Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(27)

Training her away from domesticity was harder than it sounded. And Rook, the most social of the three pygmy goats still receiving treatment here in the barn, wasn’t much help. He looked like he wanted to give her a good sniff. Possibly chase her around some. Show the newcomer who was king. But he was a rescue himself and tended toward timidity, so a lot of their interaction was Rook gearing up to introduce himself then backing off and Azul being oblivious of any overtures that didn’t come from humans.

In a way, it was kind of like human courtship, the sweet parts anyhow.

Kellen balanced in a squat next to the goat, careful to keep his body still. He motioned to Azul, and when she boinged over and nosed his wrist, he studiously ignored her, waited for her to take a step back, and then, on his terms, he petted her, letting her closer only once she had control of herself. She didn’t even seem to realize she was also close enough for Rook to get a good sniff. The little gal gurgled with joy, and Rook snuck to within a meter of her before he backed off.

Baby steps, sure, but the social dynamics around here were looking up. Kellen breathed easy. Hairy mammals? Check. Insecure as all get-out? Check. Nonverbal but clearly needing some help? Also check. He was in his happy place.

And then he wasn’t.

Because she was there. Angela.

Materializing from the umber shadow of the elevator house and moving into full lurid sunshine, Angela Neko sashayed back into his life exactly as if she’d never left it. As if she’d never blistered his soul with cruel words or scissored him out of her own bright future.

Heron had warned him she was coming, but Kellen hadn’t quite accepted the reality. He’d been pretending he still had time to prepare himself. But he should have been honest. Nothing was going to prepare him for this, not even seeing the holoprojection of her up on Chiba Station. Angela in the flesh was a whole different experience, and he wasn’t anywhere near ready for it.

With one brown-eyed gaze, she clamped him in a state of suspended ecstasy, and he couldn’t look away.

Nobody had ever described Angela Neko as pretty, at least not in his hearing. She was a force, tremendous and terrible and amazing. She lured others into agreement with her, often against their will, like gravity. But all that was power of personality, not her looks. Physically she was tiny, graceful as a sapling liana, with tip-tilted, dark-fringed eyes and heavy, shining black hair. She used to wear it long, a cool curtain strewn across their bodies. When they’d holoconferenced a few days back, it had been trammeled in a severe updo, but now he saw she’d had it cut and shaped. Professional. Polished.

Recognition, one body of another, feathered out from his spine, curling in hot tendrils to the ends of his extremities. He could no more make words in this moment than he could calm the canter of his heartbeat.

“Hello.” Her voice painted the afternoon a darker shade of gold.

In a solar eclipse, folks without cyber eyes are advised not to look directly into the sun. Not because a direct peek hurts, but because it doesn’t. The oh-what-could-it-hurt slow, sly voice of temptation leads a body to take in more than it can safely stand. Radiation scorches the retinas, but because there aren’t pain receptors there, the eyes can be damaged irrevocably without their owner even realizing until it is far too late.

Looking at Angela Neko, at once an echo of the girl who had burned at the center of his soul and also the different, mature woman she had become, Kellen forgot that it wasn’t safe to stare. He forgot that it wasn’t safe to love her.

From a star’s distance and without moving his oversaturated eyes, he watched the animals react to her presence. Rook peered at her suspiciously. The two other goats followed his lead. The more skittish littles were nowhere to be seen.

But Azul, that oversocialized cuddlemonster, skipped right up to Angela, butted her soft nose against the senator’s wrinkled skirt, and insisted on wresting all the attention.

It was the easiest thing in the world for Angela to reach down to rub the cria’s sweet snout.

Even when Kellen’s mind was burning a supernova of memory, his instincts reacted. “Don’t do that,” he said too sharply. “You gotta thump her on the nose.”

Angela’s smile dimmed, and confusion pooled in her dark eyes. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Because you want to do right by her. Encouraging her to treat you without respect isn’t a kindness. It’s bad training.”

Kellen rose from his crouch, dusted his jeans with both hands, and approached the pair. Getting closer to that woman was way against his better judgment, of course. He did it anyhow. He wore his shabby Stetson against the hard afternoon sun, but it wouldn’t do much to protect his face from her. She would see him, as she always had, and know exactly what he was thinking.

“If we don’t tell her to back off now, she’ll grow up aggressive, try to knock people down, and just generally behave like a brat,” he explained, working hard to keep his voice even and soothing.

“Uh-huh,” Angela said with a grin that usually came with some eye rolling. But at least she’d pulled her hand back up. As he watched, she twined it with her other. Naked hands, no gloves this time. Hot hands, strong hands, lithe as flame tongues on his skin, those hands.

He swallowed, got his bearings, and patiently lured the vicu?a away from Angela’s knees. The activity centered him, tore him from staring, reminded him that time had passed. Whole years, nearly a decade. He wasn’t Angela’s thing anymore, indentured to her will.