“Because you'll find me.” His hearts pound a war rhythm against my hand. “You'll always find me. You already proved that.”
A growl builds in his chest. The vibration transfers through my palm, travels up my arm, pools low in my belly. Possession and promise woven into a sound no human language can name.
“Any galaxy.” His forehead drops to mine, his breath hot against my lips. “Any corner of the universe you choose to run. There is nowhere I wouldn't follow. Nowhere you could hide that my blood wouldn't lead me back to you.”
His gaze traces the bruises on my temple, the marks on my arms where guards gripped too hard. His claws extend, retract, extend again in a rhythm that betrays the violence still simmering beneath his gentleness. “I should have been faster. I should have...”
“You came, and they're dead, and we're here.”
We breathe together, the rise and fall of our chests aligning until I can't tell where my exhale ends and his inhale begins. The claiming marks on my throat pulse with their own heat, responding to his proximity, remembering his mouth and his teeth and the sound of my name breaking on his lips.
“This needs to come off. Need to touch you. Kiss you. Taste you. Worship you.” His claws extend, retract, extend again as he fights for control.
I shiver. “Yes.”
He peels my sleep clothes from my body, gentle in a way that contradicts the violence still staining his fingers, and the ruined fabric drops to the floor.
I stand naked before him.
No armor. No barriers. Nothing between my skin and his gaze but the dim light and the trust I've placed in a male who could destroy me without effort. The air cools my exposed flesh, tightening my nipples, raising goosebumps along my arms. He looks at me the way the devout look at altars. Not assessing. Not counting wounds. Memorizing. Claiming without touch.
I've been naked in front of other men. Field medics don't have room for modesty when there's shrapnel to extract and wounds to close. This is different. Under his gaze, I'm not a body. I'm a benediction.
His lips find the bruise on my temple. Momentarily press against it. Trail down to the marks on my jaw, my throat, the place where his claiming bite still throbs with heat that has nothing to do with damage.
“Every bruise.” The words vibrate against my skin, dark with promise. “Every mark they left on you. I will repay tenfold. Their pain will last for days before I let them die.”
“They were following your father's orders.” I don't know why I say it. Don't know why I offer mercy to males who dragged me from a bed still warm with his scent.
His head lifts. Pain flickers through his expression first, then anger, then the cold mask of the Chief Enforcer who built his reputation on a mountain of bodies. “They still chose. Every male who touched you made a choice. My father gave the order, but their hands carried it out.”
Beneath the hardness, I see what he's trying to bury. Guilt, corrosive and deep, eating at the edges of his rage.
“This isn't your fault.”
“If I hadn't wanted you...” His jaw tightens. “If I had kept my distance. Treated you as debt instead of...”
“I did my share of choosing.” I cup his face between my palms, force him to meet my gaze. “You didn't drag me into your bed. You didn't make me want you. I walked into this knowing the cost, Drazex. I chose you. Every step of the way, I chose you. So if there's fault to carry, we carry it together.”
His breath shudders out of him. The tension in his shoulders doesn't release, but it shifts. Guilt held alone becoming burden shared.
I pull him closer, hands fisted in his hair, denying him the distance his guilt demands. “I’m here and I’m yours. That’s all that matters.”
A sound escapes his chest, somewhere between growl and groan, and his mouth claims mine. Hungry. Consuming. Erasing the hours of separation, the fear, the cold stone beneath my body while strays pressed warmth against the bars that caged me.
His tongue strokes against mine in a rhythm that promises what his body intends to deliver. He traces patterns on my lipswith his tongue, my teeth, the roof of my mouth, and sensation spreads outward until my skin feels too small to contain what he's building.
I pull at his clothing, urgent, needing. The blood-stained fabric needs to go. I need to see him, touch him, map the body that crossed a compound and carved through enemies to reach me.
He helps, shrugging out of his shirt in a fluid motion that shouldn't exist in a male vibrating with barely leashed need. The charcoal skin beneath bears new marks. Evidence of the violence he walked through to find me. A plasma graze across his ribs. A bruise purpling on his shoulder. Small wounds that prove the cost he paid without hesitation.
I press my mouth to each one. Salt and heat and the taste that belongs only to him, flooding my senses until the room disappears and the world narrows to this. His skin beneath my lips. The tremors moving through his body as I trace his survival with kisses instead of sutures.
“Maeve.” My name has become a warning. His control is fraying beneath my attention, and the sound he makes when I trace my tongue along the darker striping on his ribs sends heat flooding between my thighs.
I've touched him before. Learned the planes and angles of his body during rushed claiming that left no room for exploration. This is different. I'm not racing toward relief. I'm savoring. Memorizing. Building a map of this male.
I follow the darker patterns toward his waistband. He catches my wrist before I reach my destination, and his silver eyes blaze with want so intense it steals my breath.
