by Sunniva Dee
“I might have a team...”
“I know you.” He nuzzles my skin. Pushes a strand of hair out of the way. “How many weeks left until you’re leaving?”
I don’t have the strength to keep my head up. Idly, I detect the flight of the stairs while I droop to the side and welcome his lips against my throat.
“Three.”
“Keep the Mikhailov Oracle funds for your research. Don’t even worry about me. I can pay for myself.”
“Porn savings.”
“Let’s buy the tickets, and we’ll get you there.” He lowers me to my bed like I’m child-sized. My fingers run through long, wavy locks. Silken to the touch, I haven’t felt anything better since—
Julian had short hair. This sensation isn’t comparable!
I can’t think of that. To think of it would make it swell and become so big it would crack through the bones of my skull and destroy me.
I kiss him. “That’s not a good idea.”
He sucks air in through his teeth, pressing our lips together as he sinks over me.
“Luka... I should rig your bed up.”
He pushes against me, harder than Diego and Lenny, bigger than Marlon, Nathaniel, warmer than James, Connor. His presence is... more alive than anyone.
“Leave!”
Why is it like this? Why do I want to reject him and keep him with me through all the hours I have? Why does he understand and without words squeezes me tighter, presses me into the mattress and I cry out and crush him back?
He should speak, talk to me, reason with me. Instead he draws my sighs and removes my clothing, and it’s comfortable and smooth like oil.
“Luka, please. How do you think we’ll feel tomorrow? We’ll be miserable.”
“We’ll be good. I’ll make it good.”
He bows my hips off the mattress, and despite my smart-brain, I jut to meet him. I burn when soft scruff caresses the inside of my thigh until his face grazes the apex of my legs. He groans when he finds me, and my heart implodes. Lord, it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.
“We can’t,” I whisper.
“We can.”
I’m combusting. I shut my eyes against the way he undresses without leaving me be. I can’t watch while his beautiful body becomes fabric-free/naked/hairless, invading my bed with every inch of what I shouldn’t need and need badly.
I sigh when I tug him upward, pull him to me, legs open and wanting him deep. I don’t remember craving so much of someone before, and I can’t consider that. It hurts!
His stare finds me, destroying me. Those arcs, ovals with matching peaks toward the inner edge of each eye, the blackness of his lashes, so dark compared to his white, white hair.
He’s perfection of the most imperfect kind, the sort of man whose gaze you never meet, the kind you shy away from because your gut feeling has your back and makes you leave before that first caress.
“Meet my brother, Luka. Luka, this is Geneva.”
They were the same, only absolutely, utterly not.
“I never wanted this,” I whisper as he pushes inside of me and sets me on fire. It’s painful, the way he loves me, those slow strokes thrusting against the depths of me, detaining me with hot puffs against my lips.
“We never wanted this because of him.”
We’re a joined wave, waiting, wanting, needing— He’s hard, the force of him softened by the tenderness of his movements. I tremble around him. Luka breathes quietly, a short hitch showing that he’s aware that I’m climaxing.
He waits until my body slackens and my hands slow their walk from his back and into damp hair. Luka doesn’t tell me when he caves in, but the way he swells gives him away, and I clasp his buttocks and dig my fingers in. I thrust upward, thighs wide for his reach. He’s familiar, like Julian. I’m made for him—them—god, I am. I am.
It’s beautiful, painful, crazy. I don’t want this moment to be over. It’s excruciating to think that I’ll wake up and be Julian’s surviving fiancée, not this anymore. I should have never been this.
It’s magic when his muscles tense, each joint and tendon reveling in what I award him.
I’ve gone so far as to invite Jones along. He’s a forty-year-old computer tech at the department who likes me and has eight weeks of vacation time saved up. Not even he wants a free trip to the jungle.
“You coming?” I blink at Joy over my chips and spinach dip. Strangely, the stuff goes straight to my boobs, and I don’t want bigger boobs. I do need comfort though. There’s a lot of comfort in junk food.
