Tankborn by Karen Sandler

Author:Karen Sandler
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: High Tech, Juvenile Fiction, Coming of Age, Science Fiction, love and romance, social issues / Prejudice and Racism
Publisher: Lee & Low Books / Tu Books
Published: 2011-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

Why had Devak thought Kayla’s skin might feel different than a trueborn girl’s? GENs might be non-human, but they were created using human DNA. Certainly the skin that covered them would feel the same.

He ran his thumb across the back of her hand, curled his fingers into her palm. He wanted to enclose her hand in both of his, to lift it to his cheek and feel it there.

But that would be a step too far. As would the other possibilities spinning out in his mind, fantasies that would be at least acceptable with Anjika or Eesha or Lajita. His father might scold him if he caught Devak kissing a high-status girl not yet betrothed to him, but if she was from a good family, one that would add to the Manels’ status, Ved would secretly be pleased.

But touching Kayla was beyond shameful. Except he felt warm from the tips of his fingers to the center of his chest, and lost in those wide gray eyes. When his transgression should have mortified him, he felt as if broken parts of him had healed into a whole.

He turned her hand palm up. “Your skin seems undamaged.”

Despite the wariness in her eyes, she smiled. “Your bones seem just as straight.”

He smiled back at her. “Then they’ve lied about this much, at least.”

“And your brother’s story.”

“And that.” He hadn’t completely wrapped his mind around her version, but he liked it better and hoped it was true. “Who knows what else is a lie?”

Her gaze dropped to their linked hands. “Who knows?”

His thumb moved a little higher, to her wrist, the circular motion nudging the edge of her sleeve. Her gaze softened, and he made the circles a little bigger, pushing the sleeve up past her wrist bone.

He spotted the intriguing dark swirl of color on her arm a moment before she snatched her hand away. She made to hide her hand under the table, but he captured it again and tugged up her sleeve to just below the elbow. The random designs on her forearm entranced him, streaks of dark and light, shades deeper and paler than her light brown. Every color he’d ever seen on a Lokan face, every status, was drawn on her skin.

So rapt at the meld of colors, he didn’t notice her distress until he heard her tiny moan of anguish. She neatly plucked her hands from his grip and he realized that with her strength she could have done that all along. He guessed that only politeness had kept her from being so abrupt.

He thought she’d cover her arm again, but she shoved up both sleeves past her elbows. Now he saw the same washes of color on the other arm, small specks, long streaks, thumb-sized dots.

She held them out, chin lifted, a challenging look in her eyes. “You wanted to see, you might as well get a good look.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, still not sure why she seemed so upset.

“Because trueborn gene-splicers never make a mistake.

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