Starflight (Starflight, #1)(57)

Solara yawned and rolled onto her back, her naked fists poking through the blankets in a stretch of her own. He was glad she’d quit wearing her gloves, but he kept his mouth shut about it. She was sensitive about her markings, and he could never manage to discuss them without pissing her off.

When she didn’t answer his question, he indicated the empty space beside him. “It’s a double bed, remember? There’s more than enough room for two.” He sniffed himself and added, “I don’t smell. At least, I don’t think so.”

She sat up, grumbling and rubbing the side of her neck. She must’ve tossed and turned a lot in her sleep, because a riot of hair had escaped her braids and formed something resembling a bird’s nest at her forehead. It made him smile.

“You know why,” she said. “You need the—”

“Whatever.” He waved off her excuse because that’s exactly what it was. “There’s nothing wrong with me.” He pushed the blankets down to his waist and said, “Come and see for yourself.”

Wearing nothing but a T-shirt that barely reached her thighs, she stood from the floor and took a seat on the edge of the mattress. She seemed to have lost some of her modesty, and Doran didn’t mind that, either.

“You still have bruises,” she criticized, pointing at the yellowy splotches beneath his flesh.

“But they don’t hurt anymore.”

With a dubious twist of her lips, she placed her warm palms on his sides, then ran them up and down the length of his rib cage while Doran’s breath locked inside his chest.

Hot damn.

At her touch, every internal organ between his hipbones tightened—and a couple of external ones, too. His skin hummed alive beneath her fingers, like energy flowing through a completed circuit, and he was grateful as hell to have a thick layer of blankets concealing his lap.

“Am I hurting you?” she asked.

Doran shook his head. He felt an awful lot of sensations at the moment, but pain wasn’t one of them. Maybe sleeping beside her wasn’t such a good idea after all. He gathered her hands and held them at a safe distance from his body.

“See?” he said, and swallowed hard. “Soon I’ll be good as new.”

She studied the tips of her own fingers, not seeming to mind that they were trapped between his palms. “Then you’ll be gone,” she told him. “And I’ll have the whole bed to myself. I might as well wait.”

He didn’t say so, but she had a point.

The Banshee had reached Obsidian yesterday, and they’d been hiding on a large orbiting meteor while Solara repaired the damages to the two-man craft. Once Doran felt well enough to travel, he would shuttle planet-side to the private ship waiting there. After that, he’d never see the Banshee or her crew again.

But he didn’t want to think about that right now.

Instead, he turned Solara’s knuckles to face him and skimmed a thumb over the codes tattooed on her skin. Strange how the markings didn’t bother him anymore. If his assets weren’t frozen, he’d hire a flesh forger to give her a new start. After everything she’d done for him, she deserved it.

“So you can stand to look at them now?” she asked.

“What?”

“That day in the washroom, right before the propellant cell broke. You told me that if you could stand to look at my tattoos, then so could I.” She pulled her hands away and tucked them beneath her thighs.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “You never gave me a chance to explain.”

“Okay, then.” One eyebrow lifted in challenge. “Explain.”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

Doran noticed that chills had broken out along her thighs—not that he was staring or anything. Just a casual observation. And since the problem in his shorts had abated, he lifted the covers and invited her to join him. She hesitated for a beat, then crawled in beside him, and soon they lay six inches apart in mirrored positions, facing the ceiling with their hands folded on top of their stomachs.

“All right,” she said, cozying in. “Make it good.”

“This story doesn’t have a happy ending,” he warned, and though he hadn’t intended it, his voice sounded dark. She turned her neck to face him, but he stared straight ahead. It was easier that way. “A lot of this is public knowledge. I’m surprised you never heard about it.”

“No gossip tabloids in the group home,” she told him.

“It was a big deal when it happened, but that was a long time ago. Even if you saw it on the news, I guess you would’ve forgotten.”

“Forgotten what?”

“I was abducted when I was nine,” he said, the rote words rolling easily off his tongue. “Me and my brother, we were held for ransom. The nanny was in on it. She disabled the alarm and let the guys in the back door while everyone was asleep.”

Solara pushed onto her elbows, forcing him to make eye contact with her. “You have a brother? I didn’t know that.”

“I don’t,” he said, and paused to let that sink in. “Not anymore.”

A tattooed hand flew to her breast, and when Doran blinked, he saw the inky knuckles of the man who’d clapped a palm over his mouth and dragged him from his bed that night. There had been so many markings—rows and rows of them, right on top of each other—and he hadn’t understood what they’d meant. Until the next day, when he was locked inside a closet with a concussion and a bloody lip. Then he’d learned.