Page 36 of Star Bright
Right here, right now, she’d said. Step by step.
He could do what she needed, even though her lips were so sweet and her stroking touches sent lightning through his blood. It had been a hundred and five years since he’d felt anything like this primal fire.
When she broke the kiss, he almost moaned at the loss, like a fledgling denied a treat. But he let his hands drift over her shoulders and away. Wasn’t he too ancient to be so undone by a kiss?
She gazed up at him, the small sconce light by the door turning her brown eyes to a churning molten gold. “I admit, I didn’t read the entire handbook on draklings. It seemed…rude, considering I wasn’t a contracted bride.”
It took more strength than launching into the sky to keep his voice neutrally curious. “What do you want to know?”
Hectic color chased over her cheeks. “I get that we’re supposed to be, uh, physically aligned in terms of, um, parts, but sometimes even Earthers aren’t compatible in other ways, so…”
His beast writhed sinuously within him, wanting to justshowher all the ways they might fit together.
“One step at a time,” he murmured.
She gave him an uncertain glance, obviously wondering if he was teasing. Which made him realize she was right to go slow. To break the bonds of gravity, draklings and spaceships needed to launch with force. But that was not what this moment needed.
Tangling his fingers with hers, he drew her across the room to the curve of windows. Though the transparent plasteel was stronger and more shielding than Earther glass, the Montana winter night still reached through with its silent chill. But above, the stars sparkled all the brighter for it.
“On Skyearth, the constellations we’d see would be completely different. But with maps and some time—though sometimes it takes more time than we’d like—we can find our way through the void to each other.” He tilted his head, watching her. “Maps and time and desire, of course. We have towantto find our way together.”
“I want this,” she whispered. “I want you, but… She held up their hands between them, and he felt the tremor in her. “Why am I scared?”
He tucked their hands to his chest, half closing his eyes. “Can you feel me tremble too?”
When she tilted her head down, the gust of her breath warmed the space between them and touched the glass next to them in a ghostly swirl. Even as he watched, that little sign of this moment between them faded. That was the shattering reality, he knew: that it all might disappear.
He didn’t realize he’d said it aloud until she reached for him again, enfolding him in a comforting embrace that erasedthe lingering chill. “I don’t have to know everything now to be happy,” she whispered.
He wondered if she realized she was speaking any more than he had. When she looked up at him again, the stars shimmered in her eyes, silver and gold, she boosted herself up to her tiptoes to kiss him with a passionate urgency as if time was crashing down around them.
He felt it too, the hunger, the yearning for another’s touch in the dark, to know there was someone else who cared enough to reach back.
He pressed her against the window, his palms braced on the chilly glass, trying to find some balance between his burgeoning need and the determination to make this a shared gift, for both of them.
They kissed until they were both gasping, and her lower half had melted against him, fitting her curves to his. The beast rumbled, their body throbbing with the ferocious need to take the next step. But he kept his hands on the glass until he thought he might sear his way right through, and if he did, he would set the snow and the night itself on fire.
“Vash,” she gasped against his mouth. “Please.”
Heaving in a sawing breath, he rested his forehead against hers. “What next, my verikai?”
“I want…” Words seemed to fail her in any language. “You. Just you.”
The beast was in his low growl when he said, “Just so you know, Ididread the entire handbook.”
He swung her up into his arms. The weight of her in his arms was lush and perfect, and the beast roared its satisfaction. Since that seemed somewhat premature, Vash tamped down the sound as he carried her to the bed, which was big enough for a drakling in beast shape, making his chuff in bemusement. He laid her down in the nest, admiring the shape of her. She gazedup at him, eyes wide, then he could hold back no longer and fell upon her.
This time it was an all-body kiss, gravity assisted, full contact. She wrapped both arms and one leg around him as if she would never let go. The kiss went on, and if the night had stopped there, time ending, he thought whatever remained of the atoms that were his would stay imprinted with the memory of that kiss, vibrating into eternity.
With the leverage of her free leg, she urged them into a roll, and he surrendered with utmost delight, reveling in her strength, in the hunger in her eyes as she stared down at him from above. His Earther female had a hunter in her too, the beast reflected smugly.
His Earther…
But then she was stripping her sweater over her head, revealing more of herself to him. Draklings were comfortable with nudity—a not uncommon occurrence when the beast would rip through clothing otherwise—but the IDA handbook had made clear that Earthers had their own ideas individually. He and his beast agreed they were enraptured by both her body and her boldness.
“May I touch you?” With his beast ascendant, his voice grated harshly, and he feared she would reconsider this close encounter.
Instead, she urged, “Touch me anywhere, everywhere,” with a voice almost as rough as his.
