Second-to-last chapter, y'all! Here we go!
E-DAY plus 15 YEARS, 5 WEEKS
[VNB, 1800 hours]
"Damon, what are you doing?"
Baird froze in mid-lean. Sharon had caught him in a pose like a tight-rope walker losing his balance: right hand down his boot and the other leg slightly lifted while his left hand held up a delicate copper armature like a counterweight. "Um … exactly what it looks like?"
She crossed her arms, cheeks scrunching up in delight. "Which is?"
He straightened up. "I was carrying this armature to the workbench when my calf started itching like a son of a bitch."
"So you had to scratch it right that second, and not a few moments later at the bench?"
"It really itches," he said defensively.
"Your stitches from when the Polyp got you on the submarine?"
"Yeah. I think that means they're ready to be removed." He put the armature down on the workbench and put his foot up on a low shelf, beginning to unstrap the massive combat boot.
"Wait, wait, wait." She crossed quickly to him and put a restraining hand on his arm. Baird stopped again as waves of sensation moved up and down his arm from the point of contact, like ripples from a stone dropped in a pond. "You're going to take them out right now? How?"
"I dunno, tools?"
"They're not sanitary!" she protested.
"Obviously I'll clean them first."
"With what, engine de-greaser?" she asked, still amused.
He started smirking too. "I was thinking paint thinner."
Sharon laughed, making the nape of his neck tingle. "No way. Uh-uh." She jabbed a finger at him. "I'm going to get some actual medical supplies. Sit. Stay."
"Woof-woof," he responded quietly.
She paused at the doorway in a half-turn, silhouetted in late-afternoon light so that he couldn't see her expression. "I'll … I'll be right back," she said.
"I'll be here." He turned quickly away. 'Dammit, what are you doing, Baird?' he questioned himself in panic. He heard her slow footsteps retreating down the gravel path. 'This? This is how you're going to tell her? "Woof-woof"? Really?' He thumped himself lightly on the forehead with a wrench, just below his goggles. 'Get it together, man.'
The truth was, he didn't really have a plan. More and more Stalks were popping up on the island, and Bernie and Dom both had been far too busy to get together with him and Cole for another strategy session.
Baird himself was, as Dizzy liked to say, "busier than a fiddler's elbow" repairing heavy machinery because the Chairman and the Colonel had both asked him to make sure the COG was ready to move again. He hated the idea of leaving the island because: 1) Where would they go? 2) He liked it here, and 3) There was the distinct possibility that the COG would split up for safety. Sharon and her nomads might not go with Delta Squad wherever they were assigned. Baird's stomach did a slow, nauseating roll like a ship in heavy seas. Maybe he could convince Hoffman that Sharon's nomads were still Maria's support system and should go wherever she went, which was obviously anywhere Dom was going. Sure, Hoffman had assigned Marcus and Anya to different locations without a second thought, but military regulations forbade breaking up families whenever possible. Unfortunately, Baird had even fewer rights than Marcus and Anya to protest being separated from a co-worker, especially a civilian.
Baird's head came up. That was it: he just had to get Bernie to persuade Hoffman that the nomads should go with Delta. Now, if she could manage that without telling Hoffman exactly why, that would be ideal...
"I'm back!" Sharon chirped. Baird dropped the tiny airbrush he was using to blow dust out of the armature. "Whoops. Sorry, Damon."
"It's okay." He must have stood there thinking for much longer than it had seemed.
Sharon plunked a cloth bag down on the floor near the old sofa and patted the worn-out springs. "All right, Doc Hayman gave me everything we need. Take off your boot and roll up your pant leg."
Baird's stomach quivered at the realization that she was going to remove the stitches herself. He sat on the sofa and did as she asked.
Sharon knelt by his calf while she cut the bandage off with the safety scissors and peeled it away from the stitches. "Looking good," she said. "No more swelling or redness, and the internal sutures will have dissolved by now. The smaller punctures are entirely healed, although you'll have marks there for a while." She swabbed the line of sutures on the deep wound with antiseptic. The rapid evaporation of the liquid made his leg feel cold, but the chill wasn't what was making him shiver. "This one, though … that's going to leave a mark."
