He lay across my bed as if it was a throne, his massive frame sprawled with deliberate ease. The bedding that usually cocooned me after long, draining days was wrinkled beneath his weight. In his clawed hands rested my copy of The Little Prince-one of the fragile paper book I had brought with me, a talisman of Earth itself.
To see it there, cradled in the hooked weapons of a conqueror, was almost unbearable. The book looked impossibly delicate against him, like a bird cupped in the hands of a predator. One careless twitch and it would be gone-reduced to shreds, to dust. Yet he held it with a care so precise it twisted something deep inside me-because the sight was wrong, absurd, obscene... and achingly human all at once.
My breath hitched in my throat. I hadn't expected him. Not here. Not now.
Seeing him with my book—my last shard of another life—unsettled me in a way that was not purely anger.
If he could touch that, cradle it as though it already belonged to him, then what was left that was truly mine? The fragile paper felt safer in his claws than I did in my own skin. A tremor slid through me, bitter and aching, because if he wanted, he could strip me of everything—past, future, self—without lifting a blade.
Slut for Admiral's bed
I wasn't.
I wouldn't be.
Yet the thought of open defiance, of aligning myself with the resistance, filled me with a terror that hollowed out my chest. The towel tightened under my fists, my knuckles bloodless white.
His gaze lifted lazily from the page, and for a heartbeat it was almost mocking—like I had interrupted him in my own quarters. But then his eyes locked onto mine, and the air shifted.
Gold. That impossible, molten gold. They didn’t just look at me—they held me down, dissected me, drew the marrow from my bones.
And that was when the horrible realization hit me.
I wasn’t dressed. Not even close.
A damp towel clung to me, flimsy and traitorous, plastered to my skin from the shower’s steam. Droplets of water slid down my bare legs, over my collarbone, trailing lines I felt his eyes follow even when they didn’t move.
Heat crawled across my skin, shame and fury and something I refused to name burning me alive. I wanted to vanish. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cover every inch of myself from that gaze that stripped me bare in ways the nakednes never could.
We just stared.
The seconds stretched and stretched, I could hear it—the faint hiss of the air system, the drip of water still running down my spine, even the frantic thud of my own pulse in my ears yet there was nothing but the collision of his eyes and mine—two worlds pressed into that narrow space, colliding, burning, refusing to yield.
The silence became its own kind of violence.
I couldn’t tell if it was battle or surrender.
And then—he moved.
His shoulders squared, his spine iron-straight, the book dangling between talons that now looked sharp enough to gut.
Upright, he seemed larger, closer to what he truly was. A commander. A predator. A storm contained in a body that wanted to break its casing.
"Admiral", My voice broke in my throat before it found air.
"What... what are you doing here?" The words escaped ragged, half-whisper, half-demand.
For the first time, I saw something flicker across them that wasn't command or cruelty.
The silence stretched, pulsing, alive. I felt his gaze rake over me, down the thin towel barely covering my skin, and I swore the air itself thickened with his hunger. A hunger sharp enough to make one desperate, the kind that devours without mercy.
His chest rose, then stalled. A sharp inhale dragged through his teeth. His jaw flexed, corded with restraint, while his talons curled deeper into the fabric of my bed. The sheet puckered under the force, his claws trembling as though it was the only thing keeping them from sinking into flesh.
For one breathless second, I thought he would move. Take the distance. Solve the problem of what he was and what I wasn't with a single, irreversible act. It lived in the line of his body—how still he went when something inside him wanted anything but stillness.
His eyes told me nothing. His eyes told me everything.
That he could ruin me.
That he might.
That he hadn’t decided whether to yet.
When he spoke, his voice was lower than usual, stripped down to something raw "Get dressed,” he said, each word grounded like it was anchored into the floor by force.
The towel seemed smaller, thinner, utterly useless. His words vibrated in the air between us, heavy as gravity.
I forced myself to turn, each step deliberate, my spine stiff as if the act of moving were the only control left to me. The cupboard doors hissed open, and I reached inside with clumsy fingers. Uniforms, coarse ship-issue grays, underclothes, silken nightwear. Options blurred into uselessness beneath the weight of his presence.
Behind me, I could feel him. His presence pressed against my back like a storm waiting to break. His breath was uneven-rough, shallow. I didn't need to see his face to know his jaw was clenched, his alien markings burning hotter, the thin tether of his control unraveling thread by thread.
I pulled free a shirt, fingers shaking, only to drop it. My knees almost buckled when I bent to pick it up.
Behind me, I heard him shift-sharp, sudden, the bed creaking in protest.
"Don't test me," he whispered, voice frayed, the alien lilt in it more pronounced now. "You don't understand," he rasped, and I heard the bed creak under the force of his fists tightening. "Every second you bare yourself before me-every breath you waste choosing cloth-I am at war with what I am."
I swallowed, the lump in my throat sharp as glass. My heart pounded so hard I thought it might burst from my chest.
