Page 265 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

“Eventually.”

“You closed the archive.”

“Yes.”

“You documented the temptation.”

I grimace. “That sounds very clinical.”

“It is important.”

“It also sounds like something a future oversight board will quote while making me want to crawl under a table.”

“Good.”

I narrow my eyes. “You are disturbingly fond of my discomfort when it proves I’m being responsible.”

“Yes.”

I huff, and he draws me closer. His warmth seeps through the cold I brought back from containment. I lean into him, forehead against his, and let myself stop performing competence for a minute.

“The echo told me to return to warmth,” I say.

His eyes soften. “It was right.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

“I will try.”

“It was only a ghost of a ghost of a pre-reality hobbyist.”

“A credible source.”

I laugh, and the sound is small but real.

He brushes his thumb over the inside of my wrist. “Do you still think withholding the fragment makes you cowardly?”

“I think it makes me unfinished.”

“That may be better.”

“Yeah.” I breathe in the scent of him, clean linen, healing salve, warm scales, and the faint spice of karreth still clinging to the room from breakfast. “I think it is.”

He shifts back on the bed and brings me with him. I curl carefully beside him, tucking my cold feet under the blanket. He notices immediately and makes a low disapproving sound.

“Your feet are frozen.”

“I was doing morally complex scholarship. Socks felt secondary.”

“Socks are never secondary in cold rooms.”

“That sounds like ancient Vakutan wisdom.”

“It is mine.”

He covers my feet with his, and I yelp because his skin is warm enough to feel volcanic.

“Better?” he asks.