Chapter 9 #2
The silence around the rock is charged and suffocating.
I should be furious. Or at the very least, incredibly annoyed. My rational brain is screaming that I should be demanding an apology for him accidentally broadcasting a highly explicit dream about me to an entire cave of towering aliens.
But the logic is completely flattened by the paralyzing, furnace-like heat radiating off his body.
I lean closer to his arm.
“Jacqui told me,” I say quietly.
His entire body stills. Whether he can understand me or not I’m not sure, but I’m not pressing my forehead to his. Not here with half his men watching.
The deep V between his golden eyes is sharp.
“For what it’s worth?” I murmur, keeping my voice low. “I woke up reaching too.”
His golden eyes drop to my mouth... and stay there.
The heat that rolls off him hits my skin like standing too close to an open flame.
My pulse stutters. A liquid ache drops straight to my core, and the muscles deep between my thighs clench—once, twice, several times.
I have to lock my knees to keep standing because a sudden rush of slick heat just flooded my center.
His claws dig slowly into the solid stone, scoring the surface.
He doesn’t look away from my mouth. I can’t look away from his hands.
Justine arrives at the mapping table, slightly out of breath, and drops into her position beside Rok. I am so fucking happy to see her that the words rush out of me like a yappy parrot.
I start pointing a shaky finger at canyon lines, blurting out something about patrols just to break the suffocating silence.
Kol’s golden eyes finally snap away from my mouth. He looks down at the stone.
The rest of the briefing is a blur. Justine translates. I point at the stone. He grunts a low confirmation. Every time he shifts his stance, the blazing heat of his bicep brushes my elbow.
My pulse is hammering in my throat.
I can’t focus. I step back from the table, trying to take a single deep breath to gather myself. Instead, I inhale a lungful of the freezing, bone-dry cavern draft. My sinuses instantly prickle. My eyes water. I turn my head into my shoulder and sneeze.
Ten warriors instantly draw their weapons.
The scrape of bone-spears and serrated blades echoes deafeningly against the walls. The clan drops into combat crouches in a single, fluid motion, spinning in all directions to face the dark tunnels and high vents.
Kol’s glow explodes bright enough that I have to shield my eyes. Claws tear from his digits. He steps forcefully in front of me, throwing his impenetrable body directly between me and the rest of the armed room, shielding me from his own clan.
Justine thrusts both hands out placatingly, her eyes wide. “Nobody struck her!” she yells, her voice frantic, cutting through the scrape of bone-spears. “Stand down! Nobody struck her!”
The warriors hold their spears ready, searching the shadows for a target.
I rub my nose with the back of my hand and step out from behind Kol’s arm.
“She’s fine!” Justine shouts, her eyes darting between Kol and the clan. “See! It’s just a reaction to the rock dust. A sneeze. Kol, tell them to put the spears down.”
The warriors slowly blink in unison. They look at Kol. Kol looks down at me.
Weapons slowly lower.
Kol retracts his claws, his chest heaving. He forces a deep, ragged breath through his nose, then looks straight up at the jagged ceiling.
Justine looks from Kol’s heaving chest to my flushed face. Her eyes widen slightly. She reaches out, grabs Rok’s bicep, and tugs hard.
“Okay, everyone out,” she says loudly, waving her free hand at the cavern. “Perimeter checks. Now. Move it.”
The warriors rapidly disperse. Rok herds them toward the tunnels. No one makes eye contact with Kol.
I am still standing by the map, my heart trying to beat its way out of my ribs, when the last guard clears the alcove.
It’s just me and Kol.
He turns slowly to face me. His chest heaves. The erratic, blinding gold glow dims a little.
I open my mouth to say something. An apology, a joke, anything to break the suffocating silence. But I don’t get the chance.
He just snaps.
He closes the distance, two rough hands clamping hard over my hips. He lifts me off the ground like I weigh nothing and drops me flat onto the edge of the stone. Before I can gasp, he steps flush between my knees, caging me against the cold rock.
The paralyzing heat of him completely surrounds me. I tilt my chin up, my chest heaving, fully expecting the crush of his mouth against mine.
Instead, he bypasses my lips. He bends his towering frame forward and buries his face directly into the curve of my neck.
