The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) (23 page)

I put my mouth to her ear from behind her. “Are you all right?”

Then something happened that I would remember for the rest of my days. You could scrub my brain with bleach and I wouldn’t forget it. She finally took a breath just as her entire body shivered, beginning from her the top to the bottom. When the goosebumps appeared on her skin, showing on her neck, and she hadn’t turned around yet, I gently touched the tops of her shoulders with my palms and said low, “Let’s get going, okay?”

I let my thumbs swipe across her back, to settle her as much as myself. The sight of her shivering, from my voice on her ear alone, would haunt me in the most delicious ways, but I still didn’t know exactly what had happened to her before I found her on Havard’s ship. I felt like I should move slowly.

She turned to look at me, causing my hands to fall back to my sides. Her lips were parted slightly and her eyes were…on fire.

Okay…maybe
slowly
wasn’t going to pan out.

I rubbed my neck, trying to look away from her, but unable to until she finally dropped her eyes and took a deep breath, the spell broken. “What now?” she asked suddenly.

“We should scoot out of this alley and get out there,” I jerked my head to the street, “mingling with the people. They can’t tell who’s who out there.”

She nodded as she looked around and realized that the alley was only about two feet wide and I was standing very close to her. But I had a feeling I would have been even if I had room. I was on edge right now. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

She started to move that way, but I took her elbow and gave her a look that I hoped said, ‘Since when do you go first?’ as I got in front of her to lead the way. The small smile on her lips as she ducked her head was enough for me to have hope that everything just might work out, that Sophelia’s cracks might be fixable after all.

**

“We want to get some of these,” I said and pointed at the container with the brownies inside. “Two of them. And two of these as well,” I told her and moved my finger over the jumbo chocolate chip cookies.

“Somebody’s got some silver to spend,” she said with a grin as she began to hand my pressure-bagged items to me.

              “Somebody’s got a woman with a sweet tooth,” I muttered. I balked that it had just fallen out of my mouth, and fallen so easily. I glanced over at Sophelia. And she looked a cross between amused and outraged.

              I grinned at her because I didn’t know what else to do. She laughed silently and finally said, “There’s two of everything you’re getting and two of us.” She bumped my arm with her shoulder. Since yesterday and that whole situation—we hadn’t spoken of it yet, though I knew we would, but we’d been in a good place. An easygoing, chill, good place to be. “And we should probably get some
real
food.” She looked up at the vendor. “No offense.”

              “None taken, doll. But once you bite into that cookie, you’ll never eat real food again. You’ll want to live off these things; they’re that good.” She winked at us. “Guaranteed.”

              I laughed lightly. “Well, maybe we’ll see you again then.” I paid for our items and told her to have a good one. Then I took Sophelia over to a fruit cart and picked us out some dried strawberries, bananas, whole almonds, and refilled our water containers.

              Sophelia watched me buy everything and stuff it in my bag, and then said, “What is it with you and food?”

              “What do you mean?”

              “You’re always buying these things that I’m pretty sure you don’t eat all the time. And you never buy the same food twice.”

              I gave her a sidelong glance. “Is that a problem?”

              “No,” she said quickly. “It’s your silver.”

              “It’s our silver,” I told her, just like I’d told her last night and at my mother’s house. “This silver has your name on it, literally. It’s only right that you take your half.”

              “I don’t want it.”

              She’d said the same thing last time, too.

              I ignored that. “Anything you see that you want or need, just say the word or point and I’ll make sure that we get it.”

              “But why are you always getting this random stuff?”

              I decided not to keep up our playful banter. “Because I like to watch you.” I took her arm as we maneuvered into the street into the people. I went ahead and finished it since I knew what she wanted to ask next, whether she had the guts or not. “When you take a bite of something you’ve never had before, it’s like… Remember learning about Christmas in history? How they got presents and decorated their pods and a tree, and it was just this magical two hours before it was over and then it was back to being just a normal day?”

