Anew: Book One: Awakened (5 page)

Ian

“J
ust
coffee, sir?” Hodgkin inquires. He’s a model of imperturbability apart from his
frown. We both know it’s not my breakfast order that he’s concerned about.

I nod. “Just coffee.”

I’ve retreated to the library,
one of the few rooms on the main floor of the palazzo that isn’t light and
airy. The darkness of the mahogany paneling and the shelves of old-style
leather bound books suit my mood. Not for the first time I ask myself what the
hell happened.

In the garden after dinner, I
came within a hair’s breadth of throwing Amelia down on the bed in the pavilion
and fucking her senseless. Instead, I pulled back, re-established control after
a fashion, and sent her away. That would have been the end of it if I hadn’t
stepped out onto the goddamn balcony a few hours later.

The memory of her catching the
rain on her tongue twists through me. Her innocent delight coupled with the
sight of her hands sliding down her body--

I stifle a groan. Self-recrimination barely gets close to
what I’m feeling. I crossed a line that should have been a wall around Amelia,
protecting her. Who takes a woman who doesn’t even know who she is, much less
has any understanding of her circumstances?

A real bastard, that’s who.

Why the hell couldn’t I have waited? Given her time to come
to terms with what I have to tell her before anything else happened?

I thought I was better than that. I’ve
fought
to be
better. The sight of her, the sound of her voice, her scent--I could have
resisted all that. But her courage and spirit, her intelligence and the
strength I sense in her are all another matter. So, too, is the dark pull of
desire that I feel with her, different in every possible way from anything I’ve
ever experienced before.

But then I’ve never been in a situation remotely like this.
So far as I know, no one has been.

The stark truth is that I’m completely unprepared for the
effect she has on me. All too vividly, I remember every moment with her, every
touch, every sound, the way her skin tastes, how she arches her back when she
comes, how her thighs tremble, everything. Including the fact that she was a
virgin.

That’s the most mind blowing
part of all, something I should have anticipated and would have if my head had
been screwed on remotely straight. Instead--

I’ve steered clear of virgins my
whole life only to find myself buried balls deep in one for the most
explosively satisfying fuck I’ve ever experienced.

Worse yet there was more to it
than just incendiary sex. The harsh fact is that taking Amelia the way I did
has stirred something in me I thought was long buried. The raw, primal
possessiveness mocks every enlightened view I could claim to have. I’m more
than a little thrown by that.

“You’re looking a bit peaked,
sir,” Hodgkin observes. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like something in the way of
a restorative? Bloody Mary, perhaps? Swift kick to the posterior? I’d be happy
to provide either.”

He’s got his hangdog face on,
the one that I recognize from long experience means he’s pissed at me. I can’t
blame him. He’s known me a dozen years, since I was sixteen, and he’s seen a
lot. Through it all, he’s been loyal and stalwart.

I respect Hodgkin more than I
respect almost any other man. Ordinarily, I’d take his disapproval as a sign
that I need to rethink what I’m doing. But I’m too far gone for that.

“Just keep an eye out for her,”
I say. “She’s got to wake up sometime.”

He frowns. “As you wish, sir.”

There’s still time to get things
back on track. A week ago, I was shocked and furious at what Susannah had done.
Nothing about the situation appealed to me. On the contrary, I was deeply
resentful of what she’d saddled me with.

Now all I can think of is how to
make this work.

Every assumption I had about how
to handle Amelia is gone. So apparently is most of my self control. My response
to her leaves me nothing short of stunned.

I want her under me. I want to
be in her. I want to hear her moan and feel her clench all around me. To that
end, I need her to accept the reality of her situation. The sooner she does
that, the sooner…

I’m pondering at some enjoyable
length exactly what her acceptance will mean when Hodgkin returns with the
coffee.

Setting the tray on my desk, he
says, “I knocked at Miss Amelia’s door, sir, but there was no response.
However, I did hear the shower running.”

Amelia naked, the water sluicing
over her breasts, into the cleft between her thighs, down her long, tapered
legs… I clear my throat.

“That’s fine. When she’s done,
tell her I want to see her.”

“Or I could ask the lady if she
would be so kind as to join you in the library.”

“Put it however you want,” I
growl. My temper isn’t improved by the anticipation of what I’m about to do.
“Just get her in here.”

Alone again, I wait. How long
does it take to shower and throw on a few clothes? Awhile apparently. I have
time to remember waking beside her in the middle of the night, feeling the
sweet curve of her ass against my hardening cock, sliding my hand between her
thighs--

I wasn’t quite enough of a
bastard to ignore how new she was to all this but even so it took every ounce
of control I still possessed to get out of that golden bed and walk away. As
much as I lusted for her, I needed time to regroup.

Not that it seems to have made
much difference. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what to say to her when
Hodgkin returns. This time he has company.

Eyeing me gravely, he announces,
“Miss Amelia, sir.”

I stand and come around the
other side of the desk, scanning her from head to toe. Whatever she’s wearing
barely registers with me. But I don’t miss that she looks at once beautiful and
wary, her hair tousled, face a little pale, those stunning blue eyes wide and
watchful. Her lips are moist and slightly parted. Her breathing seems a bit
ragged.

Smiling, I say, “Thank you,
Hodgkin. That will be all.”

He sighs but takes the hint and
departs, closing the library door behind him. Deliberately, I move toward her. She
starts to take a step back but catches herself and stands her ground. I’m
surprised to discover how much I like that.

