Starborne

Chapter 19

I found myself pressed up against Stefin so tightly I could feel the planes of his strong chest through his shirt. His hands were wrapped around my wrists in a way I could only describe as possessive; not so firm as to bring me pain, but unyielding enough that I could not pull away even if my traitorous body had wanted to. My words hung in the air between us, and our rapid breathing quickly filled the space between our mouths with moist heat. 

“I want you.” It was a whisper, a soft exhale, a breathy confession, released against my cheek and I felt it. 

“I want you, even though I can’t. I’m drawn to you and it defies reason and everything I know about what my life needs to be.”

Words momentarily escaped me, consumed by his presence and the heat of him, so close. I wondered who would be brave enough to take the first step, to push past the millimeters of space between our lips.

“I need you. I wish I understood why.” His confession came with the barest movement, almost intelligible. 

The bravery I’d conjured earlier had escaped me, burned up in the fiery inferno of Stefin’s intense proximity. My eyes drifted closed, lulled into a thrumming pleasure as awareness pulsed through me. 

“Me too.” My response was a whimper, pleading and damning in its urgency. I pried my eyes open, forcing myself to face the reality of his closeness. “And that’s why I was scared of getting to know you.”

Up until that moment, I’d considered Stefin’s eyes gray. Dark, stormy, sometimes flashing silver, I’d never been close enough, never found the right light to illuminate how wrong that was. Gray is a cloudy sky, gray is water vapor and stone and brooding mystery. Stefin was none of those things, not inside; Stefin was luminous, refracting, and iridescent. Feathered periwinkle, silky lilac, a spectrum of mossy greens, his eyes were a rainbow of multifaceted technicolor. They were otherworldly, inhuman- 

I took a gasping breath, wrenching myself away from the man - Cynabarrian - and cursing the cry of protest that lanced through every one of my cells at the action. 

To be clear, it wasn’t that there were any Terran rules against relationships between humans and the people of other planets. Sure, bigotry and discrimination sometimes created issues, but it was mostly cultural norms that prohibited interspecies matches. It happened - more and more often - but that was not what caused a pit to fill my stomach, what made my blood turn cold. Stefin was alien, was an alien, but that didn’t bother me. 

I was shaken by the realization that filled me when I finally gazed into the splendor of his eyes. They looked familiar to me, comfortable, and I knew why. The multi colored brilliance was reminiscent of the planet itself; the light reflected exactly like the rainbow crystals that made up much of the city, and was mined from the heart of Cynabar. I’d been relieved by the familiarity, and that only reminded me of how dangerous such a thing was. Stefin was a prince, born to this world and it shone out of every part of him. He belonged on the planet; I didn’t. Soon I would leave, never coming back, so I had no business feeling at home anywhere there, especially in his arms. 

The differences between us were more than physical, more than two individuals born as separate beings on completely disparate worlds. I was transient, a loner entrenched in stolid individuality, unwilling to give that up for the prospect of anything. Stefin had responsibility, a home, a family, things he could never leave. There could never be anything between us, and I hated why that upset me. 

When I looked into Stefin’s eyes, I knew it wasn’t the potion that was influencing me. I was developing feelings for him, despite every effort I had made to convince myself otherwise. The only thing I could think to do was run, get away from him and in turn, my emotions. If only the stupid man had let me go, I could have disappeared long enough to clear my head.