New Atlantis Bundle, Books1-3 Page 28

  ‘Are you sorry I came looking for you?’ His arm tightened about her.

  She shifted so that she could look up into his eyes. They seemed filled with pain she couldn’t understand.

  ‘The longer I am away from my old life, the more unreal it seems. The only thing that still holds true for me is you. Am I sorry you came looking for me? Absolutely not. You were right. The life I had back there was hardly a life at all. I don’t know what this one will be like, but just knowing you’re in it, makes me glad you changed my course. I know I seem like a girl with an embarrassing crush on you. I don’t expect you to return my … affections. I’m trying not to …’

  ‘Jane, stop,’ Julio interrupted impatiently. Her heart quaked. She’d done it again – embarrassed him by putting into words her feelings. Why couldn’t she behave like an adult?

  ‘Your affection for me is more than I deserve. It doesn’t embarrass me, Querida. I am flattered by it. But I find that I have no control when I am with you. Kissing you the way I did. I don’t do that kind of thing. I know you are inexperienced. I don’t want to take advantage of you, especially when you have so much else to be dealing with right now. You have all the time in the world to sort out what you want. Rushing into something that may not have a future, with me, would be counter-productive at this time.’ His face was closed, and he looked over her head as he spoke, as if parroting off a speech he’d prepared earlier.

  ‘You didn’t want to kiss me?’ was all she could make sense of from the speech. She felt the tears pricking at the back of her eyes. She couldn’t cry. He’d told her not to cry again.

  He groaned in frustration, and ran his fingers through his lock of hair, pulling it so hard she thought it might come out at the roots.

  ‘Of course I wanted to kiss you. I want to do a hell of a lot more than just kiss you. That’s what I’m trying to say. I can’t trust my control around you. It’s better if we keep our distance…’

  ‘So why did you put your arm around me just then, if you want us to keep our distance? I’m not throwing myself at you!’ Jane snapped.

  ‘I know you aren’t. That’s what I’m getting at. I was determined to keep my distance, and I didn’t even realize I was pulling you in close until I’d done it. It’s this clone. It’s not me… I…’ He swore loudly, and pulled away from her.

  ‘It’s the clone? But you said you wanted to do a lot more than kiss me. Which is it? And is this lack of control just because this body is drop dead gorgeous? Is that all it is? You never seemed interested in the Old Jane!’ She all but spat the last words in his face.

  For several long moments they stared at each other in silence, until something invisible gave way between them. Without warning, Julio grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her in close. Swearing again, but softly this time, he kissed her furiously, plundered her mouth, his rage a pulsating force that held them locked together.

  It was so different from the kisses they’d shared before that. At first Jane felt frightened. But then she remembered what Jac had told her, and she saw beneath the fury to his desperate need for control he feared he was losing.

  Suddenly, a strange calmness came over her, as if she were the elder and Julio, a frightened little boy seeking comfort. She relaxed into him, opened herself to him, drawing him in, in a way that was hauntingly familiar and yet jarringly alien.

  And the kiss became deeper, more passionate and greedy. Something deep inside her ignited, and there was no calmness anymore, just a mounting need in her that equalled his. Their mouths moved together, exploring, tasting, demanding – drinking in each other’s emotions as if they quenched some long denied thirst.

  Julio pulled back first, his breathing harsh, his eyes on fire as he stared at her in astonished regret.

  ‘I… I’m sorry, Jane. I… can’t …’

  He seemed so helpless. She felt her own strength, her own power growing. ‘Do you want me? You, not your clone, me, not my clone. Do you want me?’

  When he nodded mutely, she demanded, ‘Then do something about it, because I want you, and I don’t know what to do!’

  He stared at her, his eyes dark and crazed. And she met his gaze with a challenge. She wouldn’t back down, no matter how unfeminine her behaviour might seem. This was what she wanted. What she had wanted from the very start.

