When I said my life was about to get more interesting, it turned out to be an incredible understatement.

Alex stumbled into her room, struggling to keep balance. She did quite well, considering I had my legs wrapped around her waist, forcing her to carry me as we assaulted each other's mouths, our tongues entwined in a furious bid for dominance. Even as she pinned me against her wall, I did not allow myself to become submissive, nor did Alex try to be fully dominant. We were both equally frenzied.

I should probably recount how I wound up in this position. True we got on a first name basis rather quickly, but this… could use some explanation. Needless to say, we didn't just jump into each other's arms as soon as we got back to our ship. That would have been quite ridiculous.

After we had returned to the Murder of Crows we turned over the hard drive Alex had recovered to the tech specialists so they and Jackson could figure out what was on it, and why the IMC wanted it. The Murder was a fairly large ship. A little more than half as big as the Redeye, but still large enough to be considered a small, flying city. As such, Pilots' quarters tend to actually be quite large for a military ship. Of course, while the Frontier Militia did follow a chain of command, it was far less formal than a proper military, or pseudo-militaries like the IMC.

The ship has a full compliment of normal infantry, as well as Spectre scouts and general combat Pilots. I suppose I should clarify that the squad I was assigned to is something of a specialist squad. It's small and perfectly geared toward covert work, which is something I was personally good at, which of course was why I was assigned to the squad in the first place. The squad is led by Anna Morrison, with Max Donnelly as her second in command. Generally, we're not on the frontlines, rather investigating IMC activity or countering their own covert ops. However if we are in the area when a full scale assault is happening, we don't just stand by on the sidelines. I guess I impressed the right people to get put on this squad.

In the meantime, we had some down time. No pressing matters to attend to, no dastardly IMC plots to foil. But, there was something of a mystery for me to solve, and it had to do with one Alex Corman.

She was a good soldier, if a bit unrefined, bordering on downright vulgar. Her skills in dealing with enemy Titans were impressive to say the least. But that sort of skill was more suited to frontline warfare rather than covert operations work. True enough, on my first deployment with them, we encountered a rather large force, but it was still nowhere near the kind of firepower we would have faced in a frontline engagement. So, I was curious as to why a solider geared for full combat was assigned to a special ops squad.

The easy answer was that she was there to provide added security and backup. It was an age where giant robots were the norm, after all, and having someone who is an expert and disabling them would useful to have around. However, making assumptions about the Titan Killer has not panned out for me thus far. I wanted to get definitive information as to how Alex wound up with this outfit.

Of course, I didn't really want to ask her directly. I still did not really know much about her. I couldn't really gauge how she would react to me questioning why she assigned to this squad. It might seem like a fairly straight forward question, but I would essentially be going up to her and asking "Why exactly are you here?" If it were me, I would find that quite rude. Yes, this line of thinking does seem unnecessarily complicated and prone to getting me some easily avoidable trouble, but it did not occur to me how vexed I would become due to my decision to not simply ask a few simple questions. Social interaction was not really my forte. I decided to let it go, at least for a little while. I still had to acclimate myself to the Murder, and I wasn't about to waste this time of relative calm.

So, for the next few days, I explored the ship, drawing a mental map of where everything was. Despite some of the corridors looking quite similar, one could tell that his was a Militia ship. Many of the Pilots had personalized the doors to their quarters, and the ships recreational area had felt less like an officer's club and more like a civilian pub. Pilot's quarters, as I had said before, were fairly large with plenty of room to move around and came with personal showers and toilets. And of course there were the window shutters, which can display various 3-D landscapes. They even cycle from night to day. I personally had a rather serene mountain and waterfall. Although, I would have liked to have gotten a view of Paris. I made a note to look for a holo of it later.

I found the waiting to be almost excruciating. I understood that the quiet meant that there weren't any villages being burnt to the ground by the IMC because they had a bit of farm land they wanted. But I didn't really know what to do with myself in the meantime. I didn't have a lot of interests outside of my work. It wasn't particularly healthy, I know. I needed a distraction, and unfortunately, Alex was forefront in my mind. I had managed to suppress it while I was learning my way around the ship, but now, with nothing to do, she had managed to creep back into my thoughts. My curiosity was nagging at me like a small child wanting attention. And I was about to give in.

Of course, I was still disinclined to ask Alex about her assignment directly. Thus, I tended to keep my distance. She waved to me a few times in the mess, but didn't really insist on joining her for any meals. I would avert my eyes most times, only occasionally waving back. After the trust I had placed in her, this behavior on my part was quite unwarranted.

So I decided to go ask Morrison about her. After all, she had a lot of pull as to who was let onto her squad. She might have had some insight as to why Alex had been transferred to her unit.

Morrison had a small room that served as her office. It was rather Spartan in comparison to how some of the other Pilot's say they've decorated they're rooms. Although, I didn't really have anything particularly special in my room either, but I had only just arrived on the ship and didn't really have anything to decorate it with.

The sergeant let me in after I announced myself, simply saying, "Come."

"Deveaux. I was half expecting to see you soon. No doubt you have some questions."

"Actually, yes. I wanted to speak to you about Corman." The sergeant let out an exasperated sigh.

"Has she been making passes at you?" That response flustered me a bit.

