Page 22 of Accidentally Fearless

She pushed the fabric off my shoulders, her hands exploring the planes of my chest, the seams where scale met scale, the lines of bioluminescence that flared under her touch like living circuits. Her fingers traced a path down my sternum, following the light. A sound involuntarily escaped me.

"You purr," she said, smiling.

"I do not—" The rumble in my chest was undeniable. "It is a physiological response to—"

"You purr. Vrex, that's adorable."

No one had ever called me adorable. No one would ever dare. I silenced her the most effective way available—by lifting her again and kissing her until neither of us had breath.

I laid her on the bed and followed her down. The bioluminescent glow painted us both in shifting colors as I learned her body. The dip of her waist. The curve of her hip. The sensitive spot below her ear that made her gasp and arch when I pressed my mouth there. She was responsive in ways Velkorin women were not—vocal and restless, her hands constantly moving across my scales, pulling me closer, directing me with a confidence that made me want to give her everything.

The rest of her clothing came away. Mine followed. She looked at me—all of me—and I watched her expression cycle through surprise, assessment, and a heat that darkened her pupils to black.

"Different," she said.

"Is that—"

"Good different. Very good different. Come here."

Her hands guided me. Her body opened to receive me, and when I pushed inside her—so careful, so achingly controlled because the difference in our sizes demanded it—she took a sharp breath. I held still, every muscle locked, letting her adjust to the stretch, to the heat of me filling her completely. The sensation of her around me was almost too much—tight and slick, impossibly warm, her inner walls tightened as she breathed through it.

"Okay?" I managed, voice gravel-rough.

"God, yes. More than okay." Her hands gripped my shoulders, her fingers pressing into the grooves between my scales, finding sensitive places underneath that no one had ever touched. She rolled her hips experimentally, and the movement sent a pulse of light cascading across my markings. "Move. Please."

I moved. Slowly at first—learning her rhythm, the way her breath hitched when I angled just so, the soft sounds she made each time I sank deeper. She wrapped her legs higher around me, heels pressing into the small of my back, and the warm, tight pressure of her body drew me in again and again. I braced my weight on my forearms to keep from crushing her, claws retracted to blunt tips, giving her only as much as she pulled from me.

"Don't hold back," she said, looking up at me with eyes gone soft and dark.

"I could hurt you."

"You won't. I trust you."

Three words. They undid me more thoroughly than anything else could have. I stopped holding back—not all the way, never all the way—but enough that she felt the true power behind each movement. Instead of flinching, she met me, rising to match my pace, her body answering mine with a hunger that matched the ache in my chest.

The room blazed with bioluminescence. I could feel it, every marking on my body lit like a signal fire, rose and gold, casting shifting patterns across her skin. She was luminous beneath me, painted in my light. Her hands slid down my back, nails tracing the ridges of my spine, and the pleasure of it coiled tighter and tighter inside me. I dropped my forehead to hers, breathing her in, feeling the slick slide of our bodies, the way she clenched around me when I hit that perfect spot again and again.

When her body tensed and her back arched, she came apart with my name on her lips—soft and broken. The sound of it, the way she pulsed around me, dragged me over the edge with her. I followed with a low groan that resonated through the walls, hips stuttering as pleasure crashed through every nerve.

Afterward, she lay against my chest, her breathing gradually slowing, her fingers tracing idle patterns through the fading glow along my ribs. My arm was around her, easily spanning her back, holding her against me with a possessiveness I wouldn't suppress. The room smelled of her—of us—and the quiet between us felt like the safest place in the galaxy.

"Seventeen days," she said quietly.

"Do not count them."

"I'm not. I'm just—" She pressed her face into my chest. Her lips moved against my scales. "I'm just not ready to think about leaving."

I tightened my arm around her. The glow of my markings dimmed to a soft, steady amber—the color of contentment and safety.

"Then do not think about it," I said. "Not tonight."

She fell asleep against me.

I did not sleep. Instead, I held her, memorizing the feel of her body against mine, the sound of her breathing, the impossible warmth of a human woman who had walked into my war and begun dismantling every wall I had.

Seventeen days. It was nowhere near enough.

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