Текст книги "UnSouled"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

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“You tore up the world. I could do that too, y’know? Just need the opportunity. And maybe a partner in crime who knows what he’s doing. Knows how to mess with the powers that be. You know where I’m going with this, right? Sure you do—you’re too smart not to know. I always knew if we’d met, we’d be friends. We’d click—kindred spirits and all that.” Then he laughs. “The Akron AWOL in my storm cellar. Can’t be an accident. It was fated, man! Fated!”

“You kicked me in the nuts. That wasn’t fate; it was your foot.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. But, see, I had to do something or you’d just leave. It hurts, I know, but there’s no real damage. I hope you won’t take it the wrong way.”

Connor laughs bitterly at that. He can’t help himself. He wonders if anyone saw the attack happen. If someone did, they didn’t care, or at least they didn’t care enough to stop it.

“Friends don’t tie friends up in a cellar,” Connor points out.

“Yeah, sorry about that, too.” But he makes no move to untie him. “Here’s the quandary. You know what a quandary is, right? Sure you do. See, if I untie you, you’ll probably bolt. So I have to convince you I’m the real deal. A decent guy in spite of knocking you out and tying you up. I gotta make you see that a friend like me is hard to find in this screwed-up world and that this is the place where you want to be. You don’t gotta run anymore. See, nobody looks for nobody in Heartsdale.”

His captor stands and paces, gesturing with his hands. His eyes get wide as he talks as if he’s telling a campfire story. He’s not even looking at Connor anymore as he weaves his little fantasy. Connor just lets him talk, figuring in his verbal diarrhea, he might expel some piece of information that Connor can use.

“I got it all figured out,” he continues. “We’ll dye your hair as dark as mine. I know a guy who’ll do pigment injections in your eyes on the cheap so they’ll look the same hazel as mine—although I can see one of your eyes is slightly different from the other, but we can get them to match, right? Then we’ll tell folks you’re my cousin from Wichita, on account of everyone knows I got family in Wichita. With my help, you’ll disappear so good, no one’ll know you’re not dead.”

The thought of being made to look like this guy in any way is almost as unpleasant as a kick to the groin. And disappearing in Heartsdale? That’s the stuff of nightmares. Yet in spite of everything, Connor dredges up the warmest smile he can muster.

“You say you want to be friends, but I don’t even know your name.”

He looks offended. “It was on my name tag at the market. Don’t you remember?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Not too observant, are you? A guy in your situation should learn to be more observant.” And then he adds, “Not your situation here. I mean your situation out there.”

Connor waits until his captor finally says, “Argent. Like Sergeant without the S. It means money in French. Argent Skinner at your service.”

“Of the Wichita Skinners.”

Argent looks a bit shocked and increasingly suspicious. “You heard of us?”

Connor considers toying with him, but decides that Argent won’t look kindly upon it once he figures it out. “No—you said so before.”

“Oh, right.”

Now Argent just stares at him, grinning until the trapdoor swings open and someone else clambers down the steps. The woman looks somewhat like Argent, but a couple of years older, taller, and a little doughier—not fat, but a bit heavyset and unshapely. Dowdy—if a woman so young could be called dowdy. Her expression is a bit vaguer than Argent’s, if indeed that’s possible.

“Is that him? Can I see him? Is it really him?”

Suddenly Argent’s whole demeanor changes. “You shut your stupid hole!” he shouts. “You want the whole world to know who we got visitin’?”

“Sorry, Argie.” Her broad shoulders seem to fold at the reprimand.

Connor quickly sizes her up to be Argent’s older sister. Twenty-two or twenty-three, although she carries herself much younger. The slack expression on her face speaks of a dullness that isn’t her fault, although Argent clearly blames her for it.

“You want to keep us company, then go sit in the corner and be quiet.” Argent turns back to Connor. “Grace has got a problem using her indoor voice.”

“We’re not indoors,” Grace insists. “The shelter’s in the yard, and that’s outside the house.”

Argent sighs and shakes his head, giving Connor an exaggerated long-suffering look. “You see how it is?”

“Yeah, I see,” says Connor. He logs one more bit of information. This cellar is not in the house, but in the yard. Which means if Connor manages to escape the cellar, he’s maybe a dozen yards closer to freedom. “Won’t it be hard to keep it a secret that I’m down here,” Connor asks, “once everyone else gets home?”

