Page 14 of Skyn (After the End #3)

“What if I told you that conspiracy and witchcraft is the way the uninformed make sense of a world too confusing for them to fathom?”

“I would say it sounds elitist.”

“Perhaps, on this point, I am.”

“But you all are in charge of preventing overpopulation. How?”

“Self-control,” he says softly. He looks uncomfortable all of a sudden.

“Not controlled burns?” I press, and his head snaps in my direction.

“Never,” he says, suddenly solemn. Then he amends himself: “Never me.”

I clear my throat, trying to get back on track. “Right. Okay, we’ll come back to that whole cannibalism thing. The point is, Ben, you can talk to Lily, and she’ll fold like a tent. You’re the first Iku son. I mean, it’s kind of in the bag.”

“I wish it were that straightforward, I do.”

“I’ll help you. You know, be more…human.”

Ben’s eyes widen, and the effect is utterly charming.

A manny arrives at my side with a drink—some thick green concoction that smells vaguely of citrus and grass. And the other is holding a massive table and oils.

“This is the practice I’ve been working on.” Ben pulls his tunic over his head in one smooth motion, and for a moment, I forget how to breathe.

I’ve seen cybernetics before—patchwork mods, rusted joints, crude enhancements bolted onto bodies out of necessity, not luxury. But Ben isn’t patched together. He isn’t cobbled from parts. He is sculpted.

His chest is a mile of warm-brown skin and gleaming platinum, the cybernetics integrated so cleanly that it makes my brain short-circuit. He moves like a man, but his enhancements hum just beneath the surface, engineered to perfection. The lines where flesh meets metal feel…inevitable.

Like he was built to be both.

The mannies unfold a small table beside him. He lies down, and the sharp mechanical digits begin pinching and grabbing at Ben’s skin in sharp, painful-looking folds.

“Ben, what the hell is it doing to you?”

“I’m training it in an ancient practice I’ve been researching,” he explains, wincing slightly. “Massage. The bot is supposed to rub the skin, apply pressure, and smooth everything out. But”—he winces again—“it’s not going well.”

“This is what I mean when I say you need human help.”

He glances at me, his curiosity piqued. “You think you could do better?”

“Turn around,” I retort, arching a brow.

Ben presses a button on his wrist, and an image flickers to life: a man massaging another man’s shoulders, leaning in with deliberate pressure.

“You sure this isn’t a pleasure video?” I tease.

Ben shuts the display off, his face flushing slightly. “If you’re going to laugh…”

“No, no, I’m serious,” I say, wiping the grin off my face.

“It’s just…unexpected.” I didn’t realize he has access to this kind of archival footage.

That intrigues me. Most people below a certain IS status don’t bother with the archives, and that image looked like something from deep within the vaults.

He lies back on the table, his arms flopping out at his sides. The bot raises the table until Ben’s forehead nudges my hips and sloppily splashes fragrant oil over Ben’s back. It drips down in rivulets over his corded muscles, catching the light like liquid platinum.

“All right, so I just…rub?” I ask, moving closer.

I feel a slight tremor in my fingertips as I move closer.

His back is broad and surprisingly smooth to the touch, and I run my hands down along the contours, tracing the line to the dimpled small of his back, watching as goose bumps rise in the wake of my fingertips.

“Is that a good sign?” I ask, my voice uncertain. “I mean, getting goose bumps…is that normal?”

He pauses longer than necessary before replying. “It’s…adequate,” he says, though the unsteady hitch in his breath makes him a liar. His body betrays him too. As his obliques tighten under my hand, his hips press minutely into the massage bed, briefly imitating an ancient rhythm.

The oil makes everything slick and hot, and I need to fill the space, to push back against the silence that feels too intimate.

“I feel bad that this came between you and somebody you lo—that you feel programmed for. I know I’m just—”

He looks up at me, sharp and narrow-eyed. It cuts my breath. “I don’t want you to mention being flesh and bone as if it is your weakness. Your former lover—Jace?—is simply… unrefined,” he says.

I don’t correct him because I know he knows Josh’s name. I file away that mistake though. “So…my unmodded body is for a more refined palate?” I ask, rubbing the smooth, warm metal. I shake my head. “Elitist to your core.”

“Not elitist,” he sighs into the massage. “Objective. I have data.”

I laugh again, and he looks up at me, looking a little proud of himself.

“For example, your sartorius muscle. It’s probably the best one I’ve ever seen.”

“That is…incredibly specific.”

“I’m on the board of a cybernetics manufacturer. When people come in for body mods, they want this exact leg, the curve of your inner thigh.”

“Maybe I should go into mod modeling? What’s this called again?

Saturnus?” I run my index finger up my leg, but it’s apparently in the wrong spot because his hand closes over mine, guiding it higher.

Our intertwined fingers run up the length of the muscle, pushing up my skirt.

Flashing, for a second, the clefted black satin of my underwear.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, and each word is rough like it scraped against some inner edge. His fingers brushing the inside of my thigh send something hot and sticky trickling through my bloodstream.

“It’s also called the honeymoon muscle,” he says.

I don’t think I’ve blushed much in my life. I’ve never been shy, and I’m hard to embarrass, but I blush right then. Something greedy in me wants to say, Tell me more. Never stop.

I slap his hand away, my face hot. “This area is personal,” I say, like I’m training a new bot.

He doesn’t seem offended, just thoughtful.

Another data point.

“I heard you all down in the mines are…reactive. Aboveground, we use dampeners; I don’t really feel”—he searches for the right word—“anything.”

I know it’s civilized to not be clouded by human emotions.

