One of the benefits of using the transpo service instead of private cars was that transpos could bypass regular traffic by using both normal roads and the raised rail lanes. It wasn’t a perfect system, though. Now, for example, a sudden electrical storm had disrupted the rail service and stalled the transpo lanes.

Ewan tapped at the control screen but sat back with a frustrated sigh. “Backups all along the rails. We can’t even get off to take the highway until things start moving.”

The transpo control beeped and said in its gender-neutral voice, “All routes will be returned to normal passage as soon as possible.”

“Stupid,” Ewan said. “The whole point of this system is so you don’t get stuck in traffic.”

Nina laughed at his frown. “You should know as well as anyone that no matter how advanced the tech is, you can’t rely solely on it.”

“I wanted to get home,” he told her with a raise of his eyebrows that made her laugh.

She made a show of looking around the passenger compartment. “But it’s so comfortable in here. So secure. So . . . private.”

He was already moving across the seat to her. When he kissed her, Nina put her hands on his sides, inching his shirt out of his waistband the way she’d been eager to do for the past few hours. At the touch of her fingers on his bare skin, Ewan muttered something low, under his breath.

“What?” she asked, pausing.

He looked at her. “I said, ‘please.’”

“So polite,” Nina replied, and the edge in her own voice sent a thrill of arousal through her. She dug in her nails for a second or so, long enough to make him wince but not long enough to really hurt him. “This?”

“Yes. Please.”

She might never be fully used to the idea that he wanted her to hurt him, just a little, or that she liked it so much. Again, she was reminded how rare this thing was that they’d found together, and again, Nina remembered that it had only lasted a short time before ending.

She wasn’t going to fool herself into thinking this was a new beginning. It was an interlude, no more than that. The door to their relationship had not yet managed to close all the way. They had things to work through. It didn’t mean they were getting back together for good.

But for now . . .

Nina leaned into Ewan’s kiss, her nails digging once more on his skin. He pushed a hand between her thighs, his knuckles stroking through the material of her leggings, different than the ones she wore when she was in uniform but still thin enough that she could feel every touch. She didn’t hold back a gasp this time. She let her head fall back against the seat cushions for a second as she concentrated on the pleasure building beneath his skilled fingers.

She’d forgotten, briefly, how hard she was pressing into him. Not until he gave a low cry. She eased up, but before she could pull away, Ewan was kissing her again. His fingers stroked her. He put his other hand on hers, pushing it back against him.

The back of the transpo could seat six adults, which meant there was plenty of room for the two of them on the wide synthleather backseat. They moved together, sliding, winding, grinding. He was between her thighs, on top of her. Kissing. Touching. She pushed his shirt up to get her teeth on him. She sank them into his chest, right over his heart.

“Yes.” Ewan ground out the word. “That. More.”

Laughter eased out of her, broken into pieces by her gasping sighs. She pinched him harder, both sides. “This? More?”

Wriggling, he tried to get away from the bite of her fingertips, although the hardness of his erection was proof of his arousal. She bit him again, harder this time, as she gripped his cock through his trousers. Ewan bucked his hips into her grasp. He cursed under his breath, but when she tried to pull away, he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Don’t stop.”

Instead of biting him again, Nina let her fingers stroke over the wounds with small, soothing strokes. His mouth slanted over hers. His tongue slipped between her lips. She sucked it gently, then caught it between her teeth. She didn’t bite, but the tension in Ewan’s body told her he was expecting her to.

She smiled into the kiss and released his tongue. She lifted her hips, nudging her body against his erection. Around them, the transpo shuddered and began moving.

“How much time do we have?” she asked.

Ewan thrust a little against her. “Maybe half an hour, if nothing stops again.”

“We’d better hurry, then.”

His expression made her laugh once more. Without a word, Ewan tugged his shirt over his head and sat up to unbuckle his belt. Nina lifted her hips to tug down her leggings and the synthcotton briefs beneath. Utilitarian underpants, nothing sexy, but the way he stared made her feel as desired as if she’d been fully outfitted in lace and satin.

