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Chapter 27
Vahadr
Ihave not felt this level of peace since…I’m not sure I quite remember, actually.
Ana is laying against me, her head resting on my chest as I curl my arm around her shoulders to run my fingers absently across her smooth skin. I had half expected that she might want to cover herself, considering how modest she is about showing too much flesh with her clothing, but she doesn’t seem at all bothered to be laying completely naked and exposed against me in the fading afternoon light, and I find myself very smugly pleased about this.
“How are you feeling?” I ask her, just because I’d like to hear her voice again.
Her hand is laying against my stomach, and she flattens her palm and slides it up to sit at the center of my chest. “You know when you fly off base,” she says quietly, “when the shuttle leaves the atmosphere and there’s that moment before they engage the artificial gravity on the craft? That second where everything feels like it’s floating?” She tilts her head up to look at me, and a sliver of sun lights her warm green eyes. “I feel like that, but maybe forever.”
I puff out a breath as I stare down at her, languid and content with her cheek resting on the glow over my heart. “You are beautiful.”
She chuckles. “You always say that when I’m naked.”
“There have only been two occasions thus far,” I say, and then I flip her onto her back, her head still cradled in the crook of my arm as I lean partially over her and trail my palm up her soft stomach. “But I can make it a habit if it will get your clothes off more often.”
She snorts and smacks my bicep, and then leaves her fingers resting against my skin. “You’re going to have to do more than just that to get me nude again, thank you!”
“Oh really?” I say, slipping my fingers up to trace lightly across a warm brown nipple. “Perhaps a bracelet to match your new necklace will suffice?”
A mild sort of worry bleeds into her eyes, and she drops her hand to squeeze at my wrist. “Vahadr, I-I’m joking, you know that, right? I don’t need you to do anything. I’m here because I like you, that’s all.”
I feel the teasing smirk soften on my face, and I lean down to drop a soft kiss against her lips. “I know,” I murmur, “and I like you.”
Her cheeks light up with a flush and she smiles, warm and happy. It is interesting to me, the way that simple words seem to affect her like this.
She reaches a hand up to rest against my jaw, and when she draws me back towards her, I oblige very happily with another kiss, this one slower, more languid. When she parts her lips and I slip my tongue into her hot mouth, I feel a low, gentle burn begin to stir within me once more.
Then my com vibrates loudly against the wood of my bedside table, and she twitches and turns towards it.
“Ignore it,” I say, catching her lips between my teeth and drawing her back to face me.
“It might be important!”
She looks as if she’s about to move towards it, so I roll my body flush over hers, pinning her down beneath me and reveling in the gasp that falls from her lips and the thrill that vibrates through me.
“Vahadr.” She tries to sound admonishing, but her voice is high and breathy and I claim her lips between mine before she can say anything else. Eventually, the vibrating stops, and when her body relaxes beneath me as we kiss, my mind drifts towards her analogy of floating. It feels apt.
When I finally draw back, her breath has quickened and her eyes remain half-lidded as she looks up at me. “Why does it feel so good just to have you lying on top of me like this?”
I smile and drop my forehead to rest against hers. “Because this is where I belong.”
My com begins to vibrate again then, and I catch her wrist as she tries to snake it towards the table.
“The world can wait, Ana,” I say as I lean back, drawing her hand away and pressing it into the mattress by her head. “Leave it.”
“But what if it’s Kyrin?” she asks, and her eyes are wide and pleading. “It might be an emergency, Vahadr. Maybe you can just check to see who it is?” She blinks up at me prettily and presses a light kiss to my cheek. “Please?”
I sigh, glare at her, and then snag the com off my table. “Fine.”
It annoys me a touch, seeing how self-satisfied she looks at my compliance, and I’m already planning on how to even the score with her on that front later…
But when I look down at the small screen, teasing thoughts of Ana disappear from my mind as quickly as it takes to read the words Unknown Number.
“What?” she asks. “Is something wrong? Who is it?”
I take a slow breath in and drop the device onto the mattress beside us, rolling off her and onto my back. “Nobody.”
