by Amy Valenti
Scott rolled his eyes at the gallows humour. “Trust me. We’re safe here.”
“I am trusting you. Didn’t you notice?”
“Oh, I noticed. Wanna trust me again later?” He tightened his arms around me and I closed my eyes, feeling ridiculously safe and secure. How had I managed to find this little piece of heaven, when I’d thought I was destined to be alone forever?
“Mm-hmm…”
For a while, I just let Scott stroke my hair. He was always telling me to relax, and right now, I was the very definition of the word. I was on the edge of sleep when his quiet voice roused me. “Holly?”
“Hmm?”
“How’d you manage to fake the suppression?”
I considered putting off the question, leaving it for another time. But he needed to know, and at least here I knew we wouldn’t be overheard. So I told him.
“My aunt Leah works in the clinic; she’s one of the suppression doctors. Usually family isn’t supposed to be involved in the procedure, but she was filling in for the scheduled doctor. He’d gone home sick. Since Leah’s last name is different to mine, no one realised.”
Scott watched me thoughtfully. “She did the procedure?”
I nodded, remembering.
“You’re sure you want to go through all this again?” My aunt’s expression was concerned. “Holly, statistically speaking only twenty per cent of third-timers strike it lucky; fewer if they’re women. Why don’t you think about this some more?”
“Will thinking about it change the result?” I was terrified, but I had made up my mind. Better to be put out of my misery than to live in hope of something that couldn’t be.
Leah shook her head slowly. “This might not be meant to be, you know.”
Defensively, I drew my knees up to my chest on the bed, hugging them and glaring at her. “Whose stupid rules are these, anyhow? I studied hard. I passed all my academic tests with flying colours. And just because I sometimes think about sex that makes me a bad doctor, even if I know twice as much as someone who manages to pass the procedure and hardly studied? It’s not fair, Aunt Leah!”
She nodded, biting her lip. “I know. It’s far from a perfect system. But it’s what the law requires.”
I had a few choice things to say about that, but I kept them to myself. “Just…do your best. It’s not your fault if I fail again. I know that.”
Without replying, Leah prepared the IV that would sedate me and I stared up at the ceiling morosely, blinking back tears. I had to try—if I didn’t, I’d spend the rest of my life regretting it and wondering if it would have worked.
“Keep calm, Holly.” My aunt swabbed my hand free of bacteria then hooked me up to the IV. I winced at the pain as the cannula needle pierced my skin, and closed my eyes as I waited for the sedative to hit my system. “I’ll do everything I can.”
Around an hour later I woke up, groggy but not in too much discomfort. Most of the procedure was undertaken with nanites and hololasers, but I’d had a splitting headache after the first time. Hormone dams could be a little tricky, they’d admitted.
“Aunt Leah?”
There was a brief pause, then my aunt walked into view. From her face, I already knew there was a good chance that the post-procedure test had failed. Even so, I had to ask. “How did it go?”
From somewhere behind the bed, a robotic voice announced, “Procedure successful.”
I stared at Leah. “It worked? But before, they had to make me look at stuff and touch it and hear…”
She leaned over the bed and spoke softly, her shoulders hunched with tension. “I took the test—your recorded biorhythms and my suppressed reactions. You’re registered as a success, Holly.”
A jolt of disbelief made me as numb as I’d always assumed suppression would be. “But if they find out, we’ll both be…”
Killed. Executed. Murdered. I didn’t know which of the words to use, so I kept quiet. Leah squeezed my cannula-free hand, her smile both pained and genuine. “Don’t get caught, and we’ll be fine. Be careful. For both of us.”
Scott listened to my story in silence, shaking his head in admiration. “We could use someone like your aunt in the committee. Is she still a clinician?”
I shivered a little as my body cooled and Scott pulled a blanket over us, tucking it around me with obvious concern. “No. She disappeared a few weeks later. They called her in for interrogation about something… I don’t even know if it was related to suppression. She never got to the meeting. Maybe she went underground to protect me.”
