Page 87 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

For once, she has no immediate answer.

Her eyes search my face, and whatever she finds there makes her move toward me.

The first kiss is not gentle.

It is fear with a mouth, grief given motion, hunger sharpened by survival. Anita rises onto her knees and catches my face between both hands, pulling me down with a desperation that burns through every disciplined barrier I have left. I meet her halfway, one hand sliding into her tangled curls while the other wraps around her waist and pulls her against me.

The bond ignites, but it does not drown out the rest.

Her lips are warm, chapped from dust, and fierce.

She stares at me for one suspended breath, then kisses me again.

This time, the urgency deepens instead of exploding. Her hands move over my shoulders with trembling care, as if she is proving I am alive by touch alone. I taste salt from her tears, mineral dust, and the faint bitterness of fear on her breath. My hands settle at her back, then tighten when she leans into me with a sound that travels straight through my chest. The chamber’s low hum wraps around us, ancient mechanisms murmuring under the floor while the world above tries to kill us and the world below waits to break what remains.

Anita pulls away only far enough to breathe. Her forehead rests against mine, and her fingers remain curved along the ridges of my jaw.

“I thought that thing crushed me,” she whispers.

“It nearly did.”

“I saw your face when you reached me.”

I close my eyes. “Then you saw too much.”

“No,” she says, and her thumb brushes dust from the edge of my mouth with astonishing tenderness. “I saw you.”

Those words undo what violence did not.

I kiss her again, slower now, though no less hungry. She shifts closer between my knees, and I draw her carefully against me, mindful of my wound only because she will be angry if I reopen it. The intimacy between us turns unsteady and consuming, a series of breathless pauses, heated mouths, hands learning shape and tremor through layers of dust-stained fabric. I feel her fear recede under touch, then return, then soften again as she clings to me with the same desperate confusion tearing through my own chest.

She presses her face against my neck and exhales shakily.

“This is a terrible idea,” she murmurs.

“Yes.”

“You’re supposed to argue.”

“I am choosing survival through honesty.”

She huffs a laugh against my skin, and the sound nearly breaks me because it contains grief and warmth in the same fragile breath. “That sounded like something from a self-help pamphlet for traumatized war giants.”

“I would not read that pamphlet.”

“You’d be on the cover.”

I pull back enough to look at her. “You mock too much when you are afraid.”

“I know.” Her smile fades while her fingers rest over my heart. “And you get formal when you’re trying not to feel.”

“That is also true.”

The admission sits between us more intimately than the kiss.

Anita’s palm spreads carefully across my chest beside the med patch, avoiding the burn. “I don’t know what this is supposed to become.”

“Neither do I.”