Page 76 of Mated to the Monster God
I reach up, thread my fingers through the collar of his armor, feel the heated metal hum beneath my skin. “Kiss me.”
“I do not know if?—”
“I’ll show you.”
And I do.
I press my lips to his and the world melts away. He goes still at first, stunned maybe, but then he responds—not clumsy or confused, but careful, as though I’m a constellation he’s afraid to break. His mouth is warm, unfamiliar, but not unwelcome. My hands cup his face, and I feel the heat thrumming beneath his skin.
He lets out a low sound—half growl, half sigh—and his arms wrap around me like he’s anchoring himself in this moment.
And I don’t stop.
I pour everything into it—all the fear, the pain, the love that bloomed like wildfire in the dark. All the dreams I never let myself have. I kiss him until my lips are swollen and my chest aches from wanting.
When we finally pull apart, our foreheads rest together, breath mingling.
“I’m not afraid anymore,” I whisper.
“I would burn this world before I let it harm you again,” he replies.
I believe him.
The stars watch us. The breeze sings through the dry grass. Sweetwater sleeps, broken but breathing.
I chooseus.
CHAPTER 24
SAGAX
The stars are the same as they were on the first day I fell to this world—silent, eternal, watching.
But I am not the same.
She is beneath me now. Beside me. Around me.
Esme.
That name echoes in my skull like sacred fire. I whisper it again, tasting it with every tongue I’ve ever known. I speak it in the language of my birth and in the lost dialects of the void colonies. I say it in the guttural tones of the Vakutan hunters and in the crystalline clicks of the Terralith priests. Every syllable, every sound, I carve into the air like it will bind me to her soul.
“Esme,” I murmur, again and again, as my hands slide over the curve of her waist.
We have left the colony behind—left the grief and the weight and the watching eyes. We have come to the jungle's edge, where the ground is soft with moss that glows faintly beneath our feet, like the world itself is holding its breath for us. Fireflies blink between vines thick with bloom. The air is heavy with spice and nectar and the earthy scent of wet stone.
She looks at me like I am holy. I feel unworthy.
“You’re shaking,” she whispers, fingers trailing the lines of my jaw.
“I do not want to harm you,” I confess, voice hushed with reverence.
“You won’t,” she says, and leans in until her breath warms my lips. “Youcan’t.”
Her hands move to my armor. Clumsy, human fingers against alien plating. I still her with a touch.
“No,” I whisper. “Let me.”
She nods, heart pounding under her skin like a drumbeat in my bones.
