Chapter 16 Dimitri #2
But he couldn't succumb to temptation, especially since the shower routine was still ahead of them, and with both of them naked in the cramped shower stall, things were about to get much more difficult.
He took a step back. "We need to get ready for the day. Let me check if Petrov delivered the breakfast trays yet."
Mattie let out a long-suffering sigh. "Go. I need to pee anyway."
The breakfast trays were on the dresser in the hallway as he'd expected, and when he returned with the clingy plastic, Mattie was ready for the shower.
They followed the established routine, wrapping the plastic film around her bandaged hand, adjusting the temperature and letting the shower stall fill up with steam, removing her T-shirt with the careful choreography of two people navigating injury in a space built for one.
Dimitri tried to approach it clinically, but he was failing miserably.
It was not possible when the woman he loved was pressed against him under warm water, her head tilted back, her eyes half-closed, her skin flushed from the heat.
Every morning, the gap between clinical and not clinical, between restraint and letting instinct take over, narrowed, and this morning, with the adrenaline of the tooth falling out still in his blood and the kiss still on his lips, the gap shrank dangerously.
She felt him respond. The shower stall was barely big enough for one person, and two bodies pressed together left no room for secrets.
"Dimitri." She turned in his arms, her good hand bracing against his chest. Water ran down her face, darkening her lashes, and the look in her eyes was not a question. It was a statement of intent.
"Mattie, I—"
She put her finger on his lips. "Don't say no."
"I wasn't going to say no. I was going to say that your hand—"
"Doesn't need to be involved."
Before he could formulate a response to that, she slid down, her knees touched the tile floor of the shower, and his mind went blank.
The water hit his chest and shoulders and cascaded down, and Mattie looked up at him with an expression that didn't leave much room for argument.
Not that he had any resistance left in him to argue.
She could do anything she wanted to him, and he wouldn't even try to stop her.
Her mouth was warm and deliberate, and even though her left hand wasn't her dominant one, she didn't need much dexterity to make what she was doing to him exquisite.
His hand found the back of her head, fingers threading through wet hair, and time lost all meaning. The bathroom walls faded, the island disappeared, the missing tooth and the emerging fangs, and the collective consciousness that wanted to merge with his brain all ceased to exist.
There was just Mattie and the way she made him feel.
Against all odds, his higher functions somehow reasserted themselves, and he eased back gently, cupping her face with both hands. It wasn't because the sensation wasn't extraordinary, because it was, but because the imbalance of it bothered him.
She looked up at him. "You don't like it?"
"Like doesn't begin to describe it. But I'm not willing to do this if it's not reciprocal."
Still on her knees, water streaming over both of them, she blinked. "It can be."
The words sent a jolt through him that was not purely sexual.
It was the particular electricity of a puzzle presenting itself, and despite the circumstances, the part of his brain that would always be a scientist first and a lover second immediately began calculating positions, angles, weight distribution, and the constraint of an injured right hand.
"I'll think about the mechanics," he said, and even as the words came out, he recognized how absurd they sounded. Here he was, standing in a shower with a beautiful woman on her knees in front of him, and he was talking about mechanics.
As Mattie burst out laughing, the sound echoed off the wet tiles, bright and contagious, and Dimitri laughed too. The tension that had been building between desire and responsibility had been broken, and it was a tremendous relief.
She was still laughing as he helped her to her feet. She leaned against him, her forehead pressed to his collarbone.
"The mechanics," she repeated, shaking her head. "Only you could turn sex into a physics problem."
"Engineering problem. Physics is theoretical. Engineering is applied."
"Even worse."
He tilted her chin up and kissed her, softer this time, the kind of kiss that was a promise rather than a demand. "Tonight, and I mean it. But right now we need to get down to the lab. A new shipment of chemicals arrived yesterday, and Petrov and I have a full day of work ahead of us."
"What's more important than this?" She wrapped her good arm around his neck.
"Nothing. But the shipment is more urgent."
She sighed. "Fine. But if you keep putting me off, I'm going to ask Dave to tie you to the bed so I can have my way with you."
The image that description produced was so wildly inappropriate that Dimitri nearly choked on his own saliva.
"That's not funny."
"It's a little funny." She grinned. "Four of Dave on the right side, four on the left, while I…"
Oh, God. That was such a wrong thing to say, considering what Dave wanted from Dimitri. If he agreed to the mind merge, the scenario that Mattie had painted would become a reality. Dave might not be there physically holding him down, but they would be there virtually.
He grimaced. "Please stop."
"Why? Don't you find the idea kinky?"
"No." He turned off the water and reached for the towels, shaking his head. "You are a menace."
"I am a woman who misses making love with her super handsome, sexy boyfriend." She took the towel he offered and toweled herself dry quite efficiently, given that she did it one-handedly. "I'm tired of waiting."
The humor had drained from her voice, and what remained was raw and honest.
He took the towel from her and wrapped it around her, tucking a corner securely so it would stay put.
"Tonight," he said. "We will go slow and figure out the mechanics together. I just refuse to let your hand get injured again. I want you to give it the best possible chance of healing fully."
Her eyes searched his face for the sincerity behind the promise, and whatever she found there must have satisfied her because the tension in her shoulders eased.
"Let's see what the doctor says when he comes to check on me."
Dimitri had forgotten about the doctor's scheduled visit.
