Page 18 of Adrift!
“You have to start,” he said. “That’s how I find my part.”
She swallowed once, then, so softly he almost missed it, she started the song again. Now, instead of humming unconsciously, she was watching him with anticipation, her grasp on him tightening.
Maybe it was that urgency in her hold or the need in her eyes, but when his augments activated, the sound was deeper, sonorous and wild, as if they’d tapped into some primal key of the universe. As she sucked in a startled breath, he tried to modulate it, but she shook her head hard, red locks flying as she smiled wider. So he let it go.
Long ago, the tech had put him back together, had saved his life. Now it set him free. The cybernetic elements vibrated, seeking the spaces between her notes and filling them with complementary tones. The song that wove between them was nothing that had ever been—yet felt as ephemeral and eternal as the last of starlight at dawn.
When it finally faded, Remy pressed the back of her hand into his chest. “Ifeltyou singing with your whole body.” Her smile was tremulous. “It used to be that way for me.”
Nudging back gently, he mimicked the gesture against her sternum. “I feltyou. Itisthat way again—if you want to believe.”
Her heartbeat thudded hard against his knuckles, as if the push/pull of their hands had been strenuous work, the humming a precarious task. And maybe for her it was.
“I can’t wait to hear what your new song is about,” he said.
“You’ll be the first to know. Probably because you’ll be…” Her teasing tone trailed off, a blush feathering across her cheeks. “Unless you don’t want…”
“Remy.” He cupped her face with his altered hand, brushing his thumb over her lower lip to pause the words of retreat. “I want to be there.”
Seated side by side, they were essentially on the same level, and her gaze locked on his. Though he’d found that some beings had trouble looking into his bespoke eyes, hers were unwavering, green and amber like the thorny stems of the Earther rose. Rather than pulling away, she leaned toward him, sliding both her palms up his chest to anchor on his shoulders.
As her hands passed over him, his biomech parts sparked with tiny suns, and the last of the span between them disappeared, her lips joining with his as naturally as a chord finding its resolution.
The kiss was tentative at first, both of them afraid to shatter the unexpected convergence. The tender tension of flesh, the weightless pressure of shared air… He would have happily floated in those sensations forever.
But when she sighed against his mouth, lips parting, and her fingers slipped higher to curl in the short hair at his nape, the caution dissolved. He traced his tongue along the sharp upper curve of her teeth, courting that erotic danger. And she licked him back with a low keening in her throat. She tasted like the spiced tonic he’d made for her, fiery and complex, intoxicating.
Electricity cascaded through the neural filaments of his tech, sparking into excitement along every organic nerve. The feedback loop felt wild, uncontrolled—like the interference of a coronal storm disrupting the adaptations that had kept him alive. He closed his eyes, struggling for balance though they had barely moved.
But the self-imposed darkness only sensitized both his skin and the tech sensors, amplifying her every touch. Her nails scraped lightly over his implant when she framed his face with her palms, urging his mouth wider. She let out another hungrysound, and the sensual rumble bypassed every control filter and safety manual passage, shooting straight to his core, making him shudder in her hands.
She seemed to sense his momentary vulnerability because she softened the kiss, her circling tongue finding his again with endless patience, as if they had all the time in the universe. His hands, which had been hovering uncertainly at her waist, finally settled, and he buried his fingers in the soft fabric of her morphed outfit. Through the eyelets in the weave, the pliant heat of her skin teased him, and it took every erg of his faltering self-control not to delve deeper into those tempting holes.
Behind his eyelids, riotous colors bloomed—wavelengths even his enhanced vision had never registered before, prismatic cascades that pulsed in syncopated rhythm with their aligning hearts. Some distant, saner part of him registered the unlikely expansion as problematic, but he was too dazzled by the synesthetic explosion of impossible sensations: the stroke of her fingertips tasted like moonlight, her kiss danced like music, her breath shimmered with an unvoiced promise.
Something shifted around them, not just the curtains she’d pulled down but the fabric of the universe itself. At least his universe.
He’d been looking for a place to belong. Here, adrift in one of the most dangerous sectors of space, he might’ve finally found it.
All he had to do was open his eyes and tell her that.
Chapter 7
What seemed possible when the stars opened up in front of you?
Ikaryo had asked her that, and Remy had avoided answering directly. Because she’d been terrified, both when Earth had dwindled behind her and when he’d challenged her to think of what might come next.
Her pulse was still pounding now, but for a different reason. As his hands settled at her waist with devastating gentleness, urging her toward him, she’d discovered that the distinction between almost and always could disappear in a heartbeat.
His mouth, hot on hers, tasted faintly of the metallic spice liqueur he’d given her earlier. When the kiss deepened, his deep groan vibrated through her like a tuning fork struck against her lips, oscillating down her spine. Touching him—from his black hair, silkier than she expected, to the edges of his tech, hot as his skin—intensified the thrill, every nerve ending glimmering like a string of twinkle lights.
A stutter in his breath warned her they were going too hard, and she soothed him with tender strokes down his back.
It was his first Earther kiss, after all.
The wicked pleasure of it was as exhilarating as her first step onto a stage. Oh, how had she forgotten that? The moment when anything was possible, when the obscured murk beyond the stage lights might become an ocean of starry eyes ignited by her music.
While his trembling eased under the caress, his augments seemed to convert the nervous energy to subtle harmonics. The throbbing undertone sank into her body like…like the beginning of an orgasm.
