I kept my comms on whole day.
Every few minutes, my gaze flicked toward it, half expecting it to blink, to pulse.
But the comm stayed silent, leaving me alone with my thoughts. The quiet began to close in, thick and weighted. Sleep came thin and restless, tangled in sheets that refused to stay cool. I turned over, trying to push the tension from my body, but it followed me down into that fragile border between waking and dreams.
The dream started the way dreams do when the body remembers what the mind won't admit.
His hands first. Always his hands. Talons that should have been threat became something else entirely-tracing the line of my jaw, the hollow of my throat, slow and deliberate like he was reading me in a language only he knew. The pads of his fingers were warm, warmer than they should be, and they pressed against my pulse until I couldn't tell if the rhythm was mine or his.
"You're shaking," he said, voice low, that resonant rumble I felt more than heard.
The air between us has gravity, pulling me forward even as my mind whispers wrong, wrong, wrong-run.
"I'm not-" I started, but the lie died when his other hand came up, cradling the back of my neck, thumb brushing the soft skin just below my ear.
"Don't," he murmured, and the word wasn't a command-it was a plea wrapped in stone, a sound that made surrender feel like mercy.
For a heartbeat, I couldn't breathe. The air between us shimmered with something that wasn't quite fear but wasn't comfort either. It was that stillness before the strike, that trembling hush of prey caught in silk and unable to tell whether the touch that binds is meant to consume or to protect.
That's what he was-the spider spun of gold and gravity. Every word, every glance, a strand of gossamer so fine it shimmered with beauty even as it tightened. And me-stupid, trembling thing that I was-I couldn't stop struggling, even knowing the silk would hold
Then his mouth found mine.
The kiss wasn't gentle. It was need made manifest, pressure and heat and the taste of something I couldn't name. His lips moved against mine with a deliberation that felt like falling and being caught at once.
My hands went to his chest-meant to push, meant to stop-but instead they curled into the fabric there, pulling him closer. His body was solid, impossibly warm, and when he shifted, angling deeper, I made a sound I didn't recognize.
When his talons skim down my spine-careful but insistent-each nerve lifts like it's seen daylight for the first time. I arch into his touch, betraying myself. He makes a sound-low, dangerous, almost pleased-that ignites a second heartbeat inside me.
"I thought of you," he murmured against my skin, voice molten and soft in a way I'd never heard in waking hours.
"When the Vein-Wraith tore into my hull. When fire came. I thought of you."
My heart slammed in my chest.
A flicker of thought crossed me-he didn't even know me, couldn't know me-but the logic dissolved immediately. This was a dream. None of it had to make sense. And yet... the words landed like thunder, folding themselves into something raw and irrevocable.
"Admiral-" His hand slid up my spine, cradling the back of my neck, tilting my face toward his.
"I survived," he said, "because you were waiting."
His golden eyes were molten, fixed on me like I was the only star in a dead sky.
Heat and terror twist together. My mind lists every reason to fear him-his rank, his power, the blood in his history-but my body answers with want.
Couldn't think past the way his hands moved, the way his breath ghosted over my skin.
He reached beside us-when had we moved to a bed?-and lifted something into view. The golden pearl kit. The ceremonial box I'd seen at the Pearling, glowing faint and impossible in the low light.
"This," he said, voice dropping into something reverent and dangerous, "is for you."
He opened it. The pearls inside gleamed-gold brighter than sun, each one threaded with some ancient heat that pulsed in time with my heartbeat.
"They belong to you," he said, fingers tracing over them like a benediction. "As I do."
He took one pearl-round, smooth, warm as living flesh-and brought it to my lips. "Open."
I opened my mouth-not thinking, just feeling-and he placed it on my tongue. It tasted like heat and metal and something older than words. A pulse of heat blooms inside me, and the world narrows until it exists solely in that fragile, impossible connection.
Before I could comprehend, his mouth was on mine again, deeper this time, stealing the breath and the pearl and every coherent thought I had left.
His hands moved with purpose now. One slid beneath the hem of my shirt, palm flat against bare skin sliding up to my left breast, flicking my nipples with that dangerous talons of his and I gasped into his mouth.
The sound seemed to undo something in him. He pressed me back against bed and his weight was there, solid and overwhelming and exactly what some traitorous part of me wanted.
"I fought the beast," he said against my jaw, my throat, the hollow behind my ear. "For this. For you." Another pearl, hot and smooth, trailed down the center of my chest, following the line of my sternum, leaving a trail of heat.
"Every burn. Every claw. I carried you with me."
The pearl dipped lower, tracing a path that made my spine arch.
His grip on my hip is iron, unyielding. I am held. I am taken. I am not allowed to flee.
"Kridura," I breathe-part warning, part plea, part confession.
He hummed, a sound that was almost a purr, and the pearl moved lower still, slipping beneath fabric, finding heat.
"Say it again."
"Kriudr-" His name broke on my tongue as his hand moved, deliberate and knowing, the golden pearl small, impossibly intimate rolled, teasing my pussy over and over again.
It made thought fracture into white noise, and everywhere it touched bloomed with sensation-nerves waking, skin hyperaware, the boundary between his touch and the pearl blurring until I couldn't separate them.
Wrong. This was wrong.
I should fear this bastard. I should fight him. He is..
I broke-back arching, breath gone, a sound tearing out of me that might have been his name or might have been surrender.
"I am yours," he said, voice rough and certain. "And you-" His mouth found the pulse at my throat, teeth grazing just enough to make me whimper. "You are mine."
"My T'skiyla"
His mouth found mine again, swallowing the sound, the kiss deep and claiming. The pearl slipped from between his lips to mine, passed back and forth like a vow neither of us could speak aloud.
The pearl pressed, rolled around and over my clit in rhythmic motion.
Oh no!!!..Oh yess!!!
Fuck!!!
My vision blurred at the edges, I saw kriudra....no....god.
I can't think straight. His hand fastened with urgency, the heat building in a spiral I couldn't control, couldn't stop, didn't want to stop-
I woke up gasping.
My body jerked violently, tangled in sheets that had twisted around my legs like restraints. I was halfway off the bed, one hand awkwardly against the cold metal floor, the other clutching fabric I'd apparently been trying to tear.
For three disorienting heartbeats, I didn't know where I was.
My heart hammers. My skin is too tight. The place between my legs throbs with phantom pressure, the dream so vivid I can still feel the ghost of his hands, his mouth, the way he'd looked at me like I was the only star in a collapsing universe.
I press both hands over my face, mortified. Horrified.
It's nothing, I tell myself. Just a dream. Just neurons firing in the dark. But my pulse won't settle. My skin won't cool. And when I close my eyes again, all I see is gold.
The knock comes just after morning cycle, when I'm still trying to scrub the dream from my skin with cold water and willpower.
Two sharp raps.
I open the door to an officer I don't recognize-low-rank by the insignia, posture military-perfect. His eyes are a cooler shade of grey, he carries that same unnerving stillness they all seem to have.
"The Admiral requests your presence in Command," he says.