Page 17 of Starfighter’s Salvation

Then Gina made a startled sound against my lips and leaned into me.

Need tore through me.

I kissed her harder, angling her head beneath my hand and taking the invitation she had not spoken aloud. Her mouth opened under mine, warm and sweet, and her tongue met mine with none of the caution I deserved. She kissed me as though she had been waiting for this. As if every impossible conversation across the simulation had led me here, to this room, this breath, this woman trembling in my arms.

I used the arm behind her shoulders to pull her closer. Cupped her delicate jaw. Tilted her head to give me better access.

She fit against me with devastating perfection.

Her fingers slid into my hair. The gentle tug sent heat rushing down my spine, and a growl escaped me before I could swallow it. Gina answered with another breathless sound, one that went straight through my discipline and shook me to my bones.

I had imagined kissing her hundreds of times. Imagined the sounds she would make during the long silences after she logged out of the simulation, when her absence made the universe feel too large. Imagined what she would taste like on the journey to Earth while I lied to myself, refused to give up the idea that I might still turn back. I had imagined taking her face between my hands and discovering whether her real lips were as soft as they looked in the simulation.

The simulation had lied and my musings fell short. Nothing made of light and code could have prepared me for this.

For the warmth of her skin beneath my palm. For the quick beat of her pulse under my thumb. For the way she rose into the kiss when I drew back half an inch, chasing my mouth as if she could not bear the distance.

I kissed her again before either of us could think.

This time there was no pretense of restraint. I traced her lower lip with my tongue, then claimed her mouth with a hunger that should have frightened her. Instead, she tightened her arms around my neck and met my with hunger of her own.

Every instinct I possessed demanded more.

I wanted her beneath me, my cock buried deep in her wet heat. I wanted her wrapped around me. I wanted to erase every doubt in her eyes with my mouth and hands until she understood that leaving her on Earth had never meant I did not want her.

It meant I wanted her enough to be terrified.

“Corvan,” she whispered against my lips.

My name had never sounded like that. Not even when she had spoken it through the simulation late at night, her voice soft with secrets neither of us were ready to discuss.

I pressed my forehead to hers, fighting for breath. “You should not say my name that way.”

Her fingers flexed in my hair. “What way?”

“Like you want me to forget every reason this is dangerous.”

Her mouth brushed mine when she answered. “Maybe I do.”

I should have released her.

Instead, I kissed the corner of her mouth, then the line of her jaw. Her head tipped back, granting me access to the delicate curve of her throat, and the trust in that small movement nearly destroyed me. I pressed my lips to the rapid pulse beneath her skin. Once. Again. Then I let my teeth graze her lightly.

She shivered in my arms.

My control fractured.

I returned to her mouth and kissed her until neither of us was breathing properly, until her fingers clenched against my scalp and my hand had slipped beneath the hem of her shirt to span the bare heat of her back.

One more inch and there would be no stopping.

One more breath and I would put her down on the nearest flat surface and prove exactly how little distance remained between desire and surrender.

The medbay monitor chimed.

The sound cut through me like an alarm.

Her healing cycle was complete.