The mercenary’s grip is on my arm and my waist. I can feel my sleeve tearing. He’s dragging me backward. I’m thrashing. Kicking. I land an elbow somewhere soft. He grunts but does not let go.
Then Texon is there. The mercenary is ripped away from me with such violence that I feel my arm wrench in its socket. I hear a wet sound.
I don’t look.
And in the chaos of being grabbed and pulled and twisted and saved I feel the fabric of my glove. It catches on something as I fall. Trunk’s right glove is ripped nearly off too. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. I just know that as he grabs for me to steady me, as his claw wraps around my hand to pull me up from where I’ve half-fallen…
His bare palm presses against mine.
Oh.
Oh hells.
The heat is instantaneous.
It starts where his skin meets mine and it spreads. Not like warmth. Like wildfire. It races up my arm, floods my chest, pours down into my belly and lower. I gasp. My knees actually give out for a second.
Texon goes absolutely rigid.
He is frozen. His eyes are huge and dark and I watch the exact moment something inside him shifts. The patient, dormant, monkish male I have been sleeping next to for two nights vanishes.
In his place is someone else.
Someonehungry.
His whole body changes. I can see it. His shoulders go tight. His breathing goes deep and ragged. His pupils blow wide. And — because I am human and I cannot help myself — I look down at his crotch.
Ohwow.
His heavy erection is tenting the front of his pants obscenely. I have been sleeping next to this male for two nights and hadno idea this was what I’d be confronting.
And I’m not upset about it.
“Trunk?” Chief’s voice shouts from somewhere far away. “Trunk, what?—”
“Get Kryzon secured.” Texon’s voice is not his voice. It is deeper. Rougher. It is the voice of a male who has exactly one thought in his head and cannot remember any others. “Now.”
“Brother, are you?—”
“Now.”
“Did he just clasp her bare hand—” Heavy sounds bewildered. “Did his body just?—”
“Apparently,” Scar says.
“How.” Heavy again.
“Later,” Chief snaps.
Texon’s grip on my hand tightens. His other hand wraps around my waist and pulls me flush against him. I can feel him shaking. Not with fear. With restraint.
“I need to claim my Bride,” he growls.
I should probably be embarrassed. There is an entire audience of my new in-laws standing about ten feet away. There is a captured conspirator right there watching. There is at least one corpse at my feet. I am covered in dirt and someone else’s blood and my hair is an absolute catastrophe.
Yet I am not all that embarrassed. I am so, so ready. I’m inhaling his potent scent and it’s making me hot and bothered in an instant. I need him, now.
Rook steps forward and points into the jungle. “We’ve got Kryzon. Go.”
