Page 239 of Galaxy Games Four-Book Box Set (Galaxy Games)

239

No Forgiveness

M aya

This humongous warrior has told me he loved me almost since the beginning. I need to find a way to tell him, too.

“Tell me, Adore. When you used to dream of machta and a mate, how did you picture it?”

Maybe that was the wrong question. He’s a guy. Even if he’s an alien, if he’s honest he’s going to tell me he pictured fucking.

“Well, there were times I thought of fahking . Many times.” My big Xenon gives the shyest, cutest smile. Since when did his terrifying face become cute, I wonder. “There were other things, though. I thought of hover drives and trips to the park and exploring nearby caves and introducing my mate to my parents.”

His face goes on lockdown for a moment, as if he just remembered his family isn’t all just dead. Their bones turned to dust a thousand years ago. He’s still kneeling between my feet, so I settle my hands on his shoulders, a subtle reminder that I’m here for him.

“One thing I used to imagine a lot. Dancing. I used to watch a vid about a male and female who fell in love and danced together until they experienced machta . I watched it over and over with stars in my eyes. It’s a Xenon expression.”

“Imagine that.”

I stand and a touch of my hands indicates I want him to rise to join me.

“Show me, Adore. Teach me your Xenon dance.”

He tells the computer to play a song, and music fills our cabin. It’s primitive, with only three instruments—a drumbeat and two flutes that sometimes play together and at other times they twine around each other, lilting high and dipping low.

He pulls me into his arms, then hunches down. I’m not sure why he’s almost squatting. There’s no way to be graceful in that position. Then he pulls me to him so our chests touch. His fingers splay on my back and tug me even tighter, so my breasts are smashed against him.

I’ll play along, but there’s nothing fun or romantic about this. Certainly nothing sexy.

Suddenly, he gets a better idea. He lifts me, splits my naked legs around his naked waist, and hugs me tight.

“I guess only one of us will be dancing,” he says with a self-deprecating laugh. “Let’s see how this works.”

Now he’s dancing and I’m just along for the ride. His perfect, muscular body takes no time at all to get into the primitive rhythm of the music. Luckily, I have no preconceptions, so I allow myself to simply be in the moment.

He glides with me on a path through his small cabin. We travel around the bed, twirl in place, then return to where we started. As we start our third circuit, something changes in his stance, the way he’s holding me.

He seems to lose his self-consciousness, letting himself become one with the music. Then he tugs me more tightly to his chest.

“Feel my heartbeat?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper in my ear.

It takes me a few seconds, but as I sink into the moment, allowing myself to focus on only one thing, his heartbeat, something changes. The subtle awareness of his heartbeat moves from background to foreground. The primitive pulse of the music is lost, replaced by the pulse of his heart.

I can’t just hear it. I can feel it. It’s rumbling against me. Soon it’s invading me. It’s not just the music of the two flutes weaving together. It’s the drumbeat of our hearts.

“Are you feeling it too?” My voice is high, so full of emotion it’s quivering.

“Our hearts are one,” he says simply.

Out of all the changes I’ve experienced since I met him, even the need to drink his blood, this is the most profound. It’s not just that our hearts are in sync. No. Our hearts are beating as one . A frisson of fear snakes up my spine when it strikes me that if his heart quit beating, mine, quite literally, would stop beating, too.

“We’re that connected?” I ask, unable to hide the awe, and the fear, from my voice.

“ Machta , my heart. Machta .”

I resist for a moment as my vision becomes hazy from my tears, then I allow it all to flow away as I release it to the universe.

“I love you, Adore,” I say tentatively. Speaking it out loud opens a dam inside me. It feels good and right and true. I will never again worry that my emotions for him result from some quirk of biology. No, what A’Dar and I have is deeper, more genuine, more solid and substantial than the granite of Mount Rushmore. “I love you,” I say again and again as I ride through a whirl of emotions from tearfulness to joy to elation.

“You forgive me for forcing you into this?” he asks.

I wish I could see his face, but I don’t want to break our heart connection.

Speaking into the shelter of his neck, right over his jugular, I say, “There is nothing to forgive, my love.”