The tenuous thread gathered size and strength, straining to pull away.
“Just sprinkling.” His whisper was distracted and rapt with awe. “Keep your focus.”
“It’s fighting me. Still think I can do this without getting eaten?”
“You’re doing it. The mind is everything. Center your thoughts, let it empower you.”
I closed my eyes. Control the aphid. Take over the army. Find Roark and Jesse. Kill the psycho brothers. Get the hell off Malta. Oh, and discover the cure. My eyes popped open. “Right.”
“You cold? Dizzy?”
His body against mine warmed me inside and out, enough that the memory of it would keep me warm as I slept alone that night. “I’m good.”
He skipped his hands along my torso as if trying to catch the weightless sensations bouncing between me and the salivating creature. “Bring it closer.”
Inhale. Breathe out. Closer leapt from my chest.
The aphid slid two more steps, its bowed body quivering.
“Look at that. Incredible.” His admiration penetrated the static charged room. “Do you sense Aiman?”
A network of electric-like trails crisscrossed my mind’s eye. The strands thrummed with single-focus, consistent with aphid hunger. “The only crazy I’m sensing is coming from this couch.”
His chuckle danced against my back where our skin touched. I wanted to turn and see what his beautiful face looked like wearing a smile, but a clawed foot dragged over the tiles. Then the other foot. More dragging. Getting too close. My order burst from my tailbone and escaped with the air from my lungs. Stop.
It halted an arm’s span away and cocked its head. Tiny pupils arrowed on me. Tubular parts slid over one another in its throat, connected by strings of black snot.
“I’m doing that,” I whispered. “I’m controlling it.”
When the arms around me squeezed, I realized he was putting his life in my hands. If I didn’t trust him, if I wished him harm, I could use the aphid to attack him.
The skin between its exoskeletal scales twitched with restrained hunger. I probed the thread that linked us. “It’s afraid of me. And the rain’s pissing it off. But there’s also…curiosity.”
“You feel all that?”
“Don’t ask me how—”
My stomach bucked and forced a yelp from my throat.
He tightened his embrace. “What was that?”
“The hunger. The Drone’s starving them.” A chill crept over me, followed by an onslaught of dizziness.
“Evie?”
I burrowed into his chest and braced for another shiver. “It’s really hungry. Trying to break my hold.” My teeth clicked together. “I’m cold.”
“Hang on.” He half stood and pushed down his pants without releasing his hold around my waist. Then he sat us back on the couch, legs bare under mine. Only the thin material of his boxers lay between us.
Warmth replaced the chill. Tension left my body and the wooziness passed. I swallowed. Leave.
The trudge of retreating feet scraped through the room.
“Well,” I said, “the Yang thing works.”
He nestled his face into my neck. The intimacy of his lips sent a different kind of warmth through me. I held my breath, confused by his affection at the same time savoring the tingle pulling through my womb.
The aphid froze at the door, crouched, pincers raised. Its torso heaved as sucking parts punched from its gullet.
Leave bloomed in my chest and sprang free.
It straightened, a tremor rippling its limbs. Then it scurried out.
I pivoted in his lap. “That last move you did…you can’t do that.”
His inky irises peeked from under half lids, regarding me, not as my doctor but as something else. His hands, a heavy heat on my thighs, crackled electricity over my skin.
“Dammit, Michio.” My feet hit the floor and my shift fell in place.
The aphid hunkered just outside the chamber. I jogged across the room and slammed the door shut.
He hauled on his pants. “What happened?”
“Arousal. That’s what happened. Shit. That’s how I called the Drone last night.” I held my hand over my stomach and searched for his poisonous chasm amidst the psychic threads. “I don’t feel him.”
He eyes roamed my face and his brows snapped up. “Pheromones. Chemical communication. That’s what you’re broadcasting.”
“Yeah.”
“That could be bad.”
“You think?”
“Let’s try it again. This time, beckon two guards from downstairs.”
That night, I lay in bed and watched the subtle movement of Michio’s chest on the couch. He wouldn’t leave the chamber despite my demands that he search for Jesse and Roark. And I couldn’t sleep mulling over the risks they were taking on an island of aphids.
Roark’s flirtatious smile appeared every time I closed my eyes. His drawl purred through me and curled my toes.
Then I saw Jesse’s copper eyes, rough-hewn jawline, pillowy lips. When our paths collided in the foothills of West Virginia, those exquisite features would twist up as if I disgusted him. Yet, he left his brethren to follow me across an ocean, a continent.
Even more conflicting than my relationships with a celibate priest and a half-mad Lakota was the man sleeping feet away. I wanted to know him better, and I would. Until then, I didn’t know if, behind his tenting fingers and penetrating eyes, he was analyzing my evolving genetics or memorizing my features the way I memorized his.