Chapter 8 Supernova
Supernova
Polly
The door slams shut behind us and for one heartbeat the room is absolute darkness.
Then Rynn’s body ignites.
Not fire. Not heat shimmer. His micro-scales—the intricate lattice that covers his chest, his shoulders, the vulnerable sides of his ribs—begin to glow.
Soft at first, like embers banking in a dying fire.
Then brighter, pulsing in time with his heartbeat until the entire room is bathed in amber-gold light.
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
He’s bioluminescent. My alien noble is literally glowing, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
The patterns trace along every muscle, highlighting the architecture of his body like someone drew him in liquid gold. The scales aren’t flat anymore—they’re flared, sharp-edged, creating shadows and peaks that make him look like he’s armored in light itself.
“Polly.” My name is a growl, subsonic vibration wrapped around vowels. His eyes are completely black, only thin rings of molten gold remaining. Fangs fully extended. Hands flexing, claws catching the light.
He looks like a god. A monster. A nightmare made of hunger and need.
And I’ve never wanted anything more in my entire life.
“You’re glowing,” I say stupidly, because my brain has apparently short-circuited.
“Zha’keth mar—” He’s speaking something that isn’t Basic, the words flowing like music and gravel combined. “Sha’ren vaess, kethara min—”
“Basic,” I demand, backing toward the bunk because my knees are about to give out. “I want to know exactly what you’re promising to do to me.”
His smile is all predator. “I said: Mine at last. My mate. My everything.”
Oh fuck.
He stalks forward—there’s no other word for it—and the temperature in the small room spikes so dramatically that sweat breaks out across my skin.
The air is thick, humid, crackling with electricity that has nothing to do with the ship’s systems and everything to do with the alien who’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the universe that matters.
“Your shirt,” I manage, because I need something to ground me before I combust. “Get it off.”
He looks down at himself—at the expensive Aethel-weave shirt that probably cost more than Pink Slip’s last three repair jobs combined—and I see the exact moment he decides he doesn’t care about preserving it.
He grabs the collar with both hands and rips.
Fabric shreds like paper, buttons scattering across the deck with sharp pings. The shirt joins his jacket on the floor in a crumpled heap of ruined finery, and then there’s nothing between me and all that glowing, alien skin.
“Come here,” he orders, and there’s so much command in those two words that my feet move before my brain catches up.
I reach for him with shaking hands, and the moment my palms make contact with his chest I gasp.
The temperature difference is staggering—he’s burning up, easily over 110 degrees—but it’s not painful.
It’s perfect. Heat soaking into my hands, radiating up my arms, making me want to press my entire body against him and never let go.
But it’s the texture that makes me pause.
Smooth human-like skin across his pectorals, his abdomen.
Then the scales—those beautiful, alien scales—rising in intricate patterns along his ribs, his sides, disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers.
They’re not smooth. They’re sharp-edged where they’re flared, catching against my fingertips, and the contrast between soft skin and hard scale is mesmerizing.
I trace one line of scales from his sternum down to his hip, watching them pulse brighter under my touch, a living constellation flaring to life beneath my fingertips.
Rynn freezes.
Goes absolutely still, every muscle locked, breath caught somewhere between inhale and exhale.
I can feel the tremor he’s fighting to hide, the way his whole body is braced for rejection.
Waiting for me to flinch. Waiting for me to pull away from the sharp, alien parts of him that his family spent generations teaching him to be ashamed of.
Instead, I lean forward and press my lips to the scales on his ribs, soft at first, just the barest brush of mouth on cool, smooth plating. They warm instantly under the kiss, glowing brighter, and I feel the shiver that rolls through him like distant thunder.
His breath hisses out between clenched teeth.
I smile against his skin and do it again, slower this time, letting my tongue trace the edge where scale meets flesh.
The texture is incredible: hard and unyielding one moment, then yielding like heated silk the next.
I follow the glowing line upward, over the ridge of a rib, tasting salt and something faintly metallic, like ozone after lightning.
“Polly…” My name is a warning and a plea all at once.
I ignore it. I’m busy discovering that if I press my open mouth just beneath his collarbone and hum, the scales there flare so bright they cast shadows on the wall. His hand comes up, fingers threading through my hair—not pulling, just resting, trembling.
