by Dale Mayer
Then again, she didn’t have much choice.
*
Levi waited until Dani had stretched out in the pod. He needed her to relax enough to be back in here. Afraid or not, she needed the pod still and likely would for a long time to come.
He played a gentle music track and set the pod to give a massage.
She moaned. “I don’t know what you did, but it feels wonderful.”
“It will massage whatever surface you lay on the pod. So a back massage or a chest massage.”
“Then I’m good here for a long time.”
He smiled. “It will help you to sleep, too.” He backed away towards the door when she said, “You’re sure it’s safe?”
“I’m sure. Just rest.”
He waited a few moments, studying the small room and realizing how unimpressive it was. He could fix that. He could also make the room bigger. His head reeling with ideas, he snuck out of the room and headed directly to the big computer.
There, working on the opposite side of Milo, he brought up the dimensions of the apartment. He had paid extra for the adjustable space and so far they hadn’t used all of it. He enlarged the space of the pod room, incorporating the bed she’d slept in the first night to make a bedroom big enough for Dani and the pod. As much as he’d love to have her in his bedroom – she was his wife, after all – he wanted that to be her decision. So until that time…he opened the decorating program, studied the settings, and selected a Pacific island hideaway. He started the program, hoping she was asleep already. Otherwise, the changes might freak her out. He should have thought of it earlier.
As it was, he realized he’d better check up on her. He quickly raced back down to the room and watched as the colors changed and the holograph appearance shifted so the pod was in the middle of a South Pacific island. The walls also slowly adapted to the new parameters he’d set, allowing the imagery to have more punch. He thought the sand was a nice touch. Too late, he noticed that Charmin had followed him into the pod room.
“Ohh, a litter box.” Charmin jumped in.
“No! That’s not a litter box,” Levi whispered in a harsh tone.
“Looks like a litter box.” Charmin walked forward and sniffed. “Smells like a litter box.” He turned in a circle and started to dig. “Feels like a litter box.” And he squatted.
“No! Don’t do that.” Levi hurriedly opened his link to the comp programming back in the kitchen. “Program. No sand. No sand!”
Too late.
Charmin flicked his butt, lifted his nose in the air, and sighed happily. “Nice litter box.” He studiously buried his mess then bolted past Levi.
Levi groaned. “I can’t believe you did that,” he yelled after Charmin. “You know better.”
“Who knows what better?” Dani stuck her head out from under the pod, frowning at him. “I was asleep. What happe—” she stopped, her eyes went wide, and she gasped. “Oh my. What happened in here?”
“It was supposed to be a surprise.”
“It’s a fantastic surprise,” she exclaimed. “But why? How?” She pulled herself further out to stare in happy amazement. “We’re not really in the South Pacific, are we? If we are, I’m all for staying here.”
He smiled at her innocence. “No, we aren’t. But if you want to go, just say the word.”
“Word,” she cried. “Word. Word. Word.”
He stepped over Charmin’s heaped sand pile and opened the pod. “Sorry, I didn’t mean today. Later, we’ll travel. There are a lot of things to take care of here first.”
She stared up at him, lying back on the pod bed. “Really? It’s not expensive?”
His eyebrows shot up. She really had no idea what kind of wealth he and his brother had accumulated or that she herself had for that matter. “Let’s just say it’s definitely doable. And…” he thought about the benefit of taking her somewhere where no one else would know who they were until she learned more about their world. “It might not be a bad idea. I’ll have to think about the ramifications.”
“No, you have to work. I understand. You can’t just take time off whenever you feel like it.”
She really didn’t understand. He needed to fill in her education and fast. “There’s a lot you need to learn but for the moment, I can work anywhere in the world. I can show up to work in holographic form. That’s how I attend most meetings. Yes, we have offices, as you know, but if I want to spend a month on the top of the mountain resort, that can be arranged as well. I can also use special ports to come back to work on a daily basis if I choose.”
Her eyes went even wider as she absorbed what he was saying. “Everyone can do that? Not just rich people? Cause wow!”
He laughed. “Not everyone. Obviously, if you are in a field that requires your presence, then you can’t take off all the time. But this is a normal in the business world and it’s common to port from one place to another this way. Go for lunch in Europe with a business partner or attend a meeting in South America in the afternoon. Time zones are a bit of a problem at times, though.”
“I bet,” she said with feeling. “And there must be currency issues.”
“No, we now have a global currency and a global financial group that keeps track of the international monetary scene.”
“That makes sense,” she said slowly. “In my time, there was talk about doing something like that.”
“It happened somewhere around the same time that English became the global language.”
“Do you still have banks?”
“Financial centers, but you can access the same one all over the world. Makes travelling much easier.”
“Do you have to pay to use ports?”
“Oh yes, like the Internet, we pay for usage. It’s expensive, but nothing like plane travelling would have been in your time.”
“That’s a relief.” She smiled up at him. And damn if that simple movement of her lips didn’t make his groin tighten.
“First, you need to heal.” He went to close the lid of the pod, letting her go back under. “Then we can explore. There are a lot of things I want to show you here. It really is a magical world.”
