Page 42 of Zayrik

I’D LET HER KISS ME.

And stars help me I hadn’t wanted her to stop. Even now, hours later, my body hummed with awareness, like every nerve ending had been rewired to respond to her alone.

I was still flying thisflutzingship with her scent on my skin. A maddening mix of mechanical oil, something sweet I couldn’t place, and that underlying scent that was purely Nyla. It clung to my clothes, my hands, everywhere she’d touched. The memory of it making my fingers tighten on the controls until the metal groaned.

Every part of me burned with the memory. The intensity of her fingers on my jacket, desperate and demanding. The press of her mouth against mine, soft and warm and dangerous. The desperate, furious heat that had crackled between us like a live wire. It hadn’t been a kiss. It had been a detonation. One that had blown apart every careful wall I’d built.

I adjusted the flight controls, forcing my breathing to even out. The familiar motions did nothing to calm the storm in my blood.

Behind me, the door to the cockpit remained closed. Everything we hadn’t said pressed down on me in the silence.

Good.

Because if she walked back in here now... If she so much as looked at me with those eyes that saw too much, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it. Wasn’t sure I could stop myself from pulling her back into my arms, from finishing what we’d started.

My mating marks still thrummed, a low pulsing beneath my skin that hadn’t eased since her mouth had crashed into mine. They traced patterns of fire across my shoulders, down my spine. Ancient Alaran markings responding to something I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge.

They burned like a second heartbeat. Louder, needier, hers.

Always hers.

I gritted my teeth and focused on the jump point coordinates ahead, the blue-white numbers swimming before my eyes. Anything to block the memory of her body pressed to mine, the way she’d fit against me like she belonged there. The way she’d tasted like danger and something that felt too much like mine.

The worst part? I could still feel the exact moment she’d given in. When the kiss had changed from challenge to want, from fire to primal need. Something that terrified us both.

I hadn’t meant to corner her in that cargo hold.

I hadn’t meant to push.

I needed answers about why she trusted me, why she stayed.

She gave me fire instead.

The kiss hadn’t been careful. It hadn’t been calculated. It had been raw.

A reckless, burning thing that had sent my thoughts scattering and my control with them. Like a nova explosion, destroying everything in its path. Including my carefully maintained discipline.

And when she pulled away?

When reality crashed back in?

That fleeting flash of regret in her eyes hit harder than a blaster shot to the chest.

She’d run, leaving silence and heat in her wake. The sound of her boots on the metal grating echoing through the ship like accusations.

I hadn’t stopped her.

Not because I didn’t want to.

But because if I’d touched her again, I wouldn’t have let go. Wouldn’t have been able to resist the pull that had been growing between us since the moment she’d appeared on my ship.

I shifted in my seat, my nails digging into the padded armrest as the ship cruised through dark space. The stars streaked past, cold and distant. It was quiet now. No alarms, no enemies, no blaster fire.

Just my thoughts.

The ghost of her mouth on mine.

And the growing certainty that I was in deeper than I’d ever meant to be.

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