Chapter Twenty-Nine

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed as my eyes blinked and de-blurred was the corded muscle of Luke’s arm draped over my waist, his hand pressed lightly to the mattress near my head. The next thing I noticed was that his chest was pressed to my back, solid and warm – but not too warm. The blankets were pulled up just enough to comfortably enshroud without stifling. It was the perfect temperature and the perfect amount of covers and the perfect – everything. I felt coveted and protected, but not drowned.

It was like he knew exactly how to spoon me, even our first time.

But I wasn’t surprised. That wasn’t all he’d known exactly how to do.

I closed my eyes, turning my attention inward. I was… tender in some places. I flexed and winced. Quite tender. Nick hadn’t been joking about Luke’s size.

As the events of the last few hours flooded my memory, I had to bite my already bruised lips to keep from moaning. In the darkness behind my lids, I not only saw but felt everything. Luke’s extremely adept hands, his intuitive touch, his focused strength and patient persistence that slowly rolled into just the right amount of selfish, slightly rough passion.

And now I wanted to do it again.

When I swallowed, I felt a little twinge of soreness in the skin on the side of my neck, I smiled to myself, despite my irritation. He’d no doubt given me a hell of a hickey. I remembered knowing he’d leave a deep mark when he’d done it. I probably should have protested, but I was caught up in him.

Besides… as immature as I knew it probably was, and as foolish too, there was a part of me that wanted to be marked by Lucas. It wanted to be owned by him. Especially now, in the face of everything. In the face of Zero.

And it was in a place easily covered by clothing anyway.

Against my back, Lucas slowly shifted. I felt him pressing his weight into the hand on the mattress in front of me. I watched that hand, how beautiful it was, remembering those fingers…. And I suddenly had to clear my throat.

Lucas rose over me from behind, and I turned just enough to look up at him. His EED was blue, his dark hair was tousled, and the black of his pupils was fast expanding. He was smiling in a way I had never seen before. “Good morning, Beautiful,” he said. His voice was deep, filled with sleep and lust and darkness. His eyes trailed from my eyes to my lips, and I swallowed again, this time reflexively.

“Good morning,” I replied, smiling.

Damn. He’s too gorgeous. My body was far too aware of him. His lips curled a little more, giving me that new, sexy smirk that was too similar to his creator’s. I suddenly turned my face away from him to moan longingly into the pillow beside me. It was shameless. And I couldn’t help it one bit.

He must have known, must have read it in a scan, or maybe he was simply a man and knew what to do, because he chuckled low, balanced on one unnaturally strong arm, and used the other to snake beneath me and roll me over onto my stomach.

My breathing hitched, then sped up. I squeezed my eyes shut tight and bit my sore lip as my heart raced a million miles a minute. I knew this was going to hurt – and I wanted it anyway. I couldn’t have told you how badly I wanted it.

His arm stayed wrapped tight around my waist, holding me firmly against him as he once more found my core, sank deeply into it, and took me to some kind of godless heaven.

Hours later, I’d showered and dressed and entered the kitchens to find Lucas had cooked me breakfast. That was nothing new. He almost always made me breakfast. But this time, he sat across from my chair to make sure I ate it. I would have rolled my eyes at the amount of care he was exhibiting, but his actions were actually kind of endearing. So I sat down and tried not to feel conspicuous.

“Scrambled eggs,” I said, smiling down at the plate. They were a rare treat. Eggs were the one food that science hadn’t yet been capable of perfectly replicating without any actual animal products. And Lucas had put cheese on them too, which wasn’t as rare since it was replicated, but was absolutely delicious.

Scrambled eggs.

I blinked.

Scrambled. Scramble….

“Oh my God,” I said aloud.

Lucas straightened at once, probably slipping into battle mode. “What?”

But it all just occurred to me right then, each little piece, every memory, and the schematics of how it would all fit together. I heard Sonia’s words in my head, and saw them float by like glowing text ripped from a holy manuscript…

…We lost touch with Jonathan and Nathan right away. Zero must have scrambled the signal…

Floating just behind them and glowing just as bright were the tiny scrambling nanites I’d originally incorporated into the outer silicon layers of android skin to prevent probed readings upon contact a year ago.

