Page 7 of Fifth (Intergalactic Warriors #5)

“DO NOT look at the drones.”

Locus’s mouth brushed the edge of her hair, his voice a quiet command that sank straight through her skin. He didn’t pull her harder into him. He didn’t need to. His body was heat and endless masculinity. The drones that had demanded the kiss drifted backward atlast.

Hannah kept her eyes on his throat, unwilling to peer into those predatory drone lenses.

She could still taste Locus. The kiss had been forced by cruelty, but nothing about the moment had been forced.

The first kiss had been obedience. The second, asensual surprise.

The third was hunger that didn’t care who watched.

She hated that.

Her lips tingled, swollen and warm, and her chest rose too fast beneath the thin halter they had given her. The tiny skirt bit into the soft place at her hips each time her breath pulled in. She felt bare and furious and alive.

Locus was nearly naked, nothing but a strip of crude fabric low on his hips that didn’t hide the cut of muscle or the crisp V that dragged her gaze where it had no business going.

Nor did it hide the size of his cock, huge in comparison to a normal human’s.

His skin held heat like he had stolen it from a fire and brought it with him.

When the night air touched her, it became a mockery.

When his body touched her, it became the only truth she could trust.

“All right,” she said, voice small and jagged. “You can let go of me. They’re gone.”

“For now.” His breath warmed the shell of her ear, but he didn’t pull away. “They will return when they believe the bettors require more.”

The words slid down her spine. “Bettors.” The syllables tasted like rust. “Betting not if we’ll die, but when.”

He looked down at her, and the amethyst in his eyes wasn’t a color she’d ever seen on a human. It was a winter sunset with a burning light behind it. “That will not happen.”

The word settled under her ribs. She hated that, too. “You make a lot of vows to people you just met?”

“No.” He didn’t blink. “Only this one.”

The preserve hummed quietly around them.

The slavers were clever with their noise.

Far enough to make the night empty. Close enough that the crack of laughter could carry along the metal fence and coil into the trees.

Distant torches flickered like false constellations.

Something moved out beyond the swaying reeds, muffled and heavy, then stilled when Locus turned his head as if listening with hisskin.

He wouldn’t let her go. He hadn’t since the kiss. That should’ve frightened her more than the machines. It didn’t. It settled the wildness in her chest until the beat evened and she could think again. She shivered, half from cold, half from awareness.

“Come closer,” he urged, his voice low, toughened with a need that slid beneath her skin. The words carried more than command—they carried heat, an invitation and a pledge, awarning and a promise all atonce.

“I am close.”

“Closer.” His palm found the edge of her ribs and lifted slightly. “Breathe here. Slow. Iwill match you.”

“I’m not a machine for timing your breath.”

“You are a heart.” His voice eased, and the sound of it made something old and tender inside her ache. “Let me hear it steady.”

She exhaled. Inhaled. Her ribs rose under his palm.

He matched the rhythm exactly, breath for breath, breast to chest, until their bodies settled into one cadence.

It was like standing in the shore break and letting the waves take control until balance returned.

He knew what he was doing. He was regulating her system with his own.

She didn’t know the language for it. Perhaps anger, adrenaline, arousal, or fear?

He turned each one down by bringing them into line with each breath.

Unable to help herself, she turned her face toward him, cheek brushing the firm plane of his bicep.

The faintest shimmer of light gilded his skin, not a glow, just a suggestion that warmth could be visible if it wanted to be.

He wasn’t human. Nothing about him would let her forget that.

And yet the lines of him were so precise and so mercilessly beautiful that her fingers itched to map them, as if touch could make sense of what sight couldn’t.

“All right, Locus,” she said. “Begin at the beginning. Tell me about yourself so I can understand you better.”

He didn’t rush. “You already know that I am Fifth. It is my rank inside my unit. Sixth is our Apex, in both designation and name.”

“Apex. Is that your leader?”

“Affirmative.”

“So, you’re one under the leader?”

“I am his Enforcer.” He looked past her, into the slim wedge of sky, where smoke from distant fires smudged the stars. “Our Final Flights normally finish us when we reach four hundred years. Mine did not finish.”

“Wait. You’re four hundred years old?”

