Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“Tell me what you feel,” he said, because he knew she could feel to a certain extent. That single tear, the way she’d fought for Jacques, the way she’d stared at Ollie with such silent wonder.
His Eleri’s heart was damaged but not destroyed.
She turned to him, her face pristine in its false peace. “It’s as if I perceive emotion through a thick layer of smoky glass.” Dropping his hand, she walked forward to the edge of the water and sat down.
When he came down next to her, the side of his body pressed to hers and she didn’t pull away.
“Js feel too much,” she said, the words sounding like a confession inside this place distant from everyone, a cocoon where they could pretend they were just another couple who wanted to steal a romantic moment. “That’s always been the problem. We can’t be Silent when our literal job is to walk in the minds of monsters.
“Each reconditioning attempted to re-create Silence by scraping away the weight of emotion, and if that didn’t work, overwriting it,” she explained. “But we also can’t forget, so the technicians added what they call ‘obstructions’ in our neural pathways. Like a circuit that never quite closes, it was meant to allow us to remember without the emotional impact of remembering.”
“It sounds like bullshit,” Adam snarled. “A way to use you like machines.”
“Yes.” Eleri continued to stare at the water as green as glass. “I think sometimes, that if they’d let us read good memories in between, we might’ve done better, might have been balanced, but that was never on the table. Only the monsters. Only the evil. After a while, it seeps into you.”
She shook her head when he would’ve spoken. “I don’t regret the people I executed. Especially not the ones who beat the system and got out—had they remained alive, they would’ve destroyed countless lives. But the girl I once was would’ve felt regret, would’ve questioned who she was becoming. That’s what I regret—losing her.” Her next words were a whisper. “In losing her, I lost you, too.”
“No.” He took her jaw, made her look at him with those eyes become obsidian pools. “You are who I want. You as you are today. I’m not that boy anymore, either.”
Eleri couldn’t fight the compulsion any longer. “Can I touch you?” she said to the angry falcon in front of her, because she would allow herself to be selfish this day that would be the only one they’d ever share. “Even through the smoky glass, the fog, I’ve always reacted to your physical presence like I have a hunger within.”
His pupils expanded, the yellow ring bright with grim satisfaction. “That’s the call of the mating bond.” Lifting her hand to his face, he said, “Do what you will. I’m yours, Eleri Dias.”
His jaw was hard and solid under her touch, his skin lightly bristled. When it grazed her palm, she wondered what it would feel like on softer, more delicate parts of her.
Chapter 28
Sexual contact must be verboten if Silence is to succeed. There is no other option—there’s too much sensation in it, too much chance of emotional bonding.
—Excerpted from draft discussion paper on the Silence Protocol (1 January 1973)
Eleri knew what she was feeling was a dulled echo of what it should be, but this was her only chance and so she would take it. Moving her hands to the buttons of her shirt, she began to undo them.
Adam sucked in a breath. “Eleri, what—?”
“I want contact,” she said, her shirt partially unbuttoned. “I want skin to skin, so much contact that I feel.”
He stopped her hands, and for a moment she thought this was it, Adam ending the experience before it began. But then he nudged her hands aside and said, “Let me,” and her pulse kicked up a notch.
Not enough, not anything like it had done during their first meeting so long ago, but for now, for who she was…she accepted it, embraced it. As she embraced the warm sensation that spread through her entire body when Adam ran his knuckles down the strip of skin he’d already exposed.
“You’re not wearing a bra,” he said, a slow smile on his lips. “Now, how are you getting away with that with a white shirt, hmm?”
“I don’t have large breasts, and while the color is white, the material is thick.”
Adam ran the back of his hand over her right breast without warning, and she felt her abdomen clench. He was watching her, gave a small nod. “You felt that, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” As a dull stab deep within her.
Adam did it again, before moving his hands to the buttons at her cuffs. He undid them with a slow deliberation that she knew she should savor, but—“I need things to be fast, Adam. Sensation layered atop sensation. No time for anything to fade.”