Kell touched her then. He picked up her right hand and examined her wrist. “No mating band.”

“About six months before the mating ceremony, I went to my mother. Told her I couldn’t go through with it. I needed to make my own decisions, chart my own course.” A rusty laugh scraped from her. “That wasn’t well received. My family tried everything to get me to change my mind. Pleas, bribes. Threats. Punishment.” She still had the marks on the soles of her feet.

His grip on her wrist tightened, the slightest increase of pressure.

“Finally, my father said I did not have to mate Piers.”

His grasp eased until he released her.

“But if I didn’t, I would be cast out. Not just from the family, but from Argenti. The Skirens have enough influence to have someone banished.”

He rolled over onto his side and stared at her. She couldn’t meet his gaze, just kept staring at the silk-draped walls, dappled with colored light from the lamps. Shabby attempts to make the room elegant, so different from the jewel-encrusted columns and lavish tapestries that hung on the walls of her ancestral home. Her home that wasn’t her home. It never had been. Everything had belonged to her family, even her.

“I spent my sixteenth birthday on a freighter heading off-world. Didn’t know where I was going.

Didn’t know anyone. I knew nothing about how to live on my own—being a princess does that to a girl. All I knew was that I could never go back, or else face execution.”

“You must have been terrified.”

That was a mild way of putting it. She had never felt fear like that, not before and not since.

Instead of saying this to Kell, though, she made a dismissive wave of her hand. “Found myself in the Makell System.”

“That’s a rough solar system.” Surprise tightened his words. “Another place ‘liberated’ by PRAXIS, with predictably appalling results.”

“It was definitely different from palace life.” Understatement, again. The anarchy and brutality of the Makell System had burned lessons into her, lessons she could never forget. “I learned,

eventually. How to take care of myself. How to…protect myself.”

“Mara—” But she shook her head, determined to banish the memories of those horrible months, and what she’d had to endure. It had taken years before she could sleep with the lights off. “I talked my way onto a scavenger ship, becoming one of the crew. Eventually, I became owner and pilot of my own ship.” Thoughts of the Arcadia helped push away the memories, and she knew there was pride in her voice when she spoke of the ship. “It’s not a plush life.”

“But it’s yours. It all belongs to you, and only you. Your life, your ship.”

She did look at him then. He stared back, and the understanding in his dark eyes rocked her. No one had ever given her as much. She felt something inside her break and fall away. Leaving her open.

Raw. She could only manage a nod.

A wry smile shaped his mouth. “Expectations don’t last, not where we’re concerned.”

Oh, he had the truth of it. Neither of them who they were supposed to be. Exiled royalty turned scavenger and a former street brawler turned 8th Wing hero.

He rose up from the bed, sleek and strong. Their gazes held as he stripped out of his remaining clothes. She allowed herself the pleasure of looking at his nude body, the shapes and surfaces of his muscles, and the play of jewel-colored light over his skin. He was wondrous to look upon.

When he held out a hand, she could not refuse, and he gently pulled her up to standing.

He kept silent as he slowly, carefully began to remove her clothing. She started to help, but he shooed her hands away, so she could only stand, motionless, as he divested her of everything. He unbuckled her gauntlets and placed them on a nearby table. His long, blunt fingers undid her corset with surprising dexterity, and this, too, he placed on the table. The same for her blouse, her skirt, until she stood before him entirely nude, save for her boots.

She shook with desire.

He knelt before her and undid her boots, taking his time as each buckle slid free, his concentration total. Her heart threatened to tear from her body, to see this powerful warrior kneeling before her, tending to her so carefully, as if she was someone precious. Not a scavenger. Not a pawn.

A woman who deserved to be cherished.

It was all an illusion, she knew. The same illusion she’d felt briefly as they’d made love earlier.

Their time together was fleeting. If they survived this mission, they would never see each other again.

They were too different, their lives completely opposed. But for now, in this place, at this time, he gave her the momentary gift of being treasured.

At last, she was as naked as he. And he was as aroused as she, if the upright, thick stance of his cock was any indicator. Yet he did not take her back to the bed. Instead, he led her into the hygiene chamber, and she watched as he turned on the shower, adjusting the temperature until it met his standards.

He stepped into the shower and drew her in with him. “Let me clean you, princess.”

Water sluiced over their bodies. She did not know if her eyes clouded from the steam or something else, but she gave him a regal nod and he began.

He washed her thoroughly, tenderly, his big hands stroking over her slick body until she moaned.

He saw to himself with much more speed, clearly impatient to touch her again. As soon as he was satisfied with her cleanliness and his own, he shut off the shower and toweled them both off.

He adjusted the lights in the room to low, then led her back to the bed. Still, he spoke not a word, not even when he lay back and opened his arms to her. The silence felt deep, profound, and she preserved it. As silent as he, she came onto the bed and straddled him.

She held herself poised above him, the smooth, wide head of his cock just at her entrance. For a moment, they simply stared at one another, lost in each other’s eyes. Tension rolled from him, and she knew it took every microgram of his control to keep from surging up into her. Instead, he lay back, his hands on her waist, and waited.

If he had controlled their last bout of making love, this was hers to command. He was hers to command. A giddy, vast sensation that she prolonged as long as she could endure.

She could not endure much, wanting him too badly. She sank down onto him and gasped. He felt exactly right.

They went slowly, as slow as they had been fast before. Learning each other. Feeling the slide of skin to skin. His hardness. Her pliancy. Without intending to, their breathing synched, so they moaned together, drew air together. She felt herself floating, in her own orbit of sensation and pleasure.

This was new. This was different. She usually liked her sex fast and rough. Here, she and Kell created new worlds through deliberate, languorous movement. She wanted it to go on forever.

Her body had other demands. She could not stop herself from moving faster, taking him deeper and harder into her. His hips rose to meet hers, and his eyes closed as he became forged metal beneath her. Their gentle breaths changed to ragged panting.

She shifted so that her clit ground against him with each thrust. Fire shot through her, and then, arching back, she came in a dizzying, obliterating storm.

Groaning, he surged upward with his release. She watched him, feeling him empty into her, and through the haze of her own satiation, she saw that he was tough and beautiful.

They fell asleep this way, with her atop him, his body still within hers. Peace and safety cloaked them. Yet here was another illusion. Everything was danger, chance—the mission, the feelings between her and Kell. Questions and risks. Sleep was a temporary balm, yet nothing could ever truly withstand the perilous uncertainty that loomed like encroaching shadow.