14. Helsa
HELSA
H e kissed me like he was angry about it.
Not at me — I understood that much. The anger was at everything else, at the water and the grooves in the rock and the flat silver surface that gave nothing back.
I happened to be the only thing in reach that he could do something about.
So he kissed me like a decision. Like the last one available to him.
I let him.
More than let him.
Because I needed this too.
His hands came up and found my face the way mine had found his.
Both palms, certain, no hesitation. The reversal of it did something to my knees that I was going to have to think about later.
Significantly later. When I had privacy and distance and the basic cognitive function currently being routed entirely elsewhere.
There was something else… something I am supposed to remember…
It surfaced briefly, the way things do when your brain is trying to be responsible and the rest of you has already voted. His voice, from before the crash — from the moment just before everything went wrong and the sky started falling.
There's something I need to tell you. The weight of it. I'll tell you nothing but the truth. And then the part that had been sitting in the back of my mind since he said it, quiet and patient and waiting: I only hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.
I had filed that under things to ask about when we weren't stuck here in this predicament.
Whatever he needed to tell me had waited this long, and his hands were in my hair, and my recently demoted frontal lobe made a compelling argument that it could wait a little longer.
He made a sound against my mouth — low, rough, not quite a word — and I stopped thinking about anything.
His scales shifted under my hands. I could feel them through the fabric, through the places where the fabric had given up, a shiver that ran across his jaw and his shoulders every time I moved.
I knew what that meant now. Or I was beginning to.
I had a theory and my theory was being very aggressively confirmed.
He pulled back just enough to look at me.
Both of us breathing like we'd been running.
The ruins around us. The water below. The morning light coming in at a low angle and catching the grooves in the rock, the only evidence of everything we'd lost.
His eyes on mine. That color I still didn't have a name for.
Then he stepped back.
Not far. Just enough. His jaw tight, the scales along it very still in the way I was learning meant he was holding something in rather than letting it out.
"If we do this," he said, "the round resets."
I waited.
"Every male who's been eliminated comes back. The pods drop again. Everyone starts over." His voice was careful. Clinical. The professional trying to reassume control of a situation that had left his parameters some time ago. "Everything we've survived. It begins again."
I turned that over.
"We need another way out," I said. "The extraction didn’t work. Now we need a new way. This is it."
Something moved across his face.
He turned away from me.
"No," he said. "You're not doing this because there's no other option. I won't let that be the reason."
I looked at his back. At the set of his shoulders. At the scales along his spine that were doing the thing they did when he was losing a fight with himself.
I reached up and turned his face back to mine.
"Listen to me," I said. "I'm not doing this because I'm cornered. I'm doing this because I'm choosing to. Because I'm choosing you." I held his gaze. "I want this. I want you. That's the whole reason."
The sound he made was not a word.
It started low, somewhere deep in his chest, and it moved through him like it had been contained for far too long and had finally found the weakness it was looking for. A growl. Not angry. Not quite.
He kissed me again.
Different this time. The anger still underneath it but something else on top — something that felt like relief, or surrender, or both at once .
His hands found the hem of my shirt.
It came off in one smooth motion, Rhaek’s large hands guiding the fabric up and away like it weighed nothing.
Cool morning air brushed over my bare skin, raising goosebumps across my breasts and arms, but the shiver that ran through me had nothing to do with the temperature.
The ruins around us felt alive in the low light—bioluminescent veins threading through the ancient stone pulsed in slow blues and greens, casting shifting shadows that danced across his scaled chest as he tossed my shirt aside.
I looked up at him, heart hammering. His eyes, that impossible shifting amber-gold, had gone dark with hunger. The anger from moments ago still simmered beneath the surface—I could feel it in the tension of his shoulders, the way his jaw flexed—but it had transformed into something raw and focused.
All of it aimed at me.
He made a low sound in his throat, half growl, half sigh, and stepped closer.
One massive hand settled at the small of my back, the other sliding up to cup the nape of my neck.
His palm was warm, rough from the platform’s unforgiving rock, and the contrast against my skin sent heat pooling low in my belly.
“Tell me to stop,” he rumbled, voice gravel-rough. His forehead pressed to mine, our breaths mingling in the sheltered space under the partial roof. “If this isn’t what you want right now, say it.”
I didn’t want him to stop. I needed this— needed him—the same way I needed air after nearly drowning in fear and water and everything this platform had thrown at us.
Instead, I rose onto my toes, chasing his mouth. “Don’t you dare.”
The kiss crashed over me like the tide. His lips claimed mine with fierce intent, tongue sliding hot and insistent against my own. I melted into it, my hands fisting in the torn remnants of his tunic, yanking until the fabric gave way and bared the broad, muscled expanse of his chest.
My fingers explored greedily—the subtle, flexible ridges of his scales that shifted like living armor under my touch, the faint shimmer that echoed the ruins’ glow wherever I lingered.
He was so much larger than me, built like a weapon, all dense power and controlled strength, and the feel of him made my knees weak.
His scales shivered under my palms, a visible ripple that ran across his shoulders and down his torso. I knew what that meant now. I’d seen it before, felt the way his body responded when I got too close. This time, I didn’t pull back.
