“Still cold?” My voice is husky. The playfulness has evaporated.
“Yes,” she whispers.
“Where?”
“My back.”
Slowly, I slide my palm up her rump, but when I reach the bottom of her shirt, I slip it beneath the material. The moment my claws rake along her bare skin, she shivers.
“Is my hand cold?” I rasp.
“N-No. It’s warm.”
“You like it?”
“Yes.”
I run my fingers up along the slightly protruding bones in the middle of her back. Between the blades of her shoulders, I gently rub her there. Her shirt has ridden up, exposing her stomach to me.
“Is your stomach cold now?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper.
She nods.
“Should I warm it?”
She nods again.
I slide my hand around to her front and splay my palm out over her skin. Her breath hitches. I briefly wonder how it would look swollen, filled with my mortling. Need and possessiveness lodge in my throat, eventually escaping as a husky growl. When my hand inches higher, she jolts. My cock reacts to her body, straining in my minnasuit.
“Am I hurting you?” I ask over the pounding of my heart.
“No.”
My hand clutches her ribs and my thumb brushes along the underside of her breast. Her body quivers.
“I’m warm now,” she breathes. “Hot even. Thank you.”
Begrudgingly, I slide my hand away from her breast and settle it on her hip. I’m feeling conflicted. Did I imagine the mutual need? Was it one-sided? I’m lost in thought when I smell it.
Heady. Addictive. Obvious.
Arousal.
I’ve scented it on the other females back at the Facility before. It’s a scent I recognize and often crave. My eyes dart to hers. She squeezes her eyes closed as though she can shut me out. I brush my nose against hers.
“My nose is cold,” I lie.
She laughs. “Where’s the truth-teller?”
“Back at the prison where it belongs. I can say what I want and you’ll never know the truth,” I tease, inhaling her.
“You’re simply keeping me warm,” she says, her tone firm. “That’s all this is. Nothing. Don’t confuse things.”
I open my eyes and pull away to look at her. Her face tells me everything she won’t. All her truths written so plainly on her telling features.
This is so much more than nothing.
It feels like the beginning of something with a promise of everything.
9
Lyric
So fixing the antenna is a total frigging failure, just like Hadrian had said it would be. I’m hurt, though I won’t admit it out loud, and there’s no way Hadrian can repair the damn thing while trying to keep my injured ass safe.
Thinking about my ass only makes me remember how it had felt in Hadrian’s hands, so I try to push the thought away.
Focus, Lyric.
“We have to go back,” I finally say into the silence.
“What about the comms unit? We were nearly to the top.”
“We’ll have to climb straight back up the mountain and you were right. It’s too dangerous.”
His eyes study me as though he knows I’m hurting, but won’t admit it. He could convince me to keep going, to push through it, but instead, he says, “We’ll return to the prison. When you’re healed, we can go back up to fix the antenna.”
I give him a wan smile. “That’s sweet of you, but we’re going to have enough trouble getting back down the mountain, let alone planning another trip up. It’s too risky and I don’t want you to get hurt, too.”
Hadrian lifts a hand to my jaw, thumbing the bruise blooming along my cheek. “If I asked you to trust me, do you think you’d be comfortable letting Theron and me fly the Mayvina to the top of the mountains? We can make contact with the Facility, repair the antenna, and schedule a time for you to talk with your sister.”
Trust him?
How can I trust a man…a monster…I barely know?
My eyes flutter closed as the gentleness of his touch takes me off guard. When was the last time I let someone touch me? That I felt comfort from another person? Too long ago for me to remember off the top of my head. And certainly not since I’ve been at the prison. Finding Aria, and then caring for the prisoners has been all I’ve focused on for so long, his caress shocks me to silence.
I force myself to mellow, to think. I don’t know if it’s the bump on the head or the exhaustion I feel deep in my bones from the trek up the mountain, but I can’t seem to put two words together.
“Lyric,” he says in a dark rumble.
“How am I supposed to trust you?”
“You’ll never know until you try. That’s sort of how it works, sweet one.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say absentmindedly as his hand slips down my cheek and rests on my shoulder. I like his hands on me too much, I realize, and get to my feet. It’s like I’ve gotten a taste of something I shouldn’t have, and I like it—too much. So much that I want him to put them on me again. And again. And again.