She tried to circle his hips with her legs but he rolled to the side and pulled her into his arms instead.
“Why are you stopping?”
“Because I’m trying to be a decent person for once in my life,” he said roughly. “And because you deserve better than a quick tumble in a stolen flyer while we’re running for our lives.”
“What if I don’t care about better? What if I just want this?”
Gods help him, that nearly broke his resolve. She was looking at him with those warm brown eyes, her lips swollen from his kisses, her body warm and willing against his, and it would be so easy to give in.
But he couldn’t. Not like this.
“You care,” he said softly. “You care about everything. It’s one of the things I—” He caught himself, veering away from the word he’d almost spoken. “One of the things I admire about you. And I refuse to be something you regret in the morning.”
Her expression shifted, the frustration fading into something softer. “You think I’d regret you?”
“I think you’ve had a very hard time, and very little sleep, and you’re dealing with more emotional upheaval than anyone should have to handle.” He kissed her forehead, lingering there. “I want you to be certain, not just desperate for comfort.”
A long silence before she laughed, shaky but genuine.
“That’s either the most honorable thing anyone’s ever said to me, or a very elaborate way of rejecting me.”
“The former. Definitely the former.” He tucked her more tightly against his side. “Though for the record, the fact that I’m currently in actual physical pain from not taking this further should tell you exactly how much this is not a rejection.”
She gave another shaky laugh and pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. “Doren?”
“Mm?”
“Thank you.”
He didn’t ask what she was thanking him for—the restraint, the honesty, or simply the fact that he was there. Maybe it was all of it. Maybe it didn’t matter.
“Get some sleep,” he murmured against her hair.
“What about you?”
“I’ll sleep.”Eventually.When his body stopped screaming at him for his foolish nobility.
She was quiet for a while, and he thought she might have drifted off. But then her voice came again, soft and drowsy.
“For what it’s worth... I don’t think you’re running. I think you’re searching. And that’s not the same thing.”
He didn’t respond, but his arms tightened around her.
Long after her breathing had evened into sleep, he lay awake, watching the pulse of hyperspace light play across the ceiling. The artifact sat on the table where they’d left it, inert now but still carrying the echo of what Ari had awakened.
Three days ago, he’d been playing spy on an Ithyian slave ship, focused solely on uncovering the Grorn’s secrets. Now he had a human female in his arms, an Aurelian infant in his care, and an artifact that might be the key to everything he’d spent his life searching for.
The situation was ten times more complicated than he’d anticipated, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret a moment of it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Sherae,” Doren announced and Emma leaned forward eagerly as the planet filled the viewport.
After five days of star-streaked darkness, the clarity of a planet looming calmly in space was almost overwhelming. And Sherae was beautiful.
The planet was mostly water, covered with vast oceans of deep turquoise and sapphire blue. But unlike Earth’s familiar blues, these waters seemed to glow from within, shot through with veins of luminescent green that swirled in massive spiral patterns. Islands dotted the surface like scattered pink pearls, varying in size from tiny dots to chains of interconnected land large enough to hold cities.
“It looks like something from a dream,” she whispered.
