16. Theon
THEON
The morning after, I discover a new dependency.
My body is out of bed and across the room before my brain finishes processing the sight.
My hands find her waist. My mouth finds the curve of her neck. She smells like sleep and like me, and the second fact does things to my nervous system that no compound has ever managed.
“Good morning to you too.” She tips her head, offering me more of her throat. “You’re supposed to be reviewing the degradation curves.”
“I’m verifying last night’s results.”
“Which results?”
“You.” I press my palm to her sternum, over the place where her heart is already accelerating. “I woke up and calculated the probability that I dreamed the entire event. It was uncomfortably high.”
“We had sex twice more before we slept. Three trials.” Her mouth curves. “That’s replication.”
“Three trials with a sample size of one.”
I turn her to face me and look properly. Swollen mouth. A faint bruise on her throat from my teeth. Her green eyes lift to mine. The guard is still there—I doubt she will ever be entirely gone—but she is no longer standing between us.
“The literature demands more data,” I say.
“The literature.” She sets the vial back into its rack. “Is that what we’re calling your hands? Because they’ve been on me for several minutes, and I haven’t logged a single curve.”
She is right. One hand has settled around her hip. The other is tracing the hem of my shirt where it meets her bare thigh.
I make both stop. They object. I overrule them.
We drink water, eat protein bars, shower, and dress. Then we cross into the annex in trousers, coats, eye protection, and fresh gloves like the competent chemists we allegedly are.
Once the work begins, we last eleven minutes.
Isla is pipetting an assay sample when it fails. Her tongue is caught between her teeth in concentration, and I stand beside her pretending to read a chromatogram while actually memorizing the faint mark above the collar of her lab coat.
“Your respiration is at twenty,” she says without looking up.
“Ambient conditions.”
“The ambient temperature is fourteen degrees Celsius. You keep it cold on purpose.” She dispenses the final aliquot, caps the source vial, seats it in the rack, and logs the time.
Only then does she look at me. Her gaze travels downward, pauses, and returns to my face.
“Theon. We have forty-one individualized release files to clear.”
“Thirty-nine. I cleared two while you slept.”
“When did you sleep?”
“Briefly.”
“That is not a time.”
“Sleep is temporarily losing.”
Her eyes narrow. I reach for her, stop before I touch her coat, and curl my hand into a fist instead.
“I keep needing to confirm you’re real,” I say.
“I know it’s irrational. I wake up, and part of me is certain I'm still in the Ashford archive with my pistol raised—that I did what they built me to do and put you down like all the others—and everything since is a story my mind assembled so I'd never have to know it.”
Isla watches me for a long moment.
Then she stores the pipette, strips off her gloves, removes her eye protection and coat, and washes her hands.
I follow her through the same sequence. She waits until we have both crossed the annex boundary before putting her palms against my bare chest. Her fingers find the formula hidden in the rose below my collarbone and trace it as if she can read the cipher through skin.
“Empirical test,” she says softly. “Invented women don’t do this.”
She rises onto her toes and kisses me.
It begins controlled. It does not stay that way. Her mouth opens beneath mine, tasting of tea, and my hands close around her waist. She grips my coat and pulls me closer. The annex alarm panel stays green behind her. Every sample is sealed. Every reaction is stable.
“The release checks,” she says against my mouth.
“Can stand for six hours without compromising the data.”
“You checked.”
“At four this morning.” I drag my mouth down her jaw and over the bruise I want to darken. “Because I knew this would happen.”
“Then stop pretending you’re resisting it.” Her fingers knot in my hair. “Take me back to bed, Daddy.”
The word strikes below thought.
I lift her into my arms and carry her out of the annex. She laughs against my neck, bright and startled by her own happiness, and I understand that I would kill anyone who tried to take that sound from her.
I lay her on the bed and strip off my shirt, then hers. Slowly this time. Looking.
“You’re staring again,” she says.
“I’m memorizing.” I trace one finger from the hollow of her throat, down her sternum and over her stomach. Her skin tightens beneath it. “Every response. Everything you give me. I told you I’m keeping it.”
“The museum takes—”
“No.” I bend until my mouth is beside her ear. “The museum is yours. But this doesn’t go behind glass where I can’t reach it. You don’t hide this from me.”
Her breath catches. “Possessive.”
“Yes.”
I ease her thighs apart and run my hand between them. She is already wet, but I do not let that answer for her.
“How sore?” I ask.
“Two out of ten.”
“Sharp pain? Burning? Bleeding?”
