Chapter 13 #2
“You are cold,” he repeated, and before she could protest, he’d wrapped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his side. The warmth was immediate and startling, soaking through her jacket like sunshine.
“Adjar—”
“The heating machine is failing. I am not.” His tone brooked no argument. “Come. We will share warmth.”
He guided her towards the bunk with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with his size, and she found herself too tired and too cold to protest. The events of the day—the near-death experience, the emotional conversation, and the constant stress of survival—had drained her reserves.
“Fine,” she muttered. “But only because hypothermia is a terrible way to die.”
“There will be no dying.” He settled onto the bunk and drew her down beside him, arranging her carefully against his chest. “Not while I am here.”
She should have felt the old familiar panic of being held and restricted and dependent on someone else. Instead, she felt… safe, just as she had when she slept in his arms. The realization was strange enough to make her pause, examining it like an unusual rock formation.
When did I start trusting him this much?
“There’s a thermal blanket,” she said. “In the storage compartment. Second shelf.”
He retrieved it without releasing her entirely, his tail wrapping around her ankle to maintain contact while he stretched across the small space.
The gesture was so casually possessive that it made her heart flutter.
Then he spread the thermal blanket over them both and unfurled one of his massive wings over them.
“My wings hold warmth,” he explained, wrapping it around her like a living cocoon. “You will be warm now.”
He was right. Encased in his wings and pressed against his chest, with the thermal blanket creating an additional layer of insulation, the cold became a distant thing.
She could still hear the storm howling outside and see her breath misting in the air beyond their cocoon, but within it she was warm and safe.
God, when did I become someone who uses that word so easily?
“Tell me about your flight,” she said, partly to distract herself from the intimacy of their position and partly out of genuine curiosity. “What did you see?”
He was quiet for a moment, his chest rising and falling beneath her cheek. “Changes,” he finally said. “The ice is different. Valleys where there were mountains. Flat where there was broken. The land has… shifted.”
“That happens over geological time. Glaciers move, reshape terrain—”
“I know this. But knowing and seeing—” He made a sound of frustration. “It is difficult. To look at a place you knew and see it strange.”
She understood that, perhaps better than he realized. The first time she’d returned to the place where she’d grown up after everything had changed, she’d felt that same disorienting sense of familiar-unfamiliar.
“What else did you see?”
His wings tightened around her, and the muscles beneath her suddenly tensed.
“Buildings. In the distance. To the east.”
“That must be the trading station. Anything else?”
“Traveling objects. To the southeast.”
“Traveling objects?”
“Like the one beneath the shelter. But larger.”
“Like the snow crawler?” Her heart stuttered. “How big? How many?”
“Six. Several the same. Two much larger.”
No. No, no, no.
She pulled back enough to look at his face, cold dread pooling in her stomach. “How far? How far to the southeast?”
“Difficult to say. The air is different, distances deceive. Perhaps… three days journey on land?”
Too close. Far too close. The polar regions were supposed to be empty. That was the whole point of her claim, and the whole reason she’d chosen this isolated patch of frozen nothing. No neighbors, no competition, no oversight. And definitely no vehicle convoys.
“Did you see any markings? Colors? Anything that might identify—”
“There was a symbol. On the largest vehicle.” He frowned, trying to remember. “A circle with lines through it. Like… rays of a sun. Or the spokes of a wheel.”
Her blood turned to ice.
GenCon.
After three disastrous years working for one of their mining operations, their corporate logo was burned into her memory. Especially after she’d learned what they really did with the tech they “acquired.” She’d sworn she’d never let them get their hands on anything she found.
“Jaz?” His deep voice cut through the spiral of panic. “Your heart—it beats too fast. What is wrong?”
“GenCon.” The word came out strangled. “That symbol—it’s GenCon. They’re a corporation. A very bad corporation. And if they’re out here…”
They’re looking for something. Looking for—
Her eyes snapped to his face.
“Oh God.” She tried to pull away, but his wings held her gently in place.
