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“We might as well. It’s late, and I don’t like driving at night.”
He walked into the bathroom and started the shower. He went to the bathroom as the water warmed and turned to find Hope standing a few feet away.
He opened the shower door and smiled. “Coming in?”
She raised an eyebrow, and he laughed.
“It’s just to shower. I think we both need rest after today.”
She must have agreed because she walked toward him. She slipped under his arm and stepped into the shower. He watched the water spray over her and down her entire body. He could go another round, but he knew that tonight was enough. They both had a long day ahead of them tomorrow, and he didn’t need to make her sore.
After they showered, and he found clothes for both of them to wear, they crawled into bed. Hope found the critter downstairs fast asleep and decided to leave it.
She curled up next to him and sighed deeply. “Thank you.”
He smirked at her, holding her closer. “For what?”
“Being you,” she said with a sigh. “Thank you for being you.”
He smiled at her and allowed himself to drift off to sleep.
NINETEEN
HOPE
All through the night, Hope had dreamed of Deimos. Her mind knew that her body wanted more, to go all night, to have no breaks.
In one dream, they made love continuously, in different positions in different places, but somehow never detaching as if they were one organism. Two sides in complement: one convex, one concave. One a lock, the other the key. One a honeycomb, the other a bee. She was his queen, but her honey existed only to provide pleasure for him. Her king.
In another dream, they went back and forth between Nova Aurora and Earth, and they reveled in each other’s bodies under both one sun and two.
In another dream, she scratched him, but under the cuts were beautiful scales like opals that could inspire empires to fall to have them.
In her dreams, it was simply a fact that she needed him for the rest of her life. Which both thrilled and scared her when she woke up.
But then she saw Deimos’s face, peaceful and sleeping, and all her fears dissipated. She wondered what visions he saw in the dreams behind those eyes. She wondered about all that he had seen in his life, the horrors and the ecstasies alike.
She loved his soft, gentle breathing, especially in contrast to the ferocious lust from last night. She wanted more. But she didn’t want to wake him.
As she pulled on her underwear and pants, the slight tenderness elated her. It brought back images of the reason why she was sore this morning.
This morning, she had a plan to investigate the hunch she had. They now knew from the lab results that the cows had been deliberately poisoned. After what she overheard in the grocery store, especially combined with Deimos’s concerns about sabotage from within the clutch, she wanted to find the man she believed responsible: Tura.
It felt luxurious to leave the house and find herself in the center of the city, surrounded by stores that sold beautiful, one-of-a-kind items and restaurants with reservations booked for months. Although she imagined that Deimos probably had strings he could pull to go anywhere he wanted, any time he wanted.
The city reminded her of a motley imitation of dozens of places on earth: the storybook gilding of Prague, the futuristic excitement of Tokyo, the crossroads aura of Istanbul, the ancient grandeur of Cairo, the center-of-the-world self-regard of New York. Now that she was falling in love, it had the slightly drunk,que sera serajoie de vivreof New Orleans.
Right now, however, she inhabited James Bond’s London. Her mission was to track down Tura’s location for Deimos, to conduct clandestine reconnaissance, and gather any clues she could that pointed to him as the culprit. She thought she would have an easier time going unnoticed than Deimos or someone else in the clutch, which gave Deimos one less thing to worry about.
She guessed that Tura would want to go someplace where he could see and be seen, so she walked toward the most opulent part of the quarter, the Volta Quadrangle. Grateful for the malleability of Nova Aurora clothing, she shifted her pants and T-shirt into a regal yet inconspicuous black ensemble to fit in with high society without drawing undue attention.
She guessed he might be in the historic Portal Club, a Nova Aurora institution known for traditional spirits and brews. Otherwise, she thought of the Altair Lounge, an establishment where patrons could partake in smoked refreshments through apparatuses that resembled hookahs. They had imported tobacco and cannabis from Earth, but also Nova Auroran substances with effects ranging from hallucination to genuine extrasensory perception. The backroom held even darker pleasures.
She strolled around the square, looking casually into the enormous picture windows, stopping to read the menus posted outside.
Inside the Portal Club, she spotted a cluster of serious-looking men. At the center was Tura.
She glided in confidently but discreetly, then took a seat on the edge of the room. She was close enough to hear, but with it being fairly dark inside, she was reasonably confident that no one would notice her listening.
