“Harder,” I managed to whisper.
He gave a half-laugh, half-growl, and slammed into me even harder than before. I cried out and so did he, as I went over and took him with me. He groaned as he exploded inside me and I clutched at his chest, the orgasm too intense for me to make any sound.
He let my legs slide down slowly as he lowered himself gently onto me and kissed me again, deeply and passionately. I wrapped my legs around his lower body and my arms around his neck. We kissed like this until both our bodies stilled.
As “Accident Sex” by Vendetta Red came on, Jeff slowly rolled us onto our sides. He wrapped one leg around mine and pulled me closer as he pulled the sheet, which was somehow still on the bed, up and over us.
My head was pillowed on his arm, my face nestled back in between his pecs, while I let how wonderful making love with him was and how much I loved him wash over me.
He kissed my head. “I love you, Kitty.”
“I love you, too, Jeff.”
He smiled against my forehead. “I know. I can feel it.” He hugged me. “It’s the best feeling in the world. Now, let’s do what the song says, baby, and go to sleep.”
“Whatever you say, as long as it’s preceded by what we just did.”
He chuckled. “I say that we do this again in the morning, to make sure we start the day off right.”
“That’s one campaign promise I’m going to make you keep, Congressman.”
“Finally, a perk of being in office.”
CHAPTER 52
BECAUSE JAMIE DID US A SOLID and slept in, we did indeed start the day out right. Fortunately we chose not to get too fancy, because we only had time for a couple of orgasms before the baby monitor shared that Jamie and all the pets were up and ready to get on with their day.
Was glad we’d taken the time to do the deed, though, because once we were up, dressed, breakfasted, had dropped Jamie and the pets off at daycare, and joined the others, the happy glow was quickly replaced with the reality that the prior day had been all too real.
Most of those in the Embassy and Zoo were still reeling from what had happened. White, however, insisted that we needed to continue to function and get at least the necessary work done. Hard to argue with the guy who’d been dealing with things like this for decades, so we agreed.
This was the day we normally did the weekly Embassy briefing, so we had the main Embassy staff who were up to it convene in the conference room. There hadn’t been a conference room when we’d moved in, but Pierre had finally had it with us constantly doing big meetings in the ballroom, and had had a couple of the salons on the second floor combined into a nice, spacious conference room.
In addition to me, Jeff, and White, we had Raj, Doreen, Irving, Amy, Christopher, Pierre, Kevin, who was finally back from Dulce, and Stryker, representing Hacker International. No one felt it was appropriate to ask any of the Gowers to attend, though Chuckie insisted that since the rest of the Gowers were with Naomi, he should be involved in the meeting.
Tim and Serene came to represent Alpha & Airborne; Brian was staying with Patrick and the rest of the kids at the daycare center. Len and Kyle were being relieved of child care protection duty by the Barones, so they were with us, along with Buchanan, Adriana, and Mister Joel Oliver.
Rahmi and Rhee asked if I wanted them to stand honor guard over Michael’s body, or if it would be better for them to guard Jamie. I hadn’t forgotten Tim’s point about the animals either keeping things in or out, so I figured we couldn’t have too many trained people guarding the kids, and someone watching out for Brian wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
Plus it would give the princesses more to do, and while they were much improved in how they dealt and reacted to Earth things in general and men in specific from when they’d first been sent to us, they’d probably get more out of spending time with Denise, Brian, and the kids. So had them join the Barones on Daycare Center Guard Duty.
“How bad is it in terms of Imageering?” Jeff asked once everyone was assembled.
Serene shook her head. “It’s bad. All video is corrupted. And I do mean all. Including archival footage. We can’t read anything.”
“What about film?” Chuckie asked.
“We can still read film images. But most of our work revolves around live video. Why?”
“Film is a chemical process, but video stores magnetically. There’s more to it, but whatever they hit us with, it must do something to affect the magnetization of video.”
“Mahin’s like Storm. Maybe they’ve got a Magneto in the Yates Band of Half Siblings from Hell.”
Chuckie nodded. “Anything’s possible.”
“How would they have sent the virus through everything, though?” Christopher asked. “Serene’s not just talking about our archives. We can’t read anything, anywhere.”
“YatesCorp is a huge media conglomerate,” I reminded him. “They have access to the airwaves; they practically control them.”
“The hack was good enough that I’d believe whoever did it could also have infected all existing media,” Stryker said.
“The bigger question is, can we combat it?” Jeff asked. “Or are our imageers rendered as impotent as our empaths?”
“We don’t know yet,” Serene said. “We’re still in too much disarray.”
“Speaking of Mahin, where is she and what’s being done about her?” I asked Buchanan.
“She’s still in Guantanamo. She helped us, but neither your father nor I can be sure she’s changed sides. We are sure she didn’t expect any of the hostages to be hurt, let alone murdered.”
“Well, that’s something, I guess.” This also brought up a question. “You know, I get why they took Brian, and all the Gowers. But what I don’t understand is why they grabbed Melanie and Emily. They aren’t hybrids, and they aren’t that close to either Alfred or Richard’s bloodlines. And they aren’t in positions of real power, not like Gladys, for example. Or their daughters. Speaking of whom, where are Lorraine and Claudia?”
“Verifying that everything’s back in order at the Science Center,” Tim said. “They’ll be joining us soon, I’m sure.” He grinned at Kevin. “We trust you, but it always pays to have another couple sets of eyes on things.”
“No argument,” Kevin said with a laugh. “But I think Kitty has a good point about the specific hostages chosen.”
“Before we delve into that, we have another pressing issue that’s also political in nature,” Raj said. “The President wants to do a full-on hero’s funeral.”
Every A-C either grimaced or looked appalled. Realized I’d never seen an A-C funeral. Wasn’t thrilled that I was going to be seeing one far sooner than later. “What’s wrong with that? It’s a sign of respect.”
“For humans,” Jeff said. “For us, it’s pretty much against our religion.”
“Really?”
White nodded. “We believe that once the soul has left the body, there are a few days set aside, if feasible, for the family to visit and come to grips with the reality. Then we cremate the body and scatter the ashes.”
“The President expects a coffin,” Raj said. “And a full, military-style, twenty-one-gun salute type of ceremony. In part because Michael was an astronaut, and therefore an American hero, and in part because he died defending people against a terrorist attack and is, therefore, a worldwide hero.”
“How much press is there on this?”
Raj handed me the morning’s newspapers. Every one of them had Michael’s death as a front-page headline, the World Weekly News among them. The pictures chosen were all different, though most of them showed him geared up as an astronaut. The World Weekly News’ picture, however, showed him and Brian from when we were all in Paris during Operation Confusion, when we’d had them take the credit for saving innocent people from terrorists.