“No one else comin’,” Argent says. This was the news Connor was fishing for. He’s ambivalent about it. On the one hand, if there were other members of this household, someone might be rational enough to stop this before it gets any further. But on the other hand, a rational person would most likely turn Connor over to the authorities.

“Well, I figured you’ve got a house, so you must have a family. Parents maybe.”

“Dead,” says Grace. “Dead, dead, dead.”

Argent throws her a severe warning look before turning back to Connor. “Our mother died young. Our father kicked the ghost last year.”

“Good thing too,” adds Grace, grinning. “He was gonna unwind Argent’s sorry ass for the cash.”

In one smooth motion, Argent picks up a water bottle and hurls it at baseball speed at Grace. She ducks, but not fast enough, and the bottle careens off the side of her head, making her yelp with pain.

“HE WAS JUST SAYING THAT!” yells Argent. “I WAS TOO OLD TO BE UNWOUND.”

Grace holds the side of her head, but remains defiant. “Not too old for parts pirates. They don’t care how old you are!”

“DIDN’T I TELL YOU TO SHUT IT?” Argent takes a moment to let his fury dissipate, then looks for an ally in Connor. “Grace is like a dog. Sometimes you gotta shake a can at her.”

Connor can’t hold back his own seething fury. “That was more than shaking.” He looks over at Grace, still holding her head, but Connor is sure her spirit is hurt more than anything else.

“Yeah, well, unwinding is nothing to joke about,” says Argent. “You know that more than anyone. Truth be told, our father woulda unwound us both if he could, so he didn’t have our mouths to feed. But Grace wasn’t ever eligible since there’s laws against unwinding the feebleminded, and not even parts pirates’ll do it. He couldn’t do me either, because he needed me to take care of Grace. You see how it is?”

“Yeah, I see.”

“Low-cortical,” grumbles Grace. “I ain’t feebleminded. I’m low-cortical. It’s the less insulting way.”

Although low-cortical always sounded pretty insulting to Connor. He twists his wrists, gauging the tightness of the knots. Apparently Argent is very good with knots, because the ropes don’t give at all. His hands are tied individually, so he’ll have to squirm out of both sets of bonds to free himself. It makes Connor think of how he had tied Lev to a tree after Connor had first rescued him. He had kept Lev against his will to save his life. Well, thinks Connor, what goes around comes around. Now he’s at the mercy of someone who believes he’s holding Connor captive for his own good.

“Did you happen to keep the sandwiches I bought?” Connor asks. “Because I’m starving.”

“Nah. They’re still in the parking lot, I imagine.”

“Well, if I’m your guest, don’t you think it’s rude not to feed me?”

Argent considers this. “Yeah, that is rude. I’ll go fix you something.” He orders Grace to give Connor some water from their stockpile of survival rations. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

Connor’s not sure if he’s talking to him or to Grace, but decides it doesn’t really matter.

After Argent is gone, Grace visibly relaxes, freed from her brother’s sphere of influence. She holds out the water bottle for Connor to take, then realizes he can’t take it. Grace unscrews the cap and pours it into Connor’s mouth. He gets a good gulp, although most of it spills on his pants.

“Sorry!” says Grace, almost in a panic. Connor knows why.

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell Argent that I pissed myself. He can’t get mad at you for that.”

Grace laughs. “He’ll find a way.”

Connor looks Grace in the eye. There’s an innocence there that’s slowly breaking. “He doesn’t treat you too well, does he?”

“Who, Argie? Nah, he’s okay. He’s just mad at the world, but the world isn’t around to be mad at. Just me.”

Connor smiles at that. “You’re smarter than Argent thinks.”

“Maybe,” Grace says, although she doesn’t seem too convinced. She looks back toward the closed cellar door and then to Connor again. “I like your tattoo,” she says. “Great white?”

“Tiger shark,” Connor tells her. “Only it’s not mine. It belonged to a kid who actually tried to strangle me with this same arm. He couldn’t do it, though. Chickened out at the last second. Anyway, he got unwound, and I wound up with his arm.”

Grace processes it and shakes her head, getting a little red in the face. “You’re making that up. You think I’m dumb enough to believe the Akron AWOL would take an Unwind’s arm?”

“I didn’t have a choice. They slapped this thing on while I was in a coma.”

“You’re lying.”

“Untie me and I’ll show you the scar where it was grafted on.”

“Nice try.”

