Chapter 14
Haid
I drag her through the corridors like a man possessed. Maybe I am. Possessed by rage, by terror, by the memory of her facing down that Apex dog with nothing but vines and fury while he held a gun on her.
Guards snap to attention as we pass. I don't acknowledge them. Can't. Every ounce of my focus is split between keeping my grip on Ksara gentle enough not to bruise and not turning around to go back and finish what I started with that spy.
"Haid." She's trying to dig her heels in, trying to slow me down. "Haid, stop. Where are we—"
"My quarters." The words come out clipped. Controlled. A thin veneer over the violence still churning in my blood. "Now."
I palm the lock. The door hisses open. I pull her inside and seal us in, overriding the system so no one can interrupt. The lock engages with a heavy magnetic thunk that echoes in the silence.
She yanks her wrist free the moment I release her. Backs up three steps, putting space between us. Her eyes are bright with anger, her chest heaving, hair wild around her face from our sprint through the station.
Beautiful. Furious. Alive and vibrating with an energy that makes the air between us crackle like a live wire.
The relief of it, the sheer, overwhelming fact that she's here, whole, unmarred save for the fury blazing in those eyes, nearly drops me to my knees.
My chest constricts with something too raw to name, something that makes my hands shake where they hang at my sides.
She could have been dead. Could have been bleeding out on those cold station floors while I was too far away to stop it, too late to save her.
But she's not. She's here. Breathing. Fighting.
"What the hell was that?" She's breathing hard, hands clenched into fists at her sides. "You can't just drag me around like cargo! Like I don't get a say in—"
"You went to the lower levels." I can hear the gravel in my voice, the barely leashed fury. "Alone. Without guards. Without telling anyone where you were going."
"I was distributing the harvest! You know, the reason you kidnapped me in the first place?" She takes a step forward, chin lifted in defiance. "Those people needed—"
"Those people nearly got you killed!" The shout tears out of me before I can stop it. "Do you understand what I found? What I walked in on? He had a gun pointed at your head, and you were alone in a corridor where no one would have heard you scream!"
"I had the situation under control!" Her voice cracks with indignation, with the fierce need to prove herself.
"Under control?" I can't stop the bitter, desperate laugh that escapes. "You had seconds left before he pulled that trigger! Seconds before I would have lost you forever!"
The words hang suspended in the space between us like shrapnel after an explosion, jagged fragments, dangerous and deadly, each one cutting too close to truths I've spent years burying under layers of ice and iron will.
She's shaking again, her entire body trembling with barely contained emotion.
But it's different now. Not the adrenaline-fueled aftermath of near-death, not the shock of violence or the terror of staring down a weapon's barrel.
This is something far more volatile, far more combustible.
This is rage, pure, incandescent fury that blazes in those eyes and radiates from every tense line of her body.
A rage that mirrors my own like looking into a dark reflection of everything I'm feeling, everything I can barely keep chained down.
"I am not some delicate flower you keep locked in a greenhouse, Haid." Her voice drops low, deadly quiet. "I can take care of myself. I've been taking care of myself my whole life while my mother paraded me around like a prize orchid, and I will not, I refuse to trade one gilded cage for another!"
"This isn't a cage." I'm moving toward her without deciding to, drawn by gravity or madness or something I don't have a name for. "This is keeping you alive."
"No." She holds her ground even as I close the distance. "This is you trying to control something you're afraid of losing."
The accusation hits like a railgun blast. Dead center. Devastating.
"You're damn right I'm afraid of losing you." The confession rips out of my throat, raw and bleeding. "You want the truth? Fine. You are the only thing in this gods-forsaken universe I cannot lose. The only light in decades of darkness. The only—"
I cut myself off. Breathing hard. Close enough now that I can see the gold flecks in her eyes, can smell rain and soil and something uniquely her that makes my head spin.
"The only what?" Her voice has gone soft. Dangerous in a completely different way. She tips her chin up, meeting my eyes without flinching. "Say it."
I can't. The words are lodged behind my teeth, behind every wall I've built to survive in this brutal corner of space. Admitting it makes it real. Makes it a weapon someone can use against me.
Makes me vulnerable in a way that no armor can protect against.
