Page 28 of Collision!
Telegraphing every motion, she reached out and traced her fingertip across the high ridge of his cheekbone toward the sharp point of his ear.In the hologram, he’d looked so cold, detached.That gargoyle man on a distant precipice.
But under her touch…
He shuddered, a full-body vibration that rippled through him as if he might come apart at some hidden seams—a mountain of glass on the verge of shattering.
She paused.“Too much?”
“Not enough.”The words were ragged, dragged from some deep cavern within him, and the tremor echoed in his hand lifting toward her face, hovering, not quite touching.“May I?”
She angled her chin a notch, exposing that vulnerability.“Please.”
His fingertips eased up her jaw to cup her cheek.“So soft,” he murmured.
The caress sent invisible sparkling shimmers through her, as if her nerves were woven from his lumi-lace.Leaning toward him, she turned her head to press her lips into his palm.
When he let out a short breath, the exhalation put a fractional distance between them.“You’re not afraid.”
“Why should I be?”
“My venom,” he reminded her.“My temper.”
“My orgasm,” she reminded him back.“Your bite is worth your bark.”
Another breath eased out of him, almost a hiss.“If this wasn’t part of your dream, tell me what you want.”
She met his fierce, pale glare.“Your mouth,” she whispered.“On mine.”
Not crossing the space between their bodies, he framed her face with both of his hands, cradling her as if she were something precious and fragile.In the bottom of her peripheral vision, the spiny armor on his forearms was a reminder.
But then his mouth descended on hers.
It was nothing like that first desperate collision in the salon.This was a questing, a soft yielding of lips that nevertheless roused all her nerve endings back to shimmering life.Gliding infinitesimally on the slick heat, the slant of shifting pressure generated a matching energy within her—quickening with every heartbeat to a needy fever.
She’d told him she didn’t expect more than a kiss.But what a kiss.
And that was only the lightest caress.
When she sighed against his lips, he made a low, deep sound that vibrated through her, igniting an answering throb between her legs.
Without lifting his head, he growled into her mouth, “I smell your arousal.”
“Suvan…” Shock blanked the rest of her words.
“Like hot plasma flooding the engines.But sweeter.”
She gasped out the start of a laugh, and he kissed her again.
Deeper this time.His tongue—that long, clever tongue she’d admired before—outlined the curve of her upper lip before seeking hers.The tentative first contact sent a wild thrill dancing down her spine and out along every limb—almost like the moment of the last day of her pre-IDA intake with the revelation that aliens actually existed.
Now one was in her bedroom.
He tasted faintly metallic, she wanted to tell him, like ozone and lightning.But that half-teasing truth came out as a moan.With his thumb under her chin, he angled her head just so, delving inward until his tongue tangled with hers.And though only their mouths were connected, with tantalizing strokes, he hinted at what his tongue might do elsewhere…
Her head spinning, she slipped her hand toward his nape, threading her fingers between the quill-scales there, anchored herself on his armor.
When he finally lifted his head to gaze down at her, the clear quartz crystal of his eyes seemed full of starlight.
“I blamed the resonark,” he murmured.“But I kissed you the first time because you came to the engine module.”
