Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
ZAN
My fingers tremble as if I am five years old again picking up a plasma rifle for the first time. That’s the last time I can remember being this nervous. Lily has given me permission to touch her, and it’s not something she’s done lightly, that much I know.
“It’s not easy for you to trust me, is it?” I ask her.
She doesn’t bother answering and just makes her huffing noise. That means she’s both listening and irritated to me.
“That’s fine,” I tell her. “All you have to do is let me take care of you right now. Trust me. Enough for this, and the rest will come.”
“Oh,” she makes a soft snorting sound that must be disbelief. But there’s a heightened aroma of her heat that belies the fact that she is not at all affected by me. There is hope for us yet.
The water switches on easily, as if it had been taken directly from one of the many colonies I’ve been stationed on over my years. In fact, it’s unsettling just how perfect this replica dome is, and it triggers all sorts of unpleasant memories of my time in the Draegon Army.
The water is perfectly warm, the combination of the scent of the soaps already in the line is perhaps the most powerful memory recall of all.
“What’s wrong?” Lily asks.
I’ve been letting the water run in my hand while she sits there watching me.
“Just remembering my time in the military,” I tell her softly. “Lean your head back.”
She does as I ask, but her eyes are wide, and even though she’s silent, the wheels in her head haven’t stopped turning.
“So we’re just going to get the floor all wet?”
“The dome automatically collects the water and recycles it,” I tell her. “If it’s too hot, let me know.”
“It doesn’t feel like anything’s even coming out,” she says, and I swallow a laugh, knowing that she won’t appreciate it if I seem like I’m making fun of her.
“I haven’t put it on your head yet,” I tell her gently.
“Oh,” she says, that familiar annoyance back in her voice. “Well, I suppose that makes sense.”
“It is not very much water, though. It is not like bathing in a waterfall or in a great lake.”
She gives me an odd look, one eye scrunched closed while the other watches me carefully as I wave the shower wand over her soft black hair.
“Is that how your species normally bathes? Outside in a waterfall?”
“Yes,” I tell her sarcastically. “We invented spaceships, but indoor plumbing eludes us.”
Even though I’m being sarcastic, I say it gently enough so that she knows that I’m teasing with her, not making fun of her, and to my delight, she laughs.
It’s not a musical sound, at all, but a low sort of bark of hilarity, and I savor it because I have never heard it from her before.
I’ve heard all sorts of angry noises; my name pronounced in so many different ways of irritation I never even thought it possible.
But now, with that delicious laugh and the slight smile on her face, the way she’s slowly relaxing under my touch, I think maybe I can have her say my name in a way I’ve never imagined.
“Your nails feel really good,” she says, shuddering in the chair.
I swallow hard, my gaze tracking the rise and fall of her chest, small but ample enough, the steady tick of the pulse in the vein that runs down the smooth column of her neck. “They’re talons.”
She cracks open another eye. “Right. Talons. Heaven forbid you have something as mundane human nails.”
“I can protect you much better with these.” I lightly scratch them over her scalp, and her throat bobs. “Is that too hard?” I ask, cataloging every single tiny reaction that flits across her face.
I am certain it was not, and that that was pure pleasure I saw, but I want her to say it. I want her to tell me exactly how she feels right now.
“It’s fine,” she says, her voice high and thready, giving away exactly how she feels in spite of her not wanting to tell me, which, to use her words, is also fine.
It has only been days since we met. But the fact that she’s been able to keep her heat in control this far speaks to how hard a shell my little female has around her heart and her body. But now—now she’s letting me wash her hair.
The dainty line of her slim throat bare to me, with full trust, as I gently untangle the snarled mess on top of her head and watch her in complete submission, her eyes closed, relaxing in front of me.
Oh, it is fine indeed.
But before we are through with this ridiculous and dangerous survival challenge, it will be much more than fine. Of that I am almost certain.