Page 20 of Accidentally Fearless

His mouth found mine.

The kiss was not gentle. It was years of restraint finally breaking. He kissed me like I was the first thing he'd allowed himself to want in decades—like I was oxygen after decades underwater. His lips were surprisingly soft against the hard line of his jaw, and the heat of his body surrounded me completely. His hands pressed against my back, pulling me flush against the solid wall of his chest. One broad palm spanned almost the entire width of my lower back, holding me there as if he was afraid I might vanish.

I kissed him back with everything I'd never admitted I needed. All the loneliness, all the quiet longing to be truly seen and wanted. I met his urgency, tasting the faint metallic warmth of his mouth, feeling the low rumble building in his chest.

His scales were hot under my palms—smooth and sun-warmed stone, shifting slightly as his muscles tensed beneath them. The bioluminescent marks along his arms and up the sides of his neck flared brighter, casting a rich rose-gold glow that painted both of us and turned the sterile corridor into something almost sacred. The light pulsed in time with his heartbeat, growing stronger with every shared breath.

He made a sound—low and rumbling, a deep purr that vibrated straight through my ribcage and settled low in my belly. It resonated in places I hadn't known could feel sound.

When he finally pulled back, it was only far enough for our foreheads to rest together. His breathing was rough, ragged, and the rose-gold glow from his markings still bathed us both in warm, living light. We were suspended in the corridor—between the cold political machinery that wanted to tear us apart and the war that had somehow brought us together.

"This complicates things," he said. His voice was wrecked, barely more than a growl.

"Yeah," I agreed, my own heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my fingertips, in my throat, and in every place where his body still pressed against mine. "Let's do it anyway."

He smiled—sharp teeth and all—a real, unguarded smile that transformed his face from carved obsidian into something warm and heartbreakingly alive.

And he kissed me again.

8

VREX

The days following the kiss were an exercise in discipline I had not anticipated.

I had trained for war since childhood. I had learned to suppress pain, ignore fatigue, and compartmentalize grief. I had fought for three years with my parents' ghosts at my shoulders and maintained operational effectiveness through pure force of will.

None of that training had prepared me for Rory Sullivan running tactical drills in the morning sunlight with her sleeves rolled up and her hair escaping its band, issuing commands in a voice that made my warriors snap to attention and my scales glow in colors I could not control.

Seventeen days remained on her contract. I counted them each morning the way a man counts the last of his water in a desert.

On the fourth day after the kiss—day thirteen of her contract. I found her in the armory. It was late, well past the hour when my officers retired, and the armory was lit only by the amber maintenance lights that gave everything a warm, shadowed quality. She was cross-legged on the floor surrounded by weapons components, a diagnostic tablet propped against her knee, checking each piece.

"The training equipment was tampered with today," she said without looking up. She had learned to identify my footsteps. I was not certain when, or how, or what it meant that the knowledge made my chest tighten. "Three power cells swapped with depleted units. If Kev'ran had fired at full charge during the formation drill, the kickback could have dislocated his shoulder."

I went still. "You are certain it was deliberate."

"Depleted cells don't accidentally end up in active weapons. Someone swapped them." She finally looked up. "I'm checking everything myself. All of it. Tonight."

"That will take hours."

"Then it takes hours. I'm not sending your people into the next engagement with equipment I haven't personally verified." She turned back to the components in her lap, and her hands moved like she had been maintaining equipment for years. Which, of course, she had. Different equipment, same principle. The realization that a woman who maintained paintball guns could diagnose sabotaged military weapons with equal competence should not have affected me the way it did.

I sat down beside her on the floor. It was not behavior befitting a commander, but I did not care.

For an hour we worked side by side, checking cells, testing charge levels, documenting the compromised units. Her shoulder brushed mine when she reached for components. My claws occasionally touched her hands when we passed equipment between us. Each contact was brief and accidental, but devastating.

"Vrex." She set down the diagnostic tablet. "We haven't talked about it."

"The sabotage?"

"The kiss."

I set down the power cell I was holding. "No. We have not."

"Are we going to?"

"What do you want me to say?"