Beth Waldman reached with her right hand, the one that had belonged to a driver who died chasing the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, and shifted to third gear. Most of her had never driven a stick shift before today. But it was proving no trouble. Alarms bypassed: check. Files cracked: check. Anonymous pick-up truck with clean plates: check. (Anonymous trucks, preferably blue, were the John Smith of getaway vehicles: there were so many!)
All this just to return a U-Haul truck a day late; the actual file retrieval hadn’t been nearly as complicated. Ridiculous. Just pay the fine, idiots.
Flight from MSP to Logan airport: check. Pick up new car from Terminal B garage: check. Check in with lab: ugh.
Still. Had to be done. Standard procedure after every op. Didn’t even take that long; D.E.R.P. had it down to a science, pardon the pun. (Wait. Was that a pun?)
And so what if she felt like a used car surrounded by indifferent mechanics each time she ran the gamut? Thousands—millions—had it worse. And billions had it much worse; they were in the ground and she should have died in the tunnel. But here she was, alive and well(ish), making good money working a few hours a month. And with free health care, natch. She lived in a beautiful house in Sandwich, she was still walking around on her own two feet.
Well, no. Not really.
The new car had started right up, and as it was 1:00 a.m. on a Wednesday in August, traffic was light. Before long she spotted the Cinnabon shop, pulled off, then pulled in. She parked at the far end behind the lot, grabbed her key card, did a quick mirror-check
(yes, everything’s still attached)
and headed for the entrance. It hadn’t been a Cinnabon franchise for years, but the place still smelled like the world’s most delicious frosting because her life was indefinite and weird (was that redundant?). She could forgive D.E.R.P. a lot, but not ruining Cinnabons for her.
She felt a sudden compulsion to sprint the rest of the way across the lot and hurtle past the checkpoint, and squashed it. She was tired; her day had begun before dawn, she’d chased files all over the city, gotten into two old-fashioned knock-downs (really old-fashioned: the last guy had pulled her hair before he went down—who does that outside of elementary school?), and she was tired. So the urge to run and run and run? Wasn’t hers.
“Stop it,” she muttered at her legs, a strong indicator she was overdue for a psych check. Her left was from a silver medalist—gold? hard to keep track—in the 220 meter hurdles. Her right was from a competitive jogger. Until the last transplant, she hadn’t known there was such a thing as competitive jogging. Maybe competitive monkey bars was also a thing. Who knew? Just once, can I get a transplant from someone who wasn’t some kind of pro racer? Or Olympic athlete? Or professional gymnast? Why do people who lived sedentary lives never donate limbs? Why do I never get the hands of a baker or the feet of a shut-in?
A question for the ages.
She reached the outer door and swiped her card through the magnetic lock. The entrance smelled like pissed-on Cinnabons; now and again they’d “forget” the outer lock and let a random homeless fellow take a leak in there. The smell cut down on traffic and added to the ‘yep, totally abandoned space and kinda gross so don’t linger!’ vibe D.E.R.P. was always going for.
Beth stood still so the Space For Lease sign could scan her retina, the least annoying part of the process. She was attached (ha!) to her right eye, the brown one she’d been born with. It didn’t do anything special. It wasn’t from a fighter pilot with 20/10 vision. She didn’t lose it in a poker game. It was just an eye. It was her eye.
The first ‘a’ in Space For Lease flashed, and she heard the muted click as the inner door slid aside, revealing an unremarkable elevator. In she went. Nothing fancy, no key card, no armed security guard pointing a Ruger P at her while she recited code words, no trick questions. Just an elevator. Granted, it led to an underground) agency with an eight figure budget and little to no oversight whose outer chamber smelled like pee and frosting, but the elevator itself was nothing special. For some reason, that always disappointed the newbies.
She studied her hands (well...hers temporarily, at least) on the way down. Both donated from small-boned Caucasian women, and the right was a little more weathered than the left. Though she was accustomed to coming at night, it wasn’t necessary. The one thing she thought would give her away was the one thing no one seemed to notice. The only one self-conscious about her scars and rotating limbs was her. It sounded asinine, like one of those “these kids today and their <fill in blank>” complaint, but most people were too busy looking down at their phones, or up at whatever screen commanded their attention, to notice her right hand didn’t entirely match her left. That her right anything didn’t always match.
There had been that memorable month when her left leg was from a champion swimmer from Nassau while her right was from a cross-country medalist from Portland. But it had been January in Boston, so no one ever saw her bare legs. It wasn’t as if a steady sweetie or a family member would have seen and lost their shit.
No, it wasn’t like that was a possibility at all.
