Chapter 8
8
Toorin
“Right,” I finally said, dropping my shirt. My voice lacked authority, still a little shaken by the unexpected contact. We weren’t so different. We shared the same scars. Shared the same heart.
And I wondered what it felt like to have another man’s heart beating in your chest and be able to look that man in the eye.
I hesitated with my hands at the waistband of his trousers.
“Do it,” Toft said.
I averted my eyes, giving him as much privacy as possible with me squatting a foot from his crotch. I worked the fabric over his hips as heavy footsteps approached. Before I could tell Darwin to wait—I knew it was Darwin. No one walked like that man—his lantern lit the doorway.
“Nice dick,” Darwin said, his words dry and matter-of-fact.
“ Darwin. ” Though, if I was honest, I couldn’t keep from glancing.
And Darwin wasn’t wrong.
Toft’s dick nestled at the apex of his thighs, all soft and wrinkled, but… fuck .
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
“What?” Darwin said when I shot him a look. “I mean, it’s huge even with the whole cold-water-shrinkage thing. Me dick and balls went into hiding when I hit the water, and I still can’t find them.”
He was kidding but wasn’t wrong.
Toft laughed despite his hypothermia and weakness. I chuckled and motioned for Darwin to get out. He left, but not before setting down the food and mead I’d told him to bring for Toft and, of course, taking one last peek.
Toft managed to kick off the wet trousers and reached for the dry pair I’d brought him.
“Sorry about Darwin.” Wait, did I apologize to my prisoner?
If Toft was embarrassed, he did a fine job pretending otherwise. Though, to be fair, modesty wasn’t much of a thing on the fringe. Nudity wasn’t uncommon in a place where people couldn’t find food, much less clothing. But I figured things might be different in the settlement where they had access to things most of us on the fringe couldn’t imagine.
“People have been dressing me from day one. I’m used to people seeing me in all states of undress.”
I guided his feet into the legs of the trousers, helped him pull them on, and stood before scooting the tin bowl of food closer to him. It wasn’t much more than hardtack and dried strips of fish Lyric had turned into stew. Best he could do, considering we’d been gone for days and hadn’t caught anything fresh.
I heard the clomp of Darwin’s footsteps approaching again. “Anyone naked?”
Toft shook his head, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth before he managed to pull the shirt over his head.
“Come in,” I said.
Darwin had another bowl of stew, presumably for me, though I hadn’t planned on eating with Toft. In fact, I wasn’t sure what I would do with him now that I had him.
It was one thing to say I was getting my heart back.
Quite another to have the recipient of that heart sitting right in front of me.
I had some thinking I needed to do, and staring at each other as we ate stew wouldn’t help.
I stepped toward Darwin, and the fucking whirring stopped. I knew what would come next.
Darwin looked confused when I didn’t take the bowl from him. I bumped my chest with my fist and staggered. My shoulder hit the bulkhead, and I dropped to my knees.
Marcelis
Moon and mars and the stars . What was happening?
“ Bodie! ” Darwin dropped, laying Toorin flat on his back. The panic in his voice sent chills across the gooseflesh already on my arms.
I heard footsteps running toward us, but Darwin didn’t wait. He hit Toorin square in the chest, giving him a few good thumps. I went to crawl over to him, but Bodie and Toorin’s other man wedged into the room, and I retreated to the corner near the bunk so I wouldn’t get in the way.
“Hold up, hold up.” Bodie pulled Darwin away with a hand on the man’s shoulder. Bodie bent his ear to Toorin’s chest. To his heart.
His mechanical heart.
That’s on you.
My hand went to the heart beating in my chest, and it was all I could do not to abandon the boat and confront my sire again. He’d had no right to do what he’d done. No right.
If I were chancellor, the reapers would all be out of a job.
But I wasn’t. And I refused to be.
I… couldn’t .
I couldn’t live with the isolation, even in a settlement full of people. The deference, the unchecked power, the unmitigated cruelty. It wasn’t for me. If being given Toorin’s heart hadn’t given me the impetus to leave, I would have done it anyway.
“It’s working.” Bodie hovered over Toorin. Eventually, Toorin opened his eyes, and Bodie said, “Welcome back. I know you like to be the center of attention and—”
Toorin socked Bodie in the chest to shut him up. “Help me up.”
“Lyric,” Bodie said to the other man. “Help me.” Bodie and Lyric each took one of Toorin’s arms and propped him against the wall. The three mother-henned him until Toorin shooed them away. “That’s enough. I’m fine now.”
Lyric said, “I’ll help you back to your quarters, Captain.
Toorin glanced across the cabin and met my eyes. Our gazes held until he shook it off. “No. I want to stay here a wee bit longer.”