"Wha… No! No… I just wanted to ask how she ended up with your unit."

"I see. That sounds like something you ought to ask her yourself." There was a pause as she noticed a pang of uncomfortableness about me. "Ah, I get it. You're afraid of what she might say."

Morrison, it seemed, was good at reading people. It was a valuable trait for a leader. Right now, however, all I could really think about was trying to come up with some kind of denial to her claim. I couldn't find one that didn't sound ridiculously obvious.

"I… didn't want to offend her."

"So you now you're trying to get information on her behind her back?" Merde she could be blunt. She can also make you realize when you're being rather stupid.

"I should just talk to her, shouldn't I?"

"That would be a good start." She gave a bit of a smirk, like she knew something she wasn't telling. I saluted her then left.

Even after a few days, I was still attempting to avoid Alex. At this point, this action would probably be considered ruder than any question that I might have asked her. However, now I was avoiding her for an entirely different reason. What Morrison had said, it had me thinking about why Alex kept crawling into my thoughts. Part of me gravitated toward a rather obvious answer, but the more logical part of my brain refused to give in to that notion.

Frustration set in. My impotence in asking a simple question of a comrade was utterly pathetic. To make matters worse, all the waiting was beginning to cause me to go mildly stir crazy, so much so that I had to relieve my frustration in a rather unbecoming way.

The problem with masturbation, though, is that no matter what you might be fantasizing, if there's something, or rather someone, you've been unable to get out of your head, then that person ends up working their way into your fantasies. Needless to say, I was quite embarrassed at that. I didn't even get to finish, either. I was even more frustrated than I was before.

I needed to talk to her, and quickly, before I ended up doing something rash.

"Hey, Misty, what's up?" I nearly jumped when spoke from behind me.

"Oh… um… I just wanted to…" It was at that moment that the logical part of my brain decided to abandon ship.

I grabbed her by the head, pulling my lips into hers so fast and so hard it was almost painful. In a matter of seconds, we were engaged in a crazed torrent of lust. Calling what we were doing kissing just doesn't cover it. If there were other people watching, we weren't aware of them, nor were we really inclined to care.

This brings us back to where we started off. Stumbling into Alex's room, with me in her arms, my legs wrapped around her. Modesty was not really important at that moment. But just because I was pinned against a wall, it didn't mean I was about to play the submissive, sexually confused French girl.

I pushed off the wall, causing Alex to somewhat lose her balance. This forced her backwards, sending us both down onto her bed. It was rather fortunate that it was right there. Otherwise this could have ended quite quickly.

I was on top, straddling her. After what seemed like minutes, we broke contact, but only to facilitate the swift removal of our clothing. She pulled my top off, quickly discarding it. As she went to undo my bra, she leaned down, kissing my chest, lavishing me with her attention. Even though I knew that this was a purely impulsive act that goes against my normally very rational mind, I couldn't help but feel relieved that Alex did not reject my sudden affection.

Our clothing rained off the side of the bed, soon leaving us completely bare, leaving nothing between us. In the brief moments before we once again became consumed with each other, I saw Alex. All of her. Her body was a roadmap of warfare. Half faded scars marred an otherwise perfect body. She was beautiful in her own way.

I had little time to take in the sights as I found myself on my back, Alex kissing me deeply once more. But, there was something different about it. Something I could really put my finger on. I wasn't exactly in a position to really focus on it, however.

I felt her leg brush against my sex, which elicited a small gasp from me, muffled as it was by Alex's own mouth. She shifted her position, straddling me in a missionary position. Neither of us was in any sort of mindset to come up with anything more elaborate. When she began grinding against me, I lost all sense of anything besides the pleasure she was giving me.

When her mouth moved from my own down to my neck, my moans became suddenly unstifled. The small part of my mind that could still think logically thanked that these rooms were virtually sound proof. If they were not, then everyone on our deck would have probably heard us. Well, heard me anyways. I don't know how, but Alex was mostly quiet, the most noise she made being some heavy breathing. Of course, her mouth stayed firmly glued various parts of my body for a large portion of the encounter.

I, on the other hand, was not so restrained. I moaned, panted, cursed… my restraint was gone, whittled away by mild cabin fever and sexual frustration, both of which were in the process of being cured.

Her pace was furious, yet rhythmic. She was rough, yet she was not dominating. Her dichotomous performance only made me more curious about this seemingly straight forward and simple woman. If the small glimmers I had seen were any indication, she was anything but straight forward and simple. It was maddening. I resolved then and there that if I didn't simply fall asleep from exhaustion, I would talk to her. Really talk.

What little cohesion my mind had melted away as I got closer to what promised to be an explosive climax. My moans had been replaced by fast, deep breaths that could have seemed to someone listening that I was having some sort of fit. And when I finally came, I was not modest about it. It was loud and irreverent, and I didn't care.

I greedily gasped for air, trying to replace the oxygen I had lost in the throes of the passionate tryst that had taken place between Alex and I. The Titan killer rolled off me nonchalantly. If she came, she didn't really show it. Although, she did have a rather smug look on her face. It was a good natured smugness though.

After my breathing finally returned to normal, I tried to think of something to say. All I could come up with was…

"So, I suppose we should talk."