Control yourself.
It was more difficult than it should have been. Everything about her seemed designed to undermine his discipline—her warmth, her scent, the soft sounds she made in sleep. Some part of himthat he didn’t fully understand wanted to roll her beneath him, to cover her with his body and?—
No. Absolutely not.She was half his size and a different species entirely. She’d saved his life. The last thing he was going to do was repay that kindness with anything that might frighten her or make her regret her actions.
She stirred and he froze, caught between the urge to feign sleep and the knowledge that his current… state… made that option inadvisable. He settled for going absolutely motionless, hoping she would drift back into deeper slumber.
Instead, her eyes fluttered open. For a moment, she simply looked up at him—her gaze soft and unfocused, still caught in the haze of sleep. A small smile curved her lips, drowsy and unguarded, and something in his chest turned over at the sight of it.
Beautiful,he thought again.And she’s smiling at me.
Then awareness flooded back into her eyes.
The smile vanished. Her body went rigid against his, every muscle tensing as the reality of their position registered. He watched the progression of emotions across her face—confusion, realization, mortification—and felt an unexpected pang of loss as the warmth between them shattered.
“Oh God.”Her voice was rough with sleep and high with panic.“I didn’t… We’re?—”
She scrambled backwards, and he made himself release her. He lifted his arm from her waist, folded his wing back, and reluctantly unwound his tail from around her leg. Everything in him protested the separation, but he forced himself to let her go.
She practically fell off the bunk in her haste to put distance between them, her feet tangling in something on the floor before she caught herself against the curved wall. Her face had flushed a deep red—fascinating, how her skin changed color with emotion—and she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—you grabbed me, and I was going to leave, but you said—and then I fell asleep and?—”
The words tumbled over each other, a rush of sound that his still-struggling mind could barely parse. He caught fragments—sorry, sleep—but the details remained frustratingly elusive. He understood enough to know that she was apologizing. That much was clear from her tone and the way she held herself, the distress radiating off her in waves. She thought she had done something wrong.
No.The denial rose fierce and immediate.You did nothing wrong. I took you. I held you. The fault is mine.
But he couldn’t say any of that. He couldn’t make her understand that he had been the one to pull her close, and that her presence in his arms had been the best thing he’d experienced since waking in this strange new world.
Instead, he slowly and carefully pushed himself to a sitting position, testing his body’s response, and turned to face her fully.
She had backed herself into a corner, her arms wrapped around her middle in a gesture that looked almost defensive. Her eyes kept darting to him and then away, like she couldn’t decide whether to watch him or pretend he didn’t exist.
Communication.The need crystallized in his mind with sudden clarity. He had to find a way to talk to her and break through thebarrier of language that separated them before she retreated so far he couldn’t reach her at all.
He thought back to the words she’d used. The sounds she’d made when she was feeding him, when she was tending his wounds, and when she was murmuring comfort during his nightmares. His memory was exceptional, one of the gifts that had made him valuable, and he replayed them in perfect detail.
There were patterns in the sounds, recurring elements that suggested meaning. Her language wasn’t so different from the trading tongues he’d learned in his youth, the simplified speech used between species who didn’t share a common origin. He’d learned that. He could learn this.
“Not harm,” he said firmly.
She blinked, her nervous fidgeting stilling.“What?”
“Not harm,” he repeated, and she blinked again.
“You mean you won’t harm me?”The color filled her cheeks again as she dropped her gaze.“I believe you won’t,”she said quietly.
Her trust filled him with satisfaction, but it wasn’t exactly what he meant. He pointed to her. “You. Not harm me. Sleep.”
“Oh. You mean you didn’t mind me sleeping with you?”She finally gave him a slight smile.“Then I guess it’s okay.”
“Okay,” he repeated, savoring the word. He looked around the space, searching for something simple to point at, and landed on the covering on the sleeping platform. He touched it, then looked at her expectantly.
“Blanket,”she said.“That’s a blanket.”
“Blan-ket.” The syllables felt strange on his tongue, but his mind filed them away automatically, connecting the sound to the object.
She took a small step closer, her posture loosening slightly.“You want to learn words?”