Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(29)

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I spent that whole night trying to keep Heron alive. Wasn’t easy. I didn’t have a scrap of time to play with you on Torchat, though I’m sure it would have been a hoot.”

“It was… I mean, if it wasn’t you, then…” She turned from him, stared out into the desert. He could almost hear the gears of her big brain whirring. Finally she went on, “I guess mech-Daniel put that whole thing together. To make the gala easier for me. Christ on a pickle. Except, you know what? This shit is stupid embarrassing, and I don’t need any of it.” She pivoted and stomped off, while he watched from his vantage.

Oh yeah, he watched. Drank in the sight, truth told. She was a hellcat in her wrinkled skirt and bedroom slippers, and she hadn’t changed one bit in all these years. Her firecracker temper crackled on his skin, both familiar and heartbreaking. Used to be, she’d spark it up just for him.

She stopped just inside the shadow of the elevator house, one wrist poised in front of the scanner that would call up the elevator. Being her, though, she had to get in the last word. “So that’s it, then? You didn’t send the messages, and you didn’t want me here. And now you’re just going to let me walk away?”

Oh no, you did not say that.

They hit him smack in the gut, those words. She could have said anything else. Pain flared, and he spoke before the better part of him could even process. “Sure as hell am. Go play your tiny diva violin for somebody else, ’cause I am done listening.”

She turned, and he braced himself. Was she planning to lay it on even thicker? Because if she expected him to roll over like a goddamn lap dog, she didn’t know him at all anymore.

Her dark eyes snapped, electrifying him across space. “I am not…”

“Oh, princess,” he drawled, pushing away from the fence post. “You most surely are. Ain’t that the same damn thing you did to me? You watched me walk away. Now, absofuckinlutely, I aim to do the same. Put that pill in your own mouth, and give it a chew.”

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

SUMMER, 2049

DUNES BETWEEN ABU DHABI AND THE MUSTAQBAL INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Late afternoon was the hottest time of day in the hottest part of the world, but Kellen sunned in it like a happy rattlesnake. Part of that had to do with how his blood still felt too warm, too heavy for his veins. With the languor that had invaded his limbs after sex, or the stretch of forever in his mind. And maybe also with light and heat that splashed over his bare skin, merging him inexorably with his lover.

The sun lowered in the west, and he longed to hold it, hoard it. He didn’t want today, or this moment, to end. Not ever.

She stirred against him, her breath billowing over his chest. “We should record this, you know.”

“What, so I can send it to you during particle physics? Girl, you’d never ace a test again.”

“You think you’re so distracting, do you?”

“I know it.”

“Ha. Well, you’re probably right. But I’d still get top marks in the class. With a high enough frame-rate and industrial magnification, I would be able to definitively describe the atomic interactions that occur at the point of orgasm. This is valuable research. Stills from our copulation would be in all the best science channels. Your cock would be famous.”

She didn’t touch anything especially sensitive right then, but she might as well have. His body reacted to being talked about. He moved one palm along her sweat-damp spine. Her skin was silk.

“Also,” she went on in a softer, more solemn voice, “I would be able to play the vid over and over. When I am exhausted but cannot sleep. When I am scared but cannot scream. When I am lonely. Every time I’m lonely and wanting you.”

“Sweetheart, you don’t have to worry about none of that,” he swore. “I don’t intend to let you get too exhausted or scared or lonely, not ever again. I aim to stick on you like glue all the rest of our lives. I love you.”

He waited for her to say it back. She took a long time.

“I love you too, Kellen, but you really shouldn’t make promises like that.”

“Give me one reason why not.”

“I can give you a billion reasons: all the other people crawling across our planet. A billion vectors in chaos. You can’t track them all or know their purposes. There are too many uncertainties to make forever-type promises.”

“I can promise that I will love you forever.”

“How can you do that?” she almost cried.

His eyebrows crawled up his forehead, topping what he knew was a cocky grin. “Give me a couple weeks and I’ll come up with a theorem. Probably Pascalian, because of all them vectors, but till then, you’ll just have to trust me.”

“I do trust you,” she said. She rose up on one elbow and looked down at him, her head eclipsing the too-harsh sun, her hair encasing their mingled breath. “But I think that might be a problem.”

“Trust is a problem?” If she’d lean down just a smidge further, he would be able to kiss her, and they wouldn’t need to talk so much. His body stirred again, all his parts reaching for her. He could have her a thousand times out here in the desert, and he’d still want more.

“Dependence is a problem,” she said.