Chapter 3 #2
The planet was not alive. The storm was not sentient. This alien did not truly believe I belonged to him now. He was full of shit and old-fashioned, superstitious, primitive nonsense.
I almost believed it.
Almost.
Sorik
I walked her back to the ruined shell of her craft as the light failed.
I stayed two careful paces to her left, close enough to intervene if the jungle offered anything dangerous, far enough that the magnetic pull between us didn't become something she could reasonably object to.
Every step was a negotiation with my own body.
The storm nodes along my spine had not dimmed since the moment I'd seen her.
They were bright and constant and building with a slow, inexorable pressure that I managed through sheer force of will.
Years of training and discipline held me back, but just.
I needed to touch her. Not with urgency or demand.
The need wasn't crude. It was deeper and more unsettling than that — the cellular-level insistence of the Skybond seeking the physical confirmation that what the nodes had recognized was real.
My palms felt wrong. Bereft. Like they existed to hold her but, until now, had been unaware of her absence.
I locked them at my sides and concentrated on the jungle.
Her craft was smaller than I'd expected from the ground — a silver vessel built for survey work, she'd told me, designed to enter planetary atmospheres, collect data, and return.
It had carved a long dark scar through the canopy when it came down.
I studied the impact line, calculating angle and velocity and the stark, terrifying fact that if she had made one mistake, hit the wrong crystal outcropping, she would not have survived.
Would have been forever lost to me and I would never have known she was mine.
"You piloted this alone?" I asked. She glanced at me. Quick and sharp. The way she did everything.
"I had to." Something moved through her face.
Dark and brief and controlled very quickly — grief with a door slammed on it before it could fully open.
"Our other two pilots were dead." The words landed in the silence between us like stones falling into still water. “I’m the back up. The contingency plan.”
I stopped walking, the need to pull her against me, press her soft body to my hard flesh so strong I knew if I moved, I would break her trust. Reach for her. Touch her before that touch was welcome.
She kept moving for two steps, then registered my stillness and turned.
Her arms folded. Her chin went up. The grief was gone behind the wall.
What replaced it was the thing I had begun to recognize as her default armor — precise, professional, competent.
She was a warrior in her own right. My cock hardened to the point of pain and pulsed toward her.
Eager to claim her. Tame the defiance. Accept her surrender.
"The electrical surge hit us the moment we entered the atmosphere," she said.
"It came through the forward systems first. I was working on one of our survey units.
Our other pilots were at the controls." She paused.
Swallowed down pain. "They didn't survive the initial strike.
Lightning electrocuted them in their seats. "
"The rest of your crew—"
"Alive." Fast and fierce. A correction. A refusal. "The captain ordered the evacuation immediately. Ten escape pods. They launched before the shuttle lost full control. They're scattered across the valley. As soon as I get the ship secured, I need to find them."
“Why did you not take an escape pod and get to safety?” The thought of her alone, battling the ship as it plummeted to the ground made me want to rage at her, at the danger she put herself in. The unnecessary risk she chose to take.
Her eyes found mine directly, and what lived in them wasn't grief yet — grief was in the locked box, saved for when she could afford it.
What lived in them now was the weight of a person who had made a decision and accepted the consequences.
"I stayed to attempt a controlled landing. The alternative was an unguided crash.”
“You should have taken an escape pod. Ensured your survival.” I could not accept the alternative. That she willingly placed herself in danger.
“There’s a village in this valley. We were headed right for it. I couldn’t let that happen."
I looked at her for a moment. She risked her life for my people.
This small human woman had held a dying craft in the air over my people's valley long enough to make sure it didn't fall on them and then walked out of the wreckage alone into a dangerous jungle as though it was simply the next problem to solve.
The storm nodes along my spine pulsed with something that went past the Skybond entirely. Something older and harder and very, very certain that this female was exceptional. Honorable. Mine.
The storm chose well.
"You risked your life for the village? For people you had never seen?”
"It was the only choice."
I could see that she believed what she was saying. She genuinely believed it was only logic, and not honor, not bravery, that guided her. I sensed the truth. “You chose to save my village. Soltharra knew this and chose to save you. I am grateful for both.”
“We didn’t come here to kill anyone. That’s not who I am. Even if there was a chance they were cockroaches.” Her soft laughter washed over me like wild waters, soaked into my mind and soothed me in ways I could not describe.
I needed to offer her something of worth. Something worthy of her sacrifice for my people. "We will find your crew. I give you my word; we will save them all."
She looked at me for a moment, and the wall around her emotions cracked — just slightly, just for a second, something raw and relieved flickering in her eyes before she put it back. "You keep saying we. Who is this we?"
"My men have already begun searching. We will find them and secure their safety before the next storm.”
“Can your men bring them back to the ship?”
“No. They will be safer in the village.”
“What if I—they don’t want to go to the village?”
My little mate was searching for an escape, a way to avoid her destiny.
Surely she felt the pull between us? The bond?
Yet, she had no storm nodes. No marks on her flesh that I could see.
She was not from my world. Would the storm be so cruel as to choose a mate who could not feel the Skybond?
Could not feel the energy pulsing between us?
“They will take your crew to the village, where it is safe. Once your people are secure, you can decide what to do.” I held her gaze.
“I want you to stay. With me. You are mine.”
"We've known each other for thirty minutes."
"The Skybond does not concern itself with time."
She made a sound — not quite a laugh, somewhere between dismissal and exasperation and a reluctant edge of something warmer that she clearly had no intention of acknowledging. "Right. We can talk about that later."
She turned and climbed into the shuttle.
I followed her through the hatch, bent through an opening built for a species considerably smaller than my people, and straightened inside a space so small and so aggressively angular that my first instinct was the same low-level discomfort I felt in caves — the territorial unease of a body that needed room.
The air inside was stale and metallic and carried the sharp chemical smell of damaged systems. Underneath all of it, stronger here than it had been outside, was her scent.
Warm. Feminine. Clean underneath the smoke and fear of the crash.
Something floral underneath that — some personal fragrance she wore that was not native to this planet, something that had traveled across systems to arrive here, in this valley, in this broken ship. It hit my nodes like a struck chord.
I sat down in the crew chair before my body could do anything inadvisable.
She moved through the interior with the unconscious ease of someone in their natural habitat — pulling up screens, running sequences, her fingers fast and certain across the controls.
I watched her hands. I kept watching them despite every intention to stop.
They were capable and quick and sized so that I calculated — against my will, with complete focus — exactly how they would fit wrapped around my cock.
Clinging to my shoulders. Raking through my hair.
Her hand would be small when she finally placed her palm against mine. Fragile. Delicate. Perfect.
She glanced over at me. One quick, involuntary sweep from my face down to where I sat folded into the crew chair, then back up. Something crossed her expression. She turned away before I could identify it fully. But I had seen enough. She was not immune to the pull between us after all.