Dax searched her expression.
Veya placed both hands against his chest.
“I want you, Dax.”
He believed her.
His restraint ended.
He caught her waist and kissed her with enough force to drive them both back a step. Veya opened the robe herself,pushing it from her shoulders while his mouth remained upon hers.
The fabric fell around her feet.
Dax looked at her as though every weapon he had ever carried had become useless.
Veya caught the front of his shirt.
“You are wearing too much.”
“That can be corrected.”
He removed it, and she ran both hands across his chest before pulling him back to her.
The second kiss carried none of the uncertainty of the first night.
Veya remained fully present, meeting every movement with her own and directing him whenever patience became unbearable.
He lifted her, and she wrapped both legs around his hips before he carried her to the bed.
Dax lowered her onto the mattress and followed, supporting his weight above her.
“I cannot promise gentle.”
“I did not ask for gentle.”
The answer moved through him with a force that had nothing to do with the tether and everything to do with the woman beneath him. Dax kissed her again, slower this time, letting the urgency remain without allowing it to take the shape of proof.
They had already proven what mattered.
She had chosen him in crisis, and she chose him again now with the compound sharpening itself for war beyond the guest-suite walls.
His mouth moved over her skin, avoiding the place where Rhen’s blood had entered her life. Veya’s hands slid over hisshoulders and into his hair, drawing him closer with a certainty that needed no further interrogation.
No blood passed between them.
No fangs broke skin.
No magic answered in the dark.
Whatever happened next belonged only to them.
Later, when the room had quieted and the fire had burned lower, Dax remained wrapped around her with his mouth resting against the back of her neck. He waited until her body settled fully against his before speaking.
“You alright?”
Veya turned inside his arms.
“More than all right.”
