Page 237 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

The teasing curve of her mouth softens into something vulnerable enough to make my chest ache in a place no injury can explain. She looks away first, but not fast enough to hide what the words do to her.

“Careful,” she says quietly. “If you keep saying things like that, I’ll start believing you’re good at this.”

“I am good at many things.”

“Humility is not one of them.”

“No.”

Her laugh is soft, a little tired, and far more intimate than laughter has any right to be. She leaves the viewport and crosses the room slowly, bare feet quiet on the floor. The vessel’s gravity is steady, but she still moves like someone whose body expects reality to change its mind. I understand that. Every creak in the walls makes some old combat nerve in me measure exits.

She stops beside the bed. “How bad is the pain?”

“Manageable.”

“Translation?”

“Annoying.”

“Actual translation?”

I look at her for several seconds.

She narrows her eyes. “Ghar.”

“It hurts.”

“Thank you. See? Full sentences. Honesty. Growth.”

“I am being rewarded with mockery.”

“You’re being rewarded with me not calling medical and ratting you out for sitting up too long.”

“That is generous.”

“I am a river of mercy.”

She sits carefully on the edge of the bed, leaving space between us as if distance is polite. I dislike the distance immediately. I also understand it. This is the first time we have been alone without collapse, pursuit, interrogation, or a shard of dangerous truth pressing against her chest. The absence of emergency changes the shape of everything.

Fear cannot take credit for what happens now.

That makes the moment more frightening.

Anita looks down at her hands. “This is weird.”

“Yes.”

“Good. I was hoping it wasn’t just me.”

“It is not.”

She exhales, and the breath trembles slightly. “We have kissed while being shot at, argued about cosmic responsibility, escaped a dying planet, and told a First One echo that it had terrible follow-through. Somehow sitting quietly in a room together is the part making me nervous.”

I reach for her hand, slowly enough that she can refuse.

She does not.

Her fingers slide into mine. The bond answers, but not with the violent certainty of first recognition or the desperate ache of battle. It moves gently, like warmth spreading through cold water. Beneath it is choice, memory, and the simple pleasure of her skin against mine.