Page 79

Rann was here. Alive. Breathing.

She watched his chest move because she needed to. Needed proof beyond his voice that he was actually here and this wasn’t some cruel figment of her imagination.

Lowering her gun, she eased her finger away from the trigger.

“I thought you were dead,” she said again.

“I’m here.”

He stopped in front of her, close enough that she had to tip her head back. He seemed taller. Broader, too, and it wasn’t all the suit. He’d changed. He wasn’t hunching, and she realised now that he had been. Making himself smaller to be less noticeable.

Reaching out, he brushed a strong finger under her chin to make her look up at him. He searched her eyes. “Is that why you said you loved me? Because you thought I was safely dead?”

She shook her head. “No, no, not at all.”

He tilted his head. It was such a small movement, but something about it was so nonhuman that she gasped. That was what had been bugging her. The size of him. The way he moved. His speed on the hull. All those little things she’d noticed and then shoved aside because they didn’t make sense.

The poison he’d insisted wouldn’t hurt him after he’d been sliced by one of Joe’s goons.

“You’re not human.”

He smiled softly, eyes warm as he reached out and took the gun from her. Without looking, he handed it off to one of the people with him. “Never said I was, kelarris.”

“You’re an alien.”

“I am.”

Silence fell between them. Or perhaps the room was still noisy and she’d stopped hearing it. She just stared up at him, trying to reconcile the man she’d had naked in her bunk with the alien standing in front of her.

Oh, there were going to be questions. A whole fucking list of them. But right now she couldn’t marshal one of them enough to force it past her lips. She couldn’t get past the fact that he was here to answer them. That she could reach out and touch him.

His lips quirked. “So… does that mean you love me or loved me? Now I’m alive, of course.”

She blinked. Then her laugh tangled with a sob as she threw herself into his arms. “Of course I love you, you bloody great idiot of a man!”

He caught her, his weapon swinging aside on its sling as his arms closed around her. The suit was hard beneath her palms, nothing like the warm skin she wanted to get her hands on, but he was solid. Real.

She pressed closer anyway. Fuck the suit.

“Alien,” he reminded her, already sliding a big hand into her hair.

His fingers spread against the back of her neck, gentle as he tilted her face up toward his. Her lips parted automatically. She wanted his mouth on hers so badly she could barely think, wanted something to replace that last horrible image of the ship exploding.

“Alien man,” she agreed, then planted a hand in the center of his chest. “Wait, I said it, but you didn’t.”

He pulled back to frown down at her. “Didn’t what?”

“Say you loved me.”

His eyebrow winged up. “I crawled over the hull of a ship in a suit three sizes too small for me, then jumped off an exploding ship. I nearly ran out of air on the hull of this one and am rescuing you. What part of that doesn’t say ‘I love you’?”

She stared at him. He’d jumped off the ship?

Her fingers curled against his chest. She wanted to hit him and hold him tighter, which was becoming a distressingly familiar combination where he was concerned.

“For draanth’s sake, Rann, just say the words,” a deep voice said from behind them. “Females like the words.”

Peeking around his broad shoulder, she blinked.