Covenant (boyxboy)

Chapter Nine

Spring was slow in coming, as it always was in the mountains. A single day of mild temperatures would be immediately followed by a white-out blizzard, much to Connor's delight. But other than the occasional foot or two of snow accumulation, the months of March and April passed by uneventfully.

Connor and I went to the institute almost every day. Bo and I ran tests, analyzed data, and redacted reports until late in the night to keep Cambrias satisfied with our progress. I had visits three times a week with Lundas, where he put the electrodes back on my head and asked me both personal and existential questions. And because the Council had rejected the petition to remove me from the courting roster, every Friday night was spent at the Elioud school, surrounded by people who were mostly inclined to avoid me.

Every spare moment in between, I was fighting with the angelic nucleotides that stood in the way of undoing Connor's pheromone problem.

Connor bore all our experiments with his usual patience and curiosity. He didn't complain as we pricked him with needles, scanned him with every imaginable piece of equipment, asked him to drink bad-tasting electrolyte solutions and deposit his bodily fluids into an endless series of sample cups. Cambrias' interest in him was neverending. How did his metabolism compare to an Elioud's? Did his sperm cells display similar characteristics to Elioud oocytes? Was his Y chromosome contributing to his above-average N-factor? How did his cells react to the introduction of various allergens?

I tried to keep the experiments as non-invasive as possible, drawing small samples and working with the potentially harmful substances in vitro only. I pissed Cambrias off at least weekly, because he'd want us to test something on Connor directly and l'd veto it. I think he was hesitant to push me too hard, because of what my epiphany had done to Father.

The one procedure I hadn't been able to spare Connor from was a spinal tap. Cambrias threatened it was either that or explorative brain surgery to get the data he was looking for. Bo assured me he could do it without damaging any of Connor's nervous functions, but I was a knot of anxiety the entire time. True to his word, Bo pulled it off without a hitch. And working with Connor's cerebrospinal fluid was easier than his blood samples; Bo and I didn't have to do nearly the amount of adjustments to hide his ovarian system.

Connor was back to his workouts a couple days later. He was truly serious about them, I'd realized. No matter what else had happened that day, even the days he was on his period and feeling like crap, he still wanted to go to the fitness center and lift weights. Grace had him doing all kinds of strength and agility exercises, and inevitably he was dripping with sweat and pheromones by the time he got through them, practically glowing with self-satisfaction.

At first I went into the room with him, and stood at the door to keep everyone else out. We justified our monopoly of the space by having him wear different types of sensors while he exercised, which actually did render useful data and kept the other employees from complaining too much.

But soon, staying in there became too difficult. Never mind that his movements were gangly and awkward. There was something about his legs flexing as he squatted, the earnest hard squeezes of his shoulders, the soft little grunts escaping his lips... I couldn't spot for him without my heart pounding so hard I was dizzy. The pheromone blocker formula was useless when he was exercising, it evaporated before it could neutralize the attractants he was releasing.

By the time he was ready to head for the showers, I was irritable, uncomfortably aroused, and plagued with erotic thoughts that had no business being in my head. Thoughts of sliding hands over his worked muscles, tasting his sweat-slicked skin. The way he'd feel against my lips if I ran them along his collarbone. The knowledge that if I followed him into the showers, he'd probably let me do all that and more.