My Book Boyfriend #20: Oren

A weekly meme, hosted by The Unread Reader and My Keeper Shelf, in which we swoon over boys in books!

This week's book boyfriend is

Oren

from Skylark by Megan Spooner

From Goodreads

 

Sixteen year-old Lark Ainsley has never seen the sky.

Her world ends at the edge of the vast domed barrier of energy enclosing all that’s left of humanity. For two hundred years the city has sustained this barrier by harvesting its children's innate magical energy when they reach adolescence. When it’s Lark’s turn to be harvested, she finds herself trapped in a nightmarish web of experiments and learns she is something out of legend itself: a Renewable, able to regenerate her own power after it’s been stripped.

Forced to flee the only home she knows to avoid life as a human battery, Lark must fight her way through the terrible wilderness beyond the edge of the world. With the city’s clockwork creations close on her heels and a strange wild boy stalking her in the countryside, she must move quickly if she is to have any hope of survival. She’s heard the stories that somewhere to the west are others like her, hidden in secret – but can she stay alive long enough to find them?

 

Oren portrayed by Michael Fjordbak

Facts about Oren:

He's in his late teens, but at times looks both younger and older

Has shaggy black hair, blue eyes, and is lean but fit
Has been living in the Void on his own since he was ten-years-old

Is an excellent hunter, quick on his feet, and is very intense
Comes off as feral, but when he smiles he shines  

Favorite Lines / Scenes:

“What are you?” I gasped. 

“You ask too many questions,” he hissed. “You should be quiet. It isn’t safe.” The boy licked his lips, gazing at me with his animal eyes.  “My name is Oren.” 
His voice was quiet and a little rough, but very human. 

How long since I’d heard another person speak, who wasn’t a machine or a ghost or a dream? Oren—it could have been the name of any of my classmates back in the city. And yet it took only one look at him, the finely muscled shoulders, the wild eyes, the ill-kempt hair and dirty skin, to know he could never be mistaken for one of them.

***

“Are there others like you?” 

“Depends what you mean,” came the reply. 

“I mean like—living out here, like this. Do you have a family? People you live with?” 

My hand crept into my pocket for the paper bird, but I’d put it into my pack to dry after my dip in the marsh, and my fingers closed around nothing. 

There was no reply. “Look, you’re the first person I’ve seen since I’ve been out here that hasn’t tried to eat someone,” I said. 

Why was he so determined to move in absolute silence? 

“Do you never stop talking?” he asked tightly, as a twig cracked just in front of me. He’d stopped. It was just enough warning to keep me from walking straight into him in the dark. “What do you want? I’m keeping you alive, aren’t I?” 

“But why?” 

I felt that familiar sinking in my stomach. The Institute wanted me alive, after all. 

His voice was clipped but quiet. “There aren’t so many of us left. You were different. So I followed you.”

***

He beckoned to me with a jerk of his chin, and I went to his side. “Try this,” he said, swiping a finger along the thing he was cradling in the palm of his hand, and then sticking the finger in his mouth. 

I recognized it now as part of the beehive, something I’d seen in books. It was dripping with viscous honey. I dipped a finger and tentatively brought it to my mouth. Unimaginable sweetness. Far more tantalizing than the sugar beets in the city. I closed my eyes, barely aware that I was humming with pleasure at the unexpected delight. 

“Go ahead, eat all you like,” said Oren. And though I could not be sure in the fading light, I thought I heard a smile in his voice. 

We sat there in the clearing with the torch wedged between two rocks, devouring the honeycomb whole while the bees danced and swarmed all around us. The sugar and the light and the delicious fullness of my stomach was all the more satisfying for how hungry, and how tired, and how frightened I’d been. I couldn’t help but think of the last time I was so full, that first night in the Institute, before I’d known to be scared. Before I’d ever had to run. I closed my eyes, letting myself, for once, just rest. 

“Don’t fall asleep,” Oren warned. “I draw the line at carrying you.” 

“Hmm,” was my only reply, lips and fingers and face sticky with honey.

***

“Be safe,” I said, staring at his threadbare T-shirt, unable to lift my head and meet his eye. “Please, Oren, be saf—” 

He took a step forward and covered my mouth with his hand. He smelled of blood and grass and the wild wind. “Be still,” he said fiercely. “Do you never stop talking?” 

He curled his fingers into the hair at the nape of my neck. He touched his lips to mine. The lips of a monster. I must have made some small sound, for he drew back abruptly. He scanned my face. I was too stupid with the ringing in my ears and burning of my lips to know what he saw in my expression. Whatever he found there changed him. He stepped forward, closing the gap between us again. 

This time there was an urgency to his kiss that broke my heart.

So, why did I love Oren enough to make him MBB this week? Well...because he is the BEST! Seriously! I just KNEW right from the very first time he showed up that his character was going to be amazing and as I kept reading it turns out that he was. I definitely have a thing for grumpy mysterious hero type guys that do the sweetest things for the heroine - and Oren is the epitome of those qualities - making him number one! When I started Skylark I couldn't help but to picture Oren as the blue eyed cutie from MTV's Teen Wolf, both are straight up adorable!

Who's YOUR book boyfriend?