I'd had the best sex of my life last night with a seven-foot-tall lizard-bird-man warrior, and now I couldn't stop replaying every moment. The stretch and burn of him inside me. The way his tail had coiled around my waist, possessive and perfect.
The sounds he'd made when I'd touched the base of his wings.
My thighs clenched involuntarily. Heat that had nothing to do with the suns pooled low in my belly.
Stop it.
I forced my mind back to practical considerations. Wind speed. Terrain features. Potential threats. Anything except the way his chest expanded against my side with each breath, or howhis arm beneath my knees adjusted every few minutes to make sure I was secure.
It was a losing battle.
Good thing there were no human men in Scalvaris. I was pretty sure I was ruined for my own species now. Everything about human anatomy would feel wrong after this. Too small, too smooth, missing that thick tail and those careful claws and that goddamned appendage at the tip of his cock that had found places inside me I didn't know existed.
Possibly ruined for everyone except Nyx.
I shut that thought down hard. Shoved it into a mental box, locked it, and threw away the key. I wasnotgoing there. This was a temporary situation born of proximity and adrenaline and weeks of sexual frustration. Once we found the missing humans and got back to Scalvaris, things would return to normal.
I'd stop having dreams about him. Stop noticing how his scales caught the light. Stop wanting to trace the white markings on his chest with my tongue.
Normal.
Right.
I focused on the mission, wearing my determination like armor. Larissa was out there somewhere. Kira's sister, along with at least six other humans who'd survived the crash only to vanish into Ignarath's territory. People who were counting on someone to give a damn when the Blade Council had voted to abandon them.
That was what mattered. Not the way Nyx's heartbeat thrummed against my ear, steady and strong. Not the memory of how he'd growled my name, or that word he kept using.
Kyvara.
I still didn't know what it meant. I didn’t want to know.
The heat intensified as morning stretched toward midday. Sweat soaked through my shirt, made my leathers stick to myskin. The air shimmered in the distance, distorting the horizon into something that looked like water but was just another cruel trick of this planet.
Nyx's wings adjusted, angling us toward a rocky outcropping that rose from the desert floor like a broken tooth. The formation was tall enough to cast shade, rare and precious in this landscape.
We descended in a controlled spiral. His landing was smooth despite my added weight, feet hitting stone with barely a sound. For something his size, he moved with unsettling grace.
He set me down carefully. Like I was something fragile that might break.
I stepped away immediately, putting distance between us. His tail had started to coil around my waist again, that unconscious claiming gesture. I couldn't deal with that right now.
The shade was a relief, dropping the temperature by at least twenty degrees. Not cool, not by any reasonable standard, but better than being directly under the suns. I shrugged off my pack, rolled my shoulders to work out the stiffness from hours of being carried.
My ribs protested. The wounds were healing fast, faster than they should, but the tissue was still tender. I ignored the discomfort and went for my water flask.
The liquid was warm, tasted faintly of the treated leather container, but I didn't care. I drank deeply, forcing myself to stop before I emptied the flask. Hydration was critical out here. Rationing was survival.
Nyx was watching me. I could feel his gaze tracking my movements as I pulled out rations, as I settled against the rock face, as I deliberately did not look at him.
The silence stretched between us. Heavy. Loaded with everything we weren't saying.
Nyx moved to his own pack. Pulled out his water, his rations. Settled against the opposite wall of our shelter, maybe ten feet away.
Too close. The space felt intimate despite the distance, like the rock walls were pressing in on us. I had to do something that wasn’t looking at him. Otherwise …
There was no otherwise.
I pulled out the map before the silence could get worse.