And the solution to our most recent problem was there in that puzzle too, spinning and moving and glowing just like everything else. It was a missing link, like an electron to a proton, and it would draw everything together. I just needed to focus long enough to recognize it.

I stared unseeing at the fresh, hot plate of breakfast. In my head, equations and yellow-gold diagrams turned like carnival lights. It was there… it was there…. It’s right there.

Suddenly I was jumping up out of my chair and looking frantically all around me for something to take notes and draw with.

“Samantha!” Lucas was alarmed. He stood quickly, moving around the table. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Someone else came into the kitchens at full speed, probably spurred by the sound of my exclamation and Luke’s questions. I saw them out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t even look at them. I needed to concentrate! Focus!

I pushed past Lucas to begin walking briskly toward the lab Nick and I had been working in day and night, and luckily Lucas let me go.

“What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” Charlotte asked as I brushed past her too. I looked up briefly and tried to smile reassuringly. But big, blue eyes searched me with concern. She had bags of toys in her arms.

“It’s fine!” I told her hastily as I moved further down the hall. “Really! Nothing’s wrong!”

Lucas was right on my heels. Over my shoulder, I called, “I need something to draw with and I need an interface!” In my head, the pieces began to shift together now, finally pulled as if by magnets. I felt my pace quicken further. Then I broke into a run. “And I need to see Nicholas!”

Luke’s running footsteps were still behind me. I knew that if he wanted to, he could easily overtake and then overpower me, so I called back to him as well, just to alleviate his concern. “I know what to do!” I told him. “About the bounty hunters! And the android scans! And even the bullet-proof skin I was working on!”

I rounded the corner, the door to the lab slid open, and a weary Nick at the end of his shift looked up from the table he’d been working over. I exclaimed, “Nicholas! I figured it out!”

He just stared at me for a protracted and dumbfounded period of time before he finally ran his hand over his face and said, “You figured what out?”

He was in desperate need of caffeine. Or sleep. Caffeinated sleep. That what I called this stage of being: The caffeinated sleep stage. It was the stage where you could drink twelve espressos and probably do some kind of speed to boot, then sleep for twenty hours like a toddler after a sugar high.

“All of it,” I told him, grinning and stepping into the room. “I think I’ve figured out a way to stop androids from detecting who we are with their scans, and I think I figured out the android bullet-proofing once and for all!”

Nick blinked. Then I watched his eyes widen. He straightened where he was standing, looking two-hundred percent more awake than he had ten seconds ago, when I’d walked in. “In that case, get in here and take over,” he said, looking around the table at the mess he’d made.

We were both rather frantic workers, and tended to not clean up after ourselves when in the throes of creating something, which was probably foolish and dangerous when conducting science experiments, but it was just the way we worked. Sometimes it felt like if we stopped or slowed down even the tiniest bit, we would lose the tenuous grasp we had on the specifics of what we were doing. Like a writer interrupted mid-flow – we wouldn’t be able to regain that momentum once it was lost, no matter how hard we tried.

When I got to Nick’s side of the table, I realized Lucas had followed me into the lab. He was standing near the door, watching us with an obvious dose of infuriation. But it was good natured infuriation, at least. He was almost smiling.

I gave him an I’m sorry, forgive me, you know you love me anyway! smile and he shook his head, sighing. “I’ll be back with mocha protein shakes for the both of you.” He turned on his heel and left the hall, allowing the door to the lab to slide shut.

My heart warmed, and my stomach growled. Lucas made the best shakes.

“Christ,” Nick whispered under his breath. “You two finally did the deed last night, didn’t you?”

My head whipped around. “Wha-what?” I stammered like an idiot as my face flushed furiously.

But Nick’s gaze slipped from my wide eyes to my neck, and he smirked. “That’s what I thought. No wonder he’s being so smug.”

