Page 7

It started with a hiss. Not from the alien, who had apparently taken a vow of dramatic brooding, but from the water purifier.

The sound cut through the stale recycled air of our little bunker, startling me from my third attempt to inventory what was left of my personal belongings after my unexpected interplanetary vacation.

I’d been awake for a few hours, restless and unable to fall back asleep with my skin still buzzing from dreams too vivid to dismiss.

Dreams that left me flushed and frustrated, with phantom sensations of strong hands and golden eyes.

Dreams that felt strangely familiar, like memories I couldn’t quite place.

The purifier hissed again, more aggressively this time, followed by an alarming pop and the distinct smell of something electrical giving up the ghost.

“Hey, uh... Mr. Tall, Grim, and Growly?” I called out, abandoning my pathetic pile of half-melted possessions and crouching beside the sparking device. “Your apocalypse Keurig is throwing a tantrum.”

No answer. Of course.

I glanced over my shoulder and, yep—there he was, standing like a granite sculpture with arms crossed and eyes glowing faintly in the low light. Watching. Always watching. His massive frame somehow managed to make the already cramped shelter feel both smaller and safer at the same time.

“Do you even speak?” I asked, voice rising with mock incredulity.

“Or do you just... brood people into submission? Because if it’s the latter, I should warn you that I’m particularly resistant to tall, dark, and silent types.

” That was a lie. I was extremely susceptible to his particular brand of brooding intensity, a fact I was desperately trying to ignore.

Still no response, though his jaw ticked. Aha! Progress.

The purifier gave one last pathetic wheeze before spitting out a stream of what looked suspiciously like steam instead of water. I leapt back with a yelp that I would later deny vehemently.

“Okay, seriously, I think it’s dying. And since I’m guessing water is kind of important in this hellscape desert of yours, maybe we should do something?”

He walked over finally, every heavy step somehow quieter than my heartbeat, and knelt beside me.

Without a word, he popped open the panel, large clawed hands far more gentle than I expected as he fiddled with internal components.

I bit the inside of my cheek to stop a comment about how even his fingers were annoyingly attractive—long, strong, with those predatory claws that retracted partially as he worked with delicate parts.

The proximity was torture. Heat radiated from his body like a furnace, carrying that scent I couldn’t place—something wild and masculine and definitely not human. Something that made my mouth water embarrassingly.

“Do you glower at all broken appliances,” I said lightly, desperate to break the silence, “or am I just lucky?”

He looked up at me then, eyes narrowing, his voice gravel and thunder. “You talk too much.”

“Right,” I muttered. “Definitely not a conversationalist.”

Still, I didn’t move as he worked. I liked the heat of him, the scent—something earthy and dry, like sunbaked stone and wild herbs. I was dangerously close to leaning into him when he handed me a replacement tube with a single grunted word: “Hold.”

I held. Probably held my breath too. Our fingers brushed during the exchange, and the contact sent an electric jolt up my arm that had absolutely nothing to do with the malfunctioning purifier.

His skin was hot and slightly rough, textured in a way human skin wasn’t. The brief touch lingered like a brand.

I watched his face as he worked, fascinated by the subtle expressions that crossed his alien features.

Concentration furrowed his brow. Irritation tightened his jaw.

Satisfaction softened his eyes when a connection clicked into place.

He was more expressive than he knew, or at least more than he intended to be.

When the purifier finally purred instead of hissed, I grinned. “Look at that. Teamwork.”

He stood, his massive frame unfolding with that fluid grace that never failed to mesmerize me. “Stay out of the systems next time.”

“Aw, he cares.” I placed a hand over my heart in mock surprise.

His look was flat. “I care about not dying of dehydration.”

I rolled my eyes but smiled anyway. This whole thing was weird.

Alien tech. Alien desert. Alien man. And now, alien flirtation, apparently.

Because no matter how grumpy he tried to act, I wasn’t imagining the way his eyes dropped to my mouth.

Or the way his tail twitched every time I touched my hair.

I made a strategic retreat to the other side of the small common area, busying myself with reorganizing my meager possessions while my face burned. Smooth, Jas. Real smooth. Accidentally propositioning the alien warrior who’s keeping you alive. A+ survival strategy.