“Yeah, it would have worked better if I had my shirt on and you couldn’t see the scar for yourself.”

Grace comes closer, kneeling down, examining Connor’s shoulder. “I’ll be damned. It is a grafted arm!”

“Yeah, and it hurts like hell. You can’t tie a grafted arm back like this.”

Grace looks at him—maybe searching Connor’s eyes the way Connor searched hers.

“You got new eyes, too?” Grace asks.

“Just one of them.”

“Which one?”

“Right. The left one is mine.”

“Good,” says Grace. “ ’Cause I already decided that’s the honest one.” She reaches behind Connor for the ropes. “I’m not gonna untie you—I’m not that dumb—but I’ll loosen the rope on this arm a little so it don’t pull at your shoulder so much.”

“Thank you, Grace.” Connor feels the rope loosen. He wasn’t lying. His shoulder was burning from the strain. As the rope gives, Connor tugs his hand. It slips through the loop, and his hand—Roland’s hand—is free. It closes reflexively into a fist ready to swing. Connor’s own instinct is to do it, but Risa’s voice, ever present in his head, as if it has been transplanted there, stops him. Think, Risa would say. Don’t do anything rash.

The fact is, only one of his hands is free. Will he be able to knock Grace out with one blow, then free his other hand and escape before Argent gets back? In his current state, will he be able to outrun the two of them, and what will the consequences be if he fails? All this flashes through Connor’s mind in a fraction of a second. Grace still stares at Connor’s freed fist in shock, not knowing what to do. Connor makes a decision. He takes a deep breath, loosens his fingers, and shakes his hand. “Thanks. That feels much better,” he says. “Now quick. Tie up my hand again before Argent comes back—only not as tight this time.”

Relieved, Grace redoes the bonds, and Connor allows her to do it without resisting. “You won’t tell him I did that, will you?” Grace asks.

Connor smiles at her. It’s easier to pull off a smile for Grace than for Argent. “It’ll be our secret.”

In a few moments, Argent returns with a BLT heavy on mayo and light on bacon. He feeds it to Connor by hand, never noticing the subtle shift in dynamics. Grace now trusts Connor more than she trusts her own brother.

2 • Clapper

The clapper has misgivings, but he’s beyond the point of no return.

For many months before today, he had suffered on the streets. The things he had to do to survive were horrifying and demoralizing. They were dehumanizing to the point that there wasn’t much left of him that felt remotely human anymore. He had surrendered to the shame of it, resigning himself to a marginal life on the seediest back streets of Sin City.

He’d gone to Las Vegas thinking an AWOL Unwind could more easily disappear there, but Las Vegas treats no one who lands there well. Only those who are free to leave get VIP treatment—and although most of them leave with empty pockets, it’s better than remaining as an empty shell.

By the time he was recruited, the clapper had lost his ability to care. It had been pounded out of him on every level. He had been perfectly ripe for picking.

“Come with me,” the recruiter had said. “I’ll teach you how to make them pay.”

By “them,” he meant everyone. The universal “not me” who was responsible for ruining his life. Everyone else was at fault. Everyone must pay. The recruiter understood that, and so the deal was made.

Now, two months later, he walks gingerly with the girl of his dreams into a neighborhood sports club in Portland, Oregon. It’s far from Las Vegas, far from what had once been his life before that. The farther the better. This new life, brief though it may be, will be bright. It will be loud. It will be impossible to ignore. This random target was chosen for them by someone farther up the clapper chain. Funny, but he never thought of clappers as being so organized—but there is definitely a structure and a hierarchy behind the chaos. It gives him some comfort to think that there’s a method behind the madness.

His is a cell of two. He and the girl have been prepped, primed, and pointed by a gung-ho trainer who must have been a motivational speaker in a previous life.

“Randomness will change the world,” they’d been told. “Your act will be smiled upon years from now—and in the meantime, your revenge will be sweet.”

The clapper cares less about changing the world and more about revenge. He knows he would have died ignobly on the streets, but now at least his bitter end will have meaning. It will be under his control by the sheer power of his applause. Or is he just deluding himself?

“Are you ready for this?” the girl asks as they approach the gym.

He doesn’t share his doubts with her. He wants to be strong for her. Resolute. Brave. “Maximum carnage,” he says. “Let’s do this.”

