Bonds of Brass (The Bloodright Trilogy #1) - Emily Skrutskie Page 0,109

cockpit, my world reduces to the slight hitch of his breath as he leans up and presses his lips to mine.

There’s no hurry. No resistance outside, no brink of war on the horizon, not even the thundering urgency inside me for more, more, more. Just the slow tilt of his chin. The warmth of his mouth. The way my shaking hands move up his sides. I feel him grin—nearly catch myself on his teeth.

And a deep certainty washes over me as his hands find my hips, skim under my shirt, run up my back. He’s never going to leave me behind. He never could. I pull back, trailing my fingers over a brow meant to wear a crown of brass and obsidian.

It feels ridiculous to say it now. For gods’ sake, we just caved into this. But two and a half years is more than enough to know, even if you’ve only been kissing for a microscopic portion of them, so it doesn’t feel shameful in the slightest to whisper, “I love you,” into the inches between us.

And it feels a thousand times more ridiculous when Gal whispers, “I love you too,” back.

He leans in for another brisk kiss, his nose smashing awkwardly into my cheek. “Tell me what you need,” I mumble against his mouth. “Where to be. When to be there. I’m never going to let you down again.”

Gal laughs, nuzzling my neck. “I need you here. With me. For as long as we can stay in this ship. I need them not to question that I want to sleep here. But most importantly, I’m gonna need you to kiss me again and tell me not to do something really stupid.”

“Really stupid?” I ask before obliging him.

When I break away, his eyes are downright wicked. “Do you want to steal the paint, or should I?”

* * *

—

Gal swipes the can from one of the scaffolds while the workers are looking the other way, covered by the thumping beats of the Archon music the detailing team is blasting from a haphazardly but lovingly rigged stereo system. He sprints back across the hangar with the paint in one hand and the detailing brushes clenched tightly in his other and dodges around the Ruttin’ Hell’s rotary thrusters, nearly running headlong into me. A glob of thick, brassy paint slips over the edge of the can, dripping onto the hangar floor, and Gal tries to wipe it away with the toe of his boot.

Instead he smears a streak of gold across the concrete. He laughs, bracing against my shoulder, but only makes it worse as he scuffs his boot along the floor. “Ruttin’ hell,” he mutters. The paint’s already starting to dry. “Whatever. Did you pick a spot?”

I point to a panel in the juncture between the ship’s body and the branches that hold the rotary thrusters. It’s clear of the heat shielding so the paint won’t get scorched off by the reentry burn, and it’s low enough that we don’t need a ladder to reach it.

Gal holds out a paintbrush, but I raise my hands in protest. “Your handwriting’s way better. You should do it.”

“It’s for the both of us—we should both have a hand in it.”

“You write one word, I’ll write the other?”

“You first.”

I roll my eyes and take the brush, moving past him to run my hand over the chosen panel. “If I rut this up, I’m blaming you. And don’t you dare make me rut this up.”

Gal holds out the can of paint, but the mischief in his eyes makes no promises. I dip the detailing brush’s fine tip in, swirling it once before pulling it out and raising it to the hull. “How big should I make it?” I ask Gal, poised to strike.

“One foot per letter,” he says, and I snort. The point of this exercise is moot if our addition gets noticed and scraped off the hull. I trace my R carefully, then trace over it again, trying my best to lend some elegance to my strokes. It doesn’t work. No childhood penmanship lessons survived the fall of Archon, and