Page 43 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

"And you've been feeling everything I feel."

He tensed beneath my shoulder. The reaction was physical, but beneath it came a faint echo of alarm that was not mine. Now that he'd named the bond, I could separate that second signal from my own feelings.

"For me, the first tier has carried your broad emotions since the ship," he said. "For you, it was background you could not identify. Knowing what to recognize — and touching me — lets some of my emotions echo back. Proximity makes the meanings louder. A kiss may widen the channel. Consummation would open the third tier: permanent bilateral integration across significant distance. No thoughts. No words. No control."

"So when I was in that pool..."

"Taylor."

"You FELT that?"

"Taylor."

I was grinning. His markings were incandescent. The glow showed through his undershirt, running down his chest, and I was seized with a curiosity so intense it was almost physical — what did the rest of them look like? How far did they go? What would happen if I touched the ones on his ribs, his hips, the ones I'd glimpsed below his collar?

I reached out. Slowly. Deliberately. I touched his forearm. Not his wound, not an accident — his marking. I pressed two fingers to the glowing line that ran from his wrist toward his elbow.

Light detonated across him. I watched it cascade from the contact point outward, like dropping a stone in water. He made that sound—low, involuntary—the one that stripped away the warrior and training and left just him, raw.

"Does that feel good?" I whispered.

He didn't answer with words. His hand came up and covered mine, pressing my fingers harder against the marking. Holding me there. His eyes closed. His breathing changed.

"If we start, I will want to keep going," he said. His voice was rough. Unrecognizable. "I will still stop the moment you ask."

I looked at him. This alien man who had been fighting himself for over a week, suppressing a biological imperative that was literally written in light on his body. Who had protected me and respected me and agonized over every boundary. Who was telling me, even now, that wanting did not outrank my boundary.

I traced the marking from his wrist to his elbow. Slowly. Watching the light follow my fingers like it was chasing my touch.

"Maybe I don't want you to stop," I said.

He opened his eyes. Violet. Dilated. The slit pupils were wide, almost round, and in the glow of his own markings his face was beautiful and alien and exactly right.

He kissed me.

18

KEL

Ikissed her and the resonance exploded.

Not metaphorically. The bond, which had been building for eight days, a slow, relentless accumulation of proximity and emotion and suppressed need, detonated at the first press of her mouth to mine. Every marking on my body ignited. The resonance channel between us surged wider, and suddenly the echoes of her emotions arrived in full force.

Her nervousness. Her want. The hitch of surprise at how my mouth felt against hers, quickly overtaken by heat. Her hands came up to my jaw and the touch of her fingers on my facial markings sent a cascade of sensation so intense I broke the kiss to breathe.

She looked at me with wide eyes. "Was that⁠—"

I kissed her again. Deeper. My hand found the back of her head, fingers threading through her hair — still tangled from the jungle, still damp from the humidity, and I did not care. She tasted like the miral berries we'd eaten at dusk and underneath that, purely her. The resonance cataloged every molecule and declared them essential.

She made a sound against my mouth, a small, wanting sound, and I felt it in every nerve ending I possessed. Through the bond, her desire was a physical force. It hit me like a wave, warm and overwhelming, and my body responded with a surge that my training had no framework for managing.

I had been trained to withstand interrogation, to operate for days without sleep, to maintain composure under fire. None of that was useful here. None of that prepared me for Taylor Jennings kissing me back like I was oxygen and she'd been drowning.

I pulled back. Just enough to look at her. Her lips were swollen. Her eyes were bright. The firelight and my markings painted her in purple and blue-white. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I had seen nebulae.

"The resonance," she breathed. "I can feel it. You. I can actually feel you."

"The emotional channel has opened wider."