Chapter 18 Luca
The heat of her skin is unreal, the rosewater smell of it intoxicating.
Emery’s tongue slides over mine, teasing and then overtly sensuous, and I let out an involuntary groan, arching my hips into hers, pushing deep into her warm heat.
I don’t even know how we got here—on this mattress, undressed, making frantic love—but I wouldn’t stop it if there was a gun to my head.
Emery gasps, her nails digging into my back, her legs spread wider as she works to pull me as close as she can get me.
“Sei splendida qui sotto di me,” I tell her. You are splendid here beneath me.
She looks up at me, sunlight catching the copper-penny flash in her right eye, and she smiles, so elated, so happy.
Cool air blows over my back as I bend and press my lips to her neck, sucking, biting, desperate to consume her somehow.
I snake my hand between us, feeling where I move in her, stroking her in gentle, fast circles.
“Ti piace, amore?” I murmur into her neck. Do you like it, my love?
She nods, her cheek brushing against mine. “Yes. Yes.”
With a tight cry, she starts to come, her body growing taut beneath me, and relief blooms through my bloodstream, the promise of pleasure streaking electric down my spine—
My entire body jerks, and I suck in a sharp, surprised breath, blinking into bright light.
It takes a few beats for me to figure out where I am—and where I’m not.
I’m not on a bare mattress outside, I’m not naked, I’m not making love to the woman with the soft skin and copper streak in her eye.
But I am in our bed. Alone.
It all comes back to me in a nauseating wave: waking up in the BioVIVE pod to a life of which I have no recollection. Emery’s lies about her career, the hidden safe in her office, and who knows what other secrets.
Still, she’s clearly heavy with remorse; every time I look at her, I register how her guilt has settled firmly into two parallel lines on her forehead between her eyes, how every admission she makes pours out of her with desperation and hope.
I try to put myself in her shoes—she must miss the Luca she knows.
I must feel like as much of a stranger to her as she is to me.
That she loves me is obvious.
I just need to reconcile what her love looks like with what my instinct tells me love should be. And it wasn’t just her failing me: I want to understand why I was willing to suppress the instinct that told me love should be more present, more complex, just… more.
Slowly, I push myself up and sit at the side of the bed. The clock on the nightstand says 4:12 a.m., meaning I somehow slept nearly twelve hours again. Jesus. That can’t be normal.
But I also can’t worry about the physical ramifications of being resurrected right now, because my body is still vibrating with the phantom sensations from the dream—or was it a memory?
The soft, rosewater scent of her skin, the tight clasp of her body around me, her gasping, pleading sounds for more.
From my throat to my groin, I ache with the need to come.
I’m tempted to go find her and pull her into my arms, to ask if we can, for just an hour, pretend this situation doesn’t exist and come together in the way my body is screaming we need to.
But I know sex won’t fix anything right now. What I need is to get my head together.
Literally.
I focus on the feeling of the ground beneath my feet, on the awareness of the muscles in my legs, the solidity of the bones, the strong chain of my spine to my neck, deep breaths, the clarity of my vision.
I push to stand, feeling a pulse of victory when I’m able to do it without rocking back and forth on the mattress to gain momentum.
I turn, giving Honey a soft whistle to come, before following her out of the bedroom and closing the door with a quiet click. I don’t know where Emery is, but the house is silent.
Everything in my body feels haywire; my brain screams for distance to think, but my body needs more of her. Closing myself into the bathroom, I shove my sweats down my hips and wrap my hand tightly around my length.
There’s a brief moment where I wonder if this is even safe, if my heart is ready to handle this sort of thing.
I decide I don’t care. A hell of a way to go, I think with a laugh, before closing my eyes to remember the way dream Emery looked gazing up at me, the way her sounds turned hoarse and fevered as she started to come, the feel of her so wet and hot around my dick.
I can still hear the sounds, can still smell the soft rose scent of her skin, can taste the salt of her sweat.
With a tight breath, after only a frenzied flurry of strokes, I bite back a groan, coming hard into my hand.
Dizzy, I take a second to catch my breath before washing up, brushing my teeth, and hoping I’ve managed to clear my thoughts enough to face the rest of the day, whatever it involves. At least one important part of me is working.
Knowing I can’t really go anywhere outside without Emery, I decide to poke around the house some more.
Part of me hopes there aren’t any more secret vaults, hidden doors, or panels to entirely new rooms, but part of me hopes there are, because without any emotional investment in Luca Martín’s life, there’s an element of all of this that objectively borders on absurd, and in a strange, unhinged way, I’m curious to see how far it all goes.
But an investigation of the living room reveals Emery fast asleep on the sofa, curled up beneath a blanket.
Her hair is loose and tangled; her tank top has slid off her shoulder, revealing a stretch of smooth, perfect skin.
She doesn’t stir as I carefully limp around the room, and it occurs to me that she probably hasn’t really slept since we got home from the lab.
The fucking lab. With an actual resurrection machine. None of it feels even remotely real.
