I kiss her again. Just once. Gentle.
“I didn’t come here expecting this,” I say.
“I didn’t let you in expecting it either.”
We lie in the quiet, the engines outside humming like a lullaby.
No promises.
No regrets.
Just the stillness after the storm.
And the knowledge that nothing between us will ever be the same.
CHAPTER 14
NOVA
The world is quiet when I wake.
Just the low hum of the station and the even rhythm of his breathing behind me.
Kaz is still asleep. One arm slung across my waist, fingers splayed like he's anchoring himself to reality. His chest rises and falls against my back, slow and warm. I can feel the shape of him—heat, skin, the scrape of stubble on my shoulder when he shifted in the night.
This is dangerous.
And gods, it feels good.
I let myself stay in it for a moment.
Eyes closed. Breathing synced. Pretending the world outside this room doesn’t exist. That I’m not a decorated pilot, an instructor, a woman with rules etched into her bones. That he’s not my student, my recklessness, my soft landing and my nosedive all in one.
His thumb brushes absently over my stomach in his sleep, and I almost forget to breathe.
It’s not just the sex.
That’s what makes this worse.
It’s the way he touched me—like I was a constellation he was charting from memory. Like he’d dreamed of every curve and freckle and finally got to make contact. Reverent. Unhurried. Knowing.
No one’s ever looked at me like that.
Not like I’m a risk worth taking.
He shifts behind me, and I feel it again—his cock, half-hard and heavy against my lower back. Even in sleep, his body aches for mine. And gods help me, mine responds just as instinctively. My thighs press together. My breath catches. Every place he touched last night is still humming with sensation.
“Kaz…” I whisper, a warning and a wish.
He stirs again. His nose nudges the back of my neck, then his lips—barely there. A soft press that sends sparks down my spine.
“You’re warm,” he mumbles, sleep-thick and deep-voiced.
“I should move.”
“Don’t.”
His arm curls around my waist, drawing me tighter against him. I can feel the ridges of his scaled skin against my back, smooth and hot and alive. One of his fingers lazily traces the dip of my navel, his touch drifting lower.