"Coward." She breathes the word like a challenge. Like she knows exactly what strings to pull to unravel me. "You can kidnap me, threaten empires for me, nearly kill a man for touching me, but you can't say—"
I kiss her.
It's not gentle. Not careful. It's weeks of wanting and fear and desperate need compressed into the press of my mouth against hers, the slide of my hands into her hair, the way I back her up until she hits the wall and gasps against my lips.
She doesn't push me away.
She kisses me back with the same hunger, the same fury, her fingers digging into my shoulders, nails scraping against the undersuit beneath my armor plating. The small sound she makes in the back of her throat unravels something fundamental in my chest.
I break the kiss long enough to work the armor release at my collar. The chest plate disengages with a hiss of pressure seals. I let it fall to the floor with a crash that probably wakes half the corridor.
Don't care about consequences, about politics, about whether the armor makes enough noise to alert the entire ship when it hits the deck plating.
Can't care about anything except getting closer to her, skin to skin, breath to breath, getting rid of every barrier between us, every layer of protection I've wrapped around myself for decades.
She's already pulling at my shirt, dragging it up and over my head. Her hands find bare skin and I hiss at the contact. Warm. She's so warm compared to the cold I've lived in for years. Her palms slide over my ribs, my chest, tracing scars with a reverence that makes my breath catch.
"Mine," I growl against her neck, teeth grazing the tender hollow of her throat, tasting salt and skin and need, breathing in that rain-and-soil scent that has haunted me since the moment she stepped aboard my ship. "Tell me you're mine."
Her response is immediate and fierce. Her teeth sink into my bottom lip hard enough to sting, hard enough to draw blood, the sharp edge of pain lancing through me like lightning. The sensation spikes straight to my groin, hot and demanding, making me groan against her mouth.
"Only if you're mine," she whispers against my lips, her breath mingling with mine, those clever fingers threading through my hair and pulling just hard enough to make my scalp tingle.
There's steel in her voice now, that hidden strength I've always sensed beneath her soft exterior finally showing itself.
"Only if you belong to me the same way you're demanding I belong to you. "
The possessiveness in her voice destroys me. I lift her like she weighs nothing, carry her the three steps to my desk and set her on the edge. Tactical maps and data-pads scatter to the floor. I don't spare them a glance.
She's already working the fastening of my pants. Efficient. Determined. Those clever hands that grow life from dead soil now intent on unmaking me completely.
I catch her wrists. Hold them. Wait for her to look at me.
"Are you sure?" My voice sounds like I've swallowed gravel. "Because if we do this, there's no going back. I won't let you go. I won't—"
"I don't want to go back." She's breathing hard, her pupils blown wide, lips swollen from my kiss. "I want this. I want you."
The simple truth of it breaks something in me.
I kiss her again, slower this time. Deeper. Pouring everything I can't say into the slide of my tongue against hers, the way I cradle her face like she's made of starlight and wishes.
Her dress is in the way. Too much fabric, too many fasteners. I find the seam and pull. The material tears with a sound that should probably concern me but only makes her gasp and arch into my touch.
"Expensive," she manages, breathless.
"I'll buy you a thousand." I'm mapping the curve of her waist, the flare of her hips, learning the geography of her body with hands that have only ever known how to destroy. "I'll wrap you in silk and starlight. Anything. Everything."
"I just want you." Her hands are in my hair, pulling me down into another kiss. "Just this. Just us."
I work her underwear down her thighs. She kicks them off, and then there's nothing between us but need and heat and the sound of our breathing in the quiet of my quarters.
I press against her. Hard and aching and desperate. She wraps her legs around my waist, pulling me closer, and the friction of it punches a groan from my chest.
"Please," she whispers against my mouth. Not begging. Demanding. "Haid, please, I need—"
I sink into her in one slow thrust that steals both our breath.
Tight. Warm. Perfect. Like she was made for this, made for me, made to fit around me like a missing piece I didn't know I'd lost.
She makes a sound caught between a gasp and a moan, her head falling back against the wall, spine arching in a bow that puts her breasts against my chest. I can feel her heartbeat against mine. Racing. Alive.
"Okay?" I force the word out through gritted teeth. Every instinct screams at me to move, to take, to claim, but I hold still. Waiting. "Do I, should I—"
"Move." Her nails drag down my back. "Gods, Haid, move."
I do.