Sharon used a different pair of surgical scissors to remove the sutures. The thread had had to stay in for so long that he had white dashes where they had pierced the skin, making the line down his leg look like the marks on a map that would represent a railroad.
She looked up at him with those fox-like eyes. "You're very quiet. Am I hurting you?"
Not in the way that you mean.
"I'm fine," he assured her. "I could feel the stitches coming out but it didn't hurt." He gestured to her forearms. Sharon was wearing thin leather greaves like a medieval archer. "What about your own stitches? Hayman was supposed to take yours out a week ago."
"She did, but also said to keep wearing something protective over them for the next couple of months so I don't re-tear the skin bumping my arms against something. My leatherworker Kristof made them for me. Don't they look great?" Sharon rotated her forearms to admire the fine lacing on the topside of the greaves.
Baird thought they looked sexy as hell, and his body agreed. Thank God for the COG-blocker, because she was kneeling right at pelvis-height and if he had been wearing only clothing she could not have helped but notice. He quickly bent over at the waist to pull up his sock and shove his foot back into the boot.
Sharon stood up when he did. "You're sweating. That long-sleeved flannel can't be comfortable. Didn't Dom give you those shirts we picked out?"
He cleared his throat to rid his voice-box of the rough notes that would have influenced its tone. "Yeah, they're over there." He indicated a greasy cardboard box in the corner. "They literally haven't been laundered in seven or eight years. Can't just throw them in the base laundromat with my fatigues because the stitching might be too delicate to survive the tumble-dry cycle."
"I'll hand-wash them!" Sharon offered quickly. "Can't have you getting heatstroke."
Baird was suddenly suspicious. "Sharon..."
"Hmm?" she asked with wide, overly-innocent eyes.
"You wouldn't be trying to get out of fixing the chain hoists for the armory, would you?" He nodded at the three disassembled hoists on her side of the workshop.
Sharon plunked the bag of medical supplies onto the bench. "No. Of course not. Don't be silly. What would make you think that?"
"You're running errands and offering to wash clothes. Clothes with eight-year-old dirt and body odor on them."
Her old you caught me smile spread across her lips, and Baird found his mouth curving in response. "But it's so damn boring!" She pointed to each hoist in turn. "Weld the cracked load sheave, replace the negative phase protector, stabilize the voltage on the control circuit, ugh! I could do it in my sleep."
He couldn't help but smirk. "You never did show your work in math class, either."
"Yes, exactly! Because it's boring!" She paced a few steps, pursing her lips. "You know," she said, "I wouldn't have to wear these greaves if I could speed up the skin remodeling with a" -she gave him a sultry look that he knew was meant to be a parody, but really just made his boxers feel too small- "cold plasma stimulation probe." Her tongue rolled around the Ls like she was licking a lamppost. Baird felt a flush of heat start at his waistband and scorch its way down over his thighs.
Sharon must have taken the widening of his eyes for interest in the topic, because she clapped her hands together and whirled around to root through her schematics drawer. "Look!" She brought a hand-drawn blueprint over to him. He had to clasp his hands behind his back so he wouldn't slip an arm around her.
"Cold plasma?" he almost stuttered. She smelled like lye soap and engine oil, and it was making his head swim.
"Yeah!" She jabbed a finger at the parts as she named them. "This is the plasma column that runs the length of the probe, here is where the connector line from the argon canister would come in, and it would need tiny magnetic coils all along the shaft to maintain the integrity of the stream-"
"Sharon," he said, turning away abruptly, "we don't have the time or materials to make a cold plasma probe."
"Hm? Why not?" When he glanced at her over his shoulder, she looked like a kid being told Father Winter wouldn't be coming this year.
"Because we might be leaving soon."
"Leaving?" she asked in a small voice.
Baird sighed regretfully. "I'm not supposed to tell any civilians, but: yeah. Hoffman's worried about the increasing Stalk activity, and wants us to be ready to evacuate within a few days' notice if necessary."
"But … but … I like it here." Her voice was breathy with disbelief.
He bent his head over the broken armature, the cheerful color of the copper loops seeming to dim along with her enthusiasm. "Yeah. I'm sorry, but … that's the way it might go down."
"But where would we go?" Baird's pulse missed a beat at her casual use of the word we.
