His hands fumbled with her shirt, tugging it from her pants. When his fingers connected with her stomach, she inhaled a shocked breath. Electricity rippled through her body, feeling like she’d just received a surge from a malfunctioning terminal. He explored higher, brushing against her ribs, then the side of her breasts hidden beneath a layer of underwear.
She inhaled sharply, loving his hands on her skin. But it wasn’t enough.
“Backward,” she rasped, giving him a shove.
He complied, but kept her against him, their footsteps in time with each other. One step was followed by more until the door to her quarters opened at their approach. They passed through, and the lights turned on, brighter than those in the hallway.
She squinted against the glare, then froze. Everything came into focus. Iax’s eyes glinted down at her, holding an untapped wildness. His fingers flexed against her skin.
Panic swept away the haze of her lust.I was about to do it with a Calypson.
Wynn retreated. He followed for a step, then his hands dropped away from her body.
“Um.” She cleared her throat around the hard lump of regret lodged there. “This probably isn’t a good idea.”
She braced herself for his reaction, waiting for him to convince her to continue down this path. So many times, she’d put on the brakes with a guy because she felt nothing, and he’d try to change her mind, urge her to take an enhancer. It was only intercourse, after all.
This time she put on the brakes because she felt too much.
Iax only blinked at her, his chest rising and falling in gasping breaths, the rhythm mimicking her own.
Questions flooded her mind. Did he even understand where this had been headed? Did he feel this burning need the same way she did? Was this all as new to him as it was to her? His expression revealed nothing.
No, that wasn’t quite true. His parted lips, the focus he gave her, the way his fingers twitched at his sides like he wanted to grab her again, and the bulge straining against the front of his pants—she reacted to his needs as much as her own.
“I…” She ran a hand over her hair and surveyed her room, if only to break his intense stare. “I have some work I need to do.”
She hadn’t checked on the central hub’s reports since the snow began, and she needed to make sure there were no adverse effects in the greenhouse with the drop in temperature. There were the new seeds she’d planted too, and the damaged sapling.
A list built in her mind even while her body hummed with frustration. She wanted to continue where they’d left off, needed it with every cell in her body, but she also knew how absolutely unhinged giving into that would be—even if she’d never achieved the sensations currently rioting in her body.
You don’t have sex with a Calypson.
It was idiocy at its highest. She needed to get her head on straight.
Wynn took a step backward, then paused. Her body and heart told her not to leave him, an unfamiliar ache forming in her belly that tugged her closer, almost like a power cord connected them and she’d rather have it slack than pulled tight.
One step forward, then another, she stopped when their chests almost touched, staring up at him. She took a deep breath, inhaling his comforting scent.
“This might sound weird,” she said, examining his face, “but I’d like to keep you close.”
A beat of silence thrummed between them, then he tilted his head, nodding once. “I would like to stay close.”
Her shoulders relaxed, a warm sensation filling her chest. “Come,” she said, taking his hand in hers.
Tingles spread through her hand and up her arm at the connection. She inhaled a quick breath, regretting that she’d put a stop to things.
We could continue.
No!All the reasons she’d just given herself remained, and there were so many more that simmered below the surface.
Tomorrow.Hope laced the insistent thought. If the storm continued to rage, if they were stuck here longer, then she had more time to come to terms with these raw, untried feelings inside her.
And if not…
She swallowed. As far as she knew, he was still determined to take her to Sector Ten. She hadn’t tried to convince him otherwise. And why was that?
But if the CORE government found him here, it wouldn’t end well. The best she could do would be to convince him to leave on his own when the storm died down, before anyone arrived to check on her.
