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his eyes. “This is about us.” He reached out and took her hand. His fingers felt warm.
    And deliciously possessive.
    * * * *
    They walked through the Stiletto’s airlock doors with their fingers still entwined.
    Elyn found that her gaze kept sliding away from his, no matter how she tried to hold it. “I’m almost seventy years old. How do you make me feel sixteen?”
    “What you feel is vulnerability.” Blade pulled her around to face him. “I feel the same way. It’s tough to let someone in so close. They can hurt you.” His dark eyes seemed to blaze in his hard, handsome face. “But I’m not going to hurt you. How could I?” Pain flashed across his face—the expression of a man with a mortal wound. “When Daven stabbed you, I felt like he’d scooped out my guts. It hurt worse than when my team died, and I’d fought beside them for two decades.” He shook his head. “How did you get so deep in me so fast?”
    Elyn’s heart was pounding so hard it thundered in her ears. “Infatuation?” But she didn’t believe it.
    “I’m forty-two years old. I know infatuation when I feel it. This is different. This is. . . .” Blade tugged her full against him and threaded both hands through her hair. His mouth stormed hers in a delicious assault of lips and tongue and teeth. She moaned as he spun her around. Her back hit the airlock door, and he leaned into her, solid and male.
    Elyn gasped at the feel of his cock pressing against her belly as he cradled her head in his hands and made love to her mouth. It was intoxicating as astral mead, a spill of fire that tumbled from her lips to her sex.
    Her nipples hardened helplessly, and she instinctively grabbed the round, firm muscle of his ass so she could pull herself against him as close as skin. “I couldn’t let you die,” she gasped against his mouth. Rolling her hips, she savored the feeling of his hard length, his big body, his Tekker strength. “I need you too much.”
    Blade’s mouth covered hers again, and they drank each other, desperate, drugging kisses that made her entire body tighten and her fangs throb in her upper jaw.
    His big hands left her head to find the hem of her top, and he stripped it off over her head with one hungry pull. It hit the floor with a soft thump. Her breasts bounced, bare nipples tightening. His hand cupped one, lifted the soft flesh. When his lips closed over her nipple, Elyn threw her head back with a throaty, helpless moan.
    Blade dropped to his knees like a supplicant, his hands hooking the waistband of her skinpants. The fabric rolled down her hips, but made it only halfway to her knees before he yielded to temptation.
    Blade’s hands found her ass, dragging her forward to meet his hot and eager mouth. His tongue slipped between her folds, slick, a hard thrust over her clit, deliciously wet. She squirmed, panted, writhed. “Blade, Gods, Blade. . . .” Her hands found his hair, forked through the silken strands, held on tight as he sent her higher with each long lap.
    Even as Blade savored her sweetness, his hands worked her skinpants the rest of the way down her long runner’s legs. He paused only long enough to pop the seals on her boots. She stepped out of them like a dreamer, and he left off tonguing her with a growl. Rising to his feet, he tumbled her into his arms.
    “Hi, there.” Gloriously naked, she grinned up at him and looped her arms around his neck. His cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. Her fangs gleamed white in her wicked smile.
    “Hi, yourself.” Blade had to grin back as he carried her down the corridor to his quarters.
    It was all he could do to look where he was going. His eyes kept drifting down to the lush nudity cuddled in his arms. She felt delightfully warm and soft everywhere she should, and taut and muscled everywhere else. Her blonde hair lay in artful curls around her shoulders, and her nipples looked as rosy and fat as a pair of cherries. He knew from experience that they tasted