I rested my palm flat against his chest.Just for a moment.Kissed his shoulder because I could.Because right now, he was still mine.Because I needed to do something true before I had to stand up and start pretending to be someone else.Someone I didn’t want to be anymore.Someone I had to be to protect him.His people.This valley.The entire planet.
There was no place for sentiment in my logic.If I didn’t get the crystals to the ship, it would explode and everyone in his village would die.If I didn’t leave him and return to base with the entire crew, my employer would send more people.More ships.More weapons.
Not acceptable.My heart had no business wanting things when the stakes were so high.
Clinging to him like a pathetic weakling wasn’t going to help.
I sat up.
He woke the instant I moved.Eyes open fully, immediately — silver and completely alert.They focused on me before I could get fully upright.
"Sloane."One word.Low and rough from sleep, carrying the full weight of the night between us.The sound of it moved through me, affected me the same way his hands did.
My chest resonated like a struck bell.
I wanted to press my fingers to the marks on his chest.I wanted to press my mouth to his throat.Ineededto walk out of this cave before I did either one and couldn't find the strength to stop.
"The storm's been over for hours.”My voice came out crisp.Possibly aggressive.The voice of fear wearing competence as a costume.
If we stayed in this cave I would have him naked and inside me before the sun rose.Fact.I could not afford another night like last night.Another memory that would haunt me when I left.Another reason to miss him."We need to get going."
He sat up.
The sight of him naked, awake…mine, hit me somewhere low and hungry.
The morning light caught him, traced every line of his perfect body; the impossible breadth of his shoulders, the pale branching of the lightning scars I had traced with my fingertips in the dark, the storm nodes pulsing their quiet dawn rhythm up his spine, the abdominal muscles that made me want to lick every dip and valley, take his cock into my mouth.
I want to make him lose his fucking mind.
I looked at the cave wall.It didn’t talk any sense into me.None.Not enough distraction.I looked at my scanner instead.My hands were steady.I was proud of my hands.
"Your marks," he said.
My hand moved to my collarbone before I finished processing the words.I touched the faint luminous branching that followed the lines of my collarbone in patterns I knew mirrored the geometry of his."I'm aware of them," I said.
"They'll strengthen.As the bond develops."
I made myself lower my hand.I had already analyzed the data — repeated electrical exchange, progressive nervous system adaptation, entirely mechanistic, entirely explicable.The way they pulsed when his eyes wandered over my skin was a detail I did not incorporate into the model.
Because if I incorporated it, I'd have to incorporate everything else.
"We're losing the morning window."I was already reaching for my clothes.I tugged my suit and jacket on as quickly as possible.“You said it was too dangerous to be up here in the afternoon.”I took my scanner and walked out of the cave into the cold sharp air without waiting.Without looking back.
Because if I looked back, I would see his face.I wasn’t foolish enough to believe I was ready for what I would see written on it.Feeling it was already bad enough.
He followed.
The morning air hit me like cold water.
Good.I needed something between me and the gravitational pull of the man two feet behind.The alien whose heartbeat I could still feel in my chest as if it were my own.
The valley spread out before us in shades of violet, blue and gray around me.Pre-storm atmosphere building above the canopy.Violet cloud systems thickened at the valley’s edges.The stormglass trees refracted pale dawn light in ethereal prisms across the jungle floor.They shimmered, black and ethereal.Stunning in their dark beauty.
The air smelled of ozone, soil and cold obsidian.
And underneath that I picked up another scent.It drifted to me from my own chest.From my suit.From my own skin.Warm and addictive.A drug I would never get enough of.Him.
I walked faster.