Chapter Twenty-three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

IN THE MORNINGS , Riley liked to swim in the lagoon.

Sometimes, Jonathan joined her, and sometimes she swam alone. She liked it out here, in the morning, the sounds of the birds and the animals as the sun struggled into the air. From the moment she'd arrived here, she'd felt as if this was home.

They belonged here, her and Jonathan, in the depths of the deep tangles of nature, with their fingers right on the pulse of discovering its secrets.

They'd never been like other humans, not really. They'd always been this, she thought, strange and different, a little monstrous, flattened in their emotional responses, and eager for one thing—discovery.

The sex part had been distracting, but they'd managed an injection that had tamed their urges to the point where they were still quite prominent but not so prominent that they distracted them from study.

They'd had nearly viable eggs three times now.

One had matured for over two months before it had just stopped growing at one point.

They didn't know why it wasn't working.

The truth was, it had taken evolution a long time to figure out the ins and outs of creating a human being. It might take their whole lifetimes to figure it out, she supposed.

But when they did, she'd swim in this lagoon with her children—hers and Jonathan's—and they'd finally have created something just like them, something new and perfect and wondrous.

For now, her life was nearly as perfect as it had ever been.

She woke and swam. She had this around her, all around her, nature. She felt connected to the trees and the sky and the water. To it all.

She had her work, and she and Jonathan were working feverishly on a problem that might take them years and years to solve, but she liked the challenge.

She had Jonathan.

They were the same, she thought. And she had been waiting a long time for a man who would understand her, who she could work with. It was the same, their love life and their work, and that suited them both rather well.

And their love life was molten.

She would never trade back down her body to a human body, not after she'd experienced the heights of pleasure that could be found in this one. She didn't know if she was a female anymore or if she was male, or what Jonathan was, and none of that mattered. They'd both always been beyond such things.

Anderson Scott understood.

He was as invested in the project as they were.

He'd vowed to them they could stay here, in their Shangri-La, their little slice of primal heaven, searching for the answers to make new life, as long as it took. And he would keep their secret and fund their research and there wasn't anything more perfect than that.

Now, she caught sight of Jonathan, at the edge of the lagoon, his body glimmering in the morning sun, his gills opening and closing. She looked more like him than a human these days, and this didn't bother her. She liked it.

She swam towards him.

He smiled at her. "Good morning, my love."

"Morning," she called back. "If you're interested in fucking me in the water this morning, I'll likely have a new batch of eggs for us to look at before lunch."

He chuckled, shrugging out of his lab coat. "I could easily be convinced to do exactly that."

"Fill me up, Jonathan," she said in a throaty voice.

He dove for her.

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