Page 53 of Mutant Mine

She smiles at me briefly. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say that. But— um. I hope this isn’t rude to ask, but how didyou… What happened to your body?”

Rory has never asked about it before. She has not shown much awareness of my physical differences at all; never stared at the growths on my head or the marks on my skin. I appreciated that about her. But her curiosity was inevitable.

I close my eyes as I answer.

“It was an experiment. An unethical one. We were meddling with forces we did not understand — trying to make ourselves stronger, so that we could fight for peace and justice. We were young, idealists… idiots. We did not know what it really means, to play god.”

Everything that I have said is true.

I open my eyes. Rory has stepped closer to me while I was talking.

Until last night, she always maintained such a strict boundary between us: watching me at all times, positioning herselfjustfurther away than the length of my reach, and as hyper-focused on me as a gazelle around a lion. But now she is reaching up her hand to touch my cheek.

“Thank you,” Rory says. “Thank you for telling me. That… explains a lot.”

Her fingertips trace down my face. I know that she is following one of the blue marks on my skin. They follow the lines of Blaschko: the invisible lines which every human has hidden within their skin, revealing how their cells developed in the womb. I know them well on my own body. Every one of them burned as it transformed.

Rory is chasing that old pain with a different sting. Her fingers brush against my mouth.

I reach up my own hand to cover hers, trapping it. A shaky breath escapes me as I turn my head, pressing my parted lips to her fingertips. It is a desperate motion, but I cannot stop it.

It is not a kiss. It is just a touch. I can allow myself this —just this. The most I will ever take.

Rory sucks in a breath. She meets my gaze, unblinking, with color high in her cheeks and her lips parted.

For a disorientating moment, still locked into each other’s eyes, it seems as if she is swaying up towards me — or perhaps I am leaning down to her. Everything is blurred, all the lines between us. Am I imagining this? Misreading it?

Our noses brush together. We are as close as a whisper now.

“Little bird…” I say, uncertainly.

It is all I have the chance to say before our mouths meet.

26

Rory

ROTH TOUCHEShis lips to mine so softly, once, twice — as if he can’t believe that he’s allowed. Then he pulls back and peers at me cautiously. We’re both breathing hard in the tiny space between us.

I know that Roth must see it in my eyes:Yes, I want this. Yes.Just for a second, I catch his startled expression. And then he’s cradling the back of my head and dragging my mouth back to his.

This time, it’s deeper. My fingers curl against his chest as he teases my lips apart. When his tongue slides against mine for the first time, I feel it in my whole body.

Lightheaded with wanting and, to be honest, sheer shock, I feel brave enough to return the favor. But rather than my tongue slipping into his mouth, it meets something hard and smooth.One of his fangs, I realize, embarrassed, ready to pull back.

Then Roth shivers.

I do it again, on purpose this time: slowly licking at one of his sharp, elongated fangs, then running the very tip of my tongue up and down it.

Roth makes a guttural sound. He’s been so gentle up until now — but whatever immense control was holding him back bursts like a dam, and he’s all over me.

I’ve never been more aware of his size or strength than Iam right now. Roth lifts me off my feet as if I weigh nothing, and dumps me down on something. Then he’s right there: trapping me against the surface with the rock-solid wall of his body, gripping my waist and my hair, and kissing me.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

“What the hell is that?” I ask, pulling back with a gasp. Looking down, I see that the conveniently kissing-height surface that Roth deposited me onto is the instrument panel. My ass has probably been setting the ship to self-destruct. I yelp and shove him backwards, hopping down onto the floor.

Roth reaches behind me and touches something on the panel. The beeping stops.

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