Chapter 9
She wanted to kiss him again.
Or kiss him for the first time, really, since technically he’d kissed her last time.
But considering she’d made it all the way to the Zarnax Zone basically on vibes and visions, taking the penultimate step to kissing an alien was harder than she’d ever imagined.
In the IDA handbooks which she’d studied diligently, it was a given that both—or more—interested parties were…
well, interested. Meanwhile, engaging the Chief Engineer of the Love Boat I felt like trying to wind a yarn ball out of some spaghettifying particles falling into a black hole—except the noodles were raw.
But Suvan without his engines…
Maybe he wasn’t such a knotty problem.
Thanks to her—what had Suvan called it?—idiosyncratic organizational accumulation, she’d had more than her share of hanks that seemed impossibly snarled. Unraveling called for patience and clever fingers.
And the way to start was to tug gently and go from there.
“Suvan,” she repeated in her softest tone, waiting for his pale eyes to lift to hers. “May I ask you something? And you needn’t answer if you’d rather not.”
His thorny scales bristled slightly, displaying the surprisingly delicate hues from jade to midnight emerald. “Your phrasing is more unsettling than my official statement of gratitude.”
She smiled. “Unlike my yarn collection, I will stop whenever you say.”
His jaw flexed when he swallowed. “Ask.”
“When you kissed me…” She held the lumi-lace ball between her palms, closing her fingers around it to block its brightening light from his sensitive eyes. And maybe to stop him from noticing her skittering heartbeat. “Was it really just about the resonark?”
The silence stretched between them like an unspun roving—the strands barely aligned, caught between what it might become and on the verge of breaking.
“No.” The word seemed forced out of him, rough and reluctant. “I thought… But it was an excuse.”
Even with her fingers tight, beams of light escaped. “What if I kissed you?”
He went very still. But this time she understood it wasn’t rejection—it was recalibration. Like he was running calculations, checking variables, trying to predict outcomes.
“I might damage you,” he said finally. “You’ve already felt my quill-scales in your hand, and the rest of you is even…” His breath hitched. “Softer.”
Oh, that little catch in his voice told her what she desperately wanted to know. But she eased back to set the lumi-lace on the viewport ledge behind them.
“Quill-scales,” she repeated. “My translator is struggling with that a little too. But I think it works. And remember: I play with sharp points and difficult materials for fun.”
“I am not…fun.”
She bit her lip, debating. But if she wanted honesty from him, she needed to offer the same. “I need to tell you something about when your quill-spine poked me. I…” With a half-strangled laugh, she clamped a hand over her eyes. “I can’t look at you when I say this. I had…an orgasm.”
When he didn’t reply, she had to peek through her fingers. “Suvan,” she groaned. “Tell me your translator knows that word. Don’t make me explain.”
“I know that word,” he said indignantly. “I may not be fun, but I do orgasm.”
Slowly, she let her hand drift down. “It was the first one I ever shared with anyone else.”
“No wonder you left Earth.” Reaching out, he caught her hand, only their fingertips imperfectly aligned. “But I didn’t even know. I am sorry again for that.”
“Not your fault at all. I was just so stunned.”
With exquisite care, he turned her hand palm up. He stroked his thumb over the place his spine had pierced her. “Do you still feel it?”
“Not anymore.”
His pale eyes glinted at her disappointed sigh. “Szauralithyn venom, like the quill-scales, is defensive, part of our evolution against the larger reptiloids that roamed the primeval caves of Etavis Nor. But during close encounters with our own kind, the obstacles to intimacy can be formidable.”
“You evolved alongside dinosaurs.” She shook her head. “That is fun.”
“We essentially are your dinosaurs.”
Was that a note of pride in his voice? She turned her hand within his, mirroring his care—and his caress. “Well, I swear I haven’t been stalking you only for that reason.”
His head jerked up, as if the thought hadn’t even occurred to him. “You would want…another orgasm? From me?”
She looked up at him through her lashes. “So fun,” she murmured. Just barely, she tightened her grasp on him.
Below the bristle of protective spines, his scales were satin-smooth and deliciously warm. She could touch him all night, losing herself in that simple tactile delight of the tessellated pattern.
How much of him was similarly satisfying?