“I’m sorry.” He kissed my forehead gently, and I tried a smile. It fell flat and he noticed immediately. “Hey… She’s probably fine. If they were on to her, there’s no way you’d still be free, right?”
“I guess,” I murmured. “God, I was so selfish. I had to be a doctor, and she was just trying to help me…”
“It was her idea, though, right?”
I nodded, wishing it would make me feel better. “I should have just accepted that it wasn’t meant to be before it got that bad.”
Scott snorted. “Way too many people just accept the way things are. Committee’s trying to change that, but it’s gonna take time, I guess.”
We lay there quietly for a while, both lost in our own thoughts about the screwed-up world. Then Scott asked, “Why d’you wanna be a doctor so badly?”
That one, at least, was a less touchy subject. “Are you sure you wanna see? It’s pretty scary.”
He propped himself up on an elbow, morbidly curious. “You have scars? Show me.”
“Okay…” I kicked off the blankets and pressed my thumb firmly to the holoswitch just beneath my hairline at the back of my neck, in the standard place doctors installed them these days. The smooth replacement skin down the left side of my body flickered, then the hologrammatic image ghosted up over it, a perfect image of the scarring and flaws I would still have if not for the nanotech that smoothed my outer skin. The old injuries were still there, below the surface, invisible to the eye and undetectable to the touch, but if I got injured there again the doctors would at least know which spots were most vulnerable—the holomap saw to that.
“Ouch.” Scott’s eyes widened but he didn’t seem grossed out. I would have had to get pissy with him if he had. “What happened?”
“Explosion. I was twelve and there was a menial revolt going down in the city. It just kind of came out of nowhere, this riot—police versus menials—and things got nasty. There was some sort of homemade device, and some of the shrapnel got as far as me. I was lucky to survive, but I was side on and there was a sign at head height that shielded my face and neck.”
“Fuck. That’s bad.”
“No kidding. Hurt like hell, too. But the doctors who worked on me used experimental nanos and somehow they managed to patch me up. Ever since then… I’ve wanted to do the same for other people.”
I let the hologram fade and Scott kissed my side affectionately before pulling the blankets back up over us. His lips sent a tingle through me, but I was still too tired to pursue it. “How about you? Why do you wanna be a doctor?”
“Cause I look damn sexy in a white coat.” Somehow, he managed to keep a straight face…at least, until I burst out laughing. Then he grinned, shrugging. “Nah. I just wanna fix stuff. Some people like repairing car engines… I like repairing organs. Theoretically, anyway. Not like I’ve had chance to do more than study textbooks and cadavers.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Fix ‘stuff’? These are people, you know.”
“I know. And when they’re conscious, I can be nice to them. When they’re injured and anaesthetised and bleeding to death, I can fix them, then wonder what they do for a living when they wake up. Otherwise, I’d probably have a nervous breakdown or something. You don’t worry about that?”
Shaking my head, I thought about it. “But that’s why I’m gonna be a specialist, not a trauma surgeon. It’s all about the bedside manner.”
“And now we come full
circle, back to the class we first met in. I see what you did there.” I kept quiet, waiting for the inevitable, and he didn’t disappoint. “Wait—you don’t like my bedside manner? Coulda fooled me…”
“That was just predictable.” It had been a crazy night of anxiety, fun, lust and angst, and I was really starting to feel the effects. Muffling a yawn behind my hand, I burrowed further under the covers. “Sleep now?”
“Sounds good to me…” He raised his voice a little. “Lights off.”
The dim lighting faded to darkness, and I closed my eyes as he brushed his lips across the back of my neck. “Night…”
I thought I heard him murmur something in response, but I was too busy sliding into sleep to catch it.
Chapter Six
When I woke up, I almost thought that I’d dreamed the events of the night before. It seemed too daring to have been something I would ever do… But then I heard the hiss of a soundproofed door, opened my eyes to find myself in Scott’s room and revised my assumption pretty quickly. “Morning.”
