Or they found me.
“What’s wrong?” His voice drifted over me like a warm caress. “Or should I say, what’s wrong now?”
A faint smile tugged at my lips. “I’m worried.”
“I know, querida.” He tossed the towel back into the bathing room and crossed over to where I worked at the lab station. Utopia had always been something of an ironic name for the white walls and scoured metal surfaces of this clean room-slash-lab-slash-nursery-slash-hospital room I’d spent far too many years inside. It had been home.
But it was an empty one without my parents. Andreas didn’t belong here. He had spent enough of his life in the shadows, he deserved the light.
“Campbell promised they have not surrendered the search.”
“Yet the Blossom people did not reach out when they said they would.” Neither of us had spoken of that little nugget. The last communication had been before we left the compound.
Before Oz left.
Before it had just been the two of us left.
Arms slipping around me, Andreas leaned his chin on my shoulder. “You know they called.”
It wasn’t a question.
Yes, I had known. But I waited both him and Campbell out. The need to focus on my recovery and regaining my strength took most of my concentration. I bounced back faster after the immersion. Then again, a week versus five years was no contest on my muscles. All of their care had helped. The electro-stimulation in the tank had also helped.
The computer hummed its completion, and I leaned forward, hands flattening against the desk as Andreas curved around me, the weight of his chin on my shoulder a comfort as the data scrolled over the screen.
“Tell me it worked,” he whispered, his hushed voice vibrating. “Tell me you’re healthy.” We hadn’t discussed this aspect, but he had to have read it in the journals, and even in the days since I’d emerged, we’d avoided the topic.
Instead, he’d walked with me. Joined me when I practiced my yoga. Cooked.
The men cooked, too, but he cooked a great deal and made sure I had a variety. They had brought supplies because the old stores here had protein supplements, a fact that had made his nose wrinkle in distance when I’d shown them to him.
I scrolled back through the results, my own throat dry as I checked them. Not answering him yet, I activated the keyboard, then pulled up previous samples. Most of the data came from my childhood and teenage years. The last sample on file was from my early twenties, when the shed had begun, but it had been a minor concern in that moment.
The sample I’d placed on file before I went into the immersion displayed the sheer volume of damage to my DNA. The memoriam may have saved my life in more ways than they realized. The vaccine I’d tested had stymied the decay, but it hadn’t reversed the process. The coma in conjunction with the machine sustaining my life functions had helped to prevent organ damage.
With a swipe of my hand, I threw the DNA details onto the screen. My early twenties. Pre-Immersion. Post-Immersion.
All the pairs lined up neatly, the ladders were intact, more, they were sheathed. The proteins wouldn’t break down as easily, they were far more resistant to infection or decay.
The shed had been neutralized.
Better. It had been reversed.
“Valda?” The worry tinging both syllables of my name had me running a soothing hand over Andreas’ before I half-twisted to meet his gaze.
“It’s not conclusive. Follow-ups are required.” The evidenced supported the hypothesis, but we’d need regularly positive results over a course of eighteen to thirty-six months, and even then…
“Querida,” Andreas said, exasperation tinging the word and demand punctuating it. “Yes or no?”
“Yes, it appears to have repaired the shed and the DNA—” Nothing else escaped as he hooked my arm and whipped me around. With one hand on my nape and the other on my hip, he dragged me into a kiss that chased away numbers, charts, theories, and treatment plans. The stroke of his tongue thrusting against mine left me groaning.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I didn’t argue as he hauled me into him and then lifted. Andreas tended to fight against his pleasures, resisting them. He found solace in denial, abstinence, and self-discipline. The pleasures of life were something we all deserved, but not Andreas. He believed in sacrifice and surrender.
Even as I landed against the bed we’d done little more than share cuddled together, I stared up at the dark eyes gleaming down at me. “You are whole.” The reverence in his voice silenced any argument I might have made.
Not that I wanted to argue with him. I could analyze all sides of the argument, but Andreas kept everything in reserve. His first and only consideration had always been my well-being. It was why he held back in the memoriam. I wasn’t me, only aspects of myself. It was why even after I woke, he would tend to me but not let me respond in kind. Only that day I pressed him had he allowed it.
Hovering over me, Andreas cupped my cheek. “How are you feeling, querida?”
I licked my lips, then clasped his face in my hands and pulled him down to meet my kiss. I’d missed them all so much. I’d missed him, even if he’d been right there. The words escaped me right now, but I tried to pour all of it into the way my mouth moved with his.
Tasting of mint and hints of coffee, he stroked his tongue along mine, and his body fit against me like it had always belonged there. His skin was hot beneath my fingers as I stroked along his back and his arms. Andreas had always been lean to the point of painful, part of that was how much he had always denied himself.
The muscles beneath my fingers were taut and wiry, the leanness giving way to tough core, as though the world had whipped him down to his base. A moan slipped from my throat as his weight settled against me. Oh, the feeling of him pressing me into the bed was one I didn’t know I’d craved.
The scrape of his teeth trailed against my throat as he kissed a path to my chest. Then he sat up, and I almost whimpered from the loss, but he tugged the loose shift I’d been wearing up and over.
Thankfully, I’d not bothered with a bra after my own shower. I wasn’t the prettiest woman on the planet, and I’d yet to regain much of my lost weight. My curves, once lush, were far diminished. Yet I saw none of that in Andreas’ eyes as he gazed down at me, and something pulled taut in my chest. Over the last few weeks, he had held me any number of times, helped me stand, helped me walk, even helped me shower. His touch had always been full of care and tenderness, but he’d refrained from anything more sensual.
The pain in his eyes darkened by worry and love had held me captive, but it had nothing on the lust and love shimmering in them now. My breath backed up in my lungs as he traced his fingers down to my breasts. The featherlight brush of his skin on mine sent a ripple of goosebumps to prickle my skin, and I gave a little shudder.
Not once did he look away as he circled one nipple. The searching look melted me.
Even with all the lust welling up in him and the slick desire softening my body, I wanted to just wrap myself around him and hold him tight. I wanted to chase away the shadows and the fears.
“We almost lost you,” he whispered. “For so long, it was like we held onto this single ribbon, and when one of us faltered, the others who would lift him up. We were a human chain keeping you bound to us and…”