I must have had a Euphoria crash, the shock of events eroding my buzz. Without t-mods stabilizing me, I blacked out. All I knew was one minute I ran down the street in my bare feet, the next I lay in bed fully clothed with sunlight streaming through the window. I had flashes where I remembered running and possibly hiring an air-hack, but little else.
I rolled over, groaning. Everything hurt. My head. My body. Gods, even my hair. Every nerve felt raw and exposed. With agonizing slowness, I eased out of bed. Standing took incredible effort as my feet protested any weight on them.
When I’d first moved into the condo, I decorated my bedroom in creams, pale pinks, and soft lavenders. The furniture was bleached wood—synth, not real—and the bed linens patterned with delicate florals. I wanted something that didn’t reflect anyone’s taste but mine. Everything was meant to be light and airy as if it might float away on a cloud. Now the colors were glaring and I couldn’t open my eyes without wincing.
“Blinds,” I croaked out. The window covering snapped shut, plunging the room into semidarkness. That eased some of my agony. I’d need stronger stuff to handle the rest.
The walk to the kitchen was the longest of my life. Along the way, I called out to the unit AI to shade every window. I’d kept the condo’s color palette light and delicate throughout, and right then, I needed sunshades to walk from one end to the other.
A fumble through the cupboards turned up the aerosol vial pain meds. I took several puffs, breathing them into my system. That was when I noticed my palms were scraped raw. Most of my nails were broken and the polish chipped. Assessing myself, I saw my knees were bruised and scratched, and my feet…well, not good. Bloody and embedded with gravel. I could apply skin renewal patches and regrow the skin in about a sol, but I needed a shower first. Otherwise, I’d heal in all the dirt, which led to infection.
It took a few more minutes to realize the cramp in my stomach was hunger and I was overwhelmed by thirst. When had I eaten last? I had no idea.
I drank water straight from a pitcher in the cold unit. Next, cold take-out pizza—a surprise since the cold unit was usually bare. I rarely ate at home, and when I did cook, Alexei ate everything in sight. He could shovel down a surprising amount of food, but then he burned more calories than I did.
The hike to the shower took forever and I peeled off my dress as I walked. Somewhere along the way I realized my c-tex bracelet was missing. Fuck. If it wasn’t in the condo, I was screwed. Aside from connecting me to the CN-net, it contained my One Gov citizenship chip. Most people’s chips were implanted in their palms once they became full citizens at eighteen. Naturally my family hadn’t gone for that, so mine was in my bracelet. Without it, I could say good-bye to any full citizenship rights like the Renew treatments and the Shared Hope program. My calorie consumption allotment would be halved and I wouldn’t be allowed to own a business or property. I’d become a ward of the state unless I could prove my identity and secure a new chip.
Even without the chip problem, finding another c-tex bracelet would be nearly impossible, and if I did, it would cost a fortune to replace. Gods, it had to be somewhere. I couldn’t have gotten into my condo without it since it held all my access codes. I’d find it eventually.
The glaring light in the bathroom was not pleasant. As for what the opaque window mirror reflected back at me…Ugh. Everything was black-and-blue, even my breasts. I recalled being groped at Red Dust. At the time, I hadn’t felt anything but amazing and invincible. Now I just felt violated and stupid. I should never have tried the Euphoria.
The shower felt like needles digging into my skin, and every scrape stung like tiny knives as I lathered with soap. Eventually it became bearable as the pain meds kicked in, but it took forever to clean myself. Washing my hair was sheer misery. My broken nails snagged in the strands so I used clippers to clean up the ragged mess.
It was only as I dried myself that I remembered the encounter that had sent me spiraling out of control. Who the hell was that man? Someone connected with my mother’s family obviously. Someone who wanted to reach out to me and…what? I had no idea and my terror had been enough to trigger a Euphoria crash. That, and Phobos exploding. No, I couldn’t be remembering that right. My gut…No, I’d effectively turned it off.
