She slid down the trunk, bark scraping against her armor, and sat in the dirt with her knees drawn up and her hands shaking.
She had thought she'd be immune to this.
That had been the plan, hadn't it? Take the money, survive the Hunt, go home. He was an alien, for god's sake. Eight feet of armored predator with claws and a tail and a face she'd never seen. She had watched the briefing videos with clinical detachment, had filed away the information about Kha'Ruun mating rituals like it was evidence in someone else's case. Interesting. Irrelevant. Nothing to do with her.
Her body's reaction had surprised her.
No, that was a lie. Her body's reaction hadambushedher. From the first moment she'd caught his scent, from the first time she'd felt the weight of his attention on her skin, she had been responding in ways she hadn't anticipated. Ways she couldn't control.
And maybe she knew why.
Morgan and Leonie. The two human women who ran the matching program, who had greeted her in Costa Rica with calm competence and knowing eyes. They had alien mates. Had chosen this life, this bond, this existence between worlds.
She'd expected trauma. Damage. Instead she'd found two women who moved through the world like they owned it. Settled. Whole. Women who had found a life worth keeping and knew exactly what it had cost them.
They hadownedtheir alien unions. Worn them like armor of their own.
Maybe that had started a crack inside her. A fissure in the wall she'd built. A whisper that saidwhat ifin a voice she'd tried very hard not to hear.
Serafina.
Her name. He knew her name. Had probably known it from the beginning, from the moment she'd set foot on this island. Maybe longer. Maybe he'd been watching her files, her briefings, learning everything about her while she learned almost nothing about him.
And he could speak. That low, grinding voice, like nothing human, like nothing she'd ever heard. He'd been silent for four days. Had let her believe he was mindless, animalistic, operating on instinct alone.
He wasn't. He had been choosing silence. Choosing when to break it.
Choosing to break it with her name.
What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck.
That night,alone in her camp, she couldn't stop thinking about it.
Not just the weight of him. Not just the heat. Not just the way he'd pinned her so easily, held her like she weighed nothing, like he could have done anything he wanted and she couldn't have stopped him.
The way he'd gotten harder when she fought back.
The way his armor had thinned to let her feel it.
The way he'd said her name.
Serafina.
She lay in the darkness, staring at nothing, and felt her body respond to the memory. Heat building between her thighs. A restless ache that wouldn't fade no matter how she tried to ignore it.
Don't, she told herself.This is insane. He's not even human. He's?—
Her hand slid beneath her armor before she could talk herself out of it.
The bio-suit responded to her intent, parting where she needed it to, and then her fingers found slick heat and she stopped thinking entirely.
She thought of him. His size. His strength. The snarl he'd made when she'd kneed him, when she'd headbutted his helm like an idiot. The way his grip had tightened. The way his arousal had pressed against her, deliberate, unmistakable.
The way he'd said her name like he owned it.
Makrath.
The name surfaced unbidden. The name she'd learned in training, studied in briefings, a word that shouldn't mean anything to her.
