fact that Jed wanted them to stop drugging him.
Not so he could get out. That, he could’ve done at any time, despite the drugs and the special metal in the locks. His memories of what life had been before had never faded, even through the distortion of childhood. He never wanted to go back to the life he’d known before coming here. If that meant spending his life in this room, so be it. No, he’d simply hated the fuzzy way the meds made him feel. Slow and thick and stupid.
“Is it getting cold outside?” he asked her suddenly, regretting the stupid words the moment they flew out of his mouth.
Samantha frowned and gave him a sideways glance, then another at the corner of the ceiling where the hidden camera lurked. “You know I’m not allowed to talk about that, Jed.”
“Right, right. I know.” Did they really think he didn’t remember there was a world outside these walls? Sometimes, Jed thought, they must. He’d allowed them to think of him as simple for so long, he must’ve convinced them he was also stupid. “I just wondered.”
“Can you sit down, please?” She gestured, and when he had complied, as he always did, always, never disobedient, she made a show of pulling out her stethoscope but leaned over him as she placed the round part of it against his chest. “The leaves are changing. The air smells like snow.”
That whisper sent an electric jolt all through him. So did her touch on his wrist as she counted the too-many and too-fast beats of his heart. Samantha looked into his eyes, so close he could see the white specks surrounding the blackness of her pupil. She gave him a small, secret smile and waited a moment or so before she officially took his pulse. Giving him time to relax.
She knew him.
She’d never commented on the embarrassing way his body reacted to her standard routine. Not when she used gentle fingers to press his neck and throat to check his lymph nodes and his heartbeat again raced, and not when she had him lift his arms to his sides so she could pass her hands along his body and he shifted against the rise in his pants. She noticed it. She had to. There was no way to hide the heat of his skin. But she always managed to be standing at an angle to block it from the camera, and she always took her time to make it possible for him to calm down before she stepped back.
Today (it was really close to midnight, though they wanted him to think it was more like noon) she lingered with the exam. Stood a little closer than usual. She dropped her stylus, a soft-tipped rubber utensil that should not have been able to cause any harm, should he decide to take it from her and shove it into a vulnerable spot. It was a sensible precaution, though he wondered why nobody had ever seemed to consider the fact he’d need no weapon if he really wanted to hurt someone.
And they thought he was the stupid one.
She smelled so fresh, so clean, that all he could do was close his eyes and breathe her in. He wanted to cover himself in her scent, to wash away the stink of this room. Of all the years...
“Jed,” she said. Warning. “No touching.”
He hadn’t meant to. The gentle pressure of his fingers against the inside of her elbow had been involuntary. He didn’t move them away. Staring into her eyes, Jed let his fingers trace a small circle on her bare skin.
Her lips parted on a small sigh. She blinked rapidly. At the tiniest hint of her tongue pressed to her upper lip, another rush of electricity jolted through him. He was so hard now there’d be no way she could keep up the pretense of this exam long enough for him to hide it from whoever it was that got their jollies watching.
She should move away from, he thought a little incoherently. She had to know what was happening. He should stop touching her, but he couldn’t make himself. Another infinitesimal stroke of his fingertips on her skin had her eyes going wide. Dark.
Her smell changed from fresh air to something his brain told him was flowers, though it had been twenty years since he’d even seen a flower; the taste of her like golden honey, sweet syrup, flooded him through the continuing touch. Every muscle in him tensed, straining, though neither of them so much as moved more than the constant, steady motion of her hands as she made a show of checking his vitals.
Pulse. Temperature. One-handed, not moving so he could keep his fingertips on the inside of her elbow, Samantha kept up a running commentary on what she was doing—for the benefit of the observing camera, maybe. Or for him. For herself, Jed thought irrationally as the steady drone of her voice cracked and dipped for a second before she recovered.
He had never kissed a woman. Never made love. They’d started giving him porn when he hit adolescence—an outlet, they thought, so any pent-up desires could be dissolved. Preventing him from what, from violence? From yearning? It had worked, to a point, he thought now, but you couldn’t replace human touch with paper pages or digital images. You couldn’t replace making love to a woman with your own hand.
He wanted to kiss Samantha. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to make her shiver and shake, not the way the women in those movies did, but from deep inside her core. For real. He wanted to hear her say his name while her body tightened around him...
Samantha put her hand over his, her eyes closing. Her body tensed. She shook, but so briefly there could be no way anyone but Jed would notice. A small moan slipped out of her, covered up so fast by a cough as she turned her head that again, nobody but he could’ve possibly heard it.
“You have to stop.” Her lips moved, in silence he understood, anyway.
Ashamed, he let her go. Samantha took a step back, almost stumbling before she caught herself. Her eyes opened. Gaze focused. A flush had spread up her throat to paint her cheeks. With her back still to the camera, shielding him, she pulled the small cup of meds from her uniform pocket and made a show of dispensing them.
“Take your vitamins,” Samantha said.
They weren’t vitamins, but at least they weren’t hallucinogens or sedatives. He swallowed them with the bottled water she gave him from the small fridge next to the desk. By the time he had, he’d also managed to will his erection back down.
“Careful, you’ve spilled,” she said calmly without looking away from his eyes, not so much as a glance at the small wet patch on the front of his pants.
Still watching out for him, he thought. Doing what she could. His balls ached, but he didn’t dare even to shift in the chair.
They shared a look, lingering as long as they dared. At least he imagined they did, but when she cut her gaze from his, Jed had to admit that perhaps all of this was in his head. Surely Samantha didn’t have any romantic feelings for him. How could she? He shouldn’t mistake kindness and a sense of duty for anything like affection. In fact, he should be ashamed of using his talent to inflict his lust on her.
“Do you need anything?” she asked him.
He needed lots of things, none of which she could give him. “No, thanks. Is it almost time for my session with Dr. Ransom?”
“Yes. I...think so.” Again, her cheeks colored as she checked her watch. “Wow, yes it is. I lost track of time.”
“The exam took longer today,” Jed said, watching her.
Again, Samantha snagged his gaze with hers and didn’t look away. She smiled. “Yes. A little longer.”
Behind her, the green light over the door clicked to red. She