"I don't know. Having most of humanity in one spot like Jacinto or Vectes isn't turning out to be such a great idea, so some of us will probably go to Anvil Gate, some back to Port Farrall, some to the Islands that aren't overrun by Grubs or Glowies, and some would stay on Sovereign and provide security up and down the coastal settlements. A lot of the Vectes locals don't want to leave, and if they spread out over the island, they might stay beneath the Glowies' notice and be left alone."
"Split up," she repeated softly. "But we just got here. We only just-"
He stepped over to her, making patting motions in the air above her shoulders. Her eyes were worried, and she looked ill. "Listen, hey, it might not come to that. We don't know for sure what's happening with the Stalks, and the rest of Delta is out there torching them right now. They don't grow back after the pods have been destroyed."
She looked down at the schematic in her hands, blinking. "Split up?" she mumbled.
His pulse skipped another beat at the idea that it was the splitting-up part that might be bothering her the most, and not the loss of the shop or the stability of staying in one place.
"I can ask Hoffman to send the nomads wherever Delta Squad goes. If you like."
She looked up hopefully, the color coming back to her cheeks. "You'd do that?"
"Yeah, of course. Maria will be going wherever Dom goes, and she still needs you guys, right?"
That beautiful smile spread across her face again, making him feel like more of a hero than Marcus Freaking Fenix of the Two-Six Royal Tough-guy Infantry. "I'd like that," she said, in a tone that made his thighs quiver even more than when she'd said cold plasma stimulation probe.
Baird's tac/com chirped in his ear, breaking the eye-lock they'd had going on. He ground his teeth momentarily. "Yeah, what is it, Control?"
The crippled Gear who'd replaced Anya said, "Corporal Baird, Sergeant Mataki has a motorcyle at the docks that she needs fixed by tomorrow morning. Delta will be going out on another Stalk recon."
"Copy that, I'll come get it in the Packhorse. Baird, out."
"What are you going to pick up in the Packhorse?"
"A motorcycle for Bernie, at the docks. She needs it for tomorrow."
"I'll get it!" She grinned widely at him.
"Sharon," he said in warning. "The hoists."
Sharon flipped on the noisy rock-polisher on her way to the key rack. "What's that? I can't hear you! Are you saying something?"
Baird couldn't keep the grin off his face as soon as she was gone. "She wants to come with us," he said to himself. DENIS clicked rapidly from his favorite hiding spot in the rafters, something along the lines of I told you so. The knowledge that Sharon wanted to go wherever Delta was posted had him smiling for so long that his cheeks were aching by the time she rumbled back into the Pack's bay with the motorcycle in the truck bed.
"Who gets to fix Mataki's bike?" She hopped out of the driver's seat, landing on both feet because the truck was too tall for her to simply step out of. He snatched both sets of keys out of her hand before she could run off with them. "I am. You're doing the hoists." She pouted. "Don't look at me like that. They'll take you all of two hours if you really dig into it."
She grumbled and hit the control for the garage door, now that the evening wind was beginning to stir up dust outside.
"I tell you what: if you do the hoists and anything else Hoffman requests, in a timely manner, every day I'll get you more of the materials for the cold plasma device."
"Really?!"
"Yes, really."
"Damon, you are the best!" She sprinted to her workbench and started rooting around for the welder needed to fix the first hoist. A warm, narcotic feeling bloomed in his chest as he went over to his own tools for the right kind of spark plugs.
"Here, catch." He took his goggles off by the strap and tossed them to her. She caught them underhand behind her back, barely looking. "Don't burn your retinas. I don't trust the visor in that welder's hood."
Sharon looped the goggles around her neck. "Still have to wear the hood to protect my face, though."
"Can't be too careful with your face, ba—" he coughed, covering for the slip. "Bandages on your face aren't as fun as they look."
She sighed. "I know. But welding through two pairs of goggles is going to take longer than usual." She winked over her shoulder. "I might only be able to finish two of the hoists today."
"You'll just end up having to do the third one tomorrow morning, along with everything else we're assigned, and it'll take all day. Longer, if you think up more bullshit errands to run."
"Don't worry, I'll get it all done on time, I'm just messing with you. I won't mind making a few extra trips every day to stretch my legs, though, even if it makes the actual work take a little longer."
Baird snorted. "Oh, sure, Sharon. I bet you'll have a great time doing laundry and running errands for little old ladies."