But as I towel-dried my hair and started feeling human again, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe the explosion hadn’t even been real and I’d been blinded by an overhead light at the same time Phobos passed by. I poked at the idea, uncertain. I could have imagined the explosion. Or maybe I hadn’t and these feelings existed because something really wrong was coming. Something I wasn’t prepared to handle and the Phobos incident was a wake-up call. What if…Gods, I didn’t even want to think about it, but what if something had happened to Alexei? Why, I had no idea, but what if it was so awful, I couldn’t deal with it? What if he’d been hurt…or…I had to find my c-tex immediately!
I threw on the bathrobe I kept on the back of the bathroom door and hobbled to my bedroom. I tore through the room, finding nothing. Then I searched the condo, looking into everything because gods only knew what my frame of mind had been while I’d crashed.
Ultimately, I found it between the couch cushions. When I powered it on, the charge was low. I slapped it on my wrist, where it began charging as it tapped into my bio-energy. I had over a hundred unchecked shims, which was kind of insane. How was that even possible when…
Holy shit, it was Tuesday—Sunsol afternoon. I’d been out cold for two and a half sols?
I scanned the messages. Nothing there that I really cared about, though I did see a few from Lotus, which was good news. That meant she wasn’t in the same mess I was. Then I flipped to the CN-net news feed, gasping as I read and flicked through the imagery.
The night I’d been at Red Dust, there has been an explosion at the Phobos penal colony, the result of a prison break. Dozens of inmates had escaped. All were recaptured though several were dead. No names had been released. Phobos, which was porous, had actually cracked and splintered from the force of the explosion and there were concerns as to whether the penal colony should remain on the moon after the damage it sustained. Fuck. I’d witnessed a prison break.
Logically, I knew Alexei wasn’t connected. I knew he was out there somewhere dealing with the tunnel collapses in the off-world mines and speaking to the union leaders. I was overreacting because of the Euphoria crash. Yet at the same time, I didn’t really know what sort of situation he was in. The last Tarot reading I’d done hadn’t left me feeling warm and fuzzy. I had no way to confirm where he was. No way to talk to him or see if he was okay. Alexei frequently went away on Consortium business but this was the first time I’d ever felt so disconnected from him. Seeing the explosion on Phobos brought up memories I thought I’d buried since Brazil.
My knees gave and I sank down on the couch. No, I couldn’t let my thoughts drift in that direction. This wasn’t Brazil. History wasn’t repeating itself. Alexei was fine and there was no reason to believe otherwise. But what about this anxiety I couldn’t shut off? What if something had happened—maybe not on Phobos but in one of the off-world mines? What if I lost him again, only this time, it was permanent?
A little over five months ago, that’s what I’d believed—that he was dead and I’d lost him forever. I hadn’t even realized I’d found something worth having until he was gone. And then he’d walked back into my life, determined to prove himself to me. I’d lived with the fear that I could lose him. Something else could take him from me. So I’d held myself back, terrified to go all in with him. I know I had. If I didn’t fully commit, it wouldn’t hurt so much if he disappeared again. Except I could see now I’d been lying to myself. If being without Alexei was my new reality…
I couldn’t go through that a second time. I didn’t want to imagine a future without him in it. I needed my cards. Even if he didn’t want me using the Tarot for him, I needed to run a spread now. I had to see if he was okay. I couldn’t settle until I checked, his feelings on the matter be damned. Yes, once I ran the cards, everything would feel better.
I pushed up from the couch on unsteady legs, about to hobble to my office, when explosive pounding smashed against the door. Stunned, I yelped and froze in the entrance hallway. Then the door opened and thumped hard into the wall. I think the plaster behind it may have cracked on impact.
