Anew: Book Three: Entwined (10 page)

“He may have
mentioned something about that,” he says. “You think he’s a better teacher than
I would be?”

The question is
softened by his smile. With a start, I realize that he’s teasing me. At least
partially.

“I think I can
concentrate a lot better around him than I would with you,” I say tartly.

My explanation
seems to satisfy him. He sits back a little, studies me, then says, “On the
subject of plans, I think you should know that I’ve engaged a lobbying firm to
work for legislation that will secure human rights for people who are created
by cloning.”

Several things hit
me all at once. First, he didn’t say ‘clones’, he said ‘people’. Two small
words but the gulf between them is immense and Ian has crossed it. I don’t for
a moment underestimate how far he has come in a very short time. Or what that
says about his fundamental sense of decency and fairness.

But neither can
I deny my own confusion. “How…I mean, is that even possible? Won’t the wealthiest
and most powerful people, the only ones who really stand to benefit from
cloning, fight to prevent any such legislation?”

“Some of them
will,” Ian agrees. “But exposing and defeating Davos will go a long way toward
overcoming any opposition. No one will want to be associated with him even by
implication.”

“I suppose not…”
The result of that begins to sink into me. “If you succeed, the incentive for
cloning will be wiped out.”

Without taking
his eyes from me, he nods. “Most of it at least. The only remaining use would
be to create a child who would come into the world to be loved and cared for as
any child should be.”

I stare at him,
unable to conceal the stark emotion that his words evoke. To all intents and
purposes, I was Susannah’s twin, just eleven years younger than her because of
when I was created. Her parents--I can never think of them as ‘ours’--knew this
but it didn’t matter to them. They were content to leave me as I was, trapped and
helpless, against the day when I might be needed to save the only child they
thought of as their own. Even Susannah herself did the same until, confronted
by the inescapable nature of death, she chose to let me live.

“People will
have to accept that we’re all human,” I say slowly. “It’s not ‘us’ versus
‘them’, however either is defined. There’s only ‘us’. Regardless of how we look
or what we believe or even how we come into the world, we’re all human. We recognize
that and stand together or--”

“Or we don’t
survive,” Ian says bluntly. “Davos and the others like him are just a symptom. We’re
at a fork in the road with two very different futures before us. In one, we use
technology to achieve a better future for everyone and humanity survives, even
thrives. But in the other, only a few benefit and then only temporarily because
by themselves, they’ll never be able to stand against Clarence and his kind.
Humanity really will be lost.”

I’ll need time
to absorb the scope of his vision, at once acutely personal and vast. But one
inescapable result of it strikes me immediately.

‘If you
succeed,” I say, “what happened to me will never happen to anyone else, will
it?”

He hesitates.
“I’ve thought about how it would make you feel if there were never anymore like
you. You have to know, Amelia, that you aren’t alone. You have a family. You
have…me.” A sudden look of uncertainty crosses his face. “If that’s what you
want...”

I gaze at him
through a sheen of tears. This gift he wants to give me, the recognition of my
full humanity, is as nothing compared to the gift of himself. A giddy happiness
seizes me. Standing I hold out my hand.

“Let me show you
how much,” I say.

Amelia

“L
ike this,” Hamako says. “First, the tea is whisked
slowly…then more quickly…then quicker still.”

Her motions are graceful and
controlled as she demonstrates. “Stop when the tea becomes frothy. Set the
chasen
aside…”

She lays the bamboo whisk beside
the tray. “…rotate the cup clockwise twice…”

She does so precisely. “…and
present it to your guest.”

As she sets the cup in front of me,
she bows gracefully from the waist. We are both kneeling on a tatami mat in the
garden’s small ceremonial tea house. The sliding walls are open, admitting the
perfume of jacaranda and bougainvillea bushes. Small birds flit by, drawn to
the water shimmering across the surface of a stone fountain before dripping into
the moss-covered ground. I inhale peace with every breath yet my spirit remains
restless.

In the three days since Ian
revealed his plans, I’ve immersed myself in Hamako’s geisha lessons and
Takashi’s martial arts class. Keeping busy helps fill the hours when Ian is away
but it cannot keep him from my thoughts. I find myself watching the passage of
the sun across the sky, counting the hours until we will be together again.

At the thought of him, my body
stirs deliciously. Last night… Warmth ripples through me at the dark, sensual
memory. Ian drove me mad, making me beg before bringing me to orgasm over and
over again until I was gasping and writhing under him. All while he held
himself in strict check, demonstrating a level of control I can only marvel at
even as I wonder how much longer he will be able to maintain it. And what will
happen when he can’t.

With an effort,
I force myself to focus on what Hamako is saying. She is instructing me in the
art of
obon temae
, the simplest tea ceremony. There are far more
elaborate tea rituals, some taking hours to complete but judging by what I’ve
seen so far, I’ll have all I can do to learn this baby version.

