Free Love and Decay by Rachel Higginson

I get to
ask you a question now?”
    He nodded once. His eyes found the ground as
he withdrew into himself. He was terrified of what I would say.
    I had a thousand questions to ask him, but
when I opened my mouth, I surprised myself. “Why are you afraid to
go back to the Colony?”
    His eyes snapped up to meet mine. He hadn’t
been expecting that question either. He didn’t answer right away.
In fact, he was silent for so long that I thought he had changed
his mind and wasn’t going to answer.
    Finally, he took a deep breath and admitted,
“I’m afraid of what I’ll find.”
    “You mean, Matthias? What he’s done?”
    “It’s more than that,” he confessed. “It’s…
I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid of the control he still has over me.
I’m afraid… I’m afraid that I’ll find out I’m exactly like
him.”
    “You’re not.” I rushed to assure him before
he even finished his sentence. I closed the distance between us and
threw my arms around his neck like I’d wanted to do earlier. He
smelled so good, like leather and soap and something so intensely
him. I wanted to bury my nose in his neck and breathe him in.
    Instead I spoke against his heart, even while
his hands dangled at his sides and he refused to hug me back.
“You’re nothing like him, Miller. You’re good. So good. You’re
strong and clever and loyal, but most of all you’re good. And he is
nothing but evil. You couldn’t be more different. He might be your
father, but he’s not your family. And you might look like him, but you are not him .” I pulled back and bravely met his
stormy gaze. My stomach flipped and I could barely say the words
when I promised him, “I swear it. I swear your fears are
unfounded.”
    Nerves fluttered through me as I waited for
him to say something. I couldn’t stand his silence, but I was more
afraid of what he would say to me. I didn’t want him to argue with
me.
    I wouldn’t be able to stand it if he told me
I was wrong.
    I was as afraid of his truth in this moment
as I was for him.
    But in the end, it was my fears that were
unfounded.
    He didn’t speak at all.
    His hands finally moved to touch me, cradling
my face in the gentlest caress. He stared into my eyes, telling me
more secrets that I couldn’t decipher. Except this time, they felt
like hope and healing and intimacy beyond words… maybe they were so
deep and intense that nothing could describe them.
    I opened my mouth to say more, to assure him
more… but he silenced me by covering my mouth with his.
    Instead of words, I gasped, breathing him in
and letting him take control of my mouth. His tongue swept over my
bottom lip and I trembled at the feel of him, at the taste of
him.
    This wasn’t like when Santi kissed me and I
simply memorized the mechanics of it. With Santi it had been all
about exploration and sating curiosity. With Santi I had been
physically present, but mentally absent, taking in everything from
a clinical, exploratory perspective.
    With Miller I didn’t think.
    I couldn’t think.
    He overwhelmed everything inside me, forcing
my body to react, my mouth to move. He erased coherent thought and
made my mind spin with feeling and emotion and something so
delicious I thought I would melt from it.
    I got lost in the feeling of him, in the
subtle scrapes of his teeth over my swollen bottom lip, over the
tangling of our tongues and the feel of his body against mine. He
trailed his hands from my jaw to my back, wrapping strong arms
around me and holding me tightly to him. I leaned into him, unable
to support myself any longer.
    This was too good.
    Miller was too perfect.
    I was afraid that he would stop, that he
would pull away and I would be left to figure out how to do simple
things like breathe on my own and stand up by myself.
    But he didn’t do that. Instead he deepened
the kiss, worshipping my mouth with his. His soft sigh of, “Page,”
was nearly my undoing. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes and I
willed them not