His mouth was on mine before my voice died.

Everything in my life, every decision I’d made and every experience I’d had and every moment that led me to right now, came to a head. It coiled into a ball of energy and slammed into me, rocking me to the deepest part of my being. I didn’t feel like a human anymore. I didn’t feel like anything anymore. I just was. There, in the middle of the godforsaken desert beneath the space-riddled sky with only miles between me and my first criminal act, Zuran kissed me, and I just was.

He tasted like heat. There was no other way to describe it. He tasted like he’d been made from sunshine and lava and flames and passion, hot and heady and erotic. He tasted like danger, risk, and sarcastic smirks. Just like him, his flavor was impossible to identify, to understand and categorize. He was a good guy, but he wasn’t. He was a jerk, but he was sweet. His favorite thing to do was enrage his twin brother, but he was willing to jeopardize his career and his freedom to rescue Venan. Zuran was an anomaly, a contradiction, and it only made sense his kiss was the same.

And I loved it.

I fell into him, my chest crushing to his as he snaked his tongue between my lips. I wanted to hold him, claw at him, beg him for more. He had me under his spell, indeed. Every nerve in my body was on fire, not the simmering embers of hot coals but the crackling, raging flames of arson. I was withdrawing from a drug I never knew I needed, and he was the only one who could soothe the ache.

We eased apart slowly, like neither of us wanted to actually separate. I looked up at him through hooded lids, feeling shy all of a sudden. He, however, was staring at me with a blend of hunger and surprise on his handsome, striking face.

“I definitely didn’t see that coming,” I muttered jokingly.

He grinned, and he swooped down again. This time, it wasn’t a slow, burning kiss but a quick one, a peck of claim. His hand closed around mine, and he righted himself southward again.

“We ought to continue,” he said.

His tone was light and airy as if we hadn’t just practically devoured each other, and, at first, I wasn’t sure how to take that. But when he flashed a second grin at me, I smiled back. He was teasing me.Ppurposefully, leaving me wanting more. And he succeeded. I was practically salivating with desire.

It was weird to walk hand-in-hand with him. We talked casually just like we had for the last few weeks, and it wasn’t awkward at all, but there was definitely a new zing of electricity between us. Our spark had erupted into electrocution. I could feel him now. Just his hand wrapped around mine felt like my body had absorbed his. His pulse throbbed in his fingertips, and mine matched. Thump, thump, thump. We were united. Two separate bodies, but united. It was like this was what we were meant to be all along.

“I would like to ask you something,” he announced without warning. He was looking straight ahead, but I could tell he was cautious.

“Sure,” I agreed. “What?”

He didn’t reveal his question right away. I could see a muscle in his jaw clenching and unclenching like he was thinking really hard if this was the right time or even an appropriate query at all. I squeezed his hand reassuringly. There wasn’t anything he could ask me that would offend me, I was sure. I wanted to share myself with him—in more ways than one—and I wanted him to share himself with me.

The squeeze around his fingers did the trick. “Did you decide to become a nurse because of your sister?”

I almost stopped walking. It wasn’t that I was angry or hurt by his curiosity, but I was so stunned that I didn’t know how to process it. Thankfully, my feet kept moving of their own accord, and he continued to stare straight ahead, so I was able to collect my thoughts without interruption.

“I think so,” I answered slowly. “In a way. I didn’t decide to go into nursing specifically because of her, but, after what happened, I knew I wanted to help people somehow. I considered other fields like grief counseling after seeing what my parents went through when we lost her, but I ended up choosing nursing because I noticed that almost all the time Finnie was in the hospital, it was the nurses dealing with her. The doctors didn’t seem to be very involved. So, yeah, I guess it was because of her, more than I thought.”

He nodded his understanding, and I saw relief soften the sharp angles of his cheekbones.

“Why do you ask?” I wondered.

With a glance at me, he said, “I just wanted to know. It is a rare individual who devotes their life to others. I knew you were that type of person when I saw you with Kharid. You cared what happened to him even though you did not know him. I have never met someone like that.”

I didn’t blush or blow off the admiration like I normally would have if he’d complimented something like how I looked. What he described was exactly who I was, and it was also the reason I’d wondered several times if being a nurse was actually the right choice for me. Becoming so emotionally involved with patients wasn’t beneficial in my line of work; it was draining, difficult, and sometimes crushing. But it was me, and it was a prime example why I didn’t think he was right in his theory that good things were outweighed by bad. Those patients I lost, who either died or were diagnosed with something awful or even had just been dealt a bad hand, were hard for me. But the people I managed to save and rehabilitate and heal were like my oxygen. It gave my life a purpose.

“What about you?” I asked, turning it around. “Did you become a warrior because of Venan?”

His smirk returned, but it wasn’t the smirk of mischief and danger. It was droll and ironic like there was a joke inside his head I couldn’t hear. “No,” he said. “I became a warrior in spite of Venan.”

“Well, if not because of him, why did you then?”

Zuran bent his head toward me, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “For far from noble reasons, I am afraid.”

I raised my eyebrows and pressed further, “What, like, they’d clear your record if you joined up or something?”

“No,” he repeated. “I became a warrior because the A’li-uud we are going to see needed someone on the inside.”