Bodie made a noise in the back of his throat. A disgruntled sound. The sound a person made when he’d been served cold, congealed, tasteless oatmeal for a week straight. “You need rest.”
“I can rest here.”
I mean, he was sitting on the floor, his back propped up against the wall, so there was that. However, it was curious that he preferred to stay. I expected he’d have wanted to get as far away from me as possible.
But clearly, he didn’t.
Maybe he was afraid I’d disappear on him. But I was on a boat in the bay surrounded by water, and we all knew how well water and I got along.
“Go. All of you.” Toorin said, “Don’t make me order you.”
“Suit yourself. Me chow’s getting cold,” Lyric said, turning to leave.
Darwin followed, but not without a backward glance at Bodie as if imploring him to talk some sense into their captain.
After they’d left, Bodie stood. His hands went to his hips. “You’re more stubborn than your sire.”
Reaching for his stew, Toorin sighed. “Stubborn isn’t always a bad thing.”
“It got your sire killed,” Bodie said. “You’re not immune from that fate.”
“You’re more likely to get me killed before my stubbornness does.”
As soon as those words left Toorin’s mouth, he deflated as if he wanted to take the words back but didn’t quite know how.
Bodie’s head dropped between his shoulders. “Look, I—”
Toorin closed his eyes and opened them to find Bodie squatting in front of him, their eyes level, Bodie’s voice a hair’s breadth above a whisper when he said, “I would take it all back if I could. I didn’t—I didn’t know those men were reap—”
“The blame’s not for you to bear. I shouldn’t have insinuated that it was.”
“Still, I—”
Bodie cut himself off when Toorin shook his head. “Speak no more of it.”
Bodie clapped him on the shoulder and stood.
“Besides,” Toorin said, his face scrunching. “I’m not my sire.”
I snorted, knowing the feeling of wanting to distance myself from my lineage and hating any comparison to the chancellor. Both men turned my way. “I guess we have something in common besides the heart thing.”
Toorin held my gaze until Bodie went to leave. Bodie turned at the threshold, pinning me with a glare so intense I wanted to look away, but I refused. “If it happens again, yell.”
I didn’t have to ask what ‘it’ was. “I will.” I didn’t leave the settlement to find my donor only to watch him die.
Toorin set his mug of stew on his lap. The steam long gone. “Eat.”
I picked up my bowl. It had nearly gone cold, but I was so famished that I didn’t care.
Besides, for the life of me, I didn’t know where I’d lost my pack, so it wasn’t like I had other food to fall back on. But I’d be needing my pack so I could finish my meds.
“Do you know where my pack is?”
“Bottom of the dinghy. I’ll have it brought to you.”
With a nod, we finished our meal in silence. I had many questions, and he must have had the same for me. Otherwise, he wouldn’t still be sitting in my cabin.
He set his empty bowl down as a wave from a passing vessel rolled under the hull. The bowl slid a couple of inches as he brought his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.
I tapped my chest. “What happened?”
“My mechanical heart is dodgy. It stops randomly.”
“And if no one is around when that happens again?”
It was Toorin’s turn to snort, a self-deprecating turn to one corner of his lips. I couldn’t take my eyes off their fullness, a fickle part of me wondering what it would feel like to have those lips, that mouth on my skin.
To have them heat me from the inside out.
“What was that?” I asked, realizing he’d said something while I’d been too enthralled with those lips to register a word he’d said.
“I said, if that happens, then I guess it won’t be my stubbornness that kills me.”
I didn’t expect his resignation. No. It wasn’t that because nothing this man had done so far resembled a man who’d given up. I didn’t know how to respond to that. Especially when I had something we both wanted and needed.
Now that he’d found me, I had no clue what to do now that we were together. And the way he kept studying me, I didn’t think he’d thought that far ahead either.
“Now what?” I asked.
Instead of answering the question, he asked, “Why a harvested heart? You’re the chancellor’s spawn. He could have afforded many options without resorting to…” He waved a hand up and down, indicating his chest. “Surely Reparion could have made you one to order.”
“It’s not that simple. All the chips and credits in the province can’t fix some things.”
“Like?”
I had to clear the air before we went any farther. I didn’t know if Toorin would believe me, but I had to try. He needed to know he wasn’t the only victim here. Though to be fair, I’d come out on the winning side of the situation. “This wasn’t what I wanted. I never wanted a donor heart. I never wanted your heart.”
Toorin’s head fell back, knocking against the wall. The shaft of light from an oil lantern cast his face in highlights. “Why not?”
“Because I never wanted my bad heart to become someone else’s problem. I would have rather died than take another person’s heart.”
