I should find him.

  “Not yet, luv,” he murmured, as though I’d spoken the thought aloud. “He needs time to wrestle his temper under control. The thought of losing you after everything we’ve already done is nonnegotiable for all of us.”

  I pressed my lips to his back. They’d both undergone so much torture.

  “Doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Not when the reward was finding you safe and sound again. When we knew you were out and the others had you safe… Well, at least until Oz, the daft idiot, showed up to save us, and even that I’m hard pressed to be angry with him over. He actually did it.”

  I smiled. If I closed my eyes, I could see the room he’d been held in. Feel the blows.

  “Don’t.” Hatch pulled away, only to twist and face me. His hands came to my face and cupped it. “I’ll hide nothing from you. I don’t know why the nanites have bound us quite so tightly, but I don’t want you to feel that pain.”

  “You shouldn’t have to have suffered it alone.”

  “Like you did?” Challenge filled his voice. “Deny it if you dare, but I know you went through hell to get out of the memoriam, if you had to put yourself into a medical coma to treat your shredded DNA.”

  I frowned.

  “Andreas told me and Oz last night after you and Dirk went to bed.” He rubbed his thumbs in slow circles. “We all endure our own crucibles. I don’t want you to have that pain. Just pleasure. Just you and me. And whatever this means… And when I have time, I’ll see what’s going on with the nanites because the guys deserve to know if they want this connection with you. Or if you even want it at all. I could probably knock them out with an EMP…”

  I pushed up on my tiptoes as I dragged his head down and then shut him up with a kiss. He allowed me control for all of a split-second before he pulled me into him. His tongue demanded access, and I dug my fingers into his neck. I needed to feel him. As he lifted me, I worried about his injuries, and he batted aside the thought.

  There was only how he tasted and felt. The heat of him rushed through me, and I wrapped my legs around his hips. Even with our clothing in the way, the press of his erection against my core had me grinding against him, or maybe he ground against me.

  Eagerness poured through my veins. Eagerness coupled with need and a kind of desperate desire.

  It had been too long.

  My nipples ached in longing for his touch. Suddenly, he pivoted and my back landed on a bed. I stared up at him dazedly. I didn’t even know when he’d started moving or descending the stairs. I was too full of the sense of him to focus. He pulled away and stood long enough to strip his clothes, and I pushed up on my elbows, but a hand on my abdomen and his fierce gaze held me captive.

  Don’t move.

  The thought resonated through me, and I shuddered at the wild, wantoness living in those two syllables.

  I need you.

  Heat licked its way through me as he stood naked in front of me. I didn’t even know what room we were in—his apparently—nor did I care. Neither did he. His thoughts crashed into mine. Some distant part of me had to wonder if hormones amplified neurotransmitters and somehow affected the nanites, but then his fingers were stroking electricity on my skin as he stripped my clothes, and he dragged my legs wide before he buried his face in my pussy.

  No patience.

  No build up.

  His mouth latched on and his tongue lashed me and the conflagration he ignited consumed me.

  Chapter 15

  “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

  His hands seemed to be everywhere, or maybe they were my hands. Our hands. The sense of him settled into my bones. Cords of tension roped through our muscles, but the tightness was all in my belly. His burned with a feverish need that seemed to possess him. The first orgasm stormed over me, and I tilted my head back to scream as he cupped then squeezed my ass with one hand, while working two fingers into me. From one orgasm right into the next, he gave me no respite.

  “Hatch.” I exhaled his name like I clung to it for my sanity. Maybe I was as pleasure lashed through me. My nipples ached for his touch, but his eyes locked on mine and the thought translated wordlessly. Aware of him watching me, I cupped my breasts and began to twist and pinch my nipples.

  Harder.

  He wanted to taste the bite of pain. I lifted my hips to get his mouth back to my clit, and as soon as his tongue stroked me, I twisted one nipple until the pain speared us both. His answering groan had my pussy clenching.