Sharon chuckled warmly as she sifted through a jar of connectors that DENIS hadn't gotten around to sorting. "Yeah, well, it's good practice for when we're old."
Baird's hand froze over the drawer of spark plugs. His breath stopped in his throat. Her back was to him, but he could see that she too had stopped moving.
"You still think we'll grow old together." He meant to ask it like a question, but his voice came out completely flat.
He could hear her swallow even from three feet away. She said slowly, "I suppose I just didn't … uh … come up with a Plan B." She sighed shakily and rolled a connector between her palms. "... sorry ..."
Baird's world shrank down to just the workshop. There was nothing outside now. No COG, no Locust or Lambent, not even the passing of time. There was only him and Sharon.
Surprisingly, his hands weren't trembling, so he used them to lift the top tray out of his red toolbox and scoop out the tools so he could remove the false bottom. He drew out the titanium necklace he'd made last week.
Baird watched her out of the corner of his eye as he slowly replaced the tools and tray with a tinkling sound. She was swearing under her breath and tossing random objects into the bin beside her.
At the sound of his footsteps approaching, her shoulders drew closer together.
Bernie had asked him not to make any big decisions without her, but screw the plan: he wasn't going to get a better opportunity than this.
Baird held his arm forward over her head and let the tiny gear-shaped pendant fall from his fingers and swing from the chain, directly before her eyes.
"I thought you might want a replacement," he said.
Sharon grasped the pendant in her delicate fingers and Baird let the ball-bearing chain drop. He took a large step back.
She cupped the necklace in her palms and stared down at it for so long that Baird's ears started to ring from the silence.
Sharon turned around with the pendant clenched in her fist. She stared at him with wide, golden eyes. He said nothing.
"Damon?" she asked in a small voice, as if this, and not their meeting at Port Farrall, was the first time she'd seen him in fifteen years.
"Hi," he answered shyly.
"Oh, my God!" She jumped at him, throwing her arms around his neck, and he caught her against his chest. His heart pounded like an engine coming apart.
Sharon buried her face in his neck with a sobbing laugh. "Damon, I missed you so much." She tightened her arms around his neck. "I thought I'd lost you."
Baird blurted out, "Me, too. I mean, saw your name on the Presumed Dead list ten years ago, and I-"
Sharon pulled back and put her hands on his cheeks, the chain of their necklace woven through her fingers, cold against his hot skin. "I heard that most of the COG military was wiped out on E-Day, and-"
Then they were talking over each other, dropping thoughts and picking them up again to have multiple conversations at the same time.
"Dom told me about the Riftworm, and I-"
"-saw the mag field designs and thought they looked like something you'd-"
"-was thinking of you out there fighting without much ballistic protection, so I made-"
"-these crazy monsters the AI called The Sires-"
"-swear to you that sneaking around in Nexus isn't as risky as it sounds because-"
"-freaky Lambent glowy things at the Imulsion refinery-"
"-found the first bloodhound at a burned farmhouse-"
Their rapid-fire storytelling trailed off, and they stared at each other. Baird was still holding her up with his arms around her thighs so that her face was above his. Sharon untangled the necklace from her fingers and looped the chain around her neck over his goggles. Baird shifted her weight to one of his forearms, and his other hand traced the line of ball bearings down to the tiny gear lying against her skin.
She slowly moved a hand to cup his jawline and her thumb traced the corner of his mouth. Then she leaned down and kissed him.
Baird hadn't realized how much pain he'd been in until it was gone.
He walked them over to the workbench and plunked her down on it so he could do more with his hands. His head buzzed like standing too close to a power transformer. Sharon slipped her fingers under the hem of his shirt to touch his skin. Baird hissed in approval and kissed her greedily as he stood between her knees. There would be time for tender kisses later. Much later.
He pressed his mouth to hers, hard, and she answered with the same intensity, both desperate to pack as many heated kisses into these few moments as they could. There was a true sense of urgency, knowing that sooner or later something would take them away from each other. Any second now there could be a siren or an explosion or a call on the tac/com—
The little radio started chattering in his ear as if on cue. Without breaking the kiss, Baird yanked out the earpiece and slammed it down on the workbench.