              She nodded. “I bet Christmas was fun. And Thanksgiving.”

              “That’s what it’s like watching you. You enjoy it so much. You savor every bite; you don’t just eat it for eating’s sake. You appreciate it, which makes me want to get new things for you to try.”

              She walked with her head turned to me and barely gave me a little nod. Not watching where she was going, I gripped her elbow and tugged her toward me so she wouldn’t run into the carrier bot that was being loaded down with holographic barrier boxes. The only bad thing about those kinds of containers is that you could see everything the person had bought through the holographic sides. This person obviously needed dried prunes.

Badly.

              I chuckled to myself and then realized I still had Sophelia’s arm in my hand. But when I looked back up, I saw a couple of sentries three blocks down. I acted. I slung my arm over her shoulder as we exited the busy district. When I saw them still steadily coming, I walked us a little faster, but saw that the street led to nowhere.

So I did what anyone would have done in my position.

I turned to Sophelia and pressed my face into her neck. Like we were laughing, being silly, being in love, and luckily for me, Sophelia was either too stunned or knew what was up to knee me in the junk.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered, her fingers going to my shirtfront and tightening in the fabric.

“What?” I pushed her back to the black brick alley wall once we reached it and continued to assault her skin, torturing myself, so I could watch the Militia as they came up the street. “Maybe I just wanted to press my face into your neck. Ever think of that?”

My eyes were on the Militia but my nose was on her skin, my lips skimmed her skin, too—just barely—enough to make me start to sweat all over. When she didn’t respond, at all, not even a chuckle, I flicked my eyes to hers and realized what I’d done.

After what Ivan just told her about what
fy melys
means, and that kiss yesterday, I could not be telling her I wanted to stick my face into her neck. I completely
did
want to press my face into her neck. And that wasn’t all.

And with her in those pants, I was about to lose my mind, but I knew that she wasn’t the kind of girl who wanted to be told outright that you were losing your mind, no matter what my mother said.

This was a delicate situation and I planned to feel it out and handle it as such. And so far I wasn’t starting out great. I grimaced. “Sorry. I was just kidding.”

“So…” she squinted so cutely, “you don’t really want to press your face into my neck.” Long pause. “Right?”

Oh, boy. “No, not really.” I sighed. “Totally kidding.”

She sighed so harshly—with relief?—that I was starting to get a complex.

“I knew that old man was pulling my leg.” So she thought that Ivan, the nicest man on the planet, would make it up because she couldn’t believe it that much? Did she not want me to want her that badly? It must have been on my face because she scoffed. “What?”

I forced my eyes away from her and onto the sentries who were now so close I could smell them. That’s what I get for not paying attention to the enemy and having my eyes instead on the gorgeous redhead in my vicinity.

Then I heard her gasp. “Maxton.”

I loved how she called me by my full name instead of ‘Max’ like everybody else did, but when my eyes landed on hers, I saw the fear there and knew that one of two things was about to happen. One, her oxygen was running out, which wasn’t happening because the pills lasted for a few days, or two, she needed a gravity tab, which I couldn’t give her in front of the Militia because they’d know they were black market.

This was no longer a recon on the Militia, this was now a mission to get Sophelia her gravity and make sure we didn’t get killed or taken in for processing. I pulled her behind me and she followed without a word until we reached the next alley that was stuck in a darker, hidden alcove.

I put her back to the wall and took both of her arms and put them on my chest so they couldn’t see the screen on her arm flashing a warning through her jacket if they were looking. I looked down into her frightened eyes, wondering if she’d ever come to floating away before. I’d come pretty close; too close.

“I’ve got you, Soph,” I assured her, “I promise.”

