Not now, though, I was upset and confused and a great deal of things, but not one of them involved anger or indifference. Roys found that as strange as I did. Though he held me close, an apprehension consumed him, leaving him unsure of what to do next. I didn’t know either. My new state of being seemed to be clueless. All I could think of saying was simple.
“If anything like this happens again, I’ll dispose of the synthetics.”
“That…” He licked his lips. “That isn’t your job to worry about.”
“This isn’t a debate.” My hands fell away from his back to cup his face, still red from tears continuing to fall. “This can’t happen again. I don’t want it to happen. Do you?”
He shook his head and pressed a kiss to my thumb when it brushed over his bottom lip.
“Okay, okay.” He buried his face in the crook of my neck. “Thank you.”
My arms wrapped around his shoulders. I laid my cheek against his temple, trying to ignore every feeling bursting within me. They were loud and frightening — explosions on the horizon, leaving me breathless.My lungs constricted and muscles tightened. Every nerve screamed to run before I couldn’t.
I already knew I couldn’t.
“Yeah, um, no problem,” I muttered. Another chuckle from him, that one more amused. “Comforting isn’t my strong suit,” I said.
“This is enough. I’m sorry— ”
“Stop apologizing. It’s done.”
He breathed in deep, and I shuddered against the heat of his breath on my nape. “You’re awfully forgiving this evening.”
Because it’s you,I clamped my mouth shut before the truth could spill out.
We stood in each other’s arms where Roys’ trembling lessened until they disappeared entirely. His tears stopped. The scruff of his beard tickled from his lips admiring my neck. I squirmed, making us both laugh before he kissed me. I hadn’t realized I could miss the taste of him so much in such little time.
As much as I wanted nothing more than to rip off his clothes and throw him on the bed, my brain shoved all consideration toward horniness aside to remind me I had a lot of questions. Which I would ask after my tongue relearned the shape of his mouth. Breathless, and really wishing my dick did more of the talking, I stopped him from ruining my neck. If he hadn’t already.
“There is some explaining required,” I said.
He settled his mouth on my collarbone where the scruff of his beard made the goosebumps return full force. “I know.”
If I didn’t know where to start, he certainly didn’t, so I guided him to the bed where we settled among the twisted sheets. He had one pillow. Two more presided somewhere in the bedroom. We didn’t make a move to get them because when I collapsed on the bed; I brought him on topof me. Roys laid comfortably between my thighs, his head on my chest while my fingers ran through his hair.
Cuddling had never been my strong suit, either. I seemed to suck at a great deal of things. But he must have given me a passing score because Roys was more than content, as was I. One of his hands caught mine so our fingers could intertwine, and I couldn’t believe how that made my blood run hot.
“When did you start?” I asked.
“Fifteen. It was the only way I could make it through the days.”
“Too hungry, too cold, too miserable.”
“Yeah.” He squeezed my hand. “I started moira through work. High Risers loved dragging us up from the filth to serve them. I didn’t care, so long as I got a serving job at one of their clubs. There were less than savory individuals at the establishment. Synthetics were par for the course, and sex. My life’s a blur between the ages of fifteen to twenty-two. I was too fucking high. That’s all that mattered — the next fix.”
“What changed at twenty-two?” I had a pretty good guess, but I wanted Roys to continue peeling back layer after layer until there was nothing between us.
“Dinah. We worked at the same club, took the same shit, and had a less than serious relationship. She got pregnant.” He glanced up at me, his eyes full of shame he didn’t deserve. “Do you know what an agency is?”
I shook my head. He looked away.
“Abortion was too expensive, and adoption only happened among the High Risers, which is where an agency came in for the likes of us. It’s an institute that pays ourmedical bills and then keeps children in a shit shelter with shit food and shit education, just enough to send them off at thirteen to do shit work. They’d be expected to pay back everything they owed, plus interest.”
“In other words, they’d be owned by the agency until they died,” I finished for him.
“Exactly, so Dinah wanted to keep the baby. I thought she was fucking mad. He wouldn’t survive the pregnancy, except Dinah quit. I still don’t know how she did it.” He laughed, a sorrowful, choked sound that brought on his trembling. “I was never father material, but I didn’t want Dinah to be on her own, and an agency was out of the question. The militia offered stability, to keep me off when I had proven that I couldn’t do it on my own and…”
He swallowed hard when looking at the picture of him and Malwin at the bottom of the bed. “And maybe it’d keep him safe from me. I’m not like Dinah. She hasn’t touched moira since, doesn’t even drink or smoke, but me? A couple of times she wouldn’t let me visit because she found out I was using again. Running myself ragged made it easier to ignore the urges, and when incidents like this occurred, it was easy to…”
