Page 14 of Chained to the Champion
He unwrapped the bundle. Steam—hot, spicy, meaty—rose into the stagnant air. Dumplings. Delicious. He offered one, a lean across the too-short gulf. My fingers brushed his as I took it. His scales were cool. I pretended not to notice the shiver knifing up my arm.
We ate, silent, watching each other across the DMZ of our sleeping platform. Tense, calculating silence. Like sharing a foxhole with someone who might, or might not, shoot you when this was over. I stared at the food, chewed slowly.
Don’t think about the alien sitting three feet away. Don’t think about arm muscles under his torn tunic. Focus on survival.
He finished first, wiped his mouth with the back of his scaled hand. Efficient, but not pretty. His gaze dropped in a way that set every alarm in me screaming, straight to my wrists, the ugly red welts left from the staging. I pulled them away, too slow. He saw.
A growl started low in his chest. Before I could brace, he’d reached out, one huge hand swallowing my left wrist. My entire body went electric, every nerve sparking, adrenaline surging. Reflex screamed: yank away, grab the knife.
I didn't move.
His claws, curved and lethal, ghosted over my pulse point. I could feel the throb of my blood, erratic and panicked. And something else Ireallydidn't want to name.
“Hold still,” he ordered.
I wanted to jerk back on principle. To tell myself I was still the one in control here. But my body had other plans.
He uncorked the waterskin, fingers deft and surprisingly graceful for hands so lethal. A slip of wet cloth pressed gently and slowly against my wrist. Careful, precise, as if I were some rare, breakable specimen. Not a prisoner. Not prey.
I shuddered. Heat prickled under my skin. It burned up my arm, haze and static, nerves twanging in time with my pulse. Every touch was a new spark. I resented it. Relished it. Didn’t know where to put the wanting.
He paused, gaze boring into the space where my flesh rose, small shivers, betraying me with every shallow breath. His thumb brushed deliberately over the goosebumps. Almost wonder, something like hunger flickered in his eyes, raw and unguarded, so unlike the calculating strategist I’d catalogued and hated and, God help me, noticed.
“Your skin. It rises. Why?” The words vibrated out of him, low and heavy, close enough to melt into my bones. Not scornful. Curious. Hungry. Like the puzzle of me had him absolutely riveted.
A claw danced its way up my arm, feather-light and agonizing, tracing a map of heat and blood. Each graze left a pulse behind, tight, electric, intimate. My body arched to it for half a second before I caught myself, but he saw.
Of course he saw.
My breath caught, turned ragged. Not fear, I recognized that old, animal instinct. This was something more slippery, more dangerous. Dread and desire, tangled and indistinguishable in the moment. I tried for science, for analytic distance. I failed spectacularly.
I wasn't just being handled; I was being studied. Admired and consumed by his focus. Under that stare, I wasn’t less. I was too much. Nerve endings overloaded, skin tuned to his frequency, every instinct in me screaming: Yes. Yes. Don’t you dare stop.
He leaned in, an invasion, heat radiating off him like a furnace. The air thickened, crackled. His scent wrapped around me: dust, stone, and something wild, base, beautiful. I could taste it, could almost taste him.
His head dropped, lips parted, hovering just above my skin, close enough I could feel the heat of his breath, the promise strung taut between us.
Not prey. Not an experiment. No, not for a second.
I should have pulled away. Should have said something sharp, driven a wall up between his want and mine. But my body was honest, traitorously honest, urging closer, arching into his orbit, breath coming quick and wanting.
The danger wasn't that he'd break me.
The danger was that I'd say yes.
He sat there, studying me like something half-wild, half-sacred. Like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to conquer me or worship me. I held his gaze, chin up, defiant but shaking, inside, anyway. Refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing how badly I wanted to close the distance.
The silence vibrated. Breathless. Heavy.
He went lower, gaze fixed on the chaos at the pulse under my jaw. Then, God and rot and every broken thing, his tongue flicked out. Long, dark, deadly. One slow, deliberate swipe across my wrist, burning and startling and weirdly, breathlessly intimate.
I froze. Blank. Sound dropped away. The world, for one long, vertigo-laced heartbeat, constricted to nothing but the damp heat on my skin, the thought of his alien taste, the wild, unspooling panic and thrill tangled at the root of my spine.
Then he was gone, pulling back like a shutter slamming down, intensity vanishing behind emotional armor.
“You should rest.” Flat. Command. Dismissal.
He rose, every movement efficient, practiced, distant. He parked himself at the fractured window, staring out at the slice of sky hacked between the filthy buildings.
