But then she clicks the door shut.
I snort under my breath, pressing a kiss into Nil’s hair while I hold him even closer.
This is—without question—my favorite bad decision ever. Because I just thought of a way to make more of my fantasies come true. But for now, I’m fulfilling one more. Watching my man finish with only my cock inside him.
“Ever come without stroking yourself?” I ask.
His naughty mewl is all the answer I need. I’ll show him how it can happen.
Adjusting my hands on his ass, I pummel up into him and drop him harder on me. Faster and faster.
His sounds are straight-up fucking dirty, deep and disastrous, and doing things to me that make me ready to fill him.
My gaze goes down to his cock. It’s twitching hard. His tip’s making a mess on his clenching abs. They’re not as clenched as his tight hole taking me in.
“You close?” I ask between deep breaths.
He nods, the sounds outta him even more desperate. It’s making me desperate too.
With a deep thrust, I spill right into him, feeling him milk me. He follows me with a groan he keeps in his throat. He throws his head back, but my hand slides into his hair in time to make sure his skull doesn’t hit the tiles.
That throws us off-balance, with only one of my hands under him. His left leg drops. He takes me in deeper. We both moan.
He whispers my name while he stares at me through half-lidded eyes that drive me wild.
I don’t think I can properly tell him how much wilder I want this to be. But I’m gonna try.
16
Em
Some moments earlier
I stand inside this new space with off-white walls and a big, gray bed. I suppose this is my room now.
My eyes scan the layout. Spatial familiarity helps regulate me. So does the feel of something in my hands, like tasks needing to be done. At the moment, there aren’t any.
There’s a twitch in my left hand, where Stan placed his phone. I flip it open, needing to fidget, and see that, despite the chipped metal finish, the screen is clear and clean, appearing brand-new.
The phone’s background photo shows Stan smiling wide with Nil beside him. A round window’s between them, which tells me this picture was taken in the mess hall.
I take a deep breath. Stan slipped a phone into the ship. I shouldn’t be surprised. Worse things happened on the ship. People were hurt—werekilled—during my experiment. It’s indiscernible evidence that I didn’t do enough to reinforce rules, to protect people who relied on me.
Yet I’m the one here, given a big bed in a warm home with peoplewho care about each other. Meanwhile, the one I’ve come to rely on the most is…doing everything else for me. Idris is on the other side of the world, fixing the experiment that was made up of my ideas and my hope.
My hand clutches the phone. I don’t have Idris’ number memorized by heart. Even if I could call him, I’m certain he’d tell me to rest, to find something else to do than worry over the past. So my feet move toward the desk. It’s a habit of mine to stare at a screen, letting work take me away from my thoughts. Lately, my mind’s been overfilled with them.
I sit and adjust the angle of the desk lamp by a few degrees. Then I turn the monitor on. It whirrs. It comes to life, whereas I feel rather far away from that feeling.
When I lift my gaze to the screen, my vision blurs. I blink, refocus, and continue. It blurs even more.
My vision swims with an unfamiliar, foreign pressure building behind my eyes. With a long exhale, I tell myself that the pressure merely suggests a dysregulation response. Stabilization is clearly needed.
So I reach into my pocket and retrieve a small pill box. Opening one tab, I take out one of the black capsules. The movement is calming and familiar. I’ve been doing this since Idris took my blood and told me it read normal. The next day, he gave me pills he compounded himself.
Inspecting it further, I can see the pill’s black sheen catch the light of the lamp.
I bring it up toward my mouth. But my hand hesitates. I hadn’t realized I was shaking. Most likely from stress or lack of nutrition. I haven’t eaten much. Haven’t been able to stomach much since—