The only time her situation had garnered unwanted interest was when a man’s left hand was grafted to her wrist for a disastrous ninety-six hours. D.E.R.P. tried to avoid such procedures—the process was tricky enough between non-blood relatives, never mind donors of different sexes. The thing would not stop grabbing at her tits all weekend. She put up with a lot, but there were limits. She still remembered calling the lab and politely screaming, “The pervert hand trope? Really? Clear an OR and tell the docs to get scrubbed. I don’t care if you have to replace his hand with a garden rake, just get the thing off me!”
Weirdest weekend ever, which was not a phrase she threw around lightly.
The muted ‘ding’ cut through her thoughts and the doors opened. She stepped out into the sub-sub-sub-basement and managed not to sigh out loud.
“Hey, Beth! Hey, how are ya? Great job, that’s what I heard. That thing you did? Which is great. You look great!”
Ben Whitman, who was afraid of her, hid this from himself by overcompensating. Which led to a barrage of over-enthusiastic questions coupled with an inability to make eye contact.
“Hello, Ben.” Normally, the Division of Emergency Recovery of Publications’ headquarters usually blazed like an operating suite, and was often teeming with suits and lab techs running hither and yon. Sometimes, in addition to hearing the constant, eye-watering hum, you could almost feel the fluorescent lights shining down on you. “Quiet tonight?”
“Sure it is, sure it is.” Ben’s eyes, pale blue against his near-white blond hair and eyelashes, were showing the whites all around, like a horse who smelled fire. He was tapping the Taser clipped to his belt, probably unconsciously. “Which, y’know, is great. S’far as I know, you were the only agent out and about today, so there’s only one tech in the back. Which is great! Who wants a ton of people running around? At night? With most of the lights off? Not us, am I right?”
She decided to mess with him because she was a wretched human being. “Oh, I agree. It’s wonderful to have all this space to ourselves. Just you. And me. And one tech who can’t even see us.”
“Um. Yeah!”
“We could do anything we liked. Raid the fridge. Set files on fire. Go through everybody’s in-bins.” She had been standing in front of the security bank while she spoke and now leaned forward until she was looming over him. “Nobody would know,” she whispered.
Poor Ben made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Right? It’s—it’s way better that there’s only a couple of people here. It’s great!“ All this as he stared and stared and stared at the black band around her neck.
Should have gone with a turtleneck.
She took pity on him and stepped back. “Shall I head back?”
“Sure!” His relief was plain, since she wouldn’t see him again until she left. The security staff, to a man/woman, found the labs and operating suites to be unbearably creepy and kept clear. Their job was to keep people from coming back, not actually patrol the back, and they all adhered to the letter of that particular law.
She pushed through the swinging door separating guards from monsters and headed back. The place was decorated in American Office With Cubicles circa 2013: grey cubicles and government-issued beige carpet, white-tiled breakroom with standard fridge, microwave, and drawers full of 300 plastic spoons (but only 7 forks) to the left, restrooms (including the government mandated handicapped stall) to the right. Labs and limb storage
(“Aw, c’mon. It’s Hypothermic perfusion and—“
“You keep chilly severed limbs in here. Call it what it is, please.”)
at the far end. Back here everything looked a lot more expensive (nicer carpet) and high-tech. Actually better than high-tech, because D.E.R.P. defined cutting edge. The cold storage chambers looked like futuristic refrigerators; much of the equipment looked like it was lifted from the set of a Star Trek movie. And not a bad one, like The Final Frontier. A good one, like First Contact.
“Hello?” she tried again.
“Here! I’m here!” Beth heard a distinct thump followed by breaking glass, then hurried footsteps, and then Vic came running. “Sorry! Aw, man, so sorry to keep you waiting.” He was shrugging out of his lab coat while he talked, wrestling free of the thing like it had a sentient grip, and while he struggled he tripped and sprawled full-length in front of her.
“Oh, hell,” he moaned, face-down on the carpet.
“Are you...all right?” Somehow, she managed to ask this of him with a straight face and without laughing.
“No, I’m mortified.”
“I can barely understand you when you mumble into the carpet.” Don’t laugh. “How about turning over?”
“No,” he told the carpet. “You’ll be annoyed and horrified and you’ll leave and I don’t want to see any of it.” Pause. “This carpet smells really weird.”
“I won’t be horrified,” she promised.
“You might if you smell the carpet.” She could hear him actively sniffing. “What is that? Did someone dip fried chicken in chocolate, coat it in plastic, and then drop it? Right here?”
“I promise I won’t be horrified by anything you’ve done,” she amended.
He sighed and flopped over like a salmon dropped on the dock. Victor Clive, lanky cutie and D.E.R.P.’s latest star scientist. She’d only seen him on two other occasions, and then only to nod hello. The second time, she remembered, he took off his lab coat as soon as he saw her. Did he not like lab coats?
He straightened his Clark Kent frames while she reassured him. “See? Still here. Not horrified. Not leaving.” She looked around. “They let you fly solo already? I don’t think it’s ever been so quiet here.”
