Chapter 14 #3
I wrap my arms around her waist beneath the water and press my lips to her temple. She hums, a low, contented vibration I can feel through my chest, and her fingers trace lazy patterns along my forearm.
"Your heart is very fast," she observes, her head still resting against my neck. Of course she can feel it. Her whole back is pressed to my chest like a living stethoscope.
"Yeah, well." I tighten my arms around her. "You're sitting naked in my lap in an alien hot tub. My heart's doing its best."
"Alien." She huffs. "You are the alien here."
"Fair point."
She's silent for a moment, her fingers still tracing along my forearm.
Then she shifts, turning in my lap until she's facing me, her legs straddling mine beneath the water.
The movement is slow and deliberate, and the look she gives me as she settles into this new position makes me go very still.
Her eyes are half-lidded, filled with amusement and a want that makes the heat of the water seem tepid in comparison.
Her hands come up to frame my face, her thumbs resting under my cheekbones.
"A'Vanti. My mate," I say, testing the word.
The effect is instantaneous and startling.
A'Vanti's eyes widen. Her pupils contract to narrow slits. A flush spreads across her throat and chest, her scales darkening to deep amber, and her grip on my shoulders tightens.
"Say it again," she rasps.
"Mate."
She makes a sound, halfway between a growl and a purr that vibrates between us, and then she's kissing me. Hungry and demanding.
Her hands slide from my face to my shoulders, gripping tight, and she pulls me toward the edge of the pool with a strength that catches me off guard.
Before I can fully process what's happening, she's out of the water and pulling me after her by the wrist. We stumble back toward our shelter, dripping and half-blind because we can't stop kissing long enough to watch where we're going.
Her hands are everywhere, and mine aren't much better behaved.
I barely manage to snag our discarded clothes from the rocks as she hauls me past them.
"A'Vanti—" I start, half-laughing, half-gasping.
She silences me with another kiss, pushing me through the opening of our shelter and onto the blankets, following me down.
Afterward, we lie tangled together, breathing hard and grinning at the ceiling like two people who've lost their collective minds.
"So," I say, once I've recovered enough oxygen to form words. "The word mate. That's, uh. That does something for you."
A'Vanti stretches beside me with the languid satisfaction of a cat in a sunbeam. "In Cerastean culture, the word carries… significant weight. It is not a term used lightly. It implies a permanent, sacred bond."
"And hearing me say it…?"
She props herself up on one elbow, looking down at me. "When a Cerastean female hears her mate claim her, it activates bonding hormones. The effect is—" she pauses, searching for the word "—overwhelming. Like a wave you cannot resist."
"Noted." I grin up at her. "So basically, I've discovered a cheat code."
"Do not abuse it."
"Wouldn't dream of it." I trace the line of her jaw with my finger. "Mate."
Her eyes go dark immediately, that flush racing down her throat again, and she hauls me toward her.
"You," she hisses, but she's smiling as she says it, "are incorrigible."
"Guilty."
The storm continues to rage above us. We can hear it during the quiet moments, a deep, persistent rumble that vibrates through the rock like a bass note played on the world's largest subwoofer.
But down here, in our underground world of heated water and muted light, it feels far away.
We swim again in the main pool, this time without the urgency of desire.
We enjoy the simple pleasure of floating in water, letting the minerals work their magic on muscles that have earned their ache.
A'Vanti floats on her back in the pool, her eyes closed, her hair fanning around her like a golden corona, and I sit on a rock ledge and watch her because it's become my favorite pastime, and I see no reason to stop.
"Tell me something," she says suddenly, her voice echoing slightly off the cave walls. "About your life. Before all of this."
I've been expecting this question. Dreading it a little, honestly.
Not because I have anything to hide, but because my story feels so small next to hers.
She survived genocide and years of captivity and the loss of her entire civilization.
I grew up in a small town and learned to fly jets.
My life has been so easy compared to hers.
But she asked, and she deserves honesty. She's given me hers.
"Not much to tell," I start, which is a lie and a stalling tactic, and A'Vanti sees right through it.
"Cody."
"Okay, okay." I take a breath, sliding into the pool and sinking until the water reaches my chin.
"I'm from a town called Cedar Hollow. It's in the Appalachian Mountains – that's a mountain range in the eastern part of the United States.
Small town. Really small. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone and there's one traffic light and the high school football game is the biggest event of the year. "
"It sounds peaceful."
"It was. Is." I stare at the cave ceiling, watching the light play across the stone.
"My dad was a mechanic. Had a shop on the edge of town, Johnson's Auto Repair.
Fixed everything from tractors to school buses.
My mom was a nurse at the county hospital.
I have two younger sisters, Lisa and Claire. "
A'Vanti has turned in the water, watching me. I can feel her focus like a physical thing.
"I was a restless kid. Couldn't sit still, couldn't focus in class, drove my teachers crazy.
My mom used to say I had 'itchy feet'. That I was born wanting to go somewhere, I just didn't know where yet.
" I smile at the memory. "Then when I was ten, my dad took me to an air show at a base a few hours from home. And that was that."
