Page 9 of Fifth (Intergalactic Warriors #5)
HEAT ARROWED through Hannah, sharp enough she had to close her eyes. If she might die today, at least she’d know what it was like to taste him again.
Her fingers curled in determination as she whispered, “Kiss me.”
His head bent, his mouth claiming hers with a heat that stole her breath.
The first brush was rough, almost harsh, as if he would devour her.
Then he slowed, deepening, coaxing her lips open until she yielded without thought.
His tongue stroked into her mouth and she met him, clutching at the hard planes of his shoulders, pressing closer until the thin barrier of her halter became useless.
The kiss burned, wild and consuming. His hand slid from her waist up her spine, fingers splaying against bare skin as he hauled her tighter against his chest. She gasped into him and he swallowed the sound, kissing her deeper, as if he would brand her with his mouth alone.
Her thighs trembled, brushing against his, and the loincloth did nothing to hide the hard proof of his arousal. Heat coiled inside her, fierce and insistent, and she pressed closer still. His answering growl vibrated through her chest, low and primal.
He broke the kiss only to trail his mouth along her jaw, down to the tender spot beneath her ear. Her head tipped back, breath catching, and she hated how badly she wanted more. His teeth grazed her throat, not a bite, only a threat of one, and she shivered.
“Again,” she whispered, reckless now. If the world ended, she would at least have this.
He obliged, crushing his mouth back to hers, kissing her like a man starving.
His hands roamed, not yet beyond her back and hips, but firm enough to make her ache with promise.
She wound her arms around his neck, greedy for his heat, for the dangerous certainty ofhim.
It didn’t go further, only the fire of mouths and hands and the sharp, trembling knowledge that she wanted more.
The dawn waited. The trial waited. But for this stolen stretch of night, there was only the furious press of lips, the hot drag of breath, and the unspoken truth that she would never be the same again.
Her lips tingled as she broke away, breath ragged. “That’s enough,” she whispered, though her body screamed the lie. “If I take more, Imay never stop. And I don’t want anyone to see. This is only for us.” The words steadied her, afragile shield against the hunger.
Locus’s eyes burned violet, his chest heaving, but he inclined his head once as if honoring the boundary.
He stood in one efficient movement. The night carved darker shadows into the lines of him, the faint ash on his forearm brushing her skin as his hand slid away. “You have only to ask. Iam yours.”
She pushed up, hair sliding over her shoulders in a dark curtain.
The halter tugged, the tiny skirt riding high.
She didn’t pull it down—he had already seen everything and somehow made her less exposed by looking.
He reached for the canteen he’d set in the ferns the night before and lifted it to her mouth.
She drank because he wanted her to, and because the water tasted like the first mercy she had been given indays.
“Again.” His voice left no room for refusal. She drank again.
When she lowered the canteen, the world tilted, areminder that she had not truly slept. He steadied her by the elbow, then released when she found her balance. His gaze lingered on the sky in the direction of the camp for a beat toolong.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The drones. They are moving again.”
“Here?”
“Near.” He angled his head. “Not yet here.”
“Then we go before they arrive.”
“Affirmative.” He stepped in front of her, pace purposeful. “Stay on my heel. If I stop, you freeze. If I pull, you lean.”
“You like to pull.”
His mouth curved, adangerous flicker. “Affirmative.”
They moved together, bodies recalling the rhythm they had built the day before.
The ground toward the gate looked black and smooth in the dawn, aribbon of something not quite dirt, not quite stone.
It reminded her of the surface of the lake when the wind died and the water became glass.
She thought of boards that creaked and grandmothers who smelled of soap wrapped in paper—and then she thought of nothing, because the earth gave under Locus’s weight in a fool’sbow.
His hand shot back, clamped her hip, holding her as if his fingers were driven into the ground itself. The smooth surface trembled and held. He eased his grip but didn’t lift hispalm.
“Do you trust me?” His eyes never left the ground.
She thought for a single heartbeat. “Yes.”
“Then we will go through.”
She wanted to laugh. To cry. To kiss him until the memory of her abduction shattered. Instead she set her palm flat between his shoulder blades, fingers pressing into hard muscle. “Through,” she said, and the word clicked like a key turning in alock.