Alexei stood in the doorway, looking more disheveled than I’d ever seen him. His thick black hair stuck up in all directions as if he’d shoved it impatiently out of the way and he hadn’t shaved in at least a week. He was dressed like he’d just gotten off a shift at a construction site, wearing a dark T-shirt of some indecipherable color stretched over his broad shoulders and chest, canvas pants full of pockets, and work boots. Speechless, I watched him enter and slam the door behind him. He dropped something that looked like it might be shoes, but I immediately lost track as I found myself backed up and pinned to the wall by his body.
His lips crashed down hard on mine as he kissed me with enough force and heat, it seemed he might devour me. His tongue plunged into my open mouth and a hand fisted in my damp hair. His other hand slid down my back to cup my butt then lift me up on my tiptoes to grind against him.
It was a kiss that should have had me tearing at his clothes, desperate to get him naked. Except after the Euphoria crash and my crawl through the back alleys of Elysium City, the kiss hurt. He was too rough, too demanding, and my body was in a hurry to remind me how much I’d abused it.
“Alexei, don’t. It hurts,” I whimpered against his lips.
Immediately he stopped and set me back on my feet. Then he frowned as both hands came up to caress my face, my shoulders, and down my arms, examining me. The frown deepened as he inspected my skinned palms and broken nails.
“Your poor hands,” he said, kissing one then the other. “I’ve always loved watching them move when you talk or you run your cards and how soft they feel against me. Seeing them like this feels like it might actually kill me.”
Of all the things he could have said, that was the most unexpected and made me cry at my own stupidity. I never imagined he might notice a thing like that. He wiped away my tears and pulled back enough to take in my entire sorry state: bruised, cut, and practically falling apart in front of him.
“My people found your shoes in a deserted hallway at the Red Dust nightclub,” he said, drawing my attention to what he’d dropped earlier. The shoes I thought I’d imagined were real, making me feel like I was in some twisted fairy tale. “They lost track of you for over an hour. Then your bracelet powered off. And now I see you like this…Do you know what this does to me? How much it terrifies me? The Euphoria you took isn’t the same as what’s available elsewhere. It’s enhanced military-grade pain management mixed with opiates to increase the pleasure response. The Consortium was using Red Dust as a test market before releasing the product on a wider scale. You could have…I don’t even want to contemplate what could have happened.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” he agreed, voice hardening. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
I shrugged weakly, not looking at him. “I just wanted to feel something besides this edginess that’s been eating at me for weeks. I thought it would calm me. Believe me, I won’t do it again.”
“Good, because I’ve shut down the club. As far as I’m concerned, testing is over.”
He’d done what? “But…But what about the people working there?”
“Do you think I’d care about any of them if you died?”
I ducked my head, utterly humiliated. I should have known he’d react like this. Still, “They shouldn’t lose their jobs because I made a bad decision.”
He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. In a calmer voice, he said, “They’re all Consortium people. They’ll be redeployed elsewhere.”
“Oh. Okay,” I said, letting it go.
He waited a moment, then said, “The fact that you’re not arguing about this actually worries me. Why aren’t you asking about the enhanced Euphoria and demanding to know what it’s for?”
“I would, but I don’t think I can spare the brain cells to ask the right questions.” I looked up and met his amused expression. “Besides, I’m just so glad you’re here.”
The amusement faded. “I’ve spent the past two sols out of my mind. Even though I’d been assured you were home, I needed to know for myself you were safe.”
I groaned. “You shouldn’t have to waste your time babysitting me. I know you’re busy with projects that cost billions of gold notes and you don’t have time for this.”
His thumbs stroked the insides of my wrists, moving in unhurried circles. “You are never a waste of my time. If you need me, I’m here. It doesn’t matter what it is. Just don’t make me relive this nightmare where I thought I’d lost you. Don’t ever do that to me again.”
“I really am sorry. I haven’t been thinking straight,” I admitted. “You’ve been off-planet for the Consortium before, but I never worried like I did this time. It felt different. Everything in me has been so unsettled, and the feeling won’t stop. I just wanted to shut it off.”
“Different how?” he asked softly.
