“Lydia?” Daniel called out as she stumbled back.
The light faded as quickly as it had come, and in the aftermath, there was no reorientation to the darkness, no reason for her retinas to readjust.
Because it hadn’t been light in the conventional sense.
“Lydia, what’s wrong?”
Daniel was right in front of her now, the cap to keep his balding head warm the first thing she noticed. It was on backwards, and the detail of the sewed-on tag was an absurd thing to notice.
“I’m okay,” she lied as she tried to focus. Tried not to think the flash was anything important. Tried to…
And yet is it really a surprise, she thought.
Her Finnish grandfather had always told her that if you wanted to see your future, you went out at the moment of first dawn, when the sun was just starting to warm the sky in the east. There, he had said, you would find what destiny was bringing you in a blaze of light.
And if you wanted to see your past…
Then you went out at gloaming. And waited for the same.
“Honest, I’m fine,” she mumbled as she reached out and wrapped her arms gently around Daniel’s narrow shoulders.
With a surge of emotion, she wanted to crush him to her. Hold him so hard neither of them could breathe. Bury her face into his neck and scent him until he was all she could smell.
Their goodbye was coming—and she had known that in the hypothetical. But the light she had just seen announced their parting as reality.
Daniel was more her past now, more than even her present. In spite of the fact that he was standing in front of her.
“Listen to me,” he said urgently as his arms came around her with a surprising strength. “I talked to Gus. I told him I’ll take Vita-12b. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything to not lose you, to stay here with you. I don’t want you to be left alone and I’ve still got some fight in me, I promise—”
Lydia pulled back. “No, no, Daniel, I’ve been thinking. You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like, what you’ve been through. I can’t ask you to—”
“But I want to. I’ll do it—”
“You don’t have to—”
Abruptly, he laughed in a burst—and then started coughing. After things with his lungs calmed down, he shook his head ruefully. “How is it possible that we got to the same place, just at different times?”
Lydia closed her eyes. He was telling her what she wanted to hear, what she’d thought the only solution was, but she’d reconsidered her desperation all day long.
More than that, though… the light just now told her everything she needed to know about what was going to happen next. Especially if he had resolved to take Vita-12b. When he’d been against it? She hadn’t seen what she’d just witnessed, even though she got home every night at the same time.
There had been plenty of chances.
Jesus… that novel agent was going to kill him.
“No,” she said urgently. “No, don’t do it.”
“What?”
Lydia grabbed for his hands. “I was wrong. You’re wrong now. Let’s—no, we have to enjoy the time we have, okay? You’re right. Another treatment’s just going to make you sicker and we don’t even know if it’ll work—”
“I’ll do it, Lydia. I can do it.”
Reaching up, she stroked his hollow cheek… and wondered how she was going to live without him. The sobbing that came with that grim, sad thought was immediate and uncontrollable—and for the first time since he’d started the chemo, he was the one holding her up. Somehow, even with his diminished strength, he managed to keep them both on their feet.
Good thing, too.
She would have shattered like glass if she hit the pavement.
* * *
Up in the house, as C.P. looked down at the two people who were embraced in her motor court, her vantage point jerked back and forth.
Daniel and Lydia were easy enough to track, though, given that they were standing flush against each other, their heads close, their arms wrapped tight around the center core created by their embrace. And the image of them together, bracing against the storm they were in, made her rethink a little of the romantic crap she’d always turned her nose up at. That whole two-who-became-one platitude had never resonated with her, but tonight, the living, breathing display of unity struck a painful note—
“I’m coming, I’m fucking coming…”
C.P. switched her grip on the windowsill in her study’s private bathroom and widened her stance because things were about to get even more bumpy. With her skirt up around her waist and her silk panties and panty liner pushed to the side, the blond guard who was drilling her from behind might as well have been a dildo.
Actually, he was one, albeit one that had a heartbeat and respiration rather than batteries.
“Fuck—”
The tempo increased in a sudden surge, and she needed to use the muscles in her shoulders to keep from banging her face into the glass. And yet still she watched as the couple down below separated from their tight clutch and Daniel wiped his woman’s face with his shaky hands.
The grunt from behind her was punctuated with a locking penetration, and as she felt the guard’s cock spasm deep inside her, she was relieved pregnancy wasn’t a problem even though they weren’t using protection. She was infertile—and she wasn’t worried about STDs. The regular health screenings she required him to take made sure she was safe.
What he did after hours was his business. What they did during? Was hers. And as the two would never mix, he got tested weekly.
With his orgasm over, the guard’s breathing was harsh and heavy, and she remembered back a couple of months ago when she’d found the sound erotic as hell. Now, it was just like someone working out next to her in a gym, the two of them side by side on StairMasters.
No orgasm for her this time. A first.
As soon as he withdrew and collapsed back against the marble wall by the toilet, she straightened from the windowsill and rearranged her skirt. A quick check of her reflection was satisfactory. Not a hair out of place and her lipstick wasn’t smudged. No kissing, of course.
They really were so damned compatible. She needed someone who could be satisfied with nothing but doing her from behind on her schedule—also somebody who never argued with the boundaries, touched her in any other way, and didn’t share the details with anyone. On his side? He apparently just needed a heart and a hole. At least while he was working his shift.
“Was that good, baby?” he drawled.
With his eyes at half-mast, and that prodigious cock of his taking its own sweet time deflating, he was a male animal who was well satisfied with his performance—and very used to receiving compliments. But that wasn’t where she went. Goddamn, she hated when couples called each other “baby.” “Babe” was even worse. But they weren’t a couple, so his poor taste in sobriquets wasn’t her problem.
“Pull your pants up and collect yourself, would you.”
He stroked himself with a lazy hand. “You sure you don’t want another?”
She hadn’t wanted the first one. But she’d been feeling untethered. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the grounding she was looking for—and why the hell was she cold? It was seventy degrees in here, and technically, she’d just had some aerobic exercise.