Classified Planet: Turongal (The Darvel Exploratory Systems, #1)

by S.J. Sanders

She had just escaped being a meal for one creature—she wasn’t about to wind up a meal for another. It would just have to wait until the environment poisoned her or she suffocated in her helmet before it got to eat her. Yeah, she would be dead regardless, but it was the principle.

“Interest pales next to what I feel. It is need and desire, thirst and hunger… Not just for your body, despite its beauty, but all the things which make you—you. I demanded to mate you because while, yes, I did not want to see you suffer the touch of a stranger, in truth I could not bear to even imagine you in the arms of another. I demanded you because I long for you and need you. I have burned for days for only you.” “What is this between us?” she whispered back. “I do not know,” he replied, and she heard the honesty in his words, “but I cannot tolerate being separated from you. I need you, Cha’lii, like I need the breath of Inara Tahli to live. You are my breath.”