Page 30 of Fifth
“I know enough.” His thumb traced the corner of her mouth. “I know you when you are afraid and when you pretend you are not. Iknow you when you think you must be steel and when you allow yourself to be skin. Iknow the way you look at a weapon and decide if it can be turned against the hand that holds it. Iknow the sound you make when you swallow the first clean water after a day of running from death. Iknow the way your body comes to mine even when your pride says it should not.”
Her eyes shone. She lifted her chin and closed the last inch between them. The kiss began carefully and turned greedy in a breath. He tasted smoke and salt and the iron ghost of the day on her tongue. He groaned and answered with the full potency of his mouth, the promise he’d been holding back since he first put his body between hers and a blade.
She pressed closer, arching into him, heat rolling off her in waves that matched his own. His hand slid beneath her halter and found warm skin, the swell of her breast filling his palm. She trembled, not with fear but with hunger, and pressed harder against him as if daring him to takemore.
Her nipple peaked against his thumb and he rolled it gently, drawing a sound from her throat that arrowed down his spine and shattered his control. He caught her mouth again, deep and unrestrained, his tongue sweeping hers, his body grinding against the soft cradle of herhips.
She clutched at his shoulders, nails biting into damp skin, pulling him down as if she would have him cover her right there. His mouth trailed from her lips to her jaw, to the hollow beneath her ear, tasting her with a need that raged closer and closer to breaking point.
His hand slid lower, cupping the curve of her hip, then squeezing the firm flesh of her backside, dragging her harder against the rigid length straining the thin cloth at his loins. She gasped and arched into him, her thigh sliding high until it pressed against his arousal.
He groaned and thrust once against her, raw and instinctive, the sound of their ragged breaths filling the narrow space. His mouth claimed hers again, tongue plunging, while his free hand slipped to the soft inside of her thigh and edged upward into the heat of her core, damp against his fingers. She whimpered, hips rocking, her body already begging to be taken, and he was seconds from tearing the cloth aside and driving into her when—
“Wait.” The word tore out of her on a gasp. She didn’t pull away. She held him tighter for a heartbeat as if to make the stop hurt less. “Not here. Please.”
He froze where he was, nose tucked into her hair, mouth open on skin that tasted of water and smoke. Every part of him wanted to push. None of him did. He lifted his head and met her eyes in the muted light.
“I will wait,” he said. His voice had rough edges that he didn’t attempt to smooth. Truth didn’t need polish.
Her palm cupped his cheek. “You make me feel safe.”
“Good.” He eased her onto her side again and settled behind her, the line of his body fitting to the line of hers like two pieces made for one shape. His arousal pressed hot against the curve of her backside. He didn’t hide it, nor did he move against her. He breathed. He held. He let the ache be a reminder that he was alive.
Her hand found his where it lay across her waist and threaded their fingers. For several breaths they did nothing but be a shape together.
“You will tell me,” he said into her hair, “when you are ready.”
“Yes.” Her voice was thick with sleep. “Trust me. You’ll know.”
“I already do.”
She laughed softly and surrendered to the pull that had been trying to take her since they left the water. Sleep slid over her in warm waves. The tiny muscles in her back softened. The last of the tension in her shoulders melted into his chest. Her breath evened and then deepened, asteady thread winding itself around hisribs.
He didn’t sleep. He listened. The fire talked in small crackles. The wind moved the tops of the trees and left the ground alone. Abeetle clicked and went quiet. The preserve had the stillness of a held breath.
He thought about what would happen if they survived. He pictured a ship’s corridor with lighting faint because she said it was kinder to the eyes. He pictured a bed with clean sheets and the way she’d push him onto his back with laughter in her mouth and victory on her tongue. He pictured her asleep on his chest without dirt in her hair. He pictured his hand opening a door and letting her choose which way to walk through it. Want rose like a tide. He let it come. He let itgo.
The sound came as a change in the pattern. Asmall metal touch laid against another. Afaint click that didn’t belong to bugs or branches or the sigh of a banked fire. His eyes opened. The world narrowed.
A man crouched at the edge of the light. He wore dark fabric rubbed to a dull sheen by use. He rolled heel to toe with the care of someone who’d hunted more than he’d worked. The barrel in his hands caught a lick of firelight and held it like a bad idea. He kept the gun low for the approach and lifted it as he sighted.
Chapter 9
LOCUS’S HANDclosed over Hannah’s hip and moved her subtly deeper into the shelter. She slept on, her breath a steady rhythm against the ferns, asmall sound of protest escaping when his chest shifted away from her back. The fire put copper on his skin and shadow across his eyes. He rose without a whisper of brush against wood. He had been trained to kill in silence, and silence moved withhim.
The hunter’s gaze stayed low, his head bent over the weapon, and he didn’t look up fast enough to see death coming.
Locus’s world became simple. The angle of the gun. The distance between them. The way the man’s chest lifted, the faint fog of breath invisible yet known to him. He tasted metal that wasn’t in his mouth. His feet set into the dirt. His chest stilled. His focus narrowed into a spearpoint.
He moved.
The strike landed before the man could breathe again. His hand closed over the barrel and twisted. Bones cracked. Theintruder’s mouth opened, but no sound made it out before Locus’s other hand clamped over his throat. The firelight flickered across the whites of his eyes, wide with terror, as the gun clattered to the ground. The intruder clawed at his arm, but Locus’s grip crushed cartilage and gave no mercy. He drove the man backward, slamming him into the dirt. His knee pinned the intruder’s hip as they hit, leverage sealing his domination. In the next breath, the neck snapped clean. The body went slack beneath him, the life ripped away as efficiently as a blade across a throat.
He lowered the body carefully, his movements precise even in death. Hannah stirred, sighing softly, her knees curling tighter against her chest. She had no idea how close death had brushed her. He wanted to keep it thatway.
He crouched over the body, cataloguing details. The man was lean, human, stinking of grease and smoke. He had some training, carried himself like one who’d been taught to fight, yet he lacked the discipline to match an Intergalactic Warrior. He’d dared to creep into the preserve and hope fortune would allow him kill one in his sleep, but he hadn’t been good enough.
A fool. Still, fools were dangerous when they carried weapons.
