As the polo-clad woman explained what would happen next, he studied his surroundings. Beside him, April was doing the same, her eyes sharp and narrowed in scrutiny as she scanned the cloth-covered ceiling, the screen disguised as a window, the blue-patterned walls and built-in shelves.
The simulator, built to resemble a Victorian drawing room inside, didn’t boast many decorations on those walls and shelves. Some books, decorative plates and glasses, a mirror, a painting, a chandelier. A fishbowl too, amusingly enough. White-painted metal railings crisscrossed the room, providing handholds each small group of visitors would need in due course.
Along one wall, the screen showed a window’s-eye view of the Painted Ladies near Alamo Square. The city as it existed in 1989, during the Loma Prieta quake, according to the museum employee. Eventually, she told them, the image would change to the city as it appeared in 1906, before the most infamous disaster in San Francisco history.
Compared to a Gods of the Gates set, the room was sparse at best. But in today’s scene, he got to hold April’s hand and interlace their fingers, knowing he wouldn’t have to die a stupid, stupid death on camera. All in all, he’d take that trade every time. Even though more than one cell phone was now pointed toward the two of them, rather than the room or the guide explaining the gist of what would happen.
First, as the polo-clad woman explained, the room would jolt through the 1989 earthquake, then the 1906 temblor. Or at least modified versions thereof, demonstrations safe and brief enough for casual visitors. If the first, weaker, quake simulation proved too nerve-racking, they could leave before the second.
In one nonsensical scene in Gates’s fifth season, Aeneas rode a pegasus to visit Venus, his mother, in her lofty celestial abode. To film that sequence, Marcus had spent hours and hours perched precariously atop a giant green-painted rig assembled in a cavernous green-painted hangar and programmed to simulate the movements of an enormous winged horse in flight.
For all the precautions taken, for all his love of physical challenges and performing his own stunts whenever possible, he’d found the experience . . . disconcerting. At least at first, until he’d gotten used to the rhythm.
He figured a room that required only railings as safety measures should be just fine.
As a recording briefly explained the circumstances surrounding each earthquake, he and April leaned against their patch of railing, hip to hip. Then the re-creation of the Loma Prieta quake began, the lights flickered out, and the room rattled and shook beneath their feet.
He put his arm around her shoulders, hitching her closer as the chandelier swayed and the books hopped out of place, millimeter by millimeter.
“As a precautionary measure,” he said when her gaze shot to his.
She snorted. “Right.”
All in all, it felt not entirely dissimilar to his memory of the actual quake, except happier. And sexier. Much, much happier and sexier. One of her breasts nudged his chest as she shifted under his arm, and he had to swallow back an embarrassing noise.
When the simulator’s version of the 1906 quake began, the difference between the two temblors was immediately apparent. This quake involved not just rattling but sharp jolts and an ominous rolling sensation too, and the whole experience lasted much longer. Long enough to recall, unwillingly, that a similar catastrophe could happen again, right where they were standing, at any time.
Yet the grin on April’s round, lovely face widened, moment by moment. In a burst of movement, she got up on her toes and nestled closer.
Her breast wasn’t merely nudging his chest anymore. The contact had become a blindingly pleasurable press of softness, a taunt rubbing against him with each jolt of the floor beneath them.
“This is fucking awesome,” she whispered in his ear as they bumped into the rail and clutched one another. “I wonder how accurate they were allowed to make it.”
As she spoke, her lips brushed his earlobe, and her hot, moist breath caressed his bare neck. He inhaled sharply. Relaxed his fingers on her shoulder one by one, before their bite into her cotton-covered flesh became too possessive or painful. Slid that hand between her shoulder blades and down to the small of her back.
The two of them had an audience as they rode out their simulated earthquake, and he didn’t give a fuck anymore. He gripped the rail beside him more firmly, feet spread apart for balance. Enough balance for two, as necessary.
With a single, deliberate shift of his sheltering arm, he fitted her against him front to front, heat to heat. Her lips parted in a silent gasp, and their thighs tangled. As the world shuddered around them, she braced one hand against his chest for balance, the other still reaching for the rail by his ass.
The shrieks of the children in the room disappeared, muffled by the buzz in his ears and the rocketing thump of his heart.
She didn’t shift away. Instead, her warm palm skated slowly, slowly, down his chest, rubbing back and forth a bit with each jolt, stopping just above his jeans, fingers spread wide, and she wasn’t watching the room anymore. Neither was he.
He bent low. Ran his nose along the pretty, pale curve of her ear, and that shiver shifting her body against his wasn’t from the damn simulator.
“May I?” he breathed into her ear.
She nodded. Turned her head and looked up at him, eyes heavy-lidded, then fisted her fingers in his henley and—
The lights came on. The room stopped moving, even as his personal ground continued to shake.
They didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t look away.
The recording cheerfully informed them that the real quake would have lasted three times as long, and goddamn the museum for not properly valuing historical and scientific accuracy, because he wanted that extra minute of stomach-pitching chaos. Wanted to taste that plump, rosy mouth and trace the bow of her upper lip. Wanted to use his teeth and tongue until she gasped and trembled again and used her hold on his shirt to bring his body closer, closer.
But some people were shuffling out of the room, chattering noisily, while others were still documenting every second of this private moment occurring in a much-too-public place.
They both deserved better than this.
He drew back, removing his left hand from—well, it had evidently moved at some point, settling just microns above the tempting swell of her ass in those tight, tight jeans. Then he let go of the rail too and offered her his right hand, which wasn’t entirely steady.
She took it. “The planetarium next?”
He nodded, too overwhelmed for words. Fingers interlaced once more, they left the exhibit and walked toward the planetarium.
Would kissing her there work better than in the earthquake simulator? They’d have dim lighting, and maybe an isolated cluster of seats, and stars wheeling overhead, and if he slid his hand under her tunic, maybe—
Okay, the thought of what they could do in a dark theater wasn’t helping his current situation.
“Tell me more about the Loma Prieta quake on the way there.” His voice had turned raspy, and he cleared his throat before continuing. “If that’s okay. I lived through it, and I should understand how and why it happened.”
“Really?” She raised a skeptical brow. “Because you don’t need to humor me. I’m not offended if you don’t want to hear more about geology right now.”
“Really.” Casting aside his public persona, at least for the moment, he dug deep and let the right words—the true words—emerge. “I, uh—I’m interested in lots of things, actually. I listen to nonfiction audiobooks all the time, especially when I travel.”