  “I need you,” I whispered, and the words tasted sweet on my tongue. “I love you so much.” I wasn’t sure what were real words and what were thoughts as he forced another orgasm from me that had me weeping with it, and yet need was like a hot iron in me. His need.

  “I know, luv,” he whispered, his breath almost too much on my sensitized flesh. “You have me…forever.” He pushed his way up, crawling along my body, and everywhere our skin touched, I ached all over again. He closed his hand around my throat, the gentleness in his fingers unmistakable. “Forever, Valda. I want this with you forever.”

  I could drown in his eyes. I thought I did as our hands met to cup his cock and line him up. Our breath grew shallow, and the race of my heart sync’d perfectly with his. A kiss this time, his mouth on mine as he shared the taste of me, and I groaned as I licked his lips clean. Then he pushed forward, even as I arched, and his cock filled me.

  I swore I was going to come again, just from the hot tight coil of muscles clamping down on his shaft. The last time we merged like this, we’d been in the memoriam itself. Doing this here, in the real world, should’ve scared me. It should’ve absolutely terrified me.

  “No fear,” he insisted, before nibbling at my lower lip as he began to pump his hips. The slow, sensuous roll of them, pulling him out almost to the tip before he slammed it back home, had me arching up to meet him. Almost unerringly, he could strike that spot within me that set my nerves alight. Still, I couldn’t breathe around the fullness of him. He pushed my leg higher, and then there was warmth at my anus as he pressed a finger in there, and I tipped my head back.

  Aware of his eyes on me, I tried to relax my muscles against the invasion. “Yes, luv,” he whispered, and I swore I glowed at the praise. “Just like that. You’ll take everything I give you, and I want to give you everything.”

  “I want you to have everything.”

  As he alternated the pumps of his fingers—oh, he’d added a second and then a third—the stretch burned, and yet I ached for it, rocking between his cock and his hand. Too much sensation, it wound me up tighter and tighter.

  Then an image of me spread between him and Dirk flooded my mind, and I blinked up at him. “I just had that…oh…” I forgot the words I was about to use as I fought to hold on to him. I dug my nails into his shoulders, even as I kissed him fiercely.

  I know. That voice was almost smug. “I saw when you touched me,” he whispered in between kisses that left me gasping. “I want all of it, Valda. Every last bit.”

  A shudder ascended my spine. There was nothing I wouldn’t give them. Absolutely nothing I wouldn’t surrender to him. I arched higher, writhing between his hand and cock, answering the unspoken demand.

  The action sent fresh strokes of lust through me. It should be impossible to want him even more than I already did.

  “Yes, Valda, just like that. Yes, luv…” The soft rumble of his voice turned the words into a caress. A part of me wanted to drag him in and never let him go. I wanted to lose myself in him and have him lose himself in me. His teeth scraped against my throat as a litany of words fell off my tongue. “English,” he teased, and I laughed.

  There was a wildness and a freedom.

  “I love you. I want you…more,” I groaned, but the phrases sounded all wrong out loud.

  Dampness flooded between my thighs as the orgasm he’d been building me toward ambushed us both. The clamp of my muscles on him and the pleasure roaring through caught him as off guard as it had me.

  He came with a roar and a rush, and my vision splintered, whiting out. For a split-second, I was staring down at my own face and so much love swirled through me that tears filled both of our eyes, and then his mouth locked on mine as we wrapped tighter together. The world fell away until it was just the two of us.

  I had no idea how long we lay there. Time didn’t seem to have a lot of meaning as he stroked my hair. He did pull away briefly and offered a soothing murmur at my whimpering complaint. The ache of his loss resonated, but the sound of running water helped bring some of my cognitive functions online.

  My body ached in all the best ways.

  When he walked out of the bathroom, I drank in the sight of him. The bruises littering his flesh still made me ache, so did the loss of his hair, but the man was all there, and his smile softened as he rolled me back onto the bed and draped over me. I cradled him between my thighs and then began to stroke his face.

  “I told them I won’t make a decision without all of you,” I promised.

