“Yes?”
“You’re very close.”
“Yes.”
“That’s… distracting.”
He leaned down, his lips brushing the curve of her ear. “Good.”
She turned in his arms, and for one glorious moment he thought she would kiss him. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, her tongue darting out to wet her lips, and the sight sent a jolt of heat straight to his cock.
But then she ducked under his arm and retreated, her cheeks flaming.
“Boundaries,” she said, her voice slightly strangled. “We discussed boundaries.”
“Did we?”
“Rhyx.”
He grinned at her—another expression he’d learned from watching her face. “I remember no discussion of boundaries. Iremember a kiss. I remember you pulling away. I remember waiting.” He took a step towards her. “I have waited. Are you done thinking yet?”
“It’s not that simple?—”
“It is exactly that simple.” Another step. She backed up until her shoulders hit the cavern wall, and he bracketed her with his arms, not touching but close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body. “You want me. I feel it. I smell it. Your body knows what your mind refuses to accept.”
Her pupils dilated. “That’s… very presumptuous of you.”
“Is it wrong?”
She bit her lip. Her eyes darted to his lips again, and he felt a surge of triumph.
“No,” she finally admitted, barely above a whisper. “It’s not wrong.”
He kissed her then. Not the desperate, consuming kiss of their first time, but something softer. His lips moved gently against hers, coaxing rather than claiming, and when she sighed into his mouth and melted against his chest, he felt something in his chest expand with the impossible rightness of having her in his arms.
The kiss lasted longer this time. She let him explore the shape of her mouth, the texture of her tongue, the soft sounds she made when he found a particularly sensitive spot. Her hands came up to grip his shoulders, her fingers tracing the ridges of his scales with an urgency that made his skin tingle.
But eventually she pulled away again.
“Time,” she said, breathless. “I still need time.”
He nodded, though everything in him protested. “I will wait.”
“You’re very patient for someone who just woke up from a million-year nap.”
The joke surprised a laugh out of him. “I have waited a million years for you. What is a few more days?”
Her expression softened, and for a moment he saw past the walls she kept so carefully constructed to the vulnerability beneath, the fear and the hope and the desperate wanting. Then she blinked, and the walls were back.
“A few more days,” she agreed. “That’s all I’m asking.”
He didn’t point out that they might not have a few more days. He knew that the storm was already weakening, its fury fading as it exhausted itself against the mountains. The rescue she anticipated would come sooner rather than later, and with it, all the complications she so feared.
Instead, he let her go. He let her retreat to her devices and her research and the familiar comfort of her scientific detachment. And he plotted his next move.
That afternoon brought opportunity.
She had been examining a patch of bioluminescent moss near the far end of the cavern, her face pressed close to the glowing vegetation as she muttered readings into her tablet. He approached silently, his footsteps making no sound on the moss-covered floor. She was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t notice him until he was directly behind her, close enough to touch.
