Page 6 of Deserted

I returned to my sleep cot, which I had pulled into the med bay to remain close to her. As I settled back onto the thin mattress, my body still humming with aftershocks of pleasure, I wondered what she would think when she woke. Would she remember our dream? Would she accept what fate had decreed?

It didn’t matter. She was mine, and I was hers. The universe had spoken. Everything else was just details.

3 /JAS

I woketo the mechanical hiss of something opening above me, cold air rushing across my face like the breath of a machine. My eyelids felt heavy, weighted with exhaustion and remnants of strange dreams that slipped away even as I tried to grasp them. Dreams of golden sand and strong hands and pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. The last thing I remembered was collapsing in an alien desert under twin suns. Everything after that was darkness punctuated by flashes of gold—gold eyes, gold skin, gold heat.

Reality returned in unwelcome fragments. The hard surface beneath me, cool against my skin. The steady beep of unfamiliar equipment. The antiseptic smell that reminded me of hospitals and made my nose wrinkle in automatic distaste.

When I finally forced my eyes open, the world was too bright, too sharp. I blinked furiously, tears forming at the corners of my eyes as they adjusted to the clinical light. A metal ceiling swam into focus, followed by curved walls that reminded me of a submarine’s interior—compact, utilitarian, designed for function over comfort.

And then I saw him.

He stood at the foot of whatever bed-like contraption I was lying on, arms crossed over a chest so broad it seemed to defy basic human proportions. Because he wasn’t human. That much was immediately, jarringly clear.

His skin was a burnished copper, covered in distinctive markings that reminded me of a cheetah’s spots, only more geometric, more deliberate. They swirled down his bare arms and disappeared beneath the waistband of what looked like military-issue pants. His face was...God, his face. Features too sharp to be human, too symmetrical to be anything but beautiful in an alien, predatory way. High cheekbones. Strong jaw. A mouth that seemed permanently set in a grim line.

But it was his eyes that stopped my breath. Gold—pure, molten gold—with vertical pupils that contracted slightly as they fixed on mine. They glowed faintly, like a cat’s caught in headlights, and held an intelligence that sent a chill down my spine.

I did what any rational person would do when waking up to find themselves being watched by a seven-foot-tall cat man on an alien planet.

I screamed.

The sound tore from my throat, raw and primal. I scrambled backward until my spine hit something solid, pulling my knees to my chest in a futile attempt at protection. My heart hammered against my ribs like it was trying to break free.

The alien didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink. Just stared at me with those impossible eyes, his expression utterly unreadable.

“What the fuck?” I gasped when my scream finally died away. “What the actual fuck are you?”

No response. Not even a twitch. Just that steady, unnerving gaze.

I swallowed hard, trying to force my brain into some semblance of rational thought. I was alive. That was good. Iwasn’t lying dead in the alien desert. Also good. I appeared to be in some kind of medical facility. Still in the plus column, considering the state I’d been in when I passed out.

But I was also trapped in a room with what looked like a reject from the Thundercats who’d somehow stepped out of my childhood TV screen and into three-dimensional, terrifyingly muscular reality.

“Where am I?” I demanded, my voice steadier than I felt. When he still didn’t respond, I tried again. “Who are you? Why do you look like a GQ cover model mated with a big cat?”

His nostrils flared slightly—the first reaction I’d gotten from him. Then he turned away, moving with a predatory grace that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He walked to a panel on the wall, all sleek muscle and contained power, and pressed a series of buttons. The lights dimmed slightly, and I heard the distant rumble of machinery somewhere beyond the walls.

My stomach chose that moment to growl loudly, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since...I couldn’t remember when. Before stepping through the portal, certainly. Before waking up on an alien world with twin suns and lethal heat.

“I asked you a question,” I said, louder this time, trying to ignore the way my voice cracked. “Actually, I asked three.”

He turned back to me, and when he finally spoke, his voice was deeper than I expected—a low rumble that seemed to vibrate through the air between us, rough-edged and undeniably masculine.

“You are not to leave this shelter.”

I blinked, caught off guard by both the sound of his voice and the abrupt command. “Excuse me?”

“There is a storm,” he said, each word precise and clipped, as if human speech was uncomfortable for him. “You will not survive it.”

Oh, perfect. Trapped in a bunker with a hot alien warden who spoke in sentences shorter than a tweet. The absurdity of my situation hit me all at once, and I had to swallow a hysterical laugh.

I pushed myself to my feet, determined to at least face him standing. The room swayed alarmingly, and I grabbed the edge of the medical table to steady myself. My limbs felt simultaneously heavy and weightless, like I was moving through water.

“Great,” I said, aiming for sarcastic but landing somewhere closer to breathless. “So I just stay here? No phone, no signal, no clue how I got to... wherever this is?”

He stepped closer, his movements so fluid they almost seemed choreographed. I instinctively backed up, my spine hitting the wall behind me. In the confined space, he seemed even larger—a wall of muscle and alien otherness that made my heart race for reasons I wasn’t ready to examine.

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