Chapter 29: What A Morning

The blood rushed to Leo’s face in a fierce burning flush, half mortification and half raw charged heat.

He tried to pull his hips back, to make even a sliver of distance, but her weight was absolute... and every time he shifted, it only dragged the hard length of him straight against the soft heat between her thighs.

’Damn it...’ he thought, his knuckles going white where their fingers were laced. ’Don’t move. Just hold still... Don’t be a creep, Leo, she’s starving... Just let her drink...’

He shut his eyes and forced his breath into tight ragged pulses through his teeth, holding his body as rigid as a board.

Chloe didn’t stop.

Her hips shifted again, and a soft involuntary shudder ran through her slender frame as she felt him pressing up into her.

A high sweet whine caught in the back of her throat... and instead of pulling away, she pressed down harder, rocking against him slow and deliberate with her fangs sinking a fraction of a millimeter deeper into his vein as her whole little body trembled.

"Mmh... Leo..." she moaned into his neck, the words wet and muffled against his skin. "You’re so warm... everywhere..."

Leo bit down on his own tongue so hard he nearly drew more blood.

To her starved cells it was pure ambrosia.

She drank and drank, her small stomach pressing warm and full against his with the hollow violent ache that had gnawed at her since morning finally melting into slow golden satisfaction.

GULP... gulp...

The swallows slowed.

The frantic rhythm turned gentle and content, and the crimson fire in her eyes began to cool with the harsh predatory red pulling back like a tide until the clear emerald green of her irises came back.

SLIP!

Her fangs slid out of the two punctures.

For two seconds she just hovered there in the warm dark with her chin on his shoulder with her breath misting against his collarbone.

...Then her tongue came out again.

LICK!

She drew it slowly and flatly across the two little wounds, and a cool soothing tingle washed over his torn skin.

The bleeding stopped on contact and the holes knitted shut under the healing in her saliva until only two faint pink dots were left on his neck.

She licked them one more time anyway, slower, like she didn’t want to waste a drop then Chloe lifted her head.

Her eyes were clear and the hunger was gone.

Her skin, which had been sickly pale since the dead moon, was glowing with a warm healthy peach flush, and her lips were swollen and painted deep ruby red with his blood.

She blinked once then twice.

She looked at her hands, still laced through Leo’s fingers on the mattress.

Chloe looked at her body, lying flat across his chest and then she felt what was pressing hard and unyielding against the junction of her thighs.

The realization hit her like an orbital strike.

Chloe’s whole face, from the hollow of her throat to the roots of her hair, turned the color of an overripe pomegranate.

"Ah..." A tiny strangled squeak escaped her.

Her eyes flew wide and locked on Leo’s face fifteen centimeters below her own.

He was staring straight up at her with his dark eyes still clouded and heavy with his chest heaving under hers and his jaw set like iron as he tried desperately not to look at her swollen red lips.

For one breathless second, neither of them moved.

She didn’t scramble off him.

Her body seemed to have forgotten how, paralyzed somewhere between soul-crushing embarrassment and the warm heavy languor of a full meal settling into her bones.

"I... I..." she stammered, her voice climbing into a breathless squeak. "Leo... I... you’re... I’m..."

"You’re full, right?" Leo grunted.

"I’m full," she whispered, her cheeks burning so hot he could feel the heat coming off them.

Slowly her fingers slid out from between his and pressed flat against his chest, and she looked at the two healed marks on his neck with her lower lip trembling.

"I... I did it again," she whimpered, and buried her burning face in the crook of his neck so she wouldn’t have to look at him. "I’m so sorry, Leo... I was so hungry and you smelled so good and I couldn’t stop... and now you’re... you’re..."

She couldn’t even say the word.

Her hips twitched like she was trying to shrink away from the proof of it, but the motion only pressed her softer against him, and a sharp hiss of air slipped through Leo’s teeth.

"Chloe," he breathed, bringing his hands down to rest on the small of her back. "Stop moving. Just... hold still."

She went rigid and tucked her chin against his shoulder, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding on so tight her apologies came out as soft muffled puffs of warm air against his skin.

"I’m sorry... I’m so sorry, Leo... don’t hate me..."

Leo let out a long ragged breath through his nose as his heart slowly came down from the ceiling.

He was wrecked.

The flight through the debris field, the climb up the shaft, the S-Rank turret ripping through his nerves and now another half liter of blood gone... His eyelids felt lined with lead.

Slowly, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her small warm body against his chest.

Chloe let out a tiny squeak of surprise and shivered in his hold... and then she melted into him, her fingers twisting into the back of his shirt like a lifeline.

"I don’t hate you, Chloe," Leo murmured, his voice already thick with sleep. "I told you... You’re my crew... You need to eat, you eat."

She sniffled and nodded once against his collarbone. "Thank you, Leo..."

"Don’t worry about getting up," he mumbled, his eyes slipping shut against the pillow. "I’m too tired to move anyway. Let’s just... sleep."

"Leo...?" she whispered.

He didn’t answer.

His breathing had already dropped into a slow deep rhythm, the tension draining out of his jaw as his head tipped to the side and exhaustion dragged him under.

Chloe lifted her head a couple of centimeters and looked down at him.

His dark hair was a mess against the charcoal pillow, and the hard lines of his jaw, the ones he had kept locked all day while the sky fell, had finally softened in sleep.