“Adjar, listen to me. If the anomaly that woke you registered on my scanners and they’re that close, it probably registered on theirs too.
GenCon has monitoring equipment all over Mars, even in places where they’re not supposed to be.
If they detected the explosion, if they know something came out of that ice—”
“They will come looking,” he finished, his voice flat.
“They’ll want you. They’ll want to study you, to—” Her voice cracked. “You don’t understand. GenCon doesn’t care about people. They care about profit and power and acquisition. If they find out what you are, they’ll—”
“Jaz.” His hands came up to cup her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Breathe.”
“I can’t just breathe, there’s a GenCon search party nearby and you’re—you’re—”
“I am here. With you. Safe.” His thumbs stroked her cheekbones, the touch impossibly gentle for hands that could crush metal. “The storm hides us. They cannot search in this weather.”
“But when it clears—”
“When it clears, we will have a plan. We will prepare. We will not panic.”
“I’m not panicking, I’m being realistic—”
He kissed her, his mouth firm and demanding, shutting down her panic spiral with the most effective tool available. His mouth covered hers with an authority that stole her breath, his tongue sliding past her lips before she could form another word of protest.
Her hands fisted on his shoulders and she kissed him back. She let the fear transmute into something else, something hot and hungry and infinitely preferable to the cold dread that had been consuming her. It hadn’t disappeared, but she was willing to push it away. For now.
When they finally broke apart, they were both breathing hard.
“That,” she gasped, “is not a fair argument technique.”
“I am not arguing.” His eyes had gone dark, pupils blown wide, the ice-blue nearly swallowed by black. “I am distracting.”
“Same thing.”
“No.” He kissed the corner of her mouth, her jaw, and the sensitive spot below her ear. “Arguing uses words. This uses—”
“I get it.” She shivered as his lips found her pulse point. “Point made. Very… very thoroughly made.”
“Good.” But he didn’t stop. His mouth traced a path down her neck, and his hands—which had remained carefully above her waist until now—slid lower, following the curve of her hips.
“Adjar—”
“I want to touch you.” The words were a growl against her skin. “May I?”
The formal question, so at odds with the raw heat in his voice, made something flutter in her chest.
“Yes,” she breathed, and he was already moving.
The thermal jacket came off first, his claws careful against the zipper, and then the underlayer beneath it.
The cold air hit her skin and she gasped, but his hands followed immediately, spreading warmth wherever they touched.
He explored her like she was a landscape to be memorized—the dip of her waist, the curve of her stomach, and the swell of her breasts still covered by her thin base layer.
“You are so soft,” he murmured, something like wonder in his voice. “I have never touched anything so soft.”
“That’s actually kind of sad.”
“No.” He met her eyes. “It is a gift. One I did not expect.”
She reached for him in turn, curving her hands over his shoulders and down his arms. His scales caught the dim light, silver-white and smooth, warm beneath her palms. She traced the patterns on his chest, finding where the scales thinned, where the texture changed and shifted.
He shuddered at her touch. “Jaz—”
“Fair’s fair.” She slid her hands higher, over the broad planes of his chest, the ridges of muscle beneath. “I want to touch you too.”
He made a sound that wasn’t quite human—a rumble from deep in his chest that she felt more than heard. His wings tightened around them, creating a pocket of heat and darkness, and when he kissed her again it was hungry and desperate, full of thousands of years of loneliness she could only imagine.
She pulled back long enough to shed her base layer, and his breath caught audibly.
“Every time I see you, you are more beautiful.”
“I’m really not that—”
“Do not.” His hand pressed flat against her chest, over her heart. “Do not diminish. You are beautiful. You are perfect. You are mine.”
The possessiveness should have annoyed her, triggering all her carefully constructed defenses about independence and self-sufficiency and not needing anyone. Instead, it sparked a warmth that had nothing to do with his body heat.
“Show me,” she said. “Show me how dragons touch their mates.”