Chapter 19

Monte

 

 

When I got back to my room, the weight of the day still on my shoulders, I couldn’t help but smile when I entered the room and saw Ryn bending over as she put a to-go container in the fridge.

“Hey! You’re back. I got you some takeout from the cafeteria. It’s Venusian sausage and fritters. I hope you like that.”

Instead of responding, I pressed the hologram imaging on my watch, a green light flashing as it made a 3D digital image of Ryn’s backside then as she turned around it fully formed her, right down to her wide eyes and open mouth.

“Did you seriously just make a hologram of me?” she asked, staring at her own 3D image now on my watch.

“I didn’t have a hologram of you and now I do,” I said, matter-of-factly, closing out of her image.

She pouted out her bottom lip. “I don’t even have a picture of you, or us really. Actually…” She looked around my room. “You don’t have any photos at all.”

I shrugged. “I never had a reason to.”

“Well now you do, and if you don’t want a picture, I do. Of us. Maybe someday I’ll go back on social media or run into a lady at the grocery store and want to show her a photo of my guyliner wearing man.”

I smirked. “Guyliner?”

She nodded. “Yeah. That black stuff you wear around your eyes.”

“This is just how Caltian eyes look. The Egyptians I believe were the ones who developed that ‘guyliner’ or however you say it when we first visited.”

“Fun fact and good note, no offending Caltians and talking about guyliner.”

I put my arms around her waist, pulling her to me. “It takes a lot more than that to offend me, Ryn, and I will take that picture with you. You know, to show the grocery store ladies.”

I held up my arm, and a green light shot out of my watch, scanning us before my printer sounded at my desk under the loft.

Ryn gasped. “Did that just take a picture? I wasn’t ready!”

I squeezed her side before heading to the printer, pulling out the photo. Even though she said she wasn’t ready, she was still smiling, even without prompting. And I was too, a genuine smile even though I knew I’d be leaving this beautiful girl soon and didn’t know if I’d return.

“Here you go. Our first photo,” I said, taking a tack and hanging it on the wall near the fridge.

Ryn turned toward the picture, tilting her head. “I guess it isn’t too bad.”

I wrapped my arms around her waist, pressing my lips to her ear. “You could never look bad.”

“I doubt that. You’ve seen me at my worst,” she muttered.

“I don’t think you have a worst,” I murmured, moving my lips from her ear to her neck, taking in her sweet scent. She had a distinct smell that was unlike any other being I’d been around. The mixture of fresh laundry and a spring breeze. I wanted to capture her scent and ingrain it in my memory forever.

Ryn turned in my arms, wrapping her arms around my neck, her dark blue eyes meeting mine. “I should have some regrets about everything that’s happened between us, but I don’t, Monte. I went through one of the worst periods of my life, lost almost six months of living. But those dark moments, they lead me to you. You saved me, Monte, in so many ways. I just wanted you to know that. That’s why I wanted the picture. To know that even when you’re gone on this mission or if you ever get sick of your Caltian wife, I’ll know that in this moment we were happy. That you made me happy.”

I pressed my forehead to hers, breathing her in. “I always want to make you happy, Ryn. Not just because of what happened and how far you’ve come. Not because we gave into our desires. I felt something for you before we even connected. I’m yours, Ryn, for as long as you’ll have me.”

She sealed my lips with hers, her mouth warm against mine as our clothes easily slipped away, leaving nothing between us as I lifted her up, only to walk a few steps and gently place her on the couch.

We’d connected so many times, but this one felt different. There was a new electricity in the air and my heart. I didn’t know if it was because of the gravity of the mission or what I was feeling for Ryn.

“I want you to mark me,” I murmured, pressing into her.

She gasped, taking me in. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Make me yours. I want your lips, your mark, on me. So that even when I’m gone, I can look and think of your beautiful mouth. To remember what I get to come home too.”

“Like this?” she said softly, bringing her lips to my shoulder and running her teeth along my flesh.

I growled, gripping onto her hips as I rocked my body to hers. “Yes. Like that, Ryn.”

She held onto my back, biting and sucking on my shoulder while our bodies glided together and even muffled, our moans echoed through the room until the beautiful crescendo of our orgasm rang.

I laid on top of Ryn, my chest to her chest, glancing at the bright red mark on my shoulder.

“I hope you meant a hickey,” she said her face flushing.

I kissed her gently. “I did. Until we can come up with something more permanent, at least.”

She ran her fingers through my hair, her face falling. “I’ve never thought about things permanently, ever. Not with a job, a home, and especially not a person.”

I smiled. “That’s going to have to change because you’re permanently mine.” I kissed her again, whispering into her lips. “And I’m yours.”

It didn’t take long for the kissing to turn into connecting again. I could stay attached to her every minute of every day and never get tired of her.

The mission was going to be one of the longest of my life, and I didn’t want to think too hard that it could also be the last one of my life as well.