The Color of Rain (30 page)

Finding someone to love him as he is.

His ragged feelings for Crysta only prove that he's been aching for too long. I risk a glance at his smooth cheeks and lips. His eyes reveal their inner brown as his look searches me. Maybe this is simple. He's waiting for me to make the choice that he would make, the self-interest choice.
What I want
. Well, that's Walker. Johnny's known from day one that this has been about saving my brother at any cost, and now he wants to see how much further I can go.

“Twenty seconds.” Johnny taps my shoulder to the rhythm of his count.

If I'm right, if I choose to save all those people, if I choose humanity, he will be done with me. I'll have proven that I'm not like him after all. And that means we all lose. I have no doubt that even Ben would suffer from Johnny's sick disappointment.

“Five.”

A wail creeps up into my mouth—all those people!

“Two.”

“Save Walker.”

“Say
please
.”

“Please, Johnny. Save my brother.”

He sighs happily and reaches across the control panel to tap something. “Don't forget to watch the fruits of your labor, Rain.”

I tug out of his arms and step closer to the screen. Although I cannot hear the clanks of the airlock opening, I can feel it in my
skull. I can see it in the terrified faces of the huddled mass in the airlock. Johnny doesn't have to tell me to watch. I wouldn't look away. I need to see what I've done.

The
clang
sounds through the crowd, reaching me only in the startled jerk of their bodies. Then the doors slide open . . . and they all go soaring, flying, tumbling one over another as they're sucked into the Void.

Johnny clears his throat and taps something. “I think there's a better view from the back window.” The screen flashes to an image of space. Silver stars rushing by in the distance. The closer ones wink with brilliant light.

And even closer, the somersaulting procession of bodies in our wake.

“Now that's a hundred pieces of merchandise at over forty credits a head.” Johnny's arms creep around my chest until I am the tree, and he is the choking vine. He tugs my dress so that it slips to the floor. “By my calculations, we have some seriously long nights to look forward to while you make this up to me.” He's so happy, and I know why. He's finally made me into his image. Into a murderess, and a selfish, terrible being. He's won.

He squeezes me even tighter, but I can barely feel him. Two small bodies cartwheel end over end. The girls' matching blonde hair stands out like halos, and their arms stay entwined even in a frozen, horrible death. Two links in a chain, which couldn't be broken, but are lost all the same.

I
lounge across Johnny's lap, my head on his shoulder. We're on the command deck, on his captain's chair, facing the very window where I truly became Johnny's Rain. I take in his musky cologne with each breath, and I have to admit that I've grown to like it.

The fact feels wrong but is true.

Johnny's fingers trick through my hair, down my side and over my hip. He'll take us to our room within the hour; his stroking is easy to predict. He's itching for my body, and in return, I'm warming up inside for him.

Two crew members stand before us. An older man wears a scrap of cloth over his eyes, and acid burns mar the skin on his forehead. The other one is younger, shifting from foot to foot.

“So, you would like to blind him because he had a part in blinding you?” Johnny asks. I can hear the smile in his voice. He hasn't had this much perverted fun since the moment he made me choose this life—the moment the Touched tumbled out of the airlock and into oblivion.

“I couldn't have predicted that canister was going to up and explode!” the shifty one complains. “And I didn't know he was
going to put his face over it at the exact moment that I lifted the lid free.”

“It ain't fair that this idiot didn't look at the expiration date before ripping the lid off. Ain't fair that I've got to jump ship because I can't work no more,” the blind man says.

“
Fair
?” Johnny rolls the word around in his mouth while he touches my throat. His fingers have a heat to them that I've long since grown attuned to, but still, I can't shut off his snaking touch like I did with the other men. I can't slip into that voided place of submission. Johnny has too much of me for that, and I don't even try.

When he reaches for me, I reach back.

Every time.

“And how would you like to blind him? Acid again? Or maybe a knife. Oh, I have an idea, we have some antique laser weaponry down in engineering.” Johnny's fingers plug away at the com on his wrist. “I'll have Samson bring up his collection. We'll make it quite the show.”

Now the blind man shifts. “I just want him to pay, Captain. I don't know about lasers, but if you could take his Void pay and give it to me or even demote him, that'd make me sleep easier.”

The accused man looks like he's ready to kiss the blind one, but Johnny adjusts his narrow hips beneath me with aggravation. “So you bring this request to me, and then you back out when you hear my decision? I feel like taking both of your Void pay and leaving you both without eyes.” He leans forward so that I have to hold his chest to keep from slipping off his lap. I've seen this angry twitch in him before. If I don't do something, he will
have both of them flogged or worse.

“Johnny.” I lift my head from his shoulder, and as I knew it would, his whole body softens.

He touches my chin like it's made of glass. “Yes?”

“Throw the idiot in lockup before he does more damage, and let the Mec heal the burns.” I stare down his eyes in a way that I'm getting better and better at. “Take me to bed.”

He exhales, but brings my lips in for one of his scorching kisses. Then he gets to his feet, allowing me to slide off his lap in the skimpy slip of a black dress that he makes me wear.

