Chapter 7 Predator in the Dark #3
"Which you left somewhere in the olive grove, because you came back empty-handed." Her eyes narrow. "You fought a trained killer with your bare hands."
"I'm —" I search for a word that's true without being overwhelming. "Difficult to hurt."
"I can see that." Her fingers press against the sub-dermal plate. It responds, pushing back against her touch, the way it always does, seeking contact the way my body seeks hers. "This. Whatever this is under your skin. It's why the knife didn't go deeper."
"Partially."
"What's the other part?"
"I'm stronger than I look. Denser. My bones are —" I pause. "Different."
"Different how?"
"Edith." Her name catches in my throat. "I'm not entirely human."
"I felt that in the kitchen. Right before you jumped off a ten-foot balcony and ran faster than any human being I've ever seen.
" She cuts a strip of medical tape with steady hands.
Presses the gauze firmly against the wound.
Secures it. "I have a biology degree, Kaz.
I know what human bodies can and can't do.
Yours can't. By any metric I understand. "
The gauze is in place. The wound is dressed. She should step back now, give me space, process what she's learned from a safe distance.
Instead, her palm flattens against my bare chest. Right over my heart, which is hammering against her hand like it's trying to reach her through bone and muscle and the sub-dermal plating she's choosing to touch rather than fear.
"You kissed me," she says. "In this kitchen. Before you left."
"I did."
"You kissed me like it was the last time."
"I didn't know if it would be." The truth. Stripped of strategy. "He was out there and you were in here and I needed —" The words tangle. "I needed you to know."
"Know what?"
"That you mattered. In case I didn't come back."
"But you did come back."
"I'll always come back."
The promise escapes before I can weigh it. Too much. Too certain. The kind of declaration that belongs in the mouth of a male who has the right to make it, a partner, a lover, a mate, not a bleeding alien sitting on a kitchen counter lying about what he is.
But she doesn't flinch. Doesn't look away. Her hand presses harder against my chest, and through the contact I can feel her pulse — fast, steady, alive. Not afraid. Deciding.
"Do you still want to kiss me?" she asks. "Or did the assassin ruin the mood?"
A sound escapes me, not quite a laugh, not quite a groan. "The mood is not the problem."
"Then what is?"
"I'm barely holding this together, Edith. The fight, the adrenaline, you touching me — if I kiss you right now, I can't promise I'll stop. I can't promise I'll be gentle. I can't promise the things moving under my skin won't —"
"Come through?" She traces the ridge on my chest again, deliberately. "What if I want them to?"
The words hit me in a place I didn't know I had left unguarded.
"You don't know what you're asking."
"Then show me." Her other hand comes up, cradling my jaw.
"Stop telling me what I can't handle and let me decide for myself.
I've been making my own decisions about risk for thirty-two years, and the last time I trusted my judgment, I brought down a pharmaceutical giant.
Give me the data, Kaz. All of it. And let me choose. "
She's right. She's absolutely right, and the fact that she's standing in front of me demanding truth while I'm bleeding and barely shifted and radiating heat that would burn a less stubborn woman; that tells me everything I need to know about who she is.
Edith Kendrick doesn't run from hard truths. She documents them. Files them. Uses them as evidence.
"You're sure," I say. Not a question. Confirmation.
"I'm sure."
I lean forward. Press my forehead against hers. Feel her cool skin against my overheated brow, and the temperature differential is grounding and electric and nothing I have language for in any of the six tongues I speak.
"Then don't stop touching me," I say. "Because when you do, I lose the ability to think, and right now I need to think long enough to get us from this kitchen to that bed without breaking anything important."
Her breath hitches. "The bed."
"Unless you'd prefer the counter again."
"The bed." She leans back, holding my gaze. "Take me to bed, Kaz. And show me what you are."
I stand. The rib screams. I ignore it because her hands are in mine and she's looking up at me — five-six to my six-three, her face tilted back, her eyes wide and green and full of a trust I haven't earned but am going to spend the rest of my life trying to deserve.
I lift her. She wraps herself around me — arms around my neck, legs around my waist, the black dress riding up, and the heat of her body against my bare chest is the only warmth I've ever wanted.
She weighs nothing to me. Less than nothing.
She weighs exactly what hope weighs, which is everything and not enough.
The bedroom is ten steps away. I make them slowly, carefully, hyperaware of every point of contact; her thighs against my hips, her arms around my neck, her breath against my throat.
The sub-dermal plates are pressing outward, responding to her proximity, to her heat, to the fact that she's choosing to be this close, and I can feel them shifting under my skin with a need I've never allowed them to express.
I set her on the bed. She looks up at me — hair wrecked, lipstick destroyed, the black dress twisted and hiked up and absolutely ruined, and she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in a lifetime of looking.
My eyes drop to the pulse in her throat.
Visible. Vulnerable. Beating fast. The perfect place for a claiming bite — right where shoulder meets neck, where the mark would be visible every time she wore her hair up, every time she turned her head, a permanent announcement that she belongs to someone who would destroy worlds to keep her safe.
The hunger to mark her is a physical ache in my jaw. My teeth itch with it. Biology I've never felt before, screaming from somewhere ancient and cellular: Claim her. Mark her. Make it permanent before something takes her away.
I've fought in arenas across three systems. I've killed more times than I can count. I've never, not once, felt the claiming urge.
Until this woman. This specific, stubborn, brilliant, brave woman who found the armor plates under my skin and said what if I want them to come through.
I kiss her mouth instead of her throat. Saving us both from something I'm not ready to explain and she's not ready to receive. Not yet. Not tonight.
But soon.
"I'm not human," I say against her lips. "Not entirely. And I don't know if I can give you what you deserve. But I swear — I will stand between you and anything that tries to hurt you. And if you wake up tomorrow and decide this was a mistake —"
"It's not a mistake." She pulls me down.
Pulls me closer. Her hands thread into my hair, and her mouth finds mine, and the kiss is different from the kitchen — slower, deeper, the urgency banked into something more deliberate.
A woman who has decided. A woman who is choosing this with her eyes open.
"Stop talking," she whispers. "And show me."
The plates beneath my skin shudder. For the first time in five years, I don't force them back entirely.
I let them press outward — not emerging, not breaking through, but present.
Acknowledged. The architecture of what I am, held just below the surface, close enough that she can feel it everywhere our bodies touch.
She feels it. I know because her breath catches, and her hands tighten in my hair, and she doesn't pull away. She presses closer. Into me. Into the truth of what I am.
And I stop holding back.