My pulse skyrockets. My hands hover in the air for a panicked second before instinct overrides logic. My fingers tangle blindly into the sandy-brown strands of hair.
Fuck, they’re so silky. Silkier than they have any right to be.
He groans. A low, feral vibration rumbles straight from his ribs into my own. His hot, ragged exhale washes over my collarbone. He opens his mouth against my skin, the sharp scrape of his fangs dragging slowly up the side of my throat. He inhales my scent like he’s starving. Deep. Desperate.
I let him do it. I tilt my head back, giving him total access, my body vibrating under his sheer presence.
Then he shifts his posture to press closer, and his right shoulder jumps under my hands.
It’s a sharp micro-flinch.
He sucks in a harsh breath through his teeth and the dense muscle under my palm pulls tight, locking up.
My eyes snap open. The lust clears in a second.
I tighten my grip on the hair at the base of his skull and pull, forcing his head up until our foreheads press together.
The mindspace hits me instantly.
You are hurt, I project sharply into the dark.
Something instantly shutters.
“I am not.” He tries to pull back from the mapping stone. I know he can break my grip effortlessly, but when I tug his hair, he stops moving.
We stay perfectly still, our foreheads pressed together. His breath is harsh, tearing in and out of his lungs and my body is burning. Every screaming nerve ending demanding that I close the distance.
“Prove it,” I whisper.
I let go of his hair, slide both hands down his neck, and grip his broad shoulders. I pull him down. I don’t give him a chance to think or shield. I just kiss him.
He doesn’t know what to do with it. His mouth crashes clumsily against mine, all pressure and no technique, his teeth scraping my lower lip.
He tastes like heat and sunshine with something sharp and alien underneath.
I angle his jaw with my thumb, slowing him down, and when I open my mouth wider against his, he figures it out fast. His tongue finds mine and a low, guttural sound vibrates through his chest into my teeth.
His hands tighten on my hips. He lifts me higher onto the edge of the stone, stepping flush between my thighs.
Oh. Oh.
Something pulses against my center through my clothes.
Not hard. Not the way I expect. A deep, rhythmic throb, radiating searing heat through the fabric between us.
Something shifting and swelling beneath his skin, responding to me, pressing up in a rolling pulse that grinds against the seam of my pants.
My hips roll forward before I can stop myself.
A rough, broken sound tears out of his throat. His fingers dig into the curve of my ass and he rocks forward, dragging that deep, pulsing heat along my center in one long, slow roll.
I stop breathing. My spine arches off the cold stone.
He does it again and my fingernails rake down his back. He does it again, harder, his fangs catching on my bottom lip while he swallows the sound I make. My legs lock around his waist. I can’t help it.
He sets a rhythm. Slow. Brutal. Each thrust pins me flat against the stone slab and rocks my entire body backward.
My hands span across his broad back and hold on.
That pulsing heat between my thighs is swelling, throbbing harder with every grind, coiling the pressure in my belly tighter and tighter.
The cave is gone. There is just the scrape of stone under my shoulder blades, the wet heat of his mouth on mine, and the grind of his hips pushing me toward something I am not going to be able to stop.
“Kol.” His name comes out shattered. Fuck. I am right there.
He growls against my lips, shifting his stance solidly onto his right arm to bear down for another deep thrust.
And his entire right side seizes.
It isn’t a micro-flinch this time. The dense muscle under my left hand goes rigid, spasming harshly. He sucks in a ragged breath, ripping his mouth away from mine.
He staggers back from the mapping stone, his chest heaving, his golden eyes gone so totally black it should scare me.
I am breathless, my chest rising and falling rapidly as I stare at him, my body still throbbing.
He brings his left hand up, gripping his right shoulder. The raised veins along his bicep are pulsing furiously.
The haze clears from my brain like a bucket of ice water.
“You are hurt,” I say, sliding unsteadily off the stone to land on my feet. I reach a hand toward him and he flinches.
“Noh,” he grinds out.
“Kol-”
“Noh.” He shakes his head and takes another staggering step backward, retreating into the shadow of the side tunnel.
I watch him go, my knees shaking, need still pooling between my thighs and a sick unease settling low in my gut.