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time.”
    “ I meant what I said, too. I only live about five
minutes from here. I’d be honored if you spent the night with me.”
    She
kissed him, and he didn’t give a shit that people were still outside, walking
all around them. He’d waited five years for this, and this time he wasn’t going
to blow it by acting like a damn animal. Julianne wasn’t a liar or a cheat
anymore. She was a vibrant, exciting woman, and he wanted to get to know her
better. Much better.
    ****
    Julianne
whistled softly as Kane walked her through his penthouse apartment. It was
bigger than the house she’d grown up in with all those siblings, and nearly
everything inside it looked like it belonged in a museum. “Where did you get
this stuff? Did you have time to salvage that much from above ground?”
    He
shook his head. “No. You’ve heard about the teams Addison Carlyle employs,
right? He lives in NorthWest and owns Carlyle
Imports. Most of the men and women who go up to the surface and retrieve items
for money are part of his teams.”
    “ That would be fun to do. Have you ever gone with
them?”
    A
quick emotion passed over his face, and she swore it was anxiety, but then it
was gone. She couldn’t imagine Kane Bannerman afraid of anything. “A few times.
Long ago. Now I leave that to the experts. Emmett Radcliffe still goes, though
not as often as he used to. He’s the true adrenaline junkie among the twelve of
us.”
    “ You’d have to be to go up there. I’ve heard it’s
horrible. Nothing like we left it.”
    Kane
took her into his arms and kissed her. All thoughts of what it was like on the
surface of the Earth these days were gone as his tongue slid into her mouth.
Her pussy was wet again, and despite the soreness all over her body, she would
fuck him right there on the tile floor of his great room if that’s what he wanted
to do.
    When
he released her, he gazed into her eyes with unbridled lust. “You haven’t seen
my bedroom yet.”
    “ A terrible oversight. Take me there at once.”
    His
bedroom was the one room she imagined had been decorated to suit his
personality, rather than simply filled with antiques and oddities he’d
collected from the surface. It was all chrome and steel, but fit him perfectly.
The furniture resembled the modern design of what she’d seen in the loge, but
this room had been better put together.
    The
large expanse of full-length windows looked out over the fake night of NorthEast , but few buildings from this view were as tall as
this one. He’d have total privacy in here, even at night with the lights on.
“Do you keep the shades open at night?”
    “ Yes. I like to pretend I can see real stars when I
glance out the window from my bed.”
    She
studied his face. “What you’re all doing, the secret teams and the work behind
the scenes, you each really do want the same thing, don’t you? To return to the
surface.”
    He
nodded before she finished asking. “Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. If we as a
people stay down here long enough, we’ll forget all that. What it’s like to
breathe natural air and see the actual sun. We won’t remember the moon, or the
sound of rain hitting hot pavement. We won’t know the difference between fake
birdsong and the real thing. We’ll never see an insect. It will all be gone if
we wait much longer. It’s been almost seven years now. Think of the children
born here during that time in all the cities around the globe who have no idea
of the world we once knew up there.”
    Julianne
had to take a step back as the enormity of his words rushed at her. She’d
misjudged him. She’d misjudged all of them. Sure, they were billionaires, and
they lived and breathed their work, but there was more to each of the men than
their companies and their fortunes. She understood that now in a way she never
had before, and shame at what she’d done to Kane all those years ago filled her
once more.
    If
they didn’t succeed, no one would ever live on the surface again.