Page 24 of Akur

She tasted sweet, and despite the pain going through him, despite that this was not the place to indulge in such things, he wanted more. The fever just underneath his skin made everything too intense, too real. Made him hyperaware of every point of contact between them—her thighs, even the brush of her long filaments against his jaw.

So many sols chasing after that ship. So many sols of hopelessness. The last thing he’d imagined was a human’s lips pressing against his. Maybe he really was dead, and this was all a strange afterlife where nothing made sense.

She pulled back slightly, just enough to whisper something he couldn’t quite catch, before something cool dripped against his lips. Water.

It was like a splash of cold reality.

Water?

Ah, yes.

He was being subjected to forced hydration. He swallowed, the realization that she wasn’t, in fact, ravishing him settling with a dull thud of disappointment.

He might as well go on and die now.

“Stay with me,” she murmured. “Just keep fighting.”

Alright, fine. He wouldn’t die.

He’d growl, but she was still so close, he didn’t want to startle her.

That, and the starving male in him didn’t want her to leave so quickly.

So he lay there as she emptied the water she carried in her hands before her shoulders slumped, and she released a slow breath. Her head tilted as she looked around, eyes wide, and yet it seemed she still couldn’t see a thing. Her throat moved when she finally stopped looking around and turned back to face him. He blinked, expecting her to realize he was staring right back at her, but there was no recognition.

Instead, she shifted from over him, the sweet pressure of her thighs disappearing as her palms moved down his chest instead. Only then did he realize he’d been bandaged. Strips of garments tied around his frame.

This female…she hadn’t just given him water. She’d been caring for him all this time? For how long?

And where the qrak were they?

As her soft hands moved over his chest, her breathing short and labored, he squeezed his eyes tight, focusing on the sounds of those breaths and not the heat rising within him. E’lot had been right. He shouldn’t have left the shuttle wearing just a maintenance suit as protection. He’d trusted his regeneration a little too much. Maybe he’d been laughing in the face of death a little too much, too.

The heat from entry into this world. The heat from the shock rod. And the heat from the moment before they appeared in this place. It was all bad. All completely bad timing. Even dying, his body was taking that heat to mean one thing.

He’d thought that when his brother had gone into the mating frenzy on accident that it had been a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. Shum’ai don’t just go into heat at slight temperature changes. That would be stupid. But he’d had three separate intense encounters. Three encounters that might have started a chain of events that he wished didn’t exist.

Because if he was going into heat, they were doomed. Him and the human. And that meant he had to get her out of this place, off this planet, and take down the Tasqals all before that happened.

So when the female eased off him, when her softness disappeared, he kept his eyes closed. Fighting not the pain of his injuries, not the torture, but the heat.

She was gone for long minutes, all while he remained unable to move.

When she returned, he heard her counting again. “Three hundred twenty.”

Smart little fighter. She used the numbers to find him again. To kneel over him once more. And this time, when her lips met his, he kept his eyes closed.

He let her lips tease his.

Qrak. This was going to be the hardest mission he’d ever had to do.

7

Constance

A sound cutthrough the darkness. A wet, rattling breath, followed by a single word spoken in a voice like gravel.

“Female…”

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