From the precisely prescribed
method of folding the cloth used to protect the hand while pouring the hot
water for tea to the angle that the wrist should be held at while adding the
tea to the cup, every tiny detail is controlled and purposeful. And all must be
carried out with an air of perfect serenity.

“As a dancer you are accustomed to self-discipline,”
she says as I fumble my effort to wipe the lid of the lacquered tea caddy
correctly before opening it. Fingers held just so, one semi-circular motion
across the top of the lid, another across the bottom, except I forget and make
a single swipe that I realize at once is far less graceful.

“That’s true,” I agree, starting
over. “But I can do a series of pirouettes down the entire length of a studio
more readily than I seem able to do this.”

“Patience,” Hamako says with a
smile. “In ballet, you release energy. Here you must contain it. Traditional Japanese
culture places great emphasis on restraint.”

“Because it helps people live
together harmoniously?” I remember what she said about so many being together
on a small archipelago of land surrounded by the vast expanse of the sea.

“That is one of the reasons.
However, there are additional benefits.” She bends her head slightly and
studies me from the corners of her lovely, almond-shaped eyes. “Perhaps you
already know that a degree of restraint heightens the intensity of ultimate release.”

With a start, I realize that Hamako
has made the first sexual reference I have heard from her. Until now, she has
been entirely silent on the subject.

Striving to maintain a serene
expression, I clear my throat and say, “I’m not entirely unfamiliar with that
concept.”

She nods. “Good. You may wish to
consider that as you perform the tea ceremony. Like dance, it has a vocabulary
all its own. A single gesture can communicate courtesy, respect, serenity and…anticipation
of what is to come.”

No wonder Hamako is such a good
teacher. She takes what is already in her student’s mind and uses it to her own
purposes. I begin the steps of the ceremony again and this time I do much better.

When we’ve finished and are putting
away the cups and teapot in a fitted box, I thank her but I also feel compelled
to ask, “Do you miss your old job? You obviously were very good at it.”

She inclines her head in an exquisitely
graceful gesture. “I do miss it sometimes but this is a different phase of my
life. While it lasts, I am content to live in it.”

We linger a little while longer in
the teahouse. She tells me of her days growing up in Kyoto and of the shock her
parents, both robotics engineers, expressed when she told them of her wish to
train as a geisha. They did not reconcile themselves to that decision until she
married Takashi and produced a grandson.

I’m a little puzzled by that. “They
didn’t want you to follow a traditional role and yet…they did?”

She laughs softly. “I don’t blame
them for that. As human beings, we are always torn between conflicting desires,
hai
?”

I’m still thinking about that after
I return to the house. On the surface, my own desires seem starkly clear. I
want Ian to be safe and I want us to be together. But the hard truth is that my
presence in his life has put him in great danger.

Worse yet, I have no illusions
about being able to change that. Nothing will dissuade him from going after
Davos, no matter what the cost. My sense of helplessness is an old wound, dark
and deep, that stirs terrifying memories of a time I wish I could forget.

Determined to resist them, I
carefully fold the kimono I wore earlier and put it away for the next lesson,
which Hamako says will be flower arranging. Apparently, a gardenia is not just
a gardenia and a lily is most certainly not just a lily. They and all their
floral ilk are another conversation, but this time in the geometry of flowers.
I look forward to learning it.

Wearing another of the ‘little
nothing’ sarongs that Ian so thoughtfully provided, I step out onto the terrace
overlooking the lagoon. The sun is warm on my shoulders. A few billowy white
clouds serve only to accentuate the cerulean splendor of the sky above the
atoll. A hummingbird hovers nearby, sipping from a nectar feeder. It’s a
charming picture disrupted only by the appearance of a boat speeding across the
lagoon toward the house. Shading my eyes, I can just make out the sole
occupant.

Ian. Hours sooner than I expected
him.

He’s too far away still for me to
see his features but there is no mistaking the set of his shoulders, the
straightness of his back, the tilt of his head.

My heart speeds up at once, sending
a flush through my body. I feel it in the tightening of my nipples and the
sudden clenching of muscles deep inside me.

By the time he maneuvers the motor
boat onto the beach, I’m waiting there for him. He steps out and comes toward
me, wearing cut-offs, a T-shirt, and a smile. His hair is mussed by the breeze,
gleaming in the sun. I imagine the texture of it beneath my fingers, gripping
the rough silk strands in the throes of ecstatic release.

Even though it’s only been a few
hours since I saw him, a shimmer of intense awareness goes through me. The rest
of the world might as well not exist.

“Is everything all right?” I ask
him as he walks toward me, his long stride eating up the distance.

He cocks an eyebrow. I’m vividly
aware of his gaze moving over me, lingering appreciatively as his smile
deepens. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You’re home early.”

