Page 39 of Dose

The word breaks what remains of his rhythm. He groans against my throat and drives deeper, harder, one hand cradling my head against the mattress. Gentle with me even while he talks like a man who has forgotten gentleness exists.

“Look at you. Taking me so well. My good girl. My brilliant, ruinous girl.” His hand slides between us, fingers circling where I am already burning. “Come for me. One more. Come on my cock, baby girl. Let me feel it.”

I come apart beneath him.

My body clenches around him. His rhythm fractures, his breath tears loose, and his control finally goes with it. He buries his face in my neck and follows me over, hips pressed flush, my name broken in his mouth as he comes inside me.

For several breaths, neither of us moves. The bunker hums around us. Sixty feet overhead, a hunt is gathering, and down here there is only his weight, his heartbeat against mine, and the slow return of air to my lungs.

He shifts onto one forearm before I have to ask, taking most of his weight off me. When he lifts his head, his eyes are blue again. Mostly. Something in them remains unguarded.

“Data point,” he says hoarsely.

“Present it.”

“Nine seconds.” His thumb traces my swollen lip. “My mind went quiet for nine seconds. Tied my lifetime record.”

“Only nine?” I am boneless, oversensitive, and far too pleased with myself. “Flawed methodology. The trial requires replication.”

His laugh is low and real against my throat.

“Naturally.”

He withdraws slowly, watching my face. Then he disappears into the compact washroom and returns with a warm cloth and water. He cleans me with quiet concentration. There is nothing clinical in the way his hand steadies my thigh or in the possessive satisfaction on his face.

“Sore?” he asks.

“A little.”

“Tell me if that changes.”

“Logged.”

He tosses the cloth aside, gathers me against his chest, and arranges the blanket over us. I spread my hand over the chemical structures inked into his skin and listen to his heart slow.

The museum of tiny freedoms is still there. It does not burn, and it does not need to. Tonight I add something large enough to demand its own room: I chose him, and the choice did not destroy me.

“Daddy,” I murmur against his skin, experimental, just to feel him shiver.

“Careful, baby girl.” His arm tightens around me. His voice is a warm rasp, already thickening again. “Ask me for replication in ten minutes.”

Four counts in. Four counts out.

The guard inside me is not gone. But for now, with his hand spread across my back, she is quiet.

16

THEON

The morning after, I discover a new dependency.

Isla is at the clean-side desk outside the annex when I wake, wearing my shirt and nothing else. Her hair hangs loose down her back. She holds a sealed D-40 reference vial to the light, checking it for precipitation while the degradation data scrolls across the terminal beside her.

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.”