His tail coiled around her thigh, thick and muscular and impossibly warm, pulling her legs apart with a slow, deliberate pressure. She gasped, arching into him, her body responding without her permission, heat pooling low in her belly and spreading outward like wildfire.
His breath washed over her neck, hot and damp, and that low rumble vibrated through his chest and into hers. The same sound he had made in the clearing. Amusement. Approval. Hunger.
She could feel the weight of his attention even without seeing his eyes. Could feel him looking at her, studying her, taking her measure in ways that went deeper than flesh. He saw her. All of her. Every secret, every fear, every dark and desperate want she had spent years trying to bury.
And he wanted her anyway.
The realization broke something open inside her. A dam she hadn't known she was holding. Suddenly she was pressing up against him, straining against his grip, not to escape but to get closer. To feel more. To take whatever he was offering and damn the consequences.
His rumble deepened. His grip tightened on her wrists.
And then his helm lowered toward her neck, and she felt a brush against her throat, lips or teeth or both, and?—
She woke gasping.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. Her skin burned beneath the armor, flushed and oversensitive, every nerve ending alive and aching. Her breath came in ragged gasps that echoed off the stone walls of the cave.
She was aching. Empty. Her body throbbed with a need so sharp it almost hurt, arousal pulsing between her thighs in time with her racing heartbeat.
The bio-armor had responded to her elevated state, she realized distantly. It pulsed faintly against her skin, adjusting to her temperature, her heart rate, the chemical signals flooding her system. It knew. The armor knew what she had been dreaming about, what her body wanted, what she?—
And suddenly she understood.
The integration. The way her senses had sharpened over the past weeks. The way his scent hit her like a drug, settling into her blood, making her body respond in ways her mind hadn't sanctioned. The way she dreamed of him, ached for him, wanted him with a desperation that felt foreign and familiar all at once.
The armor wasn't just protecting her. It was preparing her.
The Majarin had designed it this way. The Hyrakki had known. They had put this thing on her body and let it reshape her from the inside out, making her receptive, making her ready, reshaping her to bond with one of their warriors.
Responses, Morgan had said.You'll understand when you need to.
She understood now.
They hadn't told her. Morgan hadn't told her. No one had asked if she wanted to be changed.
Anger flared, hot and bright. She should tear the armor off. Should refuse to play their game, refuse to let them manipulate her body into wanting something her mind hadn't chosen.
But even as the thought formed, she felt the truth beneath it.
The armor hadn't created the want. It had only amplified what was already there. The attraction she'd felt from the first moment she saw him on that ridge. The heat that pooled in her belly when she breathed his scent. The way her body responded to his presence like it recognized him, like it had been waiting for him all along.
The armor had made her receptive. But the desire was hers.
That was the worst part. That was the part she couldn't forgive.
She wanted him anyway.
"No," she whispered. Her voice came out cracked, barely audible. "No."
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, trying to force the images away. The heat of him. The weight of him. The way she had arched into his grip like she wanted to be held down, wanted to be taken, wanted?—
What the hell was that?
She had no answer. Her body was still trembling, still aching, still desperate for something she refused to give it. She wanted to close her eyes again, wanted to sink back into the dream, wanted to find him in the dark behind her eyelids and finish what they had started.
She refused.
She sat rigid against the stone, weapon in her lap, eyes fixed on the cave entrance. The darkness beyond was absolute, impenetrable, and somewhere in it, he was watching. She knew he was watching. Could feel the weight of his attention even now, even from a distance, like a hand pressing against the back of her neck.
