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“You said you’d never lie to me, right?”
He nodded. “I swear it.”
“How dangerous is it to go with you?”
“There’s no danger at all.”
“You said you’re a spy. What if Thuliak catches you? This doesn’t sound like a ‘no danger at all’ situation to me.”
And the danger was exhilarating. It was like how it felt to hold a live weapon in real combat, but my hands were shaking even more. I was trembling all over.
“We’re going back to theEve’s Rib.”
“We can’t go back there! I’m tainted. Don’t you know what that means?”
“I do,” he said, “but everyone on Eden will be tainted soon. Your exile will not stand. TheEve’s Ribis the safest place for us.”
Already it wasus. The trembles became a warm glow deep within me.
He was closer to me now. It’s like every moment we spoke he’d been moving his face ever so slightly nearer mine, and now it hit me that his lips were just about ten centimeters away from mine.
“How do we get to theEve’s Rib?”
I still couldn’t call it “my ship.” I was tainted, and no amount of handwaving from Kaav was going to erase that for me. Maybe he was right, but until I saw it with my own eyes, I had to assume I was not welcome on Eden anymore—which also meant I was not welcome on any of her ships. Especially not on theRib.
“This,” he said, hefting his weapon. I’d been too focused on his body, and those big golden eyes getting closer and closer to me, that despite being Weapons, I’d somehow not even noticed what he was packing a big alien weapon.
“You’re going to blow us out into vacuum?” I asked.
I was half incredulous that he was going to blow us into space, half excited to see what kind of weapon was powerful enough to blow a big hole in an otherwise invulnerable Khetar ship.
The weapon itself looked like nothing we had on Eden. It was sleek and minimal, just likeWrath, and there were no obvious power sources or screens with diagnostic information, ammo capacity, and heat levels like I was used to.
“You’re pretty close to me, Weapons,” he said, raising one eyebrow.
His skin wasn’t just golden. It was flawless. I couldn’t even see a single pore on his face. He did have a scar though, a small one on his high cheekbone. On Eden, any woman would have had it removed. I assumed Khetar could easily erase scars, but Kaav must have kept this one for a reason.
I was still gripping tight to his forearm, but my palm was all sweaty and clammy now, and I was squeezing even tighter to him in an attempt to mask how bad I was trembling, but Kaav still must have felt it.
“Agree to come with me,” he said. “I’ll protect you. If you stay here, Thuliak will sell you off as a bargaining chip to increase his status in the Breeding Swarm. He has his prize already, and he’ll use you as it pleases him.”
“You’ll protect me? That’s all you’ll do?” My voice was raspy—ghostly—barely even there. I thought I wouldn’t be too scared to tell a Khetar man what I wanted from him, but now that the moment was here I was completely choking. He was so much bigger than me. He could crush me if he wanted to. It feltwrongto ask him to do anything. Even if it was probablyexactlywhat he wanted to do to me anyway.
He leaned forward until he was just centimeters away. “I have an ace up my sleeve, Weapons. I know that I have exactly 24.6 seconds left until we need to be outside the ship. Why don’t we spend that time tasting each other?”
I didn’t even know what he meant by “tasting each other” but I found myself just nodding.
He tilted his head, almost 45 degrees. I had no idea what he was doing. He wasn’t going to actually bite me, was he? He—
He lunged forward, and his free hand—the one I wasn’t gripping like a vice—grabbed hold of my waist and pulled me up against his body. Then his lips pressed into mine, and I realized with fascination that he’d preemptively known to tilt his head like that, because otherwise our noses would have bumped into each other.
Before I could really even appreciate the strategy and planning it had taken to get his nose out of the way like that, his tongue slid into my mouth.
A lot happened in that first second of contact.
First off, I tasted him. Just as I assume he tasted me. He tasted like aman. I couldn’t have told you a few days ago whatmantasted like, but after smelling Thuliak and then Kaav, I had a pretty decent idea. Now that I was actually tasting a man though, it was much better than I could possibly have imagined. It was a taste that went straight to my brain, to somelong-dormant pleasure center. It was like within that first second of his tongue touching mine, an entire part of my brain I’d never used had been jolted awake, and now it was singing.
The next thing that happened was quite possibly the scariest, because just as that one part of my brain woke up, it felt as if pretty much the entire rest of my brain turned off. Smelling Kaav and tasting him and feeling the way his big hand gripped my tiny waist tookallof my focus. I’d forgotten about the weapon. I’d forgotten he was a spy. I’d forgotten that he had basically told me he wanted to kidnap me. I hadn’t entirely forgotten any of those things, it was just that none of that information really seemed to matter to me. I just knew I needed to keep tasting Kaav, and not just that, but I wanted to taste him all over. I wanted his tongue all over me too. Especially on my kitten.
