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After we said our thank you’s and good-night’s, she patted her leg. “Come on, Darwin. Eddie made you dinner, too.”

With his tail swishing behind him, Darwin followed Shea and Paul into the hall.

Jesse shut the door and plugged the phone into the wall outlet near the table. As he swiped at the screen, Roark, Michio, and I dug into the hearty meal. There were no extra dishes, so we ate directly from the bowls with a mismatched collection of utensils.

A moment later, a familiar low-key riff of guitar chords strummed through the phone’s speaker. Wordlessly, the four of us sat on the bed, passing the bowls between us and listening to Nirvana’s “Come As You Are.”

How long had it been since I’d heard music? Five…six months? I’d left my music player and solar charger with the Lakota in the mountains, but it had been before that, long before the plague even, since I’d heard this song.

The grungy instrumentals vibrated through me, conjuring memories of my rebellious youth, when my biggest fear in life was my dad catching the scent of weed on my clothes.

My guardians appeared to be lost in their own memories. The dim glow of the overhead light illuminated their naked chests. Jesse and Michio wore sweatpants, their abdominal muscles rippling with the rise and fall of their breaths. Roark’s powerful calves were exposed beneath his athletic shorts, his legs stretched out beside me. As he reached for a forkful of meat from the bowl next to Jesse, his narrow waistline creased, accentuating the ridges of his eight-pack.

I swallowed down my arousal with a flavorful bite of lemon-peppered noodles. “This song makes me think of high school.”

Roark lay on his back and tucked a hand beneath his head, staring at the ceiling. “Same here.”

Made sense. He was thirty-five, like me.

I looked at Jesse, the youngest of my guardians at age thirty-one. “You were in elementary school when this song came out, right?”

“Yeah.” Jesse sat on the far end of the bed with his back against the wall, his leg bent, and an arm draped over his raised knee. “I was still on the Lakota reservation. My parents didn’t divorce until I was in high school.”

Which was when he left the reservation to move to Texas with his dad.

And now, there were no more Native American reservations. No more cultural prejudices for that matter. Some religions might have perpetuated, but there were so few people left, most faiths would likely be gone within a generation or two. Especially if Aiman’s programming succeeded in exterminating free will.

Sitting cross-legged beside me, Michio set his fork down, his gaze inwardly focused. Youthfulness etched his profile, from his wrinkle-free olive complexion and thick black hair to the symmetrical bone structure of his face and the hairless skin around his full lips. I wasn’t sure he could grow facial hair, which made him appear even younger. He could easily pass as twenty-something, yet he was the oldest of us at age thirty-nine.

I nudged his shoulder with mine. “A kiss for your thoughts?”

The corner of his mouth twitched, despite the pink rimming his soft brown eyes.

He leaned down and pressed a chaste kiss to my lips. “I was thinking of Isabella. She loved this band.”

I gave him a gentle smile. Isabella had been his girlfriend through med school and years after…until the plague hit. He’d told me one night in the mountains that he’d been too focused on his work to marry her.

Reaching for his hand, I interlaced our fingers. “You look sad.”

He traced the skin between my knuckles. “I should’ve set her free to marry another before… It doesn’t matter now.”

I wished I would’ve told Joel I loved him more often. I wished I would’ve spent less time in the office and more time with Annie and Aaron. We all had regrets. It was easy to second guess every action with the clarity of hindsight.

Roark reached around Jesse and snatched the phone. He flipped through the screens, his thumb pausing and his eyebrows crawling up his forehead. “Dropkick Murphys? Now that’s the shot.”

As we finished eating and moved the empty bowls and water bottles to the table, the cacophony of upbeat drums, guitar, and bagpipes pounded through the room. Roark sang along, his gruff vocal melody a blend of punk, old Irish lilt, and sexy swagger.

I loved his accented voice and how his jade eyes glimmered when he sang. I loved the way his shorts stretched over his groin, the thin material highlighting the line of his long cock. I loved how hard his muscular thighs were, remembering the flex and press of them as they spread me open. A spasm clenched in my pussy, intensifying an endless ache.

Jesse and Michio moved the table near the door, and I sprawled on the bed beside Roark. He opened the Bushmills, drinking directly from the bottle as I scrolled through the music selection.