He blinked up at her. “That’s not how any of this was supposed to go. Just so you know. I mean, I practiced and everything.”
“Pshaw.” I don’t think I’ve said ‘pshaw’ ever in my life. Why am I busting it out now? “This sort of thing happens all the time.”
“You’re lying to set me at ease,” he said, still stretched out on the floor. “Which I appreciate, by the way.”
She peered down at him, briefly wondered if he was ticklish, squashed the urge to prod a toe into his ribs to find out. “Why did you have to practice?”
His reply, gasped in one sentence, was the last thing she’d expected. “Because I know you hate coming here and hate when everybody stares at you while pretending they aren’t so I wanted to make it as comfortable as possible so I fixed it so it’s just me this time except for Ben who is scared shitless of you because he’s an idiot and won’t come back here so you won’t have to deal with that, either.”
Surprise silenced her. Nothing against the other techs, but she often felt her comfort was secondary to the work. It was a surprise to hear someone flip the priorities.
She looked him up and down again (mostly down), and as on the other two occasions, liked what she saw. He was tall, just over six feet (it was more obvious when he was upright) and slender, but deceptively strong for his body type. The first time she saw him, he had been lugging one of the half-fridges from Point A to Point B without help.
His black hair was short on the sides and long and wavy on top, artfully tousled and thick. His nose was long and sharp, and might have dominated his face if his dark blue eyes hadn’t. As with many men, he was blessed with long eyelashes women all over the world tried to duplicate with mascara. Dark stubble bloomed along his jaw and chin and he was blinking at her through black-rimmed glasses. He had dark circles under his eyes—trouble at home? Insomnia? Too much time in the lab? Gambling addiction?
Maybe stop staring and help him up? Right. Good advice; she extended a hand to help him to his feet. When his gaze dropped to the stitches around her wrist, she let go so fast he nearly hit the carpet again.
“Sorry! I am so sorry.” She held up her hands in a placating gesture, then remembered the stitches and dropped them again. Fucking Walmart. She’d ordered a half-dozen long-sleeved t-shirt for fall. They sent her three-quarter sleeves because they hated her and wanted her to suffer. And she’d left her jacket in the new car because why wouldn’t she? They both knew what she was and why she was here. “Force of habit.”
He was already shaking his head. “You’ve got nothing apologize for. Besides, I’m supposed to see them.”
Right. Because this wasn’t a date. It wasn’t even a meet cute. He was a mechanic, and she was the car that needed new tires. Or windshield wipers. Or whatever the hell. Metaphors weren’t her strong suit.
“Okay then!” He’d bounded back to his feet and actually bounced up and down a little. “Let’s get started so you can get the hell out of here.”
She snorted and followed him toward the exam rooms. “You enjoy my company that much?”
“No!” He stopped, horrified, and actually slapped his forehead. “Stupid, stupid. That’s not what I meant. I love your company. I mean—I don’t mind it. You. I don’t mind your—I love your—uh—“
She’d thought he was about her age at first—late twenties?—but his energy made him seem younger. “Maybe we should just begin.”
“Right! Beginning is good. It’s just this way.” And he darted off like a setter intent on flushing pheasant.
“Yes, I remember.” Argh, quit it. He’s adorable, quit poking at him.
I will if he will, she snapped back at herself. But he won’t. There’s going to be plenty of poking, and none of it the fun kind.
Because here was Vic Clive, a thoughtful, enthusiastic, handsome genius, and all she could think about was: he was going to see her scars and pretend she wasn’t a freak stitched together from dead people. At best, he’d see her as an interesting lab rat. At worst, a living ghoul.
Either way: not sexy, or even lovable. And that was fine. She knew what she’d signed up for. She could have succumbed to her wounds and died, like a sensible person.
She paused when he went left instead of right, and followed him to the end of another hallway and into a cold sterile exam room that looked like...
“Eh?”
...a comfortable office decorated in Lair Of The Geek?
He turned and saw her surprise. “Is this okay? You’re not here for the full check-in.”
She had hoped, but wasn’t sure until he said it. “Really?”
“You just had one ten days ago. And going by the reports, you didn’t suffer significant trauma this time.”
Okay, not that she was arguing, but... “One of them pulled my hair. I don’t like people touching my hair.” She folded her arms across her chest and knew it was childish, but couldn’t stop herself. “It’s mine.”
He held up his hands in a ‘please don’t hit me’ pose. “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t like some corporate spy yanking my hair, either.”
“Nonsense.” She smirked. “They could never get a grip, not with all the hair product you favor.”
