He doesn’t answer right away.
Then, finally: “It doesn’t scare me. Itwrecksme.”
The honesty hits me like a gut punch.
“I’m always halfway to losing control when you’re near,” he says. “But it’s not fear. It’s want.”
The air between us thickens. Something sharp and molten andinevitablecoils around my ribs.
“You’re not my type,” I say.
He leans in, voice like gravel and honey. “Then why do you keep staring at my mouth?”
That’s when I crack.
Just a little.
“I don’t want towantyou,” I whisper. “You make everything harder.”
“Good,” he says. “Means you’re alive.”
And then he leans in—slow, like he’s giving me time to stop him.
I don’t.
His lips brush mine like a spark touches dry tinder.
And the world tilts.
It’s not a kiss.
Not yet.
It’s apromise.
One I might just break every rule I’ve made to keep.
With the comms down and everyone else sealed into other quadrants, it’s just the two of us—two emergency cots, one ration pack, a backup power cell flickering like a drunk firefly, and the soft, menacing hum of Whiplash cycling through a full recharge. I pretend it’s fine. I pretend this is routine, like being locked in a pressure-sealed mech bay with Naull of all people isn’t the most dangerous situation I’ve been inall day.
I bury myself in work, curling my spine against a diagnostic pad and tapping commands into the portable relay panel. One of the servo stabilizers is lagging again, probably fried from the kaiju’s electromagnetic pulse, but the problem is fixable. Logical. Machine logic I can handle.
What Ican’thandle is the looming.
Naull has no concept of space. Of silence. Of peace. He moves around me like an oversized jungle cat with no claws buta lotof opinions.
“You’re slouching again,” he says.
I don’t even look up. “Because I’m working.”
“Poor posture leads to long-term spinal degradation.”
“You learned that from a cartoon, didn’t you?”
“No,” he says, pausing long enough to smirk, “from the human anatomy files I downloaded when I realized I liked watching you bend over.”
I groan and almost short the data line with the force of my eye roll.
“Here,” he says, reaching around me with a fusion clamp I didn’t ask for, didn’t need, and now can’t ignore. His arm brushes mine—scales warm like river stones, the texture somehow both rough and hypnotic.