"An 'air show'?"
"The jets." I close my eyes, and I'm ten years old again, craning my neck so hard it hurts, watching F-16s scream across the sky in tight formation.
The sound shaking my chest. The contrails cutting white lines across the blue.
"I just knew. The way you talk about architecture…
That feeling of knowing exactly what you're supposed to do with your life?
That's what it felt like. Standing there in the bleachers, covering my ears because the noise was so loud, and thinking that. I want to do that."
"And you did."
"Eventually. Wasn't a straight line, though." I open my eyes. "My dad got sick when I was a teenager. Cancer. Took him eighteen months."
The words come out simply, without the dramatic weight they probably deserve. It's been a long time now. The sharp edges of that grief have worn smooth, but it's still there. It will always be there; a heaviness I carry everywhere I go.
A'Vanti doesn't say she's sorry. She doesn't offer platitudes or try to equate her loss with mine. She wades closer and takes my hand under the water, threading her fingers through mine.
"After he died, I thought about staying.
Taking over the shop. My mom needed help, and Lisa and Claire were still young, and it felt selfish to leave.
" I squeeze her hand. "But my mom… she's tough.
Tougher than me, honestly. Tough like you, actually.
She sat me down at the kitchen table one night and she said, 'Cody Allen Johnson, if you stay in this town out of guilt, I will never forgive you.
Your father wanted you to fly. So go fly. '"
"She sounds formidable."
"She is. She's about five foot two and barely a hundred pounds, and she is the scariest person I have ever met." I pause and give A'Vanti a sly look. "Actually, tied for scariest."
A'Vanti's lips curve. "I will take that as a compliment."
"It's meant as one." I draw our joined hands from the water, lifting her knuckles to my mouth and pressing a kiss there.
"So, I enlisted. Went through basic, then flight school, then fighter training.
Turned out the restless kid from Cedar Hollow was pretty good at flying fast and making split-second decisions. "
"You are more than pretty good."
"Well. I got lucky a lot." I shrug. "And then your people arrived, and they needed human pilots to integrate with the fleet, and I volunteered because…
honestly? It was the most incredible thing I'd ever heard of.
Aliens. Spaceships. An actual interstellar alliance.
The ten-year-old at the air show would've lost his mind. "
"And then you were sent to rescue captives from the facility."
"Yeah." My voice goes quiet. "And I met you."
She's close now. Close enough that I can see the individual scales along her cheekbones, each one a tiny masterpiece of gold and amber. Close enough to watch the steam from the pool bead on her skin like dew.
"I carried you out of that cell," I say, "and you hissed at me and tried to claw my face off."
"In my defense, you bared your teeth at me. That is a threat display in Cerastean culture."
"I was smiling."
"I know that now. I did not know it then. All I knew was that a strange creature with sky-colored eyes was holding me like I was precious, and I did not know what to do with that."
"And now?"
She lifts our joined hands and presses them to her chest, right over her heart. I feel it beating beneath my palm, strong and steady and slightly faster than resting rate.
"Now," she says, "I know exactly what to do with it."
The kiss that follows is slow and sweet and tastes like mineral water and a promise that might be forever.
I don't rush it. We've got nowhere to be and nothing to prove, and there's an intimacy that borders on sacred about kissing someone in a place where people have been pledging themselves to each other for thousands of years.
When we part, I rest my forehead against hers.
"My mom's going to love you," I tell her. "She's going to take one look at you and adopt you on the spot. She'll try to feed you. She'll ask you a hundred questions about architecture. She'll probably cry. Fair warning."
A'Vanti makes a sound that's half laugh, half something more fragile. "I would like very much to meet your mother."
"Then you will. I promise."
We stay in the water until our fingers have gone wrinkly. Or mine have, anyway; A'Vanti's scales seem immune to the effect. Then we climb out and dry off and get dressed in our rumpled clothes. A'Vanti wrinkles her nose at her sandy outfit but pulls it on without complaint.
I try the comm again while A'Vanti sorts through our remaining rations. This time, I get through. Barely. L'Zaen's voice crackles through the static like he's broadcasting from inside a washing machine, but the message is clear enough.
"…storm tracking shows at least…through tomorrow morning…unprecedented…stay in shelter…all teams accounted for…repeat…"
"Copy that," I say. "We're safe. Plenty of supplies. Will maintain comm schedule."
"…careful…the wind speeds…"
Then static swallows him whole.
"Tomorrow morning at the earliest," I relay to A'Vanti, trying and failing to look disappointed.
She raises one golden brow. "Tragic."
"Devastating."
"However will we pass the time?"
I cross to where she's crouched beside our rations and pull her to her feet. "I've got a few ideas."
"I thought you might." She leans up and presses a kiss to my jaw. "But first… dinner."
We eat sitting at the edge of the main pool, feet dangling in the water, and the simplicity of it fills me with a contentment so deep it almost hurts.
This is what I want. Not grand gestures or dramatic declarations.
Just this. Eating a meal with the person I love, watching light move across water, feeling the certainty that we are exactly where we're supposed to be.