Page 128 of By the Pint

I looked at Dima.

“Any time you want to stop, we can. Okay?”

I nodded, pushed the door open, and there before me, were a set of rooms. The entrance space opened to a living area, with a sofa, a coffee table, a vintage sideboard, a big TV, a set of shelves, and a drinks cabinet. It was minimalist and modern, and clean, and …

“I really like it,” I said. “I don’t remember any of it, but it all feels right. If you know what I mean?”

“Of course.” Dima gazed into my eyes. I saw the love in his expression. Literally saw it in his softened features, his raised brow which was gently creased, his slightly parted lips, the way he seemed to be holding a breath he didn’t need. It was like he was seeing me for the first time. Like he was opening a Winter Fest gift and realising he’d received exactly what he asked for. A smile blossomed across his cheeks, and he slammed his mouth against mine.

It’s time to grant your undeath day wish.He pushed me backwards. A series of short, forceful shoves, broken up by yet more kisses, guiding me to the bedroom area. He shucked his cloak and tossed it onto the floor. I did the same with my jacket.

The bed was a low, utilitarian type thing. Solid wood, but no headboard. Somebody, probably the grumpy centaur and histiny angry wife, had recently switched the sheets for clean ones — I smelled the laundry detergent — and placed a vase of fresh flowers on the nightstand. Whether they’d done it out of duty towards Killian, or perhaps I wasn’t as much of a shit as I was letting myself believe.

Dima pushed me right up to the foot of the bed. This time, he never let his mouth leave mine. He undid the buttons on my shirt. His hands shook.

“I’ve waited so fucking long for this moment,” he whispered against my lips. He cupped my ass cheeks and urged my hips against his.

And then abruptly, something washed over me. Something huge. “Wait!”

“What is it?” he asked, as I slid out from his grip and began searching the room for … something. “What are you looking for?”

But I had no idea. Only an overwhelming sense of familiarity. Déjà vu. I moved to the living room area, Dima followed, but I still didn’t understand what I was trying to find. I scanned the coffee table, looked through drawers on the sideboard.

“I’ll know when I see—”

Then, my eyes landed on the bookshelves. To a hardback book facing forward, with, impossibly, a photo of Dima on the front. I remembered, I actually fucking remembered, why I was looking for it.

“You wrote in the front of this book. You wrote,I feel like I’ve been waiting for this moment.” I opened it up to the first few pages, and sure enough, Dima had scratched those exact words onto the paper. “Did you know?” I whispered. “When you wrote that. Did you know we would be here all this time later? That we were …” I tried to come up with an appropriate term. Boyfriends didn’t seem adequate. Lovers? Best friends? No,more than that. It was more than that. Dima and I were made to be together. Destined. We were two halves of a whole. Two sides of the same coin. The only two pieces of a two-piece jigsaw puzzle. “That we had a soul bond?”

Dima couldn’t answer me because he was crying, obviously. He shook his head.

I love you,I said into his mind, because I was certain if I said it aloud I’d be next with the waterworks. I pulled him into a kiss, squashing the book between us.

Another not-quite-a-memory-but-more-than-a-vibe flitted into my thoughts. “Pages eighty-six and seven.”

Dima laughed over his sob. I eased a gap between us and opened the book to those pages.

“Woah!” I think my eyes about fell out of my head. I searched the memories Dima had showed me.

“It’s AI. My flatmate helped me. Took him hours and hours to get the prompts exactly right, and he’s something of a tech genius. A fae.”

But all I saw in the memory was my own bewildered face staring back at me.

“I need to see this for real. Like right now. I need to know if this is accurate.”

We had messed around at the facility, but each time almost always fully clothed, because the risk of Nina or one of the other minders walking in at the wrong moment had been catastrophically high. So, I sort of knew what he looked like, and I’d sort of felt his body when I could sneak a hand up his sweatshirt, or down his pants, but I still hadn’t seen the whole thing naked in front of me all at once. And I needed that. More than I needed my next pint of O neg.

“Dima? I, uh, how will this work?” I hadn’t had sex before, at least not in my current memories. Technically,technically,I was a virgin. Though, like I knew where everythingwent. I’d seen it in Dima’s memories, and on the instructional‘Welcome to Immortality’training videos they made us watch. Practiced it in the shower often, too.

He didn’t answer my question. Instead, he pulled his sweatshirt and shirt over his head, let them drop to the floor, and then, casual as fuck, he walked into the bedroom. By the time I’d torn myself from my daze and caught up with him, he had also rid himself of his boots and trousers and was wiggling free from his underpants.

And there he was in all his naked glory, except for the locker key dangling from his neck. Just like the picture from the book. But better, because there was no quilting hoop covering his cock, which stood erect and happy and proud and, fuck, so inviting.

A dormant human impulse arose in me, and I sucked in a breath. He was perfect. More perfect than I’d ever imagined anyone could be.

I undid the last few buttons on my shirt, kicked my shoes off, whipped open my belt, and let my suit trousers and boxers drop to the ground. Dima sat his ass on the edge of the bed. I came to stand in front of him.

“Casey?” he said, looking up at me, his hair falling back over his shoulders. He reached his hands forward and cupped my ass cheeks. “Will you please fuck me?”

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