Chapter 11 #2
My heart pounded like a hammer against my ribs. Panic threatened to explode from my throat in a shout. A scream? I didn’t know. I just knew the surge of awareness inside me needed an outlet or I was going to explode. Or collapse. Or lose my damn mind.
His nodes pulsed. Mine answered. The air between us shimmered.
"The discharge cascade won’t take long. We should be able to move in a few minutes.
" His voice was level. Controlled. The Commander’s voice — the one that told me he worked at this as hard as I did, that being this close to me cost him something, too.
That his stillness was discipline, not indifference.
Something twisted in my chest, knowing the distance between us cost him. Knowing he held himself back. For me.
"A few minutes? Are you sure?"
"Yes."
We looked at each other.
The crystals glowed inside the pouch. Blue-white.
Soft and steady, breathing light into the dark fissure around us.
The soft light highlighted every line of him.
The storm nodes that pulsed their rhythm along his spine, brighter now than this morning, deeper.
The pale lightning scars across his collarbones — the same fractal geometry as the marks on mine. The same pattern.
The planet had written us in the same language. From different directions. And only now did I truly understand what that meant.
My breath caught.
He was watching me. He was always watching me — with complete, unhurried attention that made no pretense of anything else and never had. In the blue-white glow he looked like something this world had made with purpose. For me. He was mine.
My marks pulsed in agreement. In demand.
My hands had moved toward him before I knew they were moving.
I pressed them flat against his bare chest.
He was warm. Familiar. My body had memorized his heat in that cave. Catalogued it on the ledge when he caught me, while the planet welded us together in white fire. I wanted to close the remaining distance so badly I was in physical pain.
"Sorik.” My voice came out low. Raw. The professional space explorer was long gone. On hiatus. Fucking banished by the sex-starved maniac I was now. I felt like an alien. Like a wild animal whose instincts were in control.
"Yes."
One word.
Careful. He was being careful with me. He always was — that precise carefulness of a man who understood exactly how close to the edge I stood and had decided not to push. Not to take what I wasn’t ready to give.
Discipline. Restraint. Honor. This alien was large enough, strong enough, to overpower me. He knew the bond surged through my veins. That I would not be able to resist him. That with one kiss, he could overwhelm every defense I had. Every moment we were together, he gave me space. Let me choose.
I was so tired of resisting him.
What about the crew?
I was the engineer. I was the one who held things together. I had been holding things together for so long, for so many people, across so many missions, that I had forgotten what it felt like to be the one held.
The thought hit like cold water and the warmth retreated.
The engineer's brain came back online with a guilty lurch.
Ten people. Ten pods. Ten beacons in that jungle.
I had been so consumed — by the clock, by the crystal, by the raw sexuality of the man in front of me — that I had not let myself worry about them.
But now I had the crystals I needed to repair the ship. Now, I had a way to get them off the planet. To take them all home.
How could I stay if they all wanted to leave? Shit.
Maybe I could convince our captain to report me dead, killed in the field. Or killed in the crash. No idea if she would do that for me, but I would ask. Because leaving Sorik didn’t feel like an option. It felt like death.
I didn’t want to go back to being a zombie. Unaware. Asleep. Alone.
"We have to find my crew." The words came out raw. Stripped of everything professional. "There are ten escape pods. Ten beacons. They're out there in that jungle and I've been up here—"
"Our warriors will find them. They will all be protected."
Not gentle. Not soft. Certain. The absolute certainty of a man who trusted his people with the same faith he had in his storms, in the nodes along his spine.
"You don't know that." My voice held. Barely. "You don't know their condition. The pods could have broken. They could be injured. How do you know—?”
"I know my warriors." He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. "I know this valley." His eyes held mine across the crystal light — silver and steady and completely without doubt. "Your crew will be found before the storm arrives."
I stood in the glow of the crystals and I believed him.
“Thank you.” I was not in love with him. I couldn’t be. Not if calling it love made leaving a kind of death. No. Absolutely not. This ache in my chest was not love. Couldn’t be. Not yet.
Not yet wasn’t very convincing.
The storm moved outside the cave. Lightning flashed in a violet sky.
His eyes held mine, steady and silver and patient. The tiny space between us hummed with everything neither of us said.
God dammit. I loved him. I loved the way he was always the wall between me and everything that wanted to hurt me. Loved the way he touched me. Kissed me. Let me climb the cliff and caught me when I fell. Loved falling asleep in his arms with our hearts beating the same rhythm.
I knew last night, with his cock buried deep, that something had permanently changed. That I had changed.
Anything else was a lie. I had been lying to myself all day. Pretending I was the same woman who had crashed the ship. The same woman who stepped out into the stormglass forest and was instantly attracted to the most stunning man I’d ever seen.
All this pretending was exhausting. I didn’t want to pretend anymore.
"Last night," I started.
His focus was absolute. He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Simply stared at me. Waited for me to figure myself out.
"I called it a physiological response," I rasped, my throat so tight with emotion I could barely get the words out. "To an external stimulus."
"Yes. You did." Still being careful. So controlled. But I felt the hurt in him now. My reaction had hurt him.
"I've been doing that." The words came out slowly. Turns out confessing to being an obtuse idiot was harder than I thought it would be. "That’s what I do. I analyze. I assess and study. I write reports. If I can explain the effect, I don't have to—" I stopped.
The cave was very quiet.
His warmth crossed the foot of air between us and landed on my skin. The marks on my collarbones pulsed, and pulsed, and pulsed. I was so tired of pretending I didn't understand every single thing they were telling me.
"Feel it?" His voice was quiet, but his understanding wrecked me.
I looked up at him.
His eyes were very soft.
Not with pity — Sorik was constitutionally incapable of pity. The softness in him was something else.
His hands were still at his sides.
He had not physically moved toward me. He gave me every bit of space between us even though I knew it cost him.
I could see it in the set of his jaw and the careful stillness of his hands.
The nodes along his spine pulsed brighter than they had this morning, lit up the cave wall behind him like a spotlight.
They were brighter than they had been on the cliff, brighter than anything I'd seen since we were naked last night, his cock buried deep.
His name on my lips. When the bond between us lit him from within.
That light was desire. Need. He wanted me.
He had wanted me since the moment we met, with an intensity I was only beginning to understand.