Page 93 of Tempting Cargo
Shame sank into my chest. “I’m sorry. Do you understand now? Why I can’t let you in until it’s safe?”
His muscles tensed. “I do. More than you think. Humans might not bond like that, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. There’s only so long I can hold on, Shohari. The longer we spend like this, holding each other like this? Even if we fall asleep back-to-back, you know how we wake up. Like this.” He shifted, propping himself up on one arm to look at me. “I thought I could hold on, thought I could wait. I’m realising I’m not as strong as I thought I was, not when it comes to you.”
Cold dread gripped my gut. Ineededhim to hold on. He was the one keeping things alive for us.
Realisation, a sick wrongness at my selfishness, sat uneasily in my chest, fusing with the terror of bonding with him, the terror of losing him. “What are you saying?”
The pause before he answered was a lifetime.
“That maybe I need to protect myself the same way you are,” he said, his words measured, sad, yet still laden with care.
I tried to find something inside me, but all I found was numb. “There’s nowhere else to sleep,” I said, as though that was an answer.
Coerril was in the galley, on my sofa—under my last blanket, for skyk’s sake.
“I could go back to the cargo bay. Or the training room.” His voice was gruff, the tone sour with resentment.
“But?”
“I don’t want to have to.”
Hope burst into a flame, a tiny warmth that could keep me alive. “You don’t want to sleep there when you could be here with me?”
“I don’t.” His sigh was visceral. I felt it in the rise of my hand on his chest, the press of my breasts on his back, and against my heart, where it wished it could beat alongside his.
When he spoke again, his tone held a rough edge. “But I want to be herewithyou. Not just here.”
And we were back to the beginning.
I stroked his arm. Felt the strong muscle, his warmth, tracing the vein there, as I’d traced it dozens of times before. It would be so easy to give in. Too easy.
Yes, my bones said.Let him in. Make him yours. Keep him.
“It’s a week till we get there,” I said. Then, softer. “Can you give me one more week?”
He was tense in my arms for a long while until he huffed and went lax. “It seems I’ll do anything you ask.” It was the sweetest thing, but there was a warning in his voice.
I squeezed him tight. “I’m here. You’re here. Let’s sleep.” I allowed myself one kiss on his neck. “Go to sleep, little spoon.”
But before I drifted off, yet another unsettling thought took shape, a seed of nausea turning in my stomach and blooming outwards. What if the price of protecting my soul was breaking his heart?
Whatwasthe price of protecting his heart?
What if one more week was all we had, and I was wasting it?
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
A warmth worth fighting for
Garrison
I WOKE asI usually did these days, trapped under the warm embrace of an alien.
It was the first day I minded.
It was the first day that, instead of relaxing into her arms, enjoying her heat, her curves, her scent, I tensed. This was too comfortable.
I couldn’t be angry with her, not any more. The last thing I wanted was to doom her fate. Fuck, why hadn’t she said something earlier?
