Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kissing.
The word didn’t do it justice. It couldn’t possibly encompass the explosion of sensation that had ripped through Rhyx when Alina’s mouth touched his—soft and warm and impossibly perfect against lips that had never known such contact.
His people had not kissed. His memories were fragmented, scattered like shards of broken glass, but he was certain of this.
They had touched foreheads, shared breath, twined tails in displays of affection and devotion.
But this—this pressing of mouths, this tangling of tongues, this exchange of taste and heat and desperate need—was something entirely new.
Something entirely hers.
And now that he’d experienced it, he couldn’t imagine existing without it.
She had pulled back after their first kisses, her cheeks flushed a delicate pink, her breathing ragged, and her eyes wide. He’d wanted to chase her lips and recapture that electric connection, but something in her expression had stopped him.
“I need time,” she’d said. “This is… a lot. I need time to think.”
The words had cut deeper than they should have.
He knew she was pulling away, retreating into that busy mind of hers, the one that never stopped spinning, but he had let her go.
He’d watched her retreat to her favorite spot beneath the vines and forced himself to give her the space she requested even as every instinct screamed at him to close the distance.
Patience, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. A memory that wasn’t quite his own from that colder side of him. Some battles are won through waiting.
So he waited.
Two days. Two days of watching her flit around the cavern with her strange devices, scanning rocks and plants and bone-like structures, muttering to herself in that rapid stream of words she used when she was excited or frustrated or both.
Two days of helping her collect water and berries, of answering her endless questions about the cavern’s ecosystem, and pretending he didn’t notice the way her eyes kept drifting to his mouth.
Two days of slowly, methodically, driving her mad.
A hand on her shoulder as he passed. His fingers brushing hers when he handed her a container of water. His hand curling around her ankle as they sat together, then retreating before she could object.
She noticed. Of course she noticed. She was a scientist, trained to observe, and he was not exactly subtle. But instead of pulling away, she leaned into the touches, her body betraying what her words refused to admit.
On the second morning, he found her struggling to reach a cluster of berries growing high on one of the vines.
Without thinking, he stepped up behind her, his chest pressing against her back as he reached around her to pluck the berries.
She went still in his arms, her breathing shallow and her heart racing.
“Rhyx,” she breathed.
“Yes?”
“You’re very close.”
“Yes.”
“That’s… distracting.”
He leaned down, his lips brushing the curve of her ear. “Good.”
She turned in his arms, and for one glorious moment he thought she would kiss him. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, her tongue darting out to wet her lips, and the sight sent a jolt of heat straight to his cock.
But then she ducked under his arm and retreated, her cheeks flaming.
“Boundaries,” she said, her voice slightly strangled. “We discussed boundaries.”
“Did we?”
“Rhyx.”
He grinned at her—another expression he’d learned from watching her face. “I remember no discussion of boundaries. I remember a kiss. I remember you pulling away. I remember waiting.” He took a step towards her. “I have waited. Are you done thinking yet?”
“It’s not that simple—”
“It is exactly that simple.” Another step.
She backed up until her shoulders hit the cavern wall, and he bracketed her with his arms, not touching but close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body.
“You want me. I feel it. I smell it. Your body knows what your mind refuses to accept.”
Her pupils dilated. “That’s… very presumptuous of you.”
“Is it wrong?”
She bit her lip. Her eyes darted to his lips again, and he felt a surge of triumph.
“No,” she finally admitted, barely above a whisper. “It’s not wrong.”
He kissed her then. Not the desperate, consuming kiss of their first time, but something softer.
His lips moved gently against hers, coaxing rather than claiming, and when she sighed into his mouth and melted against his chest, he felt something in his chest expand with the impossible rightness of having her in his arms.
The kiss lasted longer this time. She let him explore the shape of her mouth, the texture of her tongue, the soft sounds she made when he found a particularly sensitive spot.
Her hands came up to grip his shoulders, her fingers tracing the ridges of his scales with an urgency that made his skin tingle.
But eventually she pulled away again.
“Time,” she said, breathless. “I still need time.”
