The Drafter Read online

  She knew his frustration was because she was forever losing parts of herself, a renewable distraction with a reset button. He gave, and gave, and gave, but he needed her as much as she needed him. Today she remembered. That was all they ever dared to try to keep.

  Peri traced the line of his shoulders, liking the sheen of hazy morning outlining his biceps. With a sigh, he dropped his head to find her breast with his mouth. Peri’s breath caught. Wanting more, she wrapped her legs around him and ran her fingers through his hair, following the curve of his head down to his neck and then his smooth chest. One by one, she outlined the defined edges of his abs, teasing as she reached down as far as she could. It wasn’t far enough.

  Jack pushed her robe open. She shivered as the golden light bathed them. Her eyes met his, her own desire kindled deeper at the need rising in his gaze. With a happy sigh, she pulled him back to her, mildly frustrated that she couldn’t take his shirt off without making him stop what his lips were doing.

  Her fingers stretched, reached, and finally, unable to resist, she slipped from the chair, sending it toppling over behind her as they knelt together. They kissed, the hint of his tongue sparking through her. His lips tasted of coffee and walnuts, the scent of hotel soap a whisper rising between them as their breaths quickened.

  His hands moving, always moving, Jack’s kisses spun from her lips to her neck, becoming more aggressive. His grip became firmer, more demanding. She found his mouth again, and wouldn’t let him leave until she reached to pull his shirt over his head, her shoulder aching from her bruise.

  But she got it off him. Relief was a flash, followed by wicked desire as she groped for his zipper. His teeth on her neck shocked through her. One hand traced his tight backside as the other unzipped his pants. He sighed as it went down, but she needed two hands for the button, and she teased until she got it undone and reached to find him.

  She squirmed as he pushed her panties down, careful when he skimmed over her bruised hip, and she shivered as she met his mouth with hers, stiffening in delight when his hand traced a firm, demanding path up the inside of her thighs, defining her with his touch. He was a beautiful man, sculpted and toned by the needs of fast action and evading death, and her pulse quickened. He was hers. All of him. And she loved him.

  Breathless, she sent her hands everywhere, gentle here, demanding there, until he found her breast again, and she gasped, back arched. They needed to reaffirm that they were both alive and that she was here with him and not dead on the floor of an upstairs corner office.

  “Oh God. You’re going to be the death of me if you don’t do something more,” she whispered, almost humming with desire.

  His lips lifted from her, and he smiled, reaching behind her to pull the cover off the bed. Her robe had come undone, and he lowered her to the faded bedspread, their passions hesitating as she sent her eyes over him, loving the way he looked, the way he made her feel.

  He knelt above her, his pants kicked off and his shirt in a corner. In the rich light filtering through the curtains, he looked like an amber-skinned god. Peri traced the lines of his abs again, drifting lower to make him growl and lean down over her.

  “Jack . . . ,” she whispered, pushing suggestively into him, and then her hands on his shoulders tightened as he entered her, first warm, then cool as he withdrew and slipped within her anew. Breath fast, her motions became demanding, the pains from last night forgotten as he moved with her, his hands in her hair, his mouth on hers. She bit his lip, and he tilted his head, lunging into her neck with a motion that was both loving and aggressive. Her passions began to peak, and her grip on him grew tighter yet, pace quickening with a desperate need.

  She wanted this, she wanted it now. The barest slowing, a widening of motion and catching of breath warned her, and she slowed, knowing it was close and wanting to prolong it. She strained, legs wrapped around him.

  And then she found it, gasping with release as waves of ecstasy pulsed through her, shaking them both.

  Jack groaned. His hands sprang from her hair as he clenched his fingers into the bedspread, shuddering. She could feel him inside her, and her body responded again as their motions with each other slowed and stopped, warmth eddying between them until all was still.

  Panting, she slowly unkinked her hands from his backside, not remembering having put them there. Smiling, she looked up at him, liking what she saw in this moment of unguarded contentment. Sweat sheened his tanned skin, making him glow, almost. His eyes were still closed, his breathing heavy but slow.

