Chapter 12 #2
I'd lost Catherine to cancer, and that had nearly destroyed me.
But this—losing Serna—would be something else entirely.
Because what I felt for her went beyond love, beyond desire.
It was recognition. Like my soul had been searching for hers across the vastness of space and time, and had finally found its home.
Hours passed. The jungle sounds shifted as different creatures took over the night.
The lights around the shuttle remained constant, and I saw the guards change shifts once, two new figures replacing the original pair.
The search party did not return, which I couldn't decide would hinder or help our mission.
When I judged it was around midnight, I gently shook Serna awake.
"Your turn," I whispered.
She sat up immediately, alert despite having been asleep moments before. "Anything?"
"Guard change about an hour ago. Search parties still haven't returned. Otherwise quiet."
She nodded and took up position near the entrance while I settled back against the moss-covered wall. But sleep didn't come easily. My mind kept running through scenarios, calculating odds, trying to find a way to keep Serna safe even as we walked into danger together.
Eventually, exhaustion won out, and I drifted into an uneasy sleep.
I woke to Serna's hand on my shoulder and the faint gray light of pre-dawn filtering through the foliage.
"It's almost time," she said softly. "Only the two guards on duty and the search party still hasn't returned."
I sat up, working the stiffness out of my shoulders.
"Ready?" Serna asked.
I looked at her—this incredible woman who'd somehow become everything to me—and felt that pull in my chest again. That sense of rightness and connection that I couldn't quite name.
"Ready," I said.
But before we could move, Serna reached out and pulled me close, kissing me with an intensity that stole my breath. When she pulled back, her eyes were fierce.
"Whatever happens," she said, "I need you to know—"
"I know," I interrupted gently. "I know, Serna. I feel it too."
She nodded, and I saw relief in her expression. Then she turned toward the entrance, her body shifting into warrior mode, and I followed her lead.
But we didn't move toward the shuttle.
Because as we started to emerge from our hiding place, Serna suddenly froze. Her hand shot out, stopping me, and she tilted her head in that way that meant she'd heard something.
I listened, straining my ears, and then I heard it too—voices. Close. Too close.
"—should be around here somewhere," someone was saying in heavily accented Standard. "The tracks led this direction."
"Waste of time," another voice grumbled. "They're probably halfway to the mountains by now."
"General wants them found. So we search."
Serna and I pressed back into the alcove, barely breathing, as two figures passed within ten feet of our hiding spot. They were armed, alert, sweeping the area with handheld scanners.
We waited, frozen, until their voices faded into the distance.
"That was close," I breathed.
Serna nodded, but her expression was troubled. "They're expanding the search. We're running out of time."
She was right. If they kept pushing outward, they'd eventually find our hiding spot. And once they did, we'd be trapped—outnumbered, outgunned, with nowhere to run.
"We move now," I said. "Before they circle back."
"Agreed."
But as we prepared to leave the alcove, something shifted in the air between us. The danger, the fear, the desperate knowledge that this might be our last chance—it all crystallized into a single, overwhelming need.
I reached for Serna at the same moment she reached for me.
Our mouths met in a kiss that was equal parts desperation and desire. Her hands fisted in my shirt, pulling me closer, and I wrapped my arms around her, holding her like she might disappear if I let go.
"We shouldn't—" she gasped against my mouth. "We need to—"
"I know," I said, but I didn't stop kissing her. Couldn't stop. Because if this was our last moment together, I needed it. Needed her.
She seemed to feel the same way, because instead of pulling back, she deepened the kiss, her body pressing against mine with urgent need. We sank down onto the moss-covered ground, hands fumbling with clothing, desperate to feel skin against skin.
"Cullen," she breathed, and there was so much in that single word—love, fear, need, hope.
"I'm here," I said, kissing her jaw, her throat, anywhere I could reach. "I'm right here."
We made love with desperate, silent intensity. Every sound could betray us—Riuondo's forces were out there, hunting. The danger should have stopped us. Instead, it made everything sharper, more urgent, more unbearably intense.
There was no time to undress. No time for anything but this overwhelming need to be joined, to feel each other, to claim this moment before it was ripped away.
My hands found the fastenings of her bodysuit, yanking them open with trembling fingers.
