Chapter 11
*** MARINA ***
She found him three hours later.
Three hours of crisis management, structural assessments, and making sure every human on her team was accounted for and treated.
Three hours of being the person everyone needed; calm, competent and in control.
Peter was stable, his shoulder was immobilized and the Weredragon healing compound was already working miracles on the laceration.
Patel was in the research caverns with Melessra, comparing seismic data with an enthusiasm that bordered on unseemly given the circumstances.
Athena was running a security assessment of the guest wing, processing stress the way she always did; through methodical, exhaustive, slightly aggressive competence.
Three hours. Marina had given every one of them to her crew, to the Colony, to the alliance. The next hours belonged to her.
The tunnel was where Athena had described, third on the left past the secondary junction.
The stone narrowed as she descended, the walls closer, the air thicker with moisture and warmth.
She could hear water, not the thundering cascade of the Colony's main waterfalls, but something gentler.
A constant, soft rush that echoed off the stone with a sound like breathing.
The chamber opened around her like a secret being told.
The low ceiling was covered in bioluminescent organisms that glowed a deep, warm gold.
They were different from anywhere else in the Colony, richer, softer, like firelight captured in living tissue.
Steam rose from three pools carved into the stone floor, each one fed by a thin stream of water that emerged from the rock wall and fell with a musical sound into the heated water below.
Toren was sitting on the edge of the middle pool, his feet in the water, wearing loose Dobromian trousers and nothing else.
His rose-gold scales caught the golden light, and the steam softened the edges of his form until he looked like something from the stories he'd told her about.
He looked like a figure from Weredragon mythology, carved from stone and given breath.
He looked up when she entered. Surprise, warmth, and then something deeper that he didn't try to hide.
"You found me," he said.
"Athena gave me directions. She also told me to tell you that if you hurt me, the earthquake will be the least of your problems."
"She told me the same thing. I believe her."
"You should. She once broke a man's arm for cutting in line at a coffee shop."
"That seems disproportionate."
"It was a really long line."
Marina stood at the entrance. The warm air pressed against her skin like a hand. The golden light made everything soft, private, separated from the rest of the world by stone walls and heated water and the simple fact that nobody knew she was here except Athena and the man she'd come to find.
"I handled everything," she told him. "Peter's stable. Patel's with Melessra. Athena's doing security. The structural teams cleared the guest wing. The relay is restored. Rowan knows we're safe." She paused. "I've been responsible for six straight hours. I'm done being responsible."
"What do you want to be instead?"
"Yours."
The word filled the chamber, reflected by the water, absorbed by the stone.
Toren stood. Water dripped from his feet onto warm rock.
He crossed the space between them with a steadiness that cost him.
She could see the effort in his jaw, the careful control of someone who wanted to move faster and was choosing not to.
He stopped in front of her. Close enough that the heat from his body mixed with the steam from the pools.
His hand came up and touched her face. His palm was against her cheek; his scaled fingers were gentle against her temple.
The texture was something she'd imagined for weeks, and her imagination hadn't gotten it right.
Not rough, not smooth. Warm, alive, and unmistakably him.
"I need you to know something," he said. His voice was low, careful. "For Weredragons, this isn't casual. I'm not capable of casual with you. If we do this, it means something I can't take back."
"I know."
"The bond, the claiming bond; it may activate. I can't control it. If we're compatible, the frequency starts building, and once it starts, it doesn't stop. It becomes permanent. I need you to understand …"
"Toren."
"Yes?"
"I flew across a solar system on your back, survived an earthquake in your Colony, and told you I loved you in a hallway while covered in blood. I understand what I'm getting into." She put her hand over his on her cheek. "Stop warning me and kiss me."
He kissed her.
* * *
His mouth was warm, warmer than she'd expected.
Weredragon body temperature ran several degrees higher than human, and the heat of his lips against hers sent a current through her body that rearranged everything she thought she knew about kissing.
This wasn't a first kiss in the usual sense.
This was two species who'd never done this before, and the novelty made every sensation sharper, brighter, more present.
She kissed him back with the urgency of someone who'd been waiting too long and the patience of someone who intended to remember every second of this.
Her hands found the bare scales of his chest, palms flat against the overlapping rose-gold plates, and the contact made him inhale sharply.
The scales were warm, textured, extraordinarily sensitive.
She could feel fine vibrations beneath them, as if the surface of his body was responding to her touch the way a musical instrument responded to being played.
"Your scales," she murmured against his mouth.
"Thousands of nerve endings per plate," he managed. "Every touch is; it's a lot."
"Too much?"
"Not enough."
She traced the line of plates down his sternum with her fingertips.
His scales flushed from rose-gold to deep copper; the color change spreading across his chest like heat through metal.
His eyes closed. His wings opened behind him, involuntary, expansive, the translucent membranes catching the golden light and casting their shadows across the cavern walls like a cathedral window.
"I can't control that," he said.
"I don't want you to." She kissed his collarbone where the scales transitioned from heavy chest plates to the smaller, smoother ones along his throat. He shivered, and the shiver traveled through his body into his wings, and the wings trembled, and their shadows trembled with them.
They undressed each other with a slowness that was its own language.
Her jacket first. His fingers were careful on the zipper and slightly clumsy with the unfamiliar mechanism.
Then her shirt, and his hands paused at the buttons because Weredragon fingers were broader than human and the fine motor challenge was real.
She helped with the last two, and the look on his face when her shirt came away was the same wonder she'd seen when he watched the whale movie.
Discovery. Something beautiful that he hadn't dared believe was possible.
She was self-conscious for exactly one second. Then his hand traced the curve of her waist with a reverence that made self-consciousness impossible.
"You're warm everywhere," he whispered. "Humans are so warm."
"You keep saying that."
"Because I keep being amazed by it." His thumb moved across her hip, mapping the difference between her skin and his scales. "Your skin is extraordinary. It's soft in a way that nothing on Dobromia is soft."
"Are you going to catalog every difference between our species, or are you going to come into this pool with me?"
She stepped out of the rest of her clothes and into the water.
The pool was perfect: warm without being hot, deep enough to submerge to the shoulders, the mineral-rich water silky against her skin.
Toren followed, shedding his trousers at the edge, and she had a moment to appreciate the full scope of what she was getting into.
He was large. Scaled from shoulder to ankle, the rose-gold plates shifting in the water, his musculature visible beneath them in the golden light.
His tail curled behind him in the pool; the spiked ridges carefully angled away from her.
Wings folded against his back but twitching at the edges with a restless energy that she was learning to read as desire.
He pulled her close. The sensation of his body against hers in warm water; scales and skin, his heat and hers, the slide of wet surfaces finding each other, made her gasp.
She could feel every plate of his chest armor against her breasts, every shift of his muscles, the steady double-beat of his hearts pulsing against her body.
Two rhythms, slightly offset, like a song with harmony built in.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, and the closeness was so complete that she could feel his breathing change against her chest. His arms came around her, and his hands on her back. His scaled fingers on her bare skin, sent cascading warmth down her spine.
"Marina," he said. Her name in his mouth carried a quality she'd never heard from anyone. Tenderness was layered with desire layered with something that sounded like disbelief. Like he still couldn't accept that this was happening.
"I'm here," she told him. "I'm real."
"I know. I just want to remember saying your name while it's happening."
She touched his face. The scales along his jaw were flushed copper, warm under her fingertips. His blue eyes were darker than she'd ever seen them, pupils dilated, the color deepened by desire and the golden light.