Chapter 3
Sloane
So, he had a name. Sorik. And a rank. And his town was called Sol’Virex.
"Dr. Sloane Carter." I held his gaze by force of will. "Engineer and pilot. Research vessel Astraea with the Nova Frontier Initiative. We came from Earth."
"I do not know this Earth you speak of. I do know you are fragile and weak. You will not survive out here alone."
Weak? Who was he calling weak? True, human biology was somewhat fragile, but that’s what technology was for. Life support suits. Weapons.
"I can and will survive alone, if I need to.” I had survival training. Gear. A ship to sleep in. For now.
The concern that moved across his face was immediate.
Unguarded. He scanned the tree line with the quick, habitual efficiency of someone whose body had been trained to put itself between danger and anyone more vulnerable — a reflex so ingrained it didn't require thought.
The storm nodes along his spine flared brighter, and I watched it happen despite every intention not to stare. I simply could not look away.
God, he was stunning. Sexy. The thought arrived without warning and without my consent. I shoved it down hard. Curled my hands into fists so I wouldn’t reach out and touch.
Fuck. I really, really wanted to touch him. Run my fingertips over those lights. Discover what his skin felt like pressed to mine. What he tasted like. Did he have a penis? Like a normal man? Would it be hard and wide? Long? Did he have sex the same way humans did?
"The storm crystals in the cliff face," I said, turning my eyes toward the distant formations and away from the impossible lure of him. "Do your people harvest them? I need to know if removal would destabilize the—"
"I know what you need," Sorik interjected.
That tone. Was he talking about more than—?
No. Couldn’t be. He was an alien. He’d never even seen a human before. My out-of-control body was playing tricks on my stressed out mind. Had to be. No alien was going to walk up to me in a glass jungle full of deadly fauna and obsidian trees and tease me. Flirt with me.
Right? I looked back at him before I could stop myself.
He had closed two of the six feet between us.
I hadn't seen him move. He was simply closer. The warmth radiating off his body hit me like standing at the edge of a fire — startling and immediate. It sank into my body. Deep. Compelling. His heat radiated through the space between us. I shouldn’t have been able to feel him.
Somehow, I could. As if his body ran at a fundamentally different temperature than anything human.
Hotter. Stronger. Like the storm energy living in his spine turned him into my personal beacon.
Every cell in my body responded. Heated. Leaned. Wanted to be closer. My breath caught. Audibly. I hated that. His silver eyes bored into me like he knew exactly what was happening to me.
Was this some kind of weapon they used on invaders? A test? Poison? Was I losing control of my body because of something he put in the air around me?
"The storm crystals," he said, holding my gaze, "can be harvested from the upper cliff deposits. The paths are dangerous. The pre-storm surges have already begun." He paused. "I know the safe routes. I will take you to them."
"Why would you help me?" The question came out stripped of everything professional.
Raw in a way I hadn't intended. But it was the question I needed answered more than anything else.
Why. Why a stranger who owed me nothing would offer to risk his life for a human—alien to him—who had just fallen out of the sky.
He looked at me for a long moment. His silver eyes steady. Unblinking. The light along his spine pulsed once, slow and deep, like a heartbeat syncing to something outside himself.
"Because the storm chose you," he explained. “You are mine now.”
He spoke with the absolute certainty of a man describing an observable fact, like the direction of wind or the coming of a storm.
You are mine now.
Something cracked open in my chest. I didn't have a name for it. I didn't want one.
“I belong to no one.”
“We all belong to the storm.” If I didn’t know better, I’d swear his features softened. “The storm chose you. Pulled you from the sky.”
“Lightning hit our ship.”
“Exactly. That was no accident. Soltharra has spoken. We are Stormbound. We will complete the Skybond and honor the storm’s gift.”
What the fuck was this guy talking about?
Stormbound? The planet choosing to hit our ship with lightning and make us crash?
As if the planet had any say in where a random electrical charge would be released in its atmosphere.
And to do it for me? So that this alien and I would meet?
The very idea was laughable. Completely absurd.
Unfortunately, the alien male in question looked at me like he believed every word he said. He wasn’t laughing.
