Page 78 of Fighting Gravity
And soothed me when I thought I was dying in the med bay.
And shook me to the bone when he used it at the embassy.
When Rhone stepped forward, I stiffened, leaning against the wall. Slowly, he reached out, taking my wrist in his hand and lifting it. His thumb traced over the pinkish scarring left by the cuffs he put on me during his first interrogation. The way he touched the tender flesh was far too gentle to be the same Rhone that made the scars in the first place.
“Care to tell me what you’re thinking?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
I could punch him…
“The marks on your body,” he continued, dropping my wrist. “The strange art. What does it mean?”
“My tattoos?” I shrugged. “Nothing. The flowers on my arm are just my favorite flowers. The horse on my hip is a really bad interpretation of my first horse growing up, which the artist botched, so she’s just a big, faded blur.” I swallowed. “The moon under my belly button is for the kid I never knew,” I rushed. “And the dots on my shoulder blade are the control panel for the training ship I landed to pass my first piloting test. Everything else is a drunk or high mistake I can’t remember or flash art because I was bored.”
I could tell that Rhone only understood about half the words I just said and I didn’t like the way his eyes lingered so long on different parts of my body like he was staring at my tattoos through my clothing. It made me feel like I never put anything on after my shower.
“What about you? What’s with all the piercings?” I said. “You all seem to have some.”
“They are symbolic of our achievements.”
I counted the two piercings on his right brow and the three studs in his right ear. Like he knew what I was going to ask, he explained.
“My two sisters,” he said, indicating his brow, and then pointed to his ear. “My three brothers.” I was about to ask about the four little rings on his left ear when he kept talking, showing me a small row of embedded studs on one of his head appendages. “The three ships I’ve worked on.”
He pointed to a stud in his librae and explained something about a moon dedicated to military training, but I was distracted by the glint of the silver stud that pierced through his tongue. Every time he opened his mouth to speak, I saw it and I had to wonder.
Rhone stepped closer like he knew I was staring. “All males get this piercing when they mature.”
“Why?”
He canted his head, that smirk returning to his lips. “So they can pleasure a woman.”
Heat trickled south and I tried not to let it show. I pressed my thighs together, irritated at how easy it was for him to turn me on. The idea of him using that pierced tongue on me made me quiver and I wanted to slap him for it.
“How many women have you pleasured?” I muttered. “Being the descendent of a god must make them line up.”
“What Veron told you is a fraction of the story.”
“There are a lot more people looking to you for their future than just the ones on this ship, aren’t there?”
He nodded once. It was a slow gesture like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer me at all.
“There’s no one looking to me for anything,” I admitted. “I can’t imagine what that feels like.”
I was more than surprised to be empathizing with Rhone. It had just come out without warning and I was dumbstruck by it. I swallowed uncomfortably, waiting for Rhone to feed off that moment of tenderness and turn it around. But he didn’t.
“Your species has ventured into space,” he said. “It was inevitable. But don’t presume to know the hundreds of years of conflict you’ve just stepped in the middle of.”
I paused, trying to take some weight off of me because the whole conversation took such a heavy turn. I was feeling suffocated.
“I just came here wanting to fly ships,” I said. “I didn’t come here to be part of a war.”
“And yet here you are,” Rhone whispered.
He stepped in one last time, coming so close to me that I could smell the rugged heat coming off his skin. Once more, his eyes glimpsed my scarred wrists.
“I don’t want to hurt you anymore,” he divulged.