“Wait.” She pushed the pod lid back up. “Can you join me?”
“What?”
She gave him a slow sexy quirk of her lips. “Remember the last time?”
“Oh God, yes, I do.” He hesitated, hating that he felt like he needed to ask. What if she said no? “Are you sure? You need to rest.”
“I believe we went over this once already. Sex in a healing pod helped in many ways.”
Part of him wanted to correct the use of the word sex. It wasn’t just sex for him. He didn’t really want to know if it was for her. He hoped not, but this was not the time to discuss such things. Not if he wanted a chance to make love to her again.
She smiled, a warm enticing smile that heated his blood. Damn, she was something.
He grabbed his shirt and tugged it over his head, tossing it to the far side of the room. “Make sure you miss the litter box,” she whispered with a smirk.
“Ha. It’s gone. Bet he didn’t know that the rooms clean themselves.”
And didn’t that make her stare. “They what?”
“Absolutely. Housework is a thing of the past.”
“My past apparently.” She reached out a hand and stroked down the front of his thighs, pausing before slowly climbing back upward.
Hips surged into her palm, willing her to explore further.
“Remember last time, you said I could have a turn?”
He’d barely thought of anything else. “Yes,” he muttered, struggling to open his pants and step out of them. He finally managed to stand in front of her, his eyes watching her face as she studied him with a fat grin.
“So let’s trade places.” And she scrambled out of the pod to stand beside him. He was now fully nude and she was fully dressed. And didn’t his knees start knocking? He wanted this. Damn, he wanted this very much. He lay down on the warm bed, s
elf-conscious for the first time as his erection stood tall and proud. He watched her watch him. He waited with bated breath as she reached out a hand and grasped him gently with one hand. He groaned softly and closed his eyes.
When he felt her wet tongue, he almost lost it.
“You do that and it’s going to be all over before we’ve even started.”
She gave a low throaty laugh. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
Chapter 12
She loved that he lay there so accepting. With all the problems she’d brought with her, he’d done his best to keep her safe. And now he was trusting her like she’d never had anyone else trust her. And she wanted to make it good for him. For them both. She took her time stripping off her new clothes, loving the feel of his heated gaze, the appreciation. He had the ability to make her feel beautiful with just his eyes. When she pulled her tank top over her head, finally as bare as him, he sat up and reached over to cup her breasts.
“Hey,” she teased, “I thought this was my turn to run the show.”
“Too late,” he said thickly. “I can’t wait. I need you now.” He tugged her forward until she rested on top of him. “I swear I’ve been waiting for you forever.”
Sliding his hands up to clasp her head gently, he pulled her down for a kiss.
And what a kiss it was. Fireworks and liquid heat fought for supremacy, lighting up nerve endings while melting her insides. Lord, he was a hell of a kisser. And she had to admit, there was an odd sense of homecoming attached to this moment. As if she’d been waiting for him, too. And didn’t that train of thought take her down a direction she had not thought to go. He was here and so was she. That was good enough for both of them right now. And she wanted him. She’d never been a one-night stand type of person and didn’t plan on being one now.
Besides, he was her husband. And they’d yet to have a wedding night.
“Do you have a bedroom?” she murmured when she could.
“Of course.” He reached up to clasp her head and tugged her down for more drugging kisses. She twisted sinuously against him, dragging her breasts from one side to the other, then flexing her hips and pressing her pelvis hard against him. He moaned, sliding his hands down to grab her hips and ground his pelvis up against her.
“You know, we could try a bed out one time.”
He smiled beneath her lips before moving to trail kisses down her throat. “Next time.”
She tilted her head back, letting her long blond hair fall down around them. “That’s what you said last time.”
He laughed and flipped her over to lie down beneath him. She stared up at him in wide-eyed surprise when he came down on top of her, just where she wanted him.
She spread her legs, making a place for him. He settled in deeper. She arched beneath him, offering her breasts. He bent his head, tugging first the one then the other into his mouth and suckling. He stoked the fires until she twisted beneath him, crying, “Levi, now.”
“Not yet.”
“Now.” She wrapped her legs around his thighs and gripped him tightly. Then she wiggled beneath him.
He roared, lifted his hips, slid his hands down to hold her hips steady, and plunged deep.
She gasped at the invasion. At the fullness. At the rightness. Again. A tiny corner of her mind worried that it was dangerous to think that way, but the rest of her reveled in it. All her life she’d been trying to find her place. Trying to find her home in the world. Apparently she’d just been behind the times.
Levi lifted his hips, pulling back and back and…
She dug her nails into the smooth rounded muscles of his buttocks to stop him from slipping away from her completely.
He drove inside.
She wrapped her legs around him as he set up a rhythm that she was desperate to match and more frantic to increase. He picked up speed. Throwing her head back, she held on for the ride.
Inside, her blood heated as her body raced to the finish line.
She twisted her head, crying out as tiny explosions started to go off, but she wasn’t quite there. He lowered his head and claimed her lips, his tongue slipping inside as he drove in one last time. His body stiffened above her and he threw his head back, a long low groan sliding out from deep in the back of his throat.