I shrugged, not sure I could explain. “I saw what happened to Phobos. I was looking right at it when the explosion happened, then my Euphoria crash hit. You weren’t involved, were you? The Consortium didn’t have anything to do with what happened on Phobos, right?”
“Why would you even think that?” he asked instead.
“I don’t know. It’s just…” I shrugged again. “Maybe it’s all mixed up in my head because everything happened at once. You were off-world, I took the Euphoria, and I’ve had this awful feeling of doom hanging over me. Plus when I ran the cards—”
“I asked you not to run the cards for me. That’s not why I’m with you,” he said patiently.
“I know, but it’s like asking me not to breathe,” I confessed. “Regardless, when I got up this morning, I realized how much the explosion on Phobos felt like Brazil all over again. I thought maybe that’s why I’d been feeling so unsettled. Maybe Phobos was a warning you were gone and I would never see you—”
“No,” he said urgently, interrupting me, hands stilling on my wrists. “I allowed foolish decisions to come between us and made mistakes I don’t intend to repeat. I don’t regret my actions in stopping your mother, but I regret putting us in a situation where that was the outcome. I regret the time we lost.”
“I know. Or I thought I did. It wasn’t until this morning that I realized how scared I am. It made me see how much I’ve been holding back because deep down I thought you would hurt me and disappear again. I thought if I acted like this didn’t matter, it wouldn’t hurt if you were gone.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat, knowing he was the only thing in the world truly holding me up. If I lost him a second time and never told him all the things I’d been afraid to say, I couldn’t live with myself. “I love you. I was a coward not to tell you before. I should have let you know how I felt and how much you mean to me.”
He went utterly still. There was a look on his face I’d never seen before, a kind of amazed wonder that shocked me. “I didn’t think you would ever say it.”
My eyes widened, outraged. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Careful of my hands, he lifted my arms until my wrists rested on his shoulders. His lips curved into a smile and his hands settled around my waist. “I knew you were afraid, but I worried that if I said anything, you would run. I wasn’t entirely certain you trusted me enough to let me in. And the thought of losing you was so paralyzing, I didn’t want to risk what you’d already given me. You needed time and space to decide how you felt, and I tried to give it to you.”
“What if I’d wanted to go?”
“I would have let you. Or I’d like to think I would. I’m not certain since I’ve waited too long for you to let you go. I love you. I’ve loved you since Brazil. I just haven’t said the words because I knew you weren’t ready to hear them, moya lyubov.”
My mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. “Brazil? That was a year ago!”
“I know, but as I said, you weren’t ready,” he whispered. “Now you are.”
“Alexei—”
“Say it,” he murmured. His hands went to the sash of my robe, tugging gently on the knot. “Please, I need to hear you say it.”
The awe in his voice made my stomach flutter. “I love you.”
He sighed and bent until his forehead rested against mine. In that moment I knew he belonged completely to me. The Consortium may have created him, but only I owned him.
“Again. I need to hear it again.”
“I love you.”
“I adore you, Felicia,” he murmured. “I will love you for as long as this life will let me. I don’t know how to stop loving you.”
I felt tears threatening again as I reached up to run my fingers through his hair. Nothing in my life had felt like this. Absolutely nothing. This man knew me better than anyone did or ever could, and to think he loved me this much while I ignorantly bumbled about, trying to sort out my life…
“I’m sorry I never told you before.”
His hands slid under my robe and pushed it off my shoulders. “Then you’ll need to make it up to me.”
My breathing hitched. Any lingering aches and pains from Red Dust were forgotten. “How?”
Whatever he’d been about to say or do next, it all stopped as he pulled away, his eyes trained on my bruises. He pushed aside my robe until it was on the floor, swearing viciously under his breath in both English and Russian when he saw the extent of the bruises covering my ribs and breasts.
“What happened to you?” he ground out, raising a hand to my breast, his fingers skimming the bruises. “Who did this?”