His eyes dropped to the wood floor beneath us briefly as he contemplated what I’d said. He glanced up again, his eyes narrowing. “You mean that, don’t you? You’re not saying that because you fear for your life.”
“I mean what I say. I want to live, yes. But not at the expense of another.”
Toorin’s chuckle came laced with dark humor. “Yet here we are.”
“As I said, it wasn’t what I’d wished.”
“You never answered my question. Why a human heart?”
“I have a…” I didn’t know quite how to phrase it. “A defect, if you will. My body produces an enzyme. The metalloprotease enzyme, the doctors say. It’s rare.”
“Moon and mars,” Toorin muttered. “Speak plainly.”
“It means my body breaks down metal. The mechanical hearts won’t work for me. What would last other people their natural life wouldn’t last me long.”
Toorin glanced down at his chest. “I think this one was made in the Central Province. Nothing good comes out of there. How long would it last you?”
I wasn’t a doctor. I could parrot back what they’d told me, but it wasn’t like I understood more beyond that. “Weeks, from the sounds of it.”
“If it doesn’t quit working like mine and kill you instantly.”
“Always a possibility.”
“Okay.” A wave rolled under the hull from the opposite direction and slid Toorin’s empty bowl back to him. “Mechanical hearts are a no-go. What about an autograft?”
“You know about autografts? How growers can take cells from your body and grow a whole new organ?”
“I know the term. Not much more.”
“Reparion was growing one for me. But it takes time. No matter how many credits you have or who your sire is. Turns out, I didn’t have that kind of time. I arrested. My new heart was too immature for transplant.”
Toorin sucked in a breath. He knew how the rest of the story ended. It took him a while before he blew it out. The man could hold his breath. I’ll give him that. Probably the only reason I was alive and not a meal for the sturgeon and bottom feeders.
He rolled to his hands and knees and stood on wobbly legs. I looked away. My sire had reduced a strong man to one who couldn’t be left alone without worrying his heart might stop whirring.
“What’s it like?” I asked. “Having no heartbeat?”
He grunted like I’d hit him with a painful truth straight in the solar plexus. “Eerie. And the silence when it stops…” He shook his head. “Quiet… at least before the panic sets in.”
I took hold of the edge of the bunk and struggled to get my feet beneath me. Who knew that drowning sapped so much strength? Toorin reached out a hand for me to take.
Why would he do that?
I hesitated.
“It’s not a trick,” Toorin said as if reading my mind.
I couldn’t see what the trick would have been, it was just that he had every reason to be a bloody ass to me. I mean, sure, he’d saved my life, but that was self-preservation on his part. Because without my heart — rather his heart—he’d likely die soon of a mechanical failure.
I reached out, locking my wrist with his. He hauled me to my feet. I would have been staring at his throat if I hadn’t tilted my head back.
The movement made me cough, and I tasted bay water at the back of my throat. I swallowed it down. Though I wasn’t privy to Toorin’s plans, I didn’t fear for my life. At least not yet, because if I died, he died.
I glanced down at our hands, clasped around each other’s arms. The spark, the tingle in my skin that burned hot where our bodies connected, probably came from a faulty circuit in his heart.
A rogue electrical impulse.
It meant nothing more than we had to find a way to return his heart before it was too late.
The fact that Toorin happened to be the most handsome man I’d ever laid my eyes on had nothing to do with it.
Probably.
His tongue traced his bottom lip. That close, his warm breath brushed my skin, and blood pooled in my hapless dick. I pulled away.
It was one thing to find Toorin attractive.
It was quite another to act on it.
He stepped back, ducking his head to avoid hitting it on the door jamb. “Don’t go anywhere.”
I raised my hands. “I’m not looking to run. I’m looking to help.”
Toorin tilted his head. “How so?”
“I left the settlement looking for you. Why would I run when I’ve just now found you?”
He opened his mouth and closed it again as if I’d spoken in a foreign tongue, and he couldn’t comprehend what I’d said.
“I want to live.” That statement came as a surprise and a truth I couldn’t deny. I had spent many hours, days, and months in the chancellor’s residence, not knowing if it mattered if I lived or died.
If I mattered or not.
And not as the spawn of the chancellor and all the odious responsibilities that would bring.
“But I don’t want to live at the expense of another. Not like this.”
Toorin reclaimed his retreating step, close enough for me to feel the heat of his body warming the space between us. “What are you proposing?”
Toorin’s whispered words hit a low register, making my heart jog and the heat creep into my cheeks. In the dim cabin, I doubt he noticed, which was a good thing.
I found the words, my voice strong and sure, when I said, “That we work together to get you your heart back.”