Page 56 of The Edge of Dawn

For she was asleep, and she was the most sublime thing he’d ever seen.

It was the first opportunity he’d had to study her properly. He could hear—no, sense—the steady beat of her heart. He could feel the rise and fall of her chest and the gentle rhythm of her breathing, no longer ragged and labored.

He padded across to the far wall and sat down on the floor, crossing his legs and placing his hands—palms facing upwards—on his knees. Barefoot and bare-chested, he relished the feeling of the cool cabin air against his skin. He closed his eyes and embraced the stillness, the silence.

Then, he extended his sixth sense, letting his second-sight drift over her.

He could hardly believe he was alone with her—this curious creature who had addressed him so boldly the first time they’d met.

He took in her human features: soft, rounded, delicate. Her gently feathered brows and the lustrous mass of her hair. The slender column of her neck. Her smooth, delicate skin. It was so obvious she came from a comfortable existence where she didn’t have to become marred by the scars of violence or hardened by cruelty.

There was something else, too. Something that had been tugging at his senses ever since he’d physically encountered her in the mine.

Something he couldn’t detect through dreams or thought-walking.

Her scent.

It had crept up on him; at first, he didn’t understand what it was. Just a tendril of exquisite fragrance mingling with the dust and the blood and the machine-metal smells in the mine.

And he’d been so focused on maintaining control—on protecting her untrained mind from the noise—that he’d barely noticed when it surrounded him, infiltrating every last part of his consciousness.

At last, he fully opened up his senses and let it wash over him. It was warm, rich, and heady. It was the essence of a sun-drenched world: lightness, innocence, and vitality.

If his existence was cold, dark, and barren, then this was the antithesis of all of that, and he had no idea how to handle it.

He took a slow, deep breath, taking in her heady aroma and turning over every note, every tendril.

From far off, another presence was approaching, but he ignored it.

This freedom… he didn’t know when he would get to enjoy it again, so he might as well luxuriate in it.

Might as well seek the forbidden.

For although he’d never known the feeling of lust or even wanting—the Mistress had kept him under such tight control—he could now begin to understand a fragment of what had driven the others to become mated.

He could understand how they’d succumbed to this exquisite madness.

For the very first time in his existence, he felt a tendril of arousal.

He was tempted to throw caution and control into the galactic slipstream and just succumb to it.

His cock stirred.

He let it happen, but he didn’t act on it.

He simply allowed the feeling to course through him, giving it free rein.

The knife-edge of arousal was both sublime and torturous because he knew there was nothing he could do about it right now.

There would be no relief.

The presence outside drew nearer.

It wasn’t an ordinary presence. It was one of his kind.

Her aura was immense. She couldn’t properly contain it. She didn’t possess that level of skill yet, but then again, she didn’t need to.

She didn’t hunt from the shadows, under a cloak of invisibility.

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