3. Tamsin
TAMSIN
Three days. Sorek had been avoiding her for three days, and Tamsin couldn't stop thinking about him.
She'd been assigned a different guide, a younger Priest named Koreth who answered her questions with clipped efficiency and made no effort to engage beyond the bare minimum required by hospitality.
He was perfectly adequate. He knew the temple's history, could explain the significance of each ritual she observed, and never once looked at her like she was anything more than an inconvenient obligation.
It was fine. It was professional. It was exactly what she'd come here for.
She hated every moment of it.
She found herself scanning every courtyard they passed through, searching for a familiar tall figure among the meditating Priests.
She listened for his voice during the chanted prayers, that low resonant tone that had made her bones hum.
She invented reasons to walk past the corridor where she'd last seen him, telling herself she was taking the scenic route, knowing she was lying.
The worst part was the confusion. She had touched him accidentally, yes, but she'd apologized immediately.
His reaction had been extreme, but she'd assumed that was cultural, a religious taboo she didn't fully understand.
Surely three days of complete avoidance was excessive.
Surely whatever she'd done couldn't be so unforgivable that he couldn't even be in the same room with her.
Unless it wasn't about what she'd done. Unless it was about how he'd reacted.
The memory of his face in that moment kept surfacing no matter how hard she tried to push it down.
His eyes going molten and slitted. His whole body rigid with something that looked less like offense and more like desperate hunger.
The sound he'd made, low in his chest, before he'd torn himself away and disappeared.
She was a trained anthropologist. She should be able to analyze his behavior objectively, fit it into the cultural framework she'd spent three years studying.
But every time she tried, her professional detachment crumbled, and she was left with nothing but the visceral memory of how it had felt to be looked at like that.
Like she was something rare and terrifying.
Like she was the answer to a question he'd never thought to ask.
On the morning of the fourth day, she spotted him across the main courtyard.
He was sitting in meditation with the other Priests, his eyes closed, his posture perfect, his face arranged in that serene mask she remembered from their first meeting.
He looked peaceful. Composed. Like he hadn't spent the past three days deliberately avoiding her, like nothing at all had happened between them.
Tamsin's temper, which she usually kept firmly in check, flared hot and sudden. She handed her tablet to a startled Koreth, muttered something about needing a moment, and crossed the courtyard with more determination than wisdom.
Sorek's eyes opened when she was still ten feet away.
They locked onto her immediately, tracking her approach with an intensity that made her step falter.
His calm expression didn't change, but she saw his hands tighten on his knees, saw the subtle shift in his breathing, saw the faint golden flush creeping up his throat.
"Scholar Leclair." His voice was carefully neutral. "Is there something you require?"
"An explanation would be nice." She stopped just outside arm's reach, acutely aware of the other Priests watching them with varying degrees of curiosity and disapproval.
"You disappeared on me mid-tour, and you've been avoiding me ever since.
If I've done something to offend you, I'd like to know what it was so I can apologize properly. "
"You have done nothing wrong." The words sounded rehearsed, like he'd been practicing them. "I simply determined that another guide would be more appropriate for your needs."
"More appropriate how? Koreth barely tolerates my presence. At least you seemed to actually care about helping me understand your culture."
Something flickered in his amber eyes, there and gone before she could identify it. "My care is precisely the problem."
Tamsin opened her mouth to demand clarification, but he was already rising, unfolding from his seated position with that fluid grace that made her breath catch.
He inclined his head to the other Priests, murmured something in formal Khorani that she couldn't quite translate, and walked toward one of the smaller doorways that led into the temple's interior.
She should let him go. She should return to Koreth and continue her research and stop obsessing over a celibate alien priest who clearly wanted nothing to do with her.
She followed him instead.
The doorway led to a narrow passage that curved away from the main temple, opening eventually into a small garden she hadn't seen before.
It was sheltered from the suns by high walls, and someone had coaxed actual plants to grow here, twisted desert succulents and a single stubborn tree with silvery leaves that rustled in the faint breeze.
Sorek stood with his back to her, his shoulders rigid beneath his robes. He didn't turn when she entered, but she saw his claws extend slightly before he forced them to retract.
"You shouldn't have followed me."
"And you shouldn't have run." Tamsin moved closer, drawn by something she couldn't name. "What's going on, Sorek? And don't give me more evasions. I deserve to know why you can't even look at me."
He turned then, and she saw what the courtyard hadn't revealed.
He looked terrible. Gaunt around the eyes, his usual serenity replaced by something raw and strained.
His markings were fluctuating, gold and copper shifting restlessly across his skin, and his pupils were already slitting even though she was still several feet away.
"Because looking at you is the only thing I can do," he said roughly, "and still honor my vows."
The words hung between them, heavy with implications she was only beginning to understand.
"I don't..." She trailed off, her anthropologist's mind finally catching up with what her instincts had known for days.
The extreme reaction to her touch. The avoidance.
The way he looked at her like she was simultaneously salvation and destruction.
"Something happened. When my hair touched you. Something you weren't expecting."
"Something that has never happened to a Priest." His voice cracked on the words, and she watched him struggle to compose himself, to find the calm that had always come so easily before. "In three thousand years of recorded history. We thought ourselves immune."
"Immune to what?"
He met her eyes, and the hunger there stole her breath.
"The scent-match." Each word seemed to cost him. "My body has chosen you as my mate. The drive is... overwhelming. Every moment I am near you and cannot touch you, it feels like burning from the inside."
Tamsin's heart slammed against her ribs.
She thought of the way he'd looked at her that first day, the sudden intensity that had replaced his serenity.
She thought of the Khorani mating rituals she'd studied in preparation for this trip, the biological imperatives that drove their bonding, the way their bodies could recognize a compatible mate through scent alone.
She thought of rain, and realized with a jolt that she had no idea what she smelled like to him.
"This is why you've been avoiding me." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Because your body wants me, and you've taken vows that say you can't have me."
"Because touching you would destroy everything I am.
" He took a step back, as if he didn't trust himself to stay close.
"I have served the twin suns for thirty years.
I have honored my vows in every possible way.
And now my body has betrayed me, and if I break, if I give in to what I'm feeling, I will be cast out.
Stripped of my markings. Exiled from this temple forever. "
The anguish in his voice cut through her like a blade. She thought of what it would mean, to lose everything you'd built your identity around. To have your body make a choice that your spirit couldn't endorse.
"I'll leave." The decision crystallized as she spoke it. "I won't let you lose everything because of something neither of us chose. There are other temples I can study, other priests who can—"
"Don't." The word erupted from him, raw and desperate, and before she could react, he'd closed the distance between them. He stopped just short of touching her, his hands clenched at his sides, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding back. "Please. Don't leave."
"Sorek, I have to. If staying here is torturing you—"
"Leaving would be worse." His eyes were glowing now, molten gold in the shadow of the garden walls.
"I've tried to stay away from you. I've meditated, prayed, done everything I was taught to suppress these urges.
And all I can think about is your scent, your voice, the way you looked at me like I was worth understanding. "
Tamsin's breath caught. He was so close she could feel the heat radiating off his body, could see the individual marks shifting across his skin, could hear the low rumble building in his chest that sounded almost like a purr.
"What do you want?" she whispered.
"Everything." The confession seemed to tear out of him.
"I want to touch you. I want to learn the shape of you.
I want to bury my face in your hair and breathe until I can't smell anything else.
" His hands lifted, trembling, hovering inches from her face.
"I want to worship you the way I used to worship the suns, and I don't care if it damns me. "
She should step back. She should think about consequences, about his vows, about the cultural implications of what was happening between them. She was a professional. She was supposed to observe, not participate.