This bond?
This connection?
It isn’t about prophecy.
It isn’t about legend.
It’s about proximity.
And it’s making itself known in every strained moment between us.
CHAPTER 23
VROK
Idon’t knock.
The door to Roxy’s quarters hisses shut behind me with a finality that tastes like copper on my tongue. My claws hover over the lock panel for a second too long, just breathing her in, then I jab the override and seal us in—every bolt sliding into place like a promise I don’t have time to keep. The room’s dark, just the faint amber wash of emergency lighting along the floor giving me enough to see her shape curled under thin blankets. It smells like her—warm skin, old soap, faint sparks of citrus from whatever she wore earlier. I breathe it in so deep it hurts.
I’m across the room before I know it. Boots still on. Blood still hot from too many nights holding back.
She stirs as I approach, lashes fluttering. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t speak. Just blinks those wide eyes at me like she already knows what I came for.
“Vrok?” her voice rasps.
I don’t answer with words.
My hand’s already in her hair, thumb at her temple, mouth crashing down on hers before she can finish another thought. She gasps into it, soft and startled, but she opens for me—mouthparting, body arching—and I lose the last thread of restraint I was clinging to.
I taste heat. Salt. Her.
I press her down into the mattress, crawling up over her like I belong there, like the stars spun their maps wrong and I’m here to rewrite them one kiss at a time. Her legs part instinctively, a soft whimper caught between us when my thigh slides between hers. She’s soft under me, pliant and already burning through my armor.
“You could’ve knocked,” she murmurs against my mouth.
“Didn’t want to give you the chance to say no.”
She huffs a laugh, breath shaky. “Like I would.”
I pull back just enough to look at her. “This isn’t careful, Roxy.”
She searches my face. “Do I look like I want careful?”
I bare my teeth. “You look like mine.”
And then I devour her.
Clothes don’t come off—they vanish. My claws make short work of her top, dragging the fabric away from heat I’m already tasting, already claiming with mouth and teeth and tongue. She gasps when I take her nipple into my mouth, arching hard into me, and I growl low in my throat, the sound vibrating against her skin.
Her hands are everywhere—clutching at my shoulders, raking down my back, sliding around to grip my horns like she knows what it does to me. I nearly black out.
“Roxy—” I snarl it against her breastbone. “You don’t know?—”
“Then show me,” she breathes, pulling my mouth back to hers.
She kisses like it’s the last air on the ship, and I kiss her back like I intend to die breathing it.
I slide my hand between her thighs and curse in Vakutan when I find her already soaked for me. She writhes under my touch, breath catching, hips chasing every stroke of my fingers. I work her open slowly, teasing the tight heat of her, mapping every gasp and hitch in her breath like I’m writing coordinates into bone.
