Page 62 of Enslak

His hand was still against my face. His thumb moved, slow and considered, tracing just below my eye.

"My Niki," he said.

Not a claim. Not the way possession usually sounds. He said it the way you say the name of something you've been afraid of losing, something you're still not quite sure you get to have.

"Your Niki," I confirmed.

His breath changed. The warmth in his eyes deepened, and I recognized what moved through them, the same thing I'd felt when I kissed him and he kissed me back.

Attraction, fully awake, and going exactly nowhere for the moment.

Because he was still healing. Because the words had just come back to him today, halting and hard-won, and that mattered. Because whatever this was between us, it was worth doing carefully and well.

"We should rest," I said gently. "My leg needs it. And you took claws across both arms."

He looked down at his arms. Back at me. A sound in his throat that acknowledged the truth of it.

"But Enslak." I waited until he met my eyes. "I'm glad I'm here. I want you to know that. On this planet, with you. I'm glad."

I watched him hold that. Watched him turn it over.

Then, slow and warm and belonging entirely to him, he smiled.

I kept touching him, running my fingers through his pelt, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath. And he just melted. Became completely docile, completely trusting, completely at peace.

George's words about the Vaktaire bond came back to me then, unbidden. At the time, I'd thought it sounded beautiful. Romantic, even, in an alien sort of way.

Now, feeling Enslak's massive body relaxing under my touch, hearing that deep, rumbling purr, I understood it differently.

This wasn't just comfort. This was need.

He'd been drugged, tortured, broken down to something barely sentient. And through all of that, some part of him had been screaming for this, for the simple comfort of a gentle touch, for someone who chose to stay close not because they had to but because they wanted to.

"We're going to be okay," I whispered, more to myself than to him. "We're going to figure this out. I'm going to help you find your way back."

He rumbled in response, his massive shoulder pressed against mine, his breathing slow and steady and content.

And sitting there in the mouth of that cave, on an alien planet filled with dinosaurs and impossible beauty, with this person who was healing one careful day at a time, I felt something I hadn't felt since the moment I'd been shot in Hell's Kitchen.

Hope.

Chapter 14

Enslak

When Niki kissed me, something cracked open inside.

Not broke. Cracked. Like ice on a frozen lake when the sun finally hits it right. I felt it in my chest first, this spreading warmth, then up into my head where everything had been stuck and jumbled for so long.

She pulled back. Smiled through tears. Said: "Your Niki. And you're my Enslak."

Mine.

The word rang through me, clear and true. She was mine and I was hers and that was everything.

She didn't kiss me again after that.

I wanted her to. Kept thinking about it. The softness of her mouth. The warmth. How my whole world had narrowed to just that single point of contact, her lips against mine, nothing else existing.