“It happened at the club after I took the Euphoria,” I said in a small voice. “Someone grabbed me from behind.”
“Did he do anything else? Touch you anywhere else?” His voice was deceptively calm but rage poured off him in waves like it was a physical thing.
I knew what he was asking and I shook my head, shivering. “No. Just this. It was my own fault. I shouldn’t have—”
“This was not your fault. It was mine for not being here and taking better care of you. Mine for always being pulled away on Consortium business and leaving you alone. Mine for not keeping you safe.”
“It’s bad enough you have a security detail following me everywhere except the bathroom. You can’t expect to watch me every minute. It’s creepy and it’s weird,” I shot back, suddenly nervous. “Besides, sometimes things just…happen.”
“Not to things that belong to me.”
“I’m not a thing you can own,” I retorted.
I may as well have been talking to myself at that point because, just like that, he was gone. His mind had flown to the CN-net and all I had left was a shell. He was still alive, but for all intents and purposes, he was no longer with me. His mind could travel the CN-net faster than anyone’s, sniping information, searching down leads, gathering data. It was one of many things I’d never be able to do. I didn’t have the t-mods. I couldn’t load my thoughts into the CN-net and participate in that online world the way most of the population could. It hadn’t really bothered me until now—moments like this when he was completely gone from me.
I didn’t know what to do when he got like this—especially not when he had one hand on my breast and loomed over me. Disturbing, and it freaked me out. When I tried to wriggle away, he was back, his blue eyes focusing on me with laserlike intensity. Then he bent and lifted me until my legs were wrapped around his waist.
“Alexei, what happened? What did you do?”
“It’s been dealt with” was all he said as he carried me to my bedroom.
“How?” I had an idea of what he’d done—gone through the club’s security AI, analyzed all the CN-net avatars whose citizenship chips had been scanned that night, broke into memory blocks to search for anything involving me until he found who’d attacked me. No doubt he’d already located the responsible party and sent chain-breakers to deal with him.
Alexei said nothing, setting me on the edge of the bed instead. He disappeared, and when he came back, he carried a handful of skin-renewal patches.
“Alexei, please. Tell me what you did.”
He knelt before me, tearing off pieces from of the first patch and smoothing them over the cuts and abraded skin on my knees. Seconds later, I could feel the tingle of new skin graphing over the damaged areas.
“You already know,” he said, looking at my hands and applying patches there as well. Then my elbows because apparently I’d spent my evening falling over every single pebble on Mars. “You’re mine to protect. Mine to keep safe. You were assaulted. You could have been raped. If you hadn’t gotten away, he would have done just that and thought nothing of it. Just blamed the Euphoria. Claimed you were willing because you didn’t say no. If I could, I would rebuild this world so nothing could ever hurt you. Since I can’t, I deal with the threats the only way I know how.” He examined the bottoms of my feet now, smoothing skin patches there as well.
“Is he still alive?”
He finished with my feet and his blue eyes met mine. “Not for much longer.”
My eyes widened. “You can’t kill a man because he touched me!”
“He wanted to do much more than touch, Felicia.” He set the unused skin renewal patches on the floor. “I’m perfectly aware of how unhinged I sound. I would fail a One Gov rationalization test were I to take one now. Unfortunately for both of us, you make me irrational. I lose all common sense where you’re concerned. A threat to you existed. I dealt with it.”
“Even if he intended something worse, it didn’t happen. You can’t kill him for that.”
“I disagree. To protect you, I would do that and more. This is what the Consortium created and turning off that conditioning is difficult.” He paused, caressing my cheek. “I won’t kill him, but I will destroy his life. Ultimately, he will end up killing himself, which is the desired outcome so it doesn’t really matter.”
My mouth opened, but I was speechless. What kind of comeback was I supposed to have for that? How had we gotten so far away from normal?
“I’m sorry I’m scaring you,” he said, and he looked sorry too as he knelt on the floor in front of me, his head bowed and hands at his sides. “If you want me to leave, I will.”
