Page 37 of Accidentally Fearless

He held out his hand.

His quarters were warm. They always were—Velkorin body temperature ran several degrees above human, and the environmental controls in his rooms were set to match. The space was spare and military, but in the weeks since I'd started spending nights here, small changes had appeared. A second pillow. A shelf at my height in the washroom. A reading light on "my" side of the bed.

He'd been making room for me. The Velkorin version of clearing a drawer.

I turned to look at him. In the low light, his scales caught the glow from his own bioluminescence, and the effect was stunning—black and bronze and rose-gold, like someone had cut a figure from the night sky and lit it from within.

"We won," I said.

"We won." His voice was low. Rough with everything we'd been through in the past forty-eight hours—the fight, the battle, the fear, the resolution.

"And I'm staying."

"You are staying." He stepped closer. His hands found my waist. He was careful, his claws retracted. His touch was deliberate and warm. "You are staying, and I am—" He paused. Searched for the word. "Grateful is insufficient. Relieved is inadequate. The Velkorin language has a word—tavreni—that means the feeling of a warrior who has fought for something his entire life and finally holds it in his hands."

"Tavreni," I repeated. The word felt different in my mouth, shaped for a tongue and teeth different from mine.

"You speak it well." He was close now. The warmth of his body wrapped around me like standing near a hearth. His hands tightened on my waist.

"Vrex."

"Rory."

"I'm yours," I said. "You know that, right? Not because of a contract or a citizenship or a Council vote. Because I choose you. I choose this."

His scales flared. The bioluminescence blazed along his arms, his shoulders, his spine—the rose-gold light that meant desire and devotion, and that permanent, irrevocable bond that Velkorin warriors spent their lives hoping for and rarely found.

"You are mine," he said. It wasn't a question. It was a simple fact. "And I am yours."

He kissed me, deep and unhurried. We had all the time in the world. His hands slid from my waist to my back, drawing me closer. The heat of his body through the thin fabric of my tunic was exquisite.

I pulled at the fasteners of his uniform. The jacket opened under my hands and I pushed it off his shoulders, revealing the planes of his chest, black scales over powerful muscle, the bioluminescent lines running from his collarbones down his sternum, each one pulsing for me.

I pressed my palm flat against his chest. The scales were smooth, and beneath them, his heartbeat was strong—faster than usual.

"Your hearts are racing," I said.

"You are touching me."

"I've touched you before."

"Not—" He took an unsteady breath. "Not like this."

I kissed the center of his chest. His hands came up to cradle my head, claws retracted, fingers gentle in my hair, and the sound he made—that low, rumbling purr I'd only heard once or twice before—vibrated through my lips and teeth and settled in my belly.

He undressed me with reverence. When the tunic came off, he ran his hands down my bare arms. I would never get tired of the contrast of his hands, dark and scaled and enormous, against my soft pale human skin.

"You are fragile," he said in wonder, like he couldn't quite believe he was being trusted with something this breakable.

"I'm tougher than I look."

"I know." He lifted me effortlessly—one arm under my back, one under my knees, carrying me to the bed like I weighed nothing. "That is what terrifies me."

He laid me down and followed, the bed adjusting to his weight—Velkorin engineering accommodating a species that averaged three hundred pounds of muscle and scale. He braced himself above me. He was extraordinary, his amber eyes looking down at me with an intensity that made my breath catch. His bioluminescence had already begun to glow softly across his scales, casting a warm, living light over both of us. His body was a dark architecture of power, every muscle held in deliberate, trembling restraint. For me.

I pulled him down.

The first full contact of his body against mine was overwhelming—heat and weight and the smooth, textured drag of his scales against my bare skin. I arched into him instinctively. His deep purring rumbled through me, vibrating straight into my chest and into my bones. I was being held by a living storm that had chosen gentleness.