The panic behind my eyes instantly shatters. My shaking stops. My pulse slows, dragged down by force to match the rhythmic thud of his heart.
The friction of his thighs bracketing my hips sends a sharp, brutal spike of arousal dropping straight to my core.
My brain is screaming that we are sitting in a devastated cavern. My body ignores it, focusing solely on the dominating, feral heat vibrating against my stomach.
I press my face into his thick neck, wet tears soaking into his starfield skin.
He holds me so tight my ribs ache with his every breath.
“We’ll get her back,” I swallow the words against his throat.
He doesn’t lift his head. He shifts his jaw, pressing his forehead hard into my collarbone.
“Yes.” The projection hits my brain.
The small stone he gave me presses into my hip through the fabric of my pocket.
I am done fighting this planet. I am done fighting everything. I close my eyes. I breathe in the dark musk of his skin. Because there is only one word I have for him, too.
Yes.
His arm abruptly tightens, pulling me higher against his chest, as if picking the thought straight out of my blood.
Chapter 17
AY DIOS MÍO, SON DOS
ERIKA
His arm tightens around me like a vice, hauling me up higher against his chest until the back of my head knocks against the hard ridge of his collarbone.
His breathing shifts. That slow, steady anchor I’ve been holding on to for the past few hours is absolutely gone. His inhale catches, and I feel his ribs expand sharply right under my cheek.
Against my hip, the entire length of his thigh tenses up. The thick muscle jumps. He’s burning so hot right now it feels like a fever straight through the canvas of my cargo pants.
He drops his head, pressing that blazing forehead hard against mine.
“I cannot stay here.”
The projection hits the inside of my skull. It’s rough. Barely controlled.
Before I can even process an answer, he’s moving. His free arm sweeps under my knees and he stands up in one fluid surge, taking me right up into the air with him. My hands automatically lock around the thick column of his neck.
He turns his back on the small recess in the cavern rock and effectively vanishes up the steep, pitch-black incline leading to the high ledges. He moves so incredibly fast the rock walls just blur past us. I bury my face in the curve of his throat. He smells so good. But his pulse is way too fast. It’s an erratic, terrifying hammering against my lips.
He’s hiding me away like feral treasure even as his body breaks down.
It doesn’t take long before the narrow tunnel opens up into his alcove.
It’s exactly as I remember from the feverish, exhausted night I spent recovering in it. I remember the curved walls, the raised stone shelf, the thick furs. Back then, it was a dark refuge. Now, the intense heat pouring off him is turning the entire space into a literal oven.
He steps up to the large stone shelf and sets me softly onto the furs, breaking my fall as if I am the most fragile thing in the universe.
The second my boots clear his body, the whole alcove erupts with blinding light.
The points of white starlight etched across his blackened skin stop pulsing and start tospin, swirling inward as if something at his center is pulling them down. A grunt tears from his chest. His back hits the far wall of the alcove, a deep vibration going through the stone with the impact.
His chest heaves, the scraping sound of his inhale echoing off the stone.