  She turned to see his hand dug into the bedspread beside her ear, still white-knuckled. There was a sock under the bed that she didn’t want to forget, her talisman button beside it. Not wanting time to move, she pulled him down to her to breathe him in. The floor was hard and the smell of dirt in the carpet unnoticed until now. A line of sun glowed in from under the door, and the scent of cheap soap and coffee added to her contentment.

  At peace, she looked at Jack, seeing that same happiness in the faint lines just now starting in about his eyes, seeing the reaffirmation that they belonged together. He wants to retire? She wished this would never end, but she’d be content if she could hold on to it forever and never forget.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  “Did you remember to plug in the car?” Peri asked as she trundled her overnight bag past the row of Sity bikes waiting for warmer weather. Her building loomed over her, and she couldn’t wait to be back in her apartment, finding herself.

  Looking tired, Jack pocketed their access card and held the door for her. “As always.”

  The stairs were unheated, and it was cold despite the low February afternoon sun shining into the glass and cement stairway of the residential tower. Peri’s bag thumped up the steps behind her, conspiring to make her shoulder ache and her black eye pound. They could take the elevator, but it was slow and their apartment was only one flight up.

  She’d picked the place out five years ago, liking the balcony overlooking the engineered pond and surrounding shops and restaurants collectively known as Lloyd Park. Even then her job had paid enough that she could have afforded one of the larger units on the top floor. But she couldn’t jump out of a top-floor window and survive the landing. The second floor, on the other hand, was perfect. Jack had moved in six months after becoming her anchor, but it still felt like hers.

  Jack jogged past her on the stairs at the last moment, his dress shoes scuffing as he got to the fire door. “I said I’d bring that up for you,” he said, and she puffed her bangs out of her eyes.

  “And I said I had it,” she muttered, her mood bad. She hurt, and that brought out the worst in her.

  “As you wish,” he said, his dry humor making her smile as he pushed open the fire door. He’d been distant and preoccupied since defragmenting the draft, and a return to his normal, cheerful self was a relief. Perhaps he was worried about Bill. Their handler was a stickler about her mental state, demanding tests and sessions when their earned downtime would accomplish the same thing.

  Peri followed Jack into the warmer hallway, giving the solar panel–covered, snow-edged parking lot shared by the twin residential towers a last look as it glowed in the setting sun. Detroit was a pretty backdrop, Opti a short ride in by magnetic rail or car. Much better, Peri thought, remembering streets so choked with cars that you couldn’t drive, and then the frightening emptiness when everyone who could left.

  She’d watched Detroit falter, was there when the city fathers tore it down to use the old infrastructure to create defined pockets of clean industry, commerce, and housing, then connected them with green relief and quiet transport all layered over the original foundry steel. Though still known for her cars and music, Detroit had become home to the developing human and technology interface industries. Her Mantis was a part of that, a pretty, monstrous bauble that showcased Detroit’s new technologies. Hiding the Opti military installation amid the new medical park hadn’t been difficult.

  U
nlike many of the restructured areas, there hadn’t been a landmark used as a stylistic cornerstone at Lloyd Park, but Peri loved the Frank Lloyd Wright theme gone neon that the architects had played with. The stark patterns of angles and lines were everywhere from the streetlights to manhole covers to the roof over the taxi charging stations, even the fencing around the park. But it was at the nearby commons where the neon took over. Surrounded by high-end shops and eateries, the red, gold, green, and white blazed loudly between the ever-changing e-billboards and big-screen communications monitors to keep the courtyard alive with people even in the dead of winter. The façade of her building continued the neon theme, and though the style was heavy in the lower common areas, it was a mere hint in her apartment.

  Just enough to make a statement, she thought when the fire door clicked shut behind them. She was glad to be back—impatient to do something normal. Having lost six weeks, she felt as if she was coming home from an extended vacation, not three days. The shadow of cat feet moved back and forth at the crack under the door, and she smiled. Jack had named the stray, thinking it hilarious to call the cat after a late-night TV skit character who could divine the arcane. “Hi, Carnac,” Peri said, and his meows grew louder.

