She laughed, tracing a finger along his jaw. "We didn't use protection, but I'm clean, and I have a contraceptive implant."
"I'm clean, too. Haven't been with anyone other than my right hand in a long time."
She laughed again, surprised by his honesty.
"I hope I outdid her."
"Oh, you did. You ruined her for me forever. I don't know if I can ever go back to her."
"Good, because I'm not letting you go back." She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. "You are mine now."
31
TONY
"Kaia, you're not paying attention," Tony said, waving a hand in front of her face. "I've been explaining this algorithm for five minutes and you haven't blinked once."
Kaia startled, her gaze snapping back from wherever it had wandered. "Sorry. I'm distracted."
"I noticed." Tony rolled his chair back from the workstation and stretched his arms over his head. "That's unusual for you. Are you pregnant?"
She snorted. "Projection much?"
"Sorry. It's just that the first thing I noticed when Tula became pregnant was that she started getting more and more distracted."
"Well, I'm not." Kaia picked up a stylus and tapped it against her palm in a nervous rhythm. "William's meeting with Kian, and it's never good when Kian calls William into a meeting. Something's brewing."
"Does it have to do with the island?"
"I don't know." She set the stylus down, then picked it up again. "Maybe."
Tony kept thinking about the island and all the harem servants. What happened to them after all the ladies left? Had they been transferred out to perform other duties? Or were they carrying on as usual, pretending that nothing had changed?
It was depressing to think about the island and all the people they had left behind. It was even more depressing that he wasn't transitioning. His induction had been Saturday night, and this was Tuesday morning. The transition should have started already.
He'd been hoping for something—a tingle, a rush, some sign that it had begun, but he felt exactly the same as he had before the ceremony.
Same old Tony. Still human.
Kaia had told him that transitions didn't happen instantly, that it could take several days, and women sometimes took weeks before the first symptoms appeared.
Still, that didn't make the waiting any easier. He had the sinking sensation that he wasn't a Dormant and wasn't about to turn immortal.
"You know what?" Tony stood and offered her his hand. "Let's take a break. Get some coffee at the café. We're not getting any work done anyway."
Kaia glanced at her screen, then shrugged. "Why not?" She took his offered hand but got to her feet without his help. "Let's go."
They left the lab and headed to the elevators. When the doors slid open, they stepped inside, and as the cab began to rise, Tony's stomach lurched. He grabbed the handrail, steadying himself against a sudden wave of nausea that rolled through him. The sensation was intense, but not quite enough to make him vomit. His mouth flooded with saliva, and his skin turned clammy.
"Tony?" Kaia sounded worried. "You okay? You look green all of a sudden."
"Yeah, I..." He swallowed hard, fighting down the urge to gag. "Kind of. My stomach just?—"
The elevator continued its ascent, and the nausea intensified. Something about the motion, the upward momentum, was making it worse. Tony closed his eyes and focused on breathing, trying to remember what he'd had for breakfast.
Eggs and toast. Same thing he and Shira had every morning.
Things were good with Shira. Easy, in a way they'd never been with Tula. Shira didn't pick fights over small things or get angry out of the blue. She didn't make him feel like he was constantly walking on eggshells, waiting for the next explosion.
