“Until then we bide our time?”

“I’ll start making backup plans. We won’t be caught off-guard again,” she promised. “You wouldn’t be in this situation if not for me, so—”

“If not for you, I wouldn’t exist.” He sliced brutally into what he guessed would be some attempt to take responsibility for this situation.

But it’s mine to carry. Whatever I did out there, it dragged a bounty hunter down on us. And it wouldn’t be easy to elude someone who stalked others for a living.

Judging from her abortive movement toward him, she intuited his emotional state, somehow. It could be her deep familiarity with Tiralan body language but it felt more like a deep knowing, as if he could hide nothing from her. Not ever. That vulnerability offered both intimacy and potential harm, a blade that cut both ways.

She touched him only with her words, however. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m sure of that.”

“Such towering faith in me,” he said unsteadily. “When I have none. Would you…” No, he shouldn’t ask.

She’s done enough.

“What, Helix?” Another step closer, so that he could smell the spice of her pheromones and the tang of fear that Aevi had mentioned. “You can ask for anything. I meant it when I said that before.”

“Comfort me like before.” Despite feeling sure that he had no right to demand such services when his defective, unreliable memory had created this reprehensible coil, he still craved the softness she had granted earlier.

“That’s so easy,” she breathed.

And then she was in his space, all tenderness and caution, touching only with that soft, tympanic cadence, soothing his internal aches in ways he hadn’t even suspected were possible before now. He let out an instinctive pleasure sound because his body recognized what she was offering. His muscles eased and he went to her by increments, until they leaned together, chests touching.

“I cannot let anyone hurt you,” he whispered. “And yet I lack the ability to stop them. Isn’t it absurd? With every fiber of my being, I yearn to protect, but I’m the one who needs saving.”

Each time she breathed in, he felt it. Helix couldn’t say how he would feel about others, but he had grown accustomed to her proximity. It no longer felt as if her touch might erase him; rather, it seemed more probable that she could crack him open and extricate some new creature from the chrysalis, a slick and trembling thing, soft and eager and straining toward her light.

At length he calmed and she stepped away, ever careful not to push his boundaries or test his limits. A quiet part wished that she had a sliver less integrity, that she would have him, on any terms, even those disparate ones.