I move lower.
Another line of scales starts just beneath his sternum and arrows downward, disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers.
I follow it with my tongue, open-mouthed kisses, gentle scrapes of teeth.
Every inch I travel, the glow intensifies, until his entire torso is lit from within, blue-white light pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
He makes a sound low in his throat, half growl, half broken moan.
I slide my palms up his sides, thumbs tracing the sensitive seams where scales give way to skin, and feel him jerk like I’ve shocked him. His hips shift restlessly; the hard line of his cock is impossible to miss now, straining against fabric that suddenly looks far too confining.
I mouth along the sharp cut of his hipbone, nosing at the waistband, and he curses in his own language—harsh, guttural syllables that make my thighs clench.
“Careful,” he rasps. “Some of these edges are sharper than they look.”
In answer, I let my teeth catch the faintest ridge of a scale just above his belt. Not hard. Just enough pressure to make the light flare white-hot and his whole body arch.
“Polly—”
“I told you,” I murmur against his skin, feeling the heat of him, the slight vibration that’s been building ever since I first touched him. “I like the cracks in the armor.”
I slide my hands lower, cupping him through his trousers, and the sound he makes is wrecked. He’s thick and scalding even through fabric, and when I squeeze gently, his head falls back, throat exposed, scales along his neck glowing like molten starlight.
“I like the monster,” I continue, mapping the glowing lines with my mouth, my tongue, my teeth. “I like the predator. I like every part of you that you’ve been hiding.”
The sound he makes then is feral, something between a growl and a groan, and then his hands are in my hair and he’s yanking my head back to claim my mouth with his.
This kiss isn’t careful. It’s not the desperate almost-kisses we’ve shared before, interrupted by danger and duty.
This is possession. Consumption. His tongue against mine, fangs scraping my lips with exquisite care, the taste of him—alien spice and male heat—flooding my senses until I can’t think, can’t breathe, can only feel.
He walks me backward until my spine hits the cool metal wall, and the temperature contrast makes me gasp into his mouth. His body is a furnace against my front, the wall cold at my back, and I’m caught between them, trapped in the best possible way.
His hands slide under my shirt, claws retracted but still dangerous, tracing up my sides with deliberate slowness that feels like torture. When his thumbs brush the undersides of my breasts, I arch into him with a whimper that he swallows greedily.
“Look at me,” he demands, pulling back just enough that I can meet his eyes. They’re fully black now, no trace of gold, pupils blown wide with hunger. “I need you to see. Black eyes and fangs and everything. I need you to witness what you woke up.”
I look.
Really look at the alien predator pinning me to the wall with his body, glowing like he’s burning from the inside out, vibrating so hard I can feel it in my bones. The scales along his throat and chest are blazing, casting shifting patterns of light across both of us.
“I see you,” I tell him, reaching up to trace the sharp line of his cheekbone, the deadly curve of a fang that just barely peeks past his lip. “All of you. And I want every part.”
Something in his expression shatters—relief and hunger and desperate need all crashing together.
“Kethara,” he breathes, and then his mouth is on my throat, my collarbone, my shoulder. “Mine. Mine. Mine.”
Each word is punctuated by a kiss, a scrape of fangs, a possessive growl that goes straight to my core.
His hands are everywhere now—sliding under my shirt, yanking at fabric with growing impatience.
When he finds the clasp of my bra and it doesn’t give fast enough, there’s a sharp rip and cool air hits my skin.
I should probably protest the destruction of clothing. Instead I moan, because his mouth is on my breast before the scraps of fabric hit the floor, tongue swirling around my nipple while that damned vibration starts up again—stronger now, deliberate, rolling through his chest into mine.
It’s like being stroked from the inside out.
He switches to the other breast, teeth grazing just hard enough to make me cry out, and I feel the vibration shift lower, a subsonic thrum that settles between my legs like a promise.
“Do you feel that?” His voice is rough against my skin as his mouth moves lower, tracing the line of my ribcage, dipping into my navel. “That’s my biology recognizing yours. My body claiming yours at a cellular level.”
“That’s—” I can barely speak, “—the least sexy explanation for the most incredible sensation I’ve ever—”
He laughs, dark and possessive, and drops to his knees.