The thought of her drove him from his work, so much so that when he heard the first tap against the tank he was certain it was his own imagination. But he indulged himself, and standing to look over the edge of the tank, he studied her.
Her skin was soft white under the water. A luminous content of slopes and angles. She was not dead to him, but merely waiting for life. And in that waiting she glowed; she didn't need sunlight or pale moonlight to bestow magnitude and elegancy to her. She radiated it all by herself.
"What will you make of this life, I wonder?" He plunged his hand into the water and brought up her limp wrist. The skin was slick and smooth, the texture of cream, cooling on the windowsill.
"I miss talking to you," he confessed, his eyes searching hers out. "It's good to have someone to talk to." He knew he should back away, go back his work. Documenting his research had to be the most important task to him, but he could not look away. "You'll learn that soon enough," he continued to her. Knowing and hoping that when she was risen she would speak to him as she had before. Confide her secrets, and be able to explore her change with him as the original creation had been so unwilling to do. She—this new Brona—would never call him father, she would call him, Victor.
"Who will you be, I wonder?" He brought his hand across her sternum, examining the clean lines of the Y incision that accompanied her autopsy. He ran his finger along the top cuts before letting his fingers travel downward toward the base of her navel.
He could feel himself growing hard and straining against his trouser leg. His hand moved up toward her chest, circling the soft, lily-white mound of her breast. The nipple, even in death, was partially erect. He let his fingertip circle it, yearning to take it into his mouth. Stretching his whole hand out, he let his palm wader down to her abdomen and cup the side of her hip. He let out of hiss of surprise. He had never touched a woman so intimately, and the curve of her hip thrilled him even more than her breast had. As a physician he had seen the female anatomy—breasts, genitalia—but he had never slid his hand along the side of a woman's body before, never felt the dip and incline, or the soft curve of buttock or thigh.
"Who will you be?" he wondered, aloud. Searching her out with his eyes and then with his hands. "Has this," he brought her own hand into his and wrapped her fingers around his own. "Has this hand ever known love?"
He should stop. He needed to stop. But he couldn't resist bringing her watery hand up to his mouth to kiss the cold palm. "Who will you be?" He asked again, tugging at the lever that would bring her body up out of the water. He let go of her only long enough to pull the other lever that lowered her back onto the examination table. "Who will you be?" It was like a chant now, a prayer. Touching her again, this time he used both hands to wrap around her hips, feeling his fingers circle back behind her back to tug ever so slightly. He imagined what it would be to have her lifted up on top of him, with her legs astride his own, riding him at her pleasure, with his hands, just here, guiding her, and grasping at her. He could hear the tearing scream of pleasure that would ripple from between her lips.
Victor, she would say, Oh Victor.
And the hot explosion of his own that would overtake him. Deleting all sense of doubt and worry from his mind, until there was only them. Only this.
He removed one of his hands to unbutton the waist of his pants, and when he pulled back the fabric his throbbing erection sprang free. He took her hand again and circled her fingers around him. "Yes," he hissed through gritted teeth. With his hand above her own, and his own fingers sculpting hers into place he guided her hand, sliding strongly up the shaft and then back down. "Oh, god." He kept her hand moving slowly, wanting to saver each moment, each slick slide of their hands together, their joining. "Has this hand ever—" he spoke in a strangled voice, holding himself back from the brink. "—ever known love…?"
He moaned, the sound splitting and echoing into the silence of the room.
His other hand was flush against her body now, moving from her breast and to her hip and back again. He wanted to kiss the base of throat but to move would be to end all of this, and as excruciating as holding back was, he didn't want any of this to end.
Gritting his teeth for the last final movements of her hand that he knew he could stand, he readied himself. Feeling chills creep up across his back and his arms, and the throbbing ach became an agony that he had never known before. He had readied himself. Tiptoeing to the edge and holding himself back from the final leap until his very soul was at the splitting point.
The knock at the door startled him. He dropped her hand and jumped back, omitting a horrified gasp that both he could have been discovered, and that he had let his fantasy wander so far out of his control.
Quickly, without look at her again he pulled her back into the water and began to dry his hands. When he looked back into the water it was not her face that his gaze fell to, but rather that sf curve below her waist where her hip began; that soft mound that his hands so longed to touch and feel and stroke again.
"I'll be back soon."