He nodded, though everything in him protested. “I will wait.”
“You’re very patient for someone who just woke up from a million-year nap.”
The joke surprised a laugh out of him. “I have waited a million years for you. What is a few more days?”
Her expression softened, and for a moment he saw past the walls she kept so carefully constructed to the vulnerability beneath, the fear and the hope and the desperate wanting. Then she blinked, and the walls were back.
“A few more days,” she agreed. “That’s all I’m asking.”
He didn’t point out that they might not have a few more days. He knew that the storm was already weakening, its fury fading as it exhausted itself against the mountains. The rescue she anticipated would come sooner rather than later, and with it, all the complications she so feared.
Instead, he let her go. He let her retreat to her devices and her research and the familiar comfort of her scientific detachment. And he plotted his next move.
That afternoon brought opportunity.
She had been examining a patch of bioluminescent moss near the far end of the cavern, her face pressed close to the glowing vegetation as she muttered readings into her tablet.
He approached silently, his footsteps making no sound on the moss-covered floor.
She was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t notice him until he was directly behind her, close enough to touch.
“Fascinating,” she was saying to herself. “The chlorophyll analog is unlike anything in Earth’s biosphere. The light-harvesting pigments appear to—”
He pressed his lips to the back of her neck.
She yelped and spun around, her tablet clattering to the ground. “Rhyx! You scared me!”
“You were distracted.”
“I was working.”
“You are always working.” He stepped closer, backing her against the moss-covered wall. “Perhaps you should take a break.”
“I don’t need—”
He kissed her before she could finish the sentence.
This time there was nothing gentle about it. Two days of waiting had built a pressure in his chest that demanded release, and when she gasped against his mouth, when her hands fisted on his shoulders, when she arched into him with a pleading sound, something snapped loose inside him.
He lifted her into his arms until her legs wrapped around his hips. She was so small against him, so fragile, and yet the way she kissed him back—fierce and hungry and utterly without reservation—made him feel like he was the one in danger of being consumed.
Her breathing mask caught between them, the strap tangling with his fingers as he tried to pull her closer. He growled in frustration and yanked at it, and the device came free with a snap of breaking clasps, tumbling to the ground.
She gasped, then froze.
He pulled back, confused by her sudden stillness. Her eyes were wide, not with fear or desire, but with something else entirely. Shock. Disbelief.
“Alina? What—”
“I’m breathing.”
He didn’t understand. “Yes. You are breathing.”
“No, you don’t—” She pushed against his chest and he reluctantly set her down, watching as she pressed a hand to her throat, taking deep, deliberate breaths.
“I’m breathing. Without the mask. The oxygen levels—” She grabbed her tablet from the ground and started tapping furiously.
“This shouldn’t be possible. Even with all the terraforming work we’ve done, Mars’s atmosphere is still more than ninety percent carbon dioxide.
I know these plants are producing oxygen, but there’s no way the concentration should be high enough to—”
She stopped, staring at the readout on her screen.
“What?” he asked, unease prickling at the back of his neck.
“Nineteen percent. The oxygen concentration in this cavern is almost nineteen percent.” She looked up at him, her expression caught between wonder and disbelief. “That’s… that’s almost Earth-normal. How is that possible?”
He considered the question. The knowledge came slowly, rising from some deep well of inherited memory. “The plants are… engineered. Designed to sustain life.”
“Engineered by who?”
By my people. By the ones who came before. By the architects of a dying world, desperate to preserve something of themselves.
The memories were fragmented. He couldn’t give her the full picture because he didn’t have it himself.
But he knew, with a certainty that went beyond conscious thought, that this cavern had been created for a purpose.
That the plants, the water collectors, the carefully balanced ecosystem—all of it had been designed to sustain life long after the surface became uninhabitable.
“By my people,” he said quietly. “Long ago. Before the death.”
Her eyes widened. “The death?”
“The death of my world.” The words came out raw and wounded. “The skies burned. The water froze. The surface became… hostile. Those who could, fled underground. To places like this. After the death they went dormant, but they were just waiting.”