My eyes grew even wider, and before I could stop it, my hand guiltily slapped over my neck, where I knew that damn hickey was. Not so easy to hide after all.

“You know… we’ve only been dating a few weeks!” I insisted in my defense. “There’s no ‘finally’ about it!”

Nick snorted, shook his head, and returned to cleaning up the work area. As he turned his back to me in order to replace several mechanical components in their material slots on the shelf, he asked, “So… how was I?”

I was still staring at his back wide-eyed, my face burning, so it took me a second to understand what he meant by that. And when I did, I was naturally offended.

“Ugh,” I said, rolling my eyes and dropping my hand. So the mark was going to show. Oh well. For all I cared, Nick could stare at it and stew. “Just like a guy to try and take credit for another man’s sexual prowess.”

Nick turned a broad grin and glittering blue eyes on me. “That good, huh?” he said unabashedly. “I’ll count that as a successful program in my notes, then.”

I gawked at him.

He ignored me, took out an electronic notepad from his lab coat, and began hurriedly typing with one hand on the screen. “I’m betting Malcolm is even better, given his disciplined bellicosity,” he said nonchalantly and without looking up from his pad. “Care to find out for me? Purely for the sake of science? I would have to warn you though,” he continued with a thoughtful finger to his chin in pretend concern. “Zero’s added height is the tip of the iceberg; everything about IRM-1000 is bigger.”

My mouth snapped shut. My gaze narrowed. I thought very quickly, and just as quickly I came to a conclusion. Nick was venting. He was clearly jealous, and passive-aggressive dickheadism was how Nicholas Byron dealt with his jealousy. But I could handle Dickhead Nick. I was used to Dickhead Nick. Hell, I had a damn degree in Dickhead Nick.

“I can do that,” I replied with a nonchalant shrug as I grabbed my own pad and stylus from the table. “And that’s noted on the size difference; thank you for the heads up.” I turned to a fresh page on the screen and began sketching out ideas that were coalescing in my brain. The fact that they had nothing to do with what we were discussing and everything to do with electronic signature designs was not important. This was for effect. “But he isn’t next on my list, to be honest. I’m curious how Daniel compares first, given his obvious alpha-rebel comportment, so I’ve penned him in for Thursday night. Hand me that nanite retractor?”

I never looked up at him, but Nick had fallen silent and the retractor was slow in coming. Plus, I could practically feel the flames licking at me from where he stood a few feet away. So I chalked it up as victory number one and tried not to gloat.

We fell into a working silence. For me, it was comfortable. For Nick, it was probably pregnant with unspoken questions and revenge plots. But silence was silent and it allowed me to clearly think. A few minutes later, I had sketched out most of my solutions and saw that they had cohesive merit. I smiled to myself. The door to the lab slid open, and Lucas stepped in carrying two delicious-looking shakes. My stomach immediately and loudly reacted.

Luke came toward us and held out the shakes. “Lieutenant Byron ate the eggs,” he told me as if he knew I’d felt bad about leaving them. I took my shake gratefully, thanking Lucas. But Nick was a little more reluctant in accepting his. He did anyway; he was exhausted and needed fuel and he was on the other end of the spectrum from stupid. But his “thank you” was curt in the extreme.

Luke seemed completely unfazed by this behavior. Which probably rubbed it all in even more for Nick.

I smiled to myself at that thought, then waited until I could feel Nick’s eyes on me. While I knew he was watching, I sensuously wrapped my lips around the straw and made a show of “innocently” sucking on it.

When I swallowed and looked up, Nick’s blue eyes had darkened, his jaw was set hard, and the corners of his mouth were ever-so-slightly turned upward in black amusement and covetous challenge. He stiffly turned away, pulling his own straw out of his shake to toss it resolutely in the nearby garbage can. He then began chugging the shake, and I knew it had to be giving him a nasty case of brain freeze. But he was stubborn. And I was betting he welcomed the pain as a distraction.

I tried not to laugh at that too, and this time I almost failed.

I was chalking it up as victory number two.