"DENIS!" Baird spoke out the side of his mouth. "Go outside and lock the door!" He heard happy clicking from the robot and felt Sharon smile against his lips.
Sharon's eager fingers un-clipped his tactical belt and it fell to the floor. Something delicate in one of the pouches broke with a snap. Any other day and he would have been horrified. Today he kicked the belt away impatiently and fumbled at the buttons on her shirt until it opened. Her hands slid around his back under his shirt, but when he did the same to her, his fingers got tangled in several layers of fabric.
Their kiss broke apart with a soft smack as he straightened up to get a better look. "The hell...?"
Sharon looked very amused as he pushed her shirt down her arms. "It's a bra."
"That is definitely not a bra. You're done up like a mummy."
She rolled her eyes, smiling. "Nobody makes real brassieres anymore. A long strip of fabric for a breast band is the best we can do."
Baird grumbled and snatched up the bandage scissors, fully prepared to cut off the offending garment.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" She fended off his hand with both palms. "This is the only one I've got! Do you know how difficult it is to find three continuous yards of stretchy fabric?"
Baird shook his head. "Sorry, sugar, it's got to go."
She raised her eyebrows at him sardonically. "Oh, really? You'd rather I bounce around Vectes completely bra-less?"
Baird paused. He put down the scissors. "You may have a point."
She ran a finger along his bottom lip. "So … shall we?"
Baird didn't need to be asked twice. He picked her up again and took the stairs two at a time. It was a good thing the door was already ajar, or he would have kicked the damn thing off its hinges. Sharon was braced with her hands on his shoulders, laughing uproariously.
Rather than just put her down, he spun on his heels and fell backward onto the floor-height bed with her on top of him. Getting his lower-body armor off while maintaining the kiss was a bit difficult, but they made it work.
"Wait a second," Sharon panted as she sat back on his knees. "Didn't Carmine and Alissa-"
Baird took advantage of the break to lift her up so he could get rid of the camo pants. "Oh, hell, no. I burned that damn thing." He gestured to the wide mattress they sat on. "Made this one from fabric and straw." Finally pantsless, he pulled her back onto his lap.
Sharon lifted her arms over her head like a ballerina so he could unwrap the breast band.
"Come on, come on, you little bastard," he gritted through his teeth as he yanked at the offending cloth with clumsy fingers. "Goddamn, how long is this thing?"
She chuckled at his eagerness. "Long enough to keep me from jiggling when I walk."
Baird growled with need at the image that brought to mind. At last, the final loop of fabric fell away and the whole thing draped around her hips like a skirt.
He stared. Sharon lowered her arms slowly and said nothing. Baird brought both hands up to cup her breasts and frowned slightly. "Huh," he said thoughtfully.
Sharon's mouth curled up at the corner. "They didn't shrink," she informed him in a dry tone. "Your hands got bigger."
He shook his head. "That's not what I meant." He bounced them lightly in his palms and she giggled. "They're … I don't know, denser? More … full? My, uh, favorite part is darker now? I'm not explaining this very well."
Her smirk faded away. "Yes, those things will happen when you breastfeed a baby."
He trailed his fingers down to trace the faint white stretch marks from the pregnancy still visible on her stomach. When he looked up, her smile was small and sad.
"I wish-" he began.
Sharon tossed her head as if to clear it, then held his face in both hands and kissed the space between his eyebrows. "Sex now," she said. "Talk later."
He grinned when she did. "Hell, yes." He pulled her down on top of him, and their hands got tangled in each other while fighting to get her underwear off without sitting up.
They stopped again when his shirt came off and Sharon immediately put a fist to her mouth to suppress a laugh.
"Okay, now what?" Baird rolled his eyes, smiling. "Too much chest hair? Not enough chest hair? Has my belly button offended your delicate sensibilities somehow? It's my clavicles, isn't it? You don't like my collarbones."
"No," she squeaked.
"Then what?" he asked patiently, enjoying the quiver of her naked stomach against him.
She pressed her lips together hard and then blurted out, "Your abs look like an ice cube tray!" She fell over sideways onto the mattress, holding her stomach and giggling madly. Since the resultant jiggling was not at all unwelcome, he leaned his shoulders against the wall and pursed his lips in mock annoyance.
