“I don’t know,” she said again. It was becoming a refrain.
“Alina.” His free hand came up to cup her chin, tilting her face towards his. “I do not understand your world. Your rules, your fears, your strange clothing and stranger machines. But I understand this.” He pressed her hand more firmly against his chest. “You feel the same thing I feel. The connection between us.”
“Rhyx—”
“Tell me I am wrong.”
She couldn’t. God help her, she couldn’t, because he wasn’t wrong. She’d felt it from the moment he opened his eyes, from the moment his fingers wrapped around hers and refused to let go. Some bone-deep recognition, some certainty that defiedlogic and reason and everything she thought she knew about the universe.
“This is a bad idea,” she whispered.
“Probably.”
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
“I know enough.” His thumb traced along her jaw, and she shivered despite herself. “I know you are afraid. I know you think too much. I know you would sacrifice your own happiness to keep me safe.” His eyes met hers, blue and gold and depthless. “I know I want you more than I have ever wanted anything in any of my lives.”
“Any of your—wait, what do you mean, lives?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned down and pressed his forehead against hers, a gesture that felt impossibly intimate. His breath was warm against her lips, his scent filling her lungs—a spicy musk unlike anything she’d ever encountered.
“Be with me,” he said. “Stop running. Stop planning. Stop worrying about storms and strangers and futures that may never come. Just… be.”
“I’m not running?—”
“You are always running. Even when you stand still, your mind runs. Racing ahead, looking for danger, calculating risks.” His hands slid down to her shoulders, holding her gently but firmly. “For once in your life, Alina Falkner, stop running.”
It was the use of her full name that broke her. She didn’t remember telling him that, and yet he knew it, and hearing it inhis voice—rough and low and impossibly tender—shattered the last of her resistance.
She still turned away.
Not to run, though that’s what her instincts screamed at her to do. Just to breathe. Just to think. Just to have one moment where she wasn’t looking into those eyes and feeling herself dissolve.
It was a mistake.
His hand caught her wrist before she’d taken a full step, and then she was being pulled backward, falling right into his arms.
The cavern tilted. Or maybe that was her. Her back hit his chest, and then somehow she was facing him, his arms wrapped around her like bands of living steel, her feet barely touching the ground. His face was inches from hers, close enough that she could count the individual scales along his jaw, see the flecks of dark gold in those bright blue eyes.
“No more running,” he said.
And then he kissed her.
The world stopped.
Or maybe it was just her heart. His lips were warm and firm and nothing like she’d expected—softer than they looked, shaped slightly differently from a human’s but somehow fitting perfectly against hers. The kiss was gentle at first, almost tentative, as if he was learning the shape of her mouth the same way he’d learned the shape of her language. Testing. Tasting. Cataloging.
Then her hands came up to grip his shoulders, and something in him seemed to snap.
His arms tightened around her, lifting her until her feet left the ground entirely. The kiss deepened, became something hungry and desperate. She gasped against his mouth and he swallowed the sound, one hand sliding up to tangle in her hair, pulling it free from its messy bun. Blonde strands cascaded over his fingers, and he made a sound low in his throat that vibrated through her entire body.
This is insane,the rational part of her brain insisted.I’m kissing an alien. An ancient alien being who might be millions of years old. This can’t possibly end well.
She told the rational part of her brain to shut up.
Her fingers found the ridges of his scales, tracing them with the same careful attention she’d give a particularly fascinating rock sample. He shuddered beneath her touch, his grip tightening until it was almost painful. His tongue—longer and rougher than a human’s, she noted with the clinical detachment of a scientist even as the rest of her melted into a puddle of want—traced the seam of her lips, requesting entry.
She granted it.
