Page 24 of The Girl Beneath the Sea

And when it comes back it is going to come back on a body that hasn’t got anything left to fight it with.

“Banks.”

“What?”

“Sit up here. Please.” He gestures.

I don’t know why I do it. I move up onto the edge of the pallet with my back against the wall and he shifts around on the blankets until his head is next to my thigh.

He looks up at me. There is color in his face and his eyes are clear. He looks tired and still a little washed out but he looks better.

Then his hand comes up.

I see it coming. I have all the time in the world to stop him.

His fingers find the edge of the mask at my jaw. I could catch his wrist. I could stand up. I could be out that door and have it bolted before he does this. I know all of that.

I sit there.

He peels it up. Slow. Chin, mouth, nose, and then it is up over my hair and off and the air of the box is cold on my face for the first time in days, and he is looking at me.

Nobody has ever looked at me like that. I don’t have anything to compare it to.

It isn’t fear and it isn’t contempt. His eyes swallow me: my mouth, the broken place on the bridge of my nose, the scar in my eyebrow, the gray coming in at my temple that I am far too young for, and his face opens up.

“So that’s who you are,” he says, very quietly.

I have no idea what to do with that so I just sit with the mask in his hand and his head against my leg and the sweetness of him coming up through my own shirt.

He knows my face.

And then I think that there will be men coming for him. Men I am supposed to be keeping him secure for.

And I don’t move.

7. Aurelio

He doesn’t move.

I have his mask in my hand and his face in front of me and he doesn’t take it back. He doesn’t get up. He sits with his back against the steel and lets me look.

So I look.

He isn’t handsome. Or he isn’t in the way male models are handsome, with their even teeth and their gelled and coiffed hair.

His nose has been broken and set badly. There is a white line through his left eyebrow where the hair doesn’t grow. His jaw is dark with days of not shaving and there is gray coming in at the temple, only a little, only on one side.

Not traditionally handsome. Not pretty handsome. But he is gorgeous. He is deeply masculine, hard on every edge. I can see the muscles of his arms even through his shirt. There is not an ounce of fat on him. He is powerful.

His mouth is the surprise. It is softer than the rest of him. It doesn’t go with the nose.

I could look at him for a week.

My whole life I have been surrounded by beautiful people. People who have been chosen for it. I have never once wanted to touch any of them. I want to put my thumb against the coiled muscles in his neck. I want to put my mouth on them.

My heat is coming back. I can feel it starting low in my belly, that ache that comes and goes.

It is not like yesterday yet. Yesterday it took me all at once. This is slower. I have time. Not much. But I have some.