Video in Chapter 79 Post

81.

No dreams.

When they woke Freya and Dan made love again, trying to touch something of what they’d shared last night. She was still tender but it wasn’t too painful, and they were both eager to experiment. After a long and sweaty jumble of configurations, they were sore and neither could finish. As Dan was pulling out he saw something in her face and winced as if he’d been struck. She’d tried to mask her disappointment but she had failed.

“I’m sorry,” Dan apologized. He lied down on his side facing away from her, exhaling through his nose like he’d been punctured.

“Don’t be sorry!” Freya insisted. “It’s not you, you’re doing everything right and I love the way you feel.” She spoke rapidly, and her words had no impact. She hugged him from behind, ridiculously small as the big spoon. “I mean that. You’ll feel it when we’re back.”

When we’re back.

She hung on the words, probing at them in her mind. Somewhere the Unity had become normal and separation had become unnatural, something to suffer through. Dan wriggled out of her grasp to sit up against the headboard.

“I feel so shattered,” Dan said. She let the the useless urge to reassure him slip by, and they stared into each other’s eyes, groping for echoes of being one.

Together their eyes drifted to the Starball on the nightstand.

“It’s weird the way I’m aware of the Starball all the time,” Dan said. “It’s like my little toe, I don’t feel it but I’m aware it’s there.”

Freya couldn’t help but wiggle her toes after he said it and he was doing the same. They caught each other’s eyes and began to giggle, they’d been so serious. Dan grinned and slipped down and started tickling her, she yelped and thrashed, almost kicking him.

“Stop!” she cried, and he took her foot and set the instep against his cheek, then he was kissing her heel, and her ankles, along the bridge of her foot. He kissed her toes and then slipped her big toe in his mouth and began to suck on it. It was unexpected, and the sense they were just playing around slipped away. Freya shut her eyes the feeling was at once weird and intimate.

Is that his thing? Is it mine?

She felt herself getting hot, and he was kissing his way up her calf, up the inside of her thigh and she started to tremble.

“Can I?” Dan asked.

“Please.”

Before this, she’d felt his reluctance to go down on her, the lining of fear that he wouldn’t like it. He was enthusiastic now, so much so that she grabbed his hair and pulled him back so that his tongue was barely touching her.

“Softer. As light as you can, move up a little,” she ordered. His eyes fluttered up and his cheeks were flushed, he liked it when she told him what to do. She could feel herself ramping up in response, she took his head in both hands and pulled his mouth tighter against her, riding the edge between intensity and pleasure. It took a long time to get her there, his tongue must have been ready to fall off. Dan, kept going, he was a runner and didn’t mind if something hurt.

Dan’s breathing was getting more intense, he was grinding himself back and forth against the bed while he kissed her. She loved to watch him, his eyes shut as if in prayer, the slow, steady movement of his face between her thighs. Finally she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, she was arching her back, pulling him closer. Her eyes shot open as she came, everything was razor sharp for an instant before it rolled away into white.

He kept going as she was phasing back into the world, and Freya had to push him away. He looked a little stunned.

“Are you ok?”

“So good. I just get sensitive right after. Oh my god, that felt amazing.”

He joined her with a proud little grin, and when he moved to kiss her she had a moment of hesitation, but she went with it. She didn’t know if she’d be grossed out by her own taste but it was nothing.

“I want to know what that feels like as you,” he said, with a bashful glance away.

“Anytime you want,” she said. Against her side she could feel him twitching with excitement and she slipped her hand down to feel him, he was so hard. She grinned and slid down to return the favor.

* * *

Slush and salt hissed under the wheels as they wove through the hills. The Toyota crept past trees laden with snow, melt dripped from them in a diamond rain. They were nearly home.

Freya had worried so much over nothing. It was so simple to be with Dan, so easy to talk with him, or do anything at all, Unified or severed. She could have been happily locked in a prison cell, as long as he was at her side. In the lulls of their conversation she had time and distance to consider everything.

She ran through all of her problems. Flunking math, the insane threats from Malcolm Lewis, Lassa’s unraveling, the authorities investigating, they were all serious issues. But from this vantage she could see they were only side quests. Dan was the main line, the only one who really mattered and now she was certain. She knew him better than anyone ever had or ever would, and she loved him. Even without the Unity she could feel him on her skin, inside of her even after the shower.

He came inside of me.

She hadn’t expected it to feel so important, but the significance echoed in her, a note of shining pride. She felt a stab of worry, what if the pill didn’t work? What if she got pregnant? It was no longer the looming doomsday in her mind it had once seemed. Her thoughts darted ahead, dancing over the possibility, of course it wouldn’t happen, she hadn’t missed a pill but what if…

The thought dug in like a barb, and she knew she hadn’t felt this way before. Even before she met Dan, even before Randall died, she knew she would get rid of it if something happened. She would have gone to Lassa and two minutes later they would have been in the Mercedes headed for the clinic, no discussion needed.

Freya reached into her pocket for the Starball, it was warm to the touch.

Was this what she thought, or what the Starball wanted her to think? She probed, looking for the cool feeling in her skull of the Starball pacifying her. She wondered if Dan would be able to feel a difference in her, for the thousandth time today she wished for Unity. There was every chance it was working on him in the same way.

What do you want? Freya wondered and she wasn’t sure if she was asking the Starball or herself. She was aware she would have to answer for this when the Unity returned. It was crazy, they were too young, they had to go to college, get jobs, get married, all of that. But right now all she wanted was to ask Dan to pull off the road somewhere secluded so she could climb on top of him and have him inside of her again. They were made for this, all else was distraction.

Again she ran her fingers over the orb, wondering what was her and what was it. Maybe this was just what happened when you were in love, something that would pass when the shine wore off.

At last they were on Willow Road, and her heart began to beat faster. Freya was going to invite Dan inside, they could order pizza, snuggle on the couch. She was going to make love to him in her bed, so that she could always feel he’d been there. She hoped he would spend the night, even though she knew he couldn’t. Unity would return, everything would be all right.

But none of those things would happen. Lassa’s car was parked in the driveway.