The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,42

hurt, but the pain wasn't bad. If these were going on in the order in which I’d met them, this would be Astor’s number. I peered down at it and then glanced at him. When our eyes met, a charge zapped through the room.

I wished I could read his mind. I really didn’t know what he was thinking.

He stalked across the room, and a second later, his mouth was inches from mine. “I never wanted to share anything with Torrin, but you’re worth it.” His lips took mine in what could only be called possession. “Don’t forget me. You’re mine in three days.”

With that, he left the room. My lips were bruised, and my head spun. Where had he gone?

Torrin laughed, throwing his head back. “He’s always been so dramatic.”

Mattis pressed down the last brand. “Mine.” He winked at me, and that actually did take some of the sting out.

It was official. I belonged to all of them.

Dreama grabbed my hand. “Lunch. Now.”

Happily, she’d grabbed the hand that wasn’t attached to a freshly scarred arm, but she didn’t yank right away. She paused to let Mattis clean the brand site first, and, although the branding itself hadn’t hurt so much—like before—the cleansing part was a little more thorough. A sharp spike of pain pushed tears into my eyes, and I clenched my teeth and held my breath.

I couldn’t help myself gripping Dreama’s hand hard, though. She would have bruises, probably. But also, she didn’t react, so maybe she knew how it would hurt. Hadn’t Mattis said something about little kids getting brands to mark them as members of the City-State? So even without receiving a husband’s brand, Dreama likely remembered something of this pain. She let me squeeze pretty hard.

When Mattis applied the cleansing solution, it cooled and numbed the wound, and then, like with my burned hands after the crash, I just instantly felt better. I wished I could thank Astor for concocting such amazing medicine.

And then I realized I would get my chance to thank him. You’re mine in three days, he’d said. Well then. My mouth went a bit dry.

I could feel the others looking at me, especially Torrin, drat him. He always saw my secrets and would probably fling this one back at me at an uncomfortable moment, just like the others. I deliberately turned my face away from him and flashed Mattis a quick smile. “Thank you, it’s good now.”

“It’ll look prettier in a couple of days, like the first one,” said Mattis, setting his tools aside. “We just need to keep it clean.”

“What we need is to get her fed,” Dreama grumbled.

“Agreed,” said Torrin. “Go on, already, and when you finish up bonding with my branded lady, bring her back to me.”

Mattis stood and held the curtain aside gallantly. “I’ll watch over Nox while you’re gone.”

I met his gaze and remembered his mouth, and a strange feeling shivered through me—hot, slinky, scary, and exhilarating. I felt it at the base of my spine, the back of my throat, and—alarmingly—between my legs.

I had met Mattis last, so his brand was last. Which meant…four days. His eyes promised it would be worth the wait.

I stood, and Dreama let loose of my hand. When she turned and made for the door, I followed, hoping no one noticed the heat in my face.

We didn’t go right back to the surface or the hangar, and the only other part of the tunnel system I knew was Astor’s rooms, which were so near the surface they had vents that let in light and air—and Howler sounds. But where we would have turned left to go there, we turned right, and the corridor widened and something else changed, something subtle.

The smell. The throne room suite, Astor’s lab when he wasn’t cooking something delicious, and Mattis’ bar all smelled like human-filled extensions of the dusty, bitter planet itself, just overlaid with the not unpleasant scent that I secretly thought of as “men doing things.” It wasn’t as pungent as full-on sweat, and it didn’t smell like all the busy people I’d known in space, but it was distinctly male, or at least common to my males.

Mine. That word was surfacing fairly often now, and it no longer scared me. If I was theirs, so also were they mine. I would have to remind them of this. One by one and over and over. That interior, slinky, secret feeling stroked its way through me.

Ahem. Right. I gathered my wayward thoughts, which I was