by Godwin, Pam
“I’m doing that,” I whispered. “I’m controlling it.”
When the arms around me squeezed, I realized he was putting his life in my hands. If I didn’t trust him, if I wished him harm, I could use the aphid to attack him.
The skin between its exoskeletal scales twitched with restrained hunger. I probed the thread that linked us. “It’s afraid of me. And the rain’s pissing it off. But there’s also…curiosity.”
“You feel all that?”
“Don’t ask me how—”
My stomach bucked and forced a yelp from my throat.
He tightened his embrace. “What was that?”
“The hunger. The Drone’s starving them.” A chill crept over me, followed by an onslaught of dizziness.
“Evie?”
I burrowed into his chest and braced for another shiver. “It’s really hungry. Trying to break my hold.” My teeth clicked together. “I’m cold.”
“Hang on.” He half stood and pushed down his pants without releasing his hold around my waist. Then he sat us back on the couch, legs bare under mine. Only the thin material of his boxers lay between us.
Warmth replaced the chill. Tension left my body and the wooziness passed. I swallowed. Leave.
The trudge of retreating feet scraped through the room.
“Well,” I said, “the Yang thing works.”
He nestled his face into my neck. The intimacy of his lips sent a different kind of warmth through me. I held my breath, confused by his affection at the same time savoring the tingle pulling through my womb.
The aphid froze at the door, crouched, pincers raised. Its torso heaved as sucking parts punched from its gullet.
Leave bloomed in my chest and sprang free.
It straightened, a tremor rippling its limbs. Then it scurried out.
I pivoted in his lap. “That last move you did…you can’t do that.”
His inky irises peeked from under half lids, regarding me, not as my doctor but as something else. His hands, a heavy heat on my thighs, crackled electricity over my skin.
“Dammit, Michio.” My feet hit the floor and my shift fell in place.
The aphid hunkered just outside the chamber. I jogged across the room and slammed the door shut.
He hauled on his pants. “What happened?”
“Arousal. That’s what happened. Shit. That’s how I called the Drone last night.” I held my hand over my stomach and searched for his poisonous chasm amidst the psychic threads. “I don’t feel him.”
He eyes roamed my face and his brows snapped up. “Pheromones. Chemical communication. That’s what you’re broadcasting.”
“Yeah.”
“That could be bad.”
“You think?”
“Let’s try it again. This time, beckon two guards from downstairs.”
That night, I lay in bed and watched the subtle movement of Michio’s chest on the couch. He wouldn’t leave the chamber despite my demands that he search for Jesse and Roark. And I couldn’t sleep mulling over the risks they were taking on an island of aphids.
Roark’s flirtatious smile appeared every time I closed my eyes. His drawl purred through me and curled my toes.
Then I saw Jesse’s copper eyes, rough-hewn jawline, pillowy lips. When our paths collided in the foothills of West Virginia, those exquisite features would twist up as if I disgusted him. Yet, he left his brethren to follow me across an ocean, a continent.
Even more conflicting than my relationships with a celibate priest and a half-mad Lakota was the man sleeping feet away. I wanted to know him better, and I would. Until then, I didn’t know if, behind his tenting fingers and penetrating eyes, he was analyzing my evolving genetics or memorizing my features the way I memorized his.
I felt gluttonous taking inventory of the men in my life, yet I couldn’t ignore the fullness they gave me. Their protection, their devotion settled deep inside me, taking up space in the lonely places of my heart, making me feel a lot less lonely.
And a lot more needy. My fingers meandered over my hip, stretched toward the heat between my legs. I imagined they were Michio’s fingers rubbing the bud of nerves there. In thirty seconds, the ache would be soothed.
Bannnng. Bang. The door shook. I bolted upright.
Michio’s bulky silhouette appeared at the gate. “Evie?”
“Shit.” I clenched my thighs and dropped my forehead to my knees.
The gate snicked and the mattress dipped. “What are you thinking about?”