“Not a chance, sweetie.” She crunches on one of my chips. Her salad without dressing looks dreary, but her frozen margarita is anything but. I know it for a fact. “Hey, maybe you’ll find someone totally unlike Julian in that jungle. Some super-virile jungle man.” Her eyes light up. “You know what?”
I groan. “No. What?”
“There’s such a thing as jungle porn. You search on the internet, and presto!, these super-hot guys in tribal outfits are invading all kinds of Tarzan-and-Jane tree houses. Probably while Tarzan is out hunting because Jane is definitely present and more than happy about their visit.”
“Jesus. Aren’t you supposed to be studying for finals?”
“I am! This is PSYCH 729 Errant Sexuality.” She shrugs, putting on her blank-face. I have no idea if she’s making it up. “Anyways. Every one of your problems will be solved if you say yes to Luka’s offer. You know this, right?”
“Not true.” I want to explain why, but she stops lining her mouth with champagne-pink lipstick to interrupt me.
“You’re the anthropologist, so you’re fully aware that you feel guilty because of your ex.”
“He’s not my ex.”
“Oh man. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to call him since you weren’t married. Would it be ‘your late fiancé?’”
“Joy.” I press my fingers against my temples. “Just please call him Julian. That was his name.”
Wariness flashes across her features, but she reels herself back in easily. “So, you know the cultural side. I know the psych side. Between the two, isn’t it fair to say the only reason you don’t want Luka to come to Brazil is that you feel bad about Julian?”
I’ve had two good days in a row now. This shouldn’t break me.
She sighs, stealing a spinach-dip-covered chip and hovering it in front of her lips. “I see you.”
“And I see you.” And fear for your lipstick. I grimace while she slow-crunches a small piece of her steal.
“You’re going dark again.”
“So?” I cross my arms. Really, I’m done with this lunch, margaritas or not.
“So. It makes me think that you don’t remember what we talked about. Do you remember how grief works?”
“Of course.” She didn’t stop harping on it after Julian’s death.
“You’re going to have to deal with it for years.”
“Yeah, great. Thanks, love. This is what the world needs psychologists for, telling us the obvious.”
“But you’re going to flip in and out of your grief. In the beginning, it’s all one big black hole you can’t get out of. But then, you have more and more bright moments. Like when you were with Luka two weeks ago. You shouldn’t have pulled away from that; he was good for you.”
“You’re so opinionated.” My eyes are watery and want to spill over. “That was me caving in to momentary temptation. It wasn’t planned, and Luka is bad for me. With him around I’ll never forget his brother.”
I sniffle. There’s liquid in my nose too.
“Geneva.”
I dab off the last drops of moisture. “What?”
“You’re never going to forget Julian.” If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was taunting me. “But it doesn’t mean that you can’t find another man. You should. You�
�re young.”
“Yeah, I am, which means I have time. I don’t have to jump into the first, worst thing ever presented to me.”
“As in seven roommates, his twin brother included.”
I gasp. Shoot my stare up and find her eyes glittering.
“You’re really not cut out for your profession, you know,” I say. “There’s no way you’ll get repeat customers.”
Joy’s lips are a little chapped, I notice, as they stretch. Her amusement fades again as she continues. “You’ll never forget him—you loved him—but believe me: with time, your dark periods will become shorter and fewer as your bright periods extend. Right now, you have short bursts of happy before you dig back into that hole again. But guess what?”
The rhetorical guess-what. “Tell me.”
“You already seem lighter.”
I don’t want to hear it, which she sees and grabs my arm, shaking it slowly against the tabletop. “There’s no shame in surviving your fiancé’s death. Especially when you had nothing to do with it.”
“I did though. If I’d been there...”
“You weren’t. It was his choice, all of it.”
“Yes, but I—”
“It’s over, okay?”
We’ve had this conversation one time too many.