When he moved down her body to nestle his mouth against her heat, Nina couldn’t hold back her low murmur of longing. She threaded her fingers through his hair, urging him closer. His tongue swept along her folds, finding the point of her pleasure effortlessly. He worked her body with such expertise that she was writhing within minutes.

“I love the way you taste.” His words, muffled against her, nevertheless were easy to hear and sent a rush of desire circling through her. “I love how you sound when I’m getting you closer. I could spend all day doing this.”

“Not . . . all . . . day . . .” Nina managed to say, breathless from the pleasure. “I need you inside me at least some of the time.”

Easily flirting, her words a truth she was unlikely to admit without the distraction of his tongue and lips on her. She’d bite her tongue harder than she’d ever bitten his before admitting more than that. In this moment, anyway, all she could do was focus on how good he was making her feel. She’d worry later about the aftermath, and what this meant. For now, she could only give up to Ewan’s tender stroking tongue as he sent her hurtling over the edge into an orgasm so fierce she went totally blank for a few seconds.

* * *

Ewan would always be ready to lose himself in pleasuring Nina, even if it meant no release for himself. She’d climaxed within minutes of the first swipes of his tongue, and feeling her body moving under his mouth got his cock so rock hard he thought it was going to burst out of his pants. He wanted to slide up her body and fit himself inside her, but Ewan couldn’t manage to pull himself away from between her thighs.

Nina’s fingers twisted in his hair, but he relished the tiny, bright sparks of pain and bent back to worship her sweetness again. He lapped at her, finding the tight knot of her flesh with his tongue and then sucking gently until she writhed and cried out his name.

When he felt her second climax, her body tensing and releasing under his lips and tongue, Ewan though he finally understood what heaven was supposed to be. Muscles low in his belly tightened. The transpo was dinging, though, a warning that it was almost at his exit. They’d be back at his house in under ten minutes.

He kissed her heat, breathing in deeply to capture the full deliciousness of her scent. He lingered, eyes closed, for another half a minute before getting up on his knees to find his shirt. She pushed onto her elbows to watch him.

“You don’t want to—?”

He grinned with a gesture at the transpo controls. “No time.”

“You could make it.” Her amber eyes had gone dark, pupils dilated. Her gaze dropped to the front of his pants and the obvious bulge still there. “If you hurry.”

“I’d rather take my time.” He pulled his shirt on and watched her wriggle back into her leggings. “Nina, you’re so beautiful.”

He’d seen her take compliments before, sometimes flirtatiously, sometimes with a sarcastic reply or a falsely exaggerated and therefore endearing arrogance. Today, she frowned. Her brow furrowed. She passed a hand over the dishevelment of her curls.

“You make me feel that way,” she said after a moment.

“Because you are. I could look at you and nothing else, forever.” He would have kissed her again, but the transpo shuddered as it left the rails and began bumping over the regular highway.

Nina looked out the window with a small frown. “Almost home. Just in time for dinner.”

“You . . .” He’d been about to make a joke about her constant need for food, but paused at the sight of her expression. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“Nothing.”

He didn’t have time to press her for a more honest answer, because the transpo had pulled up at the base of his driveway. She waited for him to go first, unusual for her. By the time they got to the house, Ewan had started to worry. Just inside the front door, he turned and took her by the shoulders.

“Nina. What’s wrong. Is it another glitch?”

She nodded, then shook her head. “No. I mean, yes. Maybe. I just had a couple seconds of something. I’m fine.”

“It’s obviously more than that,” he said. “Talk to me.”

The bare, blank look on her face confused him, because he’d never seen an expression like that on her before. It took him a few seconds to recognize it, and once he did, he wasn’t sure how to process it. Nina looked . . . terrified.

Ewan’s first instinct was to pull her into his arms. She allowed it, taking the two steps toward him but remaining stiff in his embrace for a few seconds before the tension in her body eased. He held her tightly, more than a little frightened himself. What could be so bad that it would scare her?