Rhaek groaned against my mouth and broke the kiss just enough to look at me.
We were both breathing hard, chests rising and falling in sync.
The morning light slanted through the ruins, catching on the gouges in the rock where the ship had died, but I couldn’t bring myself to care about the wreckage right now.
Not when his hands were mapping my body like he was memorizing every curve.
He reached for the fastening of my pants, working them open with surprising dexterity for someone so large. The fabric slid down my legs, and I kicked it away, standing completely bare before him on the smooth stone shelf at the back of the sheltered section.
His gaze raked over me—slow, reverent, and so heated it felt like a physical touch. Then he lifted me effortlessly, setting me on the edge of that waist-high shelf. The stone was cool against my ass, at odds with the heat radiating from his body as he stepped between my spread thighs.
His mouth found my breast, hot and wet, tongue rough- textured in a way no human man’s ever was. He sucked my nipple into his mouth, the pull bordering on too much, and when his teeth grazed the sensitive peak I cried out, arching into him.
My fingers threaded into the short, dark hair at the nape of his neck, holding him there as sparks raced straight to my core. He lavished the same attention on the other breast, then trailed lower—kisses and scrapes of scales down my stomach until he knelt between my legs.
Rhaek hooked my thighs over his powerful shoulders, opening me completely. The first slow lick from my entrance to my clit dragged a broken moan from my throat. His tongue was longer, more dexterous, with that perfect textured roughness that made my hips jerk.
He explored every fold like he had all the time in the world, growling softly when he found how wet I already was. When he circled my clit and sucked gently, the vibration of it sent me spiraling.
Two thick fingers pressed at my entrance, slick with my arousal and his own natural lubricant that carried a faint spicy-musky scent.
He pushed in slowly, stretching me, curling to stroke that spot inside that made stars explode behind my eyelids.
The subtle ridges along his fingers rubbed perfectly against my inner walls with every thrust, building pressure fast and relentless.
“Rhaek—oh god—” I gasped, my head falling back against the stone. The ruins echoed my sounds back to me, breathless and desperate.
He didn’t stop. His mouth worked my clit in perfect rhythm with his fingers, reading every clench, every hitch in my breath. Pleasure coiled tighter and tighter until it snapped.
I came hard, back arching off the shelf, a sharp cry tearing from me as waves crashed through my body. He rode me through it, gentling only when I started to tremble with overstimulation, pressing soft kisses to my inner thighs as I came down.
Only then did he rise, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes blazing with need. He positioned the thick head of his cock at my entrance, nudging against my slick folds.
He was huge—larger than I’d expected, ridged in ways that made my mouth go dry with anticipation. Veins pulsed beneath the scaled skin, flaring brighter as he waited.
“Look at me,” he commanded softly.
Our eyes locked. I nodded, and he pushed inside—slow, inexorable, letting me feel every inch, every ridge. The stretch burned in the most delicious way, a deep fullness that bordered on too much. He paused halfway, chest heaving with restraint, giving me time to adjust.
“Breathe,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss me. I tasted myself on his tongue, and it only made me clench around him harder.
Yes, sir.
When the burn eased into pure pleasure, I rocked my hips. He sank the rest of the way in with a guttural groan, burying himself to the hilt.
For a moment we stayed perfectly still, joined completely, foreheads pressed together, breaths shared in the glowing ruins.
Then he began to move.
The first thrust was measured. The second harder. By the third I was meeting him, hips rolling to take him deeper. Those ridges dragged against every sensitive nerve inside me, hitting spots I didn’t know existed .
The veins along his shaft pulsed in time with his thrusts, casting faint shifting light across my skin where we were joined.
The wet sounds of our bodies meeting filled the sheltered space—skin and scales slapping, my moans mixing with his low growls and whispered words in that alien language I suddenly couldn’t understand but felt the meaning of deep in my bones.
He fucked me with focused intensity, one hand braced on the shelf beside my hip, the other gripping my thigh to hold me open.
The angle let him grind against my clit with every deep stroke, building the pressure again impossibly fast. I came a second time with his name on my lips, inner walls fluttering and squeezing around him like I never wanted to let go.
Rhaek snarled, his pace faltering as he chased his own release. His thrusts grew erratic, deeper, until he buried himself to the hilt and came with a raw roar that vibrated through my chest.
I felt the hot pulse of him inside me, the way his cock swelled slightly at the base as he filled me, a glow flaring bright between us in the moment of release.
We stayed locked together as the aftershocks rolled through both of us. His weight was careful, braced on his elbows so he didn’t crush me. Eventually he pulled out slowly, a warm rush of our combined fluids following.
He gathered me close, lifting me off the shelf and settling us both onto the pile of our discarded clothing. I curled against his chest, head resting over the steady thrum of his heart, his hand stroking slow, soothing passes down my spine.
The stone continued its indifferent cycle around us. Outside, the water lapped gently at the base of the rise, the tide beginning its next slow turn. The crabs had retreated. For now, the platform felt distant.
I pressed a kiss to the scales over his heart, my body still humming with satisfaction.
He exhaled, something like relief in the sound, his arms tightening around me.