His chuckles. The sound ignites a
burst of pleasure deep in my limbic system. With a start, I realize that I’m
happy simply because he is.

“That’s very domestic,” he says. “I
like it.”

He stops directly in front of me.
Only a few tantalizing inches separate us. He lifts his hand, brushing his
knuckles over the curve of my cheek before twining around a strand of my hair
that has come loose.

He pulls gently, evoking a tiny
sting of pain that makes me gasp.

“I missed you,” he says. “So I made
a command decision to take the afternoon off. We’re going on an excursion.”

I can’t imagine to where,
surrounded as we are by thousands of miles of empty ocean. But he looks so
light-hearted suddenly, almost a boy, that my heart tightens. I can’t bear to
refuse him even though a small voice in the back of my head whispers that more
than a mere impulse is responsible for him being here.

Instead, I yield to a giddy sense
of pleasure and freedom. “That sounds wonderful. Do I need anything?”

Again, his gaze moves over me. The
barely banked heat I see in them is scorching. “No,” he says after a moment.
“You’re perfect just as you are.”

I’m still floating on that when he
hands me into the boat. Moments later, we are skimming across the lagoon, heading
south. A flock of flamingos, outraged at our approach, rises into the sky,
squawking.

“Where are we going?” I ask
finally. We’re on the side of the lagoon opposite the compound. There are no
buildings here apart from the house that we’ve left behind.

“A place you’ll like,” he says and
arcs us in toward the shore.

When he’s drawn us up on the beach
and secured the boat, he turns to me. With a smile, he says, “We walk from
here.”

He takes my hand in one of his. In
the other, he’s holding a wicker picnic basket. At the sight of it, I raise a
brow.

“You came prepared?”

“Always,” he assures me. “The commissary
doesn’t get many picnic requests. They went all out.”

There should be a word for the
quality of feeling suddenly lighter than air. As though happiness itself is the
cure for gravity. Elated hints at it but only just. The reality is beyond
anything I could have imagined.

We walk a short distance over soft
white sand and through tickling bahia grass until we come to the ocean side of
the atoll. The surf is gentler than I have seen it since we arrived. I stand,
marveling at the long crests of water flecked with white-green foam breaking
against the beach after their journey of thousands of miles from the east coast
of Africa.

“This is lovely,” I breathe, inhaling
deeply. The scents of sea and earth fill me. For the moment at least, my cares
fall away.

“It is,” he agrees with such
sincerity that I can’t help but turn to look at him. When I realize that he’s
looking at me rather than at the spectacular view, I flush.

“Are you hungry?” he asks.

I am, ravenously, but not for food.
Being with Ian, hearing his voice, feeling his gaze have reminded me of how
precious this moment--and every moment--can be. The past is memory, the future
unknowable. All we really have is now.

He straightens, standing tall
against the backdrop of sea and sky. His hands rest on his lean hips. He tilts
his head slightly to one side and studies me. “Amelia?”

Keeping my eyes on his, I raise my
hands to the back of my neck where the sarong is tied. My breasts feel tight
and heavy against the fabric, my nipples painfully hard.

We stand on edge of a seemingly
infinite vastness, poised between his brush with death and the inevitable time
when he will leave to hunt Davos. Both together drive me to throw away every
shred of inhibition and seize the moment.

Tilting my chin up, I say softly, “I
don’t want food, Ian. I don’t think I could swallow a bite right now. I want
you, inside me. I want to feel myself clenching all around you, drawing you deeper.
I want to come all along every marvelous inch of your amazing cock.”

His mouth drops open. Emboldened by
his response, I undo the sarong and let it fall below my breasts. Warm, fragrant
air caresses me but all I want is his touch.

“I want your sweat trickling over
my skin.” I continue. “I want to swallow your groans. But what I want most is
to hold you as you come deep in my pussy. I want to overflow with you. Afterward,
I want to feel where you have been hours, days from now.”

“For god’s sake, Amelia--”

If the harsh, breathless rasp of
his voice is any indication, I have a talent for this. Delighted by his
reaction and the heady sense of power it unleashes in me, I let the sarong drop
completely. When I step out of it, I’m left wearing only my panties and an
all-over blush. Resisting the urge to cover myself, I stand still under his
devouring gaze.

“The rest,” he demands. Every trace
of the playful boy is gone. In his place is the man I’m far more accustomed to
dealing with--fiercely passionate, commanding, and irresistible.

I fight the urge to tug the little
scrap of lace off quickly for the simple reason that I’m afraid if I do, I’ll
trip. Sprawling face down on the sand could shatter the mood. Or possibly not.
Ian might simply decide to take advantage of my being in that position.

The thought sends a further ripple
of heat through me. All too easily, I can imagine myself under him, caught
between the earth and the force of his desire, helpless as he thrusts into me,
driving harder and…