...He looked like the twenty-one-year-old boy he actually was as his chest rose and fell under her ribs.

She could have pushed herself off him with a flick of one wrist and slipped back to her own dark room across the hall but Chloe stayed right where she was.

She traced a fingertip along the two pink dots on his neck over and over and a tiny contented sound slipped out of her, like a kitten curling into a patch of sun.

"You’re mine..." She breathed, so quietly it barely existed.

She settled her cheek flat over his heart and pulled her legs up, nestling her hips against his thighs and letting his heavy arms pin her to him.

The cold void outside the hull, the dead moon and the chewing worms and the ruined world behind them... none of it could get into this room.

Her eyes drifted shut against his chest.

"I’ll keep you safe tonight, Leo," she whispered. "I promise."

...

The private shower in Harper’s quarters felt like alien luxury after the rattling rusted bulkheads they’d crawled through.

Seamless matte-grey walls that were warm under her palm... soft white light, a misting ring flush in the ceiling and a sonic scrub rail purring low against the wall.

HISS!

She twisted the steel dial and hot water poured from the ring in a dense steaming cascade.

The heat hit her bare shoulders like an electric shock, soaking deep into her bruised collarbones and washing away the moon dust, the rock grit and the purple flecks of worm ichor still caked behind her ears.

She braced both forearms against the wall and let it hammer the back of her neck until her dirty-blonde hair was plastered to her skull.

Steam curled up and fogged the glass and Harper closed her eyes.

Just like that, she was back on a small wooden porch in the suburbs, where the evening air smelled of cut grass and damp cedar mulch.

Her dad was in the garage wiping down an old wrench with grease-stained hands.

Mugs were clattering in the sink, and her mom was calling down the hall that dinner was on the table.

Something twisted hard behind her ribs... What could she do for them?

...Nothing.

There was no distress line to call and no home waiting on the other side of a re-entry burn.

Her parents, her cousins, the neighbors across the fence, the mechanic down on Fourth Street... all of them were gone in a single heartbeat while she sat in Room 402.

Her throat went raw, and hot tears spilled over her lashes before disappearing into the scalding water running down her face.

She stood there with her knuckles pressed white into the wall and let the silent sobs rattle through her ribs until the shaking in her arms finally eased.

’We’re still here...’ she thought, dragging a deep shuddering breath of steam into her chest.

She forced her eyes open.

Harper wasn’t alone out here... There were six other people breathing inside this hull, and out of all of them, one was chained to her like an anchor.

Leo.

She’d known him since they were scraping their shins on the chain-link fence behind the middle school ballfields.

She’d watched him fumble through algebra, stolen the seat next to him on the morning bus and spent years elbowing him in the ribs every time he tried to act like a serious grown-up pilot.

She’d watched him bleed... She’d watched him stand on that bridge with an iron jaw, refusing to let a single one of them die and she loved him.

She’d loved him long before the sky turned to white fire... Through every stupid joke, every late-night simulator session, every quiet look across a crowded courtyard.

’So what if I have a crush on my childhood friend?’ she thought, a small bittersweet smirk tugging at her lips as she wiped the water off her chin. ’Is the whole world going to fall apart over it?’

A dry little scoff caught in her throat.

’It already did.’

If the universe had a problem with her wanting to hold on to the boy who kept her breathing, it could get in line and take another shot at her with a railgun.

CLIK-HISS!

She shut the valve, and warm air from the baseboard vents dried her skin in seconds.

She toweled her hair, pulled on her charcoal base suit and zipped it to the collar, buckled the white-and-blue vest over her chest and combed her damp hair back with her fingers until the freckles on her nose stood out against her scrubbed skin.

SWOOSH!

The corridor was dim and quiet with every door still sealed.

She turned right toward the heavy door with the blue crest at the end of the hall, and her pulse did a stupid little flutter in her throat that she tried to stomp down with an annoyed roll of her shoulders.

She just wanted to check on him... That was all.

The panel on his door was glowing a soft unlocked green, he hadn’t even set the deadlock.

’Probably still out cold with his boots on the bed...’ she thought, smiling faintly as she pressed the pad.

PSSH!

"Hey, sleepyhead, sun’s up, even if there isn’t a—"

The words died in her throat.

Her boots locked to the deck... The air left her lungs like she’d taken a twenty-millimeter slug straight to the chest.

In the faint silver starlight from the viewport, Leo was sprawled on his back across the charcoal blankets with one arm hanging off the edge of the mattress and lying right on top of him, wrapped around his body with her legs tangled between his thighs and her cheek pressed over his heart, was Chloe.

Harper stood frozen in the open doorway.

A sharp violent pang of jealousy slammed into her sternum, so sudden and hot that her jaw clenched until her molars ground together.

Her eyes narrowed and dropped to Chloe’s small hand, curled loosely into the fabric of Leo’s undershirt... so comfortable, so possessive, so at home against his body.

A heavy bitter lump rose in her throat.

Ten years.

She had spent ten years walking beside him, laughing at his terrible puns and pretending she didn’t care whenever other girls looked at him in class... and the quiet timid girl who’d woken up a bloodsucker barely a day ago was curled on top of him like his personal blanket.

Before she could shove the ugly burning feeling back behind her usual sarcasm, the sheets rustled.

Chloe stirred with a soft sleepy hum against Leo’s chest, and her eyelids fluttered open as her gaze drifted up toward the light spilling in from the hall and locked dead on Harper.