Page 57 of Surfaces
I shook my head.
“That’s what happens when you really connect—time just flies!”
When you really connect… Is he talking about me?A soft hope, so different and foreign to me, unfurled inside my stomach, smooth and delicate as a rose petal. I tried to shake off the feeling—this strange effeminate weakness—but it clung to my ribs and wouldn’t go away. I wanted him to be talking about me, I realized with a start. I really wanted it.
“Tonight was amazing, don’t you think?” he said. “I know I’ve only been away from town a week but I didn’t realize how much I missed intellectual conversation. You know?” He gave a yawn and stretched his bronze arms, drawing my eyes to their sculpted muscles and the outline of his fingertips.
But instead of the flare of lust that I expected based on my reactions to Julian’s body earlier in the day, I felt fluttering inside my ribcage—as if a moth had wandered in and gotten trapped. I rubbed at the spot, trying to erase that sensation.
Strange. I was feeling strange again.
Perhaps from the heart palpitation.Maybe the spell hadn’t been enough.I’d have to think on it.
In fact, I realized…I’d gone through this entire day without planning how I was going to attack Avia next. I hadn’t thought about what I was going to do in order to set her on edge, disrupt this tournament.
Julian had distracted me from my quest, an offense normally punishable by dismemberment at the least. But I glanced over at the way his lips quirked, slightly higher on the right side…and I couldn’t find my normal stores of annoyance or dismissal. Instead, that softness brushed against me again.
He spoke, and I had to remind myself to listen to the conversation instead of wondering so much about what was going on with my fool body.
“I suppose that I thought more men of intellect would compete for Queen Avia’s hand, you know?” Julian sighed dolefully. “Of course, the world is run by brute force and I didn’t take that into calculation—the number of brutes competing for her. Did you see Watkins and Valdez earlier? I swear, I thought they’d shift and fight. Savages, I tell you. So glad I found you amongst the competitors.”
The way my fingers tingled at that compliment and my face stretched into a grin was absolutely childish. I might have preferred to continue to get rock-hard erections around him, instead of this syrupy sweetness. I tried to hedge against my emotions by turning his conversation down a serious path. “I think a man who can encompass both intellect and brute force is best suited to run the world.”
Julian laughed in response.
Shocked, I paused in our swim, my feet slowing their rapid paddle so I could turn and stare at him, my teeth clenching—memories of my courtiers laughing at Bloss’s shite orgasm wish filling my mind. I hated being thought a fool.
His pale green hair wavered in the current and when he noticed my expression, he stopped laughing. He put a hand to his lips instead and my eyes naturally followed.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that you said a man should run the world.”
“Yes. Why not?” I shrugged.
“Well. It’s just that the queens have always controlled—”
“If you can envision a world without magic, why not one where men rule the world instead of women?”
He grinned and tossed an arm around my shoulder, clapping my triceps. “True enough. Good point. Good point. I’m sorry about my reaction. I didn’t mean any offense. I don’t often think about politics, unless it relates to medicine. A bit outside my wheelhouse. But you have a fascinating proposition here. How different would the world be if men ran it? Would there be fewer wars? I mean…the Fire Wars were just horrific. Then you have the recent debacle with our own queen.” His face took on a somber quality as he processed my proposal. “I wonder… Stavros, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you decided to compete so I’m not alone amongst these over-muscled idiots.”
Julian was agreeing with me, complimenting me, but I was more focused on the fact that he was freely and willingly touching me, on the way the pads of his fingers felt against my skin. Perfect.
It was an unsettlingly pleasant sensation that was rapidly followed by the realization thatno onewillingly touched me—they were either ordered to or else I touched them.
When’s the last time I’d been touched by someone out of basic affection?
It had to be hundreds of years…so long that I wasn’t even sure if my memories were true or false.
His touch revitalized me in ways I didn’t even know I’d needed. My nerve endings bloomed like desert flowers who hibernate beneath the sand, his touch life-giving as rain on a parched land. His scent was as refreshing as the smell of rain on heated sand, that delicious scent of wet rock associated with pop up storms.
The warmth of Julian’s arm across my back, the comfortable weight of him leaning into me, the spark in his eyes…they caused a change, a reversal of the tides.
Instead of sluffing off the softness that kept invading my system, for a moment, I embraced it.
Then something grew between us, there in the dark water, something that I suspected might be even bigger and more dangerous than the physical attraction I’d experienced when he touched me earlier this morning.
What was it?
“You know, your ideas are a bit out there. But so are mine. And you have something more going for you than I have.”
