Page 15 of Crave
He had no idea what to do with her. The books were clear enough—very clear, sometimes—but his dreams had been hazy, chaotic.
This is your chance. Make it count.
He angled his fingers up into her hair, the color and texture partly imposed, partly her own. Who was she, really?
But finding out was the point of dating, wasn’t it?
Gently, inexorably, he tipped her head back. “Open your mouth, Kinsley. I want to taste you.”
That was how it was done in the last book he’d read. The female protagonists who’d become lovers had been so different he hadn’t been sure they’d be happy ever after, and he’d had to put the book down, worried they wouldn’t find their way together, but two at once had seemed like an efficient way to learn more about Earther women.
Maybe he would try opening a small-town vegan bakery if the orcs lost their spaceship and interstellar salvage was no longer an option.
“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?” From so close, her breath teased his lips.
“Because this is my first time, and I want to savor it.”
“Sil…” His name in her mouth was like the background whisper of cosmic wind, filling the universe, filling him.
Though he let his mouth descend with the inevitability of gravity, the first contact was a silent shockwave. He managed to hold back a groan, but only because he lacked the air in his chest.
By the light everlasting and the dark that embraced it… This was the meaning that had eluded him in all his research. A kiss took the infinity of space, the distance between all souls, inevitable and eternal, and coalesced into this gentle, inexorable compression of her lips under his.
And, vug, it felt so good.
Her soft sigh this time filled him with life-giving air, expanding his lungs and the ecstatic pulse of his ichor, expanding his awareness, achingly, infinitely, to the perfect, scintillating knowledge that this was what he’d always wanted—this moment, this sensation, with her.
Her tongue swirled gently, tracing his mouth, and the kiss turned to fire and shadow, all leaping within him. Reflexively, his fingers tightened, angling her farther back, so that he boosted over her to keep that hungry contact, leaving him half sprawled above her in her bunk, holding himself away from her only with the dubious strength of his other three arms.
For a wild heartbeat, he almost longed for his strength to fail him, after a lifetime of wanting to be stronger, so he could fall upon her, take the kiss to the ends of the universe.
But this was what she had asked for, only this one kiss.
He lifted his head, just enough that her gusting breath was outside of him again, and gazed down at her.
Her smoky gaze was glassy, reflecting back the glitter of his own pale eyes.
She took a deep breath, the softness of her pressing up into him. Orcs had evolved tough hides to protect them from the twists and turns of rough caverns, but the honed senses that allowed them to thrive in the darkness left him achingly aware of her every breath and shiver. Even as he forced himself to release the strands of her hair, all his other hands flexed with the deep urge to hold on to the rest of her.
She still had one hand braced on his torso, where his glyph would’ve been, and the other curved over his shoulder, half embracing him, half holding distance. “Sil,” she whispered. “That was…”
But before she could continue—and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what she might say—a warning alarm blared through the shuttle.
“Route hazard ahead. Obstruction of composition and density beyond recommended parameters. Taking immediate evasive action.”
Sil jolted backward, thunking his head on the underside of his bunk. With a hand that had just moments ago been filled with the softness of her hair cradling the back of his aching skull, he raced for the cockpit.
“This wasn’t on the chart,” Kinsley said she slipped into the seat next to him.
He didn’t have time to ask how she knew that; maybe she was paying more attention to the ways of space living than he’d realized. “We are outside of regular travel areas. Not everything is accurate and verified.”
The shuttle’s scanners had traced out an approximation of the hazard. He quickly reviewed the data.
“Vug,” he swore. “This isn’t just cosmic dust or jetsam. Looks like debris from a destroyed ship. There is still the potential of live ordnance which is why the shuttle can’t just auto deflect.”
“Destroyed?” She sucked in a breath. “It’s not…not theDeepWander, is it? Tell me they didn’t follow us.”
“Almost certainly no, based on the scans.” But for once, the science brought no comfort to him. “There aren’t a lot of reasons to be fighting over this region of space,” he murmured, mostly to himself.
