Cursing, Victor began pulling stringy sheet-material off his gloves, but then his other safe-guards executed and red indicators turned green as his slave factors reprogrammed the Dragons, yet again, to reclassify him as "friend" rather than "food." The baby's mandibles closed and its whiskers and antenna extended. It gave him a sniff before turning around and trundling back to its mother.

What had he been thinking about surviving a day with the Dragons? What had he been thinking about Feroza? With a sigh, Victor turned back to his work. The spaghetti clump was as sheet-like as it would ever be, and there was still a little feedstock left…He paused for a moment, thinking. Then fantasizing. Then anticipating. He typed in his last order: a spongy blob of insulation, another plastic bag, and a powder that would become soap when mixed with warm water.

Feroza wasn't surprised to see the bath implements. Victor could tell because he could see her face.

"You took off your helmet," he said and the sponge inflated in his gloves.

Outside of the bulky space-suit, she looked tiny. Victor was no giant, but the bristly black top of Feroza's head only came up to his collar. Thick, dark brows nearly met over her severe eyes, the upper lip of her neat little mouth dotted with hair. Victor stared at her, the entirety of his mental processing power dedicated to the task of stopping himself from saying, "you're beautiful."

He was already reaching up to snap off the catches. Victor could feel himself blushing, then blushing more as he realized she could now see that reaction. See how he was staring at her. How his mouth was hanging open. He hadn't shaved in days and he probably stank like a goat.

Victor took a breath to apologize. And her smell hit him.

It should have been disgusting. Neither of them had bathed in days and despite everything the still had done to clean the air, their little habitat stank like an oil spill. If Feroza had sat down next to him on a bus in Lima, Victor would have stood up and left.

But this was the first person he'd smelled since his disastrous trip into the jungle. This was Feroza, who'd saved his life.

She rubbed a hand across her forehead as if to push back a lock of hair, and blinked when her fingers grazed her astronaut's buzz-cut. Victor's own hands went up to his throat, trying to straighten a tie that wasn't there.

Because he wasn't on a blind date with some daughter of some auntie's friend. He wasn't in some candle-lit bistro. He was on Titan, at the top of a metal mountain, in a hangar, in a tiny bubble of light and heat and oxygen.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"About that bath…" Victor said.

"Ah, yes. The sponge in your hand." Watching her smile was like smiling, himself. "You know I've been fantasizing about this all day?"

So had Victor. He breathed. Held out the sponge. "Ladies first?"

She took it. "With pleasure."

She flicked back the catches on her wrists, slid her gloves off her smooth hands, and Victor realized what he was staring at. He spun around, slipping in the low gravity. "Oh. Uh. I'll…do something."

"You can help me with my spacesuit," she said. "And I shall help you with yours."

Victor blinked around at her. "Oh," was all he could think of to say.

The clasps around her waist clacked open under his fingers.

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure-dome decree."

"Eh?" Victor shook his head. "Who did what with a dome?"

"Khubalai Khaan," she said, "You know, the Mongol emperor? I don't know his name in Spanish. I was quoting Coleridge."

"Oh," said Victor, feeling like he was failing history class. Or maybe Coleridge was a poet? It was hard to concentrate and take off Feroza's pants at the same time. Pants were very complicated.

Her suit-ling clung like thick rubber to her ankles and calves and thighs. "It's just orientalist rubbish, really," she said. "A bit embarrassing that I remember the whole thing."

"So Coleridge was a poet?" Asked Victor.

"That's right." She shimmied out of the shell of the upper suit. Her hand went up to the zipper at her collar.

Victor swallowed. He was almost entirely certain she was seducing him. "How does, uh, the rest of it go?"

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure-dome decree:/Where Alph, the sacred river, ran/Through caverns measureless to man/ Down to a sunless sea."

Then the poem got sexy, and Victor was kissing her.

Snaps snapped. The pants and boots of his environment suit scraped down his legs, leaving them feeling as light and flexible as the noodly blanket he'd hung over the airlock. The heavy shell of his upper suit rose, occluded Feroza's face. Then his suit was rolling on the ground and so were they. The air on his skin when she unzipped his suit liner felt almost as delicious as Feroza, herself.

Outside their little bubble of warmth and light, the Dragons panted and steamed. Heat fountained from the mountain beneath them and life ground against itself in the jungle below. The planet Saturn shone, invisible beyond the gasoline clouds.