Six Months Later
Feather-soft hair tickled my thighs, brushing over sensitive skin as I reached down to cradle Sem’s head. Not wanting to but knowing we had somewhere to be this morning, I checked the time.
“We’re going to be late,” I said, then moaned when his tongue flicked and swirled. “Sem, we have to go.”
“No,” he argued, his voice muffled. “You have to come.”
I decided not to argue back, especially with how committed he was to his work. Besides, it had been over a week since we’d been able to do this.
Sem had been spending every minute he wasn’t in the med bay completing his apprenticeship with Maximus, hoping one day to leave his position as the Ignisar’s physician and embark on his childhood dream of becoming her head mechanic instead.
And I was preoccupied with stepping into my new role as a lead representative for the Federated Bionic Union.
Including preparing the statement I was to give at the upcoming KU Senate meeting on ensuring fair and equitable labor practices for bionics; enacting protections against any programming, past or present, designed to keep bionics from self-actualization; and making the practice of recommissioning of bionic components voluntary and transparent.
At least there’d be a friendly face in the senate chamber. Senator Sonia Ramesh sent me a Vmail last night, congratulating me on my promotion to union rep and telling me she was looking forward to my statement.
Since we were still not comfortable with being apart for longer than a day or two, Sem was coming with me. But our shuttle was set to disembark in less than an hour, and considering the situation we found ourselves in now, making the airlock in time seemed unlikely.
“Oh, yes. Right there.” I sighed when he found the perfect spot, the perfect rhythm, the perfect everything. Pleasure raced along my skin, pulling my muscles tight, making my back arch off the bed as my world went white. And then I was floating.
Moments later, his teeth scraped across my inner thigh, bringing me back down. I reached for him, curling my fingers around him.
“I thought we didn’t have time,” he said while he settled between my legs. “Didn’t you want to see little Felix again before we left?”
I did want to see Freddie and Sunny’s adorable baby boy, but while I slid the head of Sem’s erection through my center, getting him slippery before positioning him at my entrance, I said, “I want this too.”
While he pushed inside me, easing slowly in and out, a little deeper each time, I laid my hand over his chest. “Does it bother you?” I asked. “That you and I will never have children?”
“No.” He kissed me softly, sweetly. “Does it bother you that I’ll grow old and weak while you remain young and beautiful?”
“No.” I kissed him back. “I’ll take care of you if you can’t care for yourself.”
“Elanie.” He gave me a small thrust that I felt in every sensitive neurofiber of my body. “That sounds a lot like a vow.”
“No,” I said, my head falling back at another thrust, deeper this time. “A vow would sound more like: Sem, I promise to take care of you and love you even when you’re old and weak, until the end of our days.”
Meeting my stare while his longer bangs brushed over his forehead, he said, “And I promise to love you for the rest of my life just as you are. Because you are perfect, and you’re the only family I will ever need.”
“But what about Grover?” I said, cuing the grint to squawk from his spot on the dresser. “He’s our family too.”
“Sorry.” He grinned. “You and Grover are the only family I will ever need.” Then his grin slipped, his hips slowing.
“Sem?” I asked when he stopped moving entirely.
He slid his hand over my cheek. “What if there were other vows I wanted to make to you?”
“What do you mean?”
When his thumb ghosted over my skin, the haze of desire clearing from his eyes, the moment shifted, a heaviness setting in that was more than just the weight of his body over mine.
“Elanie, you are the love of my life. I would follow you across the Known Universe again and again, live in a cave with you again and again, raise an unhinged grint with you again and again, just so I could spend every day with you. I want to be with you and only you until the oceans dry up and the stars burn out. I want you to be my family for as long as we both shall live. I want you to marry me. Marry me, Elanie.”
I must have misheard him. Until he said it again, followed by a “please.”
“But bionics can’t marry,” I said, trying to keep my heart from soaring to heights it was never meant to reach.
“I don’t care if we have an actual wedding.
I don’t care if some KU government official somewhere stamps a piece of paper declaring us husband and wife.
But if you do, if that’s important to you, then let’s add it to your platform.
Because bionics should be able to marry and have families just like everyone else.
But right now, all I care about is making sure you know without question that I am yours, no matter what, forever. ”
Forever. The word sank into me, filling me, edging out other word like shuttles and meetings and agendas. Edging out ships and stars and everything in the entire cosmos until there was room left only for him.
Staring at this brave and kind and beautiful man who changed my life by continually risking his, gazing into those same silver-blue eyes I wanted to see gazing back at me until the Known Universe itself was only a memory, I smiled and said, “Then yes, I will marry you. Because I am yours too, no matter what, forever.”
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