“No,” he replied. “It wasn’t. But now my people have the chance to start over, to create dreams outside of Ofarian magic or structure, outside of the Secondary world. Opportunities I never had. I want that for every one of my people. I want that for all Secondaries.”

Her full mouth twisted and he knew he hadn’t sold her. That was okay. For now. Baby steps. Spying and manipulating was so much easier when it was done out in the open.

Kekona pulled her feet onto the bed and curled her legs to one side, getting more comfortable with him. He liked that. She was hard and muscular, a clear warrior, but there was a feminine gracefulness to her movements, and it made him hyper aware of her presence, still so close.

His hand was halfway across the space between them before he realized it. Too late. No turning back. But instead of going for her face again, which he sensed would make her back off, he fingered a piece of her glossy hair. She flinched but didn’t move away.

“It doesn’t catch fire?” he asked in wonder.

“Wouldn’t make much sense to be Chimeran if it did, would it?”

True. “It feels . . .” amazing.

“What?”

He shook his head, let her hair slide out of his palm, and rolled off the opposite side of the bed. He went to his bag, ripped it open with more force than was necessary, and pulled out a pair of gray flannel pants. When he looked up, her eyes were skating over him in obvious—and wonderful—approval.

A slow smile spread across her face as she pushed from the bed and sauntered toward him with powerful elegance. The woman knew how to command a room. She didn’t have to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him, soft and swift, and it was then he first tasted the zing of sweet smoke on her breath. It curled down his throat and made its home inside him, and he knew he was done for.

“Kekona,” he whispered, before he could stop himself.

Her head snapped back mockingly. “Yes? Griffin?”

No one had managed to unnerve him, to embarrass him, in years. He found that he liked it, this reminder that he was real and not untouchable. That he was someone other than a leader, a scapegoat, a man to be feared, admired, or hated.

He cleared his throat. “Anyone call you anything besides Kekona?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly, he felt very brave. “What can I call you then?”

With a lift of an eyebrow—arched and dramatic compared to his flat, thick ones—she nodded to the door that opened into the hallway. “On the other side of that, call me ‘general.’ But in here, ‘Keko.’”

Feeling victorious and electrified, he pushed his hands into the black silk of her hair and tilted her head back. To his delight, she let him. “So this is happening again?”

“Yes.” She nipped at his bottom lip. “I believe it will.”

 • • •

The next night, Keko let him throw her onto the bed.

It had been another grueling night session with the Senatus around the bonfire in which he’d been asked to relay stories of successful Ofarian integration into Primary businesses and schools. The inquiries had planted hope, which, if he’d been smarter, he would have recognized as him having reached the apex before the crashing fall over the back side of the mountain. Because as soon as he concluded talking about an Ofarian man who used to do accounting for the old Board and had recently secured a job at a large Primary firm for equal pay and excellent retirement, the premier and the chief—Aya remaining oddly silent—dragged out example after example of times when the commingling had done more damage than good.

Instances that he knew far too well. Instances that had resulted in death. Twelve deaths to be exact.

So when Keko accompanied him back to his hotel room, his mood a murky, roiling cloud of frustration, he’d slammed her against the wall, his mouth claiming hers before she could speak. Spinning her around, he slid one hand down the front of her ratty, loose jeans and the other up her shirt. A smooth, willing piece of heaven, right in his grasp. His for now. She was grinning at him over her shoulder as he picked her up and tossed her onto the bed.

She gave him a wonderful fight, smiling with her jet eyes the whole time. Exactly what he’d been looking for. But in the end he let her win, because she seemed to like that. She seemed to get off on victory. When it had started he’d wanted a means through which to take out his annoyance and anger, but then as soon as he was inside her, it changed. He just wanted her, the driving velvet of her body, and the casual exchange of words and random thoughts directly after.

On the third night they didn’t even make it to the bed, doing it on the floor just inside the hotel door.

On the fourth night of bonfires, the Senatus finally asked him about his story—the one he’d told Keko about growing up in the Ofarian classes, about how he and everyone else he knew had been wedged into lives they didn’t necessarily want.

It had taken her a few days to relay this information to her chief. Maybe she’d deciphered the growing tension in Griffin over their past few secretive nights together. Maybe she’d actually wanted to help him. But it was dangerous to think the latter, to take the fork in the road that veered toward the personal. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder.

Griffin told the Senatus about his life up until the downfall of the Board, and the other elementals were more receptive than they’d ever been to his words—at least no outward arguments or raised voices. Griffin went back to the hotel jubilant, that small accomplishment stoking his desire. With a silent folding back of the covers, he invited Keko between the sheets for the very first time. He’d expected a laugh, maybe a roll of the eyes, but instead got a slow removal of her clothes, revealing the body he would never, ever get tired of looking at. When she slipped her feet under the top sheet and lay back, the contrast of her dusky skin against the pure, starched white was remarkable and lovely, the whole process achingly slow.

With an impatient lift of her brow, he got naked under her appraisal. She made him feel like a Chimeran—full of fire and the urge to use it.

He came down over her and immediately she grinned and tried to resist, to get a leg over him, to return to their games of the prior nights, wrestling for control. But with firm hands on her forearms, he pressed her into the bed. Not hard, but enough for her not to misread what he wanted, or did not want.

“Can I just be with you?” he whispered.

Beneath him she softened, but only a little. Enough to remind him that he was leaving Utah after the Senatus bonfire tomorrow and there wouldn’t be another night with her. Enough for him to know that he wanted to slow it down tonight and . . . memorize.

As he touched her—for the first time really touched her with care—he told her with words how much he loved the way she felt and looked, and the way she did things to him. When he finally pushed inside her and her Chimeran heat coated him, pulled him deeper in, he told her how much he loved that, too.

She didn’t respond with any verbal declarations, but he hadn’t expected her to. After they came, staring into each other’s eyes, and he rolled off her, she made no move to leave him or the bed. That was a first. And it would also be a last. He hated that thought.

She shifted onto her side to face him, and that said more than her unspoken words.

“Thank you for not trying to make a fight out of it,” he said.

Her lips rolled inward and he couldn’t tell if the expression was regret or uncertainty. “It’s just how it is with me.”

“I know.”

He stared as though seeing her for the first time. The mysteries of her people glittered around her. Her signature had made a comfortable home in his mind and being, nestling in good and tight. He would never forget it, as long as he lived.