felt the press of him against my back—in several spots of my back, actually.
“Hi there.” I turned to face him, pressing my flesh against him, feeling his warmth even as my feet touched the cold tile floor. I ran a hand down his chest, felt the firmness of his muscles and let out a little sigh of contentment. I gave him a long, sweet kiss and broke just when I heard him gasp slightly. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he said with a smile. “Just in time, it was starting to get that first feeling of ow.” He squeezed me in his arms and I lay my head against his chest.
I held there for almost a minute, just enjoying the feeling of being close to him, then a devilish thought lit my mind and I raised my head to look at him. “Do we...have time?”
He looked pained. “Again? I have to tell you...other girls I’ve talked to, you know, after the first time, they’re not really as...um...enthusiastic, let’s say. I mean you seem fine and all, I just mean I hope it didn’t hurt too much.”
“I barely felt it at all,” I said, putting my head against his chest. I froze there for a second, and then pulled myself off his chest to look him in the face. “That’s not what I meant,” I said, watching him raise an eyebrow. “What I meant is that compared to the pain I’ve experienced in my life, it was fairly small. Pain-wise, I mean.” I slapped myself on the forehead. “A small amount of pain! Not that I didn’t feel it, because I did, and it felt good, but...” I sighed. “You know what I mean. I hope you know what I mean. It was very good. I liked it a lot. I would like to do it again, as soon as possible.”
“I think I got what you mean,” he said, with almost a smile. “You were already...prepared... and so the little pain you felt was not that big of a deal compared to the beatings you’ve experienced in the last year.”
“You’ve got a way with words,” I said, pulling close to him again. “I wish I had a way with words right about now. Instead, I’m fumbling, a mess, all that.”
“It’s all right. But to answer your earlier question, I have to go.” He gently pulled from me. “We have a meeting with the other agents, preparations for when this Operation Stanchion lands on us.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Stay out of the way as much as possible if it’s a meta assault,” he said, taking a slow walk out the bathroom door and back into the bedroom, fishing his boxer shorts out of a pile of clothing next to the bed. He came up with my underwear as well and tossed it to me. I caught it in one hand. “Our job is to effect an evacuation of the campus, not to get into a rumble with Omega’s metas. We’re assigning out those industrial strength electro cannons like we used on Wolfe, but we’ve only got a half dozen of them. We’ve got some dart guns that will put most metas down, but they take a few seconds to work, so pistols and rifles are going to be option one. We’ve got some shotgun shells that have some extra pop to them, and some slug-throwing shotguns that’ll put a hole in an elephant. Other than that...” He shrugged. “Like I said, we’re evacuating and trying to make way for you metas to rumble to your heart’s content.”
“My heart’s quite content with no rumbling,” I said, and slipped on my panties. “I could use a nice long vacation about now.”
Zack smiled. “Like Italy?”
“Somewhere tropical,” I said. “Somewhere warm. It’s about to get really cold here in Minnesota again, you know.”
“Having lived here my whole life, I was dimly aware of that fact.”
“I’ve never been outside the Midwest,” I said, looking out the window at the sun, already high in the sky. “I remember thinking when Wolfe was coming for me how much I wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else.”
“I remember,” he said. “But you knew he’d find you.”
“Yeah. I should take those vacation days they gave me, and go somewhere good.” I stepped closer to him, rubbed a hand along the smooth covering over his chest as he placed his shirt on and left it unbuttoned. “What do you think? You, me, a sandy beach, warm sun overhead, crystal blue waves—”
“I think