Chapter 4 Thermal Dynamics
Thermal Dynamics
Polly
The galley is trying to kill me.
Not metaphorically. Literally. The air is so cold it has edges.
It slices under the collar of my flight suit, slips icy fingers along my throat, breastbone, and the soft skin just above the waistband of my pants.
Every exhale blooms white and dies in the recycled air.
My nipples are so hard they ache, and not in the fun way. Yet.
Across the table, Rynn sits like a fever dream wearing arrogance.
He has put his shirt back on—a criminal offense in my book, considering what I saw in the engine room—but he’s rolled the sleeves to the elbow.
His forearms are roped with muscle and marked with faint silver scars that I suddenly, desperately want to trace with my tongue.
He’s pretending to read a datapad, but the amber glow of the screen is reflecting in eyes that haven’t left me once.
He isn’t shivering. He isn’t even hunched.
He’s radiating. A steady, infuriating wave of heat that makes the air between us shimmer like asphalt in summer. I can feel it on my face, my lips, the inside of my wrists. My body leans toward it without permission, the same way plants lean toward light.
I hate him for it.
I want to crawl into his lap and bite him for it.
“Zip,” I say, teeth clacking hard enough to chip enamel. “Please tell me the heat is coming back online soon. Or tell me you’ve secretly installed a fireplace.”
“POWER CONSERVATION PROTOCOLS REMAIN ACTIVE, CAPTAIN,” the AI chirps, far too cheerful for a droid witnessing its creator turn into a popsicle.
“LIFE SUPPORT PRIORITIZING OXYGEN RECYCLING AND QUANTUM MATRIX REPAIR. HEATING AT 35%. STABILIZATION PHASE BEGINS IN THREE MINUTES. EIGHT-HOUR UNINTERRUPTED WINDOW REQUIRED.”
Eight hours.
Eight hours of this exquisite torture while the most dangerous male I’ve ever met sits three feet away burning hot enough to melt hull plating.
I pull my knees to my chest on the bench seat, wrapping my arms around them to become a smaller, less freeze-able target.
The plasma burn is more of a dull ache now.
It doesn’t help distracting me. My toes are going numb inside my boots.
My thighs are trembling. And every time I glance up, Rynn is watching me like he’s cataloguing every shiver, every goosebump, every involuntary clench of muscle as if he’s memorizing the map of how to take me apart later.
“You’re staring, Courier,” he says without lifting his gaze from the datapad. The words are soft, low, and they stroke down my spine like a heated blade.
“I’m conducting thermal imaging,” I lie, burying my nose in my collar. “You’re hoarding approximately ninety-eight percent of the available heat on this ship. That’s rude. It’s biologically selfish.”
His mouth curves—just barely. A predator’s version of a smile. “My core temperature runs higher. The dermal lattice traps and amplifies it.”
I remember that lattice. In the engine room, I slapped my palm to his chest to steady myself and nearly came on the spot.
The plating had been furnace-hot, thrumming like a second heartbeat under my fingers.
I’ve been wet ever since, a low, constant throb that has nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the memory of how solid he felt. How alive.
I shift on the bench, and the seam of my pants drags over my clit. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from moaning.
Practical, Polly. Be practical.
Practical currently sounds like: climb the alien aristocrat, wrap your legs around his waist, and ride him until the heat death of the universe.
Instead, I say, “Rynn.”
He looks up fully this time. The weight of those amber eyes hits me like a punch to the sternum. He looks calm, composed, the perfect picture of noble restraint. But I saw him look at me in the engine room. I know there’s a beast under that expensive suit.
“Polly.”
The way he says my name—rolling the ‘L’s, dropping the pitch—should be illegal in at least six sectors.
“I’m going to lose fingers,” I tell him. “Or worse. My bunk is insulated. It’s tiny, barely a coffin with a mattress, but it holds heat. You have heat to spare. Basic thermodynamics says we pool resources.”
He goes very, very still. The datapad lowers an inch.
“You are suggesting we share a bed.”
“I’m suggesting survival. Don’t get a big head about it.”
Too late. I can already see the way his pupils blow wide, swallowing the gold with black ink. He looks at me like I’ve just pulled the pin on a grenade and handed it to him.
He stands. Slowly. The motion brings him into my orbit, and the temperature spikes ten degrees in a heartbeat. His scent slams into me—ozone and expensive spice and something darker, like smoke over snow. My mouth actually waters.
“You have no idea what you’re asking,” he says, voice so low it feels like it’s coming from inside my own chest.