“Julian didn’t wake up, and you went to class. It’s what you did on a regular basis because he flaked. But put yourself in Luka’s shoes. He was there, having breakfast while his twin brother stopped breathing right above his head. He’s the one who has to live with having called the ambulance too late.”
Here she is, Joy, my friend, and she’s throwing Luka’s higher guilt in my face. It’s ruthless, and I can’t take it today. I stand so fast my chair screeches against the floor. She straightens, eyes still on me as I whip around and stalk out the door.
Tuesday night dinner. Luka has a slump to his back I haven’t seen before. Connor passes around baked duck glistening in orange juices. It rests on a bed of vegetables and rice.
“Luka,” I murmur for the first time in two weeks. Since I asked him to please leave my room and stop making me feel at peace. “How are you?”
He stops chewing, eyes moving from his plate and up to my face. The low chatter around us stills too. I feel Lenny’s attention on me while the others look away, leaving this moment to us.
“I’m all right.”
“Have you thought more about what you want to do?” I’m putting him on the spot on purpose. I’ve finally made up my mind, and I need to tell him about it.
“As in?” He clears his throat of gruff. Then he swallows and looks away.
“As in if you’re taking a break from classes.”
“You’re taking a break?” Lenny cutting in makes the others shift in their seat.
Luka leaves his fork on the plate and tips on his chair in a display of controlled. “Yeah, hanging up the books for a minute.”
“You’re finishing up your degree, right? This doesn’t make any sense,” Connor mutters. “You’ve got, what, one semester left or something?”
Luka nods. “The one retake in the summer—which I’m not doing—then one semester because I’m behind.”
“He’ll do it later,” I say, which turns their attention to me. They’re a study in group behavior. “Have you talked with the administration about it?”
“What, are you my mother now?”
“No, I just didn’t want you to throw your education out the window.”
He sighs and lets the front legs of his chair land on the floor. “It’s not the first time someone has an emergency while in med school. You’re not gonna be cut off from ever finishing because your brother dies.”
“So you haven’t asked them, then?” I cross my arms. “You should ask someone, your adviser or something.”
“All right, fine! I’ll ask tomorrow.” Luka’s ice cracks, and he scrunches his eyes shut, mouth constricting in a trembling line. He lifts a big hand, pushing down over the bridge of his nose as if pressing back tears. I see it, though, the trickle of moisture escaping from a corner.
Around us, forks start to clang against plates. Nathaniel asks Diego to pass the duck as Luka rises to his feet and turns toward the kitchen. He hesitates. It’s as if his brain is too full to kick his body into action. I get up too.
“Luka.” I stroke a stooped shoulder. “I only asked because you were right; I can’t do this alone. I want you to come with me to the Amazon.”
He stills.
Between the disgust I feel for this man, the attraction, the constant reminder of the past, I’m setting myself up for more pain. Even so, it feels right to offer him a chance to escape with me.
“I’m not saying it’ll be easy. Honestly, I don’t understand why you’d want to come with me in the first place. But yeah. If you’re interested, I can’t think of a better solution for a male chaperone.”
“Chaperone? I think you can hold your own.”
“I’ll delegate. You’ll be expected to wield the sword and slay all the dragons for me. You have to defend my honor, etcetera.”
A small smile raises the corners of his lips. “I can do that. And I’ll stitch you together after the tigers feast on you.”
“Knock on wood!” I exclaim. His smile grows, and I meet his gaze without restrictions. I suddenly feel lighter. “So you accept?”
Luka sinks his teeth into his lower lip. “Yeah. I’ll be your dragon slayer.”
“You need to let go and concentrate on one thing at a time. It should be all about your studies now, and I fully support you taking Luka along on your trip. I wouldn’t have been happy if you left without someone like him,” Dad said with that wise almost-scowl on his face. Of course he doesn’t know how Luka pays for school. He wouldn’t have given me his blessing if he did.