"Okay, so, let's review." He held up a finger and pointed to it with his other hand. "First I was 'bumpy' and smelled like old gym socks-"
"When did I say that?" She grinned up at him, the sparkle coming back into her eyes.
"You were completely hammered. Don't interrupt."
Sharon pressed both fists against her mouth as he held up a second finger.
"Then I had 'man boobs'-"
Sharon said, "Moobs!" in a strangled voice.
"Quiet, you." He lifted a third finger. "And now apparently my stomach reminds you of a kitchen gadget?"
Sharon squeaked through her fingers, "Mm-hm!"
Baird snatched up his long-sleeved shirt. "That's it. We're doing this with my shirt on." Sharon tried to wrestle it away from him, finally managing to make him drop it by kissing him Kashkuri-style, i.e.: with lots of tongue. "Okay, okay," he panted, leaning back on his elbows. "No shirt. You'll just have to suffer through looking at my weird torso."
Sharon braced herself up on one arm and drew a finger from the notch between his collarbones down his sternum and into the valley between his abdominal muscles. He shuddered and his vision went blurry when she leaned over him to slip her palm down his boxers. His breath caught in his throat. Sharon lifted an eyebrow and said in a low voice, "Well. I see everything important is still the same."
"Yeah," he joked through his tight throat, "the T-boosters really allowed the rest of me to catch up."
She hummed her amusement against his mouth and pushed off his boxers while he rolled them over so she lay beneath him. Her eyes became heavy-lidded and his pulse started pounding painfully in his neck and groin.
He poised himself between her legs but went no further, asking her with his eyes if she was truly ready, or if his new body was too strange and she needed more time.
Sharon reached out and pulled his hips forward into her. Her moan turned into a whimper partway through, and Baird let out a noise that was definitely a manly groan and not a sob. Definitely not.
He couldn't move, only pant heavily. Sharon stirred beneath him, but he didn't budge.
"Damon?" she panted.
"Yeah. Yeah, I just … I just need a minute." His eyes wouldn't open. Not a dream, not a dream, not a memory or a dream, please," he prayed silently to Whoever might be listening. If this weren't real ... if he'd somehow been dosed with a hallucinogen, or was in a coma, or experiencing temporary dementia ... he'd never be able to recover from the heartbreak of waking up from this. He'd go mad. Stark, raving mad.
He felt the backs of her fingers trace down his cheeks, and when he opened his eyes, he saw his goggles as they lay around her neck, with the chain of their necklace draped over the nose bridge. He hadn't had goggles like these as a teenager, and that, more than anything, told him this was real.
Sharon crossed her ankles over the small of his back and drew them toward herself, causing a burst of pleasure so intense that his tongue curled and his eyes rolled back. She pulled his head down and took his tongue in her mouth, setting off a fire in his brain.
It was actually a good thing the bed didn't have a frame, because he would have pounded it into kindling just then.
It was just as frantic and out-of-control as the first time they'd been together, but the noises he dimly registered over his own groaning told him she didn't mind.
After a few minutes, though, something went wrong. Her hands fell away from his back and her legs dropped open limply. He felt the change immediately and came to a screeching halt.
Sharon had her eyes shut, her face expressionless except for a slight wrinkle between her eyebrows. Her hands lay palm-up on the mattress, unmoving.
"Sharon?" She didn't respond.
Baird thought frantically, desperate to figure out what was wrong and fix it, goddamn it. This wasn't supposed to happen. He didn't even know what "this" was.
What was wrong? She wasn't participating anymore; she was enduring it, as if this were something he was doing to her instead of with her.
The realization shocked him more than if someone had suddenly dumped a bucket of ice water onto his steaming back. Something had changed her. Something that bastard had done to her-
Baird chopped off that thought and tossed it over his shoulder into the Think About It Later pile.
With tremendous effort he kept his body still and waited until she opened her eyes. Her eyelids flickered like she was waking from sleep, and her gaze slowly came back into focus on him.
"Oh," she said in a tone that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and not in the good way. "It's you." A smile tried to form at the corners of her mouth.
"It's me," he affirmed. "It'll always be me. I -" He swallowed hard at the effort of keeping still. "I may feel different, but it's still me."
She tried to smile and failed. He'd seen that same grim expression on Captain Tremain's face whenever the shell-shocked officer tried to pretend he still had human emotions.
