Page 35 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

He kissed her. In the violet light, in the quiet corridor, with the bond singing between them and the surveillance nodes recording everything and neither of them caring even slightly. His wings opened; they always opened when he kissed her, the involuntary response she'd come to love, and the shadows they cast wrapped around them both.

When they finally reached his quarters, they fell asleep in each other's arms on the prince's sleeping platform, his wing draped over them, the bond humming in steady, matched rhythms. Marina's last thought before sleep took her was that she'd come to an alien planet to study rocks and atmospheres and had instead found something no instrument in her lab could measure.

She'd found home. Not a place. A person. A person with rose-gold scales and blue eyes and a children's book and two hearts that beat in time with hers.

She slept better than she had in months.

CHAPTER 12

*** MARINA ***

She woke with his heartbeat in her chest.

Not metaphorically. She could physically feel it; the dual rhythm of Toren's cardiovascular system transmitted through the bond they'd activated in the warm pools. Primary heart was steady, strong and the pace of deep sleep, while the secondary heart was slower, deeper with a bass note beneath the melody. Both present in her sternum like a second pulse running alongside her own.

They were in his quarters. The prince's chambers were in the Colony's upper level, carved from stone and furnished with volcanic glass shelves and a sleeping platform considerably more comfortable than the guest wings. His wing was draped over them, the membrane translucent in the bioluminescent morning light. His arm circled her waist. His breath was warm and steady against the back of her neck.

Marina lay still and let herself feel everything. The warmth of his body, the weight of his arm and the hum of the bond, steady and present. It was a background frequency she was already starting to think of as part of herself. Through the connection, she could sense his emotional state without seeing his face. It was peaceful, content. It had the deep settled calm of someone who'd found what he was looking for and had no intention of letting go.

She pressed back into him, and his arm tightened. His breathing shifted from sleep to wakefulness. It was a change she felt through the bond before she heard it.

"Good morning," she murmured.

"Is it morning? I can't tell."

"My wrist link says six. Whatever that means on a planet with no visible sunrise."

"On Dobromia, morning is whenever the D'Karr starts sending messages. By that measure, we have about an hour."

He pressed his mouth against the back of her neck. The contact sent the bond flaring with a pulse of warmth that radiated from the point of contact through her entire body. She gasped; not from surprise, but from the intensity of feeling his desire through the connection at the same time she felt her own. The two sensations layered on each other, amplified by the feedback, until his lips on her neck produced a wave of heat that made coherent thought difficult.

"The bond does that?" she asked, slightly breathless.

"Physical contact amplifies the emotional feedback. Touch becomes…"

"More."

"Significantly more."

She turned in his arms to face him. His blue eyes were half-lidded with sleep, his scales the deep rose-gold of their natural resting state. The copper flush was already starting along his jaw which was the physiological response she was learning to read as desire. It was the Weredragon equivalent of a blush that he couldn't control and that she found devastatingly attractive.

"Show me," she said.

He kissed her, and the bond turned the kiss into something that transcended physical sensation. She felt his lips on hers and simultaneously felt what he felt; the softness of her mouth, the warmth of her breath, the pleasure of kissing someone he loved. The doubled sensation was dizzying. She kissed him harder and felt the feedback intensify, a loop of shared feeling that built on itself.

She understood now why the Weredragons treated the claiming bond as sacred. This wasn't just a psychic connection. It was the complete dissolution of the barrier between two people. Every touch felt twice. Every emotion shared. Nowhere to hide, and no reason to want to.

They made love in the morning light of the bioluminescent panels, slowly and thoroughly, with the bond amplifying everything. When she touched his scales, she felt what he felt. She felt thousands of nerve endings firing beneath her fingers, a cascade of sensation she experienced as both giver and receiver. When he touched her skin, she felt his wonder at the softness, the warmth, the alien texture that fascinated him.

She whispered his name, and through the bond he felt everything the name carried: love, desire, the fierce protectiveness of a woman who'd decided this man was hers. He whispered hers back, and she felt his version: awe, devotion, the quiet disbelief of someone who'd collected artifacts from a distant species and ended up holding one in his arms.

The intensity built in layers. Physical and emotional, sensation and meaning, until the two were indistinguishable. When the climax arrived, the bond carried it between them, and the combined intensity was almost unbearable. Almost. They held on. They held onto each other, and the bond held them both, and the morning light pulsed around them like a heartbeat.

* * *

Afterward, tangled together on the sleeping platform with his wing over them and the bond humming in satisfied steady rhythm, Marina said, "We need to talk to your father."

"I know."