Page 34 of Rainse
“Yes,” she breathed. “I don’t understand it, but yes.”
“Then stop trying to understand.”
The pull between us snapped taut, invisible but unbreakable, humming with the same low power that lives in the sea before a storm. She shivered, though the sun was still warm, her lips parting on a breath that trembled somewhere between disbelief and invitation.
I cupped her face, my thumb tracing the line of her jaw. Her pulse beat fast against my palm — quick, human, alive. When our eyes met, I saw the question there, the choice. She didn’t move away.
So I closed the distance.
The first touch was light, a test. A whisper of contact that sent electricity racing through me. Her breath hitched. Mine stopped altogether. For a heartbeat, it was just that — shared air, shared silence. Then she made a sound, small and uncertain, and tilted her head the slightest fraction closer.
That was all it took.
I deepened the kiss, letting instinct guide me. She tasted of salt and sun, of the ocean that had given her to me. The world tilted — the sand beneath us, the endless horizon, the rush of waves that rose and fell in time with the pounding of our hearts. She gripped my shoulders, pulling me down to her level, and I went willingly.
The bond roared to life. Not the faint hum I’d felt before, but a surge — light and heat flooding through every part of me. It was too much and not enough, both wild and inevitable, the ocean itself surging through our veins. She gasped against my mouth, but she didn’t pull away. Her fingers slid up my neck, tangling in my hair, holding me there as though afraid I’d vanish if she let go.
I kissed her again, slower this time, savouring the way she sighed into it, the way her lips softened against mine. Every sound — the seabirds, the waves, the whisper of palms — faded into nothing. There was only her. The taste of her, the rhythm of her breath, the heat that bloomed between us like sunlight through water.
When I finally drew back, the world was shimmering. Her eyes were still closed, her lips still parted. She looked dazed — no, alive.
“That was…” she began, voice catching.
I brushed my thumb over her lower lip, barely breathing. “Yes,” I said quietly. “It was.”
Her eyes opened, and what I saw there stole whatever composure I’d managed to hold on to. Wonder. Fear. Want.
“Pam’s going to hate this,” she whispered, and that tiny, breathless laugh of hers broke the spell just enough for me to smile.
“She’ll live.”
And then I kissed her again — because stopping felt impossible, and because for the first time since I’d left Finfolkaheem, I knew exactly where I belonged.
14
Verity
I couldn't believe I'd kissed him. I couldn't believe how good it had felt. And how much I wanted to do it again, and again, until my lips were swollen and I couldn't remember my own name.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. Nothing about this was supposed to happen like that. One minute, I’d been trying to reason with myself, listing every sensible reason not to want him — alien, abductor, wrong species, wrong situation — and the next, his mouth was on mine, and my body had voted for complete mutiny.
I pressed my fingers to my lips. They still tingled. My pulse hadn’t slowed; it was thudding hard enough that I could feel it everywhere — in my ribs, my throat, the tips of my fingers. The sea breeze cooled my skin but couldn’t calm the heat that had taken root beneath it.
I’d kissed men before.
But never like that.
There’d been no hesitation, no polite test of compatibility, no trying to make it work. It had just… worked. Instantly. Like my body already knew the rhythm of his, like some deep, ancient part of me had been waiting for that precise moment to exist.
I wanted to blame it on the bond — that strange biological phenomenon he’d described, part chemistry, part instinct. Maybe it explained the attraction, the dizzying pull between us. Maybe it was his scent, or pheromones, or whatever mysterious evolutionary quirk made our DNA spark like flint.
But science didn’t explain the way his touch had made me feel.
I’d spent years studying patterns — migration routes, sonar communication, the subtle logic behind animal behaviour. None of it had prepared me for this. For him.
I turned toward the sea. The waves were calm again, stretching out in endless shades of silver-blue. He was somewhere behind me, probably just as dazed as I was. Maybe not — Finfolk were used to the idea of “fated mates.” Maybe this was ordinary for him. Another biological inevitability.
But for me? It felt anything but ordinary.