“Morning, yourself.” He was wearing boxers and nothing else, and that was almost as interesting as the mug of coffee he held out towards me. Until I’d had my first caffeine hit, though, I was going to be about as good in the sack as a ragdoll.
Propping myself up with pillows, I took my first sip of the steaming liquid, smiling appreciatively as I found the bitterness tempered by the perfect mix of cream and sugar.
“How’d you know how I take my coffee?”
Scott shrugged. “I didn’t. It’s how I take mine.”
Maybe we were some sort of match made in heaven. I wasn’t going to argue against it at this point. “How’d you sleep?”
“Not bad. Your snoring didn’t keep me awake for long.” His carefully deadpan expression was a little too rehearsed, and I shot him a mock scowl, not bothering to protest my obvious innocence.
He sat close to me, sipping his own drink, his thigh brushing mine. Though he was sitting on top of the bedcovers and I was still underneath, it felt like the contact forged an unexpectedly strong connection between us. I rested my head on Scott’s shoulder between sips of coffee, still waking up.
“You’re really not a morning person, huh?”
I shook my head. “Need lots of caffeine and cold water to wake me up.”
“How about sharing a shower with me?”
I pretended to consider the idea, while my inner self laughed hysterically at the thought that I might turn him down.
As if.
“I could see if I can handle that.”
I wrapped the sheet around myself and let Scott tow me down the hall towards the bathroom. A door farther down the hallway opened and a dark-haired guy in faded jeans and an oversized T-shirt stepped out. I froze like a rabbit in headlights when I saw the tattoos ringing his wrists, and Scott felt it, putting an arm around me immediately.
“Hey, calm down. He’s one of us.”
I sagged against him in relief as the guy grinned. “You must be the lovely Holly. Good to meet you. I’m Grant.”
“Hi,” I said awkwardly, very conscious of the fact that all I had to protect my modesty was the thin bed sheet.
“Quit perving, you ignoramus,” Scott said good-naturedly, and continued past him down the hallway.
“Can’t help it. No offence, you understand.”
I couldn’t help but see the funny side of the situation. “None taken.”
I stepped past him and into the bathroom after Scott, who shut the door firmly. Laughing at the borderline-possessive expression on his face, I leaned in to give him a brief kiss, letting the sheet fall to the floor.
“So, is the bathroom soundproofed, too?”
Scott cupped my ass in his hands, pulling me against him. “Yup.”
“Interesting…”
I chewed on one of the tooth-cleansing tablets from the dispenser on the wall as Scott turned on the shower unit, setting the timings to ‘manual’ so the machine wouldn’t interfere by offering us soap and shampoo at vital moments. I tugged his boxers down over his hips, then we stepped under the spray, letting the glass door seal shut after us.
My fatigue slipped away as Scott began to harden against me and I took him in hand, stroking him teasingly up and down, over and over. He buried his face in my neck with a groan, skating his hands over the skin of my back as I refused to increase my pace.
“You’re killing me, here,” he complained.
“What? I’m just making sure you’re nice and clean…” I hit the button on the automatic soap dispenser and got my hand good and slippery before returning to my task. The soap didn’t stay long, washed away by the stream of water that fell down on us, but by the time I was done Scott was breathing hard, pinching and rolling my nipples between his fingers.
“Holly…”
“Okay, I’m done,” I said innocently, and he pushed me back against the slightly squishy flexiwall of the shower booth, which was warm from the steam the hot water had generated. Not for the first time in my life, I mentally thanked whoever had come up with the safety surface. The tiles that used to cover bathroom walls in the last century looked like they’d be so cold and uncomfortable in situations like this.
Then I forgot everything but Scott’s devious fingers, which sought to put me through the same torment I’d just subjected him to. Soon I was whimpering with frustration as he rubbed the soap into the skin around my clit, avoiding the sensitive spot for now.
“Fuck me, damn you!”
He began to gently tap my clit, in a light, staccato rhythm. I moaned and closed my eyes, enjoying the slowly increasing tension deep inside me, and he nipped my earlobe with his teeth before whispering, “What do you say we just stay in bed all weekend? Think anyone would miss you?”
