Page 28 of Skyn (After the End #3)

Illuminance

Ben dresses quickly the next day, and it’s like I’m looking at someone new. His linen pants and loose cotton shirt fall lightly on his frame. His curls are wild and tight, fluttering over his forehead with every step. There’s something…different about him. Lighter. Like he’s shedding skin.

I get dressed too—linen shorts, very short ones. Maybe it crosses my mind that he once mentioned my legs. What was it? Saltine muscle?

A coincidence.

I don’t dress for men. #GirlStandUp.

He moves like he’s experiencing everything for the first time, sighing as he slips on his jacket, pausing to inhale the scent of food wafting up from the kitchen.

He grabs my hand before yanking me down the stairs in a rush, and I can almost picture him as a boy. His eyes stay on mine, playful, pulling me along like we’re kids skipping school.

At the bottom of the stairs, Lily is sitting with Ben’s mother and brothers, laughing, perfectly poised, like she’s always belonged with them. And maybe she has.

The laughter screeches to a halt as soon as Ben and I reach the landing.

Lily shoots me a look, quick and sharp—an unfiltered flash of distaste.

It’s almost a relief. Finally, cold, hard proof that I’m not imagining things. That I’m not just jealous.

They’re plotting his demise in broad daylight, slicing up his lab like they’re sharing a meal, guessing at the value of each invention, trading theories on what to repurpose, what to scrap, and what to lock away so no one else can get their hands on it.

The precision of their conversation, the cold efficiency, the way they calculate the worth of his life’s work down to decimals—it hits me like a gut punch of inadequacy.

I think I have a mind for strategy. But this?

This is control on another level.

“Ben,” I whisper, my voice barely holding steady, “what if we can’t pull this off?”

He shakes his head immediately. “Illogical.”

We’re out in a flash—speed walking, then running, just in time to watch a rush of birds lift into the sky as we reach the sidewalk.

He laughs—a high, rusty sound. Cyborg joy.

We pass towering buildings with mirrored surfaces reflecting the sky in fractured blue, like the city’s trying to hold the heavens captive.

People glance our way, eyes sliding over us like we’re too strange to register, too fast to catch.

Eventually, we reach a large domed building flanked by massive columns. Above us, flickering holographic banners announce the latest advancements in digital archives and information discs.

It’s a library—the centralized IS hub of the aboveground.

“Ah, Dr. Iku! Always a pleasure to see you mingling with us peasants in the stacks!” Calls a librarian from behind the desk. He’s a Gold, clearly someone Ben knows.

He hands Ben three digital volumes. I read the titles greedily before Ben slides them into his bag: Tactile Resonance: The Neurobiology of Skin-to-Skin Contact and Its Role in Emotional Healing.

Dermal Dynamics: The Intersection of Skin Contact and Cellular Regeneration.

The Human Interface: Psychosomatic Responses to Extended Physical Contact in Post-Human Bodies.

“Falcons lost that game the other night; I think I’ll be a peasant soon,” Ben says, deadpan.

“What do you owe me now?” The Gold teases.

“Uncountable,” Ben sighs dramatically.

“Why do you still put credits on the birds?” One of the younger librarians—an Aluminum—asks, raising a skeptical brow.

“Once I find a team, I mate for life,” Ben says, placing a hand over his chest. It’s meant to be funny, but something about the gesture feels too sincere.

The librarians are startled, unsure how to react, then burst into a collective, if awkward, laugh.

“Dr. Iku, was that a joke?” One asks, half disbelieving.

“It was an attempt,” Ben says, ducking his head, seeming shy and proud at once.

Then he gestures toward me. “This is the woman I told you about.”

His voice drops—soft, reverent—like he’s stumbled upon something sacred. “Fawl—”

“Oh, we know,” another librarian—bespectacled, mostly machine—interrupts, their eyes lighting up with a kind of reverence that makes me feel like some kind of local legend. “Fawl here is one of the youngest Diamonds in the IS.”

I grin. “I didn’t realize our rating system was universal.”

The library is incredible—rows upon rows of leather-bound books lined up beside sleek transparent cases holding holographic info discs. It’s a dream.

We dive deep—into Iku rites and rituals, property law, and finances. We leave no stone unturned.

After a few hours, the Aluminum librarian taps me on the shoulder. “Dr. Iku mentioned that you never received a Diamond Ceremony?”

“No, I…” Life fell apart before that milestone could even get penciled into my calendar.

Someone hits a button, and tinny orchestral music starts playing from a radio.

“Excuse the rather impromptu decorations, Your Illuminance…”

Whew. I have to admit, my full title sounds pretty damn good out loud.

