13. Apex
APEX
She's asleep.
Her weight against my chest. My cock still inside her—the knot has released but I haven't moved. She's warm around me. She holds on even in sleep. My cum is still in her and I feel it where she holds me.
Mine.
She came to me from the sky. I've been filling her for three days and I'll keep filling her. I want her full of me. I want her carrying my cum when she wakes, when she eats, when she sleeps, when I take her again. She smells like mine. She feels like mine. She is mine.
I'm hard. Her breathing is slow against my collarbone. Her ribs rise and fall and I feel each one.
Eight years alone in this territory. I held the borders. I held the work. I didn't let myself need this. Once there was something else—something past the rut, past the borders, past the season and the need. I don't find it now when I look. Only my mate. Only filling her. Only mine.
She's lighter than she was three days ago. I feel it. The rib she guards when she shifts. She needs to sleep. She needs to eat. The rut doesn't stop for that.
My cock flexes. She makes a sound—small, still asleep—and her body answers mine without her in it. I want to drive into her. I want to take her until she cries out and comes apart around me.
I don't move.
I sit at the edge of the nest with her back against my chest and hold still. The canopy to every horizon. The smoke of her settlement in the east. She's not done with it yet. I know this.
Both hands flat against her stomach, over where my cum sits inside her. Holding still.