“But you don’t look like a monster,” I say, echoing words he once said to me. “You don’t look fully human right now, but I’m not frightened by you. Should I be?”
Yes, answers a distant voice in my brain.
If I were thinking rationally, I should walk away from this strange man’s too-keen eyes and his measured words with hidden meanings. If I were thinking rationally, I shouldn’t have run up this hill to begin with.
Unfortunately, rationality left me the moment I spotted the streak of dawn on the horizon, which is why I hold my ground while he leans in closer to ask, “The better question is: should I fearyou?”
I blink. “Why would you fear me?”
“Because you’re . . .” He pauses, pupils dilating as they search my own for the right words. “ . . . an unexpected distraction.”
The way he grimaces as he says distraction makes it seem like it’s one of the worst possible things I could be. To him, maybe it is. What was it he said to me at the selection ceremony?
“Soldiers can’t afford to feel. We are one distraction away from death.”
Something flutters in my stomach as I process the implication. “If I’m a distraction, does that mean you feel things for me?”
I regret the words as soon as they’re out. They’re too bold, too vulnerable.
And yet, Kalden answers anyway. “Unfortunately, yes.”
Before I can ask for clarification on why that’s unfortunate, he lifts a hand to brush a few rogue curls from my face, tucking them behind my ear. Silencing my mind. Stilling my breaths and body.
“You make me feel . . . too many things.” His fingertips trail a line from my ear to my chin
“Like what?” I dare to ask.
“Frustration,” he breathes while tugging on my bottom lip, and Igasp at the hungry flames erupting beneath his touch.
“Curiosity.” His thumb travels back and forth across my lip, the twin suns of his irises flashing brighter as he toys with me.
His thumb presses harder. “Desire.”
Lifting onto my tiptoes, I lower my gaze to his full, crooked mouth in a silent plea.
He pulls his hand away, and I fear the moment is over before it’s truly begun.
But then he wraps his fingers into my hair, gently tugging my head back while lowering his face to mine. His lips are tender as they press tentatively into my own, testing me.
Stoking the flames, I pull him closer, my hands roving along the bare skin of his neck. Like mine, it’s pebbled. The knowledge that my kiss elicits the same response in him as his does in me emboldens me to press further into him.
A guttural vibration emanates from his throat, nearly stopping my heart from beating. Yet Kalden still restrains himself, and I’ve had enough. I nip at his lower lip, pulling his mouth further open, commanding him without having to say a word. And he obeys.
There’s nothing tender about the way he claims my mouth, then the sensitive area at the base of my neck. Nothing cautious about the way I groan into his ear, or the way his fingers dig into my hips as I hook my legs around his waist. The energy beneath my skin rises and rises until it erupts, enveloping us both in an invisible inferno. I pull away, making sure I’m not actually causing him harm, but he tugs me back to reclaim my mouth. The contact of his lips against mine ignites another hot, pulsing wave that consumes my senses. And it’s like I can feel his innermost essence exploring my own.
Kissing Kalden is like being devoured by the sun itself, and delighting in every second of it, while needing more. More heat.Moreskin. More everything.
I pull back to glare at his leather bodysuit, wishing there was a better way to rip it off him without ruining his only attire. I suppose we could make do with loosening the buttons securing the thin removable strip of leather between our legs, but that’s hardly ideal.
“You really are a distraction,” Kalden says, noting where my focus has drifted. He chuckles into my lips before sliding me back down to my feet. “As much as I’m intrigued by the direction of your thoughts, we should retrieve our helmets before the others wake, if they haven’t already.”
It takes several seconds for the lust-induced ringing in my ears to settle down enough for me to comprehend Kalden’s words.
“Oh,” I say, inwardly flinching at the disappointment in my tone. I release my clenched fingers from around his neck and clear my throat. “Good point. Gem will probably freak if I’m not there when she wakes up.”
Gabe, too, though I don’t mention his name aloud.
Come to think of it, this is the first I’ve thought of my ex-husband since . . . Well, since I left him behind an hour or so ago. But now that I have, the last embers of lust extinguish as I consider how Gabe might feel if he discovers I threw myself at another man less than twelve hours after denying him and spending the night sleeping beneath his arm.