  ‘Which is your room?’ His voice was as rough and scratchy as sandpaper on her heightened senses.

  She stood up, and held out her hand to him, waiting. When his fingers closed around hers, she felt her heart leap in fear and exaltation. Then she was leading him down the passage to the little room that had become hers in the last few weeks.

  The light came on automatically. She stood in the middle of the space, watching as Julio closed the door behind him. Then, with an almost infuriating slowness, he turned back to her. He snagged her gaze with his own, as he tried to read her thoughts, tried to sense any reservation.

  She lifted her chin and met his question with another challenge. ‘Do you want to get me out of this get-up or what?’ she demanded.

  As if that was all the answer he required, he came toward her, and reached for one of her shoulders. A second later, the tunic fell away, revealing one breast. He dragged in a harsh breath, and tentatively reached out to slide his fingers down from her throat to the outer edge of that breast, following its curve. The sensation was like nothing she had ever felt before, could never have imagined. She drew in a harsh breath of her own.

  Then, while he held her eyes, he moved to the other shoulder and released the fabric there, so that it slithered down her body to pool on the floor at their feet. He repeated the stroke, this time on the other side of her throat and around the curve of her newly exposed breast.

  ‘I would tell you how beautiful you are, Querida, if I thought you would understand that I do not mean this clone,’ he rasped out, as his hands cupped her breasts, weighing them in his hands.

  ‘I want to be beautiful to you, Julio. For the first time, I am grateful for this clone, if she gives you pleasure.’

  He groaned as he drew her against his body, rubbing his cheek against her hair. ‘You are what makes this body beautiful to me, Jane. Your spirit, your soul, whatever it is that makes you Jane. Do you know how moved I was when you called out to me that long ago day? You, who always hid in the shadows, afraid to be seen – you called out to me, not caring what anyone else thought – wanting me to see you. And you said, ‘I will miss you.’ And I wanted to drag you out of that shop, there and then. I didn’t want to risk losing you in that harbour. But I had to let you go. I had to…’

  She lifted her mouth up to his and kissed him, the tears pricking her eyelids again. Why did he always make her cry? He kissed her back, stroking the skin on her shoulders and down her back, burying his fists in her fine, bright hair.

  ‘I have been so alone…’ he murmured into her mouth. And her own loneliness leaped forward, recognising his.

  She wanted to touch him. She wanted to claim him as hers. She reached up for the shoulder of his tunic and felt around for the invisible catch. The shoulder fell away.

  Mouth dry, hands shaking, she ran her fingers across his muscular chest, through the scattering of hairs there, until she reached the other shoulder. She released the catch there, too, and the tunic fell down to his waist, caught by the gold belt he wore.

  He quickly undid the belt and, as it came away, the tunic fell from his body. Now they both stood clothed only in small, white under-shorts.

  Julio drew her against him, skin to skin, and held her there for a long time. It felt so natural to be held this way: her cheek resting on his bare, muscular shoulder; her small breasts pressed against the hard, naked planes of his torso; breathing together, hearts as one.

  Swallowing repeatedly, Julio eventually drew her away, and moistening his lips with his tongue. His dark, intense eyes locked with hers as he began to slide his fingers down her body and under the waistband of her under shorts.

 
Out of nowhere came a wave of fear. She drew back from him, feeling her eyes widen with the terror of a cornered deer. Mortified by her childish reaction, she dropped her head and braced herself for what was to come. What she had invited. What she had wanted, only a split second before.

  His gentle fingers lifted her chin so his eyes met hers again. They were no longer sparking with sexual heat, but gentle with understanding. ‘It’s okay, Querida. You set the pace. Suddenly, I have all the control I need to let you take your time.’

  She smiled her gratitude. All she wanted in that moment was to be held by him. No expectations, no exploring hands. Just skin on skin. Warmth and closeness. The prospect of sex seemed too hasty, too soon.

  ‘Can we just lie together on the bed…’ she managed.