“I’ll thank you,” he said with exaggerated dignity, “to keep your snide commentary of my personal hygiene to yourself.” He reached up and felt the crown of his head. “Which reminds me, I’m almost out...never mind. All joking aside, it’s still just a standard check, just vitals and such. So I figured here’d be okay. Unless you’d rather—?””
“This is fine.” ‘This’ was a room with lots of low, warm light but not a fluorescent to be seen, overstuffed chairs in front of the desk which wasn’t a desk, but a long table piled with files, empty Subway wrappers, books. Bookshelves lined the far wall, everything from Operative Techniques in Transplantation Surgery to The Sandman graphic novels. There was a small brown fridge in the corner just below the “Start every day off with a smile and get it over with” poster, which he went to at once, opened, grabbed something, turned. She had to smile: he was holding out a bottle of sweet tea, her non-alcoholic tipple of choice.
“Thank you,” she said, then guzzled with the finesse of a cow at the water trough. She only then realized how thirsty she was. Her body couldn’t process heavy food—steak dinners and the like were permanently off the menu—which meant a liquid diet supplemented with broth and baby food. The most annoying part was how much she liked some of the baby food. Gerber’s pureed peaches? Divine. Especially when you threw a couple of jars of it in a blender with ice cream and vodka.
He’d grabbed a bottle for himself and they clinked them together. She had to laugh. “This is the closest thing I’ve had to a date in years.”
Vic nearly choked on his tea and for a moment she wondered if she’d have to pound him on the back. “Oh, sure,” he managed, eyes watering. “Like that’s at all believable.”
“It’s true,” she protested. “I haven’t been on a date in years.” Four, in fact. She’d waited until two years after the accident and the subsequent surgical procedures. Dinner and a movie had been almost as big a disaster as the accident that should have killed her.
“Really?” Vic was still shaking his head. “Well, I guess if you’re so busy saving the world—“
“I have never once saved the world,” she pointed out. “I’ve never even saved a city block.”
Still with the head-shaking. “Some of those files, if they’d fallen in the wrong hands—“
She waved that away. “I sometimes turn the tables on companies that indulge in corporate espionage. That’s it. That’s all it is.”
“You’re not giving yourself enough credit. What you do—it’s important. If for no other reason than we can use the profits to—to—“ He gestured at her. “To do all these wonderful things. We’ve advanced amputee rehabilitation and organ transplants by decades.”
“But only for a select few,” she pointed out. She wasn’t D.E.R.P.’s only monster, just their first. If J.A.M.A. or the New England Journal of Medicine caught on to what they were up to, they would, as the saying went, collectively flip their shit.
“For now, yes.” He set his drink on the table behind him—one of those people who liked to talk with their hands. “But clinical trials will start soon. Now that we’ve broken the 72-hour time threshold and figured out a way around the inevitable anoxia and toxin accumulations, the—okay, I know it’s a cliché, but the sky really is the limit. Because of you.”
Ah, no. He was giving credit to the limbs, not the people who sewed them on. But if he wanted to see her that way, she wasn’t going to argue. This had already been one of the nicest experiences she’d ever had at Not-Cinnabon.
With his hands free, she was amused to note, he talked even faster. “...and, of course, cold storage—“
“The old,” she observed.
“—paired with artificial perfusion—“
“The new.”
“—has revolutionized the industry. Shit, there goes another cliché.”
“I don’t mind. Essentially, what you’re saying is, ‘Eureka!’” (Because “It’s alive! It’s aliiiiive!” was already taken.)
Still, clinical trials were an important third step, if lengthy. Inevitably, they’d be able to get around The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984. Everything would change. To what extent, she could not be sure, but that was because in her former life, she’d been an accountant. Even now, after several procedures, she wasn’t entirely sure how the process worked. Unprecedented medical breakthroughs coupled with a fundamental understanding of blah-blah-blah, nanotech and molecular-scale electronics something-something, and that’s where they lost her, every time. And her confusion was no fault of D.E.R.P.’s. They had tried, many times, to explain exactly what they did and are doing and how it worked and what would happen next. For her part, she decided it was medical sorcery and hadn’t entirely discounted the dark arts, either.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s good to be reminded that there’s value to this, that people’s lives will change for the better.”
He nodded so hard he had to push his glasses back up. “It’s why I wanted to work here,” he said simply. “It’s all I ever wanted. Um. This is gonna seem hokey, but...” He’d reached back, found his phone, made a few swipes, and showed her a picture of a smiling woman in a wheelchair, with coal black skin, large and lovely eyes, and a smile that could only be described as dazzling. She had one arm hooked around Vic’s neck. The other arm had been taken at the elbow, and both legs were missing at the knee.
“She’s gorgeous.”
“Yeah. We were in the same accident when we were kids, only she wasn’t wearing her seat belt.” When she looked up, he added, “My big sister.”
“Your—oh?”
