Bethany and I rocked back and forth on the recliner chair she had laid out on her back deck. She was nestled against my chest, curled up so that her legs were resting on my thighs, making almost a low purring noise to herself as one hand rubbed my chest. As welcome as the sensation always was, my attention was wandering to the sight of the sunrise through the trees.
The back deck of her house always had a magnificent view in the fall; the great forest she lived at the edge of, the colors of the falling leaves, the mist on its floor and the songs of the waking birds all coming together to greet the sunrise... I have never since lived in a finer place.
I stroked Bethany's hair with my free hand -- she was so goddamn cute now, and her reaction to it only made her cuter. We had discovered something shocking when she finally recovered from her bedridden state -- the retrovirus didn't just stop the aging process of a normal human, it was actually reversed in her case. Bethany went to sleep at forty-one years old and woke up at just about twenty. She looked younger than any of us now, and she'd lost a few inches of height and gained even better looks -- not to mention a sexier, more energetic and sensitive body, and a generously increased pair of boobs.
For weeks afterward she had been an absolute mess; she would scream things at me randomly, cried herself to sleep, woke up in a rage and threw things at me, fucked me senseless then slapped me so hard my ears rang... I couldn't blame her, to be honest. I never hid from any of it, and let her take out all of her rage on me every time. Trying to dodge it, or blame some now-vanished space alien, would have done neither of us any favors.
I felt horrible about her reaction, even as I tried to explain to her that she had what billions would kill for -- the next best thing to immortality. I had already stolen so much from her; her career, for one thing. When I came back and literally stole her life and identity -- well, destroyed really, I didn't take anything for myself -- and made her externally so young that she couldn't hope to pass as her old self, it drove her pretty much insane for a while.
She avoided mirrors for years afterward, saying that looking at a stranger in the mirror creeped her out like nothing else. At the same time, I was trying to maintain my new relationship with Nina on top of caring for the ongoing catastrophe that was Bethany; the balancing act seemed impossible.
I suppose, in hindsight, that I should have seen through Nina's impossibly pleasant demeanor and tolerance given my erratic disappearances and the odd injuries I came back with. You see, well, it's not a big secret that Nina is smarter than I am; I knew that then and now. What's more, she's wiser, and a better judge of character - so it made zero sense to think she wouldn't be curious about my strange behavior, yet she seemed almost angelic in her patience.
What confused me even more at the time was the fact that she seemed completely unaffected by the retrovirus; she showed no symptoms like Bethany or Emily did, and I began to think she was just immune somehow. In fact, as she told me later, she knew by the fifth day something had changed very profoundly in her body, and she knew that it coincided to just about when she met me. She thought she was pregnant at first, and just sat on the knowledge for a while... until things started to get really weird for her.
It was my own dumb-ass fault that I left the flash drive with 15226's research notes plugged into my computer after a night with her that ended at my place. I didn't even encrypt the files or anything. Smart as she was, she was able to understand more of it in a week than I had in two months, and by the time three weeks had passed after I'd first made love to her, she realized that it wasn't so much that I was some kind of evil mastermind or B-movie space monster - that I was just a confused, horny young man with no idea what he was doing.
When I finally found out she was onto me, she already knew about Bethany, 15226, the Vault, the hominus race and my own retrovirus... everything. I remember the confrontation. She wasn't mad, she wasn't disgusted, she just calmly laid out everything she knew to me, then said that if I didn't fill in the blanks to her satisfaction, that she would walk away and I would never see her again.
It worked. Losing her then would be like losing my own arm; she was already someone I cherished more than life itself. I told her about my semi-abduction, the yacht trip, what 15226 told me about the human race's future, the memories 15226 imbued me with -- that raised an eyebrow -- and I even told her about Emily. I've never kept a secret from her since, probably one the first good decisions I made.
Nina told me to leave afterward so she could think, and I was in despair. I thought she would react like Emily, and began to wonder if every girl would do the same. To my surprise, when I went to Bethany's place the next morning, there she was -- leaning against her car parked on the shoulder, waiting for me to walk her in and introduce her to another of her own kind.
The two hit it off pretty quickly. Bethany's emotional roller coaster seemed to take a break whenever Nina was around; after only a few more days of the two spending almost every waking hour together, Bethany seemed to be herself again. We did things together; nights out at restaurants, movies, walks, long conversations over drinks. Having another female around had some kind of powerful, stabilizing psychological effect on her, like that of a family or an animal pack - even now we don't completely understand it.
Some niggling little voice in me kept hoping for the forbidden fantasy -- but it still was a surprise... there was one day I came home, maybe two months after I'd introduced the two of them to one another. It was already after dark when I walked in, then spent a good half-hour preparing the three of us a fine teriyaki chicken dinner with chow mein and a ginger salad, and put my hand on the doorknob to the back deck to call the girls inside for our meal.
I glanced through the window and saw something that made my cock practically blow my pants in half -- the two of them, topless in Bethany's hot tub, making out. Nina was the instigator -- of course -- and was crowding the smaller brunette Bethany into one corner, those wonderful French-vanilla breasts pressing into Bethany's cappuccino-colored melons.