Chapter 33 - Mars #2
"Easy." Tanner is on his feet, both palms out. He puts himself between us without hurrying, which I'll give him credit for. "Dewey talks garbage on his best day. It won't happen again."
"If it happens again, he'll need somebody to chew his food for him, and it won’t be inside this mine."
"Understood." Tanner's eyes stay steady on mine, and there's no fear in them but something else sits in there instead, patient and buried deep, and I can't put a finger on what it is before he turns away. "Back to work, boys. Frames don't bolt themselves."
The table clears out fast with Dewey the first to skitter away.
Cody goes with them without looking at me, but I can see a touch of shame on his face as he passes me.
Penny stares after the kid with a small whine so I grab what’s left of his sandwich and toss it to her.
When I turn to go back to my own lunch, I find Marlene standing there with her arms folded over her cardigan.
She must have crossed half the bay to get here.
"He sends His warnings in plain sight," she says like she’s preaching in a church. "An abomination doesn't hide what it is. It can't."
She heads off toward the visitor centre with her chin high before I can answer, which is for the best, because nothing I'd have said would be fit for a church setting. Fucking Jesus nut job.
I stand there and watch her walk away thinking of that word…
abomination. Yup, that’s me. I try to pull my shadows one more time just for myself and they come out from under the table around my boots on the first pull.
I'm left standing in the middle of the bay staring down at my own feet in surprise. This magic that we have needs to be worked with more. We need to learn to control it so it doesn’t fail when we might need it the most.
By evening everyone has emptied out for supper and showers.
I'm doing the last walkthrough to tidy up any tools left out when Luna comes down the aisle with her hair untangled from the braid it was in earlier.
She's changed out of work clothes into one of her soft cotton dresses, and the sight of her hits me low in the chest.
"We're short trays for the top row." She points her thumb at the maintenance room off the north wall where we stacked the overflow of supplies on day one. "I'm grabbing another set before I lose all ambition and crash."
"I'll carry them for you." I fall in beside her before she can argue. She gives me a sideways look, halfway between amused and suspicious but doesn’t stop me.
The maintenance room smells like machine oil and fresh soil, but her lilac and lavender scent is all I can concentrate on as I hold the door open and she slides past me.
She finds the tray stacks and starts counting out what she needs while I stand there doing nothing but watching her.
Stray strands of that cinnamon hair with white streaks keep sliding forward into her eyes and she keeps hooking them back behind her ear without losing her place.
I forget every reason I had for coming in to help her except the real one.
I needed a minute of her. One minute of being close to her, even if all I get out of it a chance to help her and have her attention in some small way.
She catches me staring and pink climbs up her cheeks as she wrinkles that cute little freckled nose at me.
"What?" Her voice is breathless in a way that undoes me. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because for two years I tried to remember your face right, and I was off." I say it before I can think better of it. "My memory of you was never this good."
Her breath catches but she turns away to the shelf, fast with her shoulders up, and I know I've done it wrong, said too much, pushed where I shouldn’t have pushed.
"Hey. I'm sorry." I touch her shoulder and turn her gently back to face me. "I didn't mean to..."
The apology dies right there, because my shadows have made a decision without my consent.
They lift off the floor in slow ribbons and reach for her, curling around her wrists, sliding up her bare forearms, barely touching her at all as they slide higher.
She goes completely still as under her skin, pale light rises to meet them, faint at first, then brightening to a soft white glow that spreads out from everywhere my dark touches.
The shadows twine through the light and the light threads back through them, and all we can do is watch.
"Mars," she whispers my name into the space between us. Her throat moves in a long swallow as her teeth press into her bottom lip, and her eyes drop to my mouth and stay there.
A rough groan pulls out of my chest. "Don't look at me like that, baby."
Her chin tips up an inch, glowing and defiant and gorgeous. "Then stop looking back."
Every good intention I own dies with her challenge.
I crash my mouth down on hers, one hand fisting in her hair, and the noise she makes against my lips wipes out two years of pretending I remembered this.
My memory was never even close. She's warm and real and kissing me back, her fingers grabbing my shirt to haul me closer instead of pushing me off. Another heavy weight I’ve carried in my heart since the night I ran lifts away as the smell of her and her cherry taste floods my senses like a homecoming.
Her arms wind around my neck as I lift her against me and her legs come around my waist on instinct, both of us moving on a memory of what we once had.
Three steps puts her back against the wall and my hands slide under the cotton hem of her dress and fill themselves with her ass, guiding her hips while she rocks against where I'm already aching for her.
The friction rips a curse out of me that her mouth swallows whole.
The sounds she makes will end me. Breathy little moans, small gasps timed to every roll of her hips and my name broken into pieces against my neck. I'm one more rock of her hips against my cock from finishing in my jeans fully dressed, which would be a new personal low and completely worth it.
Goddamnit, I will take anything this girl gives me. Any piece of her she allows me to have and hold on to. Whatever crumbs or version of us she's willing to give to me, I’ll take it and get on my knees to thank her for it.
Something hits the concrete outside the door with a clang that echoes off the walls in here.
We tear apart, both of us heaving and panting.
The door shoves open a little wider and Penny trots in wagging her tail, immensely pleased with herself, an empty fertilizer can rolling in a slow circle behind her.
She sits down on my boot and waits to be acknowledged with a doggy grin.
"Penny," Luna groans but she's gasping with one hand pressed flat to her chest, her lips swollen and red from our kiss.
I see the confusion rising up through the heat in her eyes.
"I didn't... Mars, I didn't mean for that to happen.
" Her fingers press against her lips. "I don't know what came over me. "
She's still glowing. Faint and lovely, the light moving under her skin in slow pulses, and my shadows are still wrapped around her.
As I watch they slide higher, over her collarbone, up the column of her throat, and settle around her neck in a loose, dark circle.
They aren't holding her, but they aren't letting go either.
My magic has claimed her, and hers accepted without consulting either of us.
"I didn't intend that either, Little Moon." My thumb traces the edge of the glow along her jaw, and the light leans into the touch. "But it looks like our magic is happy about it."
She stares up at me, lit from the inside, shadow ringing her throat, and she doesn't pull it away but leans into my touch.
Whatever vote I thought I didn't deserve, whatever line I planned to wait behind, my shadows just went around all of it.
For the first time in two years, I have real hope that I can get her back.