Even so, her wariness concerns
me. When I’m close enough to smell the scent of her skin, I ask softly, “Are
you all right?”

Her face flames. She glances
away, takes a deep breath, and drags her gaze back to mine.

“Yes, I am. I’m just impatient
to hear what you’re finally going to tell me.”

And that, it seems, is all she’s
going to say about last night. I should be relieved. Women who insist on a
post-game play-by-play bore me. Still, I’m a little put out by how readily she
dismisses what for me at least was an unforgettable experience.

“As you wish.”

I indicate a chair on the
opposite side of the desk. If we’re going to get through this smoothly and
efficiently, I need to keep some distance from her.

“Have a seat. Would you like
coffee?” Hodgkin has thoughtfully provided two cups.

Amelia shakes her head. She
sits, her hands gripped in her lap. The knuckles are white. It occurs to me that
the kindest thing I can do is get this over with. I sit down behind the desk,
lean back, press the tips of my fingers together and study her.

“Stop me at any point if you
have questions, all right?”

She gives an almost
imperceptible nod. I take a breath and begin.

“Last year, a woman I cared for
a great deal died. Her name was Susannah McClellan.”

Amelia shoots me a surprised
look. I can’t blame her. The last thing she could have expected was for me to
tell her about a woman I’d been with in the past.

There was more I could have
said--that Susannah had come into my life like a cool draft of water falling on
parched ground. That despite the fact that neither of us could be entirely what
the other needed, we were still good for each other.

In the year since her death,
I’ve gone from helpless rage at my inability to save her to gradual
appreciation of the time we had together. Or at least that was how I felt until
a week ago.

“Bear with me,” I say. “You
won’t understand what I have to tell you without knowing about Susannah.”

I take a breath and run over
again in my mind how to explain what I’m still struggling to grasp myself. The
best that I can do is lay it out for her and hope that she’ll be able to
understand.

“When she was eleven years old,”
I begin, “Susannah was diagnosed with a hereditary illness, the result of a
rare genetic mutation. Her parents, who were very wealthy, were determined to
do everything possible to save her. Stem cell therapy worked up to a point but
it couldn’t cure her. To assure that a compatible source of organs, bone
marrow, and anything else she might need to survive would always be available,
her parents arranged for the creation of a genetically healthy clone.”

I watch Amelia carefully,
gauging her reaction. She frowns and says, “Human cloning is illegal.”

“Not everywhere and even where
it’s been outlawed, it’s still happening. For those wealthy enough to afford
it, the authorities have always been willing to look the other way.”

She shows no surprise that this
is the nature of the world we live in. Hopefully, that means she’ll be better
able to accept the reality of her own situation.

I continue, anxious to get this
over with and move on. “Although Susannah’s illness went into remission, her
parents decided to keep the clone alive in case it was ever needed. It remained
their property until Susannah turned twenty-one, after which ownership was
transferred to her. When the illness struck again a little more than a year
ago, her doctors wanted to harvest the clone in a last ditch effort to save
her. Instead, she decided on a different course. The technology that she chose
to make use of has only recently become available but it’s the result of
developments that began decades ago.”

I don’t question Susannah’s
right to do what she did. But whatever her motives, she left me to deal with
the consequences.

“Beginning in 2013,” I continue,
“the governments of the United States and the European Union sponsored a project
to map the human brain, much as the human genome had been mapped a few decades
before. The goal was to learn exactly how our brains work--how they manage our
bodies, shape our emotions, accumulate knowledge and memories, develop consciousness
and personality, basically to understand everything they do. Technology was developed
to make a precise digital copy of an individual’s brain for purposes of study
and analysis.”

I can’t help reflecting that as
a goal, the Human Brain Project was rock solid. Thanks to it, mental disorders
that had reached epidemic proportions in modern society--depression,
bipolarism, addiction, and the like--became imminently treatable. Uncountable
human suffering has been eliminated or completely prevented.

But if a little of something is
good, a lot of it is bound to be better, right? Being human, we just don’t know
when to stop.

“As with every other technology
we develop,” I continue, “brain mapping had unintended consequences, especially
once someone got the bright idea of applying it to clones. It didn’t take long
to discover that the entire neural map of an individual can be imprinted onto a
suitably receptive brain, one that because of the circumstances in which it has
developed is essentially a blank slate. The process creates a new biological
version of the original person called a ‘replica’.”

I could add that replica
technology--the creation of not just a physical copy of an individual but one
that contains everything that makes us uniquely ourselves--is raising
fundamental questions about what it means to be human. But I don’t want to
overload her any more than I have already.

Amelia has gone very pale. As my
words and their meaning sink in, her pupils begin to dilate. Even without
touching her, I’m sure that her skin is chilled. She has all the symptoms of
someone struggling with profound shock.

We all go through stages when we
have to deal with something that’s too traumatic to accept head on, beginning
with denial. Given that my priority is to get her to the last stage,
acceptance, as quickly as possible, I press on relentlessly.

“Replica technology is highly
controversial.  We haven’t even begun to come to terms with its implications.
But Susannah didn’t let that discourage her. Before she died, she arranged for
her clone to receive her neural imprint. It took awhile to accomplish
everything that had to be done but a week ago, I got a call. That’s when I
learned of your existence.”

She stares at me across the span
of the desk. Her eyes are wide and luminous. I can’t even begin to guess what’s
going on behind them. More to the point, she’s utterly still. I don’t think
she’s even breathing.