“Nina, please tell me what’s going on.”

She shook her head after a second, her face pressed against him. “It’s just a glitch.”

“Does it hurt this time?”

“No.” She paused, then added, “it would be easier if it was just pain.”

Ewan didn’t say anything right away. His hand stroked over her back and the softness of her curls, over and over. “I’m sorry, for whatever it is.”

“It’s like looking up at a night sky, with pinpricks of stars shining, and watching them wink out. One by one. Except that the stars being consumed by the darkness are memories. Small things,” Nina told him in a shaky voice so utterly unlike her usual tone that she sounded like a stranger. “Like what I had for breakfast two days ago.”

He’d been worried before, but at her explanation, a chill crept over him. “How frequently does this happen? Maybe we need to get you to a doc . . .”

“It won’t matter,” Nina said, her words low and muffled against his chest. “They can’t do anything about the degrading tech, Ewan.”

“And I’m the reason why you can’t get it upgraded,” Ewan replied, sick to his stomach at the unspoken accusation.

She shook her head without moving out of his embrace. “You’re part of it, but at this point, it’s beyond your control, Ewan. There’s nothing you can do about it. I know that.”

He stroked his hand over her hair when she fell silent. He closed his eyes, sending up a plea to the Onegod or whatever deities existed that this meant what he hoped, that Nina was going to give him another chance.

“I’m going to—”

She held up a hand, blocking his words. “Please, don’t. I can’t handle any empty promises right now. I want to believe you, Ewan. I want to forgive you. I just don’t think I can.”

She pushed out of his arms to look him in the face. Her voice shook, but although her eyes glistened, no tears slipped free. He had time to wonder if that was a measure of her body’s extreme self-control, or if she simply wasn’t crying over him. Them. Over the end of things. He didn’t want her to cry, he didn’t want to know he’d hurt her so badly that she had to weep. But he also didn’t want her to feel nothing, no emotions at all about it, or about him.

“This . . .” She waved a hand between them. “Sex. That’s all this is.”

“Not for me.”

Nina shook her head. “This is all it can be, for me. Just like in the beginning. Before we . . . before it became something else.”

Part of him wanted to take what it seemed she was offering, something solely physical. With someone else, anyone else, he might have been able to. Not with Nina.

“I don’t want sex.”

She lifted her chin. “You didn’t seem to mind about half an hour ago, when you were going down on me.”

“I don’t want there to be just sex,” he corrected. “I realize you’re angry with me—”

“It’s not anger,” she interrupted. “If I was only mad at you, this would’ve been over a long time ago.”

“You’d have forgiven me?”

She laughed, but it was humorless. “No. Probably not. But I’d have walked out on you the first second I saw you were the one who’d hired me. I wouldn’t have cared, Ewan.”

“But you do care. Now.” He kept himself from reaching for her again, trying hard to give her what she needed and not simply try to take what he wanted.

She didn’t answer him at first, and she cut her gaze from his. She didn’t look scared anymore. She looked sad. This was worse. It sliced him bone deep.

“I’d give my entire fortune to take that look off your face,” he told her. “I’d give everything I have.”

“What look?”

“The one that tells me how deeply I cut you. How much I hurt you. The look that says you can’t forgive me, even though you want to, because what I did was so awful it can’t be forgiven.” He drew in a breath and raked a hand through his hair. His throat felt tight, lungs burning. He wanted to scream, throw and break things; he wanted to rage.

None of that would change her mind.

“I will never not want to make love to you, Nina,” he said finally. “That will never change. But it’s not enough for me. I know we can’t go back to what we were before. I don’t want to. I understand if you can’t ever forgive me, but if you’re not going to ever feel anything other than physical for me . . .”

“How can you think that?” Nina demanded, stepping closer. “Of course I feel something for you. I feel everything for you, Ewan! Why am I here, if not because my entire heart is straining, reaching, yearning for you again? How could you think anything less?”

