Chapter 11
Sloane
We started climbing down.
The most bizarre, unreal, fucking crazy thing?
I wasn’t dead. I’d been practically electrocuted and all I’d felt was Sorik’s arm around me, his emotions in the energy field around us.
The storm doing what storms do. It felt normal.
Natural to have him in my head, to feel my heart match the rhythm of his, to absorb the heat and wildness of the planet’s storms. It was all insane by human standards.
But I wasn’t sure I was human. Not anymore.
I needed to reach the ground. I needed solid earth under my feet and open air around me, and distance — real distance. I couldn’t think with him so close. With the maddening proximity of him below me on this cliff face where I could feel his warmth rising against my back with every move I made.
I was running out of cliff.
Worse, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way his arm felt around me.
The terror that gripped me when I fell. The relief when he caught me, grabbed me out of the air as if I weighed nothing.
Held me as an unbelievable amount of energy ran through us both like we were two gigantic pieces of copper wire, the storm’s power flowing through us like water through a pipe.
This place had changed me. He changed me. Every cell in my body had reorganized itself around his existence sometime in the last two days and I hadn't been consulted about it. I couldn't stop it. And the worst part? The devastating truth? I wasn't sure I wanted to go back to the way I was before.
I wanted him to touch me. I wanted him to make my body go crazy. I wanted to lose control. Give him everything. Believe I could have a life here where I was happy. Loved. Not alone.
That was the truth I'd been climbing away from all morning.
Simple truth. Emotional, not logical. Completely impossible to rationalize.
My skin ached for him. My lips. The marks on my collarbones pulsed their warm steady reminder with every move I made as if they were talking to me — you know what this is, you know what this is, you know what this is.
I did know. The heat pulsing through me was him. Connection. Awareness.
The Storm, he called it. The Skybond.
I had no idea what was happening to me, biologically. I just knew I was different. My body had changed. Adapted. I felt things I shouldn’t be able to feel. Was aware of things I shouldn’t be. I was alive.
Realizing how dead I’d been inside before this, before him, was the most depressing reality I could imagine.
Were all humans just… zombies? Were we always like this? Or had there ever been a time, in our ancient past, when we connected with the Earth the way Sorik connected with Soltharra? With the storm?
I pressed my hands harder into the obsidian ledge and kept moving because I didn’t know what else to do.
Stopping meant being in his arms again. Stopping meant thinking.
Analysis. Facing whatever this thing was between us.
This thing that felt like obsession already.
Desire. Some strange force flowing between his body and mine.
Making my heart want to beat with his. My mind reach for the flow of awareness between us.
I wanted that connection. Was starved for the emotional bond I’d felt in the cave when his cock was buried deep and my entire body just…
melted into his. I gave him everything without a split-second of hesitation.
Worse, I had no regrets. In fact, I couldn’t fucking wait to do it again.
I was so screwed.
The lightning burst came without warning.
One moment — cliff face, metallic sky, Sorik below, crystals safe in my pack.
The next — blinding white light.
Not a strike. A massive pre-surge cascade from the upper formations, stored charge releasing in a wave that hit me like a missile strike. The marks on my collarbones flared as I felt something different. Something directed.
Something that felt like it was speaking to me. Intentional. Direct. Aware.
I went still on the cliff face.
The charge moved through my marks. Into my chest. Outward through my nervous system in slow, deliberate waves. There was no pain. This was — recognition. The enormous, patient recognition of something vast that had decided I was worth talking to.
You are part of this. Part of me.
It wasn’t words, exactly. More like a frequency. Below thought, below language, landing in my bones with the certainty of something that had always been true.
You have always been part of this. You simply were not awake.
My throat closed with a surge of emotion I could not name.
I was part of this planet. This alien world had looked at me and said yes and written that yes into my flesh in light and circuitry. Marked me as Sorik’s mate. As part of this world. Part of him.
If I wanted to protect this place, protect Sorik, I had to repair the ship, round up the crew, and leave as soon as possible.
