I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think past the way his hands felt against my skin, the heat that seemed to pour through me wherever we touched. “This is insane. We’re different species. We come from completely different worlds.”
“I know.” He was so close now I could feel his breath against my lips. “But I don’t care. Do you?”
Did I? Standing here in this quiet chamber, exhausted and raw and more honest than I’d been in years, did I care that he was D’tran and I was human? That his eyes shifted colors and mine didn’t, that his culture was alien and my past was complicated? Destrans and humans had no problem making relationships work.
“No,” I whispered. “I don’t care.”
“Then stop fighting this.” His voice was barely audible. “Trust me enough to let me kiss you. We can figure out everything else later.”
I didn’t make a conscious decision. My body just moved, closing the last breath of distance between us, and then his lips were on mine.
The world exploded.
Heat. Overwhelming, consuming heat that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the connection that snapped into place between us.
Rezor’s hands slid from my face into my hair, angling my head as he deepened the kiss. I grabbed onto his shoulders for balance as my knees went weak, and felt the solid strength of him beneath my palms. One of his arms wrapped aroundmy waist, pulling me flush against him, and I made a sound that was half gasp, half surrender.
This wasn’t a tentative first kiss. This was desperate and hungry and full of all the tension that had been building between us since the moment he’d pulled me from that crashed pod. His tongue traced the seam of my lips and I opened for him, tasting him, feeling the way his whole body shuddered in response.
My hands moved from his shoulders to his chest, feeling the heat of his skin and the rapid beat of his heart. I felt an answering warmth in my own skin, like something in me was reaching toward something in him, trying to bridge the gap between human and D’tran, between stranger and mate.
We broke apart just long enough to breathe, foreheads pressed together, both of us panting.
“Your marks,” I managed. “They’re glowing again.”
“For you.” His voice was rough, almost awed. “Only you.”
I pulled back just enough to look more closely at his chest, where amber light blazed through his shirt in intricate patterns that seemed to move and shift with each heartbeat. Without thinking, I reached up and pulled the fabric aside to see them properly.
My breath caught.
The marks were beautiful. Geometric patterns that looked like circuitry and organic growth all at once, spreading across his chest in lines of pure light. They pulsed with warmth, with life, with something that felt bigger than both of us.
“Deep compatibility,” I whispered, remembering what Mierva had told me. “Is that what this is?”
“I don’t know.” Rezor’s hand covered mine where it rested against his marks. “But I know I’ve never felt anything like this. Never wanted anyone the way I want you.”
“I’m scared,” I admitted. “I’m scared of how much I want this.”
“Good.” He kissed me again, softer this time but no less intense. “Be scared with me. We can figure it out together.”
Together. The word should have terrified me. Instead, it felt like a promise.
I kissed him back, pouring everything I couldn’t say into the connection between us. All my fear and hope and desperate need to believe that maybe this time, trusting someone wouldn’t end in betrayal. His arms tightened around me, and I felt safe in a way I hadn’t in years.
The tech chamber hummed around us, systems pulsing with light, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I should get back to work, or return to my quarters and get some sleep. There were a thousand practical reasons to stop this.
But for just a moment, I let myself have this. Let myself trust that the marks blazing between us meant something real. Let myself believe that maybe brave and brilliant and impossible me could have something good.
CHAPTER 10
Rezor
Iwaited until the sun had fully risen before summoning Vax to my chambers.
I’d spent the past several nights turning over the evidence in my mind. The sabotage Cleo had found in the underground chamber. The timing that perfectly coincided with the sky people’s arrival, designed to make their presence look catastrophic.
Only a handful of people had the access and knowledge to pull this off. And of those, only one had been vocally pushing for the sky people’s exile from the beginning. I’d asked questions, considered every angle for several cycles, but each time, I landed at only one conclusion. One suspect.