Not going there. I stared at the wall beside his head.
His nostrils flared and his eyes captured mine. “You’re aroused.”
The heat in my cheeks extinguished any chance of escaping with my dignity. “I’m not.”
“Turn it off.”
I shifted my hips, unintentionally rubbing against his. “You give really shitty advice.”
He reached for me and hesitated. A sigh floated between us. “Bet that mouth gets you in a lot trouble.”
My face burned hotter. “Bet you’d like to find out.”
The brush of his thumb on my jaw belied the professional detachment in his voice. “Your testosterone levels aggravate your aggression. And your arousal.”
The pulse between my legs agreed.
He lowered his voice. “I can numb it.”
I pretended to misunderstand. “I don’t want to be sedated. Thought we were past that.”
The clement breeze fanned his sandalwood scent around me. My breaths quickened and I knew he noticed.
A hunk of black hair fell over his bowed head. “Let me ease you, Nannakola.”
I flinched, even as my heart stretched in my chest, reaching for him. “How would that work? Arousal’s the problem. You’re making it worse.”
“If you can’t shut it off, you need an outlet. Direct it to me.”
I’d learned that morning I could isolate my transmissions to a specific aphid. Since I didn’t know how to turn off the pheromones, it meant I could funnel the waves to him and deflect the aphids from feeling it.
I strangled my enthusiastic heart with the knowledge that his offer was a medical diagnosis, not some romantic attempt to make out with me. “What’s behind door number two?”
He reached in his pocket, bent across my lap, and set a syringe on the side table.
Ugh. That would work if the wall-imparted lump on my forehead was anything to go by.
A growl rumbled through the door followed by the cracking of wood.
I chewed my thumb nail. Shirtless, his well-cut shoulders blocked out everything in the room. It’d been so much easier to ignore my attraction to him when he was my enemy. “What did you have in mind?”
“Come here.” He patted his knees.
When I leaned toward him, he curved a hand around the small of my back and guided me into his lap. His other hand traced my collarbone, bared above the wide neckline of my chemise. He followed the contour of my neck and tipped up my chin. I forgot to breathe.
His thumb padded my bottom lip. “Breathe, Evie.”
My lungs emptied in a whoosh and his mouth fastened to mine. Our lips moved together in silent exploration, a tongue touch. Tenderness without expectation. I liked it. Too much.
He flexed everywhere I put my hands. Skin stretched over the cords of his shoulders. The wide column of his neck contracted as his tongue chased mine, seductively, expertly. Every taste he gave and took fed the blaze within me. Our breaths became one. My body sang.
But beneath the feel of his lips and the tingle of his fingertips on my jaw, I sensed constraint. The edges of his mouth hardened. His hips made a slight roll. Still, he kept it soft and steady, holding himself away from me. Just like Roark.
A twinge stabbed my heart. I broke the kiss and tucked my fingers in my elbows.
Silence waited beyond the door. He wore his usual stone mask. “It worked.”
I touched my lips. His eyes followed my fingers, his voice passive. “You’re thinking about the prie
st.”
A swallow bounced my throat. “He’s celibate. We don’t have that kind of relationship.” The twinge in my heart sharpened.
He remained quiet, the moonlit sky graying his flawless complexion. I fell into the hypnotic trance of his eyes as they watched me with too much knowing. My libido was calm but his beauty prompted me. “Stay.”
His body hardened. Then, with each breath, the woodenness rolled away. He leaned in. “What do you need?”
I lifted a shoulder and let my eyes fall to his naked torso. “Skin.”
He stretched out on his side in the space I gave him, looped an arm over me and tugged my chest to his.
My nose settled in the hollow of his throat. He smelled so clean, I wondered if I pressed closer I could absorb some of his humanity. Could I inhale it from his lips to mine? “I never thanked you.”
“For what?”
For the forced meals. The baths. Fending off spiders and infection. “For keeping me alive when I didn’t want it.”