It was as if the planet somehow knew the decision I had made.
Completely insane, but it seemed as if Soltharra itself was speaking to me anyway, persistent and vast, entirely unbothered by my schedule. My worries. My fears.
I didn't know whether to be terrified or grateful.
I was both.
"Cave." Sorik's voice. Below me. Not loud — it didn't need to be. It carried the absolute authority of a man who had spotted danger. "Three meters left. Now."
I moved.
The planet's voice still ran through my marks.
I moved through the energy flowing around us like swimming in deep water — aware of it flowing in every direction, changed by the pressure.
My body followed orders while my nervous system rewrote itself around a frequency that had no name in any language I spoke.
The cave mouth was a shadow in the obsidian. Narrow. Dark. I went through it sideways, crystal pack at my chest, shoulder dragging across the entrance rock.
The second discharge wave hit the cliff face just as I cleared it.
Close. The charge raised every hair on my body.
Flooded my mouth with the taste of copper.
My legs shook. I locked them and held the crystal pouch tighter because it was safe, and I was the one who kept things safe.
I was still that person, even with the planet speaking in my bones, the marks blazing on my collarbones, the man one half-second behind me whose touch made me forget my own name.
Sorik. He moved into the cave behind me. Filled the space completely.
His heat made me want to melt into him. He towered over me.
Huge. Strong. I had spent the entire morning trying to forget what it felt like to be this close to him.
Thanks to the small space, and the storm outside, I was now completely incapable of thinking about anything else.
Apparently, the cave had opinions about personal space, and none of those opinions involved me having any.
He was too close. Smelled too good. Was too damn sexy. Strong.
Cave sex was a new thing for me. Never considered it before. Now? I wanted it again.
What else were we going to do while the storm passed? Stare at each other? Enjoy the awkward silence? Pretend we didn’t want to touch each other?
Maybe he had more self-control than I did. Maybe his body was behaving far better than mine. Maybe he was used to feeling this all-consuming, overwhelming urge for contact.
Me? I was a fucking mess. Frantic. Needy. My skin was too sensitive. My pussy was aching. Throbbing. Empty. Every beat of my heart was like a bass drum pounding through my veins, the pulse moving through me like a mating call. I was consumed by it.
The cave was a fissure — four meters deep, barely wide enough for his shoulders, intimate in a merciless way that did not help my self control.
The entrance was at his back. He stood between me and the storm.
The crystal glowed against my chest. The marks on my collarbones pulsed their warm, steady, entirely unhelpful rhythm.
Those pulses seemed to chant his name in a language I was only beginning to understand.
I had no defenses left.
I knew it was true the moment the thought danced through my mind.
Not a gradual understanding — a sudden, complete, exhausted acknowledgment of fact.
Sorik had broken down every wall I had around my heart without even trying.
The ledge. The catch. The security of his arms. The press of his lips to my hair.
Slow. Deliberate. The touch of a man who had decided I was his and had no problem showing it.
He had saved my life. Repeatedly. Protected me. Helped me.
Seduced me.
He looked at me like I was the reason he drew breath, with complete and utter focused attention. The walls around my heart hadn’t just cracked when he claimed me, when I came apart in his arms. They were rubble. There was nothing left to rebuild them with.
I shook, my emotions creating a storm all their own.
He stood one step away and watched me with silver eyes that missed nothing.
He waited. Watched. Did not rush me as I realized the truth of my situation.
He knew. He’d known the moment he saw me.
No. Earlier. He said he’d felt my presence when my ship came over the mountains.
Had accepted the fact that he would be mine, that I would be his. No doubt. No questions.
How was that even possible?
No fucking clue. But it was. I knew that now.
Knew it the same way I felt the rhythm of his heart thudding in my own chest. The way I sensed what he was feeling, even when he didn’t speak.
We were connected somehow. I didn’t know if this energy flowing between us was his storm, the planet, alien biology, quantum entanglement, God, destiny, or wild, random luck.
I just knew I was his now. There was no going back.