Now they waited.
The space was tight.Too tight.He was pressed almost against her, his boots bracketing her feet.The smell of the garbage bins was pungent, but it couldn't mask her scent.Fear spiked her pheromones, making them sharper, more potent.
He needed to protect her.
He looked down at her.She was staring up at him, her chest heaving.Her lips were parted, breath coming in short, shallow gasps.But as he looked down at her, the terror faded from her eyes, and he realised.She wasn't looking at the alley entrance.She was looking at him.Her pulse jumped in the hollow of her throat, the tiny movement catching his eye.He smelled the salt of her sweat and the sweet, underlying scent of her skin.
He was hard.Painfully, traitorously hard, straining against the leather of his pants.He tried to look away, to focus on the alley entrance, but his gaze was dragged back to her face.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, then back up to his eyes.There was confusion there, yes.But also something else.Awareness…
He wanted to touch her.To run his hand down the curve of her cheek, to tangle his fingers in those wild curls, to press her back against the brick and?—
A roar overhead shattered the moment.The air pressure in the alley dropped as engines screamed.Dust and trash swirled into a mini-cyclone, stinging his face.He looked up.A combat dropship, bearing the Imperial crest, hovered above the buildings, its repulsor engines angling downward.
Extraction.
He didn't feel relief.Instead, anger rolled through him that the moment was broken.
He grabbed her arm."Move!"
"Wait!Is that?—"
He didn't let her finish.He hauled her out of the alley and toward the descending ramp, all his instincts screaming one word...
MINE.