  In answer, he picked her up and took the two steps to the bed. Then he gently lowered her onto it, and slid onto the double with her. Wrapping her in his arms again, he rested her head on his chest.

  ‘Rest, Jane. It’s late. I will be here when you awake.’

  And with the reassuring sound of his heartbeat beneath her ear, she surprised herself by sliding into a deep and restful sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Julio slept with his precious gift wrapped securely against his heart. And he wondered how he had been able to sleep without her for the last two hundred and twenty years. She seemed to perfectly fit against his side, her shoulder under his arm, her head cushioned on the hard planes of his chest, the feel of her slow, steady breathing naturally matched to his own.

  ‘Whole’ was the word that kept popping into his mind as he drifted through the levels of sleep, always aware of her presence, always comforted by the weight of her body against his own. If they never had more than this, it would be enough. The obsessive pressure to claim her body had been met, if not completely, at least enough. The rest could wait until she was ready.

  As the light of morning slowly brightened the small room, Julio woke and began to play with a lock of the coppery hair. It was a vibrant, almost living thing, this hair. And instead of lying straight and flat, as New Atlantean women’s hair was trained to do, hers had begun to curl around his fingers, as if it had a life of its own. Over and over, he picked up a length of the hair, and watched as it curled toward him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ A sleepy voice drew him from his play.

  ‘How’re you doing?’ he replied in words that had become his hallmark greeting.

  ‘Hey. Sorry I wimped out on you last night. It all got too much.’

  He pulled her into him and hugged her tightly. ‘Never apologise for doing what’s right for you. Just lying with you this way has been…’ he wanted to say amazing, incredible, but he settled on, ‘… enough. If more happens, it happens. But for now, it’s enough to hold you like this while you slept. To play with your hair. It curls around my fingers like tendril on a clinging vine. It’s naturally curly, not straight.’

  ‘It’s pretty isn’t it? I didn’t like it at first, because all the red heads I’ve ever met weren’t attractive people. But she’s different. And I’m glad you find her attractive.’

  He sighed heavily, hearing that caution in her voice again, knowing she was seeing the inner Jane as inferior to this new body. Somehow he needed to convince her otherwise.

  ‘I do not like the clones. It is probably the wrong thing to say, but there is a part of me that finds their perfection repellent. You do not know a lot about this world yet, and maybe I should not tell you… but I will.’ His voice was low and croaky with sleep, and he fought to keep emotion out of it. His speech patterns had returned to those he had used for two hundred years.

  ‘I was ten when the Last Great Plague wiped out most of the human race. The culling had been going on for nearly a hundred years by that stage, what with wars, pandemics and natural disasters. The planet’s population went from nearly ten billion, down to only one, during the course of the 21st Century and the beginning of the 22nd. And it was not a pleasant place for the ten percent of us who survived.

  ‘I spent my first ten years on the streets of a city that had been built for ten times as many people. A city that had no way to support itself. We starved. We got sick and died without proper health care and clean water.

  ‘Then the plague came. And when I was able to rise from my sick bed, I found I was alone. Everyone else was dead. I walked the streets for days, looking for other survivors, scavenging for scraps. Finally, a military helicopter with infrared scanning equipment located the handful of us who had survived out of the thousands that had not. They collected us up and moved us away from the populated areas, because of the health risk so many dead bodies created.’

  He paused for a moment, lost in traumatic memories. Jane’s comforting hand stroked his chest. Her compassion washed over him, calming his tortured soul.

  ‘I ended up in an agricultural community set up on the edge of what was left of the Amazon Rainforest. There were very few children amongst the survivors. Maybe there would have been more, but they did not have the life skills I had developed. When your mother is a drug addict, you learn fast to look after yourself. A woman, who had lost her four children to the plague, took me in. And a man, who had lost his whole family, took us both in. We became a little family. The first real family I had ever known.

