When they got back they didn’t make it inside the house.
Juni wasn’t sure who moved first. One second they were climbing out of the transport, the cold air hitting her, and the next Goraath had her up against the side of the vehicle with his mouth on hers.
The kiss was brutal. Desperate. Nothing like the tender moments they’d shared before. This was teeth and tongue and the copper taste of blood where someone’s lip split. She didn’t know whose. Didn’t care.
He was alive, she was alive and that was all that mattered.
Her fingers clawed at his shoulders, his back, anywhere she could reach. She needed to feel him. Needed proof that this was real, that she wasn’t still in that alley with a blade at her throat and regret choking her.
“Inside,” she gasped against his mouth.
He made a sound low in his chest. Not agreement. A growl. Pure want.
Then he was lifting her, one arm hooked under her thighs, the other banded around her back. He didn’t carry her toward the house. He carried her around it, his stride eating up the distance like the cold didn’t exist and her weight was nothing.
The hot springs.
Steam rose in thick curls against the darkness, the water glowing faintly from some mineral she didn’t have a name for. The same pool where she’d watched him rise from the water like some kind of holo-film star. Where she’d hidden behind rocks and touched herself in her room after, desperate and needy.
Now he was bringing her here. Claiming this space and making it theirs.
Setting her on her feet at the edge, he went for her jacket, shoving it off her shoulders. It hit the rocks with a wet slap. Her thermal shirt followed, then his, both of them tearing at fabric with shaking fingers.
The cold should have been unbearable but she couldn’t feel it. Could only feel him… the heat radiating off his skin, the rough scrape of his calloused palms as he pushed her leggings down her hips.
“Goraath—”
“I need—” His voice cracked. Broke. “I almost lost you.”
“I know.” She kicked free of her boots, her leggings, stood naked before him in the freezing air. God, it was cold. “I know. I’m here. I’m right here.”
He stared at her like he was memorizing every inch. Like he still couldn’t believe she was real. Then he stripped off his remaining clothes and pulled her into the water.
The heat stole her breath for a second. The mineral smell of the springs filled her nose… sharp and sulphurous and nothing like Earth. His hands found her waist, lifting her, and she wrapped her legs around him as her back hit the smooth rock edge of the pool.
There was no foreplay and no gentle buildup. He positioned himself and thrust home in one stroke.
She cried out. The stretch burned—he was so big—but her body didn’t care. Her body wanted this. Wanted the proof of him inside her, filling her, alive and whole and hers.
He held there for a moment. Buried to the hilt. His forehead dropped against hers and his breath came ragged, hot against her lips.
“Juni. Look at me.”
She forced her eyes open. Met his eyes. Amber and burning and fixed on her like she was the only thing in the universe.
“You’re mine.” He pulled back, thrust again. Harder. “Say it.”
“Yours.” The word tore out of her on a moan. “I’m yours.”
He rewarded her with another thrust. Deeper this time. The angle dragged him against something inside her that made her whole body clench.
Fuck. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but feel.
“And I’m yours.” His grip on her hips shifted, tilting her pelvis, opening her further. “Whatever I was before. Whatever I am now. All of it. Yours.”
She couldn’t respond. Could only dig her nails into his shoulders and hold on.
He set a pace that was almost punishing. Each stroke bottomed out inside her, his hips slapping against the backs of her thighs as the water churning around them with every thrust. The cold night air hit her wet shoulders and the contrast with the heat of the water, the heat of him inside her, made her head spin.
