The Color of Rain by Cori McCarthy

Author:Cori McCarthy [McCarthy, Cori]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780762448463
Publisher: Running Press

CHAPTER

18

Ghostly bodies fall through the Void.

They scream my name.

And Walker’s pod is among them, flipping and spinning until it’s gone beyond the blue engine lights of the ship. I try to jump after him, but I’m held back by gripping, stroking, stealing fingers. I’m prodded and stripped. I’m taken apart by faceless men—skin from muscle, muscle from bones.

Soul from body.

Someone touches me, and I snatch the hand, bending back the thumb that I’ve caught. I open my eyes and look straight into Johnny’s hair-ruffled halo.

“Let go.”

I drop his thumb. “You startled me.”

He shakes out his thumb joint but wears a smile. “You were nightmaring.” I try to push up on my elbows on the satiny bed, but he moves closer. He’s naked, but then so am I. I stripped both of us when I returned from being with Ben. And I destroyed the room. The plush chair is on its side, clothes are strewn about, and a bottle has been emptied on the bar.

“We did all that?” I fake.

“Apparently. Must have been a wild night. Wish I could remember some of it.” He squeezes his temples for a moment. The drug I slipped him last night has left him groggy but not dead. The sheet glides between us like a film of lotion as he presses his length against my side and draws circles on the lowest part of my belly.

“Tell me what you dreamt about.” A smile is fitted to Johnny’s face, but for once it isn’t cold or malicious. If anything, I would call it searching. “I don’t remember my dreams,” he adds.

“I saw my brother,” I say, leaving out the rest.

Johnny groans. “Boring. And here I was hoping you dreamt of me. Crysta used to have nightmares where she’d call out for me.” His eyes reveal their deepest brown as his gaze falls out of focus. “I loved watching her twist and cry. Watching her ache and sniffle. Sometimes I would wait for her to hit that breaking point—right before she might wake herself—and then I’d kiss her.”

His lips seal mine, reeking of the alcohol that I smeared over his unconscious mouth, and his body arches as he moves his kiss from my mouth to my neck to my chest. I begin to slip into it—to run my hands through his hair and massage his back.

But Johnny sags, and he presses his forehead into my neck. Strange emotions seem to freeze him where he lies, and for just a moment he is nothing like the cold commander of this ship. His whole weight sinks against me as he sighs, and if I didn’t know better, I might call him heartsick. Ben said that Johnny has a sort of love for me, but it feels more like he has an overwhelming need for another’s love. A craving.

A deficiency.

His com buzzes next to my ear, and he grumbles out of his trance and slides off. He presses something on the wristband, and the door opens.

Ben enters.

Johnny has taken the

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