“I just want you to be a regular guy and for us to not have conversations like this.”
“I’m trying, but I may still do things you won’t like because, for the Consortium, that is who I have to be. It’s difficult to be one thing for you and something else for them. I’ll make mistakes. You’re not my conscience, but I need you to help me. I need you so much I would destroy this world if I lost you.”
He looked so miserable and pained, I had to reach out to him. I may not like what he’d done, but I also couldn’t let him go because of it either. My fingers brushed his hair from his face and tilted his head so I could see his eyes. I knew I should be angry and afraid, but seeing him like this undid me. He was undoubtedly one of the most powerful men in the tri-system yet he needed me. Only me.
“I need you too,” I whispered. “I don’t want to go back to that part of my life where you weren’t in it. Just…ease up on the death threats. Notify One Gov instead of whatever it is you planned. Don’t kill anyone for me. Don’t do anything that might drive us apart.”
“Never. I would never do that.” He paused, slipping away from me again and back to the CN-net. A moment later, he murmured, “One Gov is on their way to apprehend him.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Thank you.”
“Pazhalsta, but I’ll be watching him and will deal with him as I see fit if I think it necessary. That’s the best I can promise you.”
What could I say to change his mind? Probably nothing. “Okay. I guess that’s fair.”
He rose up from where he knelt and his lips met mine. Slow, soft, and gentle, the kiss was little more than a brushing of lips. No part of his body touched me other than his mouth, the kiss a caress on its own.
To my surprise, he pulled back. “Would it be best if I left?”
I had to salvage this situation, afraid it might become a hurdle we couldn’t overcome. In answer to his question, I leaned back on my elbows, spreading my legs in invitation, putting myself on display. I couldn’t imagine behaving like this for anyone but him. His eyes went where I intended and stayed there. “I haven’t seen you in over two weeks. What do you think?”
The hesitancy turned into something else. He said something softly under his breath in Russian I didn’t catch. “I think we’ll be ordering dinner in tonight,” he said.
He stood and stripped off his clothing faster than I’d ever seen anyone move, throwing his T-shirt on the floor and somehow pushing off his pants and boots all at once. As always, I couldn’t help but admire his body. He was perfect, all sculpted and defined muscle that felt like warm granite under my hands. His broad shoulders and deep chest tapered down to a lean waist and a set of abs I could probably do my laundry on. His arms and legs were also heavy with a chiseled muscle that begged my touch—hands, mouth, with whatever part of me that could reach him. Lastly, my eyes were drawn down to his penis, fully erect and swaying slightly under its own weight. It was beautiful yet daunting, unnerving me with worries that, just like everything about him, it would be too much for me.
However, what really caught the eye were his tattoos. Done in blue-black ink, they might be considered works of art if you didn’t know how he’d earned them. The Madonna and child over his heart said he’d been born into the Consortium. The spider on his neck marked him as a thief. The crucifix on his chest signified he would never betray the Consortium and loyalty to death. High up on his right bicep, I’d once thought it a rose, but in reality it was dozens of tiny skulls shaped in the outline of a rose, meaning time in prison and also murder. He’d killed many times, and it was likely a number that would horrify me. The dragon around his waist and coiled down most of his left leg meant he was in the Consortium’s grip for life. Last were the stars on his knees and both shoulders proclaiming him 1vor v zakone: thief in law and a ruler of the criminal underworld. He was the pinnacle of organized crime. And while the Tsarist Consortium took pains to show One Gov and the tri-system it had shed its ancient roots, the tattoos proclaimed some of the original element remained.
Before I could finish looking, Alexei tumbled me into the bedsheets. I found myself on my back, repositioned up the bed, him over me. Rather than kiss my lips, he ran his mouth over my body. My throat, my shoulders, along my arms and hands, then my breasts and stomach, to my thighs and lower—every part of me was kissed and licked and caressed with his mouth until I was an aching ball of need. His touch was worshipful as he whispered how much he needed me, how important I was to him, that I was the only thing in his world that mattered. He’d never been so gentle before, never so reverent. I was on fire from those kisses, lost in him and begging him to take me because I needed him too. I couldn’t live without him. Didn’t want to live if he wasn’t in my life.
