Page 20 of Rescuing Mara

I nod, appreciative of his efforts to put me at ease. Lauren grabs something to drink and waves goodbye.

I barely notice her departure, my focus solely on O’Rec. He seems to be all I can see every time I come near him. Everything else just fades into the background.

He steps closer, entering my personal space. When he turns the tattoo device on, it makes a soft buzzing sound. Automatically, I reach for the numbness, but as I take a breath, I am blown away by the scent of spices and leather. O’Rec. I exhale, tension leaving my body in a rush, and I revel in the feeling of him being this close to me. His scent envelops me, and I let my mind drift away, closing my eyes and focusing on breathing.

I’m in a happy place, safe and secure - nothing like the numbness I retreat to for most of my day-to-day life. I revel in the foreign feeling. Before I was completely separated from reality, locked in my head, but now I just take one breath after another, letting his delicious scent envelop me in a bubble.

The sound of his voice is taking me out of my trance, and I notice that the buzzing of the tattoo device has stopped.

“Is it done already?”

O’Rec responds by holding up a mirror so I can see what he has done. I gasp. It is stunning. From the slave band around my neck drops a necklace tattoo. A smaller, mirror image of the swirls he has over his pecs nestles in the valley between my breasts. I clench my fists to keep from touching the lines.

“Do you like it?” O’Rec says hoarsely.

“I love it,” I whisper. My throat feels dry, and I blink a couple of times to keep the tears filling my eyes at bay.

“Thank you!” I say hoarsely. Tension crackles between us, and the moment's intimacy almost overwhelms me.

O’Rec takes my hands and brings them up to his mouth, touching his lips to the knuckles of my left hand, then the ones on my right, never breaking eye contact in the process.

“Whatever you need, I will be there to give it to you. You are the spark in my heart, the light in my sky. Leaving you was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I promise you, I will never leave you again. Where you go, I will follow. If you jump, I will as well. You, Marra, are everything to me.”

CHAPTER14

Mara

His words make my frozen heart crack, and tears threaten to spill. And I never cry. Crying is a weakness, a vulnerability I can never show because it will get me killed. But these words, this man. Nobody has ever spoken to me like that, at least not that I can remember. This… this is not what I expected, not how Ananta told me it would be. “I don’t want to cry,” I whisper.

O’Rec steps closer, his hands moving to frame my face. He wipes away the tears that escaped my eyes with a gentle caress.

“You can cry if you need to, I’m a Warrior, I have seen many things and am not fazed by some tears.”

I sniff, the need for crying passes, but deep inside me I feel something else.

“Can you… can you hold me?” My voice breaks with all the vulnerability I give him.

He doesn’t hesitate but steps in close and softly but firmly pulls me against him.

“Always,” he says.

We stay like this for the longest time, with me sitting on the tabletop and him holding me close. He’s warm, and his skin feels soft. His heartbeat a steady drum in my ears.

When he finally pulls away, I shiver from the loss of warmth and yawn, suddenly feeling very tired.

“Time for bed,” he says before silently leading me towards his bedroom.

I follow him through the ship until we stand before a door. He hesitates before turning towards me.

“You were in my bedroom earlier. That is where I very much prefer you to be, but if you wish to sleep somewhere else, we have guest quarters.”

His hand moves towards a screen to open the doors, but I stop him before he reaches the surface.

“I want to stay in your room, please.”

He smiles before he takes my hand and takes me back to a door on the other side of the hallway.

“You can open the door by putting your hand on the screen here.” He points to a shiny screen on the right of the door. “Only we can use the lock to open the door. Once inside, you can open the doors by using voice control.”

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