Chapter 13
Vessa
Salt and fire.
A cold oblivion.
Thunder.
What afterlife was this? Had the Elders been right? Then she was surely deep in the Pits, for she’d forsaken both gods and the Elders long ago.
“Ves.”
That voice. That name. Her body became suddenly aware, her brain rushing through a dozen details, trying to catch up. A sword striking true. Freezing water. Death.
But she wasn’t in the Pits. She wasn’t dead at all.
It was much, much worse.
She was naked. And pressed fully against a topless Kedar. Her breasts were smashed to his bare chest, her arms tucked beneath his at his sides. His heavy, thick-muscled arms were around her, a hand resting on the back of her thigh and another on the small of her back.
Skin to skin.
Vessa peered up, tried to pull free, and only managed to get a cramp that gripped her neck and shoulders.
“Be still,” he grumbled.
“You undressed me?” Her voice cracked and her throat burned. If she wasn’t dead… that meant he had dived in after her. How had he found her?
“It was the only way to get you warm.” His voice was huskier than usual, as if she’d woken him up, and it was so much deeper with her ear to his chest. It competed with his thunderous heartbeats. “I could have left you.”
“Well, you should have,” she snapped, but the venom wasn’t nearly as potent as she would have liked.
“Most would show gratitude for being saved. You seem unfamiliar with such a custom.”
In a span of days, he had saved her life twice. She wasn’t grateful, she was furious. Ashamed.
Kedar’s fingers tapped against her back once. “Do you remember anything from after I pulled you out?” The way he asked it made her feel like there was something else to the question.
Vessa tried to remember. She had a flash of Kedar making the fire bigger, of him standing over her doing gods knew what, but little else. “Just some fragments.”
His chest rose as he inhaled deeply. “I had to take my helmet off. To give you breath.”
Of course he had. Unless she had come to on her own, Kedar would have had to help. By sealing his mouth over hers.
Had she seen his face? Had she finally looked him in the eyes? Felt his lips on hers? She tried to conjure the image, summon it from the reaches of her consciousness, but found nothing. She was almost disappointed.
“Ugh,” she groaned. “I don’t remember seeing your stupidly precious, must-be-kept-a-secret face. Now let me up.”
“No. Your temperature is still too low. Your body, even with the help of a fire, wouldn’t be able to stabilize.”
She struggled against him for a moment, but his arms were a weight she couldn’t currently move. And, he was right. Damn him. Every point of contact that she made with him was warming, but the bone-deep freeze was still there.
If she was going to be alive, she might as well not make it any more miserable than it already was.
When she settled against him begrudgingly and growled out a Xaala insult, a purred sound of satisfaction rumbled through him. Bastard. “I bet you’re loving this.”
A soft laugh shook him. “This is for survival. I’d do the same for any comrade.”
“Vorgshit.” Though one couldn’t characterize an entire race as one thing or another, most Xaal were proud by nature.
Many would freeze to death before asking for another to warm them.
If they were weak enough to die by the cold, they didn’t deserve to be saved—that was how they would see it. “And we aren’t comrades.”
He shifted, and she felt every solid curve of muscle flex beneath her. “It would have been a poor death,” he said after a time. “The High Huntress of the Minad, the greatest warrior of her faction, defeated by poor swimming skills.”
“I know how to fucking swim.” He knew that better than anyone. He’d gone dive-fishing with her in oceans across the galaxy. “The water was freezing and my body wouldn’t listen. Did you save me just so you could trap me here and badger me to death?”
“No.”
“Then why? I’d rather be dead than deal with you.”
“I saved you,” he rumbled, “because only I have the honor of killing you.”
It sounded like a vow. A shiver moved down her spine. “You’re really set on dying by my hand, aren’t you?”
He made a noncommittal noise. “Perhaps if this Corros Xaal of yours had trained harder with you, you would have been able to survive the cold water.”
“Are you calling me weak?” The conversation was so at odds with the way they were pressed to each other. The way he held her.
“If that is how you take it.”
Vessa cursed. Her brain was not at full capacity, she told herself. That was why she was having such trouble finding her usual wit. “How often have you dreamed of this, then?” she asked, more to have something to say so he didn’t have the last word than anything else.