They go into the gym. He holds the door for her, and she smiles at him. Such smiles and gentle moments between them is the furthest their relationship will ever go. They wanted more, but it was not to be. Their explosive blood had made intimacy an impossibility.

“Can I help you?” asks the guy at the front desk.

“We’d like to talk to someone about a gym membership.”

“Excellent! Let me get someone to help you.”

The girl takes a deep, shuddering breath. The boy holds her hand. Gently. Always gently, because you don’t always need a detonator to set yourself off. The detonators make it quick and clean, but accidents do happen.

“I want to be with you when we . . . complete our mission,” she tells him.

“Me too, but we can’t. You know that. I promise I’ll be thinking about you.” Their orders are to be at least ten meters apart. The farther apart they are, the more effective they’ll be when their mission completes.

A ripped dude with an expensive smile approaches them. “Hi, my name is Jeff. I’m the new member coordinator. And you are?”

“Sid and Nancy,” the clapper says. The girl chuckles nervously. He could have said Tom and Jerry; it didn’t matter. He could even have given their real names, but fake names somehow add to the authenticity of the deception.

“Come on. Let me give you both the grand tour.” Jeff’s wholesome smile is reason enough to blow the place sky-high.

He leads them past the manager’s office. The manager, on the phone, glances out at the clapper, catching a moment of eye contact. The clapper looks away, feeling read. He feels as if every stranger he sees can read his intentions, as if his hands are already spread wide, ready to swing together. But the manager has a real air of suspicion. The clapper moves out of his sight range quickly.

“Over here we have our free weight area. Our resistance machines are to the right. All state of the art, of course, with holographic entertainment consoles.” Neither of them is listening, but Jeff doesn’t seem to notice. “Our aerobics deck is upstairs.” Jeff beckons for them to follow him up the stairs.

“You go, Nancy,” the clapper says. “I’m going to check out the free weights.” They share a brief nod. Here is where they put distance between themselves. Here is where they say good-bye.

He moves away from the stairs and toward the free weight area. It’s five o’clock—a crowded time. Does he feel remorse for coming at this time of day? Only when he looks at people’s faces, so he tries not to. They are not people—they are ideas. They are just extensions of the enemy. Besides, he didn’t choose to come at the gym’s most crowded time. They were told to come precisely now, precisely on this day—and when an event is this big, it’s easy to hide behind “I’m just following orders.”

Stepping behind a pillar, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the circular Band-Aid-like detonators, affixing them to his palms. This is real. This is going down. Oh my God. Oh my God—

And as if to echo his thoughts, he hears, “Oh Jesus.”

He looks up to see the manager standing there, catching him with the penny-sized detonators glaring from the clapper’s palms like stigmata—there’s no mistaking what he means to do.

The manager grabs his wrists, keeping his hands apart.

“Let go of me!”

“There’s something you need to know before you do this!” the manager hisses in a loud whisper. “You think this is random, but it’s not. You’re being used!”

“Let go or I swear—”

“You’ll what? Blow me up? That’s what they want. I’m an organizer with the Anti-Divisional Resistance. Whoever sent you here has been targeting us! This isn’t about chaos. It’s about taking us out! You’re working for the wrong side!”

“There are no sides!”

He pulls away, ready to swing his hands together . . . but suddenly not as ready as he was a moment ago. “You’re ADR?”

“I can help you!”

“It’s too late for that!” He can feel his adrenaline surge. He can feel his heartbeat in his ears and wonders if a pounding heart is enough to detonate him.

“We can clean your blood! We can save you!”

“You’re lying!” But he knows it’s possible. They disarmed Lev Calder, didn’t they? But then the clappers came after him and tried to kill him for not clapping.

Finally one of the various self-absorbed weight lifters notices the nature of the conversation and says, “Clappers?” and backs away. “CLAPPERS!” he yells, and makes a beeline to the door. Others quickly size up the situation, and the panic begins—but the manager doesn’t take his eyes off the clapper.

“Let me help you!”

Suddenly an explosion rocks the gym, and the cardio deck comes crashing down upon the first floor. She did it! She did it! She’s gone, and he’s still here.

Bloody people stumble past him coughing, wailing, and the manager grabs him again almost hard enough to detonate him. “You don’t have to follow her! Be your own man. Fight for the right side!”

And although he wants to believe there is a right side—that this hint of hope is real, and not false—his head is as confused as the burning rubble still raining down around him. Can he betray her? Can he close the door that she opened and refuse to finish what she has begun?

