Chapter 4
Sorik
I wanted to kiss her. Seduce her. But not here, where the scent of her dead lingered in the air and alarms blazed from nearly every control panel of her ship. “Where are the dead pilots?”
She sighed. “We put them in stasis pods before everyone bailed. We need to take them home to their families.”
The idea of placing the dead into any type of stasis was abhorrent to me.
They should be freed from their physical forms, given back to the storm.
Yet I said nothing. These were not my people.
Not our way. And my mate was emotional. Upset making her small hands tremble and tears gather in the corner of her eye.
She scrubbed the liquid away as if offended by its presence. "The Skybond," she said, facing her screens. "Explain it."
"I can explain what it is," I said. "Your acceptance of the truth is a different matter."
She turned and leaned against the console, arms crossed, eyes on me.
The bioluminescent light from outside caught the planes of her face — the strong line of her jaw, the dark watchfulness of her eyes.
My gaze was drawn to the dried blood at her temple with a physical intensity far exceeding its medical significance.
I could no longer tolerate the blood on her face.
I pulled a healing leaf from the small pouch at my waste and stepped toward her.
“Whoa? What are you doing?” Her small hands pressed to my chest, palms flat. Desire raced through me at the contact, pulsed in my blood and bones. The bond was strong already.
“Caring for you. The healing leaf of the Lumithra vine will heal the cut on your head.” I stepped into her touch, needed more.
Needed to care for her. The constant ache in her head pulsed through her system and into mine with an urgency that had appeared and increased over the last few hours.
Our bond was strengthening. If the elders spoke true, in a few days or weeks I would know her moods. Her desires.
Soon, she would have no more secrets.
For now, when we were close, I sensed her physical pain. My mate would not suffer when I could heal her.
“Oh. Okay.” She stepped back. Removed her hands from my chest. I satisfied my need to touch her by lifting one hand to cradle her cheek as I wiped the blood away from her head with the leaf I held in the other.
Her skin was softer than it looked. More delicate than a flower petal. Beneath my palm, the bond between us pulsed gently. Softly. For the first time I felt her energy, not mine, not the storm’s. Feminine and quiet. Delicate. Addictive.
Fuck. How was I going to protect her from this place? From the storm, the glass, the wild things that would hunt and devour her without hesitation?
I wiped the blood from her face, tore off a small piece of the leaf and slipped it between her parted lips. “Hold this under your tongue. It will help your headache.”
I stared, too long, at her lips as I explained the Skybond.
How the nodes on our bodies would only awaken in the presence of our mate.
How the bioelectrical signatures of two beings would sync into one rhythm.
One frequency. The resonance that formed between bonded pairs, a natural phenomenon as real as the storms that had shaped my people across generations.
She listened with the stillness of a brilliant mind processing at speed.
“Like coupled oscillators.”
Warmth surged in my chest because she understood. She had not admitted to feeling the bond, but she understood.
"That's what's happening between us," she said warily. “Synchronization. That’s why I feel so—”
Her voice trailed off as relief flooded me.
She felt the pull between us. The need. The connection.
Thank the storm. None of my people had ever met a human before.
From Earth. Part of me had feared she would be unable to form the proper bond.
Accept my energy. Feel the Skybond when I held her.
Fucked her. Claimed her as my own. "Yes.
We are one now. One energy. One frequency. One storm."
"My nervous system is human. It's not designed to—"
"Your body is bioelectric." I traced her lower lip with my thumb because I could no longer resist. Fuck me, her lips were even softer than the skin of her cheek. How could something so soft and fragile be mine?
Yet, if she were not compatible, I would not feel her presence so acutely. I would not be fighting every instinct I possessed to touch her. Kiss her. Make her mine. "Apparently, there is no distinction between Earthen and Soltharran biology. We are compatible. The storm has chosen."
The silence was charged. Literally — I could feel the static building in the small space between us, the air gone thick and electric the way it did before a lightning strike.
My nodes pulsed hard against my control, wanting to respond to her, wanting to close the distance between us, strip her naked, press our bodies together until the resonance had something physical to lock onto. I breathed. I held still. I waited.
"This is incredibly inconvenient," she said.
"The Skybond can feel that way," I said. "Initially."
Her eyes narrowed. "What does that mean — initially?"
I held her gaze and let the silence stretch, hoped her mind, and her body, felt the truth. “I will make you mine, female. Give you pleasure. Share the storm.”
Her breath came in short gasps. I watched her chest rise and fall with the power of our bond.
I felt the corresponding ache in my own chest and realized, with a clarity that was almost violent, that I would cross a continent on foot to keep the desire that lived in her eyes right now from ever leaving.
She looked away first. Not ready. Not yet.
Soon. I would need to win her mind before she shared herself with me.
She was alien. I did not look like she did.
My skin was not soft or colored like hers.
I wondered what males from her world looked like.
Her shape was nearly identical to our females, but smaller.
Softer. I wondered if my form was attractive to her, or if her racing pulse was only a result of the bond.
I had never doubted my appearance before.
Many females in the villages hoped I would choose them as my mate.
None appealed. None ignited my storm nodes.