“What?”
“Me naked on top of you, at your mercy?”
He stilled beneath her before his voice came out in a dark purr. “Do you really want the answer to that?”
Oh.
She was suddenly too aware of it all. His warmth flooding into her, life-sustaining yet intimate, their hearts synced in a triune choir declaring they lived.
Out of the five years they’d practically spent all their time together, she had pinned him or been pinned by him countless times.
This was closer. The mixed coloring of their skin was a complex abstract.
Art. His dark blue against her brown was more beautiful than it should be.
But she supposed all dark oceans must meet earth somewhere.
His warm, rough hand squeezed the back of her naked thigh.
He was so close to the curves of her ass, and his long fingers were nearly between her legs.
Vessa gritted her teeth. There was a time she had yearned to be this close to him. That it was happening now, after everything...
This had to be some cruel cosmic joke. Nothing could ever be simple with Kedar. Not even a gods damn blood challenge.
“That’s it,” she grumbled, and, sitting up with her arm banded across her chest, she pulled her leg from over him. And her foot brushed against—
His cock. His very hard, very large cock.
He had on some thinner underlayer that left nothing to the imagination. The sheer size of him seemed to be too much for her brain to process, and she sat frozen for a second too long.
“It’s natural,” he rumbled. “It means nothing.”
“Natural,” Vessa echoed. She almost told him nothing that big belonging to a male was natural, but thought better of it. No need to stroke his ego—that was big enough.
She settled beside him with her back against his side. It was, admittedly, not as warm, but it was far better than being pressed against him like a lover exhausted from a tryst. Especially now that she knew he was hard.
She’d only ever known he was aroused once before.
After the war with the Zaram and before the Elders decreed their separation, her faction held a celebration and invited his clan.
The Night of Strength honored Luron, the goddess of battle, and the faction’s might.
There had been music, dancing, and games.
One such game was played in which partners must finish an entire tankard of the heady and potent enna liquor by drinking at the same time.
If one stopped, they both lost. She’d partnered with Kedar, but since Xaal required special cups that allowed them to drink while being masked, she’d been forced to sit in his lap—straddling him while facing him so she could use her makeshift straw.
When they finished—having won, of course—she’d thrown her arms around his neck and cheered.
Except the moment had turned into something else.
She could feel his hard length straining beneath her.
It was the spirits that had caused her to grind against him; the spirits, certainly, that had caused him to let out a hungry growl only she could hear.
In that heated moment, as they stared at each other, the world had disappeared around them.
But then he’d grabbed her hips and stood up with her, setting her down on her feet as if she were a fire about to consume him.
It was a mistake.
Whatever interest had been there had only been because of the enna liquor. He hadn’t wanted her. Not truly. Not like she had wanted him.
This moment was nothing, too. That she knew for certain. He probably had a mate waiting for his return, and she wanted nothing more than to be rid of him.
“So, if you survive me, are you going to tell your mate about this?” she asked to sate her curiosity. “Holding another woman naked in an ice cavern, even for survival, sounds a little too romantic.” Her teeth were already beginning to chatter.
“No.” It sounded more like a grunt than a word.
So he did have a mate? Was it someone she knew from before?
She went through the list of Xaal she’d become familiar with but couldn’t imagine any of them being a match for him.
Then again, how would she know? “Well”—her teeth clacked together too loudly—“that’s not very honest of you. If I was your mate, I’d—”
“You are so nevskoln stubborn,” Kedar growled. Without warning, he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her back on top of him. An embarrassing squeak left her as part of the blanket covering them flared up and let in the cold air.
“I don’t want to be on top of you,” she said, but the words held no conviction. He was so gods damn warm. Curled uncomfortably on his chest, she refused to move, but then his rough hands were on her thighs, guiding them over his torso with a gentle assertiveness that surprised her.
She ended up settled where she was before. Except now, Kedar was touching her, rubbing her legs up and down, stopping right at the juncture where her ample ass met her thighs. Heat bloomed wherever his palms touched. Every pass of his calloused hands stirred something inside of her.
Gods damn it all.
“This is better for you,” he said.