My little mate was searching for an escape, a way to avoid her destiny.Surely she felt the pull between us?The bond?Yet, she had no storm nodes.No marks on her flesh that I could see.She was not from my world.Would the storm be so cruel as to choose a mate who could not feel the Skybond?Could not feel the energy pulsing between us?“They will take your crew to the village, where it is safe.Once your people are secure, you can decide what to do.”I held her gaze.“I want you to stay.With me.You are mine.”
"We've known each other for thirty minutes."
"The Skybond does not concern itself with time."
She made a sound — not quite a laugh, somewhere between dismissal and exasperation and a reluctant edge of something warmer that she clearly had no intention of acknowledging."Right.We can talk about that later."
She turned and climbed into the shuttle.I followed her through the hatch, bent through an opening built for a species considerably smaller than my people, and straightened inside a space so small and so aggressively angular that my first instinct was the same low-level discomfort I felt in caves — the territorial unease of a body that needed room.The air inside was stale and metallic and carried the sharp chemical smell of damaged systems.Underneath all of it, stronger here than it had been outside, was her scent.
Warm.Feminine.Clean underneath the smoke and fear of the crash.Something floral underneath that — some personal fragrance she wore that was not native to this planet, something that had traveled across systems to arrive here, in this valley, in this broken ship.It hit my nodes like a struck chord.
I sat down in the crew chair before my body could do anything inadvisable.She moved through the interior with the unconscious ease of someone in their natural habitat — pulling up screens, running sequences, her fingers fast and certain across the controls.I watched her hands.I kept watching them despite every intention to stop.They were capable and quick and sized so that I calculated — against my will, with complete focus — exactly how they would fit wrapped around my cock.Clinging to my shoulders.Raking through my hair.Her hand would be small when she finally placed her palm against mine.Fragile.Delicate.Perfect.
She glanced over at me.One quick, involuntary sweep from my face down to where I sat folded into the crew chair, then back up.Something crossed her expression.She turned away before I could identify it fully.But I had seen enough.She was not immune to the pull between us after all.
4
Sorik
I wanted to kiss her.Seduce her.But not here, where the scent of her dead lingered in the air and alarms blazed from nearly every control panel of her ship.“Where are the dead pilots?”
She sighed.“We put them in stasis pods before everyone bailed.We need to take them home to their families.”
The idea of placing the dead into any type of stasis was abhorrent to me.They should be freed from their physical forms, given back to the storm.Yet I said nothing.These were not my people.Not our way.And my mate was emotional.Upset making her small hands tremble and tears gather in the corner of her eye.
She scrubbed the liquid away as if offended by its presence."The Skybond," she said, facing her screens."Explain it."
"I can explain what it is," I said."Your acceptance of the truth is a different matter."
She turned and leaned against the console, arms crossed, eyes on me.The bioluminescent light from outside caught the planes of her face — the strong line of her jaw, the dark watchfulness of her eyes.My gaze was drawn to the dried blood at her temple with a physical intensity far exceeding its medical significance.
I could no longer tolerate the blood on her face.
I pulled a healing leaf from the small pouch at my waste and stepped toward her.
“Whoa?What are you doing?”Her small hands pressed to my chest, palms flat.Desire raced through me at the contact, pulsed in my blood and bones.The bond was strong already.
“Caring for you.The healing leaf of theLumithravine will heal the cut on your head.”I stepped into her touch, needed more.Needed to care for her.The constant ache in her head pulsed through her system and into mine with an urgency that had appeared and increased over the last few hours.Our bond was strengthening.If the elders spoke true, in a few days or weeks I would know her moods.Her desires.
Soon, she would have no more secrets.
For now, when we were close, I sensed her physical pain.My mate would not suffer when I could heal her.
“Oh.Okay.”She stepped back.Removed her hands from my chest.I satisfied my need to touch her by lifting one hand to cradle her cheek as I wiped the blood away from her head with the leaf I held in the other.
Her skin was softer than it looked.More delicate than a flower petal.Beneath my palm, the bond between us pulsed gently.Softly.For the first time I felt her energy, not mine, not the storm’s.Feminine and quiet.Delicate.Addictive.
Fuck.How was I going to protect her from this place?From the storm, the glass, the wild things that would hunt and devour her without hesitation?
I wiped the blood from her face, tore off a small piece of the leaf and slipped it between her parted lips.“Hold this under your tongue.It will help your headache.”
I stared, too long, at her lips as I explained the Skybond.How the nodes on our bodies would only awaken in the presence of our mate.How the bioelectrical signatures of two beings would sync into one rhythm.One frequency.The resonance that formed between bonded pairs, a natural phenomenon as real as the storms that had shaped my people across generations.
She listened with the stillness of a brilliant mind processing at speed.
“Like coupled oscillators.”
Warmth surged in my chest because she understood.She had not admitted to feeling the bond, but she understood.