“I can get you to a place of safety. No one has to know you didn’t detonate!”

“Okay,” he says, making his decision. “Okay.”

The manager breathes a gasping sigh of relief, letting him go—and the instant he does, the clapper holds his hands wide and swings them together.

“Nooo!”

And he’s gone, along with the ADR organizer, the rest of the gym, and any question of hope.

3 • Cam

The world’s first composite human being is in black-tie attire.

His tailored tuxedo is of the highest quality. He looks handsome. Impressive. Imposing. He looks older in the tux—but as age is a fuzzy concept for Camus Comprix, he can’t quite say how old he should look.

“Give me a birthday,” he says to Roberta as she works on his tie. Apparently of all the sundry bits and pieces of kids in his head, not a single one of them knew how to tie a bow tie. “Assign me an age.”

Roberta is the closest thing he will ever have to a mother. She certainly dotes on him like one. “Choose your own,” she tells him as she tucks, tugs, and tightens the bow tie. “You know the day you were rewound.”

“False start,” Cam says. “Every part of me existed before I was rewound, so it’s not a day to celebrate.”

“Every part of everyone exists before they are presented to the world as an individual.”

“Born, you mean.”

“Born,” Roberta admits. “But birthdays are random. Babies come early; babies come late. Defining one’s life by the day one was cut from an umbilical cord is completely arbitrary.”

“But they were born,” Cam points out. “Which means I was born. Just not all at the same time, and to multiple mothers.”

“Very true,” says Roberta, stepping back to admire him. “Your logic is as impeccable as your looks.”

Cam turns to look at himself in the mirror. The many symmetrical shades of his hair have been cut and combed into a perfect style. The various skin tones bursting forth from a single point in the center of his forehead only add to the stunning nature of his looks. His scars are no longer scars, but hairline seams. Exotic, rather than horrible. The pattern of his skin, his hair, his whole body is beautiful.

So why would Risa abandon me?

“Lockdown,” he says reflexively, then clears his throat and tries to pretend he didn’t say it. Lockdown is the word that comes out of him lately whenever he wants to purge a thought from his mind. He can’t stop himself from saying it. The word brings an image of iron blast doors falling into place, locking the thought in, refusing to give it purchase anywhere in his mind. Lockdown has become a way of life for Cam.

Unfortunately, Roberta knows exactly what the word means.

“October tenth,” Cam says quickly, before Roberta has a chance to commandeer the conversation. “My birthday will be October tenth—Columbus Day.” What could be more appropriate than a day commemorating the discovery of a land and people who were already there and didn’t need discovering? “I will be eighteen on the tenth of October.”

“Splendid,” says Roberta. “We’ll throw you a party. But right now we have another party that requires our attention.” She gently takes him by his shoulders, forcing him to face her, and she adjusts the angle of his tie the way she might straighten a picture on the wall. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how important this gala is.”

“You don’t, but you will anyway.”

Roberta sighs. “It’s not about damage control anymore, Cam,” she tells him. “Risa Ward’s betrayal was a setback, I’ll admit, but you’ve moved past it with flying colors. And that’s all I’ll say on the matter.” But apparently not, because she adds, “Public scrutiny is one thing, but now you are under the scrutiny of those who actually make things happen in this world. You cut a striking image in that tuxedo. Now show them you are as glorious inside as out.”

“Glory is subjective.”

“Fine. Then subject them to it.”

Cam looks out of the window to see their limousine has arrived. Roberta grabs her purse, and Cam, always the gentleman, holds the door for her as they leave Proactive Citizenry’s lavish Washington town house and head into a steamy July night. Cam suspects that the powerful organization owns residences in every major city throughout the nation—maybe throughout the world.

Why has Proactive Citizenry put so much of their money and influence behind me? Cam often wonders. The more they give him, the more he resents it, because it makes his captivity increasingly apparent. They have elevated him on a pedestal, but Cam has come to understand that a pedestal is nothing more than an elegant cage. No walls, no locks, but unless one has wings to fly away, one is trapped. A pedestal is the most insidious prison ever devised.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Roberta asks coyly as they pull onto the beltway.

Cam grins, but doesn’t look at her. “I think Proactive Citizenry can afford more than a penny.” And he shares none of his thoughts with her, regardless of the cost.

