sentence, she was pressed back against the hard metal of her wall by a solid block of pure, hot, male muscle. She moaned. She’d been about to offer the room as his temporary quarters while she bunked elsewhere, but Dev took it more as an invitation to her person. How could she blame him? She had been flirting.
Flirting? Space captains didn’t flirt. That couldn’t have been what she was doing.
Oh, but then why was she kissing him back? Sliding her tongue into his hot, wet mouth, she let him suck it between his teeth. Sacre, but it felt nice the way he flicked his tongue against hers. Heat radiated from his body, warmer than other humanoids. His body hovered close to her, not touching save for their lips. His hands pressed against the metal wall, trapping her before him. There seemed a great fire burning beneath his surface.
Her fingers lifted to his forearms. The fine red lines that decorated his flesh appeared to darken as his kiss deepened. She kept her eyes open, even as they wanted to drift closed. He was staring at her, probing her with his piercing gaze.
She’d wanted him since first seeing him standing on the docking plank to his ship. All the emotions she worked so hard to suppress surged forth—grief, anger, passion, need, they all poured over into him. Their touch became a losing battle for control.
The muscles beneath her fingers flexed as he pulled his mouth from hers. She gripped his arms, not wanting him to stop. Violette opened her mouth to speak, but only a loud gasp escaped her as she drew in a long breath. One of his hands lifted to the front of her tight black shirt. With a jerk, he pulled the neckline and tore the material from her breasts. Her breathing became raspy and her head light.
Heat enveloped her. Violette pressed into the wall. Dev’s mouth found her neck as his hand found an aching breast. Her nipple practically exploded against this palm when he touched her. How long had it been since she’d felt the intimacy of a man’s flesh? At the moment, she couldn’t remember.
There was something to his stoic nature that called to her, a sadness buried deep inside of him, but also a repressed passion that smoldered beneath the surface. If his body heat were any indication, it would do more than simmer once unleashed. She wanted to feed into that passion until his blood boiled like hers. None of this made sense, and yet, here she was, kissing Dev and forgetting about everything rational in her life.
Oh, to feel something beyond sadness and duty. To not have to think.
Her hands moved to his clothing, intent on undressing him. She could feel he was shaped like most humanoid males, yet she wanted to explore the look of him. Bevlons were a rare breed, and this was the first she’d come across in all her travels. She had heard plenty from Gil’s incredibly biased accounts, enough so that she’d been curious to read up on her own. She knew his kind kept to themselves, typically residing on some hot frying pan of a planet.
His body seemed cut from a pliable metal. Solid muscles attested to a life spent in exercise. It was evident by the way he fought Gil that he was trained in combat. There had been a fearlessness in him that captivated her and a borderline recklessness that stirred her curiosity.
Material peeled from flesh until nothing separated them. He didn’t speak, so neither did she. Violette worried that the spell between them might break should they utter a word. Something inside her shook free, like a laser missile bursting out of its shell toward another starship, making contact, exploding, destroying itself and its target in the same stellar process. It was hot and dangerous and in many ways stupid, but she couldn’t keep away from the flame of that gloriously bright moment. She locked her sights on him, fully aware that the decision she was making was a bad one that could destroy them both, if not physically at least metaphorically. Her crew would never forgive her, especially Gil. They would feel betrayed. They might not even respect her. This man was part of the ship that protected her sworn enemy, even if that enemy was her sister. Not to mention, she could dress up the facts all she liked, but he was technically a prisoner of her ship. Captain and prisoner. On