“No. And before you ask, yes, I still want you.” Her expression shifts, wickedness threading through the precision. “Cause and effect. Basic kinetics.”
I slide one finger inside her, slow, watching her eyes lose focus. “Say it again with a straight face.”
“Basic—” Her back arches. “Methodologically unfair.”
I touch her until her hips chase my hand and her careful language falls apart. When I settle between her thighs, I reach for the lubricant beside the bed and take my time with it.
“Same as last night?” I ask.
“Bare. Inside me. All of it.” She holds my gaze. “Please, Daddy.”
I push into her.
Slowly. She is still tender, still new to this, and her mouth opens on a shaky breath. Her hands close over my shoulders while I work my way into her a little at a time, ignoring every demand my body makes for speed.
When I am fully inside her, I stop.
“How does that feel?”
“Full.” Her voice is hoarse with wonder. “Like there shouldn’t be room, and then there is.”
I draw back and roll forward, deep and unhurried. Her gasp breaks against my jaw.
“Nobody else has ever been inside you.” I slide one hand beneath her hips, changing the angle until she whimpers. “Nobody else ever will. Say it.”
“Nobody else.” Her legs close around me. “Yours. Signed, notarized, and witnessed by Gwendolyn.”
A laugh tears out of me mid-stroke. She grins, pleased with herself, and I kiss the grin from her mouth before driving into her harder.
“Daddy,” she breathes.
My rhythm stutters. She feels it and says it again.
“Daddy, harder. Please.”
“Careful what you ask for.”
I give it to her. The bed frame knocks against the floor, and she meets every stroke, her nails biting into my back.
I lower my mouth to her ear and let the wanting speak.
“Do you know what I think about when you bend over that bench?” I drive deep enough to pull a cry from her.
“Every position. Every surface outside my laboratory. You on your knees. You riding me.” My hand closes around the curve of her backside.
“Your ass, someday. Not today. Not until you ask me for it. But I want it, baby girl. I want you trusting me with that too.”
She goes still beneath me.
I stop at once.
Her eyes open wide. “My—” She blinks. “People do that?”
The question is so sincerely scandalized that fondness hits me almost as hard as the lust.
“They do.”
“On purpose.”
“Very much on purpose.”
Her surprise begins rearranging itself into curiosity. I can see the exact moment it happens.
“What preparation would that require?” she asks.
“Time. Lubricant. My fingers first. Going slowly enough that you never have to endure it.” I brush my mouth over hers. “And stopping the moment your body or your mouth says no. It doesn’t happen until you want it.”
“Noted.” Her face is scarlet. Around me, unmistakably, her muscles tighten.
Her eyes widen again, this time at herself.
“Log that,” she whispers. “Apparently it requires investigation.”
“Everything about you requires investigation.” I move again, slowly at first, waiting for her body to follow. It does. “I could spend the rest of my life learning you and still refuse to publish a single result.”
“Possessive,” she gasps.
“You already logged that.”
“Feral, then.”
“Demonstrably.” My fingers find her where our bodies meet, circling until she draws taut beneath me. “Any complaints?”
“None filed—oh—”
Her rhythm breaks. I feel her tightening around me and keep the pressure steady, relentless.
“That’s it. Come for me, baby girl. Let me feel what’s mine.”
She breaks with my name in her mouth. The sound and the grip of her body tear the last of my control loose. I bury my face in her hair and come inside her, mind going white and silent.
Silent.
I count when I surface. I always count.
“Eleven,” I say.
She stirs beneath me. “Eleven what?”
“Seconds.” I lift my head and look at her. “New record. Broke the old one by two.”
Her mouth trembles. Her eyes shine, but she smiles through it.
“Records exist to be broken,” she says. “Rigorous science demands that we keep trying.”
“After the release files.”
She studies me. “Was that responsibility?”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.”
I ease out of her, make certain she is comfortable, and hand her the water from beside the bed. After she uses the washroom, she returns in my shirt. I pull her against my chest for five minutes—exactly five, because if I do not impose a limit we will still be here when the assay window closes.
I am addicted. There is no clinical hedge left and no gentler word that feels honest. Not because she has replaced my chemistry or erased what was done to me. Because I wake reaching for proof that she exists. Because her laugh has become a sound I organize my violence around protecting.
“Baseline later,” I tell her.
“After the release files,” she agrees.
We dress again and return to the annex. Thirty-nine checks remain, a hunt is tightening above us, and Isla’s shoulder brushes mine as she reaches for fresh gloves.
I have never worked faster.