Page 26 of Fought and Found

I am being held by a man who could kill me with one hand. His claws are retracted, every point. His purr has not stopped. The space that has been empty for ten years—the co-pilot’s chair, the second mug, the side of the bed no one sleeps on—is full.

I have never felt safer in my life. I have never been more aroused in my life. The two facts exist simultaneously, and I am not going to examine the architecture of that right now.

His mouth moves against my hair. Not a kiss. The shape of a word he doesn’t say. His hips shift—a fraction, a correction, an attempt to put distance between us—and the motion drags friction across every nerve in my lower body and we both go still.

Outside, the dust belt pings against the hull. Four hours until the mercs sweep back.

Neither of us moves. Neither of us sleeps.

The purr goes on.

8

Waking

Xor

Forty-sevenminutes.

I have been awake for forty-seven minutes. She has been asleep for approximately two hours. I have not moved, and the reason I have not moved is pressed against me from shoulder to ankle with her face in my throat and her fingers laced through mine and her hip fitted against the exact part of my anatomy that is least capable of clinical detachment right now.

We did not sleep for a long time. After the dust belt, after the silence, after the purr settled into something neither of us acknowledged and neither of us stopped — we lay in the dark and breathed and did not move and did not speak, and the awareness between us was alive, a presence with its own heat signature. She fell asleep first. I knowthe exact moment — 0347, her breathing lengthened, her grip on my hand softened, and the tension in her spine dissolved into the boneless surrender of unconsciousness.

I have been awake since.

Forty-seven minutes ago, her body changed. The sleeping architecture shifted from still to seeking — her hips beginning a slow, rhythmic press into me, and the sound she is making, soft and throaty and involuntary, vibrates against my throat where her mouth rests against the fuzz and each one lands like ordnance.

The friction. Through two layers of fabric, which is not enough, which is catastrophically not enough, because Xarthian anatomy is not subtle and the ridges are — she is pressed against the ridges, and she rolls against me in her sleep and the sensation travels the full length of my shaft to the base and the knot is thickening, and I cannot — I need her to stop moving. I need her to never stop moving.

My tail wrapped itself around her sometime in the first hour. Hip to waist to the soft crease where her ribs narrow, the full spiral, gripping with a possessive strength my waking brain would never authorize. I cannot unwrap without waking her and this is the excuse I am using, and I know it is an excuse, and I am using it anyway.

Her smell. Before she slept, it was the scent I have been cataloging since the cockpit — peppermint, wool, the warm base note of her skin. Now, after hours of shared heat and the grinding that has been going on for nearly an hour, something has shifted. The darker note has risen to the surface. The one my Xarthian biology catalogues before my brain can intercept the data. Not faint. Not subtle. The thick, sweet-dark evidence that her body has been responding to me while she sleeps — to the purr, to the pressure, to the anatomy she registered with clear-eyed certainty before she drifted off and chose to stay.

My nostrils flare. She is wet. I can smell it. The knowledge rewrites my entire thermal regulation and my markings flood dark and my claws extend into the mattress and puncture fabric. Retract. Extend. The bunk is dense with us by now — her want and my pheromone output, the compatible-mate signal that has been pouring off my skin for hours in the enclosed space. The mattress will not survive this. I do not care about the mattress.

I cannot go back to the absence of her.

This is not a tactical assessment. I do not know what it is.

I have been lying still because the training says: hold position. Maintain cover. Do not alert the asset. The training has stopped being the reason.

I press my lips to the top of her head.

Not a reflex. Not the tail, not the arm, not the olfactory system making decisions before my brain can intercept the data. Me. I choose this. Her hair is warm against my mouth, the specific warmth of a sleeping person, and she smells of peppermint and shared heat and something darker that my biology has been cataloguing since 0347 without my authorization. I stay there. My mouth against her hair for three seconds, four, and the choice is the most deliberate thing I have done in thirty years of taking orders.

I pull back before she can feel it. The training, at least, is still useful for that.

She wakes the way she does everything. Without announcement. Without drama. One breath she is asleep, the next her fingers tightenin mine — a single squeeze, deliberate — and the grinding stops, which means she was not conscious of it, which means her body has been chasing mine in her sleep and the evidence is on both of us.

Her breathing changes. Shorter. Shallower. The pattern of a woman taking inventory — his arm across her ribs, his anatomy against her hip, the wet heat between her own thighs that she cannot hide from a Xarthian’s senses. She knew last night. She lay against me and felt every ridge and chose to stay and now it is morning and the choosing is still here.

Neither of us moves.

“Good morning, lovey.”

Her voice is rough from sleep. Warm and low and scraped raw at the edges, and the sound of it vibrates against my throat where her mouth is close enough that I can feel the movement of her lips shaping the words. My nostrils flare. Her scent has intensified since she woke — open now, conscious, undisguised — and it floods the back of my throat and my hips flex against her before I can lock them down. A fraction of an inch. Enough that the ridges drag against the curve of her and her breath hitches.

She felt that. She liked that. The hitch was not alarm. It was the intake of a woman who has spent the night pressed against proof that I want her and has woken up wanting more.