Sometimes cold-blooded can be downright hot... When eighteen-year-old Jared, a plague survivor, arrives in the men's compound aboard the Trafalgar, Marquez knows that the young man is trouble. Jared, like Marquez, loves men, the ultimate taboo on a ship full of women on their way to populate a new, safer planet. At first, Marquez's advances are only meant to comfort and enlighten Jared, but their encounters become their only means of dealing with the harsh treatment from the women. When they're found out and punished, Marquez steals an escape pod and takes a sickly Jared on a desperate bid for freedom. But Marquez has never set foot on a planet, he has no dirtside skills, and Jared is dying. Rescue comes in the form of a lizard—man-sized, intelligent, telepathic . . . and gorgeous. Desire blossoms between the unlikely pair, and when Jared's condition deteriorates, Gharial becomes the only chance Marquez has of surviving. Marquez desperately wants to be a part of the lizard's telepathic society, but it comes with a cost Marquez doesn't know if he'll have the courage to face: the only way for a human to become a telepath is to mate with a male lizard . . . and to risk death from the poisonous bite.