She nods, her cheek brushing against mine. “Yes. Yes.”
With a tight cry, she starts to come, her body growing taut beneath me, and relief blooms through my bloodstream, the promise of pleasure streaking electric down my spine—
My entire body jerks, and I suck in a sharp, surprised breath, blinking into bright light.
It takes a few beats for me to figure out where I am—and where I’m not.
I’m not on a bare mattress outside, I’m not naked, I’m not making love to the woman with the soft skin and copper streak in her eye.
But I am in our bed. Alone.
It all comes back to me in a nauseating wave: waking up in the BioVIVE pod to a life of which I have no recollection. Emery’s lies about her career, the hidden safe in her office, and who knows what other secrets.
Still, she’s clearly heavy with remorse; every time I look at her, I register how her guilt has settled firmly into two parallel lines on her forehead between her eyes, how every admission she makes pours out of her with desperation and hope. I try to put myself in her shoes—she must miss the Luca she knows. I must feel like as much of a stranger to her as she is to me.
That she loves me is obvious.
I just need to reconcile what her love looks like with what my instinct tells me love should be. And it wasn’t just her failing me: I want to understand why I was willing to suppress the instinct that told me love should be more present, more complex, just… more.
Slowly, I push myself up and sit at the side of the bed. The clock on the nightstand says 4:12 a.m., meaning I somehow slept nearly twelve hours again. Jesus. That can’t be normal.
But I also can’t worry about the physical ramifications of being resurrected right now, because my body is still vibrating with the phantom sensations from the dream—or was it a memory? The soft, rosewater scent of her skin, the tight clasp of her body around me, her gasping, pleading sounds for more. From my throat to my groin, I ache with the need to come. I’m tempted to go find her and pull her into my arms, to ask if we can, for just an hour, pretend this situation doesn’t exist and come together in the way my body is screaming we need to.
But I know sex won’t fix anything right now. What I need is to get my head together.
Literally.
I focus on the feeling of the ground beneath my feet, on the awareness of the muscles in my legs, the solidity of the bones, the strong chain of my spine to my neck, deep breaths, the clarity of my vision. I push to stand, feeling a pulse of victory when I’m able to do it without rocking back and forth on the mattress to gain momentum.
I turn, giving Honey a soft whistle to come, before following her out of the bedroom and closing the door with a quiet click. I don’t know where Emery is, but the house is silent.
Everything in my body feels haywire; my brain screams for distance to think, but my body needs more of her. Closing myself into the bathroom, I shove my sweats down my hips and wrap my hand tightly around my length.
There’s a brief moment where I wonder if this is even safe, if my heart is ready to handle this sort of thing. I decide I don’t care. A hell of a way to go, I think with a laugh, before closing my eyes to remember the way dream Emery looked gazing up at me, the way her sounds turned hoarse and fevered as she started to come, the feel of her so wet and hot around my dick. I can still hear the sounds, can still smell the soft rose scent of her skin, can taste the salt of her sweat. With a tight breath, after only a frenzied flurry of strokes, I bite back a groan, coming hard into my hand.
Dizzy, I take a second to catch my breath before washing up, brushing my teeth, and hoping I’ve managed to clear my thoughts enough to face the rest of the day, whatever it involves. At least one important part of me is working.
Knowing I can’t really go anywhere outside without Emery, I decide to poke around the house some more. Part of me hopes there aren’t any more secret vaults, hidden doors, or panels to entirely new rooms, but part of me hopes there are, because without any emotional investment in Luca Martín’s life, there’s an element of all of this that objectivelyborders on absurd, and in a strange, unhinged way, I’m curious to see how far it all goes.
But an investigation of the living room reveals Emery fast asleep on the sofa, curled up beneath a blanket. Her hair is loose and tangled; her tank top has slid off her shoulder, revealing a stretch of smooth, perfect skin. She doesn’t stir as I carefully limp around the room, and it occurs to me that she probably hasn’t really slept since we got home from the lab.
The fuckinglab. With an actual resurrection machine. None of it feels even remotely real.
I quietly poke around the living room, but there’s nothing obviously out of the ordinary. The bathroom is tidy and lacks any apparent secrets, and the kitchen is just a kitchen—although a very well-equipped one. The refrigerator has a box in the back that saysEMERY’S MENSTRUAL VITAMINS, but I move it aside and eventually find ingredients to make breakfast, and have a stack of golden, buttery blueberry French toast piled on a plate when Emery shuffles sleepily in around six.
I’d expected the physical echo of the dream to have dissipated by now, but the moment I see her long, smooth neck and bare legs, fire streaks down my torso. She walks over, assessing my expression before cautiously setting a hand on my shoulder.
“Feeling okay?”
I nod, gazing down at her, trying to remain measured and objective about everything, but feeling so goddamn hungry for her touch. “I’m good,” I tell her.
“Yeah?” She searches my eyes.
“Stood up pretty smoothly earlier. No pain in my back today. Leg is better. Actually feeling a little restless.” Tilting my chin to the French toast. “There’s breakfast.”
“Smells amazing. It’s what roused me from a dead-ass sleep.” Shestills and lets out a defeated sigh. “What the hell, Emery! Why do I keep saying things like that?”
I laugh. “It’s fine.”
