"It suits you." Her voice is husky. "Better than goober."
"I don't know… Iamstill a goober."
She laughs, and I set her down gently, the water swirling around us. We don't let go of each other.
What follows is slow and tender and unhurried. We take our time in the pool, washing away the grit and sand from each other's skin. My hands trace the patterns of her scales, learning the way they lie smooth in one direction and catch slightly in the other. She maps the unfamiliar terrain of my skin with the same careful attention, her fingertips trailing along the lines of muscle, pausing at old scars and tracing them with a light touch.
"What happened here?" she asks, her thumb brushing a raised line across my ribs.
"Trampoline. I was twelve and convinced I could do a backflip. I came down wrong, almost bounced off my face instead of my feet, and landed in a chain-link fence."
"Did you ever manage the backflip?"
"No. But I did manage to almost give my mother a heart attack."
She laughs into my skin, and I feel it everywhere.
I pour water over her hair and work the sand free with careful fingers, and she makes a sound low in her throat that nearly undoes me. She does the same for me, her nails scratching lightly across my scalp, and I understand why people traveled across Ceraste for these springs.
With every touch, the heat between us builds, like a rising tide. Her hands linger longer. My breath comes shorter. I catch her looking at me with golden eyes gone dark, her lips parted, and my chest pulls tight as a bowstring.
"A'Vanti," I say, her name is like a benediction on my lips.
She responds by pressing her mouth to the curve of my shoulder, and that's it. That's the end of my restraint.
I scoop her out of the water, one arm under her knees, the other around her back, and she wraps her arms around my neck and buries her face against my throat. She's warm and wet and clinging to me, and I carry her through the shallows, water streaming off us both, the cave air raising goosebumps on my skin.
I carry her to our shelter, ducking through the entrance, and lay her down on the nest of mattress pads and blankets we'd arranged earlier. The lantern light filters through the shelter's walls, casting everything in a weak amber glow.
A'Vanti pulls me down to her, and the rest of the world disappears. The storm above us, the sand, the distance between our two worlds. All of it is gone. There is only this. Only her.
Only us.
CHAPTER 13
A'Vanti
The blankets are soft beneath my back, Cody is solid above me, and there is nothing else in the universe but this.
His mouth finds mine again. There is no hesitation in it. It is certain and thorough and unhurried, as though he has all the time in the world and intends to use every moment of it on me. His hands cradle my face, thumbs tracing the line of my jaw, and I feel precious beneath him. Wanted. Not for what my body represents to a dying species, not for the offspring I might produce, but for me. Just me.
I cannot catch my breath. I do not want to.
His lips leave mine and trail along the edge of my jaw, finding a sensitive spot beneath my ear. A sound escapes me that I did not authorize, gasping and raw, and I feel him smile against my skin. He presses a kiss there, then another, working his waydown my neck in a slow, deliberate path that makes my pulse hammer beneath his mouth.
I stare up at the ceiling of our shelter, the fabric glowing amber with lantern light, and I realize that this is what it feels like to be cherished.
Cody takes his time. Every kiss is placed with intention, as though he is memorizing me. The hollow of my throat. The ridge of my collarbone. The place where my scales shift from pale gold to deeper amber along the curve of my shoulder. He lingers there, his lips reverent, each kiss waking a new nerve. I arch into him without meaning to.
"You're so beautiful," he murmurs, and the words vibrate through me.
I have been told I am beautiful before. By males who assessed me the way one appraises a gemstone, for value and utility. Cody says it like a man who cannot believe his luck. Like beauty is the least of what he sees, but he cannot help mentioning it anyway.
His mouth moves lower, pressing slow, sucking kisses along the center of my sternum, down between my breasts. I watch him in the dim light, his broad shoulders silhouetted by the shelter wall, his head dark against the gold of my skin. I cannot see his face clearly, only the shape of him, the careful movement of his body as he works his way down mine. But I canfeeleverything. Every press of his lips. Every heated breath across my scales.
He kisses the curve beneath my breast. The dip of my waist. The swell of my hip. Each one deliberate, as though he is drawing a map of me with his mouth, charting territory he intends to claim. My fingers find his hair, still damp from the pool, and I cling to him.
When he reaches the juncture of my thighs, he pauses. I feel him lift his head, and even in the low light, I see him looking up at me.