It’s funny. Sometimes I felt like Dad hit it off with the wrong twin. Not that he had anything against Julian—Dad is a jovial guy—but he seemed more tentative around my quiet, absent-minded fiancé.
Luka has a few finals he’s cramming for, while I don’t. Still, whenever I ask him to run an errand for the trip, he does it without delay. Last week, he received my text in the middle of a group seminar. According to Diego, he left immediately to pick up the F1 Energy powder that had just been restocked at the pharmacy compound on Ventura Boulevard.
Diego gave me the stink eye over it that night, saying I needed to let Luka finish his exams. Caressing my arm until it met my hip, he stopped there even though I needed more. “He can’t do two things at once right now, okay? He’s got five days left and he’s finished for the semester. Luka will never say no to anything you ask of him, so don’t. Just don’t ask.”
“Wow.” I slid a hand over Diego’s stomach and down his happy-trail to my relief. He sucked in a breath but stopped my hand.
“You don’t want that on your conscience.” My man for the night jutted his chin at me. “You want him to finish these classes, right? No more retakes?”
“Of course. I heard you. I just wasn’t aware that it was an issue, all right? It’s not like he tells me these things.”
Diego’s hand went up to my mouth, a thumb stroking my lower lip before he leaned in and kissed me. “Cool. He’ll do anything to—”
“Stop telling me what he’d do for me. It makes me feel like we need all-the-space between us instead of heading off into the jungle together.”
“’Kay, cool.”
With that, the discussion was over. Diego flipped me to my back and ate his way down my throat until my chest heaved. He sucked a swollen nipple into his mouth, groaning, and all sense of before and after was lost until I fell asleep with the best cure against insomnia wrapped around me.
“That’s a small lamp,” Luka says now, eyeing the solar-slash-battery-operated lantern I’m holding up for him. I wish that section of ha
ir was long enough to stay put behind his ear. It’s distracting when it slips free and he automatically slides it back to where he wants it.
“You want a big lantern?” I don’t mean to sound flirty. Even to me, I do though, and the side of his lip hikes up. We’re at Wild Outfitters browsing the Valley’s biggest selection of sports-and-camping gear. A lot of what we need, we’ve already ordered online. It’s stacking up at the Queen, actually, filling a storage room in the basement. Now, we’re down to details we’ve missed, like water purifiers, lanterns, and lightweight sleeping bags.
“Nah, I’m good with buying small stuff. No extension needed here.”
Unfortunately, I’d have to agree with him. When my cheeks heat at the thought of his size, Luka’s lopsided amusement tilts both sides of his mouth up.
“Let’s grab three lanterns so we’re sure.” I drop the steel contraptions into our shopping cart and stalk on in front of him.
“Three? Are you planning to bring bearers into the jungle?”
“Oh. We do need someone to help us bring everything in there, don’t we?”
“And you haven’t...?”
I swing toward him. I must look scared, because his hands land on my arms while he fixes calm eyes on me. “Don’t worry. We’ve got two weeks, and this is the twenty-first century. We don’t need people carrying stuff into the jungle for us. All we have to do is find someone with some kind of robot machine.”
“A what now?”
Thinking hard, he scrunches his nose up, a move that looks extremely boyish on him. He’s charming, puzzled, and I’m having a hard time not tipping up on my toes and kissing him. It’s the identical-twin effect.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about, but damn straight there must be devices out there taking people and their luggage into the jungle. Either way, if Geneva wants three lanterns, Geneva gets three lanterns. Worst case, I’ll do a second round to pick up the rest of our shit from some preliminary camp or what-have-you.”
I laugh, god, because that’s freaking adorable. “Okay. We only need two lanterns. Now, let’s go to the rain-gear section.”
On the way back to the Queen, we pop by the Super-Pharmacy. It makes my heart lift a little to have Luka follow me through the aisles. Together we discuss and choose important first-aid paraphernalia. It’s clearly closer to his area of expertise than the futuristic genre of robotic jungle devices.
