Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 110757 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110757 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
“What’s going on with Niran?” Marcus asks.
“He’s been working in the stables every minute he’s not sleeping or eating,” Pax says. “He doesn’t talk to anyone.”
The new council wanted to start fresh. Our command and security teams are no more. Nova is testing and interviewing everyone who wants to be on the new team, which will be for security only. The words command and commander aren’t part of the new Blue Arrow Island.
“I have to go, too,” Pax says. “It’s my day to get the stabilizer.”
Ellison wanted to start small, using it on just a few people a day. I spent a day beside Marcus in bed a few days ago, Ellison drawing a pint of blood from me to make more of her compound.
Pax volunteered to be one of the first, but Ellison wanted to get it into the pregnant women first. The Rising Tide kids will get it once everyone else has taken it.
“I heard one of the side effects is a shriveled-up dick,” Marcus says. “I ducked that one, so I think that makes you statistically more likely to get it.”
Pax scoffs. “My dick’s a legend. I’m not worried about it.” He winks at me. “Speaking of dicks, are we still meeting up later?”
Marcus swings his legs over the side of the bed and starts to get up. I run over to him.
“It’s a joke! Stop. I haven’t left this room to do anything but go to the bathroom, you know he’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”
I have to climb onto his lap to keep him in bed.
“Relax,” Pax says. “I’ll stop by again later.”
“Don’t,” Marcus snarls.
Pax closes the door behind him and Marcus grabs my ass, suddenly not angry anymore.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he says, sinking his fingers in.
I can’t help the arousal that makes me inhale sharply. We came so close to never having a moment like this again. The island kept coming for us, and somehow, we evaded its wrath every time.
“Not yet,” I tell him, resting my forehead on his.
“Come on. Your blood healed me; just imagine what your pussy juice can do.”
I laugh and cringe at the same time. “Never use those two words together again.”
“Pussy nectar? Girlie goo? Cunt cordial?”
I scramble off his lap, still laughing. “Finally I get to meet the high school boy inside you who’s been holding on to those gems for years.”
Ellison opens the door, looking between us. “I can come back.”
“No.” I back away, my cheeks warming. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
“Unless it looks like she’s trying to fuck me,” Marcus quips.
“I will kill you,” I say under my breath.
“Looks like you’re feeling better, Marcus,” Ellison says, walking into the room.
“Better than ever. I don’t think I need this last day of bed rest.”
“Let me check your vitals.”
I go back to my chair and sit down, my pulse still racing. Whether it’s from turning me on or pissing me off, no one has ever gotten me going like Marcus does.
Ellison takes Marcus’s blood pressure and takes his pulse, looking unbothered. After clipping a pulse oximeter onto his fingertip and taking his temperature, she smiles.
“Let’s finish today with modified bed rest. You can leave your bed and walk around, but no exertion until tomorrow. And then, start slowly.”
“I will.”
“You’d better.”
“What about sex?”
I shoot him a glare, but Ellison is unfazed.
“So there are varying levels of sexual exertion,” she says. “Keep it mild and you should be okay.”
“I always keep it mild.”
A laugh bursts out of me. It takes me over, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.
It feels good.
An hour later, Marcus and I are walking around camp, my hand firmly locked in his. I don’t know why I was worried he’d overdo it with walking; we get stopped every hundred steps or so by people who want to talk to him.
He’s been the hot topic around camp for the past week. Everyone knows he nearly died protecting all of us, and the Tiders are especially grateful to him for protecting the kids.
I’ve overheard dozens of conversations from people who said they knew the clone wasn’t really Marcus, and I smile to myself every time. There’s no shame in being fooled; none of us even imagined human cloning was happening on another island nearby.
“His hair just wasn’t the same,” a Tider tells Marcus. “It was so obvious.”
“And his biceps were smaller, right?”
The woman’s eyes widen. “Yes! Much smaller.”
Marcus squeezes my hand, amusement twinkling in his eyes. “Thanks for the well wishes, Sammie. It’s good to be back.”
“Great to have you back.”
She beams at him, then at me, and we keep walking.
“Were you the only one the clone fooled?” he quips.
I roll my eyes. “Apparently so.”
It takes us a while, but we eventually make it to the garden. The volcano’s toxic smell has finally cleared from the air, and people are pushing wheelbarrows filled with soil and compost.