Sometimes desire burns too bright and hot to seek comfort, much less prudence: we wind up entangled on the floor with our fingers buried to the hilt inside each other, panting, dripping with sweat that makes our skin slide wherever we touch, clinging together and trembling from the aftermath of fury.

Carefully freeing my hand, I flop onto my back, gasping. Cosima rolls over, sprawling on top of me, glazing my thigh with her wetness, floating kisses over my neck and throat.

"Are you all right?" I say, my fingers meandering up and down her side, the curve of her hip, skimming teasingly over the narrow taper of her waist, along the soft weight of her breast pressed to mine.

She chuckles. "Says the woman who couldn't even wait to get me to bed before fucking my brains out."

"I don't remember hearing any complaints."

"That's because you didn't give me time to lodge any," she teases, kissing me softly, lingeringly. "Right now I'm so full of endorphins and pheromones that I could probably, like, undergo an appendectomy without anesthesia and I would barely notice it. Besides," she mumbles into my neck, snuggling closer, "I've got a really nice pillow. Firm and squishy in just the right places."

I press my lips to her temple, smiling. "Yes, but your pillow is starting to get uncomfortable — the floor is a little hard on my shoulder blades and pelvic bones. And I think I have cracker crumbs under my ass."

Raising up on her arm, she rolls my hip to inspect underneath it. "Nope. Cap'n Crunch. With Crunchberries." Sweeping away the debris with the side of her hand and briskly brushing my buttock for good measure, she sets me back down and burrows into me again.

"Sarah lets Kira eat that garbage?"

"Jeez, Dr. Cormier, judgy much? Kira eats oatmeal and fruit for breakfast. The Cap'n Crunch is Sarah's and Felix's." Her lips and tongue are doing enchanting things to the nerve endings in my earlobe. "I might've had some of it too, when I had a bad case of the munchies the other night."

Laughing, I look down, our bodies joined so closely they begrudge even the air any space between us. We are unequivocally a mess; though we managed to get most of the guacamole inside rather than on us, there are still traces of green here and there and both of us are decidedly sticky and grubby. "I could use a bath." I kiss her, my lips and tongue petitioning hers. "Care to join me?"

She smiles against my lips. "You just want to deprive me of my pillow." But she rolls easily to her feet and helps me stand. My arms encircle her waist to pull her in tightly, the curves of her body melding into me, her flesh searing my skin. Recapturing her mouth, my hands stroke her sweat-cooling back until finally, breathlessly, she breaks our kiss, her arms unwinding from my neck and shoulders and sliding slowly down to loosely tangle her fingers with mine. I rest my forehead against hers, and she cranes up to steal another kiss. "Right. Bath."

Towing me by the hand to the bathroom, Cosima lets me step into the tub first while she tucks her dreads turban-style into a towel. She notices me watching. "Washing my hair's kind of an involved process — takes like ten hours to dry, so I usually do it early in the morning." I move to sit but she stops me with a kiss. Rather than filling the tub right away, she picks up a handheld sprayer and attaches the connector end of the hose to the faucet; after the water has heated up, she plays the spray over me, the sensation like tiny gentle fingers all over my skin.

I take the sprayer from her and return the favor, paying special attention to her breasts and aiming the water teasingly between her legs, making her squirm. She reaches for a loofah, one of several hanging by hooks next to the tub, wetting it lightly and then adding a dollop of lemongrass-thyme shower gel. We take turns scrubbing each other, hands gliding over water-slick skin, rinsing and repeating the process unnecessarily until growing need makes it dangerous for us to remain standing. Kissing me softly, she washes every trace of lather from us and the sides of the tub, then inserts the drain plug and disconnects the sprayer from the faucet.

As the tub fills, I lean back against the sloping end. When the water level reaches to within a few inches of the top, Cosima turns off the flow and settles into my embrace with a contented sigh. Wrapping my arms around her slender frame, I let my hands roam freely, limning the firm swells of her breasts, the taut muscles beneath the flat expanse of her abdomen. With her head resting on my shoulder, my mouth easily finds hers, beckoning, offering, feasting. Cosima interrupts our unceasing kissing only to let out some of the cooling water and top up with more hot, then curls up against me.

"I think we've got this whole thing backwards," she says, nuzzling the line of my jaw and settling a hand along the curve of my ribcage, her thumb playing idly over the center of my chest.

Kissing her temple, my hands rub slow circles into the small of her back, grazing the very base of her spine to make her shiver. "How do you mean?"

"Most people start out with necking before going on to the fucking-like-crazed-bunnies portion of the evening's program."

"Are you going to insist on a refund for the price of your ticket?"

"Hell, no." Tipping up her head, she reaches to brush damp tendrils of hair from my brow, then slides her hand to the back of my neck to pull me into a kiss. "Worth every goddamn cent, and then some."

Time passes deliciously as we indulge in the interweaving of our lips and tongues, our hands wandering over every bit of flesh within reach. She tries to swallow a yawn; with a pang of conscience I remember that, unlike me, she has not had the benefit of a long nap. Unable to control the flare of my pulse, the rush of heat to my sex, I kiss her swiftly and then scoot over to the other end of the tub, settling her feet in my lap.