"Being hit by lightning was a gift? From your planet?”
“Yes.”
“You call your planet Soltharra?”
“Yes. That is Her name.”
“Lightning does not choose where to strike," I said. “That makes no sense.”
"You do not need to understand for my words to be true.
" His eyes didn't move from mine. The ghost of something passed through them — warmth, patience, the tenderness of someone who already knows the ending of a conversation and is waiting for you to catch up.
"The storm is the spirit of Soltharra. The storm chooses the path. We walk the path."
“You already said that.” The jungle breathed around us.
Above the cliffs, lightning split the sky — a flash of pure white that illuminated the obsidian rock faces and the full sprawling pattern of his storm nodes all at once.
Silver-bright and fractal, energy branched from his spine across his shoulders like the light tried to burn itself into the rest of his body but found the surface had already been claimed.
His chest lit up, tendrils of power writhing and twisting through his muscles.
I stared. My heart pounded in my chest. My skin tingled as if inviting that energy to jump the gap and invade me instead.
The way he watched me made my core pulse, empty and needy.
My skin was too sensitive. I needed him to touch me.
To share that light. The craving was instinctive. All consuming. An instant obsession.
I looked away first.
"I need to fix my ship and find my crew," I said. “After that, we have to go back to Earth.”
"Perhaps."
Perhaps? Perhaps? “You going to take me prisoner? Keep me here against my will?”
“That will not be necessary. The storm will speak to you.”
Talking about the weather like it was a living thing again. Make that the spirit of the planet. Great. I didn’t have time to argue with an alien right now. I had shit to do.
“We need to get moving.” I turned around and headed back inside my ship.
I needed supplies. A containment field for the crystal I needed to collect.
Tools. Maybe a hammer and chisel? Mr. Gorgeous didn’t appear to have any tools with him.
If he did, I had no idea where he was hiding them.
He was practically—gloriously—naked. Wore nothing but a bit of cloth covering the manly parts of him I really, really wanted to see.
“It is not safe to be out at night. Dangerous predators roam the darkness. We will climb the mountain at dawn.” He issued his decree and fell into step beside me.
Close. Not invading — he kept a deliberate distance — but close, close enough that his warmth displaced the cooler jungle air against my left side, close enough that when my shoulder drifted an inch toward his arm the static charge between us snapped with a tiny, involuntary arc that shot directly from the point of near-contact all the way up to my jaw.
It was as if my suit wasn’t even there. Like I was as naked as he was.
The suit provided zero protection from him. His heat. His energy.
“Fine. First light.” How could I argue? I didn’t know this planet, or its creatures.
My pulse was doing things I would have found clinically terrifying under any other circumstances.
My heart felt like it was going to explode in my chest. Every cell in my body felt like it’d been dipped in an ice bath.
Fiercely, painfully awake. Shocked out of slumber.
Alive. I could barely think, let alone come up with a plan or argue with an alien about his own planet.
Bioelectric response, I told myself again, firmly, precisely, like a diagnosis that would stick if I repeated it enough times.
I was in shock. Being on the surface of Soltharra was like walking around inside a living electrical circuit, the planet’s motherboard.
A generator. If I didn’t have my hair pulled back, it would probably be floating a foot above my head with static electricity.
I’d look like a troll doll who’d never used a hairbrush.
The electric hum of the planet rose around us as we walked, deep and alive and resonant, and it sounded — disturbingly, undeniably — like it was saying something.
Everything happening to me had to be a side effect of the crash. Adrenaline. Shock. Worry for my crew. The awareness pulsing through me was not the planet, the atmosphere or some consciousness that lived inside the storm.
This alien obviously worshiped the storm like it was a god. More like ancient Earth pantheons than a modern, scientific understanding of reality or physics.
My physical reaction had nothing to do with the godlike alien male walking next to me.
Nothing. Everything I was feeling, every bit of desire, of longing, of awareness for the male next to me could be explained.
Sorik’s storm had not deliberately chosen me, then chosen to hit my ship with a lightning strike, then steered the ship to crash in this valley, close enough that he would be the one to find me.
That was nonsense. Complete and utter fairytale bullshit.