“Affirmative,” he repeated. “Four hundred and twelve.”

He breathed once, deeply. The movement slid heat against her hip. She considered the immensity of living for so long and how she’d handle it if it were her. Then, his comment about a Final Flight snagged her attention.”What does that mean, that your Final flight didn’t finish?”

“My people—Intergalactic Warriors—ascend through a Final Flight. But I did not ascend. Ibit into the fruit of your world and the heat went out of me. My brothers call it an apple and say it gives us added life.”

“And that’s why you came here?”

“Affirmative.” He angled his head so he could see her without lifting. “My brothers took human women and it tempered them, gave them focus and purpose. Iwish the same, so I came to take a bride because I believe that is the way.”

Her mouth went dry again. “You came to buy me.”

“I came to buy someone,” he agreed, and the honesty of it stung more than any lie. “And then I saw you and I knew you were the one.”

“Romantic,” she said, the word brittle, knowing that saying it any other way would make it soft, and she didn’t know how to survivesoft.

He didn’t apologize. “I am not romantic.”

Her mind skittered between anger and curiosity, anxious to pry past his practiced answers. She wanted something raw, something he had never offered anyone else. “Then tell me something truthful. Something that is only for me,” she said, voicethin.

“I have told you only truth.”

“Tell me something that isn’t an answer you have said a hundred times before.”

His inverted brows tilted and his pointed ears twitched, asmall shift that looked like curiosity.

“I did not know what your mouth would feel like,” he said.

“I knew it would be soft. Idid not know that softness could have weight. Idid not know it would taste like this afterward. Like heat set into my bones.”

Her breath caught. She wanted to be angry, but couldn’t find the angle for it. There was nothing slick in the way he said it. There was only fact, spoken like a man who trusted numbers before poetry and had discovered that the body keeps a math of itsown.

“And you claim you’re not romantic?” she whispered.

“No,” he said. “I am honest.”

She stared at him. The amusement that threatened to lift the corner of her mouth wasn’t small anymore. She hid it by tipping her head to the side and letting her hair fall forward. He reached without thinking and smoothed it back. The gesture was so gentle that her throathurt.

“What about you?” he asked. “You have not spoken a word about your people since we left the cage.”

“Because my people are complicated.” The sentence came out in a rush.

“Because if I say my grandmother’s name out loud, Iwill want to cry.

Because if I tell you about the lake where I used to run in summer when the heat swelled the air, Iwill sit down and refuse to move.

Because I long for my parents and my brothers and sister. ”

“Tell me about the lake,” he urged.

“Cold,” she said, and the word hollowed without her permission.

“So cold it burned the bottom of my feet when I ran the first ten steps. Then perfect. Dragonflies. Such glorious colors and movement. And there was a pier that creaked when the boards swelled. Iliked the creak. It sounded like the place was talking back to me.”

He listened as though the details were weapons he could use to fight the dark that surrounded them. “And your grandmother?”

Hannah buried her face against him. “She laughed like a bell. Sharp and bright. She smelled like soap that came in paper, not plastic. She taught me to sew. Iwas terrible.” The ache rose again and she choked it back.

“She taught me to repair things anyway. You don’t throw away what can be made good. ”

“Your grandmother is correct,” he said. “I will do what she taught you. Iwill repair.”

She stared at him. “What do you think you’re repairing?”

“Anything and everything we will need repaired. Iso vow.”

Her eyes burned. “Don’t say things like that.”

He tucked her closer. “Come. Warm yourself against me. Take my heat.”

She didn’t object. Not when that heat rolled off him and into her until the night became smaller and less cruel and more like a space their bodies could define by proximity.

His forearm still lay across her middle, and each breath made his skin slide in the smallest increments.

The loincloth did a poor job of pretending to be clothing.

The knot sat low. She could’ve slipped one finger under it if she wanted to make herself crazy.

“Stop thinking,” she muttered.

“I prefer when you think,” he said. “I prefer it more when you speak.”

“I don’t prefer it. Not right now.”

“Then feel,” he said. “Tell me each sensation. Break it apart the way Third dissects data—observe it, catalogue it, and give it to me.”

“You’re relentless,” she complained.

“Affirmative.”