His breath hisses out between clenched teeth.
I smile against his skin and do it again, slower this time, letting my tongue trace the edge where scale meets flesh. The texture is incredible: hard and unyielding one moment, then yielding like heated silk the next. I follow the glowing line upward, over the ridge of a rib, tasting salt and something faintly metallic, like ozone after lightning.
“Polly…” My name is a warning and a plea all at once.
I ignore it. I’m busy discovering that if I press my open mouth just beneath his collarbone and hum, the scales there flare so bright they cast shadows on the wall. His hand comes up, fingers threading through my hair—not pulling, just resting, trembling.
I move lower.
Another line of scales starts just beneath his sternum and arrows downward, disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers. I follow it with my tongue, open-mouthed kisses, gentle scrapes of teeth. Every inch I travel, the glow intensifies, until his entire torso is lit from within, blue-white light pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
He makes a sound low in his throat, half growl, half broken moan.
I slide my palms up his sides, thumbs tracing the sensitive seams where scales give way to skin, and feel him jerk like I’ve shocked him. His hips shift restlessly; the hard line of his cock is impossible to miss now, straining against fabric that suddenly looks far too confining.
I mouth along the sharp cut of his hipbone, nosing at the waistband, and he curses in his own language—harsh, guttural syllables that make my thighs clench.
“Careful,” he rasps. “Some of these edges are sharper than they look.”
In answer, I let my teeth catch the faintest ridge of a scale just above his belt. Not hard. Just enough pressure to make the light flare white-hot and his whole body arch.
“Polly—”
“I told you,” I murmur against his skin, feeling the heat of him, the slight vibration that’s been building ever since I first touched him. “I like the cracks in the armor.”
I slide my hands lower, cupping him through his trousers, and the sound he makes is wrecked. He’s thick and scalding even through fabric, and when I squeeze gently, his head falls back, throat exposed, scales along his neck glowing like molten starlight.
“I like the monster,” I continue, mapping the glowing lines with my mouth, my tongue, my teeth. “I like the predator. I like every part of you that you’ve been hiding.”
The sound he makes then is feral, something between a growl and a groan, and then his hands are in my hair and he’s yanking my head back to claim my mouth with his.
This kiss isn’t careful. It’s not the desperate almost-kisses we’ve shared before, interrupted by danger and duty. This is possession. Consumption. His tongue against mine, fangsscraping my lips with exquisite care, the taste of him—alien spice and male heat—flooding my senses until I can’t think, can’t breathe, can only feel.
He walks me backward until my spine hits the cool metal wall, and the temperature contrast makes me gasp into his mouth. His body is a furnace against my front, the wall cold at my back, and I’m caught between them, trapped in the best possible way.
His hands slide under my shirt, claws retracted but still dangerous, tracing up my sides with deliberate slowness that feels like torture. When his thumbs brush the undersides of my breasts, I arch into him with a whimper that he swallows greedily.
“Look at me,” he demands, pulling back just enough that I can meet his eyes. They’re fully black now, no trace of gold, pupils blown wide with hunger. “I need you to see. Black eyes and fangs and everything. I need you to witness what you woke up.”
I look.
Really look at the alien predator pinning me to the wall with his body, glowing like he’s burning from the inside out, vibrating so hard I can feel it in my bones. The scales along his throat and chest are blazing, casting shifting patterns of light across both of us.
“I see you,” I tell him, reaching up to trace the sharp line of his cheekbone, the deadly curve of a fang that just barely peeks past his lip. “All of you. And I want every part.”
Something in his expression shatters—relief and hunger and desperate need all crashing together.
“Kethara,” he breathes, and then his mouth is on my throat, my collarbone, my shoulder. “Mine. Mine. Mine.”
Each word is punctuated by a kiss, a scrape of fangs, a possessive growl that goes straight to my core. His hands are everywhere now—sliding under my shirt, yanking at fabric with growing impatience. When he finds the clasp of my bra and itdoesn’t give fast enough, there’s a sharp rip and cool air hits my skin.
I should probably protest the destruction of clothing. Instead I moan, because his mouth is on my breast before the scraps of fabric hit the floor, tongue swirling around my nipple while that damned vibration starts up again—stronger now, deliberate, rolling through his chest into mine.
It’s like being stroked from the inside out.
He switches to the other breast, teeth grazing just hard enough to make me cry out, and I feel the vibration shift lower, a subsonic thrum that settles between my legs like a promise.
“Do you feel that?” His voice is rough against my skin as his mouth moves lower, tracing the line of my ribcage, dipping into my navel. “That’s my biology recognizing yours. My body claiming yours at a cellular level.”