And then my hands slid to the backs of her legs as I picked her up, feeling smug knowing that the gasp she let loose wasn’t for show but all too real, and then pressed her to the wall with my hips as I held her there tightly against me. In her eyes, I could see she didn’t care that Militia were on the way to us or that she could be about to float away into the atmosphere. No, there was only her and me, the wall against her back and the non-existent space between us. Her breaths raged in her lungs as she watched me come closer, inching toward her, my lips parted, my chest touching hers, and then I was on her, kissing her…or at least that’s what it looked like to the guards.

I leaned in as I held her there, one elbow on the wall by her head, and looked into her eyes for a few seconds because I could do nothing else. Her eyes were gorgeous. Gray orbs of trust that held me to my spot. I’d never have thought that gray was a beautiful color before, on a planet filled with gray, but now I couldn’t stop looking at them. Her lips began to crack into a smile and I knew that I’d been just staring at her entirely too long for common decency.

When she giggled a little, I leaned in and poked her under her ribs once. Her giggling only helped our cause that we were “making out”. Girls giggled when they made out…right?

I had to assume that was true.

Hoped.

Envisioned.

Prayed.

I wanted her to giggle one day in the near future when we made out because that seemed…so hot.

I put my forehead against hers when I heard the crunch of gravel directly behind me, feeling her tense up under me. I wrapped my arms around her tighter.

“Shhh,” I whispered against her mouth. Her mouth opened against mine and she inhaled. I could feel the cool wind on my lips. I kissed the corner of her mouth, wanting more, wanting so much more than that, but not wanting to take it, not like this.

I wanted her to give it to me.

Her hands came up, taking my face in them. I groaned a little, unable to stop it. I could feel her chest rise and fall with mine. Her eyes opened and I knew what was coming, I was getting those lips, but before her mouth could meet mine I heard the sentry bark behind me.

“Hey.”

Her eyes changed so quickly to panic.

I didn’t have a license, but I thought since we were being so blatantly obvious they’d never question it, they’d never imagine we’d ever be so bold. Yet, here he was barking at me.

But when they heard a commotion further down the road, he said under his breath, “I bet that’s the convicts,” and forgot all about us as they took off.

I kept my eyes on hers as I pulled my bag around and dug around in it for the gravity tabs. Scientists had discovered a way to change our blood so we could breathe, making it oxidized, but in the process of doing that they also discovered the way for our blood not to boil and rebel against us as it tried to rise while our body stayed on the ground. Liquids rose while solids stayed, as long as it was weighted and magnetized down, so even though we had our gravity boots on, we still had to take a “gravity tab” to keep our blood from trying to rise. The tabs also gave us iron to fill our blood. It made our bodies “subtly”, magnetically attracted to the planet’s magnetic granite-metal mix. It felt like you were boiling at its worst, but at the beginning, it just felt like you were going to float away if you didn’t get your tab in time.

It wasn’t any fun, at all. It felt
real
.

And if you didn’t have your boots on, you would have floated away.

Just another day on this treacherous planet.

I took a tab out of the canister with the end of my thumb. She didn’t waste any time before she was pulling my hand to her mouth, sucking up the square tab…my thumb with it.

“Oh, uh…Soph,” I groaned. In ecstasy.
Nothing but ecstasy
.

I watched her as she held my thumb in her mouth, her eyes on mine, letting the tab dissolve. I could feel the slight movement of her tongue against the pad of my thumb before she released me. Her eyes closed for a second before she sighed in relief. Then she pressed herself against me as she waited for the tab to take effect, her head on my chest.

She seemed so content there, pressed between a brick wall and my hard chest, my hands planted literally two inches from her glorious behind. Hey, if that made her happy, who was I to argue with her?

I smiled as much as I could in my shocked and drunk-on-Sophelia state. This girl.

This girl
.

She was going to be the proverbial death of me.

Maybe the actual death of me. But what a way for a guy to die.

“Are you okay now that you’ve got your gravity in you?” I joked softly.

She lifted her head and said just as softly, shyly, like she was just realizing something herself and didn’t know what to make of it. “There is no gravity. The only thing holding me to this planet is you.”