“What?” he teased, taking back his phone. “You don’t see the family resemblance?”
“Well, no, since you’re about as dark as a grub.” His eyebrows arched and he laughed, thank God, because she couldn’t believe she’d just compared him to beetle larva. Anxious to move the topic from grubs, she added, “I won’t deny being envious. I was a ward of the state, so. No family.”
Vic nodded. Few ties (preferably zero ties) to family and friends was a program requirement. A short silence fell, broken by his polite, “Would you like more tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“All right.” He reached past her and snagged something off one of the piles of paper on his desk/table. “Let’s get started. You want to get home, I know.”
She eyed the clipboard. “How quaint.”
“Right? It’s a classic.”
“Like a Ford Capri.”
“Exactly like that,” he deadpanned. “I was just telling myself that this clipboard was a lot like an old car.” He was taking her pulse, then carefully feeling her wrist, her elbow, her shoulder. Then he switched to the other hand, wrist elbow, shoulder. “Any circ problems?”
“My circulation is fine, thank you.” She knew he’d ask that straight off; it was always their biggest concern. She’d pulled her stupid three-quarter sleeve t-shirt over her head so he could auscultate, and stood before him patiently while he did. Her fingers went to the snap on her jeans and he stopped her. “That’s not necessary this time. No needed to poke, prod, bore, and make you cold.”
“You’re not boring me.”
“Well, thank God for that.” His hands were on her face now as he checked her sclera for discoloration (white = good, yellow or black = bad), then grabbed his retinoscope for a closer peek. He took her blood pressure, which was ridiculously low and always had been—as a child, she used to sneak into the kitchen to devour salt right out of the shaker. Low BP was another D.E.R.P. requirement. He checked her ears, then set the instrument aside and inspected the stitch marks at her wrists and elbows, then palpated her temporomandibular joint and lymph nodes. He rested his fingers on her collarbones for a second, then asked, “May I?” and gestured to her throat.
Oh.
That.
Her fingers flew to the dark band around her neck. It was a black strip just under an inch wide, deceptively strong, and attached at the nape with tiny snaps that were difficult to open without practice. It would never accidentally unsnap. No one could get it off in less than thirty seconds without her help.
She never took it off unless she was alone. Or here, in this place.
“I have to look,” he said gently. “I won’t hurt you.”
She snorted. “I’m not remotely worried about you hurting me.” Then she reached behind her head and unsnapped the band. He paused, giving her a couple of seconds, and then his warm fingers carefully felt the scar.
“Looks good,” he commented. “It’s healed up nicely. No keloids. If people didn’t...you know, if they didn’t know, they wouldn’t know, you know?”
“I don’t know what’s worse, that you said that or that I understood it.” But she smiled. He reached up, felt behind her ears where there’d be a scar if she’d had a face-lift (which, in a way, she supposed she had, a very fucking severe face-lift), felt the scar at the base of her neck, and she shivered.
His fingers stilled. “Sorry.”
“Tickles,” she managed, and for some reason that got them both giggling. His eyes, she decided, really were the most perfect shade of dark blue, like wet denim. She liked them, especially when they were...were...
Oh, now that’s interesting...
It wasn’t just their color catching her attention, but the size of his pupils. They were enormous, she realized, with a dark blue sliver around the edge. And it wasn’t the lighting. It wasn’t operating room bright in his office, but it wasn’t a murky cave, either. And she could tell he wasn’t afraid of her, like Ben and some of the others were.
To be fair, she didn’t do much to alleviate their fears. She probably shouldn’t have teased them when she saw them smoking in the back lot. (“Arrgh! The villagers have come with fire! Rrrraaaawwwrr!”) One of those things that had been funnier in her head than in execution. But what idiot under the age of 30 smoked in this day and age?
Never mind them. Concentrate on him. On his eyes. It’s not too dark in here. He’s not scared of me. He’s not drunk. Or stoned—not with all the random piss tests around here. So that leaves...
She reached out and took his hands in hers. “You made sure you were on duty when I came in.”
He broke eye contact and stared at the floor. “Luck of the draw. Whim of the scheduling gods.”
“You tossed your lab coat the second you realized I was here.”
“It gets hot in here. All the, uh, fridges. The equipment. It gets warm.”
“Nice try, but we both know the temp here is permanently set to ‘you need a parka’. You also,” she continued, “made a point of bringing me back to your comfortable and decidedly unthreatening office.”
“All my stuff’s in here. And my Skittles.”
“You have treated me with respect bordering on—“ Reverence. At least, that’s how it felt. Like she was precious to him, and not necessarily because of anything she had done, or could do. Which couldn’t be right, but still: it seemed like it could be. For lack of a better word, or more data, she’d stick with reverence.
She took a breath and plunged. “Would you like to have dinner?”
He looked up, eyes widening. “Yes please.”
