He could have done those things, just as he had in nights past, but he didn’t. Instead, he found the will to drift above his fatigue and his concerns, concentrating now on the warmth of Edith’s bare form lying against his own, on the relaxed cadence of her breathing, on the now-musky scent of her flesh. In these perfect moments, he shut out the rest of the universe.Just a few minutes ago, Edith had reached away from him to switch off the lamp on the nightstand. Then she’d rolled back over to him, and he’d enfolded her in his embrace. He held her now, his arms encircling her as though they’d been designed specifically for that purpose.In the twenty-five days since he and Spock had arrived in Earth’s past, Kirk had attempted to resist the feelings that had begun to develop within him from the first instant that Edith Keeler had walked into his life. It made no sense for him to fall in love with a woman with whom he could have no possible future. Whether or not her death would be required in order to preserve the timeline, as Spock had suggested might be the case, Kirk intended to right the flow of history, after which he and his first officer would return to their own time in the twenty-third century.
