Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
QUIN
Iwoke to heat. Not the dry, relentless heat of a summer’s day in my hometown of Yuma, Arizona. This was something else entirely. A living, breathing furnace curled against my back, solid and immovable as a mountain.
Vennox.
Once my brain caught up with my body, I noticed his arm draped over my waist, heavy and warm, its weight pinning me gently against the bunk.
His chest rose and fell in slow, even rhythm against my spine, and the warmth of him seeped through my clothes and into my skin like I’d been lying against a sun-warmed stone.
His breath stirred the hair at the nape of my neck, soft and unhurried, and somewhere in the long stretch of unconsciousness we’d both fallen into, the careful distance I’d maintained had dissolved.
And then I felt it.
The rigid, unmistakable length of him pressed against my backside, hard enough that there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was.
My breath caught. Held. I lay perfectly still, every nerve in my body suddenly, acutely aware of him, the weight of his arm, the rhythmic pulse of his twin hearts beating against my back.
The rebreather had stopped hissing at some point. He must have pulled it free in his sleep. The only sound in the room was the quiet of his breathing and the louder, more insistent hammering of my own heart that had migrated south and taken up residence between my thighs.
His arm tightened. Pulled me closer. Not roughly.
There was nothing aggressive in the motion, nothing that felt like a demand.
It was the unconscious reflex of someone who had been alone for a very long time and had found something warm to hold onto in the dark.
His hand settled against my stomach, palm flat, fingers splayed, searing through the thin fabric of my shirt like a brand.
I didn’t move. Didn’t pull away. Didn’t do any of the sensible, self-preserving things I should have done.
Because the inconvenient truth was that I didn’t want to.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d enjoyed the heat of a man. And after living in a heightened sense of terror, not knowing what was coming at me next, I never knew when my last day would be on this hellscape.
I thought of Dana and Tessa. How quickly their lives had ended without warning. Bio-analyzer or not, that could happen to any one of us.
Ever since I’d first clapped eyes on Vennox, there’d been a low, persistent hum of arousal that had set up shop in my core, a frequency I’d been resolutely ignoring because survival had left no room for it.
But survival was a moving target, and right now, in this sealed room, with the ship groaning softly around us, no one watching and nothing trying to kill me, the frequency had grown louder.
Why not take pleasure where I could find it?
The question surfaced with a kind of reckless, exhausted honesty that I'd always kept locked down tight. What could it possibly hurt to do a little fooling around after everything I’d been through?
After weeks of carnivorous plants and hallucinogenic spores and alien predators and the constant, grinding vigilance of keeping myself and everyone else alive? I was entitled to a little fun.
My decision crystallized before I’d fully finished the thought, and I rolled over.
The bunk creaked under the shift of my weight, and Vennox’s arm slid with me, his hand pressed flat against my back as I turned to face him.
He didn’t wake. His face was inches from mine, relaxed and peaceful.
The hard lines of his jaw softened, full lips slightly parted, just waiting to be kissed.
His tattoo-like markings cast a soft blue-white light across the silver of his chest and arms, illuminating the narrow space between us.
My gaze drifted downward and stayed longer than it should have at each stop along the way.
His throat first, where the collar scars sat in pale, raised rings against the silver of his scales.
Faded but permanent, the kind of scarring that doesn't disappear so much as become part of the landscape of a person.
Then the broad shelf of his chest, to the he carved planes of his abdomen shifting subtly with each breath.
Muscles carved that had nothing to do with vanity and everything to do with a body that had been tested and had not broken.
And even lower, where the tight taper of his waist barely held up a low-slung kilt.
What was he wearing under there?
The question arrived with a grin I couldn’t quite suppress. Curiosity carried my palm along the heavy muscle of his thigh, drifting inward toward the turgid flesh tenting the fabric. Tangled together with my arousal was a scorching anticipation.
The bulbous tip of his erection met my palm through the kilt’s fabric, and the sheer size of what I was touching made my breath stutter.
He was massive. Thick and rigid and straining against the soft material.
My hand closed around him instinctively, fingers wrapping around a girth that made my palm feel acutely small.
