Page 31 of Return to Sender
As if he was seeing me, not just the princess or the political asset or the convenient wife.
I roll onto my side, pressing my face into the pillow I may have “borrowed” from his personal quarters while he was distracted with ship diagnostics—that clean, precise smell underlaid with something warm and uniquely him. The scent that makes my body respond in ways I’ve never experienced before.
He probably hasn’t even noticed it’s missing yet. Mr. Perfectly Organized will discover the theft eventually, and the thought of his controlled outrage when he realizes what I’ve done makes me grin into the stolen fabric.
The smile fades as reality settles around me like ship’s gravity after a jump. I’m never going back to that life, am I? The thought should be terrifying, but instead, it feels like the first deep breath I’ve taken in years.
What would my life look like now? No more royal protocols dictating my every move. No more arranged social functions where I smile and nod while men discuss my reproductive potential like I’m prize livestock. No more pretending to be grateful for an “advantageous match” that would have crushed my soul slowly over decades.
Instead... what? Running from system to system with a man who quotes regulation manuals and collects banned poetry? Living on the edge, always looking over our shoulders, but finally—finally—free to make our own choices?
The thought should terrify me. It doesn’t.
Do I miss anyone from my old life? My father’s advisors who saw me as a bargaining chip? The courtiers who whispered about my “willful nature” behind painted fans? Lady Annelise and her poisonous gossip? My parents, who loved the idea of me more than they ever loved me?
The answer is swift and startling: no. Not one of them.
The only person who ever saw me—really saw me—was my combat instructor, Sera, who taught me to fight during those secret lessons. “You have fire in you, little princess,” she’d said after I’d finally managed to pin her during a particularly brutal sparring session. “Don’t let them smother it with silk and ceremony.”
Sera would approve of this choice. She’d probably laugh herself sick at the idea of me accidentally space-marrying a diplomatic courier who keeps his poetry collection hidden like state secrets.
I think about Wi’kar reading to me from that banned volume, his voice rough with emotion as he spoke of “unlikely minds” finding connection across the void. The way his careful control had cracked when I mussed his perfect hair. How his scent had betrayed his arousal even as he insisted our bond was merely a legal fiction.
Legal fiction, my ass.
The man who held me in that tunnel, who treated my injury with such tender precision, who chose protecting me over fifteen years of perfect service—that wasn’t duty. That was choice. That was... something else entirely.
Something that makes heat pool low in my belly when I remember the way his breathing changed when I pressed close to him. The barely leashed power in his controlled movements when he fought those bounty hunters.
My hand drifts down my body almost without conscious thought, following the path my imagination takes. What would it feel like to have those precise, careful hands mapping my skin? To see those silver patterns flare across his chest as he moved above me? To hear my name in that controlled voice when control finally shattered completely?
The thin shipsuit I’m wearing feels suddenly restrictive. I tug it off with impatient hands, letting the recycled air cool my fevered skin. In the privacy of these borrowed quarters, I can finally acknowledge what my body has been screaming since the moment I saw him dispatch those hunters with lethal grace.
I want him. Not as a convenient partner or a political necessity, but with a hunger that has nothing to do with law and everything to do with the way he looked at me when he thought I might be hurt. The way he chose me over everything he’d ever believed about himself.
My fingers trace the path I imagine his would take—tentative at first, then with growing confidence as pleasure builds. I think about his hands instead of my own, about that controlled strength applied to worship rather than restraint. About the way his breathing might change if he were here, watching me come undone for him.
The fantasy grows more vivid as my touch becomes more purposeful. Wi’kar’s silver-bright eyes dark with desire. His precise voice rough with need as he tells me exactly what he wants to do to me. The way those temple patterns would pulse in rhythm with our heartbeats as we finally, finally give in to what’s been building between us since the moment I tumbled out of his cargo bay covered in mud and fury.
In my imagination, he doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t retreat behind protocol and proper procedure. Instead, he lets me see the man beneath the regulations—the one who collects banned poetry about hearts recognizing each other across impossible distances. The one who made his first real choice when he chose me.
When release finally crashes over me, it’s with his name on my lips—not Agent Wi’kar, not my accidental consort, but simply the man who makes me feel like I’m finally, truly alive.
In the aftermath, breathing hard in the darkness of quarters that smell faintly of him, one truth crystallizes with absolute clarity: I’m done running from this. Done pretending it’s just legal obligation or convenient arrangement.
Tomorrow, I’m going to corner that beautiful, frustrating, perfectly controlled alien and make him admit what we both know. That whatever this is between us, it’s real. It’s chosen. And it’s worth fighting for.
I’ve spent my whole life being told what I should want, who I should be, how I should behave. For once—maybe for the first time ever—I know exactly what I want.
I want him. All of him. The precise courier and the hidden romantic. The man who quotes regulations and the one who breaks them for me. The controlled alien who loses that control when I get too close.
And I’m going to make sure he knows it.
Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this whole insane adventure, it’s that life’s too short to waste on convenient lies. Even the ones we tell ourselves.
Especially those.
10