“What are you—Whoa—”

A pushy bot sweeps in and stuffs me into a heavy green robe. Curtains swing back, and a choir of children—appear with angelic faces and impossibly perfect harmony.

These weird little cherubs are singing like the rent is due.

For me.

At that, a crowd of librarians—ranging from modestly modded 30 percenters to the full-body augmentation set at 70 percent—surges toward me like a congregation ready for communion. Their chrome glints under the soft library lights, sleek and seamless on some, but welded on in a hurry for others.

As the choir sings whatever ancient hymn they’ve been programmed with, I catch Ben’s gaze beside me. He raises an eyebrow, just the slightest tilt of his head—his version of what the hell is happening right now?

I look closer. They’re not children. Just small bots. Adult models, just scaled down.

But beneath that shared look of bemusement, there’s something else. Something unexpected.

Pride.

He’s proud of me.

And it does something to me. I didn’t appreciate what this meant the first time around.

“An honor to meet a Diamond,” they say. “Your Illuminance,” they call me. Over and over, like maybe I’m still that girl who clawed her way up from nothing.

Like maybe I’m a myth come to life.

“Now are you sure you can pull this off, my Diamond?” Ben asks.

I’m holding my belly because that’s where I hear his words, and I nod. More to myself than to him.

But I can’t think of anything now except his mouth, his body, the way he grunts when he pushes into me and closes his eyes.

I can’t leave this library without a taste of him.

So, I smuggle Ben past the main floors, through grand halls lined with velvet and flickering data streams, past the marble busts of scholars who would absolutely not approve.

The Diamond-only section of the library is sealed off by an invisible barrier, its threshold guarded by nothing but exclusivity and arrogance. No one questions me. No one stops me.

Ben walks beside me, stiff, wary, but thrumming with curiosity. “I’ve never been this deep,” he says.

I don’t stop until we’re past the rows of pristine ancient books that have never been touched.

Ben turns to me, brows furrowed, a question forming on his lips. “You had something to show me?”

But, before he can say anything more, I drop to my knees.

Ben freezes. “Fawl, we can’t.” His entire system locks up, his body taut, shoulders high, fingers curling in hesitation. “Someone’s going to see,” he pleads.

I don’t look up. I don’t care.

Instead, I press my hands against his thighs, warm and solid beneath the cool fabric of his suit. And I pull his trousers and underwear down in one pull.

“Fawl…wait.” His dick is glistening like it’s glazed with hard sugar. Ben devours me with his eyes and steadies himself on the bookshelf.

I roll the thick length against my palm, feeling its hot, velvety smoothness.

I open my mouth, and he holds the base of his cock and taps my tongue once, twice, three times, until he is hard and beating like a heart. I lift it to my lips. Then I slide the head inside of my mouth and suck. The moment I do, my mouth floods with saliva.

“God, Fawl!”

The wetness coats my lips. I pull back with a soft pop, my saliva glistening on the head, then go back in, slower this time, dragging my tongue in a long, deliberate swirl before hollowing my cheeks and taking it in deep.

Ben’s knees buckle. “Suck my cock, Fawl—shit.” His hands flex behind my head, his entire body locked in place, except for his eyes, which follow every flick of my tongue.

I hum around him, and he whimpers like a child. The vibration runs through my teeth, down my throat, across my skin.

He’s pumping now, closing his eyes and wetting the back of my tongue with something sticky and hot. I let my teeth graze the head just barely, then pull it from my mouth with a long, slick drag, strings of saliva catching in the light before snapping away.

Ben inhales sharply, holding the back of my head and moaning, bucking down my throat. “Letting me fuck your mouth in a library.”

His chest rises, falls, rises again too fast.

He looks at me like he wants to consume me whole.

When I slide his thick cock back between my lips, twisting it, sucking hard enough that my cheeks hollow again, his hands twitch—like he wants to grab something, break something, do something.

Instead, he closes his eyes. “I’m going to come down your throat, so swallow it all. Don’t waste a drop.” He thrums on my tongue, vibrating and jerking his platinum-lined thickness into my mouth, slamming priceless volumes underneath his palm.

“Fawl.” His voice is ragged, hesitant. He pulls me up and kisses me so deeply, I bow back with intensity.

Tension bleeds out of him; his breath turns deep, slow. His fingers sink into my hair, pressing me close.

“Skin to skin,” he whispers in my ear.

I’m on dangerous ground. My desire for things has a way of making them rush out of my hands. And now I’m willing to burn it all down to keep that from happening.