His chin settled on my head. “Hunger of heart is the greatest sickness. I don’t know how to heal that.” Pain tinged his voice. “I failed to guard your heart and your mind.”
He felt right in my arms. “You guard my body. Even from myself.”
“Until the day I die.”
His words moved something inside me. I strengthened my hug around him and buried my smile in his chest. “Till you die?”
“Not a day sooner.”
My smile grew so big, it exploded across my face. My cheeks strained to hold it, hurting even, but I didn’t want to let it go.
The tightness of the robe was suffocating. So was the air of impatience wafting off the Drone as he circled me. In his daily visits, he hadn’t once mentioned Roark’s escape nor had he found Michio alone to confront him. “I want progress.”
“And you’ll have it,” Michio said with a bored tone.
“It’s been four days. My doubt in your success is surpassed only by my frustration with the two months you’ve wasted with her.”
Which meant it was April. Two years since the outbreak. Annie would’ve moved on from ribbons and dolls to earrings and boy bands. Aaron would’ve climbed the ranks in Karate, perhaps knotting a brown belt with a glowing smile dimpling his cheeks. My chest squeezed.
The Drone bent his head, his mouth a scant inch from mine. “Three more days,” he breathed in my face. He smiled and the flash a sizable white tooth stole the air from my lungs. Behind him, the muscles in Michio’s throat strained and his eyes smoldered.
All at once, the Drone’s face contorted, his hand pawing at the lid of his pill bottle. Then he blustered out in a rustle of papers, shocking my lungs back into action.
I rubbed my neck where his bite had healed. “I think he has fangs.”
Michio remained rooted beside my bed, his body taut. “We need to leave. Now.”
“I bet he wears that theatrical cape because he’s hiding wings.”
He didn’t move. His arms hung at his sides but his chin seemed to lower. His body grew stiffer.
“What’s wrong with you?”
He shook himself. “I used to be better at hiding it.” Two long strides and he towered over me, hand around my nape. “I have never wanted him near you. He’s getting too close. We need to leave.”
“We’re not ready.”
“Did you hear him? Three days.”
“I heard. Three days and it’s back to the dungeon.” I squared my shoulders. “Believe me. I know what the brothers have planned for me there.”
“The way Aiman pops his pills around you, I’m not so sure—”
“His pills? For his kidney?”
He stared at me for a beat that trickled into five. “There’s nothing wrong with his kidney. He’s feigning symptoms in attempt to draw his attention from the real problem.”
“His metamorphosis?”
“His repulsion of women. Of you.”
I burst into laughter, choking my words. “Why would he do that?”
“The lie is more comforting than the truth.”
“The truth that he’s a fucking psycho?” My laughter reached hysterics.
He talked over me. “We don’t know how far his repulsion will take him. We’re leaving now.”
I sobered. “We’re not ready.”
We’d practiced my communication with the aphids every day. As long as I kept physical contact with him and quashed my arousal, they followed my command. My communication even reached to the ground floor but I could only juggle three under my control at one time.
His grip on my neck tightened. “We are.”
“We’re not.” The Jabara brothers prayed five times a day. During their prayer time, Michio walked the quadrangle to draw out Jesse. “We agreed to give Jesse one more day to contact us.” Then we’d leave the fortress, with or without his help. If I could control every aphid we encountered, we’d escape under the Drone’s radar. But outside the fortress, we’d have to find Jesse and his boat.
My hand went to my forearm. “I don’t even have my weapons anymore.”
“You don’t need them.” At my glare, he grabbed my hand and led me to his laptop and scattered notebooks on the couch. “I want to show you something.”
He tapped the screen. “This is premature, until I can prove it…”
Always a disclaimer. “Spit it out.”
“It’s just…look at this.”
A 3-D image of DNA rotated in a kaleidoscope of colors.
“That mine?”
His head inclined. “Your make-up is dynamic. It resists everything I throw at it. According to my tests, your blood’s not only poisonous to the aphids but exponentially more potent.”
