He was too close.Smelled too good.Was too damn sexy.Strong.
Cave sex was a new thing for me.Never considered it before.Now?I wanted it again.
What else were we going to do while the storm passed?Stare at each other?Enjoy the awkward silence?Pretend we didn’t want to touch each other?
Maybe he had more self-control than I did.Maybe his body was behaving far better than mine.Maybe he was used to feeling this all-consuming, overwhelming urge for contact.
Me?I was a fucking mess.Frantic.Needy.My skin was too sensitive.My pussy was aching.Throbbing.Empty.Every beat of my heart was like a bass drum pounding through my veins, the pulse moving through me like a mating call.I was consumed by it.
The cave was a fissure — four meters deep, barely wide enough for his shoulders, intimate in a merciless way that did not help my self control.The entrance was at his back.He stood between me and the storm.The crystal glowed against my chest.The marks on my collarbones pulsed their warm, steady, entirely unhelpful rhythm.Those pulses seemed to chant his name in a language I was only beginning to understand.
I had no defenses left.
I knew it was true the moment the thought danced through my mind.Not a gradual understanding — a sudden, complete, exhausted acknowledgment of fact.Sorik had broken down every wall I had around my heart without even trying.The ledge.The catch.The security of his arms.The press of his lips to my hair.Slow.Deliberate.The touch of a man who had decided I was his and had no problem showing it.
He had saved my life.Repeatedly.Protected me.Helped me.
Seduced me.
He looked at me like I was the reason he drew breath, with complete and utter focused attention.The walls around my heart hadn’t just cracked when he claimed me, when I came apart in his arms.They were rubble.There was nothing left to rebuild them with.
I shook, my emotions creating a storm all their own.
He stood one step away and watched me with silver eyes that missed nothing.He waited.Watched.Did not rush me as I realized the truth of my situation.He knew.He’d known the moment he saw me.No.Earlier.He said he’d felt my presence when my ship came over the mountains.Had accepted the fact that he would be mine, that I would be his.No doubt.No questions.
How was that even possible?
No fucking clue.But it was.I knew that now.Knew it the same way I felt the rhythm of his heart thudding in my own chest.The way I sensed what he was feeling, even when he didn’t speak.We were connected somehow.I didn’t know if this energy flowing between us was his storm, the planet, alien biology, quantum entanglement, God, destiny, or wild, random luck.I just knew I was his now.There was no going back.
My heart pounded like a hammer against my ribs.Panic threatened to explode from my throat in a shout.A scream?I didn’t know.I just knew the surge of awareness inside me needed an outlet or I was going to explode.Or collapse.Or lose my damn mind.
His nodes pulsed.Mine answered.The air between us shimmered.
"The discharge cascade won’t take long.We should be able to move in a few minutes."His voice was level.Controlled.The Commander’s voice — the one that told me he worked at this as hard as I did, that being this close to me cost him something, too.That his stillness was discipline, not indifference.
Something twisted in my chest, knowing the distance between us cost him.Knowing he held himself back.For me.
"A few minutes?Are you sure?"
"Yes."
We looked at each other.
The crystals glowed inside the pouch.Blue-white.Soft and steady, breathing light into the dark fissure around us.The soft light highlighted every line of him.The storm nodes that pulsed their rhythm along his spine, brighter now than this morning, deeper.The pale lightning scars across his collarbones — the same fractal geometry as the marks on mine.The same pattern.
The planet had written us in the same language.From different directions.And only now did I truly understand what that meant.
My breath caught.
He was watching me.He was always watching me — with complete, unhurried attention that made no pretense of anything else and never had.In the blue-white glow he looked like something this world had made with purpose.For me.He was mine.
My marks pulsed in agreement.In demand.
My hands had moved toward him before I knew they were moving.
I pressed them flat against his bare chest.
He was warm.Familiar.My body had memorized his heat in that cave.Catalogued it on the ledge when he caught me, while the planet welded us together in white fire.I wanted to close the remaining distance so badly I was in physical pain.