He picked up one of her hands and held it against his chest. "It's me," he said. "You're okay."
She made that awful expression again.
He thought for a moment, kneading her hand in his fingers. What would convince her? he wondered. What would bring her back? What's something that's only ours?
Then it came to him.
"Sharon," he said. "Bite me."
Sharon made a surprised Huh noise and jerked her head back, blinking. "What ...?"
"Yes," he said, giving her what she used to call The Look. "Do it like you used to." He lowered his eyes to her mouth. "Bite me."
Baird was willing to bet everything he owned that the thieving bastard had never said that to her. He leaned close, drew his tongue along the edge of her ear and said it again. "Bite me." He rolled his hips and she gasped in that way that always went straight to his brain-stem.
A change moved across her face like the leading edge of a rainstorm. He saw her mouth form his name. She drew her nails sharply along his ribs in a way that would leave long welts on his skin and sent lightning bolts of ecstasy down to his thighs and groin. "Unh," was all he could say as he lost the ability to see for a moment. Sharon whispered things he couldn't quite hear as she lay a path of nibbles and kisses down his neck, and his arms quivered like he was bench-pressing a block of solid iron. Just a little longer, he told himself. Sharon first. He shifted his arms, bracing one hand against the wall over her head, and the other sneaking under her left knee to draw it up higher. Sharon drew the edges of her teeth along the slope of his shoulder, and then she sank her teeth gently into the muscle with a whimper that absolutely scrambled his brain. Her body shuddered beneath and around him, and he pushed so hard against the wooden wall that he'd have to pick out splinters later on.
"I love you," she breathed against his skin. Baird halted in mid-thrust. She looked up into his face. Her hand stroked a sweaty strand of blond hair out of his astonished eyes. "I do. I never stopped."
Damon lifted his girl against him and gave her everything he had, body and soul.
Maybe he blacked out, maybe not, but the next thing Baird registered was Sharon's whisper as she tapped desperately on his shoulder.
"Damon." Tap, tap. "Damon, you're squishing me."
Sure enough, she was crushed flat between him and the mattress, struggling for air.
"Oh, shit, I'm sorry." Baird rolled off her and onto the left side of the bed, like always.
Sharon coughed once and then chuckled. "Déjà vu." She grinned at him.
He grinned back. "The best kind of vu." Baird arranged the thin pillow against the wall to cushion his head, and opened his arms for her to lie on his chest. Sharon snuggled against him and threw a leg over his thigh as she drew a thin sheet across their bodies. She sighed happily.
Baird chewed his lip for a moment. "You all right? I lost you for a minute there."
She tilted her head to look up at him. "Yeah, it was just … I closed my eyes for too long and you felt like … someone not-Damon. I'm not really sure what happened."
He kissed her forehead. "I'm sorry about that. It wasn't a complication I really considered during the T-booster shots."
She pinched his collarbone between her fingers like she was measuring the thickness with a set of calipers. "It's not just muscle mass and testosterone," she said in wonder. "Your actual bones are thicker!"
"Yeah, 'T-booster' is sort of a catch-all term. Most of what the injections actually do is supercharge the pituitary gland, so your body starts making human growth hormone again. Forces you beyond the limits of what's supposed to be your natural size."
She turned one of his hands, trying to thread their fingers together. His fingers were so wide now that they barely fit between her fingertips and couldn't slot all the way down. Baird bit his lip in frustration.
"Hey," Sharon said to get his attention. He looked at her, knowing he had a sour expression on his face. She stopped trying to lace their fingers and just pressed her palm to his. Her fingertips barely reached the first knuckles. "It kept you alive," she said. "I wouldn't have cared if they'd grafted a pair of gorilla arms to your back if it kept you alive." She paused. "Please don't have a pair of gorilla arms grafted to your back."
He chuckled. "I solemnly swear I will not graft gorilla arms to my back, as long as you never have a sex change."
She belly-laughed. Baird would never not love the way that felt against his side.
"I'll get used to it," she promised him. "It's how you're built now, so I'll learn to like it." She ran her fingertips over his abs like someone playing a xylophone. She smiled up at him with the tip of her tongue between her teeth. "In fact," she said, "I think a crash course in familiarity is just what the doctor ordered."