Page 140 of Seven Oars
He would never reciprocate her human desires. He wouldn’t know what they were. His alien composition and the hard life he’d led hardly equipped him with the capacity for softness, empathy, or love.
Endurance, yes. Resilience. Fast-twitch muscles.
But not love.
She gazed intently at him. She found his flat, alien eyes beautiful now in the same way she found open space beautiful. A foreign world she’d never fully understand nor become part of.
But oh, so exciting.
He watched her.
Her breath caught. What would it feel like to have his hard body pressed against hers? Skin to skin…
A distant screech of the“music” announced a new bout of revelry in the Habitat.
She couldn’t suppress a wince.
“You reject our sound,” he observed.
“Oh, I… No, I don’t reject it.” Her voice was faint.
“You’re lying to me. Why would you lie to me?”
Rosamma flushed and looked away. The stars glowed in the window.
Fincros wound her braid around a loose fist and let it slip through. He repeated the motion, intent on his task. His fine brows drew together.
He was waiting for her to tell him.
“If I lied to you,” Rosamma began,“if I didn’t want to tell you something, would you punish me? Kill me?”
“No.” His brows remained lowered in concentration.“I can’t kill you.”
“Now, who’s lying?”
“It’s true. If I could, I would have killed you when I caught you. I don’t keep captives. I never have.”
Rosamma didn’t know if she fully believed him. She wanted to…
She used to trust people unconditionally, like Ren, like Paloma. She wanted to feel that trust again. Unshakable.
Sitting close in the dark with him, touching, she didn’t know if any of this was real.
“Your music sounds strange to my ear,” she confessed.
“How’s that?”
“Unnatural. Like the sounds are not connected. Like they are mixed up on purpose.”
He cocked his head, and his hair shifted. Silky and smooth. Inhuman but beautiful, caressing his scars.
“When you listen, do you let the sounds go in?”
“In my ears.”
“In your chest?”
“Oh? No. How?”