She put her fingertips to her temple and her eyelids fluttered. She didn’t stagger, but he reached to catch her anyway. She didn’t try to shake off his grip.

“Let’s get you something to eat,” he said, alarmed but trying not to show it. “A drink. You can sit. We can talk about this more calmly.”

In the kitchen, she sat with a glass of ice water in front of her while he brewed tea. She watched him. “The glitch has nothing to do with me being upset. It’s not triggered by emotions or stress or anything like that. It’s a simple degrading of the tech.”

“I know that. I invented it.”

She gave him a sad smile. “But you didn’t think you’d ever be faced with having to actually see what it meant, did you?”

“When I saw what that tech could do, I was determined nobody should ever have to be subjected to it,” Ewan said evenly. “So no, Nina, I never thought I’d be standing in my kitchen watching the woman I love more than anything in this world struggle against it.”

She put her face in her hands. Her shoulders heaved. Tears fell between her fingers to land on the table, and he felt no better at the proof of her grief than he had about anything else.

Ewan put the mug of hot tea in front of her and let his hand rest on her shoulder for a second or so. He wanted to take her in his arms, but settled for gently squeezing and letting her go. “Drink this. It will make you feel better.”

Nina shook her head. “In a minute.”

He took the seat across from her. He hadn’t made a mug of tea for himself. His stomach churned too much to drink anything. He put his hands flat on the table.

“I want to make things up to you,” Ewan said. “I don’t know how, and in fact, I’m not sure I can. But I want to. More than anything else. I hope you can believe me.”

“I do,” she answered, still without looking at him.

“Nina,” he said, desperate for her to see him. “This is hard enough. Please look at me.”

“I can’t.”

He waited a second or so before reaching across the table to tug at her hand. “Please? It’s not that bad, is it? Is it so awful that you can’t bear the sight of me?”

“It’s not that.” Her voice was low. Guttural. She shook her head the tiniest amount.

“What, then?”

At last, she removed her hand from her face and sat up straight. Almost defiantly. She met his gaze head-on, the way he’d asked her to, but the sight of what she’d been hiding was enough to make him recoil.

Her entire left eye had become threaded with crimson. It got worse as he watched, blooms of red slowly creeping around the pale white sclera and even into the amber of her iris. The pupil in that eye had become a pinpoint while the opposite one dilated even as he watched.

He must’ve made a noise of alarm, because she shook her head again and reached across the table to grab his hand as he tried to reach for her. The force in her fingers reminded him of exactly how strong she was. For a second, she gripped him hard enough to make him wince, and this was different than the times when she hurt him in the ways that felt good. She let him go abruptly, leaving him to draw back his hand and rub at the ache.

“I’ll be fine. It’s nothing. I heal faster than normal people do.” She cleared her throat and lifted her chin, her expression so purposefully neutral he knew she was forcing it. “It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

Ewan frowned. “But I do worry about it.”

“Well, you don’t have to,” she snapped, and her anger was so much better than her blandness that he couldn’t even bring himself to be angry in return. “I’ll be fine.”

He almost told her, then, about his plans to start lobbying for the reversal of the Enhancement Repeal Act, but at the last minute, Ewan stopped himself. He still hadn’t finalized all the necessary pieces, and without them in place, he might as well be spitting into the wind and calling it a rainstorm. She’d think he’d made her a promise solely to get back in her good graces. She might even think he’d outright lied to her, and he couldn’t risk that. He had to wait until he was sure everything he planned to do was going to work, or it would only make her hate him more than she already did.

“Can I get you something? Anything?”

“No,” Nina said as she stood. “I’m . . . I’m going to go take a hot shower and go to bed.”

“Sure.” Ewan nodded, still able to taste her, still able to smell her. “That sounds like a good idea.”

She paused to look back at him with a small smile. “Thank you for today, Ewan. It was . . . one of the best times I’ve ever had.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, and although he didn’t say the words “I love you” aloud, he hoped she heard them anyway.