And I know everyone must do their part for the overpopulation problem, but killing your sex drive forever?

Taking your joy, sorrow? In truth, those dampeners scare me a little.

I want to be as close to my emotions as possible.

That creeping fear when something doesn’t sit right with you is a gift.

“How long have you had them?” I ask.

“Since I was a teenager.”

“A teenager!” That seems cruel, I think, but I don’t say it out loud. He’s already spilling more than he probably intended.

I continue to knead his shoulders. He clenches his lower body and lets out a soft sound—a quiet moan he tries to cover up with a cough.

“Yes, a bit early, but I was…ungovernable, watching lewd films. I wanted it all the time.” He says this with so much shame, my heart breaks a little for him.

“At first, I thought it was a punishment, but looking back at how clouded my thinking was then, I started to see it as a gift. I’m so productive now.

Did you know I have the patent for this?

” He reaches out his hand. And, God help me, I almost lift my skirt.

Touch me where you touched me before, I think.

“Oh!” He wants me to touch the back of his hand.

It’s metal, but it feels like skin.

“See, we love the look of chrome and platinum parts, but I remember as a child how I’d only want to hug my…” He pauses for so long that I think he forgot his place in the sentence. “I only wanted to hug my caretaker, not my mother.”

“Was your caretaker unmodded?” I ask.

He nods. “I’ve been obsessed with skin and recreating it ever since. This new, stronger alloy covering is SKYN—S-K-Y-N. It’s going to be revolutionary.”

I don’t press him, but I have the thought that his love of his caretaker had less to do with her skin and more to do with the fact that his mom is a stone-cold bitch.

“Careful,” I say, half joking. “You’re going to get labeled a naturalist.”

“In a way, I am,” he admits. “We simply cannot improve upon the softness of human skin, and I’m starting to wonder if we should.”

I think of Josh’s cold, hard arm, and how important I used to feel being his fiancé. I began to believe that the cold, unwelcoming metal was better than skin. And here was a son of the most elite family telling me they were trying to get back to skin.

The world is upside down.

This could be so much better. “I’m developing a hypothesis of dampeners,” I say.

Oh, he loves Hypotheses, all right. His eyes flare just a little. “Fine,” he says, in the tone of a man humoring a child. “Let’s hear it then.” He raises a brow, waiting. “Convince me.”

I lean in and whisper in his ear, smearing the oil over my thin shirt. “The dampeners skew the results of your research,” I say.

That gets his attention. “My results are airtight.”

“Your dampeners remove the most important tool you have to be a great scientist and lover: your guts.”

“You sound infirm,” he says, shaking his head.

“You will not innovate without passion,” I say, folding my arms. My shirt is now an oily mess.

He looks horrified. “Okay, yes, all the insipid radio dramas will tell you that you have to feel to be truly in love, but why do you posit I can’t be an objective scientist with the dampeners?”

“You think the dampeners make you more…efficient,” I go on, “more focused. But Ben, science isn’t efficient.” I search his face. “Innovation and love are both messy, driven by instincts—by feeling.”

His eyes narrow just a fraction. “And you think dampeners keep me from that?”

“Not just from that,” I say. “They keep you from you. From your questions, the ones that wake you up at two in the morning because you can’t let them go.” I let the words settle. “There is so much passion in genius, Ben, and I think…you want to feel that. I think you need to.”

“Passion?” he repeats, half mocking. “Passion’s for lovers and radio dramas, not for empirical analysis.”

“Right, I expected as much,” I say, leaning in again. “Take the dampeners off, just a little, and watch your work improve.” I let the words hang, waiting. “That is my hypothesis of dampeners.”

“And if taking the dampeners off doesn’t work to improve my work or win her?” he asks.

“If all else fails, then do something unexpected.”

And then I kiss him.

It’s supposed to be quick, just a light press of lips to make a point, but the moment our mouths touch, something happens. A shift in the air, a recalibration of gravity.

Ben doesn’t move, doesn’t even breathe, but I feel the way his body reacts. The blue dots in his pupils flicker. His fingers flex at my sides and squeeze my hips.

I pull back, ready to make some flippant remark about spontaneity, but—

He doesn’t let me go.

“You should take care. They made us machines because first we were beasts.” His growl is so low, it sounds like he’s talking inside my chest.

One of his hands cups the back of my head; the other presses firmly against my lower back, holding me there, chest to chest, breath to breath.

Then, finally, barely above a whisper, he says, “A glitch.”

My pulse thuds hard against my ribs. “What?”

His grip tightens just a fraction. “I can’t seem to let you go.”

He’s so close, still smelling of that clean oil and sharp citrus that makes my head swim.

The raw physicality of it catches me off guard.

Whatever this is, it’s entirely—alarmingly—unscripted.

His gaze lingers, following the stain on my shirt.

The oil has seeped through, turning the thin fabric translucent, clinging to my skin.

His gaze drags lower, to where the cool air has pulled my nipples into stiff, aching peaks, barely concealed.

Something inside me pulls tight.

His body betrays him as he hardens against my stomach, thick and undeniable, pressing into the space between us.

I swallow hard. But the dampeners… I want to ask.

His hands snap open sheepishly, and I step back.

I feel a sudden, inexplicable need to occupy my body.

I busy myself tidying the terrace like a bot, folding the towels more times than necessary.

From the corner of my eye, I see him slip a sapphire robe over his shoulders.

He moves with a casual elegance that makes it hard to focus on anything else, and for a moment, I’m too distracted by the front bulge of it all to remember that all of this is for the love of another woman.