I tried to think straight, trailing kisses over Scott’s shoulder. “I have to be somewhere on Sunday, but…I could tell my roommates I’m at my parents’ place.”
Scott slid a finger a fraction of an inch inside me, and I tilted my hips, encouraging him further. He pulled his hand away with a chuckle, and I scowled up at him. “Tease.”
“Oh, so it’s okay if you do it, but when I do…”
“Damn right.” I kissed him hard, reaching down between us to guide him inside me, and he slammed me back against the wall, pressing himself deep. “Mmm, that’s good.”
He withdrew almost all the way, then drove back in, shocking the breath from my lungs in a cry of pleasure. “You like it rough, huh?”
“I like it any way you can give it—oh!”
He slammed in again and again, keeping the pace slow, but deliciously hard. His breath was unsteady as he whispered against my lips. “Yeah? You like it really rough? You want me to spank your ass red and then fuck you till you scream?”
I’d never had fantasies like that before, but imagining them now got me impossibly hot. Had my sexual tastes changed so much in the past eight months? Had the failed suppression treatments done something to them? “Yeah…if I can spank yours back—fuck!”
He laughed as I squirmed, pressed into the wall by his body. It felt like the only thing holding me up was his cock filling me, though I knew his hands were pinning my shoulders and my feet were firmly on the floor. “Come on, Holl. Let me hear you scream.”
I held his shoulders tightly as he increased the pace of his thrusts, losing some of the force but making up for it in speed. I called out instructions, curses, blasphemous prayers, my knees trembling with the effort of keeping me upright as he pushed me further and further towards release. As it had been the night before, the freedom to cry out as loudly as I wanted was an aphrodisiac. He ploughed into me over and over, and I shook with the intensity of my orgasm, moaning with each reflexive tightening of my pussy.
Scott ground me against the flexiwall with an answering cry, and I supported him in turn as we sank to our knees in the shower booth, pelted with warm water that felt like phantom caresses in my afterglow state. I cradled his head agains
t my breast and he kissed my nipple breathlessly, then looked up at me with lazy amusement. “Now we’re gonna have to get clean again.”
“And then we go back to the bedroom and get dirty some more,” I agreed, scooping locks of wet hair out of my eyes. “Something tells me we’re gonna need a lot of showers.”
“If they’re all like this one, I can live with that.” Scott got to his knees, then returned to the floor, a handful of shampoo cupped in his palm. “Turn around.”
I complied, tilting back my head and letting Scott lather up my hair with attentive fingers. Once it was evenly covered in suds, he began to give me a scalp massage that felt almost as good as the satisfied warmth of my pussy. “Can I stay here forever?” I murmured, awash with contentment.
He tilted my head under the water again, beginning to wash away the soap. “Yeah.”
Neither of us chose to comment on the reality of the situation. The moment was too perfect to ruin.
Once we had cleaned up, we stood under the air-jets, drying off. Scott left me under them once he was done, and I attended to my long hair, which always took forever to dry compared to the rest of me. When I was finished, I took the comb the unit offered me and brushed out the residual tangles, then wrapped the sheet back around me and went to find Scott.
He had pulled on clean boxers, which would only end up on the floor soon enough, but I decided not to complain for now, scooping my clean panties from my bag and discarding the sheet again.
“Drop the panties if you want them to stay in one piece,” Scott told me with a grin, his eyes looking me up and down. I did, taking a step towards the bed, and he shook his head, holding up a hand. “Stay there for a moment.”
Puzzled, I did, and he just continued to stare at me from where he lay on the mattress, his gaze smouldering. “God, you’re amazing.”
Self-conscious, I looked down at myself. “Can I move now?”
He held out a hand, and I joined him on the bed. He kissed me with surprising gentleness, sending a pleasant tingle through my body. “I’m serious,” he said, still propped up on an elbow, gazing down at me. “I could just look at you all day.”
