Page 2 of Beast’s Temptation

"Because I don't fit in with my own people." The honesty surprised her, but she kept going. "I never have. I thought maybe if I understood enough different ways of being, I'd find one that made sense to me."

Sorek tilted his head, a gesture that seemed almost feline. "And have you?"

Tamsin thought about it. Thought about the dozens of cultures she'd studied, the thousands of hours she'd spent learning languages and customs and belief systems that weren't her own. Thought about the loneliness that never quite went away, no matter how many alien friends she made or how many academic accolades she earned.

"Not yet," she admitted. "But I'm still looking."

They continued through the temple, and something had shifted between them. The formality remained, but underneath it, Tamsin sensed a thread of genuine connection. Sorek asked her about her previous research, and his questions were sharp, insightful, revealing a keen intellect beneath the serene exterior. She found herself talking more than she'd intended, explaining not just her academic conclusions but the personal experiences that had led her to them. The semester she'd spent living with the Velanthi hive-mind, learning to communicate through pheromones and touch. The year on Nexus Station documenting the religious practices of twelve different species living in forced proximity. The way she'd cried when she'd finally cracked the code of Khorani prayer-forms and realized they were poems, beautiful and complex and full of longing.

She didn't talk about Garrett. Didn't mention the engagement she'd ended six months ago, or the accusation he'd thrown at her as she'd packed her things: You don't want a partner. You want a research subject. But she thought about it, watching Sorek's patient attention, his willingness to engage with her ideas rather than dismiss them.

They reached the Hall of Prophecies, a vast chamber lined with tapestries that depicted visions the Priests had received over millennia. The fabric was ancient, fragile, and Tamsin moved carefully as she examined each scene. Some showed the twin suns in various configurations, their light falling on Solrath in patterns that presumably held sacred meaning. Others depicted figures she didn't recognize, aliens and humans alike, caught in moments of crisis or triumph or transformation.

One tapestry drew her attention more than the others. It showed a Khorani male on his knees, his markings blazing with light, his face turned toward a small figure that might have been human. The posture was one of supplication, or worship, or something else entirely. Tamsin leaned closer, trying to make out the details of the weaving.

Her hair had come loose from its braid during the long morning of walking, and a strand slipped free to brush against Sorek's arm where he stood beside her.

He went rigid.

Tamsin pulled back immediately, an apology already forming on her lips, but the words died when she saw his face. The serenity was gone. His pupils had contracted to vertical slits, his jaw was clenched, and his chest expanded with a sharp, sudden inhale that seemed to go on forever. His hands, those elegant long-fingered hands, had curled into fists at his sides, and she could see the tips of claws pressing against his palms.

"I'm so sorry," she managed. "I know touch is forbidden. I didn't mean to⁠—"

"Forgive me." His voice was strangled, nothing like the measured tones he'd used all morning. He took a step back from her, then another, putting distance between them like she was something dangerous. "I must... I will send another Priest to continue your tour."

"Sorek, wait⁠—"

But he was already gone, moving with a speed that seemed impossible for someone who'd spent the entire morning in careful, deliberate motion. One moment he was there, the next he was a disappearing shadow at the far end of the hall, and Tamsin was left standing alone among the prophecies, her heart pounding against her ribs.

She stared at the empty doorway for a long time, trying to understand what had just happened. A cultural misstep, surely. She'd touched him accidentally, violated one of the most sacred taboos of his order, and he'd reacted with understandable distress. She would find him later, apologize properly, explain that it had been an accident. He would accept her apology with that serene patience he'd shown all morning, and they would continue their work together as if nothing had happened.

That was the logical explanation. The professional explanation. The one she would put in her research notes and never think about again.

But she couldn't shake the memory of his face in that moment before he'd fled. The way his eyes had gone molten, almost feral. The way his whole body had seemed to vibrate with some emotion she couldn't name but felt echoing in her own chest.

He hadn't looked offended. He hadn't looked disgusted.

He'd looked like a man who'd just been shown something that would destroy him, and couldn't decide whether to run toward it or away.

Tamsin gathered her research bag and made her way out of the Hall of Prophecies, but the image stayed with her. Those amber eyes, slitted and blazing. Those hands, clenched against claws that wanted to extend.

She told herself it was nothing. Told herself to focus on her work, her research, the opportunity of a lifetime that she couldn't afford to waste on inappropriate speculation about celibate alien priests.

She almost believed it.

2

SOREK

Sorek had not slept. He had not meditated. He had stood in his private chamber since fleeing from her, one hand pressed flat against the cool stone wall, trying to remember how to exist inside his own body.

Thirty years. Thirty years of perfect discipline, of mastering every impulse, of training his flesh to serve his spirit rather than the other way around. He had fasted for weeks without hunger. He had sat motionless in the scorching sun until his skin blistered and healed and blistered again. He had looked upon the sacred flames of the inner sanctum and felt nothing but reverence, no fear, no desire, no distraction from his purpose.

And now a single strand of hair brushing against his arm had undone all of it.

His body was in chaos. Heat radiated through him in waves that crested and broke without pattern, leaving him shaking and sweat-slicked in their wake. His skin felt too tight, every nerve ending raw and oversensitized. When he'd finally stumbled into his chamber and sealed the door behind him, he'd torn off his robes without thinking, desperate to escape the feeling of fabric against his flesh.

And his cock. His cock, that appendage he'd trained himself to ignore for three decades, that he'd viewed as nothing more than a biological inconvenience to be managed and dismissed, was hard. Aching. Leaking a thin stream of fluid down his thigh that he could smell even over the incense that perpetually scented his quarters.