newly infected people. The crowd out of Morristown hadn’t been exuding the nanotech as strongly as their own villagers. Somehow it knew not to replicate without end inside any particular host. Otherwise it would flay people alive much like the original machine plague. The amount of soft tissue used from each person was infinitesimal — the merest pinch was enough to create millions of nanobots — but maybe that was why some victims dropped dead. Maybe the problem wasn’t that the mind plague experienced glitches when it crossed into the brain. The nanotech multiplied wherever it happened to activate. Being in the blood, sometimes it opened an artery or the muscles inside the heart…
Still, Ruth marveled at its capacity to record and verify who was already infected.
“I’m done,” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans because she wanted to save the last not-so-dirty parts of his shirt to wrap his wound again.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Let me get a pressure bandage on there,” she said as she washed her hands with the last of one canteen. She was all business. She wanted to maintain her distance in her head, but her fingers shook when she reached for him again.
What must he be feeling?
Ruth cut the waist-strap from her pack in order to tie the new bandage in place, and she took a small measure of satisfaction in destroying the pack. She didn’t know why, except that she felt angry and helpless. She knew her movements were too rough.
“Ruth,” he said.
“Ruth.”
She met his eyes. They were much darker and richer than her own, she knew, sad and frightened and strong. He was the strongest person she’d ever known. Somehow he always knew what to do.
He kissed her. He tipped forward and kissed her with his beard against her cold face and for an instant she was too surprised to react. Then she felt her mouth split open with a smile and a short, happy sound like laughter.
“Oh. Please. Cam, please.”
Ruth raised onto her knees without letting herself leave their kiss. She straddled him, spreading her legs to the lean shape of his hips. His hand was inside her jacket. He touched her waist, squeezing as if to make sure she was real. Ruth pulled her shirt out of her pants so he could feel her bare skin.
They broke for air. That was dangerous. When she looked into his face, she thought his expression was even more tortured. The confusion in his eyes made her heart lurch and she almost kissed him again — but she stopped herself, breathing in. She laid her palms on his naked chest and used them like a buttress, keeping her body several inches from his even though they were connected where her open thighs met his hips and groin.
If he wanted to stop, she would stop. She respected Cam too much to mislead him or plead or beg. Then she rocked against him. She didn’t intend to. Her body reacted on its own, drawn to the friction and heat against her jeans.
He responded. His hand traced up her neck into her hair, cupping his fingers over the back of her skull. They kissed again and she stopped thinking, caught up in the taste of him and the sweet, maddening pressure of his erection. She pushed down slowly, insistently.
He made her feel young.
They wrestled her out of her jacket. He went to her shirt next, but he had only one hand, so Ruth began to open her shirt buttons for him and she felt her body flush, nervous and eager. Her face especially radiated heat into the night. She kept the shirt on to cover her back. The fabric rubbed at her breasts and on either side of her stomach, teasing her, teasing him. His hand parted her shirt like a curtain.
Ruth was as lean as Cam after years of hardship and strict rations. She let his fingers wander over her body for a moment. Then she lowered her hands to her jeans and unbuckled her belt.
Everywhere the crickets chirped on the hillside. The short grass rustled in the breeze. Ruth was aware of the stars all around them like a carousel of lights broken by the sliver of moon down in the west, but she refused to let it draw her eyes back toward Jefferson.
She had to move away from Cam to take off her pants. She kicked off one boot. Then she rode her jeans and undies down over her hips, pulling that leg free. She couldn’t believe it was happening at last. She crouched beside him with her knees apart, wishing he would touch her. “Let me help you,” she said, laying her hand on his jeans. She meant to tug at the button and his zipper, but first she stroked the bulge there.
His good hand lifted underneath her. She was smooth and wet. His fingertip stroked and circled and her pelvis rocked involuntarily, losing that exquisite touch.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, please.”
Cam touched her again. Ruth squeezed her hand down on his erection. The feelings coursing through her were bright and delicious even as she closed her eyes against the sting of tears.
The attraction between them had always been more than a stupid crush. If physical pleasure was all she needed, she would have picked someone who wasn’t so badly ruined by the machine plague. That was why they’d managed to be friends all this time. They trusted each other. The affinity she felt for him ran deep enough to overcome any selfishness or even the lonely, painful love she’d tried to forget.
Nevertheless, she’d always wanted to cement their relationship like a woman and man, so she desperately reminded herself again.
Cam and Ruth nuzzled together. They rubbed each other. Her orgasm was a quiet thing exactly like her climaxes had been when she was alone in the cabin she’d shared with Eric and Bobbi, sometimes as she listened to them at night or sometimes early in the mornings when she woke from a dream and needed someone, only to find herself with nothing but her memories of Ari and Cam and other fantasies.
Tugging down his pants was another joint effort. She wanted him to make love to her on her back. She wanted him to fuck her on her knees. But his wound left him handicapped, and she knew it would be very, very good just to lower herself onto his lap. “Let me…” she said.
Cam nodded. He even helped her, placing his good hand against her side to hold her weight as she straddled him again.
He was damaged here, too. She felt rough old blisters in his hip socket. Was that another reason he’d kept himself apart from her? Because he was embarrassed? He must have known she would keep his secret.
The only thing that mattered was her body working against his in the night.
There was no talk of birth control or protection. No one had seen any pills or condoms for years, except as overpriced commodities on the black market. Most women she knew were either trying to have a baby, using the rhythm method, or having sex in ways that didn’t involve intercourse. Ruth was glad she’d had her period eleven days ago, so she didn’t have to turn him away. As she got older — the time she’d spent in zero gee might also be to blame — her cycle had shortened until her periods began every twenty-six days, which was annoying as hell, even if she wasn’t sleeping with anyone — but the timing also meant that she was ovulating. She could get pregnant. Was that something to worry about?
She was being too cerebral and she knew it. She was recording every moment of their lovemaking. She let it change her. Having him was magnificent. She came again, and she’d nearly worked herself to a third before he reached his own orgasm. Afterwards, she stayed on top of him in a silent embrace, reveling in the sweat trapped between them until her butt was just too cold and she decided she’d better get dressed.
“Cam,” she said.
“No. I love you. You know I love you. But let’s not talk right now. I…”
“It’s okay,” she said quickly. “It’s okay.”