“Refuges,” she breathed. “They built refuges. Sustainable ecosystems that could survive independently of the surface.” Her mind was racing—he could see the rapid calculations in that beautiful, busy brain.
“Do you understand what this means? If these plants can survive for millions of years and awaken now, the applications for terraforming are—”
She stopped.
The excitement drained from her face, replaced by something colder. Something that made his chest ache.
“Research,” she said, her voice flat. “I was talking about research. About bringing people here to study this. About—” She pressed her hands against her face. “God, I’m such an idiot.”
“Alina—”
“I got so excited about the discovery that I forgot what it would mean. What it would cost.” She lowered her hands, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“If anyone finds out about this place, they won’t just study the plants.
They’ll find you. They’ll want to know how you survived and how you’re connected to all of this. And then—”
“Then they will take me.” He finished the thought she couldn’t bring herself to complete. “Examine me. Perhaps destroy me.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
The fierce protectiveness in her voice made his heart swell. She was so small, his Alina. So fragile and soft and utterly, adorably determined to protect someone who had been designed to be a protector. It was absurd. It was wonderful.
It made him love her all the more.
Love. The word settled into his consciousness with a click of recognition. Yes. That was what this feeling was. This desperate need to be near her, to keep her safe and spend the rest of his existence making her smile. Love. Such a simple word for such an overwhelming sensation.
“You cannot stop them,” he said gently. “If they come, if they search—”
“Then we won’t be here.” She straightened, her expression hardening with resolve. “We’ll leave before they arrive. We’ll go somewhere else, somewhere safe. There has to be other places like this, other refuges your people built. We can find one, hide there until—”
“Alina.”
Something in his voice made her stop. She looked at him, and he saw the exact moment she realized what he was about to say.
“You know how to leave,” she said. Not a question.
He nodded slowly. “I can feel the path. The tunnels, the passages—they are part of my connection to this place.” He paused, choosing his next words carefully. “I knew from the first day.”
Her face went through a complicated series of expressions—surprise, hurt, confusion, then finally a weary understanding. “You didn’t tell me.”
“You needed time. To rest. To heal. To…” He gestured vaguely at the space between them. “Think.”
“You let me believe we were trapped.”
“You were never trapped. You were…” He searched for the right word.
“Cocooned. Safe. Protected from the storm and the outside and the choices that waited beyond.” He reached for her hand, and she let him take it, though her fingers were stiff and resistant.
“I did not want to lose you. I thought that if we remained here, if you had no choice but to stay…”
“I would fall in love with you?”
The bluntness of the question startled him. He met her eyes, searching for anger or accusation, but found only a tired sort of acceptance.
“Did it work?” he asked.
She gave a watery sound. “You’re an ass.”
“I do not know what that means.”
“It means—” She shook her head, but she was smiling now, and some of the tension drained from her shoulders. “It means you’re infuriating and manipulative and I should probably be furious with you.”
“But?”
“But I’m not.” She squeezed his hand, and the tightness in his chest eased slightly. “I understand why you did it. I might have done the same thing, in your position.” Her smile faded. “The storm is dying down, isn’t it?”
He nodded. He’d been feeling it for hours—the gradual weakening of the pressure differentials and the settling of the dust that had turned the sky into an impenetrable wall of grit. By morning, the worst would be over. By midday, rescue parties would be able to venture out.
“We have to leave soon,” she said. “Before they come looking.”
“Yes.”
“But not tonight.”
He looked at her, something shifting in his chest. “No?”
“The storm isn’t over yet. We still have time.
” She stepped closer, closing the distance between them until her body was pressed against his, her head tilted back to meet his eyes.
“One more night. That’s what we have. I don’t want to spend it planning or worrying or thinking about everything that’s going to go wrong tomorrow. ”
“What do you want, Alina?”
Her hands slid up to his face, her fingers tracing the edge of his jaw with a tenderness that made his throat tighten.
“I want you to kiss me again. I want to stop running, like you said. I want—” Her voice cracked slightly.
“I want to pretend, just for tonight, that we have all the time in the universe.”