“Thank you.” Overwhelmed by everything we’d shared last night, this morning, and nowthis, I felt tears threaten.
Shade stood beside me, just our knuckles brushing. “This is my favorite place in the galaxy.”
The knot in my throat tightened, my eyes prickled, and I got the same feeling as when I rounded a corner on Starway 8 and suddenly came face-to-face with the bright, swirling colors of the Rafini Nebula. Reverence. Amazement. Fascination. And maybe, just possibly, the stirring of belief in somethingother.
“What we were talking about earlier? Faith?” Shade turned to me. “I’ve been thinking. I’ve lost things, but I haven’t lost everything.” His eyes met mine, his dark-amber gaze more open than I’d ever seen it. “And maybe, I’ve gained more than I ever thought possible.”
Emotion charred a pathway to my heart, incinerating all defenses. “I’ve never, ever been in a place that stirred me the way Starway 8 does. But this…” I trailed off on a shuddering breath. “Who would have thought that a jungle on Reaginine might reinvent me?”
A soft smile curved Shade’s lips as he looked out over the vista again, his eyes seeming fixed on the golden tip of the Grand Temple. At midsummer on this part of Reaginine, light from the Great Star pointed straight down through the hole in the top of the temple, lighting up Her image carved into the floor and kicking off the galaxy-wide festival of Emergence—the supposed birth of the celestial being. Believers across the eighteen Sectors took that day to rejoice, no matter the season where they were, or how seasonless their home in the Dark might be. I’d never bought into it, but right now, I couldn’t deny feelingsomething.
“I’ll never try to make you believe one thing or another, but I look around me”—Shade’s eyes lighted on the temples, the jungle, the waterfall and swimming hole—“especially here, and I can’t help thinking there’s something that makes all of this more than just random.”
Under the warm rays of the Great Star, I almost started to understand the faithful and their devotion. Maybe it was just the moment, the beauty, and looking out over a place that people flocked to because they believed so hard in something they couldn’t see or touch or prove existed. We’d abandoned our old God for this one. Somewhere down the line, we’d abandon the Sky Mother for the nextwhateverin a long line of them. Maybe they were all one and the same, so it didn’t matter what we called them. Or maybe there was no greater power, nothing except for what the collision of imperfectly balanced matter and antimatter had given us.
“I might start my own church,” I said, suddenly desperate to lighten the mood again. “The Church of the Big Bang has a nice ring to it.”
A chuckle ghosted past Shade’s lips. “Will you worship photons?”
“Well, and gravity. And subatomic particles. I might throw in some quarks as my Powers.”
“Should you have been a physicist instead of a thieving rebel?” He arched his brows, sounding impressed. Too bad I had to burst his bubble.
“No. I pretty much just exhausted my knowledge.”
He grinned and reached for me, pulling me against him and settling his hands on my waist. “You know what quarks do when they’re together?”
We stood toe-to-toe. I draped my arms around his neck. “I’m afraid I missed that lesson. Mareeka was always making me clean the air ducts on Starway 8 because I kept skipping out on math and sciences.”
“Quarks latch on to one another.” Shade tugged us even closer, demonstrating. I angled my hips forward, warmth spreading through me. He pressed back a little. “And the harder you try to separate them, the harder they hold on to each other.”
I looked at him through my lashes. “Are you asking me to be your quark, Shade Ganavan?”
“Baby, you’re my quark and then some.” He dipped his head and kissed me.
My eyes fluttered closed, and a lavalike heat rose in my blood faster than I’d have thought possible. Shade kissed my jaw, my neck. My breathing accelerated. My bones grew heavy. He dragged his lips down the column of my throat. I tilted my head for him. At the hollow of my neck, he opened his mouth against my skin and thrust his tongue against me.
I gasped, the muscles between my legs heating and clenching. Arousal blazed inside me, urging me to move against him. Shade’s heavy hands anchored me, keeping me still. Our lips fused again for a kiss that only made me more desperate for friction. Our mouths and tongues didn’t satisfy the need building and throbbing like a primitive drumbeat deep inside my body. Tearing off my clothes, clutching Shade’s shoulders, and climbing up him had just moved to the top of my priority list.
I broke away. “Jungle sex,” I panted.
“Let’s go swimming,” Shade said at the same time.
We stared at each other. He grinned like a loon. I blinked and then grinned also.
“I like the way you think, starshine.” Desire was a bright lick of flame in his eyes, and I knew I could convince him. I also knew he wanted to get in that beautiful clear pool for the first time in more than a decade.
“We’ll finish this later?” The pressure between my thighs protested the decision, but the rest of me thought swimming sounded fantastic.
The promise burning in Shade’s expression flipped my belly inside out. “I wouldn’t miss it,” he vowed.
I glanced at the pool. “I might have to punish you for teasing me like this.”
He hummed low under his breath. “I’ll look forward to that.”
“You won’t like it.” I’d grown up in an orphanage with thousands of kids. I was pretty inventive when it came to payback.
His eyes smoldered, somehow growing in intensity, and they’d already been melting me on the spot. “We’ll see about that.”