The fabric tore—I heard it rip, felt it give way—and I didn't care.
She was doing the same to me, pulling my shirt aside, her claws catching on the fabric and shredding it in her desperation.
"Quiet," I breathed against her mouth, even as I pushed the torn bodysuit down over her hips, exposing the velvet softness of her pelt. "We have to stay quiet."
She nodded, her eyes wild and dark, pupils blown wide with desire and fear and need. Her hands fumbled with my belt, my pants, shoving them down just enough. We didn't have time for more. Didn't have the luxury of slow or gentle or careful.
I pushed into her in one hard thrust, and her mouth opened in a silent scream.
I clamped my hand over her lips, swallowing the sound before it could escape, and she bit down on my palm—hard enough to draw blood, hard enough that I had to bite my own lip to keep from moaning at the sharp pain mixed with pleasure.
The taste of copper flooded my mouth as my lip split.
I could taste her too—salt and something uniquely Serna—as I kissed her desperately, our mouths meeting in a clash of teeth and tongue and barely suppressed sounds.
Her velvet pelt was impossibly soft against my chest where my torn shirt hung open, a stark contrast to the hard muscle beneath, to the way her body gripped me tight and hot and perfect.
In the distance, I heard voices. Guards calling to each other, their words indistinct but close. Too close.
Serna heard them too. Her whole body went rigid beneath me, her inner muscles clenching around me in a way that made stars explode behind my eyes. I pressed my forehead to hers, both of us frozen, barely breathing, as the voices grew louder.
"—check the creek again—"
"—nothing here—"
The voices faded, moving away, and Serna let out a shuddering breath against my neck. When I started to move again—slow, careful thrusts—she dug her nails into my shoulders hard enough to draw blood, her body trembling with the effort of staying silent.
I buried my face in the curve of her neck to muffle my own groan, tasting the salt of her skin, breathing in the scent of her—something wild and earthy mixed with arousal, with the musk of sex, with the green smell of crushed moss beneath us.
Her velvet pelt was slick with perspiration now, soft as silk against my lips as I kissed her throat, her collarbone, anywhere I could reach without making noise.
"Cullen," she mouthed against my ear, no sound at all, just the shape of my name formed by her lips.
Her hips moved beneath me, meeting my thrusts, and I could feel how close she was already—could feel it in the way her body tensed, in the desperate way she clung to me, in the silent gasps she swallowed back.
I increased my pace, driving deeper, and she had to press both hands over her own mouth to keep from crying out.
The sight of her—struggling to contain her pleasure, fighting her own body's need to scream, her eyes squeezed shut and tears leaking from the corners—was the most erotic thing I'd ever seen.
Her bodysuit was still half on, bunched around her waist, torn and twisted. My pants were shoved down just enough, my shirt hanging in tatters. We were a mess of partially clothed desperation, and it was perfect. It was everything.
I could feel her inner muscles clenching around me, could see the flush spreading across her skin, darkening the gray to something deeper.
When I ran my hands down her sides, feeling the coiled strength in her frame, she arched into my touch, her mouth falling open behind her hands in a silent gasp.
Another sound in the distance—closer this time. The snap of a branch. A muttered curse.
We both froze again, and I felt Serna's heart hammering against my chest, felt the way her whole body trembled with the effort of staying still, staying silent, even as I was buried deep inside her. The danger was real. Immediate. One sound, one moment of lost control, and we were dead.
But somehow that made it more intense. Made every sensation sharper, every touch more electric. The fear and the pleasure twisted together until I couldn't separate them, until the pounding of my heart was as much terror as arousal.
The sounds faded again, and I started moving—slow, deliberate thrusts that made Serna bite down on her own hand to keep from making noise.
I could see the marks her teeth left in her palm, could see the way her lip was bleeding where she'd bitten through it, and the sight of her blood mixed with mine on her mouth made something primal surge through me.
I kissed her, tasting copper and salt and her, and she kissed me back with desperate intensity, her tongue sliding against mine, swallowing the sounds we couldn't afford to make.
Her free hand fisted in my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt, and I welcomed the pain because it grounded me, kept me from losing control completely.
"Please," she breathed against my mouth, so quiet it was barely sound at all. "Please, Cullen, I need—"