Page 46 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

"Yes," I said, and he pulled the shirt over my head.

I should have been self-conscious. I was filthy, despite the pool earlier. I had bug bites. I had scrapes and bruises. My bra was a structural disaster being held together by one good underwire and sheer determination. I hadn't shaved anything since Colombia.

He didn't seem to notice any of that. He was looking at me like I was the Kethari ruins — with wonder, and reverence, and an intensity that made my breath catch. His fingers traced along my shoulder, down my arm, over the scrape that was still healing.

His hand glowed. The marking on his palm warmed against the wound and I felt it — a gentle heat, a tingling, the faint sensation of something knitting together at a cellular level. The sting faded. The edges of the scrape smoothed.

"Oh," I breathed. "There it is."

His hand stilled immediately. "Pain?"

"No. The healing thing. I remember. Just — do that again."

He'd already told me on the trail — Tier 2, proximity healing, the bond encouraging cellular repair through direct contact. I knew the science. But knowing it and feeling it while his hands moved over my skin in firelight were two entirely different categories of experience.

He smiled. Not the ghost of one this time — a real one, small and brief and gone. And I filed it in the deepest part of my heart because it was the most beautiful thing his face had ever done.

He touched every scrape. Traced every bruise. His hands glowed against each one, warm and healing, and I sat there in the firelight being gently repaired by an alien warrior who was simultaneously looking at me like I was the answer to a question he'd spent his whole life asking.

"Your turn," I said, reaching for the shoulder wound I'd tended by the fire.

"Taylor, you don't have the ability to⁠—"

"I know I can't glow-heal you. But I can touch you while you help it finish knitting."

He blinked. "That is not how it⁠—"

I kissed the wound on his shoulder. Gently. His whole body shuddered and his markings flared in a quick, helpless cascade, and through the bond I felt a pulse of emotion so intense I nearly pulled back.

He didn't let me. His hand caught the back of my head, holding me there, and I pressed my lips to the healing skin and felt the resonance sing between us.

We got the rest of it off each other by firelight and moonlight and the light of his markings, which were doing their absolute best to illuminate the entire plateau. It was fumbling and imperfect, the clasps on his greaves were confusing, I couldn't figure out the alien boot mechanism and he had to help, my bra required explanation ("It is a structural support garment for my chest." "Why does it need supporting?" "Gravity, Kel. Human gravity."), and it was perfect. Every clumsy awkward moment of it was perfect.

When I saw all of him for the first time, I went quiet. Not from shock: well, partly from shock. He was beautiful. The patterns on his skin continued below his waist, down his hips, along his thighs, and they were all glowing for me. Silver-gray skin and lean, powerful muscle and lines of light like a constellation made flesh.

He was also — the anatomy situation. Compatible, yes. Clearly compatible. But with notable differences that my brain helpfully flagged as Interesting and my body flagged as Oh My God.

"That's..." I gestured vaguely. "Different. From human."

"Incompatible?" Something that might have been anxiety flickered through the bond.

"I didn't say that." I looked up at him. "I said different. Different is not bad. Different might be very, very good."

The anxiety vanished. Something darker and warmer replaced it.

"Lie down," he said, and his voice was a thing I felt in my spine.

I lay down on the thermal blanket he'd spread by the fire. He followed me down and the full length of his body covered mine and every point of contact was a conversation between his markings and my skin. He was warm, so warm, and everywhere his markings touched me I felt that gentle hum of resonance, like his body was singing to mine at a frequency below hearing.

He asked permission. For everything. His mouth on my neck, "May I?" My breathless yes. His hand sliding down my stomach, a pause, a question in his eyes. My hips lifting toward him in answer. His mouth moving lower — "Taylor, is this—" "If you stop I will kill you."

He did not stop.

His mouth was warmer than a human's, and the harmonic — the vibration that lived under his voice — lived in his lips and tongue too. He used it. Deliberately. He worked me with the same focus he gave perimeter sweeps, thorough and unhurried, reading every gasp through the bond and adjusting in real time, and when the vibration deepened exactly where I needed it I came apart against his mouth with my fingers buried in his hair and his name breaking in half on its way out of me. He didn't stop until my thighs stopped shaking. Then he kissed the inside of my knee like a thank-you, which was so unfairly tender I almost came again on principle.

I was not quiet. This should surprise no one. I am not a quiet person in any context and in this context I was spectacularly, gloriously loud. Each gasp, each moan, each involuntary "oh god" translated through the resonance as pleasure-desire-more, and the feedback loop was devastating. I felt good, which made him feel good, which made me feel better, which made him⁠—

"Kel. Kel, if you don't... I need you to⁠—"