“When I make love to you, Roselle, it’s going to take longer than a few minutes, and we’ll need protection. They’ll kill our baby and you, too, if you get pregnant. I’ll never let that happen.”
Being secondborn is a curse that never ends. “I hate them,” I hiss. “I hate them all.” Hawthorne sets me on my feet. I pick up my shirt and hold it to me. Angry tears threaten.
“Shh . . .” He embraces me again. “Don’t cry. It’s no good hating them. They can’t feel it, and it will only turn you bitter.”
“We need to change things.”
“We need to stay alive, Roselle. We can work around the rules and still be together. Let me show you.”
He takes my shirt and tosses it to the floor by the door. Blue light flashes from the scanner on the wall when he swipes his left hand beneath it. The showerhead turns on. Warm water soaks us both. A smile tugs at my lips. I look up at him. Water runs over his face and drips from his chin. He returns my smile, staring into my eyes. His hands cup my cheeks. His mouth finds mine again, kissing away everything awful about today.
I lean against him. Hawthorne’s hand strokes my wet hair. His steely muscles tense under my fingertips. I discover he’s a bit ticklish when my unhurt palm caresses his side. He chuckles, his lips grinning against mine. I feel his hands go lower, following my spine to the waistband of my pajama pants. His hand slips underneath the fabric—past my sturdy underwear—to my bare skin. He cups my bottom. I almost melt in his arms. My heart flutters wildly as he explores my body. Eternity wouldn’t be long enough to discover the vastness of him, but the seconds tick by. My fingers tangle in his wet hair. The water turns off. Hawthorne reaches over and swipes his moniker again. It turns back on.
“How did you do that?” I ask.
“I’m a higher rank than you. I get a longer shower.”
“That’s not fair,” I say breathlessly.
“Are you complaining?” he teases. “Because I could—”
Rising up on my tiptoes, I kiss him. His tongue strokes mine. He inches my pajamas down, and I step out of them.
I’m naked. With him.
I slide my hand inside his waistband, over the smooth skin of his backside, and his clothes pool with mine on the floor. He groans. “You’re so beautiful, Roselle.” Softly uttered, his words fill my head. Tender kisses fall on skin. Desire tears through me like fragments of an artillery shell. Its sharp shrapnel travels everywhere with devastating effect. The heat of it is almost too much to bear. “Terribly beautiful,” Hawthorne amends.
I’m inexplicably linked to this man, as if he owns pieces of me—shards of my heart. The intimacy existing between us was forged in battle and by circumstance, sealed by a searing need for something real to cling to in a world of disposable people. And I do cling to him, consumed by the upheaval of passion that he elicits in me as I learn his body and he, mine.
The water turns off again. Hawthorne hangs his head. “I’m out of shower credits for today.”
It’s difficult for me to let go of him, but I must. I move away to the shelf by the door. I take a towel from the small stack of them, wrapping it around me, and then I hand him one. “I’ll leave first, and then you,” I whisper.
“Wait!”
I turn back around.
Hawthorne takes a step to me and kisses me again. “I didn’t get to kiss you good-bye.”
I want to linger here with him, but I force myself to leave the shower. On the way to my locker, I toss my wet clothes into the phloem. Selecting my uniform, I take it to the bathroom closet, towel off, and put it on. Back at my locker, I apply cooling ointment to my hand and rewrap it in a dry bandage. Closing the narrow door, I walk to a sink with a mirror above it. I twist my hair into an attractive coil and secure it with pins. I pinch my cheeks, adding some color, but they’re already flushed, and my lips are full, swollen from kissing Hawthorne. Evaluating myself in the mirror, I have a glow that was never there before.
“You’re stunning, Roselle,” Hawthorne says behind me. He has changed back into dry pajama bottoms. His T-shirt is draped over one bare shoulder. The other shoulder leans against the wall. He’s so handsome that it’s hard not to melt into the floor.
“Do I look different?” I ask as I blush. “I feel different.”
“To me you do, but I don’t think anyone else will notice,” he replies softly.
“I don’t have any makeup. Firstborns are used to makeup.”
“You don’t need it.”
“You’re biased. You’ve loved me since I was nine,” I tease him.
“I have. I still do—love you.”
“How could I not feel pretty now?” I whisper.
My moniker vibrates. I have a message. I read the holographic words.
Meet me at the main gate atrium of your Tree in twenty minutes.
—Clifton
I frown.
“What is it?” Hawthorne asks.
“It’s a message from Firstborn Salloway. He wants me to meet him at the main entrance of the Tree. He was supposed to send an escort, not come himself. I’ll see you soon.” Impulsively, I move toward him to kiss him good-bye, but then I stop and look around. At the other end of the row, soldiers are brushing their teeth. I look down. “This is going to be difficult—not touching you.”
“I know. My instinct is to crush you to me and never let you go.”
I look into his eyes. “I love your instinct. Try to get some sleep while I’m gone.”
“Impossible. Find me when you get back.”
I leave the locker room and go to the main gateway of Tritium 101. In the branch hallway to the main trunk, I have to cross through a checkpoint. I scan my moniker. From behind me, a voice says, “Little fish, little fish, we was just comin’ to scoop you up in our net. So nice of you to swim downstream to us.” Protium 445 soldiers shuffle over to me like a bunch of thugs, their rifles slung on gun straps that hang nearly to their knees. Instead of looking lethal, it looks stupid. I could shoot them with their own rifles.
“I don’t have time for you, Carrick. I’m under orders to meet an officer.”
“We’re under orders to find conscriptions for our next mission, and we choose you.” He pokes his finger into my chest.
“You won’t like what I do to you if you touch me again,” I warn him. He laughs, thrusting his finger into my chest. I snatch his rifle on its low-slung gun strap, shoving it against his heart with one hand on the barrel and one bandaged finger on the trigger. He stills. “Look, little crocodile, I’ve got you by the tail,” I murmur.
His friends scramble to lift their weapons. I unclip the gun strap from Carrick and step back, pointing it at them. “Aw, what happened to the babbling brook?” I ask them.
One of the guards at the checkpoint calls for MPs, who arrive within seconds. I lower the rifle and stand down, offering it to them.
The lead officer speaks to the guards at the checkpoint. I don’t say a word. Carrick and his friends try to talk over the guards, explaining their orders to gather conscriptions. I remain silent. No one has spoken to me yet. It’s not my turn.
The lead MP faces me. “They say they’re under orders to gather conscriptions.” Carrick smiles smugly. I want to beat it off him.
“I believe they are, Patr?n.”
“And you refuse to go with them?” he asks.
“I do, Patr?n.”
“Why? You’re a cadet. You follow orders.”
“I’m under orders, to meet Exo Salloway at the main atrium. I’m late. I was to be there fifteen minutes ago, Patr?n.”
“Why would Exo Salloway want to speak to you?”
“I’m a munitions expert, Patr?n. He’s a munitions manufacturer.”
“It’s past twenty-two hundred,” he says, with a skeptical raise of his eyebrow.
“There’s a war on, Patr?n. Our enemies don’t stop for us to rest. You’ll have to address any further questions to my commanding officer.”
“Who is your commanding officer?”
“As of twenty minutes ago,” a deep voice behind me says, “her commanding officer is Exo Salloway.” Clifton approaches from the shadows of the checkpoint. “I have jurisdiction over this cadet.”