The taste of him was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Clean and sharp and electric, like the air after a lightning strike. His tongue mapped the inside of her mouth with the same methodical thoroughness he’d applied to learning English, and she found herself wondering distantly if this was how he approached everything—with complete and total dedication, leaving no corner unexplored.
God, I hope so.
Eventually, oxygen became a concern. She pulled back, gasping, and found him staring at her with an expression of nakedwonder. His chest heaved beneath her palms, his heart racing as fast as hers.
“Alina,” he breathed. Just her name, nothing more, but the way he said it made her eyes sting with unexpected tears.
“This is still a bad idea,” she managed.
“Yes.”
“Everything I said before still applies. The storm will end. People will come looking. We don’t have a plan?—”
“Later.”
“Rhyx—”
“Later.” He pressed his forehead against hers again, his breath warm and uneven. “For now, just this. Just you and me and this cave and this moment. The future can wait.”
She knew she should point out that the future never waited, that it came whether you were ready or not and that pretending otherwise was foolish and dangerous and everything a scientist shouldn’t do.
But she was tired of being a scientist. Tired of being rational and careful and responsible. Tired of running, even when she was standing still.
So instead of arguing, she kissed him again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kissing.
The word didn’t do it justice. It couldn’t possibly encompass the explosion of sensation that had ripped through Rhyx when Alina’s mouth touched his—soft and warm and impossibly perfect against lips that had never known such contact.
His people had not kissed. His memories were fragmented, scattered like shards of broken glass, but he was certain of this. They had touched foreheads, shared breath, twined tails in displays of affection and devotion. But this—this pressing of mouths, this tangling of tongues, this exchange of taste and heat and desperate need—was something entirely new.
Something entirely hers.
And now that he’d experienced it, he couldn’t imagine existing without it.
She had pulled back after their first kisses, her cheeks flushed a delicate pink, her breathing ragged, and her eyes wide. He’dwanted to chase her lips and recapture that electric connection, but something in her expression had stopped him.
“I need time,” she’d said. “This is… a lot. I need time to think.”
The words had cut deeper than they should have. He knew she was pulling away, retreating into that busy mind of hers, the one that never stopped spinning, but he had let her go. He’d watched her retreat to her favorite spot beneath the vines and forced himself to give her the space she requested even as every instinct screamed at him to close the distance.
Patience,a voice whispered in the back of his mind. A memory that wasn’t quite his own from that colder side of him.Some battles are won through waiting.
So he waited.
Two days. Two days of watching her flit around the cavern with her strange devices, scanning rocks and plants and bone-like structures, muttering to herself in that rapid stream of words she used when she was excited or frustrated or both. Two days of helping her collect water and berries, of answering her endless questions about the cavern’s ecosystem, and pretending he didn’t notice the way her eyes kept drifting to his mouth.
Two days of slowly, methodically, driving her mad.
A hand on her shoulder as he passed. His fingers brushing hers when he handed her a container of water. His hand curling around her ankle as they sat together, then retreating before she could object.
She noticed. Of course she noticed. She was a scientist, trained to observe, and he was not exactly subtle. But instead of pullingaway, she leaned into the touches, her body betraying what her words refused to admit.
On the second morning, he found her struggling to reach a cluster of berries growing high on one of the vines. Without thinking, he stepped up behind her, his chest pressing against her back as he reached around her to pluck the berries. She went still in his arms, her breathing shallow and her heart racing.
“Rhyx,” she breathed.
