His eyes are fascinating. Sparkling in the bright suns of Tajss, they glimmer with a deep resolve. There’s something in them that causes my belly to clench tight and my throat to swell closed.

Devotion. If I’m honest, it’s love.

He risked his life, without a thought, for me. It was the bravest, most courageous, fool-hardy thing I’ve ever seen. He rode that monster! It was like… my dad used to like watching vids of what they called a ‘rodeo’ back on Earth. Men would ride these monstrously big animals holding on to a rope while the beast threw them around, bucking and turning to get them off.

It was a sport, I guess, strange as it seemed, but this was no sport. I would be dead if Samil hadn’t acted and done what he did. Stupid, sure, but he acted to save me and what choice was there?

“Let me see,” I say, running my fingers across his cheeks and down his neck.

I’m no doctor and honestly don’t know what I’m looking for, really, but the sensation of his corded muscles under my fingertips is arousing. As I slide them across his shoulders, he winces when I reach his left shoulder.

Looking closer, his arm doesn’t line up with his shoulder like it should. It’s a little lower than on the right. The scales are an angry reddish-purple color over that area.

“Here?” I ask, touching it as lightly as possible.

“Yes,” he hisses, nodding. “It’s out of place.”

“Ouch,” I respond, feeling a phantom pain in my own.

Frowning, I stare at it and try to think of a way to fix it.

“I can fix it,” he says, and I hear, for the first time, a hitch in his breathing that worries me.

“How?” I ask.

A pained grin spreads across his face and he shakes his head, inhales deeply, holds the breath as he grabs the arm with his other. In a sudden motion he jerks the left arm down and out. There’s a loud popping sound as he gasps, and I yelp. His mouth snaps shut, he grunts, and then pants heavily, but there’s still that hitched sound in his breathing.

“Is that… better?” I ask, after letting him breathe a few minutes.

“Yeah,” he smiles.

“Good,” I say, falling back onto my rear and sitting with him.

Nervously, waiting for the instinctive reactions to hit me, I reach out and take his right hand in mine, surprised when nothing makes me stop. We sit together, the double suns beating down on us, quiet. It’s comfortable.

“We should get moving soon,” Samil says, looking up at the sky.

The double suns are starting to drop meaning it’s late in the afternoon.

“Yeah,” I say. “How’s your leg?”

“Hurts,” he says after a pause.

“I don’t know how to help.”

“It will be okay,” Samil says, tightening his grip on my hand. “Are you okay?”

His words resonate inside me and I look, maybe for the first time, at myself. Am I okay? Where is the fear, that constant companion I’ve lived with since the ship?

“I… think so,” I say, but my voice betrays me with a tremble.

Samil watches but doesn’t speak. He waits, without pushing, and more importantly without any judgment. Something snaps, almost physically, inside of me. A floodgate opens and I’m crying. I can’t stop the tears as I sob and it all pours out of me in a rush.

Samil gently takes me into his arms and holds me close. Resting my head on his chest, listening to the steady double rhythm of his hearts, I let it happen. He doesn’t speak or make a sound. He holds me, tight, yet soft, and in his arms I feel safe.

It’s the first time I’ve felt safe in so, so long.

He almost died to save me. The thought makes me cry harder still. How could he risk his own life without a single moment of hesitation like that? For me? Broken, scarred me. The one who can’t let it go. Sure the girls never say it, not out loud, but I see the way they look at me. Poor Inga. Broken Inga. She’s not been the same since.

They may be too kind to voice it but every one of them has thought it. I know because I think it myself. I’ve tried, so hard, to let it go. All the times I thought I had, one of the men or the Zmaj would come close and I’d be paralyzed with fear. Again.

Except now, with Samil.

Eventually the tears run their course and the sobs wracking my body come to an end. Samil holds me, still silent, waiting with a patience that seems to know no bounds. Shifting, I wipe the last of the tears from my eyes and then, at last, I sit up and meet his gentle gaze.

He takes my hands back into his, a silent gesture that gives me more support and love than anything I’ve ever felt. We sit, silent, as the suns drop closer to the horizon. Staring across the rolling dunes, the rays of the double suns make the sand sparkle like fields of diamonds. I know I have to say something. I owe him that much at least.

“On the ship,” I say, my voice hoarse and throat sore after all the tears. “When the… Zzlo attacked… there was so much confusion. Alarms were blaring, the lights went out and there was only emergency ones, so everything was dim. Smoke started filling the halls.

We were supposed to go to rescue pods if anything went wrong with the ship. We drilled doing that all the time, since I was a little kid, but when it actually happened it was so dark and chaotic, I got lost on the way to mine.

I saw figures down the hall I was in and I ran to ask for help. When I got there, they weren’t humans, they were… well you know.”

I stop, waiting to see if he will speak or admonish me for being so stupid as to get lost. It was stupid. So, so stupid. I know it, everyone knows it. All those years, thousands of times drilling what to do, and I screw it up.

Samil nods slowly, his kind eyes encouraging. He tightens his grip on my hands but doesn’t speak. Tears well in my eyes and threaten to stake a claim on me but I push them down and continue my story.

“They grabbed me and tossed me around between them,” I say and he hisses, anger flashing in his eyes as his jaw tightens. “They were trying to… use me when Calista and Jolie found me. My friends saved me before… but ever since…” Deep breaths, say it. Let it out. It’s okay. “Anytime a man is around, that fear, that helplessness is there. It’s like it’s about to happen all over again.

I know, it’s stupid, I’m crazy for letting that rule my life all this time later but… it does.”

I stop, bracing myself for his judgment, unable to meet his face.

“It’s not,” he whispers.

Jerking my head up I meet his eyes. The fire burning there is white-hot but there’s no admonishment, no judgment or derision.

“What?” I ask, my voice cracking.

“It’s not,” he says, sliding his hands up from my hand along my forearms until he reaches my elbows. Our arms rest against each other and he’s close to my face, driving his words in with an intention that has a force of its own. “You are not crazy. Or stupid, or anything but brilliant. You are brave, Inga. You survived a horrible event. If I could find those monsters I would destroy them for you. I would make them suffer as they have made you suffer. They would regret the day they were created before I was done.

This isn’t on you. It’s them. They are the atrocities that hurt you. Them. Not you.”

My chest swells, my throat closes, and below the rising emotions a fire ignites in my core. It’s been so long since I’ve…

Impetuously I close the gap between us, taking control of my own body, as, for the first time, it feels like it is mine. My lips meet his, tentatively.

His lips are softer than I expect, surprising so. The scales that cover him aren’t on that soft flesh. They’re lush against mine, moist and inviting. The flames deep in my belly become an inferno. I want him.

No I need him.

He returns my kiss, our lips moving gently together. I slide closer to him until I’m in his lap. His massive erection smashes against my legs but he doesn’t seem to mind.

We kiss longer until I drive my tongue into his mouth, seeking his which rises to welcome and greet me. A long-lost friend coming home. I don’t know how long the kiss goes on. I don’t think we breathe, neither of us wanting to break the spell of the moment. I’m sure that we must get air somehow, but I don’t know how, it doesn’t matter.

Fear flashes through my mind but it’s a ghost of the past. My desire burns it to ashes and it blows away on the stream of sensations pulsing through my body.

We kiss until I can’t, and we break apart gasping. Resting our foreheads together we silently hold each other until the burning in my lungs finally subsides. His arms encircle me, one hand resting between my shoulders and the other around my waist. I haven’t felt this safe since before the wreck and I don’t ever want this moment to end.