Page 45 of Adrift!
He swallowed, tasting the faint bitterness of the tonic, just enough bite to revitalize. “Feel?”
“Singing. With me.”
He hesitated because how could he say it? “Beyond incredible.”
“Would you want to play again?”
The answer burst out of him. “Any time.”
She smiled, a teasing, sexy smile with a wicked glint in her eyes. “Like, right now?”
“Remy…”
“Just the two of us. Private show.”
As he hauled her up against him, the twist of her hair unraveled, and then the cold, hard knot in him was unraveling too.
“Any time,” he repeated. “Any place. Anything, as long as it’s with you.”
With one hand, she tugged open the front of his uniform…then winced.
He caught her hand. “Still tender?”
She nodded, a hint of blush rising on her cheeks. “Other places too. It had been a while for…everything.” She flattened her palm on his bare chest. “But I don’t want to wait anymore. I want to feel it all, and if it hurts sometimes, I’ll make it a song.”
“I’ll sing it with you,” he promised. “And make it all right.”
When he was naked, they tumbled together, and the bed no longer felt too big to him. Considering the anything and everything he wanted to experience with her, it was probably just enough.
She rolled to put herself on top, then sat back, straddling his hips. “Relax,” she purred. “Captain’s orders.”
With a smirk, he put his hands behind his head. “If you want to feel it all…”
She spread her hands across his pectorals. “Maybe someday you’ll tell me about these, about your journey.” Her fingertips tickled him as she traced the inscriptions across his skin, making the muscles dance. “Bedtime stories, maybe.”
“I have a lot,” he pointed out. Because each mark was a star he’d passed, a ship he’d left behind, a home he’d never found.
“One a night?” She skimmed her hands down his flanks. “Out here in the Zarnax Zone, there’s a lot of night.”
“Some of it was bittersweet,” he warned.
She leaned down to press her lips to a constellation etched over his heart. “Every scar, every enhancement,” she whispered against him, “every choice that made you who you are—it all brought you here, to me.”
“Remy.” Unable to hold back, he skimmed one hand into her hair, fingers tightening, as she continued her exploration with her tongue.
Over the vulnerable joins where augments met skin, down his body, across all those lightyears… Her mouth on his intimate flesh set fire to that lonely past, like a flaming cocktail released hidden aromatics and burned the sugars to a darker sweetness.
Before he lost control, he surged up to meet her, kneeling thigh to thigh, arms entwined, a kiss that tasted of tonic and desire and the hope they’d never relinquished.
He tipped her over backward and she fell with joyful laughter, grabbing at him to take him with her. But as he settled between her thighs, poised at her entrance, they both stilled.
“We saved the ship,” she said. “This song is for us.”
Chapter 15
When Ikaryo sank into her by torturous degrees, Remy opened herself to the perfect fit of him, and she moaned as her body yielded to welcome him home. His augments shimmered, pulsing in rhythm with their joined heartbeat—an intimate light show that painted them both in silver and blue starlight.
“I hear you,” he murmured. “Every note.”
