Gibus had handed over the device and gone back to working on some invention in his lab. He’d clearly wanted to stay and see his handiwork in action, but one pointed look from Ruckus had changed his mind.
Ruckus was currently aiming the silver contraption at her. He’d been shown how to get it to work, and seemed pretty confident in his abilities. Yet as badly as she wanted to be herself again, that old nervousness had returned tenfold. She believed that he meant it when he said he wanted her, but …
“Last chance,” she warned.
“To do what?” he countered. “Not know what my girlfriend actually looks like? Delaney, if you can’t trust me enough to really see you, we don’t need five years to figure us out.”
He was right, which made her stick her tongue out at him like a child. Sometimes a little humor went a long way, and when he rolled his eyes with a smile, she felt some of the tension ease.
“All right.” She took another deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut. “Do it.”
It wasn’t supposed to hurt—hell, she wouldn’t feel a thing, seeing as how, physically, nothing had really changed about her. She felt a slight breeze burst her way, and then nothing. After a moment she began shifting her feet impatiently. When nothing else happened, she popped open an eye, then both when she realized he was staring at her.
“What?” She gulped. “Did it not work?”
“No,” he croaked, clearing his throat immediately and rushing on before she could get the wrong idea. “I mean, yes, it worked. It’s just … wow.” He slowly made his way to her, as if afraid to spook her, and lifted a hand to her head. He took a strand of her hair and ran it between his fingers.
When she glanced down and saw that the locks he held were red, she almost wept with joy. Fortunately, she’d done enough crying, and not so much as a single happy tear slipped by.
“I know you’re not used to redheads where you come from,” she said nervously. “Hell, even where I come from we tend to fall into a taste category.” She tugged her hair loose when he didn’t respond, and took a deliberate step back.
He looked at her, and the breath whooshed out of him all over again. “Your eyes.”
“Nothing like Olena’s. I know.” She made a face. “Also there’s the whole single-color thing.”
“They’re beautiful,” he said breathlessly. “You’re beautiful. I know I told you that didn’t matter to me, and it didn’t, but … wow.”
“You said that already.”
“I’ll probably end up saying it another couple hundred times,” he confessed. He ran both of his hands through her hair, cupping the sides of her head and urging her closer. Just as their lips were about to meet, he paused, staring into her eyes intently.
She held her breath and waited, not sure what she expected him to say. It certainly wasn’t what he did.
“I want to go bowling,” he said.
She blinked. “That’s … random.”
He shook his head. “I want to try it, with you. I want to experience all the things you love to do. I want to understand firsthand why you love what you love.” He paused. “But maybe not the bungee-jumping thing.”
“Wait.” She pulled her head back and gave him an incredulous look. “You can’t honestly be afraid of heights, can you?”
The concept just seemed a bit ridiculous to her, considering all the dangerous things he did as an Ander. Like searching for bombers when bombs were going off, and being shot at with weapons that blast holes through people. Or Olena. Just Olena. No other description necessary.
“Of course not,” he countered. “I don’t have any problem with being up high. It’s the falling I take issue with.”
She laughed and then laughed even harder when she saw how serious he was.
“I don’t know,” she said, and clucked her tongue, once she’d calmed down, “you never did take me to that 3-D movie.”
He pressed a kiss to the curve of her jaw. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Impossible,” she joked. “The 3-D movies on Earth are still played on a flat-screen. Now I’ll never see one in actual 3-D, and it’s all because you never bothered to take me to one.”
She met his gaze, only to find he wasn’t smiling anymore. Instead he was staring at her intently, yellow-green eyes roaming across her face as if trying to commit every line and contour to memory.
“I see you, Delaney,” he whispered. “I see all of you.”
The fact that he was looking at her like that made her breath catch. It wasn’t Olena that he was staring at like he never wanted to stop. In a few hours they’d be on Earth, both of them, and neither of them would have to pretend to be someone else there. For the first time, there was nothing between them, no reason she had to hold back.
“Not all of me,” she said. A sudden burst of confidence hit her, and she reached for the hem of his shirt. “Not yet.”
He blinked, then captured her mouth in one swift move. Together they toppled onto the bed, his heavy weight pressing her against the soft mattress. Allowing her to tug his shirt over his head, he reached for the silky material of the dress she’d thrown on, stopping with it already shoved up past her hip.
Ripping his mouth away, it took him a moment to even his breathing enough to speak. “Are you sure?”
Wrapping a hand around his firm neck, she eased him back down toward her. “You just gave up everything to give us a shot,” she reminded him, nipping at his bottom lip. “How could I not be sure?”
He let her press their lips together once more before pulling back yet again. “Isn’t there a term for this back on your planet?”
She frowned. “What?”
“Sex on a plane?”
“The mile-high club,” she said, and laughed. “This isn’t a plane, and we’re not in the sky. We’re in space.”
“So…” He pressed his mouth against the bottom of her jaw, each word punctuated with another kiss as he trailed his way up toward her ear. “What you’re saying is, we’re starting our own club?”
“We certainly have a unique situation,” she mused, moaning at the end. “Okay.” She redirected his lips to hers. “No more talking.”
As their bodies came together, all her fears and doubts melted away. None of the negative stuff that had come along with this situation mattered; all that mattered was that it’d led her to Ruckus.
They were somewhere in space between Xenith and Earth, and yet here she felt more at home than she ever had on any planet.
EPILOGUE
FIVE WEEKS LATER
“Delaney!” the high-pitched cry reverberated through the apartment.
Snapping instantly awake, she rolled out of bed, practically tripping down the hall. A thousand different nightmarish scenarios filtered through her mind as her name was called again. The second she got to the living room, she came to a sudden standstill.
And cursed.
Her roommate stood next to the couch, still in her pink pajama pants with the tiny koalas on them. Her dark hair was a little messy from having just gotten up, and her eyes were hard and glaring.