“With me?”
He gave her a look. “Of course with you.”
“Don’t get pissy because I’m a stickler for detail,” she said, which set them both off.
“I like your white streaks,” he said out of nowhere, gesturing toward her short (mostly) dark hair.
“It’s my homage to Elsa.”
“What, like in Frozen?”
“Um. No.”
He grinned. “Sorry. Messing with you a little.”
“Just for that, you can pay for dinner.”
“I’ll pay for anything you want. Can we go right now?” he joked, then sobered when she didn’t say anything. “It’s okay. I know you’re tired. Anytime you want to go, I’m up for it. Anywhere. That’s all I’m saying. Just give me a date and a place and a time. I’ll be there. Have I emphasized that I’ll be there? I feel like I’m not emphasizing that enough. I want you to know that I’ll be there.”
“I was tired,” she said slowly. “Not now, though.” In fact, she felt more “it’s aliiiiiive!” then she had for years. “I’m not hungry, either. Well, I am, but not for food.” Argh. So hokey. Never mind. Keep going. “So perhaps we should dodge the preliminaries and get to it.”
And she leaned in and kissed him on his sweet, surprised mouth. For a terrifying second he didn’t move, didn’t return the kiss, didn’t react at all. Just as she started to pull back and offer an embarrassed apology (then run away and find a cave to live in for the rest of her life, periodically emerging to terrorize villagers and hiss at the sunshine), his hand came up, cupped the back of her neck, and he kissed her back.
This is insane.
Yes. But dammit, the brain was hers, and the skull, and the hair, even if nothing else was. And her brain was telling her—yelling at her—to take him, for God’s sake, it’s been so long, what do you need, a Friend request? Take him!
“Oh my God,” he managed against her lips, and then both hands were on her and he was stepping close, walking her backward until her back hit the wall. “Oh my God, you have no idea. How much. How long I’ve. Thought. About doing this.” Each pause was punctuated with another kiss.
“Really?” She was hearing his words, she was sensing his intent, his desire was beyond obvious, but it was still amazing to hear. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“How could I? It’s way past inappropriate. Not to mention creepy. ‘Hey, I saw your horrific accident on TV and followed your case and came to work here hoping to meet you and kind of have a crush now and I’ve read all your files and am a tiny bit obsessed, wanna go out sometime?’”
She pulled back. “That would have worked.”
He chuckled. “I didn’t know.” He kissed her clavicle, the base of her throat, her scar. Nuzzled the side of her neck as she reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. Hmm. Good hair product. No sticking! “How could I know? You’re a walking talking medical miracle, you endured crushing injuries, made hard choices, and then had an unprecedented recovery which took strength of will I can barely imagine, then obligingly put yourself in danger to help companies fend off corporate espionage.”
She was already shaking her head. “That’s not...how it was.” He was making getting caught on the wrong end of the Big Dig tunnel collapse and buried for five hours sound almost noble, instead of a result of piss-poor planning. I didn’t even have to drive to Logan that day! I had a T-pass, for God’s sake.
“I saw the pictures. That’s exactly how it was. Beth, you’re smart and strong and lovely and—no, don’t, I said lovely,” as she’d opened her mouth to ruin a good thing by protesting again. “I don’t give a shit whose limbs you’re wearing on any given day, or who this—“ Tapping her stomach. “—used to belong to. Well, I do give a shit, but only in terms of being grateful to all your donors.”
“Muh,” was all she could come up with. Do better. “Wha?” Argh.
“It’s you. You’re who I want. It’s your mind and your heart I lo—admire.” He cleared his throat. “The latter is obviously figurative and not literal.”
“Damn,” she marveled. “How did you manage to make ‘figurative’ sound erotic?”
He smiled. “My point, which stands, is that you could be with anybody. So it never occurred to me that you’d be interested, never mind that you’d return an inappropriate and unprofessional and ethically questionable advance.”
“Shows what you know. Inappropriate and unprofessional is my kink. Well, that and ice cream floats, but that’s a whole other conversation. Besides, all those things apply to you.” She tipped her head back to allow better access, because one of three things was happening. He either didn’t notice her scars (impossible), didn’t care (perhaps), or they turned him on because he had a touch of acrotomophilia. None of those are a deal-breaker, so proceed. “Except for the part where you’re a medical miracle, but you could swap that out for ‘genius’, and you could be with anybody.”
“Yeah, but...” He gestured to her. “It’s like I said. You’re who I want. Who I’ve wanted. For years.”
“Fuck dinner.” She was working open his shirt buttons and reminding himself not to yank, not to send buttons flying everywhere. Someone could lose an eye, and then urgh, more surgery. “Fuck me instead.”
“Yes please,” he groaned as he cupped her ass through her jeans. She’d gotten the shirt unbuttoned and yanked it off him like a magician doing the tablecloth trick.
