Page 25 of Skyn
I laugh again, and he looks up at me, looking a little proud of himself.
“For example, your sartorius muscle. It’s probably the best one I’ve ever seen.”
“That is…incredibly specific.”
“I’m on the board of a cybernetics manufacturer. When people come in for body mods, they want this exact leg, the curve of your inner thigh.”
“Maybe I should go into mod modeling? What’s this called again? Saturnus?” I run my index finger up my leg, but it’s apparently in the wrong spot because his hand closes over mine, guiding it higher. Our intertwined fingers run up the length of the muscle, pushing up my skirt. Flashing, for a second, the clefted black satin of my underwear.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, and each word is rough like it scraped against some inner edge. His fingers brushing the inside of my thigh send something hot and sticky trickling through my bloodstream.
“It’s also called the honeymoon muscle,” he says.
I don’t think I’ve blushed much in my life. I’ve never been shy, and I’m hard to embarrass, but I blush right then. Something greedy in me wants to say,Tell me more. Never stop.
I slap his hand away, my face hot. “This area is personal,” I say, like I’m training a new bot.
He doesn’t seem offended, just thoughtful.
Another data point.
“I heard you all down in the mines are…reactive. Aboveground, we use dampeners; I don’t really feel”—he searches for the right word—“anything.”
I know it’s civilized to not be clouded by human emotions. And I know everyone must do their part for the overpopulation problem, but killing your sex drive forever? Taking your joy, sorrow? In truth, those dampeners scare me a little. I want to be as close to my emotions as possible. That creeping fear when something doesn’t sit right with you is a gift.
“How long have you had them?” I ask.
“Since I was a teenager.”
“A teenager!” That seems cruel, I think, but I don’t say it out loud. He’s already spilling more than he probably intended.
I continue to knead his shoulders. He clenches his lower body and lets out a soft sound—a quiet moan he tries to cover up with a cough.
“Yes, a bit early, but I was…ungovernable, watching lewd films. I wanted itallthe time.” He says this with so much shame, my heart breaks a little for him. “At first, I thought it was a punishment, but looking back at how clouded my thinking was then, I started to see it as a gift. I’m so productive now. Did you know I have the patent for this?” He reaches out his hand. And, God help me, I almost lift my skirt.
Touch me where you touched me before,I think.
“Oh!” He wants me to touch the back of his hand.
It’s metal, but it feels like skin.
“See, we love the look of chrome and platinum parts, but I remember as a child how I’d only want to hug my…” He pauses for so long that I think he forgot his place in the sentence. “I only wanted to hug my caretaker, not my mother.”
“Was your caretaker unmodded?” I ask.
He nods. “I’ve been obsessed with skin and recreating it ever since. This new, stronger alloy covering is SKYN—S-K-Y-N. It’s going to be revolutionary.”
I don’t press him, but I have the thought that his love of his caretaker had less to do with her skin and more to do with the fact that his mom is a stone-cold bitch.
“Careful,” I say, half joking. “You’re going to get labeled a naturalist.”
“In a way, I am,” he admits. “We simply cannot improve upon the softness of human skin, and I’m starting to wonder if we should.”
I think of Josh’s cold, hard arm, and how important I used to feel being his fiancé. I began to believe that the cold, unwelcoming metal was better than skin. And here was a son of the most elite family telling me they were trying to get back to skin.
The world is upside down.
This could be so much better.“I’m developing a hypothesis of dampeners,” I say.