It’s dusk as the limo rides along the Potomac. Across the river, bright lights already illuminate the monuments of DC. Scaffolding surrounds much of the Washington Monument, while the Army Corp of Engineers struggles to correct the pronounced tilt it’s taken on over the past few decades. Bedrock erosion and seismic shift has given the city its own leaning tower. “From Lincoln’s chair, it leans to the right,” political pundits have been known to say, “but from the Capitol steps, it leans to the left.”

This is Cam’s first time in DC—but he has memories of being here nonetheless. A memory of riding a bike down the paths of the National Mall with a sister who was clearly umber. Another memory of a vacation with parents of Japanese descent, who are livid that they can’t contain the irascible behavior of their little boy. He has a color-blind memory of a huge Vermeer canvas hanging in the Smithsonian—and a parallel memory of the same work of art, but in full color.

Cam has come to enjoy comparing and contrasting his various recollections. Memories of the same places or objects should be identical, but they never are, because the various Unwinds represented in his brain each saw the world around them in very different ways. At first Cam had found this confusing and disconcerting—a cause for panic and alarm—but now he finds it curiously illuminating. The varied textures of his memories give him mental parallax on the world. A sort of depth perception beyond the limited point of view of a single individual. He can tell himself that and it would be true—yet beneath it, there is a primal anger brewing at each point of conversion. Each time merging memories contradict, the dissonance reverberates to the very core of his being, as a reminder that not even his memories are his own.

The limo turns up the semicircular driveway of a plantation-style mansion that is either very old or very new but made to look old, like so many things are. Town cars and limos line the driveway. Valets scramble to park the cars of the nonchauffeured guests.

“You know you’re in the highest echelon of society,” Roberta remarks, “when having to valet park a car is an embarrassment.”

Their limo stops, and the door is opened for them.

“Shine, Cam,” Roberta tells him. “Shine like the star you are.”

She gives him a gentle kiss on the cheek. Only after they step out and her attention is on the path ahead of them, does he wipe off the remnants of the kiss with the back of his hand.

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“Is it true what they say about you?” the pretty girl asks.

She wears a dress that’s a little too short for an event filled with gowns and tuxedos. She’s one of the only people Cam’s age at the gala.

“That depends,” he tells her. “What do they say?”

They are in a den in the mansion, away from the hustle and bustle of the crowded party. There’s a wall of leather-bound legal books, a comfortable chair, and a desk too large to be of any practical use. Cam wandered in here to escape from “shining” for the various rich and powerful guests. The girl had followed him in.

“They say that everything you do, you do like no other.” She moves toward him from the door. “They say that every part of you was handpicked to be perfect in every way.”

“That’s not me,” he says slyly. “I believe it’s Mary Poppins who claims to be practically perfect in every way.”

She chuckles as she gets closer to him. “You’re funny, too.”

She is beautiful. Clearly she is also starstruck. She wants to bask in his light, and he wonders if he should let her.

“What’s your name?”

“Miranda,” she says gently. “Can I . . . touch your hair?”

“Only if I can touch yours . . .”

She reaches for him tentatively at first, patting his hair, then running her fingers through the varied textures and colors.

“You’re so . . . exotic. I thought I’d be frightened to see you in person, but I’m not.”

She smells of vanilla and wildflowers—a scent that pings his memories in several nonspecific places. It’s a popular perfume among popular girls.

“Risa Ward is a bitch,” she tells him. “The way she dumped you on national TV. The way she played you, then tossed you away. You deserve someone better. Someone who can appreciate you.”

“Lockdown!” Cam blurts.

She smiles and saunters to the door. “There’s no lock,” she says, “but I can certainly close it.”

She shuts the door and is back in his airspace in an instant. He can’t even remember her moving there; it’s like she dissolved from the door into his embrace. He’s not thinking clearly. There’s too much input to handle, but for once that’s a good feeling.

She undoes his bow tie. He knows he can’t tie it again, but he doesn’t really care. He holds her in his arms, and she leans forward, kissing him. When she pulls away from the kiss, it’s only for a moment to catch her breath. She looks at him with intense mischief in her gaze. She leans in for another kiss that is far more explorative than the first. Cam finds he’s no slouch when it comes to this. Muscle memory, he supposes, for the tongue is most definitely a muscle.

She pulls away again, even more breathless than before. Then she presses her cheek against his, with her lips by his ear, and she whispers so quietly he can barely hear her.