(“And the flowers are still standing!”)
Then she attacked the button on his pants while Vic tried to remove her sports bra, kiss her, kick off his shoes, and run his hands all over her at the same time.
“Your multitasking sucks,” she informed him.
“Sorry,” he gasped, finally reliving her of her bra. She brushed his hands aside, toed off her flats, shucked off her jeans, and muttered an inaudible prayer of thanks that she’d had time to shower and change clothes before her flight.
“I like these,” she said of the gray boxer briefs. “But let’s lose ‘em anyway.”
“Whatever you want,” he promised as she pushed them down to his ankles, helped him step out of them, decided his socks could stay (for now). “I’ll lose anything you say. Do anything you say. Just tell me because oh my God, your hands. Keep doing that, please, and don’t worry if I dissolve.”
She’d run the tips of her fingers through his neatly trimmed pubic hair, then reached for his cock, long and slender, flushed deep red at the tip, already beading pre-come. She ran her thumb over the slick head, felt the weight of it, stroked the underside, then tightened her grip for a couple of firm strokes. “Like that?”
“Hhhnnngg.”
“Or that?”
“This might kill me. You might actually murder me and I am fine with that.”
“So accommodating,” she teased.
“Yes. My middle name is accommodating. Whatever you need. Anything to, uh, lighten the load.”
She groaned. “Terrible.” He reached for her panties, started inching them down her hips. “But I’ll forgive you this once and what do you think of the couch?”
“You like it? Ikea. Easy to assemble.”
“I wasn’t looking for a Consumer Affairs review.”
“Right. Of course. The couch. Definitely.” They were sort of sidling/shuffling over to the thing, more intent on kissing and stroking than actual momentum. As far as Beth was concerned, they could do it on a cot. A pool float. On top of the table. Under the table. Who cared? She just wanted to get prone. She felt the backs of her legs hit the vinyl—leather?—couch and went down
“Aaggh! Cold!”
tugging Vic on top of her. His heavy warmth was as reassuring as it was sexy. “God, you feel good,” he gulped, hands roaming while he nuzzled the slopes of her breasts. “But we can’t.”
“What?” She had both hands on his ass, which was delightfully springy beneath her fingers. She wanted to dig in, wanted to mark him, wanted to scratch Beth Waldman was here on his cheeks with her fingernails. And maybe underline it. “Why?”
He groaned and dropped his forehead to her shoulder. “We can’t. We shouldn’t do this because something-something unethical something else.” When she blinked up at him, he managed, “I know there are actual and relevant real-world reasons why we shouldn’t do this, I just can’t remember any of them.”
“That is, honest to God, one of the nicest things anyone has said to me in four years. Fuck ethics and fuck appropriate. I’ll sign a waiver if that’ll relieve your ethical dilemma, just let me suck your cock and then ride it for a while, okay? Frankly, Vic, I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
“It’s pretty reasonable.”
“Good. Get up here.” He got to his knees, then slowly shuffled up the length of the couch until his cock was hanging just a couple of inches from her mouth. She smiled. “Even better. Oh, and grab onto something. It’ll be a few minutes.”
“I love you. Sorry, I meant to say you don’t have to hhhhhaaaannnnnggggg...”
It wasn’t about ‘have to’. It was about ‘get to’. She’d always loved this part of sex, for reasons that were only partly altruistic. She didn’t just enjoy having a man put something precious within her reach (literally), or hearing the groans and moans and wonderful sexy sounds she could coax out of someone with her lips and tongue and fingers. The act itself got her wet, made her hungry, made her want and want. The only thing she could think of when she had a cock down her throat was how much better it would be to have that same cock somewhere else, somewhere tighter and warmer.
“Beth—you—you’re—ah—ah—“
It was also necessary for a more practical reason. She hadn’t brought lube to her check-in (why would she?), so she was going to need something to pave his way, so to speak. She could get wet, just like she could bleed or cry or sweat. But it took longer, so she hoped he’d made himself comfortable.
So she licked and sucked and played with his balls, grinned at the glorious sounds she was wringing out of him, encouraged him to thrust, writhed beneath him as his need kindled her own, and after a lovely long time she pulled off and said, “Now. I want you in me right now.”
She could have laughed at his dazed expression, the flush that started at his forehead and went down his chest, his panting. She wouldn’t, though it wouldn’t have been to mock him. She wanted to laugh for the sheer joy of making him look like that, feel like that, sound like that. But laughing and explaining why she was laughing would rob them of valuable fucking time.
He moved back, settled between her thighs, kissed her long and hard, began to ease into her. She propped her left leg up on the back of the couch, spread herself further for him, and a sigh escaped him as he bottomed out.
“Okay? Is this okay?”