  “I know,” he said, kissing me softly. “I know you’d never leave us again. Not willingly. But I also know that if you can support this framework idea with your mind, what happens if there are two of us?”

  I frowned as terror pitted my stomach. “Hatch…”

  “Hear me out,” he murmured. “You are incredibly strong, but you know I’ll follow your lead. I’m clever like that. You didn’t want me in the memoriam before because of the cerebral mapping, right?”

  I shivered and then nodded. “You were close to fully mapped. The others were still in progress, but the memoriam didn’t want to let me go. I worried what it would mean if you were fully integrated.”

  “I think I know what it means,” he mused. It means this connection between us. Between our nanites. It’s unexpected, but I don’t regret it.

  Studying him, I let out a little sigh. “I kind of love it. It let me find you…”

  “It let me see you,” he whispered. “I thought I was losing my mind. That I was in so much pain, I was clinging to you as a last resort. And if you were the last thing I saw before I died, I could live with that.”

  My heart ached with every admission. “I didn’t understand it at first. All I knew was I wanted to know you were both okay. I wanted to see you both so badly, and then you were there.”

  “You were a dream come true…right up until we found out that you were on your way to surrender yourself.” His expression turned fierce. “You will never do that again. Not for me.”

  I sighed. “I had a plan,” I told him.

  “I don’t care. If Dirk doesn’t put you over his knee and spank you, I will.”

  I burst out laughing at the ferocity of his threat, then kissed him. “I love you.” Every time the words slipped free, they seemed almost too small to encompass the feeling I had for him. “I would rather be with you anywhere than have you there alone without us.”

  He groaned and rolled onto his back, pulling me to curl against him. Movement in the corner brought my head up, and I met Dirk’s quiet gaze.

  “Didn’t take you for a peeper, mate,” Hatch teased him as he folded an arm beneath his head and kept one arm around me. Neither of us had bothered to dress.

  “Like you haven’t watched when you had the chance,” Dirk told him dryly with only a faint smile. “Though you shouldn’t act like you didn’t know I was here.”

  I frowned. “You were…”

  “Here the whole time,” he murmured, his smile softening. “Thinking, and then you two tumbled in here unaware of anything. I would have left, but I wanted to stay.” There was just the barest element of apology in his voice.

  I held out a hand to him, and he took the invitation with a sigh as he dropped to sit on my other side, and then he pressed his lips to my shoulder.

  Sinking down between them, I let out my own long sigh and then said, “Tell me not to do it, and I won’t.”

  “You don’t want to do it,” Hatch said quietly. “You don’t need us to tell you.”

  Relief seemed to leach the tension right from Dirk’s muscles as he slid a hand down my bare thigh. “You don’t?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But…”

  “But you need to understand all the options, weigh the possibilities,” Hatch finished for me, and gave me a small smug smile. “I don’t need the nanites to know that, and if the big guy over there was thinking instead of reacting, he’d know it, too.”

  “Yeah, fuck you, Hatch,” Dirk said without any heat. “I also know how her mind works, and how much she loves to fix things for others because she holds herself accountable for the ills of the world.”

  “Eh, I blame her upbringing. They raised this upstanding, creative, dedicated scientist, with a strong core of ethics and a devotion to duty. She’s damn near perfect, so we kind of have to accept that it means we won’t always get our way.”

  “She’s also lying right there, rather naked, and if you two want to bond over discussing my flaws, I’ll leave you to it.” I made a move to sit up and found myself rolled beneath Dirk with Hatch lying on his side, head propped on his hand. “Or not.”

  Dirk chuckled. “You know the rules when you’re in my bed.”

  “I’m not in your bed,” I reminded him. “This isn’t the room we slept in.”

  “What’s mine is his,” Hatch told me with a slow smile. “So his rules apply, and do tell more. She doesn’t let me make the rules all that often.”

  I groaned. This was not a conversation I ever expected to have. “You’ve never asked for rules, you’ve always just been a man in the hot pursuit of pleasure.”