When she let out a shaky little breath, his gaze dropped to her mouth, and something shifted in his expression—a crack in that stony facade she’d first glimpsed in an untouchable hologram.
“What if we started again,” she suggested, “with a kiss we both know is coming? You have no spines on your lips, and I have no expectations of more.”
“You told me you dreamed of me.” His gaze was unwavering. “Was it like this?”
“No. This is…not a dream.” She didn’t look away either. “This is real.”
Telegraphing every motion, she reached out and traced her fingertip across the high ridge of his cheekbone toward the sharp point of his ear. In the hologram, he’d looked so cold, detached. That gargoyle man on a distant precipice.
But under her touch…
He shuddered, a full-body vibration that rippled through him as if he might come apart at some hidden seams—a mountain of glass on the verge of shattering.
She paused. “Too much?”
“Not enough.” The words were ragged, dragged from some deep cavern within him, and the tremor echoed in his hand lifting toward her face, hovering, not quite touching. “May I?”
She angled her chin a notch, exposing that vulnerability. “Please.”
His fingertips eased up her jaw to cup her cheek. “So soft,” he murmured.
The caress sent invisible sparkling shimmers through her, as if her nerves were woven from his lumi-lace. Leaning toward him, she turned her head to press her lips into his palm.
When he let out a short breath, the exhalation put a fractional distance between them. “You’re not afraid.”
“Why should I be?”
“My venom,” he reminded her. “My temper.”
“My orgasm,” she reminded him back. “Your bite is worth your bark.”
Another breath eased out of him, almost a hiss. “If this wasn’t part of your dream, tell me what you want.”
She met his fierce, pale glare. “Your mouth,” she whispered. “On mine.”
Not crossing the space between their bodies, he framed her face with both of his hands, cradling her as if she were something precious and fragile. In the bottom of her peripheral vision, the spiny armor on his forearms was a reminder.
But then his mouth descended on hers.
It was nothing like that first desperate collision in the salon.
This was a questing, a soft yielding of lips that nevertheless roused all her nerve endings back to shimmering life.
Gliding infinitesimally on the slick heat, the slant of shifting pressure generated a matching energy within her—quickening with every heartbeat to a needy fever.
She’d told him she didn’t expect more than a kiss. But what a kiss.
And that was only the lightest caress.
When she sighed against his lips, he made a low, deep sound that vibrated through her, igniting an answering throb between her legs.
Without lifting his head, he growled into her mouth, “I smell your arousal.”
“Suvan…” Shock blanked the rest of her words.
“Like hot plasma flooding the engines. But sweeter.”
She gasped out the start of a laugh, and he kissed her again.
Deeper this time. His tongue—that long, clever tongue she’d admired before—outlined the curve of her upper lip before seeking hers.
The tentative first contact sent a wild thrill dancing down her spine and out along every limb—almost like the moment of the last day of her pre-IDA intake with the revelation that aliens actually existed.
Now one was in her bedroom.
He tasted faintly metallic, she wanted to tell him, like ozone and lightning.
But that half-teasing truth came out as a moan.
With his thumb under her chin, he angled her head just so, delving inward until his tongue tangled with hers.
And though only their mouths were connected, with tantalizing strokes, he hinted at what his tongue might do elsewhere…
Her head spinning, she slipped her hand toward his nape, threading her fingers between the quill-scales there, anchored herself on his armor.
When he finally lifted his head to gaze down at her, the clear quartz crystal of his eyes seemed full of starlight.
“I blamed the resonark,” he murmured. “But I kissed you the first time because you came to the engine module.”
She waited a moment: because she came to him and…? But when he didn’t continue, a faint twinge of dismay chilled her. Was he only interested because she’d invaded his privacy when no one else would?
Of course, she’d all but admitted she wanted more of his venom, so…
“Sometimes it’s the littlest things,” she said. “All my projects start with one stitch.”
“That was not a small thing. Not to me.” His hand, still cradling her cheek, skimmed down to her shoulder where her nighttime braid was resting and gave the end a gentle tug.
The tweak tingled across her scalp. Not even a direct touch, but she felt it like a spark beneath kindling. That was what he meant: not a trifling effect.
“On my homeworld,” he continued, “my people are renowned for gregariousness and epic festivities.”
She shook her head in surprise, tugging lightly on her hair in his grasp. “You’re joking.”