“I’m asking you to keep your pilot alive. The rest is your overactive nobility talking.” I stand up, forcing my legs not to shake. “Unless you’re scared?”
His gaze drops to my mouth, lingers, drags back up. The muscle in his jaw jumps like it’s trying to escape.
“This is a mistake,” he rasps.
“Then it’s my mistake,” I say, and turn on my heel before I do something idiotic like drop to my knees in the galley and find out exactly how hot that plating gets when it’s flush against my tongue.
I don’t wait to see if he follows. I feel him. Every step down the corridor is a heavy pulse between my legs.
My quarters are barely bigger than a closet. I kick off my boots, crawl into the bunk, and slap the privacy shutter. Darkness folds around me like a secret.
I’m already peeling off my overshirt—too many layers will trap the cold out instead of keeping heat in.
Rynn fills the doorway for a heartbeat, a silhouette cut from shadow and restrained violence. Then he exhales, a sound that is half surrender, half curse in a language I don’t know, and climbs in after me.
There is no room.
None.
We have to lie on our sides or one of us will fall out and probably break something important.
He tries to be a gentleman about it—back to the wall, giving me the outer edge, hands held carefully away from my body like I’m made of spun glass.
It’s adorable. It’s infuriating.
“Turn around,” I order.
“Excuse me?”
“Back-to-chest is tactical,” I say, my voice trembling slightly. “Face-to-face is intimate. Pick one, Lord Broody.”
He makes that sound again—half laugh, half growl—and refuses to move. “I do not turn my back to a door.”
“Zip has the door. The only thing breaking in here is your restraint, and we both know it’s on borrowed time.”
A pause. Then, his breathing roughens.
“Turn around, Polly.”
The way he says it—low, filthy promise wrapped in velvet—makes me obey before my brain catches up. I roll, presenting my back to him, and immediately scoot backward until I hit a wall of living furnace.
Holy fuck.
The heat is instantaneous, overwhelming. It pours through my thin undershirt, sinks into muscle and bone, melts the ice in my blood. I can’t stop the moan that rips out of me.
“Oh, that’s—fuck, that’s better.”
He goes rigid behind me, every muscle locking tight. I feel it like seismic activity against my spine.
“Relax,” I whisper, reaching back blindly. My fingers close around his wrist—thick, unyielding—and I drag his arm over my waist, forcing his hand to splay just beneath my breasts. His palm is so hot it brands me through the fabric.
His cock—because of course he’s alien nobility, not a saint—nestles heavy and hard against the curve of my ass like it was custom-molded to fit there.
Sweet merciful stars.
I feel him throb. Once. A slow, deliberate pulse that makes my clit answer in kind.
“Polly,” he warns, voice shredded.
“I’m cold,” I lie, wriggling back another fraction just to be evil. The movement grinds me along his length, and his hips jerk involuntarily, pushing him tighter against me.
He hisses something in his own language. It sounds like a prayer and a curse at the same time.
“Stop. Moving.” The words are ground out between clenched teeth.
His mouth is at my ear now, breath scalding, fangs grazing the shell without breaking skin.
“If you keep doing that, I will forget every oath I have ever sworn. I will pin you to this mattress and fuck you until you forget your own name, until the only word you remember is my name screamed at the top of your lungs.”
My entire body clenches. Wetness floods me so fast I’m dizzy with it.
There’s a new sound now—a deep, subsonic thrum coming from his chest, rolling through his plating and into my back like a second heartbeat.
“Are you… purring?” I ask, breathless.
“Dermal resonance,” he grits out. “It responds to arousal. Ignore it.”
“Impossible.” It’s stroking me from the inside, a constant vibration that has my hips rolling in tiny, helpless circles I can’t stop.
His hand flexes on my stomach, fingers spreading wide, thumb brushing the underside of my breast in a caress so light it’s torture.
“It is scent marking,” he whispers against my neck, his voice rougher now, losing the civilized edge. “You understand that, don’t you? When my species sleeps this close to a compatible female… we do not just share heat. We share territory.”
“Territory?” I manage to squeak.
“Possession. My scent will be on your skin for cycles. Every predator who passes you will know you belong to a high house.” He presses his nose into my hair, inhaling deep.
“You will smell like me. You will crave my proximity. You will know you are mine on a biological level that has nothing to do with logic or choice.”
The words penetrate the haze of sensation. “Mine? I don’t think so.”
“Your body thinks so,” he growls, his hand tightening on my stomach. “I can feel your pulse. I can smell your arousal. You want to be claimed.”
“I want to be warm,” I lie, though my heart is hammering a traitorous rhythm against his arm.