She could barely understand him, his voice was so thick, and wasn’t that exciting? “Exceptionally okay—ohhhhh, that’s nice.” He was moving carefully, watching her face, brushing her hair out of her eyes with trembling fingers. “It doesn’t hurt at all. Don’t stop.”
“Thank God,” he muttered into her neck, and she laughed. He was moving easily now, and she was raising her hips and meeting every thrust. It occurred to her that not only was his office door unlocked, it was open. That should have mortified her, or at least worried her, but she couldn’t muster the energy for it. Ben wouldn’t come near them, that was one thing. She didn’t care if someone caught them, that was another. They’d earned this, that was a third.
She felt the tell-tale tightening in her mid-section, her body’s precursor to orgasm, and was amazed. Even with five minutes of head, she never came this quickly. Even in her own body, she’d never come so fast. “I’m close. I can’t believe it, but—yes. Can you...? Harder? I’m almost—yes! Just like that, please don’t s-stop.”
“I won’t,” he panted, “but could you try to look a little less delicious? And sound a little less hot? Because I’m. Almost there. Too.”
“No promises,” she warned, then cried out at the ceiling. She’d gone from ‘I’m going to come’ to ‘wow, I’m coming’ in next to no time. “God, that’s good, that’s so good, now you, oh please please...”
“I can feel it,” he groaned, smearing kisses all over her mouth as he bucked into her. “God, I can—all your muscles just contracted around me, it’s—fuck.”
His eyes rolled back and she realized he still had his glasses on, which struck her as hilarious and cute. Then he was shaking through the after-effects of what looked like a spectacular orgasm, so she reached up and carefully pulled the frames off his face.
“Huh,” he managed between gasps as she set them aside. “Right. I wear glasses. To correct my vision. Which I should have taken off. Or something.”
She grinned. “Don’t worry. I’m taking it as a compliment. Or that you’re just really forgetful.”
“Thanks for that. Also, that was fucking phenomenal and I want to take you out to dinner for real and then if I am, in fact, the most fortunate man on the planet right now, which I’m pretty sure I am, I’m hoping you’ll consent to bouncing on my cock for a while. Ever since you said that, I haven’t been able to—I mean, I just came, but all I can think about is coming again. With you. After dinner.”
She pretended to think it over and realized he was literally holding his breath as he waited for an answer. “I think that sounds great. I think that sounds like dessert. I think I could eat a dozen jars of pureed peaches right now, after which I’d be delighted to sit on your cock.” She was already thinking about smearing puree all over him and licking it off. And not just peaches. Pears. Apples. Bananas. Whatever. Gerber alone offered 40+ kinds of fruit.
“Really?” He propped himself up on an elbow and smoothed her hair out of her eyes. “So this isn’t just a one-nighter? Not that I’d complain,” he hastened to add. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for more.”
“Me, too. ‘Hoping for more’ is how I got into this mess to begin with. I wasn’t ready to die. Not over a tunnel collapse I had no business being near. ‘Hoping for more’ worked for me then. And now.” She reached up, brushed her thumb over his cheekbone. “Right now.”
He caught her fingers, kissed the tips, cleared his throat. “By the way, your check-in went fine. Flying colors and all that. I’ll cc you on the chart paperwork.”
She blinked at the ceiling. “That’s a load off my mind.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
They giggled—she’d laughed more in the last twenty minutes than in the last month—then unpeeled themselves from each other and the couch (a disadvantage of couch sex), found their clothes, cleaned up a little, got dressed, shut down the light banks.
In next to no time, they were waving good-bye to Ben
(“Oh, you’re going? Both of you? Now? And won’t be back? At least for tonight? Okay, great! Bye!”)
and stepped into the elevator. “Come to my place,” he coaxed. “Will you? Tonight? After we have dinner?”
“Of course. But you must be starving. And—forgive me, but you look tired.” She leaned up, moved his glasses, kissed the dark shadows under each eye, settled his frames back in place. “How long since you slept?
“I always stay here when you’re in the field, until I know you’re—“ He trailed off and treated her to a bashful shrug. “Well. You know.”
You just earned yourself another five minute blowjob, you clever, clever man.
“So let’s just get take-out or something,” she urged, “and go to your place, and eat, and sleep, and the afore-mentioned cock bouncing can also happen, and then perhaps a nap followed by breakfast.”
“I...might be in love with you.”
“That’s fine.”
“Also, I really want a Cinnabon.” He yawned. “I know. Stupid. But I’ve had the worst craving for the last two days.”
“That’s all right. You can have the bread, and I’ll have the frosting.”
“Perfect,” he declared as he followed her out of the elevator.
“No. Weird as fuck. But it seems that might work for us.”
“It does seem like that,” he agreed, and kissed her as the doors slid shut.
THE END