Then she wasn’t aware of anything more as her own body exploded.
*
Nice. Actually a hell of a lot more than nice. Levi lay listening to the strong, steady beat of her heart. The pod started humming around them. The lid was still up. He wondered if it had the ability to take over and help even when it hadn’t been closed. Then to his amazement, it dropped into place and set up healing rays all around them. He’d never heard of them being able to open and close on their own, but it didn’t really surprise him. It was, in fact, very helpful.
Especially right now, when he couldn’t possibly move.
“Wow.” She sighed happily, her breathing only slightly calmer. “You are soo good at that.”
He grinned, loving the lighthearted intimacy with her. He tugged her up close and closed his eyes. How had Milo known that this is what he needed? That he missed loving someone. Being part of a special twosome.
His kid brother was many things. Intuitive was the one thing he wasn’t.
As Dani nestled closer, her leg sliding over his, he could feel her body settle into the gentle rhythm of sleep. That she could trust him after all that had happened made him feel good. He knew she’d had little choice over these major changes in her life, but he hadn’t forced her into this step. And although he needed her legally bound to him to keep her safe, she hadn’t seemed to have a problem with that.
He twisted slightly so he could look down on her dark blonde head. Who’d have thought she’d find a way into his heart?
He almost winced at the thought. He hadn’t thought to find a partner anytime soon. He’d looked for one years ago and gave up when all the relationships seemed superficial and dull. He’d made what he thought were a lot of friends back as a young adult, but the friendships hadn’t lasted and the girlfriends had disappeared even faster.
He’d always been looking for something…more.
Dropping a kiss on Dani’s head, he realized he might have just found it.
Chapter 13
Dani woke up, cozy and comfortable with the sound of surf breaking close to her head. Her eyes popped open to find Levi’s decorating system still in place. She loved it. And she was so going to enjoy being part of his world with these types of perks. She pushed the pod open and sat up.
And laughed.
The sand was gone. Instead, there was a long deck stretching from her pod out into what appeared to be water. She couldn’t imagine it being real water, but Charmin had apparently used the fake sand just fine, so who knew?
She tilted her head back to see blue sky and sunlight shining high above her head. This decorating stuff was incredible. She not only could see the surroundings, but she could feel a gentle breeze and even smell the heavy blooms of the tropical flowers. She spread her arms and flopped backwards in delight.
“I love it here!”
“Ha. I wondered when you’d get around to saying that.”
She laughed and rolled over to see Charmin walking along the deck as if the water was going to reach up and grab him. He did so hate water.
“You won’t get wet, you know.”
He glared at her. “What was wrong with the sand here? It was perfect.”
“Ah, except I don’t want the pod room to be your litter box. If I have to adapt, so do you.”
“What can I say?” He hopped lightly onto her pod bed. “It was done in a weak moment. A nostalgic moment.”
She shook her head. “As much as I can understand that…”
“It’s done, so forget about it.” He head-butted her. “Think about loving me for a bit.”
She stroked his beautiful fur. “As if I don’t love you.”
“Maybe, but it seems like you are loving Levi a littl
e more.”
“Not more than you!” She gasped in horror. “Never.”
“Aha! So you do love him.” He half fell, half sprawled on her.
She barely noticed. Her mind was spinning with his words. And that L word. Did she love Levi? How could she? She didn’t even know him. But she’d already acknowledged that she knew him better than her major asshole ex – and she’d loved him.
Damn.
“Stop thinking so loud, you’re disturbing my beauty sleep,” Charmin grumbled. “With all your activities, you might want to grab some shut eye as well.”
“Hey.”
“If you’re going to be kidnapped, you’ll want to look your best. Just sayin’.”
She bolted upright. “Why did you have to say that?” she wailed. “How am I supposed to rest now?”
“Seeing as how you forgot that you have bad guys chasing after you, I thought a reminder would be appropriate.”
She sat up. “Did you and Milo figure things out while I was resting?”
“Resting?” He turned his head and narrowed his gaze. “Is that what you call it?”
And damn if she didn’t flush. “Hey, be nice.”
He snorted and stretched out, showing his belly. She sighed and reached over to give him a little more love. “I wish I knew what was going on.”
“Milo found out a bunch of stuff. Go check with him. And while you’re at it, there has to be a mealtime we missed in there somewhere.”
“You wish.”
“Hey, you satisfied your hunger, now help satisfy one of mine.”
Considering he’d been fixed before she ever got him, it seemed a reasonable request. Besides, she could feel her stomach starting to grumble, too. “I’ll see.” She searched the island hut for her clothes, amazed to find them at odd places but fitting into the scenery as if she truly were there. Once dressed, she stopped at the doorway for a final look and smiled. “Charmin, this island look is perfect for us.”
“Only if you bring back the sand.”
“Not happening.” She partially closed the door as she walked out. The hallway was still the same. She had to wonder why Levi didn’t keep the apartment as something more glamorous. Surely it could be a palace on the inside instead of this normal boring old apartment? In the kitchen she found the brothers, heads bent, studying something on the table.