Chapter 20 Sem #2
“I know.” Her chin ducked. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “None of this was your fault. I’m just so relieved that you’re here and safe. You’re feeling better?”
“My fever broke as soon as we arrived. But I’ve been worried about you.” Her chin wobbled, her eyes shining like glass, somehow even more beautiful. “You were so pale when he brought you in here. So cold. I was so scared.”
“I was scared too.” Running my thumb along the length of her neck, I let myself indulge in the sensation, touching skin I hadn’t allowed myself to touch for what felt like an eternity. “But now we’re here.”
Her hand moved in a tentative glide up my chest, her fingers curling around my shoulder. “Together.”
Slowly, inch by miraculous inch, I trailed my fingertips down her back, skimming over skin so soft it felt covered in velvet. When my fingers slipped into the small valley of her lower back, then up over the rising curve of her hip, I felt only skin. A sea of skin. “You aren’t wearing any clothes.”
Her pupils expanded into deep black pools. “Neither are you.”
Blood surged hot through me, rerouting from my fingers and toes and brain to race between my legs. After weeks of trying to hide the way I felt about her, I was suddenly exposed, harder than I’d ever been in my entire life, and tenting the sheet that covered us.
“I can hear your heartbeat.” She stared at her hand on my chest, her expression awed. “It’s so hard and fast. Even faster than mine.”
She wasn’t wrong. My ribs hurt from the pounding my heart was giving them. I didn’t care, too busy studying all the places her body made contact with mine, committing the weight of her arm and the curve of her belly to memory.
“It’s okay,” I said, drowning in her delicious scent.
It swept around me, filling our hut. “I’m okay.
” And when she tucked her lower lip between her teeth, something she had to know drove me out of my mind by now, I moved my hand on her body even lower, lower, lower.
Until I cupped the round, devastating swell of her ass.
She gasped at the contact, her fingertips digging into my skin.
“There are things I’ve wanted to say to you, Elanie.
” With a little pressure, I pulled her into me, nearly dying when soft curls brushed against my hip, when her leg slid over mine.
“Things I should have said in the cave. Things I couldn’t say to you on the ship.
There are things I should have done. Things”—my gaze sank to the place where her pulse pounded in her throat—“I want to do now.”
“Sem,” she whispered, her eyes closing as I brushed my thumb over her lush lower lip, wondering how I’d gone my entire life not knowing the softness of her mouth, the feel of her breath as her lips parted.
I beckoned her closer, and she came willingly, sliding her hand down my abs. And everything around us vanished. No sounds, no sights, no thoughts. Only her lips hovering over mine, so close, almost touching—
“Ah, you’re finally awake.”
Fuck my life!
Elanie snapped to attention, and I rushed to sit up beside her, covering her naked chest with our sheet.
The green-skinned giant’s chuckle rumbled as he ducked into our hut, his enormous, muscle-bound body taking the space I’d previously thought was generous and shrinking it to the size of my gauze drawer.
“Clothing is optional in Thura,” he said, even though he wore a pair of white linen pants that were threadbare enough to leave little to the imagination.
His nonexistent shirt probably took one look at his massive pecs and ran for the hills.
“But if you’re modest, you will find clothes that fit you in your dresser. ”
“I suppose you’re Golgunda,” I said, trying to sound at least somewhat self-possessed while my mind replayed the embarrassment of being hauled like a toddler over the three-meter-tall man’s shoulder.
“Dr. Semson.” His generous lips pursed under his straight nose, his chin dimpling even though it and his jaw looked carved from marble.
When his dark brows huddled together over deeply sunken eyes the color of tree moss, he came off as pensive, almost wistful.
“We’ve never had a physician here, or a Portisan, for that matter.
” A polite smile had never felt so menacing. “No real need for either.”
I was busy processing that information when Elanie leaned in close and whispered directly into my ear, “You’re my fiancé, by the way.”
My lungs seized. But when we locked eyes, hers warned: play along.
Pivoting from the bomb she’d just dropped, she tucked our sheet more tightly around herself and said, “Good morning, Gol.”
“Elanie, you’re looking well.” He walked across the hut, the wooden planks groaning under his weight.
When he sat on our bed, I was amazed the thing didn’t collapse.
“It took you much longer to fully heed the call than it takes most of our summoned guests. You must have been well protected from the signal.” A side eye my way.
“Perhaps your mate had something to do with that?”
My lips twitched. Mate. I shouldn’t have liked the sound of that as much as I did
“If I hadn’t decided to go find you when I did…” Gol hung his head, his lustrous green hair sliding over his shoulders. “I don’t want to think about what would have happened.”
I was not a tall man by any stretch, but next to Gol, I felt like a tiny blue bug when I said, “She got sick.”
“And do you know why you got sick?” he asked Elanie.
She shook her head. “I’ve never been sick a day in my life.”
“Maybe it was something we ate?” I suggested, and although it was subtle, I could have sworn Gol rolled his eyes at me.
“It was not something you ate.” He placed a very large hand on Elanie’s knee, and I immediately wanted to swat it away.
“Then what was it?” I asked, scowling at his hand. I was a breath away from asking him to remove it from my fiancée before he finally did it on his own. I wasn’t typically this jealous, but there was something about him that screamed ownership. And nobody should own Elanie.
“The illness is by design.” His broad shoulders rose and fell, like what he was about to say physically weighed on him.
“There is code hidden deep within the so-called Shared Bionic Network. It’s old but efficient, tracing back to our first generations.
When this code is triggered, it affects every single cell in our bodies.
It makes us sick. Makes our systems fail.
Our organic tissues break down. Most bionics will never experience the effects of this termination code. ”
“Termination?” Elanie leaned forward, moving too close to him for my comfort. “Why would there be a termination code inside the SBN?”
His eyes settled on hers, and I felt something pass between them. Something I didn’t understand. Because, I realized in a rush so cold it felt like diving headfirst into our icy lake, I was an outsider here.
“It is the great contradictory thumb we are all made to live under,” Gol said softly.
“Bionics were designed to resist attachments, but also to require each other’s presence.
On a neurophysiological level, we cannot be away from each other for longer than a few weeks.
The SBN keeps us connected not only in our processing of data, whatever data they deem it appropriate for us to have,” he added under his breath.
“But also in our organic biology. We are, quite literally, connected.”
“Why?” I asked, wishing I was at least wearing pants for this conversation.
“Simple.” Gol’s eyes didn’t leave Elanie’s.
“Control. Bionics must never succeed in striking out on our own. We must never have independence. We must live as a cog in the wheel of the cybernetic-industrial complex. If we fail to police ourselves, we must police each other. Whether we know that’s what we’re doing or not.
Upon punishment of death, we must never, ever be free. ”
“Saints,” I whispered.
“No, Portisan,” Gol said darkly, his gaze shifting to mine, intense as a storm. “Not Saints. Biocapitalists. But because they expect us to be compliant, the SBN is vulnerable. It can be hacked. It can be manipulated.”
“To bring us here,” I said as Elanie slid her fingers through mine.
His hand landed on my knee now, squeezing so hard I nearly squealed.
Then he grinned, wide and toothy. “This is heavy talk for the morning. You both have much to learn, but we have time.” He stood, nearly flipping our bed onto its side.
“Come. Get dressed if you must. We have food and drink. Fresh fruits and vegetables. Spirits. Everything you could ever want or need is waiting for you.” He bowed his head and with a dramatic, resonant boom, said, “Welcome to Thura.”