  “I think he’s in love with you,” Jack said as he opened the door and Carnac came out, tail high as he wove between her feet, the bell on his collar ringing.

  “Sorry, sweetie, I’m a speciesist,” she said fondly to the marmalade cat, and they followed Jack in.

  “Change setting. Weekend,” Jack said loudly to shake the apartment out of extended-leave mode, and the environment computer dinged, recognizing him and turning up the heat.

  Peri’s shoulders slumped in exhaustion as Jack called for more light, and she trundled her overnight bag into the large, open-plan, high-ceilinged apartment. Leaning against the wall, she unzipped her boots and kicked them out of the way. Her feet stretched, pressing against the hardwood floor in relief. It was cold. She should’ve called ahead and gotten the house warmed up when they crossed the Michigan border.

  The spartan apartment felt spacious, decorated with solid blocks of color, mostly whites and grays with some teal and brown for contrast. There was a big screen with a gaming console for Jack, and a formal dining table for her that they never used. A ball of yarn and a project she didn’t remember starting sat in the crook of the couch, hidden like the compulsive behavior therapy it was. Scarf? she wondered, eyeing the scrumptious red yarn in passing and thinking it was a good match with the gloves in her bag.

  The den was to the left, and the doors to the bedroom and bathroom on the right. The kitchen took up an entire interior wall, and she enjoyed looking out over the living room and to the view when she cooked—which was often. Again, something that had begun as Opti-therapy, but Jack seemed to enjoy her efforts and she’d learned to find satisfaction in it. She loved the lazy summer afternoons when she and Jack would retract the balcony windows into the walls and the entire apartment felt like it was outside. Shelves lined an interior wall, holding her talismans from previous drafts. Remembering the button in her pocket, her smile faded.

  Jack dropped his bag. Remote pointed at the huge plate-glass windows, he shifted the glass to an opaque one-way. It was a measure of privacy she appreciated, seeing as they sort of lived in a bulletproof fishbowl. Detroit glowed in the near distance, the buildings red in the sunset. Random reflected flashes showed where the droneway paths hung. High-Q traffic and security drones were allowed above the city streets 24/7, but low-Q delivery and recreational drones were not, and the mid-skies were busy with last-minute payload drops.

  Tossing the remote aside, Jack went into the kitchen to stand appraisingly before their small wine cooler. The answering machine on the counter beeped, and Peri picked Carnac up, collar bell ringing. Jack was trying to hide it, but he was on edge and growing more so. He’d slept most of the second leg home, but he’d been closed and distant ever since waking up.

  “You miss me, sweetie?” she whispered to Carnac, breathing the words between his ears. Grabbing a few kitty treats from the canister, Peri ambled to the huge windows, Carnac still in her arms. Her winter-dead plants waited in sad-looking clay pots on the cold balcony, the chopsticks she’d stolen from Sandy and used to tie up weak stems still jammed in them.

  “Are you going to change for tonight?” Jack asked, his back to her as he took down two glasses and opened a red. “Bill wants to meet at Overdraft to debrief.”

  “Overdraft?” she questioned as Carnac spilled out of her arms. The bar was one of the few places that drafters could call home, intentionally kept unchanged to help ease rough transitions and therefore somewhat stuck in the ’90s, when it had been bought by Opti’s psychologists and staffed by the same. It was generally too busy for a proper chat, with Peri’s psychologists manning the bar, but it would be more comfortable than a sterile office. Maybe that’s what Bill was going for.

  “I thought you texted Bill that I was fine,” she complained, button in hand as she went to her talismans. “Can’t he wait until morning to start poking at me?”

  “Apparently not,” Jack muttered. “He wants us there at one.”