The shirt pressed to me like armor, though it was nothing of the sort-just thin fabric, shaking in my grip, the weakest shield in the universe against the creature who could unmake me with a thought.
..........
I had barely stepped out of the bathroom, my hair damp, the fabric of my tunic clinging to my skin, when it happened.
One blink-that's all it took.
In the next heartbeat, the air around me shifted-hot, charged, predatory. My back slammed against the cupboard door with a muted thud. His body pressed against mine, massive, immovable, a wall of alien muscle and heat that caged me in. The alien markings across his throat glowing faintly, alive, as though pulsing with the same fury pounding through his chest.The air thickened instantly, heavy, electric-charged like the atmosphere before a solar storm.
The insignia on my wrist ignited. White fire burned from skin to bone, and I gasped, choking on light that wasn’t light but him. The glow in his markings answered mine, syncing, pulsing, branding me in ways no blade ever could.
My body betrayed me. It leaned into the heat of him before I could command it not to. My blood thrummed in rhythm with his, my lungs forgot how to breathe without his chest pressing against mine.
My lungs seized. I barely registered the growl vibrating from his chest.
The scream caught in my throat never found voice before his mouth claimed mine.
The kiss was not human. Heck it wasn’t a kiss—it was a storm breaking loose, wild, merciless and searing, like he was burning through a lifetime of restraint in one reckless second. His lips moved against mine with a desperate hunger, an urgency that made my knees threaten to give way. His hands... gods, his hands. One clamped around my waist, pressing me so tightly I felt the hard lines of his alien frame etched against me. The other tangled in my damp hair, pulling just enough to tilt my head, to force me open for him, and when his tongue swept into my mouth, alien and fierce, a startled moan broke from me before I could bite it back.
Fear clawed through my chest-sharp, choking-I wasn't ready, I couldn't breathe-yet instinct betrayed me again. My arms wrapped around him not in surrender but in survival, clinging as though letting go meant plummeting into nothingness. My legs tightened reflexively around his waist, a trapped animal's grip, and still he devoured me, deepening the kiss until the world tilted sideways.
Air vanished. My lungs burned. I broke the kiss, gasping, lips tingling, the world spinning.
His eyes met mine-storm-lit gold, fever-bright-and in them I glimpsed something not hunger, not cruelty, but a flicker of mercy. A creature bred to conquer, holding himself at the edge of annihilation, choosing restraint when instinct demanded otherwise.
His voice came low, guttural, vibrating from somewhere deep in his chest. "Bloody women..." His teeth bared in a grimace that was half-snarl, half-confession. "Your scent... do you even know what it does to me?"
The words weren't meant as poetry. They were truth. Biological, inevitable. His people didn't fall into want; they were driven into it, hardwired through blood and bone.
And then, as though that mercy had only been borrowed, he crushed his mouth to mine again.
The cupboard shrieked as his strength drove me harder against it, a jagged crack racing through the wood. My fingers clutched at him-terror, desperation, instinct tangled into one-and still I could not let go. Heat radiated from his skin, searing, his chest rising and falling like a forge about to break its casing.
His hands roamed—up my back, sliding under fabric, down to my thighs, fingers digging in as though he was afraid I would vanish if he didn’t anchor me. And I felt it then—his arousal pressed against me, raw and undeniable, making my heart pound so violently I thought it might break through my ribs.
I tried to breathe, to find air, but his lips dragged me deeper, his mouth moving with such desperate rhythm it felt like he was drowning in me—and I, in him.
I didn't know if it was passion, rage, or something entirely alien. All I knew was the overwhelming flood of it, drowning me whole. His kiss was fire, unearthly, carrying a taste that felt like breathing lightning and swallowing shadows at once.
His lips moved against mine with a hunger that didn't belong to this world, too hot, too sharp, like every second risked consuming me entirely.
I was dazed—part of me trembling, part of me melting.
Then, a sharp crack split the air.
The cupboard gave way under the force, a jagged break tearing the silence apart. Wood splintered where his hand had slammed too hard in his desperation. I gasped, torn between fear and awe, trembling at the sheer force barely contained inside him.
He broke it—shattered it—yet his mouth never left mine, the wreckage nothing compared to the ruin he was making of me.
And then-
Just as sudden as it had begun-it ended.
He tore back, lips wet, eyes unreadable. His breath dragged rough and uneven, but his expression was carved stone, inscrutable. The air still crackled between us, saturated with the aftertaste of something dangerous and impossible.
I swayed, dazed, my heart beating a frantic tattoo against my ribs, lips trembling with the ghost of his.
And when I blinked-he was no longer there.
The only proof was the wreckage of the cupboard behind me, and the lingering burn of his kiss on my lips.
Had it been real?
Or had my terrified, fragile mind conjured the taste of fire and thunder out of fear?
My knees threatened to give way as I pressed trembling fingers to my lips.