Chapter 48 #2
Without a second thought, she bit onto her shirt to keep it in place on her face, then covered Airik’s mouth and pinched his nose shut.
Airik gasped, eyes widening. The android pressed forward, an unstoppable force. Airik’s neck and shoulders were pulled taut as he held back, trying to keep the android from crushing them both. Veins branched across his arms, visible with strain.
His breath against her palm was rapid and uneven. She could even feel the grimace and shape of his teeth as he heaved back with all his might, inhumanely strong.
A colorful flash of fur slithered up the android’s side, wrapping around its neck. Lucky tried to grasp a glowing red pin jutting out of the side, but his tail was not meant for such tasks.
Lucky had lived here for years before them and survived.
He must be clever, Airik had said.
Airik followed her gaze to the pin, letting out a low growl. “No.”
Nora freed an arm and reached over his thrashing body as he tried to stop her. She grabbed the pin.
Fuck, it was hot.
“Stop!” Airik cried out again.
Ignoring the sizzle of her skin, she tightened her grip and jerked back with all her strength.
She managed to pull the pin halfway out.
The android’s head shuddered, its jaw clicking.
With her eyes locked on Airik’s, she pulled again.
This time the pin released, her hand flying back, hitting the wall.
Pain crackled through her knuckles and palm. Hopefully it hadn’t broken.
The bot’s grinding halted. The android stopped bucking, then moving altogether. Its body sagged against Airik.
Nora opened her palm, but her burned skin stuck to the glass tube.
With a great, pained howl—truly like a wolf—Airik pushed away from the wall, tearing the android’s arms from its body, freeing them. It fell to the ground in a heap.
Sinking to his knees, Airik pulled Nora down with him. “You saved us,” he breathed, grabbing her hand. He plucked the pin from her palm, then tossed it over the alley wall. He flipped her hands—both of them—wincing at the raw welt rising in the center of her palm.
But no glow. No kudra.
He pressed her palm to his lips, letting out a small whimper of relief.
Holding her by the waist, he crawled out of the alley and into the open street, where the breeze blew hard. They sat against a wall, shaking. Airik shut his eyes, his head sinking to her chest. A second later, he sat up, eyes wide open. “There could be more.”
In a whirlwind of gliding hands and ragged breaths, they checked each other’s bodies, ensuring they were clear. He clutched Nora to his chest, his hot, trembling fingers holding her chin up so she faced him as his teeth chattered with unspent adrenaline.
Stunned by the urge to touch him, as intrinsic to her as the drive to eat or drink, Nora reached for him, cradling his face in her palms. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “What I said before—I don’t just want a little while—”
He flipped her under him, his skin feverishly hot. A wave of heat pulsed in her stomach.
“I don’t want sorry. I want to listen to your life.” He pressed his ear to her chest, the tension of his body holding them tight together. After a few breaths, he slid down and turned his face into her belly, shudders racking through him.
She held him, stroking the scar on his cheek, trying to slow her breath. He wore a record of the dangers that had hunted him and failed. Proof of his competence. Proof of the dominance inherent in him.
But it seemed his instinct for survival had weakened because of her.
“You came for me,” she heard herself say. “Why do you keep coming for me? It only leads to you getting hurt.”
Airik rose to his knees, straddling her. Even disheveled and shaken, his eyes blazed with conviction. He looked at her for a long time, as if the answer to her question were so obvious that he couldn’t believe she even had to ask.
She shifted beneath him, her heart about to burst.
“Because you’re mine.” He pulled her back into his arms, pushing the hair out of her eyes. “Do you know what would happen to me?” He swallowed, his eyes brimming with blue tears. “If I lost you to kudra, too?”
Too.
“I don’t know what to do with you. With what we’ve done.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “But…I feel…inside of me is bleeding. All the time. And it only stops when I am with you. Even Lucky—”
He stopped, his head whipping to the direction of the alley they’d just come from.
Nora’s stomach dropped, unable to get enough air. Airik set her down, then bolted back into the alley.
Still reeling, she hugged her knees to her chest, reminding herself that Lucky had survived on his own for a long time.
Without you around.
Fur shot up her nose and into her mouth.
“Lucky!” she cried out, jumping to her feet.
Airik cradled Lucky, who sat proudly in his arms like a little, smiling king. His back leg hung at an unnatural angle, but he didn’t seem too bothered by it.
“His leg is broken,” Airik said, looking like it was his own that had been injured.
She leaned back against the wall, tears welling, a ridiculous smile on her face. Then, because this could still have been a miraculous dream, she wrapped her arms around both Lucky and Airik, squeezing them until Lucky let out a muffled bark.
“Oh, you poor, vicious little thing,” Nora said, drawing back to let him breathe. She kissed the orange spots on his head, then gently pulled up his lips. In her terror, she must have imagined his teeth growing, because his fangs, though impressive in their own right, were normal again.
“I can hold him,” she said, taking him from Airik. He wasn’t small—at least thirty pounds—but she needed this. Lucky stuck his snout under her arm, his tail wrapped firmly around Airik’s arm.
Nora had only taken one step before Airik scooped her up so that he carried them both.
Something wonderfully elusive surrounded them, and she didn’t complain that they were too heavy for him. They weren’t. Maybe he felt it too—this thing they had almost just lost in a dark alley, on an abandoned planet—because he quieted and his breath slowed to match hers.