  “In the morning?” Peri sighed. At least at that hour, it would be close to empty. “Sure. I don’t have anything else to do.” Other than read my diary and catch up on the last six weeks of TV eye candy, that is. “I might cover the black eye. Change my blouse.” Sandy would still see the shiner, but that woman saw everything.

  Out of sorts, she set the button beside a picture of Jack and herself. It was night, and there was a huge fire gone to coals behind them. And stars, thousands of stars in patterns she didn’t recognize. She was dirty, her hair even longer than it was now. Jack was relaxed with his arms around her. New Year’s? she wondered as she picked up the heavy frame.

  “Jack? It’s Bill,” came from the answering machine, Bill’s voice sounding tinny through the speaker. “You home yet?” The heavyset man was as American as she was, but living abroad had given him a faint accent. Peri knew he used it to give himself the polish his Bronx beginnings lacked.

  Peri’s eyes closed as the machine beeped. Something told her that she’d used the picture as her own private talisman. She could feel it as clearly as the silver dagazes tooled around the frame. Carnac’s collar and the half-knitted scarf both sported the hourglass-like glyph as well. That it looked like Opti’s logo on its side didn’t hurt. She only put it on things she’d want to recognize as her own if she ever forgot them. She knew with a guilty certainty that Opti’s psychologists wouldn’t approve, and she hadn’t even told Jack about her experimentation, but she was hoping that with some preparation, the images in the photo and her imagination might—just might—bring this moment back.

  Cavana had given her the idea, after a cryptic conversation about how memory knots might not be as lethal as Opti made out. That had been right before Opti had moved him out west. She still missed their occasional chats over dessert coffee.

  Anticipation simmered as she brought the frame to her nose and breathed in the scent of the weighty metal. She tried to remember the feel of the thick red dust between her toes and the heat against her face, all of which she could see in the photo.

  With an om-like sigh, she exhaled, and like magic, the entire night came back with a tingle of adrenaline: it had been New Year’s after all. The Aborigines who had found them, the meal they’d shared, the stories she and Jack had gifted them with, the reading of their souls that they’d given back, the blessing the old man had pronounced over each of them. It had been heaven, and Peri stood there, elated as the memory held and returned a small part of herself to her. She had remembered. She had remembered on her own!

  “Jack, you there?” Bill’s agitated voice came again, pulling Peri from her private celebration. “I know I gave you the day off, but that was before Peri’s memory knot. Call me.”

  “How come you didn’t erase the machine from your phone?” she asked, her joy hesitatin
g as she saw Jack hunched at the kitchen counter, one hand propping him up, the other wrapped around his wineglass.

  “I haven’t figured out how yet.” He took a drink, his lips curling at the bitter taste. He hadn’t waited for it to breathe.

  “Impatient bastard,” she said, scared when he didn’t laugh. “Jack, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. If you pull your clothes out, I’ll get them to the cleaners tomorrow.”

  He was brushing her off, and, peeved, she stood for a moment, arms crossed, staring at him. “What?” he finally said, and not liking his belligerence, she took her apartment card from her purse beside the door. Something was wrong, and she wanted him to know she knew it. “Where are you going?” he said, sounding almost afraid.

  “Executive gym.”

  “Peri . . .” It was contrite now, but he’d snapped at her twice, and she wasn’t in that good a mood either. She didn’t want to argue. And if she didn’t leave, they would.

  “I want a sensory sauna before I see Sandy,” she said tightly. “I’ll be in either Brazil or Arizona.” Lips set, she yanked the door open, not caring she was barefoot but for her nylons.

  “Peri,” he cajoled, and she shut the door hard. Feet silent on the carpet, she strode down the corridor to the elevator, hitting the up button several times in fast succession. She raised her head as the doors opened, and she got in, tapping her apartment card before pressing the button for the top of the tower. The doors closed, and she fell back against the wall of the car, feeling every bruise, every sore muscle. Slowly her anger dulled in the new silence as she saw her reflection. Her eye was ugly, and she leaned toward the mirror to cautiously poke at it. Peri pulled away, a feeling that she’d been inexcusably remiss slithering up over her.