“Okay, maybe I will.”
We retrieved our gloves and tools. A few minutes later, while tilling up the roots from last season’s planting, Cipher turned to me and asked, “Is it usually like that?”
“Like what?” I said because I didn’t want to make any assumptions.
“Spontaneous. Easy. Hot.”
I grinned. “Yeah it is.”
“We do that a lot? Get each other off?”
“Almost every day. Sometimes multiple times.”
His eyebrows raised. “Do you…” He trailed off, looking embarrassed. “Am I usually the one who…”
“You like to top,” I said, and he nodded, looking relieved.
“Have I ever bottomed?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said with a wink and finally got a blush out of him.
We continued with our work, but every once in a while I’d glance over and catch him looking at me, and a huge smile would light up his face, then he’d shake his head and we’d go back to tilling, the metal tines breaking up the packed soil and unearthing new potential.
SEVENTEEN
CIPHER
Of courseI’d rather spend the next five years in Assburbia, fortifying our compound and refining our safety protocol, but I wasn’t going to let Kitten join up with the United Forces without me. We were a team, a unit. And I knew the Assholes would survive without us.
But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try and take care of them too.
I booked an appointment with Captain Crenshaw for that week, telling Kitten I wished to discuss the matter of my enlistment with her directly. The crowning feature of Crenshaw’s office was the mid-century solid wood desk planted in the center of the room that looked as if it had survived several wars and would survive several more. Crenshaw herself seemed perfectly at ease behind it, eying me steadily and, after welcoming me into her office, waiting for me to begin. It was a silent stare-off. She was good at this game, better than me.
“So, it seems Kitten has enlisted. Joshua, I mean,” I said to her, my opening gambit.
“I know who we’re talking about,” she said with the sort of smile that patient mothers give to their foolish children. “Have you come here to try and get it revoked?”
“Is that a possibility?”
“No.”
I hadn’t thought so, and besides, Kitten seemed set on it anyway. Damn his sense of duty. “Then, no. Though the conditions around his enlistment are suspect,” I told her.
“Meaning?”
“Enlist or be executed, is that really a choice, Captain Crenshaw?”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Not in so many words, but I know that you strong-armed him.”See her try and deny that. But she didn’t, merely shrugged as if she were blameless in doing so.
“Joshua would make a good soldier. He has a lot of attributes that would benefit our community, chief among them, his interest in medicine.”
“He told you that?”
“He did.”
Was she implying that I might try to hold him back from his dream of becoming a doctor? “Is that an option, working in the lab?” I asked.