They were acceptable for a night of pleasure, but not as my mate.
This female was mine. Exotic. Too delicate. An alien. But I would not argue with the great mother, the Storm Herself. She had chosen this female for me and tasked me with guarding her. Caring for her. Protecting her. Bringing her pleasure. I would answer the call.
"Is your headache better?” I knew it was. I could feel the relief in her system. But I wanted her to trust me with the truth.
“Yes. That’s incredible.” She lifted her hand and pulled the remains of the small leaf from her mouth. “Thank you.”
I stepped back, gave her room. My hands missed the feel of her flesh at once. “Tell me about yourself. Tell me of your Earth.”
The shift in topic surprised her. Her arms loosened slightly across her chest — an involuntary release of tension, there and gone.
I catalogued it. I catalogued everything about her, helplessly, the way my nodes catalogued storm patterns: automatically, compulsively, in service of something that could not be ignored nor turned off.
She talked about flying. About leaving Earth — her home planet, a world of rain and wind and lightning that did not live in the bones of its creatures the way Soltharra's lightning lived in mine.
She talked about choosing to leave her home world.
I heard in that choosing the shape of a person who had always looked for something more.
The storm knew she had been searching for me. For our bond.
Found me. I did not speak the thought aloud. She had found me and I would not let her go.
"And you," she said. "Commander. Tell me what that means here. What do you command?"
I told her about the Storm Guard. The patrols, the valley routes, the ridge territories and the rival tribes.
The wild creatures, predators that would not hesitate to hunt her, were she caught out in the wild.
My people did not have many enemies, but those we did were fierce and dangerous tribes.
I explained the role of the warrior, of the innocent people in my village who needed protecting.
We had ships as well. Technology buried ages ago by the elders. Not because we could not leave the planet if we chose, but because we had traveled to other worlds and found them lacking. Dead or weak. Without the power that coursed through our bodies here.
She listened with her head slightly tilted. I felt the precise angle of it so acutely — the way her dark hair shifted against the side of her neck, the smooth strip of skin below her ear — that I had to look at the wall behind her to keep my voice level. Nothing helped my aching cock.
"You all patrol alone," she said. "By choice?"
"I patrol where the situation requires," I said. "When two or more gather, it is difficult to hide our energy from others.”
“You can feel everyone around you?”
“Yes.”
“What about the trees?”
“We feel everything. The ground. The sky. The storm. The trees. Friend and foe. All life is energy.”
“Is that how you found me so fast? I was only on the ground for a few minutes, and you were already here. Like you were waiting for me.”
“I followed an unusual electromagnetic disturbance when your craft came down."
"Your nodes." She began to understand. "They responded to the crash?"
“No. Not to your ship.” I looked at her steadily. "They responded to you."
Her lips parted. A small thing. A barely-there thing. The sound she made I wanted to hear again and again, when my cock was buried deep. When she begged me for more. Shock. Surprise.
Want.
"Before you saw me?"
"Before your craft entered the valley," I said. "I felt the change in the energy field as soon as your ship reached the mountains. I followed it. I did not understand what I tracked until I found you standing at the edge of your crash site."
The air between us heated. My nodes flared with light. I could feel the heat of her from two feet away — human body temperature, which I already knew was cooler than mine. My skin ached to fix that discrepancy in ways I would not yet allow.
I barely — barely — held the reins.
"I'm not going to apologize," she said carefully, "for not immediately accepting a phenomenon, a bond, I have no framework for. I’m not from this planet. I’m not bonding with you."
"Truth does not require your acceptance," I said. “Truth simply is.”
"Then what do you require?"
I looked at her. At the set of her jaw and the guardedness in her eyes. The way her body did exactly what mine did — leaning fractionally, involuntarily, toward the source of the pull she refused to acknowledge. Toward me.
"Seventy-two hours," I said. "Give me that.
I'll help you repair your ship and find your crew, and when it's done—" I held her gaze and let her see the full weight of my certainty, everything I had not yet said aloud "—you can make whatever choices you need to make.
If you choose to leave Soltharra, I will not stop you. "
A long silence. The pre-storm winds moved through the canopy outside.
I heard the stormglass trees begin their low electric song, the sound they made when the atmosphere started building charge.
In twelve hours, the surges would intensify.
In thirty, the cliff approach would become genuinely lethal.
In seventy-two, everything would change. And then, the cycle would begin again.
"Fine. Three days.” Her words were not warm. They did not contain any of the desire I could feel gathering under her surface like a storm building behind glass. But she agreed. For now, she would not attempt to leave me or order me from her side.
Relief flooded me as she turned back to her screens and pulled up crystal formation data. She asked me precise, technical questions about extraction methodology. What tools she would need. The best route to the caves.
I answered them. All of them. Completely. In a normal voice.
And the whole time, the storm nodes along my spine blazed silver-white, pumping more energy through my system than I had ever in my life been forced to contain. My hands locked around the edges of the crew chair rather than where they wanted to be. Touching her.
Seventy-two hours to seduce her. To gain her trust and win her heart. To convince her to stay on an alien world. To stay with me.
Storm help me. She was alien. Stubborn and beautiful. I had a feeling I would need every moment.