  “True,” he agreed, and then traced a finger down my arm as Dirk studied me. The tension in his expression was gone. “Doesn’t mean I don’t support the captain.”

  A whole body shiver went through me as another image popped in my head of being pinned between the pair of him, and Hatch’s smile took on a devilish hint.

  “Yeah, I thought you liked the idea.”

  Dirk chuckled, then gave me a kiss. “When we’re more secure, we can indulge your curiosity.”

  I was more disappointed than relieved, even if the option had both intrigued me and made me nervous at the same time.

  “Get dressed,” Dirk told me softly, before giving me another slow kiss that had me arching up to meet him, arms wrapped around his neck. I felt more than heard Hatch’s groan. The image of Dirk kissing me turned him on almost as much as the sensation of his mouth moving on mine did me. The overlay of twining emotions staggered me.

  I wasn’t sure I would ever get used to that, but I was half-drunk on the feeling of it when Dirk lifted his head and shot a look from me to Hatch then back.

  “You don’t feel me kissing her, right?”

  “Not exactly,” Hatch muttered. “Fucking turns me on to feel how she does when she is though.” With a laugh, he clapped Dirk on the shoulder. “It’s fine for me, I like being teased back into a hard-on twenty minutes after I came in her. I could definitely get used to it.”

  Dirk rolled his eyes as Hatch walked away with a swagger. I tracked him as he gathered up our clothes. He left mine on the bed and then carried his into the bathroom, giving us a small amount of privacy.

  “I have an idea,” I whispered to him. At his raised brows, I added, “You won’t like it.”

  He tilted his head back, affection and exasperation at war in his expression. “I hate it already, but I’ll hear you out. Shower first… You both smell like sex, and we’ll get nothing done if all I want to do is make you smell like me.”

  The shower helped, as did the fresh tea waiting for me when we rejoined the others. As drafty and damp as the old keep was, and nothing like the compound in New Zealand, I found myself reluctant to plan our exodus because no matter what we did, we had to deal with Smtihson and the Blossom Foundry.

  “He won’t give up,” I said with a glance toward Dirk and then Hatch. Neither disagreed with me. “And I can’t see myself agreeing to what might be a death sentence for all of us.” Because they would never let me go alone.

  I suspected Dirk wouldn’t let me go at all, and if he fought me on it, the others would too, even if they all said they wanted to ‘support’ me. They’d supported me quite enough already.

  “But there is still work to be done here,” I admitted, because this was important. “It could take the rest of my life to do the work, maybe another life beyond mine, but I could get it started.”

  “I’ll help,” Oz told me. “You know I will.”

  “We all will,” Andreas assured me. “We all hid away for different reasons. Some of us were running from our past.”

  “Our present,” Oz offered.

  “Our choices,” Hatch said with a smirk.

  All three of them looked to Dirk, who just folded his arms. “I wasn’t running from anything. I was there to protect her.”

  “And you have…all of you have. But if we want a chance at our life here, we cannot be waging war with a corporation. I think the government would help us.” In New Zealand anyway, they’d been welcoming enough to me. Maybe even the Americans. “But I don’t want to be owned by any one government. I want my work to help everyone.”

  More, I didn’t want to be owned by anyone. I wanted to go back to our compound. Or the island. Anywhere it could just be us, where they could be happy, too. Suddenly, my parents’ choices made so much more sense to me. They hadn’t been walking away from the world, they’d run to be together. But they also hadn’t given up on it. My mother designed me, a perfect test tube baby combining their genes in exactly the right way, because like so many who suffered from the virus, fertility had been a problem for them.

  Not her.

  My father.

  But she found a way to do it.

  I was more a clone than a baby, but I’d been gestated and I’d grown. She had to tweak me over the years, not something I wanted to share, but they would know now and I was no longer willing to hide it. She’d also found a way to repair the issue with shedding DNA. She’d locked it in my own genes, it had just taken me a while to find it.

 

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