“This is all I have left.”

“Bullshit.” Griffin lifted his arms, let them slap to his sides. “Do I look like I came from the Senatus? Wouldn’t I have an army behind me?”

She peered over his shoulder again. Still no movement among the trees. No shapes of soldiers.

“If they wanted you,” he said, “they’d come for you. Make no mistake about that. They wouldn’t send just me. Think about it.”

She did, and then she lowered one arm, letting the flame on it die a green death.

“I’m thirsty,” he added with more than a little exasperation. “Can I have a drink?”

Her throat tightened in a similar want. She licked her lips.

“I’ll need magic,” he said, then waited for her to give a shallow nod of permission.

The Ofarian language was still as gorgeous as she remembered, all flowing words that ended too soon. She cringed, hating this reaction. Despising even more how she watched with wonder him using his magic.

The air around his head started to dim and shimmer and coalesce. He was taking moisture from it. Whipping it together to form droplets, churning it into a little spout high above the ground and aiming it toward his mouth. Dropping back his head and opening his mouth, the floating funnel of glistening water poured itself inside. It trickled out of the seam of his lips and trailed down his chin. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I’m worried about you,” he said. “I’m already tired of this chase. I’m tired of being scared for you.”

“You’re not scared.”

She stared hungrily at the empty space in the air where the water had been.

“I’m not?” His thick eyebrows lifted. “I left my people for the first time ever and crossed an ocean to talk you down from the ledge, knowing I’m the only one who could do it. There’s a tad bit of fear there, yeah.”

That didn’t affect her. Nope. Not at all. “You can’t stop me. You’ll try, but it won’t work.”

He threw a pointed glance at her hand. The one she thought still owned fire. The one that no longer did.

Her lips parted, ready to take in another Chimeran breath.

Griffin came closer, his shoes silent on the ground, his presence consuming. “Are you thirsty?”

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, forgetting to rekindle the fire at the mention of a drink.

“It’s a simple question, Keko. No underlying objective.”

So why was he staring at her mouth?

“There’s a stream—” she began, but Ofarian words overlapped hers. That beautiful water language drowning her out. Pulling her under.

Griffin’s image went blurry as the air in front of her swirled, then shifted to a sheet of undulating water hovering at eye level. It rolled into itself, forming a long, liquid thread that danced and glistened before her. The sight of it made her stomach tighten and her throat clench in need.

“Open wide,” he murmured.

Standing at least six feet away, after a long chase across brutally uneven Hawaiian land, and he still had the energy to tilt the magic water toward her. Still had the ability to do things to her with his voice. It was just water, but it was also so much more. There was so much in his offer. So much in her acceptance.

She wanted to fight her thirst—told herself to fight it. The next stream was somewhere around here, and this was the windward side of the Big Island where rain was aplenty, but in the end her body’s need won out. The weakness she’d been ignoring all morning craved attention. Maybe fire didn’t need water, but Keko’s body did.

Keeping watchful eyes on Griffin, she parted her lips. Tilted back her head. When the first cool drops hit her tongue, her eyelids started to flutter and she had to force them open. She gulped down the water, lifting her hands below her chin to cup and drink even more.

The way Griffin watched her reminded her of their very first meeting that day in the airport parking garage. Outward watchfulness, a carefully constructed shell that hid a machine of assessment and calculation and . . . desire.

She quickly severed that line of thought, snapping her jaw shut against the water. It splashed on her chin and chest and she stepped away, almost tripping on a root in her rush.

“Better?”

It had been years since she’d heard that tone in his voice. That ravaged, hoarse quality he’d used when he told her he’d never stop wanting her.

She shook her head, rattling out her anger and wits from deep inside, pushing them to the forefront. She would not be swayed by whatever it was Griffin Aames was trying to use on her. Her purpose was far, far more important than sex. Greater than any lovers’ past.

“Yeah.” She would not say thank you. “This was not a victory.”

He let out a half laugh and shoved a hand into his short hair. Whenever he’d met with the Senatus during that week they’d spent together, he’d arrived around the bonfire carefully groomed. Even when he’d come to “rescue” her in Colorado, wearing full-on soldier gear and a scowl, he’d looked like a million dollars. Now, with that vest pulled over his bare chest, sweat and rain and streaks of dirt making lines across his olive skin, his hair poking up at overlapping angles . . . he looked like a billion.

“Never claimed any victory,” he said. “You just looked thirsty.”

She glanced in the direction of where she believed the Queen’s prayer to be hidden. “I’m going now.”

Lips pursed, hands coming to those slim hips, he nodded. “And I’m following.”

She released a growl of frustration to the billowing sky.

“You know I will, Keko.”

Yes, she did know. Her panic was a living thing now, swimming throughout her body, slashing at her gut, pulling out her worry. Griffin couldn’t follow her. She couldn’t risk him ever finding out about the Chimeran disease, not when he was shadowboxing, looking for the perfect way into the Senatus. Not when it put her people at a serious disadvantage against his.

She couldn’t risk being this close to him again, not when her heart and soul were so raw, when she was at her lowest point.

But . . . this was her land. Maybe if she let him get a little closer—if she let him think she’d given in, that she was softening to him, willing to be swayed—he’d get sloppy. Then she’d lose him so fast he’d never be able to track her.

She tightened the strap of her pack that ran diagonally between her breasts. “I’m not slowing down for you.”

“Don’t expect you to.”

And then he smiled.

 • • •

Griffin woke up because of the warmth on his face. When he’d fallen asleep stretched out on the wet grass, legs crossed at the ankles, hands tucked into his armpits, he’d been cold but determined to suck it up. Unwilling to give Keko any sort of ammunition against him.

As his eyes cracked open, he stared into the dancing flames of a small fire built only a few feet away. Its heat coated his pebbled skin and he resisted groaning in relief. On the other side of the fire, just beyond its circle of light, was Keko.

She sat on her heels, her back to him, head bowed toward the hands in her lap. Perfectly still. The fire and her presence confused him.

She easily could have taken off while he slept. She’d been the first to fall into sleep, her body tucked into a nest of tree roots, curled away from his sight. Only when he knew she was out did he let himself rest, knowing he could wake himself up after a few hours. And here she still was.

Silently, he came up to his elbows.

She hadn’t spoken to him all day as she’d set a blistering pace northwest toward the coast. But then, he hadn’t asked anything of her, just stared at her back, trying to figure her out. They’d stopped when the light died.

Now he looked at her back again, only under entirely different circumstances. It was quiet here, calm. Every now and then the fire would flare, sending light to graze her back in a loving stroke. Her white tank top was one of those that looped around her neck, exposing her defined delts and lats. Her long black hair was pulled over one shoulder. She wore jean shorts that made her ass look like a denim-covered heart. The shape of her, motionless for once, was intoxicating.