“Kiss me, then.”
She twined her arms around his neck, let her fingernails scrape against his scalp. And this time, when their lips met, there was nothing but a desperate need between them. His tongue moved with hers as he pressed his hard length against her center. He tasted like everything she’d been missing for months. For years.
“I’m sorry,” she panted against his mouth in between kisses. “I shouldn’t have left you. I was scared and…”
“I don’t care,” he growled. “I would do anything for you. Go to any lengths. When I broke free, I immediately followed.”
“Broke free? I told you I would release you. How did you…” She lifted his hand to inspect it. It had healed, but there was still evidence of the damage he’d done.
“This is nothing,” he breathed, capturing her palm in his. “I would have torn my entire arm off if I couldn’t get my broken hand through.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he continued. “You don’t understand. I didn’t want to be without you for even a second.Do you know what it does to me?” His voice was thick with pain and need. “And then after you took my knot…fuck.You’re my mate, you know that?Mine,” he rasped as he trailed hot kisses down her throat and nipped at her collarbone. “I couldn’t lose you again, so I followed. I arrived here two hours after you did.”
She shook her head as he lifted the thin material of her top and licked her ribs. “That’s impossible. I would have known, sensed you.”
“Hmm,” he rumbled against her flesh. “I stayed away. Watched you from a distance. Waited.”
“Waited for what?” she huffed.
He palmed her breast through her bra, brushed a thumb over her peaked nipple. She arched into his touch. “I was waiting until I could accept your denial honorably.”
“Oh?”
His naked brow was furrowed as he lifted his head. “Then I realized I would never be able to. How does one accept the loss of their hearts? There were times when I watched you and I knew you were feeling it, too. Weren’t you?”
“Yes,” Vessa confessed. She had tried not to. Pits, she’d been trying for far longer than even these last eight months they’d been apart. “Getting over you is the only battle I’ve never won.”
“Let me put us back together again. All of our broken pieces,” he rumbled.
“We can put each other back together.”
Chapter 18
Vessa
“That is quite a run session you had,”Liv mused, “and you brought back a stray.”
Vessa waved her AI companion away. Kedar had picked her up as they neared the hatch, and his huge hands spanned the curves of her backside. He navigated the interior as if he’d been living within it as long as she had. “Exactly how long were you in my ship on planet 815-208?” she asked.
“Only a minute,” he responded breathily.
“Twenty-three minutes, thirty-three seconds, and seven nanoseconds, actually.”
Vessa groaned. “Liv, some privacy.”
The AI made a derisive sound but said no more.
Her bedroom door slid open for him. The room was deliciously cool and dark compared to the rest of the ship. She unwound her legs from his torso as she nipped at his throat. “No tearing these clothes.”
And he didn’t, but the way he undressed her was with a barely contained frenzy.
“Fuck,” he muttered as he pulled down her shorts, and she flicked them away with her foot. He tore his own clothes off until there was nothing between them.
They were beyond everything butneed.Vessa was starved for him. His touch.
He stepped forward, guiding her back, with his head tilted down to stare at her. But there was so much weight in that violet gaze. A desperate hunger, unquestionable adoration.
“Kedar,” she murmured as her legs hit the edge of the bed. His pupils dilated at the sound of his name, his lips parted. She pushed herself back on her large bed, thanking her past self for the over-indulgence. But he didn’t follow her.