An infinite amount of time later, he took pity on me. His body was poised over me and he held himself up on his elbows. He kissed me deeply, groaning into my mouth while his tongue danced with mine. Then with torturously slow movements, he pushed into me. I felt stretched and filled, crying out with relief after having been so long without him. My legs went around his waist and I dug my heels into him, trying to get him closer, faster. He wouldn’t be rushed. Instead he continued his excruciating glide, making me feel all of him as he settled deep inside me. My eyelids fluttered closed at the sensation and I arched against him, begging him with my body, letting him know what I needed.
When he went utterly still, I opened my eyes to find him looking down at me, his blue eyes dark with want. The muscles in his neck were tightly corded as he strained to hold back rather than give in to what our bodies demanded.
“Say it,” he whispered hoarsely, bracing himself on one forearm and fisting my hair. His other hand gripped my left hip hard enough to bruise as he fought to keep me from bucking against him and snapping his control. “I want to hear it. Please, Felicia.”
“I love you. I don’t know how to do anything else but love you. All I want is you. Oh gods, Alexei, no one but you!”
The hand on my hip moved, changing the angle until my hips canted up against his. He finally began to thrust in the powerful, fluid strokes I wanted that stole my breath away. My awareness of the world disappeared under the speed and urgency of his movements. In and out he went, the friction wonderful and overwhelming, pushing me past anything I’d felt with him before. His lips were on mine again, his tongue thrusting in a rhythm that matched his hips.
The orgasm hit so hard, I thought I was dying. I screamed into his mouth and clung to him. Felt his body jerk in response, and his hold tighten on me as his hips slammed into me. A heartbeat later, I felt him coming, his body convulsing with savage force. He roared his climax, greedily using my body and wringing every last bit of pleasure from both of us.
He rolled to the side then, moving so his weight didn’t crush me. I found myself sprawled on his chest, my face against his throat. Both our hearts were racing, each of us breathless. I felt him twist my hair in his hands, using it to lift my head so our eyes met. For a long time, we simply looked at each other. I’d never experienced a moment with another person that felt so intense or weighted with potential.
“Move in with me,” he said. “I don’t want us separated any longer. I never wanted it, but you needed time and now I don’t want another sol apart from you.”
And because it seemed that easy and I wasn’t sure why I’d resisted in the first place, I nodded. “Okay.”
He smiled, making my heart swell. He eased me aside and climbed out of bed. Then he cleaned us up, and resettled the sheets around me. Before I realized it, he pulled on his clothes and crouched by the bed.
“I was in such a hurry to get to you, I left some things dangling,” he murmured, kissing my forehead.
“Did everything go okay with the mines? Did you find out why they’re collapsing?”
“That’s not something I want to bore you with. Certainly not right now,” he said, drifting in for another kiss.
Somehow that didn’t seem like the right answer, so I tried again. “But it went okay?”
“There were some unexpected issues, but it’s fine.”
“You don’t make it sound fine.”
“It will be,” he assured me. “For now I want you to rest and let the renewal patches do their work. I’ll be back shortly with takeout.”
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll be here.”
“I would hope so,” he teased, brushing fingers through my hair. “I could get used to this agreeable Felicia.”
“Don’t worry. It won’t last. We’ll be fighting again soon enough.”
“Until that happens, I plan on enjoying this immensely.” He pressed a kiss to my lips before standing. “I love you. I’ll be back soon.”
It wasn’t until he’d left that I realized he never said if he’d been on Phobos. And even though he was safe and I’d told him I loved him, nothing had changed. The unease in my gut that said something big and life-altering was heading my way hadn’t disappeared. If anything, it was worse.