Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
What I wouldn’t give to … My thoughts trail off when her movement gives me an idea. I bring my hand up to my head, tapping it until she seems to understand I’m trying to tell her something. Then, I drift my hand down my neck, along my arm, to my hand that hers still rests inside and place it atop hers. She gasps and I think that maybe she’s seeing something now, but then I realize it’s just at my touch. I smile at that.
Hesitantly, but desperate to feel more of her, I trail my fingers up her arm, cursing her sleeve for being in the way. But when I reach the top of her neck where her dress begins and a bit of her is exposed, I feel her skin, her bare skin, as I bring my hand up it. I don’t think I imagine the shiver that races through her. When my hand reaches the side of her head, she begins to lean into my touch before she can stop herself, eyes fluttering, a serene look on her face. But then, she seems to remember something and her eyes widen in … alarm? Why? They dart over to a corner of the glass room we’re in and I begin to turn to see what she’s looking at, but her words stop me.
“You send images?” she asks so softly I strain to hear. “From one mind to another.”
There’s more to it, but I nod anyway.
“Through touch?”
“Y-yes.”
“Hmm. Well, maybe we’re not close enough.”
In an instant, she closes the small distance between us. Her knees clumsily hit against mine, and I begin to smile at her shyness as she apologizes, but then a sensation vibrating against my leg stops me.
Of course. My suit.
I’ve had it on for so long now that I don’t even notice it, and have had no reason to deactivate it. Her knee colliding with mine sent a vibration coursing through my leg because the suit mistook it for a hit. Her hands in mine were far too soft for the suit to even register as something harmful, so I felt nothing then. Nothing to remind me that I was not truly touching her. Nothing to make me see that with my suit on, I can’t transmit anything from me to her.
Relief rushes through me, that there isn’t some other reason why it wasn’t working. I couldn’t imagine not being able to show my mate all the events and memories that came before her, or to see the memories that fill her mind and learn about her life before me. But can I leave myself so vulnerable? I don’t worry about her harming me in the least, but the general, the guards, oh they would jump on an opportunity to finally be able to do all the little tests they’ve been trying, and failing, to perform on me. My suit, developed by my people even before we had ships to fly, has protected me from their needles when they tried to take blood, their scalpels when they attempted to take specimens. Everything.
Already from my knife and food having gone missing, I’m pretty sure I’m being watched. I know that when I deactivate my suit, the only thing that would give it away is me placing my thumb to the device, as my suit retracting would be instant and all but unnoticeable unless someone was right in front of me. Like Selina is right now. It’s a chance I can’t afford to take, and yet a chance I have to, need to, take. Because the thought that I have not truly touched her, haven’t truly felt her skin against mine except for what I made up in my mind is torturing me right now.
I hunch over as much as I can—trying—to hide what I’m doing, but Selina’s eyes go right to it. Her brows furrow as she watches me place the pad of my thumb to the square. As I suspected she would, she sees the suit retract, and her eyes widen in surprise, even if she has no idea what’s just happened. I waste no time in taking her hand back in mine. I should have said it earlier, but I was in such a rush to give her my memories, to fully explain all that she means to me, and all I have to offer her, that I forgot. But I say it now, or try to, in her language.
“No afraid,” I state.
“Don’t be afraid?” she asks. I nod and she says, “Not of you. Never.”
I swallow at the way her words wrap around my heart, but then I relax and try to send her a memory of the river again. I feel it move through me, and I can tell the moment she sees it, too. A soft gasp escapes Selina, and her eyes dart back and forth like the crystal blue waters are in front of her instead of in her mind.