I quietly poke around the living room, but there’s nothing obviously out of the ordinary.
The bathroom is tidy and lacks any apparent secrets, and the kitchen is just a kitchen—although a very well-equipped one.
The refrigerator has a box in the back that says EMERY’S MENSTRUAL VITAMINS, but I move it aside and eventually find ingredients to make breakfast, and have a stack of golden, buttery blueberry French toast piled on a plate when Emery shuffles sleepily in around six.
I’d expected the physical echo of the dream to have dissipated by now, but the moment I see her long, smooth neck and bare legs, fire streaks down my torso. She walks over, assessing my expression before cautiously setting a hand on my shoulder.
“Feeling okay?”
I nod, gazing down at her, trying to remain measured and objective about everything, but feeling so goddamn hungry for her touch. “I’m good,” I tell her.
“Yeah?” She searches my eyes.
“Stood up pretty smoothly earlier. No pain in my back today. Leg is better. Actually feeling a little restless.” Tilting my chin to the French toast. “There’s breakfast.”
“Smells amazing. It’s what roused me from a dead-ass sleep.” She stills and lets out a defeated sigh. “What the hell, Emery! Why do I keep saying things like that?”
I laugh. “It’s fine.”
I’m grateful that the scent of butter, vanilla, and cinnamon is strong enough to overpower the subtle aroma of Emery’s skin. I’m aware that it sparks something ancient in me, something feral.
Without thinking, I reach out, straightening the strap of her tank top. It doesn’t cover more this way, but at least when righted it seems to quiet some of the instinctive urges I have to undress her here in the kitchen.
God, this is all so disorienting. No wonder we had sex the first night we met.
“I’m sorry I was out cold in there,” she says, breaking her gaze away.
“What?” My pulse kicks, adrenaline streaking down my limbs. “Why would you be sorry for sleeping?”
“I don’t want you moving around unattended. I don’t want you to need something and have to get it yourself.”
I smile at her, holding my tongue when my instinct is to say, You wouldn’t be apologizing if you knew what I did to you in my sleep.
As if reading something in my gaze, Emery gives me a little smile before walking to the coffee maker and getting a pot brewing.
“I woke up and panicked that you were gone,” she says, turning to lean back against the counter while the machine gurgles, releasing the heady aroma of coffee into the room.
“I’d love to go outside, but I get that it’s probably not the best idea to go alone yet.”
Emery smiles gratefully at this and then turns, reaching for a pen in a cup and writing something on a calendar on the wall next to the coffee maker. I turn off the stove and step closer, reading on today’s date: Have breakfast together
Curious, I scan the rest of the calendar—three months at a time seems to be the system—and from May to July, only today’s square has her handwriting. The rest is what I can only assume is mine.
There are doctors’ appointments, dental cleanings, dry cleaning pickup—which, given that it’s during the daytime, I gather means I pick up Emery’s dry cleaning.
Every Thursday is trash pickup; once a month I appear to change the water filter in the fridge and once a quarter I change the filters in the heating vents.
In fact, most everything on the calendar relates to some boring aspect of adulting, except the night of my resurrection, which has a heart around the date and dinner reservations for 7:30, and every single Sunday has something penciled in, like Torrey Pines picnic; drive to Laguna and lunch at Las Brisas; brunch at Parkhouse Eatery; 9 a.m. pickleball and 12 p.m. lunch at Madi.
“Sundays were busy,” I note.
I realize, when I look down to her, that Emery had been staring at my face, only inches away from hers. When our eyes meet, she blinks away, licking her lips distractingly, and glances at the calendar. “Oh. Yeah. We call them Sunny Sundays. We do something together every weekend.”
I take a few seconds to read between the lines. “Just Sundays?”
Emery pulls her lips between her teeth and shrugs. “We spent time together at home, too.”
What was our life like? What did she like about it, and what did I? The idea that I saw my wife only occasionally at home and on Sundays feels insane to me, but here I am—married to her, wearing the wedding ring, picking up her dry cleaning, still wanting to fuck her.
I step back, leaning my hip against the counter to face her. “Can I ask you something?”
She nods, eyes wide and nervous.
“What do you want to happen between us?”
“You mean, what’s my ideal situation here?” she asks.
I nod.
“That you get your memory back,” she says. “That we get to start over with everything out in the open.”
“And your job?”
Her expression tightens. “I don’t know.”
“Can you balance it with a life outside of work?” I ask.
She’s the only anchor I have to the world right now.
I don’t know how to feel about trying to navigate this amnesia, the unsanctioned use of the BioVIVE, her secret life—all of it all on my own.
I don’t know exactly what I’ll do with the information, but I want it sooner rather than later.
Only three and a half days in limbo and I’m going crazy.
“What does a ‘life out in the open’ mean for you?”
Swallowing, she says firmly, “I’m going to prioritize us. If my job takes me away from home too much, then I quit.”
Something hard and sharp inside me melts. I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear this.