I assessed the cliff face.The wind.The crystal veins.The charge building in the rock beneath our feet.
"In a few minutes, this cliff will become too dangerous, regardless of technique."
"We have enough time."
"Sloane—"
"We can’t leave."She looked at me.“We can’t leave without the crystals.The ship will explode.”
In her eyes was the thing I'd seen in the cave.Not stubbornness — something cleaner than that.Determination.The resolve of a person who had calculated the risk and accepted it.Who intended to finish what she started no matter the cost.
I assessed the situation again, hoping I was wrong.My calculations ran cold and precise until my heartbeat synced with hers.She was on this ledge.The rock beneath her boots had just moved.The forty minutes we should have had was not going to be enough.I could not leave this cliff without her, regardless of what the storm did, or what my mate wanted, or what the broken pieces of her ship demanded.
Her courage moved through me like a second storm surge.
Beautiful, brave, stubborn fucking female.
When I got her off this cliff, I was going to fuck her senseless.
"I need to clear the outer crystals by hand.They're too delicately fused for tools without fracturing the whole matrix."
I looked at her hand.At the precision in her fingers.At the marks pulsing at her throat — warm and steady and entirely indifferent to her schedule.
I looked at the cliff around us.At the pre-surge charge building in the crystal veins.At the narrow ledge between her and a fall that would surely kill us both.
Every warrior instinct I possessed raged at me to get her off the cliff.Take her somewhere safe.Ride out the storm with her riding my cock.
The instinct was not rational.It was not something I had felt before — not with this intensity.The rage in my mind threatened all logic.All reason.
We needed those crystals or my village would be destroyed — but the stormbound male within me did not care about anything but her.The fire burning through my body was not the protectiveness of a warrior for his territory.This was complete and utter madness.I warred within myself as I fought the compulsion of a bonded male to protect his mate.I needed to drag her away from danger.My need was primal, enormous and entirely without interest in my opinions about it.
I refused to give into it.I was not a primitive animal.
I would honor her choices, her duty to her crew who were all still in the valley.It was not just my people who would suffer if we did not acquire the crystals.Whether or not I liked the fact, my mate was not a thing to be locked away from danger.She was a pilot, an explorer and a scientist.She had also, somehow, learned to read rock faces faster than warriors I'd served beside and elders who understood crystal deposits with a precision that took most warriors many cycles to develop.
The instinct to wrap around her and never let go was mine to manage.
Not hers to accommodate.
"Then I'll hold you," I said.
She turned her head.
The silver of my eyes met the dark of hers at close range."The ledge is narrow," I explained."You'll need to lean into the face to reach the depth of the central cluster.I'll anchor us both."
It was true.
It was also the only legitimate reason I could give her to put my hands on her.I was not above using it.I felt no shame about that.
I moved into place behind her.Fully.My chest against her back.My left arm around her at the waist, gripping a hold in the cliff face.And the contact?—
The contact was everything.
The whole morning's effort collapsed into this single point of truth.Her spine against my chest.The back of her head just below my jaw.My arm across her body at the waist.
I could feel her heartbeat.
Through every point of contact.I felt it quicken.Then deliberately, consciously steady — the rhythm of a woman who regulated herself under pressure, who held herself together by force of will, training and the extraordinary discipline of a person who had been holding things together her whole life.