Chapter 18 #2
But this was not the day before. He saw the steadiness of her breath and the deliberate press of her body into the space between his knees.
She wasn’t flinching away from him. Her old fears weren’t circling.
She’d heard the worst of him, the runt and the beast and the boy who stopped speaking, and she hadn’t stepped back. She’d stepped in.
“Are you certain?” he asked, his voice rough.
“I’m certain.” She said it without a tremor.
Her thumbs traced the hard line of his cheekbones, along the edge of a scar.
“Yesterday wasn’t fear of you. I need you to know that.
It was four years of everything else. And you saw it, and you took your hands off me before I even understood what I was feeling, and no one has ever—” Her voice caught, steadied.
“No one has ever cared what I wanted. Not once since I was taken.” She leaned forward until her forehead rested against his, careful of the horns, breath warm against his mouth.
“I want this. I want you. I’m choosing you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” The word sounded like it had been dragged from the bottom of his soul. “I understand.”
“Then don’t wait anymore.”
He kissed her, and there was nothing but the two of them and the quiet hum of the ship and the openness of space around them, and he took his time.
He rose from the seat and she made a small startled sound as he lifted her.
She weighed nothing, she weighed less than nothing, and he was terrifyingly aware in every moment of exactly how easy it would be to hurt her and how completely he would not.
Because that was the discipline forged in a training ground that meant to break him—to hold enormous strength and let none of it slip. He’d never had a reason worth the effort before. He had one now.
He carried her to the berth and set her down on it like something that might shatter, and followed her down, bracing his weight on his forearms, keeping the crushing mass of himself lifted away from her small body.
She reached up and pulled him closer, impatient with his caution, and he let her draw him just so far and no further, and she laughed against his mouth at his stubbornness.
“I won’t break,” she whispered.
“I’ll be certain of that.”
“Brannik.” She got her hands in his hair and made him look at her. “I told you. I’m choosing you. That means I trust you.”
He didn’t answer her, but his hands went to the hem of her shirt, and when she nodded, he lifted it gently over her head.
Her trousers followed, and then she was naked beneath him, all the softness and curves she’d spent four years hiding open to his gaze.
His body went painfully hard, but he ignored it.
She was watching him, and what mattered was that she saw nothing in his face but exactly what he felt.
His arousal was a massive, desperate pressure between his legs, but he ignored it because she was all that mattered.
His hands drifted over her, exploring every inch.
He’d touched her before, but this was different.
This was discovery. This was a revelation.
He was no longer a prisoner in a cell and she was no longer a frightened female trying to be invisible.
They were simply a male and a female in a stolen ship, finding each other at the end of a long, dark road.
He kissed a slow path down her body, pausing at the small, sensitive hollows of her collarbones, the soft swell of her breasts.
Her breath hitched when he closed his mouth over one tight peak, and he made a low, possessive sound deep in his chest, a rumble of pure male satisfaction.
He took his time there, tasting and teasing, savoring the small, breathless sounds she made.
When he finally moved lower, tracing the soft skin of her stomach with his tongue, her hands gripped his horns, tightening when he found that sensitive spot just below her navel.
“Brannik,” she gasped, her back arching off the bunk.
“I’m here, my Amy.” The words were rough, almost guttural. He’d called her his without thinking, but it felt right. More right than anything had in a long, long time. “And I’m going to make you feel so good.”
She was wet and ready for him when he finally reached the heart of her, and the sweet, musky scent of her desire was the most intoxicating thing he had ever smelled.
He parted her folds with his tongue and tasted her.
She cried out, a raw, ragged sound of pure pleasure, and her hips bucked against his mouth.
He held her there, his hands firm on her thighs, and feasted.
He paid attention to her the way he always had, learning what made her breath catch and what made her tremble, patiently returning to each discovery until the tension in her body drew tighter and tighter, and she finally shattered against him with a soft, broken cry.
He drank in her release, the taste of her pleasure, and the sight of her lost in the throes of passion.
He looked down at her, her face flushed, her eyes dazed with pleasure, and he felt a surge of possessiveness so strong it was almost painful.
She reached for him, but even though his body was hard and heavy and aching with need, he hesitated.
Part of it was concern for her, for the fragility of her small body.
But concern for her wasn’t the only thing holding him back.
He’d been alone since he was eleven. He’d told her that and it was true, but he understood now that he’d never once, in all those years, known what being alone had been costing him.
You couldn’t miss a warmth you’d never felt.
He felt it now. He’d feel its absence forever, if it were ever taken from him.
That was the fear his father had known. Not the loving.
The loving was simple, easy, the most natural thing his body had ever done.
The fear was handing someone else the whole of himself and knowing the universe could take her away.
Knowing that if it did, he would cross any distance, tear down any wall, break any chain, and kill anything at all to get her back.
He’d thought he understood loyalty. He’d been a warrior’s son, forged in a warrior’s cruelty. He understood now that he’d understood nothing.
She looked up at him, the dazed pleasure in her eyes changing to thoughtfulness. She traced an idle pattern over the deep bronze of his chest, over an old scar, and over the place where his heart beat too hard and too fast.
“You’re thinking very loudly,” she murmured.
“I don’t make sounds when I think.”
“You do, actually. You go still in a specific way.” She tilted her head up to look at him, hair loose around her face, her eyes drowsy and warm. “It’s a whole entire language, Brannik, your quiet. I’ve been learning it ever since I met you.” She put a soft hand on his jaw. “What were you thinking?”
He was quiet for a moment. He’d spent his life saying nothing because nothing was safer. He made himself say it anyway.
“That I understand my father now,” he said. “For the first time. I understand why he went, and what he couldn’t live without. I understand it, and I still can’t forgive him for leaving the boy behind. Both can be true.”
She looked up at him. Then she pressed a kiss to his sternum, over his too-fast heart.
“Why do I think that now you need to wait?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said roughly, but she only smiled and tugged him down beside her.
“I might not have your patience, but I can wait too. Until you’re ready.”
She curled against his chest, her cheek over his heart, her leg thrown across one of his, and she fit against him as though that space had been waiting his whole life to be filled by her.
His arm curved around her, his hand splayed across the full width of her back, and he could feel her heartbeat slowing against his ribs, and the steady warm rhythm of her breath.
He’d never held anyone like this, not with this warmth and an unthinking trust that settled deep in his bones and rearranged them around her.
He was a warrior, an exile, a being forged in silence and cruelty.
And here, in a too-small berth on a stolen ship, with a human female tucked into his side as if she belonged there, he felt a quietude he’d never known he was missing.
“This is nice,” she murmured into his chest. “This is good.”
“Yes.”
And as she drifted to sleep in his arms, he understood, finally, the thing that had driven his father across the stars and had frightened him his whole life. He understood why a male would risk everything for it.
For the first time, he thought it might be worth the risk.