Chapter 18
AFRAID OF A LOT OF THINGS (NOT YOU)
MIKAELA
Idon’t know how long we lie there in the dark alcove.
Long enough for my breathing to slow. Long enough for the adrenaline of nearly drowning to fade. Long enough for Sarven’s heat to seep into me like a soothing, cleansing flame, chasing away the phantom chill of the deep water.
I lift my head from his chest, wincing as my neck protests the angle.
He’s watching me.
His eyes are open, but they are still not the deep, burning red I’m used to. They look… ancient. Endless. Deep pools of black filled with pinpricks of light, like he’s holding a galaxy inside his skull. And right now, those galaxies are fixed on my face with intense, unblinking focus.
I shift, pushing myself up on one elbow to get a better look at him.
The way his muscles had locked and twisted has smoothed out. He looks solid. Finished.
Back to looking like a carved statue that finally figured out how to breathe.
But he’s not calm.
His chest rises and falls too fast beneath me.
“Sarven?” I whisper.
His gaze drops to my scale-tunic. It’s a mess. Some of the scales have dislodged from the sinew holding them all together, leaving gaps where my skin shows through. I look like I’ve been chewed up and spit out by the planet, which, honestly, is exactly what happened.
“Noh.” The word is a rumble in his chest.
I blink. “No? No what?”
“You…hurt.” He gestures vaguely at my head, then at the tunnel entrance where the poison spring waits. Then he presses his forehead to mine, his skin fever-hot. “You almost left me alone in the dust. You…went silent.”
The raw pain that comes with the thought makes my heart choke.
Sarven grimaces, pulling himself back against the rock wall, and I can tell that even though he’s not showing it, he’s still feeling a shit ton of pain.
“We…wait,” he rumbles, the words clearly costing him. “After… we return. When you…are strong.”
I look away from him, toward the dark mouth of the tunnel.
I think about the pool. The water closing over my head. The taste of rot.
And I remember what I saw just before I fell. Not just a crack in the rock. A face. Watching.
Someone who isn’t a member of our clan was in our territory. Someone who might only mean harm.
We are miles deep in a contaminated mountain on a hostile planet. We are exhausted, battered, and alone.
There is no guarantee of ‘later’.
The universe doesn’t promise us safety. It doesn’t promise us time to recover or a soft bed or constant safety and blessings. It gives us right now.
I look back at him.
Sarven is glowing with starlight. He is whole. He is alive.
And I am alive.
My chest tightens around a sudden clarity. I’m done being afraid of the wrong things.
I push myself up, closing that inch of distance between us.
“Sarven.”
His starry eyes lock on mine. The depths swirl like nebulae in motion.
“I want…” I blink, eyelids fluttering. But I don’t have to say it out loud. Somehow, I could feel his sorrow. Now, I wonder if he can feel what I’m feeling.
I place my hand flat over his heart, feeling the beat thundering against my palm. Then, I slide my hand down.
Over his ribs. Over the hard planes of his abdomen. Down to the heavy, heat-radiating reality between his legs. And I wrap my fingers around him.
He jolts as if he’s been electrocuted. His hips buck upward, a guttural sound tearing from his throat.
He is so fucking huge.
Justine had a theory. She said the bond reshapes the males to match their mate’s deepest, most primal desires. That they become exactly what we crave.
I look at the massive, ridged alien cock in my hand, bulging knot at the base and all. Ridges swirling around the shaft.
If that theory is true… then my subconscious apparently has very specific, very depraved tastes. Because looking at him, I don’t feel fear. I feel a hollow, aching need that hits me like a sledgehammer. It is my darkest secret fantasy made flesh.
“You,” I say, tightening my grip. “Me. Mate. Now.”
I watch the movement of his throat as he swallows.
For a moment, he says nothing, then he presses his forehead to mine.
“Are you sure, Mih-kay-lah?” His voice suddenly flows into my mind, and I jerk at the sound of it. But Sarven’s gaze is searching my face almost frantically. “No hurt? No… fear?”
I feel a smile tug at the corner of my mouth. It feels soft. Fierce.
“I’m afraid of the water,” I whisper before realizing that with his forehead pressed to mine in this intimate way, I can think back at him.
I can push the thought through the new link between us.
“I’m afraid of the dark. I’m afraid we might end up dying on this desert planet.
” I lean in closer, brushing my lips against his nose.
“I’m afraid of a lot of things, Sarven. But not you.”
He goes perfectly still, and I watch as those galaxy eyes swirl before me.
