The second strike hit outside.Closer.The light bleached everything absolute white and threw her face into sharp relief — the flush of exertion across her cheeks, the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the dark brightness of her eyes as they caught the light and held it.Her lips were slightly parted.She breathed hard.
She looked up at me.Our gazes locked.
My nodes didn't blaze.They detonated.
Not the original ignition when I found her — that moment had gone from cold to white-hot, startling and total.This was the Skybond in a storm after hours of maintained distance.Deliberate restraint.The exquisite torture of walking so close to her across miles of charged jungle while my body screamed at me to close the distance and claim her.
The storm's charge hit the energy I already carried.Desire turned exponential.A wave that started at the base of my skull crashed all the way to my feet.The nodes blazed so bright I watched Sloane's pupils contract against the light.
She watched.I saw understanding in her gaze.She didn't look away.She didn't ask to be set down.I held her and she allowed the contact.
I put my back against the wall.The strength of the obsidian against my skin was the only thing in the cave that made any sense — the only surface that wasn't her, wasn't warm, the only thing that didn't tempt me with what I'd resisted for hours.
I needed her.She was part of me now.Part of my personal storm.My energy field.Her mind brushed against mine.Her emotions had begun to sync with mine — flashes of knowledge in my head.Her desire threatened to drive me mad.I knew when she studied my body.When she wanted me to touch her.
I also knew with aching clarity that her mind and her body were at war.I couldn't afford to take sides.I needed her to choose me.To touch me.I would never dishonor the storm's choice by forcing her hand.She was alien.She didn't understand the bond.She needed time.
Logic knew this truth.My hard cock and burning nodes were not so understanding.
I held her.
I breathed.
"Sorik—"
"Be still."My voice came out rough.Stripped of the level quality I'd maintained all day.Something raged underneath it that I had no capacity to restrain right now — something done being patient."Let me hold you."
She stilled.Her eyes moved to my shoulders.My neck.She watched the currents run under my skin.Her expression was the one she wore when she hid behind her job — analytical, contained.Her hands had closed into fists, one pressed to my chest, one behind my neck.But she didn't remove them.
Her heart raced.I had no idea if my pulse reacted to her, or if her body synced to mine.Didn't care.We were one.
Her heartbeat ran fast and bright and loud in the enclosed space.Each pulse resonated in the nodes that tried desperately to match her frequency.I had listened to it for hours.I knew its resting rhythm the way I knew the planet's baseline charge.This was not its resting rhythm.This was something else entirely.
Desire.
I pressed my back harder into the obsidian.My body needed to claim her — an ache in the nerve clusters, a pull in my palms, a biological imperative to exchange energy with my mate the way we were meant to.The stone felt wrong.The temperature felt wrong.Every nerve cluster in my skin had a very strong opinion about what would feel right.She was in my arms.She breathed too fast."Sloane.We are safe in here."
Her emotional spike was pushing the edges of my control.I needed to take care of her.
"I'm fine," she lied."Why can I feel your heart beating?Why is my heart trying to match it?"
"The bond."I didn't need to explain.She was an intelligent female.She would figure it out.
Silence.
"Do you need to put me down?"she asked.
"No."But… "Do you wish to be released?"I would find the strength.Somehow.Storm save me.
"No."Her response was immediate and I nearly crumbled in relief.I wasn't sure I had the strength to stop touching her.Not with her pulse racing and the storm raging outside.
Lightning streaked the sky.White and immediate, it threw itself across the cave entrance in a stuttered pulse that lit her in fragments — her throat as she swallowed, the smooth line of her neck, the precise rise and fall of her breath.Too fast.Too shallow.The breath of a body that worked hard to remain calm.I looked away.I said nothing.
"How long will the storm last?"she asked.
"An hour.Perhaps two."The energy in my nodes pressed outward through my back and into the stone.The stone couldn't carry it, couldn't receive it the way a mate would.But it helped.The ache of the bond had become something I would need to address in very short order.
One hour.In this cave.Sloane in my arms.The Skybond ran so hot through my system I felt it like a separate thing — a creature all its own, impossible to reason with or control.