There is a motley selection of essential oils on a nearby shelf; picking out a bottle labeled peppermint extract, I pour some into my palm. Holding up one small neatly shaped foot, I rub the oil all over it and start by digging my thumbs into the digital flexor muscle, rubbing laterally and in tight circles, then extending and carefully twisting each toe until the little joints make tiny popping sounds.

When I slowly work my knuckles into her arch, Cosima groans. "Oh, my god, you totally missed your calling. Why are you so good at that?"

"For a while in med school, I dated a dancer named Christophe. He was in the corps at Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris. Like all dancers, he had disgusting feet — he always had ingrown or missing toenails and infected corns and these huge calluses on top of his first metatarsals that were constantly getting ripped open."

"Stop, please, you're making him sound totally irresistible," she says wryly.

Making a face at her, I flex her foot axially and rub my thumbs between all the tendons. "But he was so beautiful, and an amazing dancer. We weren't together for very long, though — he was terribly vain and self-absorbed, and he didn't understand why I had to spend so much time studying instead of being with him. Anyway, I learned a bit about reflexology and chiropractic adjustments from helping him recover after workouts and performances. You have some tightness in your plantar fascia, by the way."

"I know, I know. But I would never be able to live down the hippie chick stereotype if I started wearing Birkenstocks all the time. Mmmmm," she says as I apply firm cross fiber pressure to her heel, "can you just, like, never stop doing that?"

I press a kiss to her instep, smiling. "It might make going in to work a little awkward." Satisfied that all the tension and adhesions have been kneaded out, I let her foot slip back into the tub. Methodically I go through the same routine with her other foot; I would swear that I can hear her purr.

After adding more hot water, I slide back to the other end to gather her in my arms again. She snuggles into me, making a mewling sound into my neck.

"Delphine?"

"Yes, Cosima?"

"I'm kinda nervous about Monday."

"You have nothing to be nervous about, ma chérie," I say, stroking her back. "I've read your papers, seen the quality of your research. I know Dr. Hammill invited you to UMN specifically based on the strength of your study on post-translational protein modification in neural — "

"It's not the work. It's... well, I've always been immersed in academia — pure science, learning for the sake of learning, you know? And now I'm going to be part of this huge commercial entity where there's a high probability that any new principles or techniques or treatments I discover will be instantly commoditized, maybe even taken out of my hands before I've had a chance to thoroughly explore and understand them."

"If it's ownership you're concerned about, you should know that Dyad takes intellectual property very seriously; we retain the top IP and patent law specialists in every country where we have a presence. And unlike in a university setting, you will have unlimited resources at your disposal. Funds, equipment, consultations with top experts in every conceivable field, whatever you need, all you have to do is request it." Holding her closely, I decide not to tell her about the infamous "kill-switch clause" in the contracts and confidentiality agreements for members of Dyad's upper echelons, of which I am a newly minted initiate. It doesn't apply to her, and with luck it never will. She doesn't need to know, doesn't need to expend energy worrying about me.

"Hrmph. Unlimited resources, as long as I produce, right?"

"It's not like you wouldn't have been under pressure to publish while completing your doctorate."

"True. Mostly I just don't want to become an asshole, so totally convinced of my omniscience that I stop being curious, lose any sense of wonder about my discoveries and start thinking that I'm the ultimate authority on my little box of toys."

Like Aldous, I silently finish her sentence for her. And the caricature of a scientist that he has become.

I kiss her forehead and hold her more securely against me. "I don't think that will ever happen to you."

After a long interval, during which I'm sure she must have drifted off, she stirs again, kissing me beneath my ear. "Are you still sleeping with him?"

"Cosima, no! Not since you and I started — "

Too late I realize how neatly she has maneuvered me into answering a question she hadn't actually asked.

From this angle I can't read her face, but her expression is as closed as I've ever seen it. She shrugs. "It's okay, I get it. I don't blame Leekie for being attracted to you, because... because, well, damn. As for you, you're young, ambitious, and when you're swimming in a shark tank like Dyad it's smart to attach yourself to a big shark as closely as possible. It's obvious that he's still got a thing for you and that he gives you a lot more leeway than any of his other associates. Were you in love with him?"

I have never felt so utterly dissected, so much like a bug impaled on a pin. Suddenly I'm not so certain that Cosima will have any difficulty adapting to Dyad's dispassionately ruthless corporate mentality. Once more I remind myself that she shares her genome with a streetwise hustler and also with a genuine psychotic trained as an assassin. "No," I say in a small voice. "But he never forced me to do anything I didn't agree to."

"Were you ever going to tell me that you'd been sleeping with him?"

"I don't know. Probably not." I take a deep breath. "I was ashamed to tell you. And I was afraid of how you would react."

"Fair enough."

Cosima falls silent for a while. I trace the intricate whorls of her nautilus tattoo with my finger. "What are you thinking?" I say hesitantly.

"Just free-associating. Something about that Sun Tzu quote, 'To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.'"

"Aldous isn't your enemy. Neither is Dyad. Neither am I."

Hitching herself upright, she straddles me and kisses me roughly, her hands winding almost painfully into my hair. "I'd really like to believe that," she says, her lips hard against mine. "But you should know that, even if you were my enemy, I'd still want to bone you."

She yawns hugely, spoiling the air of erotic menace. Despite the rawness of my emotions — like my fingertips earlier this evening, they feel as though they've been abraded one layer too deeply — I can't help laughing; after a minute, she joins in. "That's it, my little strategist, I'm putting you to bed."