He was as hard as stone in my grip. Maybe harder.
And his body burned through the fabric like he was trying to set the kilt on fire.
My fingers tightened involuntarily as my hand mapped the length of him.
The weight and breadth of what I was holding spiked my pulse, and my core wept an embarrassing amount of fluid.
Vennox moaned.
The sound was low and rough and torn from somewhere deep in his chest. Silver eyes eased open.
Not all at once. Slowly, the way someone surfaces from a dream they’re not ready to leave.
His lashes lifted in increments. Still caught between sleep and waking, his gaze was unfocused, his body responding to my touch before his mind had fully caught up.
Then his gaze sharpened, focusing with fiery intensity on me. And the expression that crossed his face was not what I expected. Not the predatory hunger I’d braced myself for. Not the instant, aggressive claim I’d half-anticipated from a fierce warrior.
Instead, his eyes dropped to my hand, still wrapped around him through the fabric of his kilt, and raw, unguarded emotion swept across his features.
Shock. Desire. And beneath both, a flicker of disbelief.
“Quin.” My name came out rough and broken. His hand found my wrist. Not to restrain me, only to make certain I was real. That my hand was where he thought it was.
His scales shifted. Pale silver deepened into vivid blues. That same low thrumming started deep in his chest. Instead of soothing, it settled low in my belly with a lick of heat that set my sex on fire.
“Hey,” I said thickly. “You’re awake.”
When his eyes flicked up to meet mine, his irises had gone molten, the pupils dilating until they nearly swallowed the light. His chest was rising and falling faster now, the sedative’s easy rhythm giving way to an urgency that matched my own.
“You’re touching me,” he said, and the words sounded like they’d been dragged across gravel.
I tightened my grip just slightly, a deliberate squeeze, and watched his jaw clench, the muscles along his throat working as he swallowed hard. “Observant.”
“Quin.” He said my name again, and this time there was a warning in it. Or maybe a plea. His hand was still on my wrist, and I could feel the tremor in his fingers, the fine, barely controlled vibration of a male holding himself together by the thinnest possible margin. “You should—”
“You want me to stop?” I asked, keeping my voice light, casual, the same tone I used when I was defusing something volatile.
But my hand didn’t move. My fingers stayed exactly where they were, wrapped around the thick, rigid length of him.
Even through the fabric, I could feel the ridge of a thick vein running beneath my fingertips, hot and drumming with each pulse, a demand waiting to be answered.
His throat worked. His scales deepened another shade of blue, and his hearts were hammering so fast I could see the vibration in his chest. His grip on my wrist tightened, not painfully, but with a desperation that told me everything his words wouldn’t.
“Never,” he said the word like it cost him. “But you need to know…”
I shifted on the bunk, moving closer, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his breath against my lips. My hand still held him, and I gave him another deliberate squeeze that made his entire body jerk.
“Know what?” I asked. The molten silver of his gaze flickered, and for a moment, he looked like he was trying to solve a complex equation while someone was shouting in his ear.
“I’ve never…” he paused. His gaze dropped to my hand, still wrapped around him, and his jaw clenched so hard I could hear his molars crack.
“You mean sex?”
He made a sound low in his throat, something between a groan and a growl, and his hips swiveled, pressing himself harder into my grip.
“Yes… Never got the chance to meet a compatible female—” Another pause. His eyes squeezed shut. “You are certain you want…”
I never pegged Vennox as being a virgin, and knowing that I would be his first only fueled my desire.
“I cannot think,” he managed words that were rough and fractured, barely strung together. “You have to choose me—,” He swallowed hard, and when he spoke again, his voice had dropped barely above a whisper, raw and wrecked. “The choice must be… yours. It cannot be forced. I will not—”
He shuddered. The tremor ran through his entire body, from his shoulders down through the rigid line of his abdomen as his fingers trembled around my wrist. Not pulling me away, just holding on, like I was the only solid thing in a room that had started spinning.
“I choose you,” I said, and I kept my voice even, conversational, like we were discussing the weather and not the fact that my hand was wrapped around the hardest, hottest piece of male anatomy I’d ever encountered.