“Jenna swallowed the lump in her throat. "Good evening, gentlemen.""You'll be hard pressed to find a gentleman in this bunch," a forty-something guy with close-cropped white hair said, laughing. She walked closer to the group and held out her hands in apology. "Sorry, didn't mean to offend.”

“You're not mad at me?" she asked.He leaned to the side and placed a lingering kiss on her neck. "If I pretended I was, would you make it up to me?"Another kiss landed on the sensitive skin of her collarbone, testing the edges of the coveralls. "Um," Jenna stammered. "No.""No?" He leveled his eyes with hers. They sparkled with amusement.She tried to think, but her body had apparently decided her brain was a nonessential system and shut it down. "Yes?”

“Bright green eyes peered at her from underneath long lashes that curled toward Saturn. Despite the so very pretty eyes, he had a strong face with sharp angles that cast shadows from the harsh overhead cargo light. A slight overbite gave the impression of a permanent pout. Dark curls tumbled lazily from his head to his shoulders.In one word: gorgeous. Another word: dangerous.”

“How many times had she stared up at this same sky and marveled at the view? How many more times would it take before it got old? She hoped she would never know the answer to that question. The gentle gold of Saturn's surface was ever present like a muted eternal sun. The rings, with shades varied from the same gold of the planet's to a brown so dark it might've been black, swept across the planet's fluid surface.”

“Her hands fisted his jacket as she pressed her face to his chest. He didn't touch her in return, stood unmoving, his body tense. "It's not like that," she managed. "I'm not...it's not like I'm... I'm not a whore. I'm not. That's not what... please, please..." She didn't bother to finish. She was crying to hard to finish anyway, couldn't even bring herself to complete the lie. No, she wasn't whoring herself to Lex for drugs. Technically. But the drugs were payment for her false loyalty, weren't they? For her betrayal. And she kept seeing him, kept spending the night with him, because he gave them to her. It might not have been the only reason, but it was one of them. She thought she was going to be sick. The one thing she'd sworn she would never do, the one place she'd always said she had too much self respect to go, and here she was. She'd done it. And she hadn't even noticed. More gently than she would have expected, his hands found hers and disentangled them from his jacket. He pushed her away, his gaze focused on the ground. He wouldn't even look at her. She was glad. She didn't want him to see her like this. "Naw," he said. "Naw, Chess, you ain't a whore. A whores's honest.”

“Even now, I could no more chart her influence than I could the gravitational powers that rule the tides. I suppose that could be said of anyone we love, that their effects on our lives run so deeply, with such grave force, we hardly know what they mean until they are gone.”

“His hands on the sides of her face, on her neck, holding her there. "Chessie...shit, Chessie, I love you so bad." His teeth on her throat, biting hard, his lips soothing the spot. "So fucking much, so...so bad.”