Fuck. I was alone in a hotel room with a Khanavai warrior who watched me with lust in his eyes.
And for the first time since this farce of an escape had begun, I admitted something to myself.
I want him, too.
The thought froze me in my tracks for a second, but then I continued to the tiny refrigerator to gather up some of the bland food Dee picked up for us.
He ate and drank everything I put in front of him except the chicken noodle soup, which he sniffed, then pushed away with a grimace.
I picked up that bowl and retreated to the chair to eat the soup and consider my attraction to him.
Was it simply some kind of weird doctor-to-patient transference? Some sort of Stockholm Syndrome effect? Also, I’d just treated him as a patient. Would having sex with him be unethical?
You’re overthinking this, I told myself. It’s simply lust. He’s gorgeous and he saved you and then you saved him. Sex isn’t an unusual way to celebrate everyone still being alive.
And waking up to him kissing me had done something to me—flipped a switch that I couldn’t turn off.
I couldn’t quit thinking about him touching me, kissing me…
It’s just sex. It doesn’t mean forever.
And with that thought, I made my decision.
As he polished off the last of an entire box of saltine crackers, I set the empty soup bowl on the counter next to me and stood. “Come on. Let’s get you into the shower.”
Panic flashed through his turquoise eyes. I didn’t bother to clarify what I meant, choosing instead to simply take his hand and lead him into the bathroom, which suddenly seemed much smaller than it had before.
I turned on the water, holding my hand under the spray until it warmed up.
Then I looked back at Zont and raised both eyebrows. “Join me?”
He moved toward me, and I reached up to pull his lips down to mine until I was kissing him again. Even the taste of him was hot and slightly spicy, with just a touch of dust from our recent attempt to hide from the Alveron Horde.
Pulling me closer to him, Zont deepened the kiss, his tongue tangling with mine in a way that was brand new and achingly familiar—as if I’d kissed him before.
No. That wasn’t right.
As if I’ve been waiting for his kiss all my life.
The shape of his shoulders under my questing hands was identifiably Zont, as well. I would never be able to touch another man and not think of my enormous, gorgeous pink alien with the turquoise eyes and dark hair.
Standing on my tiptoes, I ran my fingertips down the backs of his arms, tracing the sharply defined triceps and sliding my palms down to his elbows.
With a strangled noise in the back of his throat, Zont slid his own hands down my back until they cupped my ass, then pulled me up against him, the heat of his erection burning through his kilt.
No, I reminded myself. His chavan.
If he could learn some of my language, I could learn his, as well.
I wound my arms around his neck, taking a step backward and tugging him toward the shower.
“We …talk.. this first?” Zont’s actions didn’t match his words, as his fingers worked feverishly at the knot I had tied in the front of the t-shirt I had grabbed in the gas station.
“Absolutely not. No talking.” With a triumphant motion, I shoved the leather strap—the vandenoi, he had called it—from Zont’s shoulder, leaving his broad chest and the hard planes of his stomach completely bare.
Making a strangled noise of my own, I moved my mouth to his chest, reaching up to flick my tongue delicately against one nipple, smiling at both the crisp feel of the hair on his chest and the way he both shivered and pulled away from me.
“No,” he said, but he was smiling.
“What about this?” I lightly nipped the other one, until Zont pulled my t-shirt, finally unknotted, over my head, using it to trap my arms when I lifted them. Pushing me back toward the spray, he held me still with one arm as he closed his mouth over one breast, using his tongue to play with the nipple through the silky fabric of my bra.
“Oh. I’ve been wearing that for days. Stop.”
He laughed deep in his throat and inhaled, as if he couldn’t get enough of the scent of me, as filthy as I knew I was.
Giving up any pretense at attempting to escape, I reveled in the feel of his mouth on me. As he pulled away long enough to push the fabric out of his way, cool air rushed in, stippling the skin of my breast with tiny chill bumps until he once again claimed the nipple, the flick of his tongue echoing my teasing motions earlier.
Zont released me long enough to unhook my bra—he took a few seconds to examine it, then popped it open with a single flick of one hand, as if he’d been dealing with human lingerie his whole life.
He tossed the bra and the t-shirt onto the bathroom floor, then turned his attention to the other breast, kneading it lightly even as he licked and sucked at it.
I moaned at the sensations streaking out from my nipples and through my entire body.
By the time his mouth trailed down my stomach to the top of my jeans, I was trembling. As he licked along the waistband, desire surged through me in a searing wave, rolling from my chest and moving down, as if it had been released directly from my heart. It settled in the deepest part of me, right at my core, as a hot throb of need.
With a deft motion, Zont unbuttoned my pants, sliding them off my hips and catching my silk panties with his thumbs on the way down, dropping them atop the shirt and bra.
I tugged ineffectually at the waist of his chavan. “Take this off, too.”
One corner of his mouth crooked up. “Demand?”
“A request.”
