Oh, sun. Help me.
“Do you want me to sleep somewhere else?” he asks.
“No,” I say, trying to make my voice sound nonchalant.
He sighs, and relaxes a little.
“Can you control it?”
He huffs. “I’m not going to rape you, if that’s your question.”
“No,” I say, turning over to face him. “I didn’t mean it that way.” God, my glow spot is practically pounding now. “I just meant… does it take over and make you… want to…”
“Have sex with you?” He laughs. “Well, sure. But we learn how to control the urges in puberty. And believe me, I had a lot of practice, so I can handle it.”
I close my eyes and pretend I’m going to sleep. But I highly doubt there’s going to be much sleep in my future. Once my glow spot gets excited it needs what it needs. I just don’t want to embarrass myself the way I did earlier. That was humiliating.
“Can I ask you something?” Serpint says.
I open my eyes and look at him. Why does he have to be so damn handsome? “Sure,” I say.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but… that glow in the doctor’s office…”
“Yeah?” I ask, really not wanting to talk about it.
“Is that normal?”
I let out a long breath of air. “Sorta,” I say.
“What’s that mean?”
“It means… I knew it could happen, it’s just never happened to me. So I was as surprised as you were.”
“Hmm,” he says. “How come I’ve never seen that before? I mean, I’ve lived on this station for twenty years. Have seen Crux’s princesses glow in pretty much every possible way. But I’ve never seen that.”
“Well,” I say. “Um…” Oh, sun. I do not want to tell him why I think that happened.
“Is it bad?” he asks.
“Nnnn-ooooooo,” I say, drawing out the word into two syllables.
“Then what?” He squints his eyes at me in the dim light “Are you… glowing right now?”
Oh, shit. “Am I?” I say, looking at my hand. “I don’t see any glow.”
“No, just your… eyes,” he says. “It’s not bright, but it’s there. What’s up with all this flux capacitor stuff anyway?”
OK, I have to say something. One part truth, two parts lie. That’s how this needs to go. “It’s called luminous flux,” I say. “I don’t even know what a flux capacitor is. And the glow is… well, it’s emotional. Strong feelings make us light up. So naturally, when we… erm… you know, climax”—I roll my eyes at myself—“we glow. Because it feels good. But we glow when we feel bad too,” I add quickly. “And sometimes we glow for no reason.” Lie. “Lots of times, actually.” Another lie.
“OK,” he says. “So what’s faintly glowing eyes signify?” I grow hot and he says, “Oh, shit. It’s getting brighter.”
“It’s… blushing,” I say. And then I blush harder and the glow is bright enough for me to see a shine reflecting in his eyes.
“You’re blushing?” He laughs. “Because my cock is gonna be hard all night?”
“No,” I say too fast.
“Oh, hell.” He laughs. “You’re gonna light up the room if you blush any harder.”
“Just… just… shut up, OK? God. And that’s not why I’m blushing, anyway.”
He thinks about that for a moment. “OK. We have two things happening here, I think.”
Great. Just my luck to get a smart one.
“First, we have the freaky light show back in the doctor’s office. And second, we have you blushing. And they’re related, but not because I’m hard.”
I just stare at him.
“How am I doing?”
I sigh.
“I’ll take that as on the right track. OK. So. You glowed up like crazy in the doctor’s office because… you’re in love with me.” Then he winks at his joke.
I close my eyes and shake my head.
“Holy shit!” he exclaims.
And when I open my eyes to see what’s got him so excited—I’m lit up like the sun.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – SERPINT
“I was just kidding,” I say, mesmerized by the yellow-pink light emanating from every inch of her body.
“Can we stop talking about this now?” She turns over, but I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s so beautiful all lit up. Like a fucking goddess.
“Wait.” I laugh. “Lyra, what’s going on? Are you in love—”
“No,” she yells. “No. That’s stupid.”
“Then why is this happening?”
“I don’t know, OK? I don’t know.”
I inhale deeply, just staring at how the light curves around her shoulder and peeks out from under the neck and sleeve of her t-shirt. My t-shirt, I remind myself.
“You don’t know,” I repeat. “But you have an idea. So what’s your idea?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She peeks at me from over her shoulder. But now something else is different. Her eyes have stopped glowing and they are just the normal golden-pink they were before she started blushing.
“You’re hiding something.”
“I’m hiding lots of things.” She huffs.
“You feel something for me.”