But when I dared to glance up again, I caught him watching me, something almost like amusement softening his stern features. His tail swayed gently behind him, a rhythmic movement that seemed unconscious. It was... strangely captivating.

“Four hours,” he said suddenly.

I blinked. “What?”

“Until the storm clears. Four hours.”

Four more hours trapped in this shelter with him. Four more hours of this strange, electric tension. Four more hours of pretending I wasn’t increasingly drawn to someone who wasn’t even human.

“Great,” I said, aiming for nonchalance and landing somewhere near desperate. “Can’t wait.”

His tail twitched again, and I wondered if it gave away his thoughts the way a human’s face might. If so, I desperately needed a translation guide. Because something told me surviving the next four hours would be a hell of a lot harder than surviving the alien desert.

The temperature dropped first, which made no sense on a planet hot enough to fry an egg on my forehead.

Then, with a sound like a dying whale, the environmental controls went haywire.

Red warning lights flashed across the console as the shelter’s system fought a losing battle against whatever was happening outside.

“What the hell?” I pressed my palm against the wall, feeling it vibrate beneath my touch. “Is this normal?”

Rhaekar stalked to the control panel, his movements tense and controlled. “Radiation surge from the storm. Overwhelming the cooling systems.”

As if to punctuate his explanation, the lights flickered once, twice, then dimmed to an eerie emergency glow.

And with that dimming came the heat—not gradually, but all at once, like someone had opened the door to a blast furnace.

Within seconds, sweat beaded along my hairline and trickled down my spine.

“Fuck,” I gasped, already feeling my clothes sticking to my skin. “What happened to ‘advanced alien technology’?”

His golden eyes gleamed in the low light as his fingers flew over the controls. “Legion tech. Not designed for anomalies of this magnitude.”

“Great. So we’re going to bake alive in here?”

He didn’t answer immediately, focused on whatever emergency protocols he was engaging. The shelter’s systems responded with a series of angry beeps that didn’t sound promising.

I peeled my shirt away from my skin, already soaked through. “Jesus, it’s like a sauna in here.”

“Remove excess clothing,” he ordered without looking at me, still working frantically at the console. “Conserve your body’s cooling mechanisms.”

“Excuse me?”

“Human physiology is inefficient at temperature regulation. You will overheat faster than I will.”

Well. Hard to argue with that kind of cold biological assessment. I stripped down to my tank top and shorts, fanning myself like some sort of stranded pin-up girl. The relative lack of clothing helped, but not much. The heat was relentless, pressing against my skin like a physical force.

Rhaekar finally abandoned the console with a growl of frustration. “System is locked. Self-protection protocol.” He turned to a storage compartment and yanked out what looked like a thin silver mat. “Emergency thermal regulation.”

“A space blanket?” I asked incredulously. “It’s already hot enough to cook meat in here!”

“Heat shield. Reflects ambient temperature.” He unfurled the mat on the floor, the material gleaming strangely in the emergency lighting. “It will protect from radiation and extreme heat.”

And then came the kicker: only one heat-shielded mat. Just one.

I looked at the mat, then at him, then back at the mat. It was barely big enough for one of us, let alone both—especially considering his massive frame took up about twice the space of an average human.

“I’m not cuddling you,” I warned, already knowing where this was headed.

“I wouldn’t allow it,” he said, deadpan. But something in his eyes flickered—a heat that had nothing to do with the malfunctioning environmental systems.

Ten minutes later, I was definitely cuddling him.

It wasn’t like I had a choice. The heat pressed down like a weighted blanket soaked in lava.

And he...well, he radiated cool calm like an enormous space AC unit, his body somehow maintaining a comfortable temperature despite the inferno around us.

I justified every inch I scooted closer with science.

Body heat regulation. Shared survival tactics. Shut up.

We lay side by side on the mat, his massive body dwarfing mine, careful inches of space between us that grew smaller with each passing minute. His breathing was measured, controlled, while mine came in shallow pants as I fought the dual discomfort of the heat and the proximity to him.

“Try to rest,” he rumbled, his voice vibrating through the small space between us. “Conserve energy.”

“Easy for you to say,” I muttered. “You’re not the one whose brain is being slow-cooked.”

His response was to shift slightly, one arm extending beneath my head like an offering. “Elevated position will improve circulation. It will help.”