He held my hand the whole way. Not leading me. Walking beside me. And his hand was shaking.
I looked down at it. The fingers that had killed a dozen men on the ridge, that had held a rifle steady through six hours of bleeding, that had cracked open the Sovereign’s vault. Shaking.
Because this mattered more than any of that.
We reached his door. He pressed his palm to the scanner but didn’t push it open. Looked at me. One breath. Two. The last moment before everything became permanent.
I reached past him and opened it myself.
His quarters were simple. Sparse. Functional. Bed. Desk. Storage. A viewport showing the stars.
The door sealed behind us with a soft hiss.
“Anhara.” My name on his lips, rough with want.
“Stop talking.”
I kissed him. Not soft. Not gentle. I kissed him like I’d been wanting to since I watched him almost die. Since I held his hand through hyperspace and prayed to gods I didn’t believe in. His hands fisted in my hair, tilting my head back, his mouth demanding everything I had to give.
He walked me backward toward the bed. My knees hit the edge. I fell, and he followed, his body covering mine. The weight of him was perfect. Solid. Real. Alive.
“I’ve wanted this,” he said against my throat. His tongue dragged across my pulse point, and I gasped. That feeling from the farmhouse, from our first time together, flooded back. His saliva doing something to my nerve endings. Making everything sharper. More intense. “Since that first night in your kitchen. Since you looked at me like I was worth seeing.”
“You are.” My voice came out breathy. Wrong. I couldn’t think when he was licking my neck like that. “Kallum...”
“I know what you need.”
He stripped my shirt over my head. His mouth found my collarbone, tongue tracing the ridge of bone, and I arched into him. Every place his lips touched buzzed with sensation. The euphoric agent in his saliva was flooding my system, turning my skin into a live wire.
My breast band followed. He cupped my breasts in his hands, thumbs brushing my nipples, and I moaned. When he sucked one peak into his mouth, I nearly came off the bed.
“Sensitive,” he murmured against my skin. “Good.”
He worked his way down my body. Stomach. Hip bone. The edge of my pants, which he peeled off with deliberate slowness. My underwear followed. I was bare beneath him, and he knelt between my legs, looking at me with those dark eyes.
“Beautiful,” he said.
“Kallum, please...”
“Please what?”
“Touch me. I need...”
He lowered his head.
The first stroke of his tongue made me cry out. The euphoric saliva combined with the direct stimulation was overwhelming. He licked me slowly, learning what made me gasp, what made me shake. When he found my clit and circled it with his tongue, my fingers twisted in the sheets.
“Oh god, oh...” I couldn’t form words. Could only feel.
He slid one finger inside me, careful of his claws, and I clenched around him immediately. He added a second, curling them to find that spot that made stars explode behind my eyes.
“That’s it,” he murmured against my clit. “Let go.”
The orgasm hit me like a wave. I screamed his name, my body convulsing, my thighs clamping around his head. He worked me through it, tongue and fingers relentless, drawing it out until I was sobbing.
He didn’t stop.
“Kallum, I can’t... it’s too...”