“What the woman wants, she gets,” Johnny says. The two crew members before him are doing a terrible job of hiding their surprise at his new decision. He looks to the guilty youth first. “You will eject yourself from this ship at the next stop, which will be, ah well, that will be Leland's ship,
Stride
, in the Static Pass in only two days time.”

“But Captain, I can't crew with
Stride
! That's a wanted vessel. A known slavers' shi—” The blind man elbows him into silence, and I marvel at the way the two men came to Johnny as hateful enemies only to leave as allies.

Johnny's face perks with a small smile, enjoying the youth's fear. He turns to the blind crew member. “You can see the Mec. He's down in the engine room with the other one. He may be able to help you.”

Ben
.

So he is alive. It had been a whole month of not daring to ask . . . of swallowing the fear that Ben's absence could very well mean his death. I thought not knowing was the worst, but now
picturing him somewhere on this ship makes me ache to see him. And it
is
worse.

Johnny's fingers slide through my hair until they've found my dress, slipping beneath the material to stroke my shoulder blades. “You must have turned something over in my girl to have her bringing up the Mec. She hasn't mentioned him in weeks.”

I turn from his caress. “I'm tired, Johnny. Take me to our room.”

He circles my waist, splaying his hand across my belly. “Dismissed,” he calls behind him as he leads me from the command deck, his touches growing more and more needy with each step.

I wonder if those men will thank me in secret ways. Do they know how close they came to catching Johnny's disturbed interest? Do they know that I will now have to drug him with my body to distract him from the idea that he almost got to watch a man blind another man?

I wonder these things, but I do not hope anymore.

Afterward, I slip out of Johnny's satiny bed and pull on the lacy nightgown that spends more time on the floor than my shoulders. Johnny's breath is even and calm as he sleeps on his stomach, one arm cascading over the side of the bed like he's too exhausted to right it.

I tiptoe to the bathroom.

It's dangerous to leave Johnny's side. He's easiest to sway when we're in constant contact. It's only when he doesn't have me near him for stretches that it becomes harder to command his focus . . . and to give myself to him so completely.

I stare into the mirror without seeing my face.

This is the price I pay for that horrible choice. My brother's life isn't worth all those Touched who were lost. And mine certainly isn't. I have to make it up to them by finishing my original plan. I have to save my brother so that at least one thing in this universe can be righted. And that means obedience to Johnny. Willingness and passion.

If I can stay in his favor, I may be able to convince him to let Walker go at the Edge. But not me. He'll never part with me, and I can't help but feel that it's exactly what I deserve. After all, my parents found each other, two redheads in a world of other colors, and Johnny and I found each other . . . two do-whatever-it-takes people in an empty universe.

It's almost a love story. Isn't it?

I slip out of the bathroom, tripping on a small disc that slides under the door. I pick it up, turning it over, just as it begins to spout gas at an alarming rate. I fling it away, the smoke already filling the room. I should call out and wake Johnny, but instead I cough twice on the vapors, tilt to my knees and tumble face first into the carpet.

I wake to a strong, terrible smell from a small bottle held right under my nose. I begin to scream, but a hand comes down over my mouth. So I bite it.

“Hell, Rain! Ow!”

“Ben?”

I sit up fast, slamming my forehead into his, and I am suddenly so dizzy that I might throw up. “What's happened?”

“You're in
Melee
. We're safe for the moment.” His face is dirtier than I remember, and light brown scruff runs down the edges of his jaw. But his hair is still wild, and his eyes are the deepest blue with only a hint of their silver underneath.

I fall into hugging him, and he holds me, so solid and strong . . . and so very different from Johnny. So different that it feels wrong.

I pull away. “You have to take me back. I have to get back now!” I try to stand, but he keeps me on the bunk. “He'll lose his shit if he wakes without me. Do you have any idea what you've done?”

“He's not going to wake, Rain. He went out in his sleep. You'll be back soon, and he won't know that you were ever gone, I swear.” His voice is tremulous. “Hell, I didn't think you'd be so angry to see me.”

“You have no idea what you're messing with. I can't be with you!”

“You're afraid of him now,” he quips. “What happened?”

“I have new priorities.” I get to my feet, and this time he doesn't hold me back. “You don't know what it's like up there. You should have let me be.”

“I had to see you before the Static Pass. I didn't know that you were still with him until this man came down for treatment today. He was going on and on about Johnny's ‘Scarlet Siren.'”

“
Scarlet Siren?
”

“Yeah,” he rubs the back of his neck. “Didn't strike me as a particularly flattering title either, but I knew it had to be you. I can't believe you've kept his attention this long. From what the
guy was saying, it sounds like you can even influence him.”

“Sometimes. And only on certain things.” I cross the small space to
Melee
's captain's chair. I drop my throbbing head against the seat and squeeze my eyes. Being with Ben has snapped me back into the real world, the world that isn't drugged with Johnny's body and lifestyle. It's suddenly so suffocating that I want to cry. “What do you want from me, Ben?”

“Wanting to see you isn't enough?” he says gruffly.

“No.”

Silence grows between us like a swelling wound.