Her lips caressing his neck told him the answer. A flush of heat rushed to meet the spots where her lips touched him, as she moved up his throat to his jaw, over the tip of his chin, landing finally on his mouth. His lips burned to taste hers. They kissed hungrily before she drew back, pulled her tank top over her head, and unhooked her bra. Her breasts were sculpted ivory, exactly as he had imagined. He cupped them one by one with his mouth, feeling an aching yearning in his groin.
She ran her fingers through his hair and then down his back, pulling up his T-shirt. He yanked it over his head and she smiled at the parallel ridges on his torso, brushing her fingertips down the middle line from his chest to his waist, and then unbuttoned his jeans. As she touched him, he let out a little moan and pulled the drawstring of her pants untied. Her naked body was all curves bound by flat smoothness, no sign of its trauma within.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured. With a demure smile, she reached over to the top drawer of her dresser and handed him a condom. He slid it on and then rolled on top of her, supporting himself with his elbows.
“I’ve wanted you this whole time,” she whispered as he pushed into her slowly, so as not to hurt her.
Their eyes met as their bodies joined, and he knew that no words could express the desire he had been suppressing. Instead his body told her everything he wanted to say, with every move, it told her, as he lost himself in its rhythm, watching his own pleasure reflected in her open mouth, her pink cheeks. She writhed underneath him, hoisting her hips off the bed to receive every bit of him, faster and faster they moved, until, together, their bodies protested in one violent burst; she moaned, throwing her head back in fierce joy. As the pleasure dispersed, he watched every twitch of her face, overcome by a sense of awe and intimacy he had never before experienced.
She opened her eyes to catch him gazing down at her, and grinned.
“Wow,” he murmured.
“Indeed.”
Gently, he rolled off her and rested his hot cheek against his arm, inches away from her face. She reached up to stroke his bristly chin.
“Trent,” she whispered. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
As if without permission from his mind, his throat grew a massive lump. He strained to gulp past it.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He shook his head, unwilling to confront the reality in spoken terms: I can’t imagine life without you.
“I don’t ever want to get up,” he said.
Her face relaxed. “You don’t have to. Not today.”
He closed his eyes, forcing himself to forget the vicious hourglass and the world it came from. In a later moment, he would fret about her; in a later moment, he would reach for the watch and revive his skilled deception, as well as the private suffering that came along with it. But for now, he would concentrate only on the delicate fingers stroking his face.
THIRTEEN
Trent reached for Arianna’s hand across the kitchen table at his apartment. His right hand, which could easily palm a basketball or play a ten-key interval, dwarfed her left one. He closed his fingers over hers.
“How do you do anything with these little things?”
She chuckled. “It’s brains not brawn, baby.”
Baby. Embryo. Dopp.
And his lightness was shattered. Such inadvertent connections to his other reality had crept up often in the last several days. It was as if he lived with a chronic hacking cough that would abate—allowing him a few moments of bliss—but then return at the slightest trigger. The most mundane encounters would do: a gold cross necklace on a stranger; a headline about the stalled state budget; a glimpse of a classy brown watch.
“What?” Arianna said, noticing his slackened lips. “What did I say?”
“It’s just hard,” he said carefully. “To forget everything for a few minutes, but it’s worse to remember. How do you stay positive?”
“Stress decreases my immune function.” She smiled dryly.
“I’m sorry about Ian.”
“It’s not your fault. But Sam and Patrick are still giving me the cold shoulder.”
Trent shook his head. “Wouldn’t I have reported you by now?”
“You would think. When I brought them new embryos this afternoon, Sam literally turned his back on me and didn’t even say good-bye. And I thought he and I were close.”
“Weird,” Trent remarked, thinking of his own fallout from the night he had seen the lab. Thrilled as he was to find hope and clarity, he was increasingly nervous at work—but the steep cost was one he would continue to pay as long as her life hung in the balance. At times, it struck him as absurd that his office looked the same when so much about his purpose there had changed. The painting of the Crucifix still hung on the wall, now a reminder of a different kind. As he passed familiar faces in the hallway, he wondered: Would they ever understand the cruel irony of their work—the actual lives suffering from disease because of them? He had to banish thoughts of Arianna to summon a cordial smile for his colleagues.
There, he was still one of them, and no one needed to be more certain of it than Dopp. So when Dopp had demanded the transcript and audio file of his visit to her apartment, Trent handed it over like a competent employee. Only it was the cut-and-pasted version, less the incriminating parts
