It was why I didn’t have a Queen yet. I preferred to be alone.
But, right now… I wanted to be with her… with this Earthling. I couldn’t believe how fast my heart was beating. I could feel her heartbeat in her wrist pressed against my wrist, thudding in time with mine: rapid and thrilling. Her breath came in sharp gasps each time I kissed her. I smoothed back her hair with my other free hand and then moved down to her chin to pull her head up to look at me. I was kneeling over her entirely now, and her other hand was kneading into my lower back, tentative but strong, appealing, demanding, the way I had somehow known it would be.
“You know, I’ve never kissed an Earthling.”
“Well, I’ve never kissed anyone who wasn’t an Earthling.”
“How many Alpha Warlords have you been with?”
“Oh, tons.”
I looked at her sharply, trying to distinguish the seriousness of her remark. Her eyes held steady in the dim green glow from the geode. Then they started to sparkle. I breathed more easily, surprised that I had felt a spark of jealousy thinking she was telling the truth. Why did I want to be her only Alpha Warlord?
"You'll be my first there, too, Alpha Jase." She brushed her fingertips along my jawline again and ran her hand through my hair. Sparks sprang from the contact as if there was static electricity between us igniting in the dry air between her touch and the blonde fire on my head. “If you ever get around to actually kissing me, of course.”
“You don’t like being teased?” I said with a short laugh.
“I prefer to do the teasing.” As she said it, she sat up sharply to lean in close to my mouth, whispered her lips against mine, just so they barely touched, and as I grabbed her arms to pull her in tighter, desire flaring in my chest, she moved quickly back and ducked away, rolling under me and out to stand and scoot a few yards to the other side of the cavern. I was stunned at how quickly she had moved with her leg still injured. I was left almost falling over, thinking her lips were going to be right there to kiss, my hands bracing against the empty floor beneath me, my heart beating, my stomach dropping, my desire growing.
“Tricky, tricky…” I said, licking my lips and standing up slowly. Grinning at her, I brushed my hair back. I pushed my sleeves up, my mythological tattoos glowing with magical ink in the geode light. I put my hands on my hips. “Guess my ring is making your leg feel better.”
“It does feel a lot better.” She grinned back, rubbing the bandage. “Thank you for taking care of me.” She took two steps back again as I stepped toward her. “Do you think you’ve earned…” She swooned suddenly, nearly falling, her hand reaching up to catch her head as it ducked down, as if she were going to faint.
In an instant, I was telekinetically pulling her toward me, into my arms, and kneeling down to the ground with her. She squeezed her eyes shut, her face pale, lips white in the dimness, a red flare of blood showing through on the bandage that needed to be re-wrapped.
I moved to lay her back down on the bedroll, but she wrapped her hands around my neck, buried her face into my chest, and pulled herself tightly into me. “Please don’t let me go…”
I tilted her chin up to me again and this time, sank my lips into hers. They were soft, full, luscious, sweet, and returned the kiss after a moment with a delicious pressure and the eagerness of someone who had also thought of this moment more than once.
Her fingers clung to my neck and wound themselves into my hair. Tears streamed quietly and slowly from her eyes, trading themselves to my cheeks as we kissed, slowly and deeply, testing each other’s tongues, wrapping the tips together, biting at each other’s lips, and then I pulled back on her hair to release the embrace and dotted her jawline with a dainty stream of kisses that tasted salty from her tears.
She nuzzled into me as I laid her back down on the bedroll.
"You need to rest a little while longer. Aimer is in control of the army, and they will be searching for us already. We are in a salt mountain and can't communicate telepathically with them. I will compose a code and release it from the top of the mountain. You need to let my family's ring heal you, okay?"
“Okay, Alpha.”
“Okay, Earthling." I smoothed her hair, and she moaned a little happy smile and breathed deeply. She rubbed her leg, and I remembered the bandage needed changing. I placed more of the pain reliever salve on the bandage and the cloth on her forehead and she was soon asleep again, so soundly that I wondered if I had imagined all that had just transpired between us, and, yet, I still felt the tingling in my body, the lusciousness of her lips, and the bewilderment in my brain…
I wondered if she was going to remember any of it at all, or if she would think she had just been dreaming…?
I looked at her in the dim light after setting her bandage and then moved to