His brow presses harder against mine.
“Then I take you,” he projects, the thought deep and possessive, ringing in my skull like a bell. “For always.”
“Slow,” he adds out loud, his voice rough. “I… prepare you.”
He means it. I believe he means it.
But looking at him, I’m pretty sure ‘slow’ has packed its little suitcase and fled the planet.
Sarven’s chest heaves, breath coming rough and fast against my lips.
The stars under his skin aren’t just glowing now; they’re in full supernova mode, swirling and pulsing in frantic constellations along his shoulders, his throat, his chest. He hovers his hands on either side of my face, trembling as if not crushing me takes all his effort.
He’s trying so hard to hold the line.
And every part of me is screaming to the gods for him to fail spectacularly.
He pulls back just enough to see me, his irises just a thin ring of crimson around the black starry expanse as his gaze drops to my scale-tunic.
“Off,” he growls. “I need…to see.”
I nod, wordless as his fingers find the hem of my tunic.
He could rip it. He’s ripped tougher things. Instead, he lifts, careful, waiting for my arms to rise. I oblige, and the tunic peels away from my skin in one shivery sound.
He tosses it aside as if it’s an intrusion he can’t stand and then just…stops.
And stares.
Under that look, I forget that my body has spent years being a problem to solve. Too big here, too soft there, too much everywhere. Under that look, I am simply me.
His eyes roam over me with almost painful slowness. Goosebumps rise in their wake: along my arms, across my breasts, all the way down my belly. And his gaze tracks each patch of raised skin like they’re another language he’s memorizing.
My breath hitches as he leans in.
For a heartbeat, I think he’s going straight for my mouth again. Instead, his lips brush my neck, so gentle I barely feel the pressure, just the heat.
Then another, lower, on the scar along my forearm from the crash. Another on a faint dark line at my wrist from a childhood fall.
Holy shit.
He slides to his knees without looking away, forcing me back on my arms as his mouth trails lower, across the curve of my hip, the soft dip where my thigh begins. Each press is maddeningly gentle, his breath hot and damp against my skin.
It’s the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me.
It is also, biologically speaking, driving me absolutely insane.
When he rises, big hands sliding up from my shins to my calves to my thighs, my legs tremble, my gaze falling to the heavy pendulum swinging between his legs.
My hand moves back to him before I can think. I wrap my fingers around him again and he jerks in my palm, head falling back, throat bared, ears flicking as his hips buck once against my grip.
“Mih-kay-lah.” He groans, like the word is a prayer and a curse all at once.
He’s hot, the weight solid in my hand. I run my thumb over one of the ridges, marveling at the texture, the alien firmness of it.
“Okay,” I whisper, flicking my focus between my hand, his face, and the impressive stretch of anatomy between us. “Wow. So. We…might need to talk about dimensions.”
His eyes snap down to me, instantly sharper.
“Because I am human,” I explain, swallowing the anticipation battling with the fear, “and you are…very much not.”
For a moment, he blinks.
“You’re big,” I clarify.
The haze of lust clears from his gaze like someone pulled it away with their bare hands.
His whole body stills. The stars beneath his skin seem to pause mid-pulse.
“Big?” his thoughts rasp into my mind, colored with sudden panic. His hands leave my hips like I burned him. “I hurt…you?” Horror twists his features. “No. No hurt. We stop.”
He actually starts to pull away.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” I say, one hand reaching up to grip his shoulders as I dig my heels in. “Sarven. Hey.”
He freezes, forced to look at me.
I soften my voice. “I didn’t say stop. I said talk.” My thumb strokes along one of the ridges before sanity can intervene; his breath stutters. “We just have to go slow. Okay? Slow and careful. That I am very on board with.”
The stars beneath his skin seem frozen. “You…want to?” His voice sounds wrecked. Disbelieving. Like he needs to hear this out loud more than I need to say it.
I lean in, pressing my forehead to his so he knows for sure. “Yes,” I whisper. “I want this.”
The effect is…instant.
Joy slams through him so hard I feel it in the air. His glow kicks brighter, stars swirling in dizzy eddies under his skin. His throat works, once, twice.
“Slow,” he vows. “I will…prepare you. I have listened…to the others.”
My brain stutters. Listened? To Tharn and Jacqui? To Rok?
“Wait,” I squeak. “You did wh—”
He doesn’t give me time to unpack the implications of alien voyeurism. He moves, bearing me backward and forcing my legs to spread for him. The question dies in my throat as he fills that space like he was built for it.