"I'm sure he will confirm what I'm saying. You shouldn't allow anything to happen to this hand."
He unwrapped the plastic, checked the bandage for moisture, and was satisfied to find it just as dry as it had been before they entered the shower.
Once they were both dressed, Dimitri retrieved one of the surgical masks from the box on the shelf by the door. He held it up, looped the elastic bands over his ears, and adjusted the fit over his nose and mouth.
"How do I look?"
"Like a doctor or a guy with a cold," Mattie said approvingly. "In either case, it's a very human look."
"I should probably start coughing before we get downstairs."
"Why? Petrov knows what's going on, and he's the only one there."
He shrugged. "Practice. I need to make it sound natural."
"Right. Don't do the dramatic movie cough. It needs to be the annoying, persistent, I-can't-shake-this-thing cough."
He tried a cough. It came out sounding like a small dog with something stuck in its throat.
Mattie winced. "That was even worse than the movie. Try again. From the chest."
He tried again. Better. The second attempt had the scratchy, reluctant quality of a genuine respiratory irritation.
"That's more like it. Throw in a sniffle every few minutes. Blow your nose occasionally. And don't forget to decline food and drink in front of anyone other than Petrov and me. The excuse is that sick people don't have appetites, and the truth is that you can't allow anyone to see your mouth."
"You're enjoying this."
"I'm directing your performance." She smiled. "I always wanted to make movies."
"You did? You never told me."
"It was a silly dream when I was still a kid. Before the fire. I wanted to study film."
His heart ached for her broken dreams.
"When we get out of here, you will go to film school, and that's a promise."
She smiled at him, but it was the kind of smile that implied she knew he meant well but could never deliver on his promise.
He would prove her wrong. With his and Petrov's expertise and Dave's help, they could make a lot of money once they were free, enough to pay for Mattie's tuition.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, it was a little strange not to be greeted by Russian folk music. Not that Dimitri was sorry that it was gone, but the quiet was bothersome. Petrov was at his workstation, setting up an elaborate arrangement of glassware for fractional distillation.
He glanced up when they entered, and his eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. "What's with the mask?"
"I woke up with a cold." Dimitri coughed, deploying the chest-rattling version that Mattie had approved. "Sore throat, congestion. I don't want to give it to you or Mattie."
Petrov's expression made her chuckle.
"You can't get colds," he said.
"I know that. You know that. Nobody else does." Dimitri pulled down the mask just enough for Petrov to see the gap where his left canine had been.
Petrov's eyes widened. "Boje moi. So, it has started."
"The other one is loose. It will probably fall out later today or tonight."
Petrov glanced toward the lab's windows, confirmed that no one was visible outside, and leaned closer. "Are the fangs coming out?"
"I can feel them pushing down. The gums are swollen." Dimitri pulled the mask back up. "Mattie came up with the mask idea. A cold explains the mask, the mask covers the mouth, and wearing a mask reinforces the impression that I'm human."
Petrov turned to Mattie. "Devochka, you have a good brain under that blonde hair of yours."
Mattie arched a brow. "Was that a blonde joke? Because if it was, it wasn't good."
"I try." Petrov shrugged. "I thought it was."
Dimitri stifled a chuckle. "Should we get started on the shipment?"
"Oh, yes. The shipment." Petrov picked up a clipboard from his bench.
"Twenty-three boxes. I went over the manifest, and we're missing dimethyl sulfoxide and the chromatography columns I requested six weeks ago.
They did send the acetonitrile, though, which is something.
Three of the boxes are marked in Mandarin, and I can't read the labels, so I don't know what's inside them. "
"Those would be Zhao's supplies. Probably reagents for the original enhancement formula." Dimitri crossed to the storage area where the crates were stacked. "You should catalog everything before Dave's afternoon session. I want to run a new set of stability tests on the latest batch."
"All work and no play," Mattie murmured from her spot by the window.
"I can play," Dimitri said.
Mattie gave him a look that could have melted titanium. "Prove it tonight."
"I will," he promised.
Petrov's gaze bounced between them. "Do I want to know?"
"No," they said simultaneously.
"Wonderful." Petrov returned to his distillation setup. "The youth of today. No boundaries, no shame, and no volume control. I heard you laughing in the shower this morning. You should know that the walls in this building are thin. You should remember that."
Mattie's cheeks turned pink. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize. It's nice to hear people laugh." He adjusted a clamp on the condenser. "There hasn't been enough of it around here."
Dimitri looked at his mentor and felt a surge of affection for the guy. Petrov, with his vodka and his Russian folk music, and his nearly nightly vigils at the brothel protecting a woman he couldn't save, was a better man than Dimitri had ever suspected him to be.
They had been friends before the fiasco that had landed Petrov in an insane asylum and Dimitri at a gulag, but they had never been as close as they had become on this island.
From a mentor and a friend, Petrov had become a father figure and a co-conspirator who had earned his trust through a thousand small acts of decency in a place designed to stamp decency out.
Dimitri pulled on his lab gloves, adjusted his mask, and got to work.
The crates weren't going to inventory themselves, and the chemicals inside them were the raw materials of the enhancement drugs that kept Dave stable, the formulas that kept Losham satisfied, and somewhere in the margins, hidden in coded journal entries and unlabeled vials, the work that actually mattered.
The regenerative compound for Mattie's scars and the anti-compulsion formula that he still needed to keep his mind his own.