  ‘Everyone was sick. We had all contracted the plague, but somehow survived it. But we were left weak. So they took DNA samples from everyone and made clone bodies for the adults. In a matter of months, the community I lived in went from a place of sickness and death, to a place populated by healthy, perfect twenty year olds.

  ‘I hated being an outsider, still sick and weak. And a lot of people hated me, because I reminded them of what they had been, what they had lost. But I could not get a clone until I was an adult. They said children could not take the integration, as their Consciousness was not developed enough for an adult brain. So I spent more than eight years as a sickly Original in a world populated by beautiful, healthy people.

  ‘When they finally decided I was ready, I was so weak I was nothing but skin and bones. My hair had fallen out, and my skin was covered with scabs. It was so paper thin that the slightest touch tore it away. Although we ate well on the community, my body could not absorb the nutrients, and so I was only five feet six inches tall and weighed eighty pounds.

  ‘When I woke up in this body for the first time, it was like it was not mine. I could not recognise myself in it. And I went from being a shameful creature shunned by others, hiding in the shadows because I didn’t deserve any better, to being what others saw as handsome and strong. Instead of shunned, I was courted. And it felt wrong. It felt false. I felt like a fraud. I saw all those cloned survivors as frauds. And, even after two hundred years, I still see them as something other.’

  He had run out of words and he let the silence fill the room. Part of him was afraid his revelations would alienate Jane. That she might start seeing him as that Original, rather than the handsome man she idolised. But it was a risk he had to take. She needed to understand what he saw when he looked at her. The clone body was no more her than he was his. And he didn’t want her loving his shell.

  After what felt like an hour, but couldn’t have been so long, as the light had grown no brighter in the room, Jane’s hand came up and stroked his chest again.

  ‘I thought you were a mind reader, the way you seemed to know exactly what I was thinking about this body. But it was just that you knew, from your own experiences, what I was going through. I understand now what connects us. Before, it seemed wrong that someone as beautiful as you would be attracted to someone like me. But we’re alike aren’t we?’ She lifted herself up on her elbow so she could look into his eyes. And the compassion in them humbled him.

  ‘I see you in those eyes, Julio. I see you! And you were not that weak and diseased body, just as you aren’t this perfect body. You are just you! I want to make love with you. I want to be part of you. And I am glad that your body is han
dsome and strong now, and that I am beautiful to you now. Because it will make us more confident, so we can forget about everything except who we really are, when we’re together.’

  Julio reached out to stroke the shiny softness of her hair as it fell around her face. He let his thumb caress her porcelain cheek.

  ‘We will have to feel our way with sex. I have had my share of women in the last two hundred years, but I was always selfish. I never wanted to please a woman I was with. If I did, it was only what came out of what pleased me. I will have to learn how to please you. Will you teach me?’

  Jane laughed then, loudly and joyously. ‘I think this may be the blind leading the blind, my darling man. I haven’t a clue what pleases me. I liked your kisses. I liked your fingers running down the side of my breasts. I like that look you get in your eyes that is pure sex. It makes me squirm inside. Beyond that, I can’t tell you. Or what I need to do to please you.’

  Julio smiled slowly, and he knew his expression was pure predator by the way she drew back with a little squeak. ‘A blank canvas. Gives us plenty of space to find our way, doesn’t it?’

  He flipped her onto her back in one sudden, powerful move, and her big green eyes became even bigger. ‘I wonder what you would think of my tongue running over your skin, from here.’ He nuzzled in behind her ear, tasting her there, letting his breath fan the wetness he created. The little mewing sound she uttered was a satisfactory answer.

  He let his tongue run down her neck, planting open mouthed kisses as he went. Unconsciously, she arched her neck for his touch, and his chest expanded at the power he had over her. His own pleasure ratcheted up a degree, feeding off her obvious pleasure.

  ‘To here.’ He nibbled at the juncture where long neck met graceful shoulder.