Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
AIRIK
Airik woke, gasping for air, at the edge of a blackened state of panic.
You fell asleep—how could you have let that happen?
Wildly, he searched about, looking for her. After how he’d spoken to her, had she finally left him? The fire had long died. Stars still twinkled in a pre-dawn sky, visible between the wide gaps in the roof’s metal planks.
He found her—still sleeping beside him, turned toward him.
Sucking in deep breaths, he rolled onto his side so Nora was all he could see.
Her hair covered her eyes. With the tip of a single finger and overcome with a need to see and confirm that she was still here, he pushed it out of her face. A strand of her hair curled around his finger, holding him fast, it felt like.
The beating of his heart came, rapid and hard, and no amount of repeating the oath silently could tame it. Was he so pitiful that all it took to break him was a shared meal—not even a good one—and a smile?
Or did ruin come because, in this forest where no one could see him, he’d reached for her?
Touched her. Lied to both her and himself.
He hadn’t needed to rub her feet earlier that night, especially not the uninjured one.
He wasn’t a healer, and the gel he’d used was just a water-gel sheet with a small amount of soothing serum.
But it had been an excuse, a reason to have his hands on her, even with the flimsy barrier of his torn shirt.
And she had lied, too. Telling him that his touch had been okay and that he had helped. Right after he’d nearly snapped her leg like a twig.
He spotted his gun on her other side. At least he’d armed her against him.
Beautiful liar. What am I going to do with you?
Lucky stirred beside them, stretching out his tail.
“Stop,” Airik commanded under his breath.
The ooshi stopped but growled his annoyance. The noise must’ve reached Nora because her brows drew together and she whimpered softly.
Wanting just a little longer to look upon her, Airik shot the ooshi another command. “Sit in the doorway and don’t move. Do not wake her.”
Lucky crawled off her body, slinking to the hut’s open door, where Airik had instructed. He narrowed his eyes, giving Airik a profound look of grievance, before plopping down and wrapping his tail around his body.
Strange that the creature knew how to show disdain. But everything here was strange. Airik himself had become strange. Nora’s hair was still loosely coiled around Airik’s finger. What a sight: a morazir bound by a few strands.
Her lips had parted, plump and pink. His own parted as he imagined what it would feel like to pull her full bottom lip between his teeth—careful, of course, so careful—and suck on it as if it’d sustain him for the rest of his life.
How could there not be a word for what he wanted to do to her?
The pounding below his belt heightened to a singular ache begging for release.
Untouched. Untaken. Unconquered. Not by lust. Not by the desire to sleep.
Airik watched her for a long time. From the moment the ship had lost power, a timer had blasted over their heads.
They would both die here. Eventually. If not by hunger or an animal attack, then one of them, at some point, would succumb to morphed kudra.
Even now, they slept not a stone’s throw away from it.
But he was so tired. And the kudra wouldn’t harm them if they didn’t disturb it.
Exhaustion pressed upon him so hard he wondered if he’d died in the crash and these were his dying dreams.
If it was Nora with him in the afterlife, he thought with entirely too much resignation, then he’d gladly stay dead.
The odd thought occurred to him that he’d spend the rest of eternity caring for her if she allowed it.
He’d be free of the oath, maybe even have succumbed to it.
To be near her and hear the next word from her pretty mouth.
They’d have until the end of time to share things.
He’d be gentler with her. Without the pressure of…
everything, he knew he’d be kind, as she deserved.
On that thought, his eyes drifted shut, lulled by biological need and, maybe, the desire to meet Nora in her dreams.