My pulse fired in my throat. “You said I was human.”
He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “You are. But as a human with these traits, you can likely withstand an aphid bite. And if that’s the case…Evie, you carry the cure.”
I stepped back. “The cure to reverse the aphid mutation?”
He stared at the screen. “No. That morphogenesis is final. But through our research in Iceland, we discovered in nymphs a genetic code that isn’t transformed when they evolve. It’s dormant. You might carry the key that can reactivate it.”
“So let’s test the poison theory. Call in an aphid. Inject it with my blood.”
“How would we keep Aiman from feeling its exploding heart?”
“Good point.” I narrowed my eyes. “You’ve been keeping this from me.”
“I had to be sure.”
Of course, he did. I paced, pausing to gather the skirts of my gown in one hand. “Now what?”
The scuff of sandals sounded his approach and his hand caught my waist. Warm lips moved along my hairline, trailed down my cheek and hovered over mine. “You have become the path. Now you travel it.”
My hands crept up the carved brawn of his chest. “You may not want to follow then. I’m pretty sure it’s the path to hell.”
His fingers ambled around my back. “Can we leave now?”
I crushed my hips against his. “One more day. Find Jesse—”
A scratch screeched along the door. Then the banging began.
“Dammit.” I blew out a breath and skated away from him.
He stalked me in a graceful move of muscle. “We’ll give your savage one more day, but you should know I will not share you.”
My eyes widened, probably bugging out of my head. “I’m not yours to share—”
“You have a fierce exterior, but hidden beneath glows something precious. It offers promise to dreams this world hasn’t had in two years, dreams I haven’t had in a lifetime.”
My lungs filled and emptied as I lost my self-preservation in the burn of his gaze.
Hands at his sides, he stood before me, around me, consuming me. His voice was thick. “I love when you look at me like that. Even when you don’t speak, your stunning eyes hold nothing back. Your expressions are so heavy I can feel your
emotions in the marrow of my bones.”
Aphid vibrations swarmed my gut, but my hand clutched my chest. “Michio.”
“I love that you were a mother and that you carry that experience with you always.”
His words landed a direct hit on my heart and my rib cage bucked under the impact. “Michio—”
“I love spending time with you.” He traced the stitches around my mouth. “I crave our talks, your baths, your tantrums, our fights—”
“Fight me now.”
His brows drew into a V.
To keep my pheromones directed at him only, I needed Yang to fuel the effort. Wrestling would put me right up against him. My hands found his chest. “If I get scratched, I’ll tell the savage to make your scalping quick.”
His pecs bounced under my curling fists, expression unreadable. “No holds barred?”
I shrugged.
He shifted his weight, pushed closer. “Tap out rules. My tap out rules.”
Sandalwood drifted from his thin shirt, beckoning me. My face dropped to his chest. “Hmm?”
“If you tap, you allow me to ease you.” The way he softened ease made me gulp. “I’ll start chaste. As the taps accumulate, so will the intensity.”
“Ease me how?”
“You know how,” he mouthed.
My nipples hardened. How far would it go? Kissing? Sex? “And when you tap?”
“If I tap, I’ll reveal a secret about my discipline.”
The bastard. I wanted answers regarding his fighting techniques. “What about the Drone?”
He nuzzled my neck. “Won’t be back till tomorrow.”
A swelter funneled between my thighs. I fought it. The buzzing beyond the door magnified.
I stepped back and stripped my oppressive garment. When only my chemise remained, I kicked at the skirt around my ankle. Then I ripped the material away to mid-thigh. It felt a little vulnerable without underwear, but I shook off the feeling and faced him.
He raised a brow.
“Really, Michio. It’s not like you haven’t seen it all already. Besides, how would I pummel your ass when I’m wrapped like a goddamn mummy?” I kicked away the shreds of clothes on the floor.
“You agree to the terms?”
