I held you last night, he thought as she drove her elbow into his ribs.I felt your heartbeat against my chest.
She did not care. She wanted to win.
He adored her for it.
You said my name like it mattered, he thought as she ducked beneath his counterstrike and came up swinging.You let me see you vulnerable.
She did not care. She wanted him on the ground.
He would give her anything she wanted. Anything except an easy victory.
He stopped holding back.
The change was immediate. He saw her register it—the shift in his speed, his strength, the sudden absence of the restraint that had been limiting him. Her eyes widened behind her visor. Her breath caught.
She did not retreat.
She came at him harder.
Yes, he thought, and the word was a roar in his chest.Yes. Fight me. Prove yourself. Show me what you are.
She swung at his head. He caught her wrist.
She tried to twist free, using the momentum to drive her knee toward his midsection. He blocked it with his thigh, used her own movement against her, and took her to the ground in a single fluid motion.
She hit the earth with him on top of her. His weight pressed her into the soft loam, his hand pinning both her wrists above her head, his tail coiled around one of her legs to prevent her from gaining leverage. She bucked beneath him, trying to throw him off, and the movement sent fire racing through every nerve in his body.
He could smell her.
Finally—after days of distance and restraint, after a night of holding her while she slept and forcing himself to leave before she woke—he could smell her. Sweat and exertion and the sharp copper note of blood still healing beneath her armor. The lingering trace of his own scent on her skin, from the webbing she wore, from the hours she had spent pressed against his chest.
And beneath all of it, threaded through every other scent like gold through ore—arousal.
She wanted him.
She was still struggling. Still fighting. Her body strained against his grip, her muscles coiled with the effort of trying tobreak free. But her scent did not lie. Her body did not lie. She wanted this as much as he did.
The knowledge nearly undid him. His vision narrowed, his body responding to her scent with a ferocity that made his armor plates shift and realign. He had to fight for control, had to force his breathing to slow, had to remember that this moment was hers to decide.
"Choose," he said. The word came out rough—low, clicking alien sounds with English layered over them, his true voice rumbling beneath the translation. "Fight—or yield."
She stopped struggling.
Her chest heaved beneath him, her breath coming in ragged gasps, but she went still. Looked up at him through her visor with an intensity that made his chest ache.
She did not look away.
Her free hand—he had left one free, some part of him unwilling to restrain her completely—came up slowly and deliberately. Her fingers found the smooth surface of his helm, tracing the curve of it the way she had last night in the cave.
"Show me," she said. Her voice was steady. Certain. "Show me your face."
He went rigid.
Beneath the helm was everything he was. The scars that marked his years of service. The modifications that Kha'Ruun engineers had carved into his flesh. The evidence of what they had made him into—weapon and warrior and thing of violence, shaped by hands that cared nothing for beauty or comfort, only function.
No one saw that. No one had ever asked to see it. The helm was protection, yes, but it was also concealment. A mask that let him move through the universe without revealing what lay beneath.
She had touched his helm last night. Had traced its edges, had pressed her forehead against it, had let him hold her without ever seeing his face.
