Read Online Salvage by Alexandra Duncan - Free Book Online

head feels heavy and light all at once. Oxygen drunk. I drop my head against the soft grass and laugh. It’s only Luck.
    He reaches a hand down to me. “You’re going to get us caught.”
    â€œSorry.” I take his hand and pull myself to my feet. “I didn’t know you were you.”
    â€œWhat are you doing here?”
    â€œI couldn’t sleep.” I look down at my naked feet and try to brush away the clips of wet grass stuck to my skirt. What was I thinking, walking out alone in a strange ship? What if it hadn’t been Luck underneath that tree? And what must this boy . . . this man, who’s supposed to become my husband, think of me, walking his ship half dressed at night? Did he see me thinking on stealing his crewe’s lemons?
    â€œI’m sorry. I’ll go.” I try to step around him.
    â€œWait.” Luck catches me by the arm. The warm grip of his fingers on my skin turns my whole body live, magnetized. I gasp. I stop. For the first time, I notice his feet are bare, too, and his hair rumpled.
    â€œI couldn’t sleep either,” Luck says. “I go out walking sometimes when I get that way. Or swimming.”
    We stare at each other, linked up skin to skin.
    â€œMy father asked me to come with him to the meet room tomorrow,” Luck says. “I figure you don’t have to guess much to know what that’s about.”
    â€œWith me here as a bride, you mean.” I keep my head down and finger the copper bands on my wrist, already greening my skin beneath their wires.
    â€œRight so.” He loosens his grip on my arm and stands up formal and straight. “I’m sorry for touching you before we’re bound, Parastrata Ava. You were always some proper and . . .”
    â€œI’m not.” My eyes flash up to meet his and—there—they find a place to rest safe again. It’s exhilarating, this feeling of doing something dangerous and right, all wrapped up together in my chest. I step closer. “I’m not only some proper. Not always.”
    Luck looks down at me. He blinks into my face, as if he’s trying to figure out how to mesh me with the smallgirl he knew five turns past.
    I fumble for his hand and fold my fingers around his, trying to press what I feel in through his skin. “I’ve been practicing those fixes Soli taught me. The ones you said I could learn. You remember?”
    He laughs. “What, still? After all these turns?”
    I drop his hand, hurt. “I taught myself others.”
    â€œNo, I mean . . . I’m only surprised, is all. That’s none proper for a so girl, from what I saw on your Parastrata . I thought you’d be too busy with Priority. But I’m happy. I’m glad.” He reaches out and squeezes my fingers lightly.
    â€œMe too.”
    â€œDo you think . . .” He stops and glances at the entrance to the garden room. “Have you ever been swimming?”
    â€œSwimming?” The word curls strange around my tongue. When we were smallgirls, Llell dared me to go floating in the water converter’s desalination pool. We’d heard about some of the older boys sneaking down there, how the water was supposed to float you some like the Void would, but some not. More like a giant hand holding you up , one of them had said. But Modrie Reller caught us ankle deep in the filter reeds and made us drink from the salt pool until we vomited brine. Llell and I never went back.
    I shake my head.
    â€œCome on.” Luck tugs my hand. “I’ll show you.”
    â€œI don’t know. . . .”
    â€œYou’ll be all right,” Luck says. “I swear. I know this ship backward. I know when the night Fixes come and go.”
    I hesitate.
    â€œYou trust me,” Luck says. “Right so?”
    I frown. “You swear it?”
    â€œI swear it.” Luck smiles. “Don’t you want to live some