I watched and burned and calculated and held my warrior’s discipline in place with a will stronger than the storm itself.
She reached for the next hold.Her body blazed with heat, with pre-storm light.My nodes answered with a pulse so strong my teeth ached.
Seductive.Maddening.Distracting.
Enough to make my skin sensitive, my cock hard, my heart race.
Not enough.
Neverenough.Not anymore.Not since the cave.Not since I had learned what enough actually felt like.
Control.I needed to regain control.
I looked out over the valley.
Breathe,I told myself.Just breathe.
I tried to see the dark violet jungle canopy spreading out below us from her perspective.I knew nothing of her world beyond what she’d shared with me.Our bond was getting stronger, but she had a great capacity for pushing her emotions aside, for staying focused on rational data and solving problems.Soon enough I would be able to see past the last of her walls.Until then, I was left wondering if could she see the beauty of my world, or only the danger?
The stormglass trees caught the pre-storm light and threw it back in scattered violet.If she didn’t already feel the essence, the life beating within every tree, could she still recognize their dark beauty?Was the fungi, still pulsing their faint, glowing rhythm far below, fascinating to my mate?The crystal formations in the cliff faces to either side blazed cold fire in the atmospheric charge — electric blue-white, brilliant and cold.
My home.
Every cliff face, storm path and crystal formation I had known since I was born.Known.Defended.I had stood on this ledge before — in other seasons, in other storms, alone or with warriors who knew this valley the way I knew it.As territory.As responsibility.As the weight of a thing I have chosen to protect.
I closed my eyes and expanded my senses.Opened myself to the storm.To my mate.
I saw my world through her.With her.
I was awestruck.Every color, every sound and smell, I experienced as something new.Wonderful.Alien.Extraordinary.This was my home, yet I’d never fully seen it.Not as I was seeing it now.
Could she learn to love something so strange?So different?Could she learn to love my world?To love me?
I opened my eyes.Everything was unchanged and different at the same time.My heart swelled.I could never let my mate go now.The bond was nearly complete.If she chose to leave, I would have to follow.I no longer had a choice.
Breathe,I told myself again.Just breathe.
"This formation is perfect,"she yelled down at me.
She brought her scanner up to the crystal deposit at eye level.Precise.Professional."Three meters across, matrix depth approximately forty centimeters.The center cluster has the highest electromagnetic coherence."She ran the scan.Ran it again.Once more."The central node — twenty centimeters in — conductivity profile within range of what the stabilizer coil requires."
She had already mapped the extraction path — the gaps in the matrix, the obsidian bridges between deposits, the routes that wouldn’t disturb the higher-charge formations guarding the center cluster.Her focus was total.
She was stunning.That focus.The way she gave herself to a problem completely — the same way she gave herself to everything she decided was worth her full attention.The same way she had given her body to me.
I watched her work and felt the complicated pride of a man watching someone I cared about do something extraordinary, and the devastating frustration of not being allowed to touch her while she did it.I climbed higher.Closed the distance until I could reach out and touch her boot.
"Six inches of clearance here and here."She indicated two points on the surface with her free hand, not touching."If I can get in without contacting these outer formations?—"
The ledge shuddered.
A single deep vibration transmitted through the cliff face into the shelf beneath our feet.A crystal vein at lower elevation released charge into the obsidian.I felt it in my nodes half a second before my feet registered it.The sharp electrical spike of a discharge working through the rock.
"How much time do we have?"she asked.Steady voice.Unsteady pulse.
"Forty minutes."I assessed the sky.The violet cloud systems had thickened and darkened overnight, their cores deep purple-black with the mass of what built above us.The light coming through them was wrong in the way that meant the main storm front was no longer a distant concern.
Something had changed.The storm was moving too fast.