“I find you amusing.” She turns in the circle of my arms, and suddenly we are pressed together in the small space between workbench and quantum processor. “Three years you’ve been watching me, and you never once considered that I might actually enjoy impossible problems?”
My eyes must be blazing, because her pupils dilate in response. “I considered many things about you, Fiona Davis.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
Everything. Every detail I have memorized, every fantasy I have entertained, every moment I have imagined claiming her properly instead of watching from the shadows.
“Like the way you bite your lower lip when you concentrate.” I brush my thumb across the lip in question, feeling her sharp intake of breath. “The way you curse at stubborn engines in three languages. The way you hum Christmas songs when you think no one is listening.”
“You’ve been stalking my humming habits?”
“I have been memorizing everything about you.” My voice drops to the sub-harmonic frequencies that affect human nervous systems, making her shiver against me. “The way you smell like motor oil and coffee and something uniquely yours. The way you move through your workshop like you are conducting an orchestra. The way you look at broken things like they are puzzles to be solved rather than problems to be discarded.”
Her scent spikes with arousal, and it takes every ounce of control I possess not to pin her against the workbench and claim her properly.
“Ja’war...” she breathes.
A sharp crack outside—wood splintering under pressure—cuts through the moment like a plasma blade.
We spring apart, and I curse myself for allowing distraction during a tactical situation. Professional focus returns as I move to the window, enhanced senses cataloguing the immediate threat.
“They are testing the building,” I report. “Probing for weak points.”
Three years of careful observation have taught me that humans become increasingly dangerous when their patience runs thin. These hunters expected a quick victory, not a siege.
“How long do we have?” Fiona asks, her hands already moving over the navigation interface with renewed focus.
“Unknown. But they are losing patience.”
We work in tense silence, our earlier intimacy replaced by desperate efficiency. Every scrape against the garage walls makes her pulse spike, but her hands remain steady as she calibrates quantum pathways with the intuitive genius that first caught my attention.
“There,” I say finally, watching the matrix stabilize into optimal configuration. “The matrix is stable. Try your power regulation sequence.”
She runs through the startup procedure with the confidence of someone who understands machinery at a cellular level. The processor hums to life, crystal pathways brightening as Earth-built electronics dance with Xarian quantum mechanics.
“It’s working,” she breathes, wonder clear in her voice. “Thenavigation system is—”
But her celebration is cut short as the sound we have been dreading echoes through the garage: heavy footsteps circling the building with predatory intent.
“Fiona.” I find her hand in the warm glow of Christmas lights, needing the contact more than tactical wisdom suggests. “If something happens—”
“Nothing’s going to happen.” Her fingers tighten around mine with surprising strength. “We finish this. We save those people. You deliver your cargo and come back to me like you promised.”
“And if I cannot? If they—”
She presses her fingers to my lips, silencing my fears with gentle pressure. The contact sends electricity through my nervous system even as the sharp edge of my fangs presses against her skin.
“Then we make sure the navigation system works, and you complete your mission. The rest... we’ll figure out the rest.”
For a moment, I can only stare at her in the warm glow of Christmas lights, afternoon shadows making the garage feel like a sanctuary carved out of winter itself. This extraordinary woman who chooses duty over safety, who trusts an alien predator with her life, who offers comfort when she should be demanding protection.
I turn my head to press a kiss to her palm, tasting the salt of her skin and the faint residue of motor oil that somehow makes the contact more intimate rather than less.
“You are extraordinary,” I murmur against her flesh.
“Save the sweet talk for when we’re not about to be invaded by an angry mob.” But her voice shakes, betraying how deeply my words affect her.
Something primal snaps inside me at her words. Angry mob. Invaded. The thought of them touching her, threatening her, taking her from me when I have only just found her...