He stepped, and the ground thinned.
The night ended there, with the taste of his kiss still on her mouth, his heat still burning in her bones, the rules they had spoken etched under her skin like ink she couldn’t wash away. The gate waited. The drones stirred. The world held its breath, ready todrop.
“Stop.”
Hannah froze mid-step, breath suspended. Locus’s voice cut the hush of the preserve like a blade, quiet and certain, vibrating along her spine until the small muscles between her ribs went still.
Nothing moved. Not the air. Not the leaves above the pathway. Not the faint dust at her feet that had looked so harmless a momentago.
He eased fully in front of her, silent, heat pouring off his body.
The preserve absorbed sound, yet she heard every shift of his weight, every measured breath.
He studied the ground the way a surgeon studies an exposed artery.
Her mouth dried. She looked too, and the dirt that had seemed ordinary now looked wrong.
It carried a muted, padded quality, like fabric stretched tight to cover a trapdoor.
“You see it.”
“I see something.” Her whisper barely left her lips. “I don’t know what I’m seeing.”
“The filling is fresh. There is a seam three steps ahead. Others would miss it.”
Her throat worked. “But not you.”
“No.” His attention returned to the ground. “Not me.”
They spent hours retracing a path that bent like a circle, only to find every trap reset behind them.
The iron jaw they had jammed open previously was now ready to spring again, as if it had never been touched, nets torn earlier now coiled again.
The slavers wanted them to sense the clamp of an invisible hand. It was working.
They turned toward the only route left. This corridor of dirt and short scrub was narrower than any before. Somewhere ahead, the gate waited. She sensed it the way a shipyard worker senses the sea behind a wall, the way a pianist senses a stage through a curtain. It was close.
Her eyes burned from exhaustion. Locus had offered his body like a wall and told her to rest, and she had sat upright against him with eyes open and mind racing.
That memory pressed on her now: the warmth of his chest, the heavy rhythm of his breath, the delicious taste of his kiss.
She shoved everything aside and watched his hands instead.
He crouched and drew two clean lines in the dirt with his fingertips, one to her left, one to her right, careful not to break the surface. “Step only where I step. Match my stride exactly.”
“I’m not a soldier.” Her mouth tilted despite herself. “I trip on flat sidewalks.”
“You will not trip today.” His look steadied something inside her. “Give me your hand.”
She set her palm in his, heat shocking through her arm, settling in her belly with a significance she didn’t want to name. He guided her hand to his lower back, above the strap of the loincloth they’d forced on him. “Keep it here. If I shift, you shift. If I stop, you freeze.”
His spine flexed beneath her fingers as he moved.
She mirrored him, palm splayed, muscles taut.
He placed each foot with precision, heel to ball to toe, never committing until he tested the surface.
Not elegant. Elegance was for show. Efficient.
Deadly. It felt like safety, the way a bolt feels when it locks adoor.
They covered ten steps. Fifteen. Each footfall like stepping over a sleeping predator.
The dirt shifted, gave, then held. He paused, and she sensed the pause in his body before her eyes caught it, arigid stillness that spoke louder than words.
He was a living telegraph, every muscle signaling warning.
Instinctively she shortened her breath to match his, as if syncing her body to his would tether her to safety.
“Almost there.” His voice camesoft.
“How do you know?”
“Sound carries differently near a void.” He pointed with his chin toward a dark band of ground. “The earth is thinner. There is weight below.”
“Below.” Her voice stayed even. “Like a hole.”
“Like a pit.”
Overhead, asudden mechanical whir cut through the silence.
Drones descended, their lenses gleaming with cruel interest as they hovered above the fragile stretch of ground.
Hannah’s stomach clenched. Their presence was proof enough.
There would be no way around this. The slavers wanted them here, balanced on the edge of death, and the machines wouldn’t leave until blood or triumph had been delivered.
Her mouth went dry. The guard’s voice crawled from memory: You will face the pit.
One dies, one lives. She had pressed her nails into her palms until crescent moons rose to hide her fear, remembering the guard’s mocking tone as he described the pit.
Those shallow crescents had once been like armor, but in this moment they seemed like nothing more than fragile lies, powerless against the truth of what lay ahead.
“Can we go around it?”