Chapter 13 #2
But I have plans of my own. And the plans involve him on his back.
“Stop,” I say. Not the panic stop, the I have an agenda stop.
He stops. Immediately. Pulls back. Looks at me. Concern flashing.
“Your turn,” I say. And push his shoulder.
He stands. The concern becomes confusion.
The confusion becomes something else when I put my hands on his chest and push him back against the opposite wall — the corridor is narrow enough that opposite walls are three feet apart and the three feet are ours — and his back hits the bulkhead and I hold his gaze.
“The overalls,” I say. “Take them off.”
The power dynamics rearrange. A male who has been running this chase letting the woman he caught tell him what to do.
He pushes the overalls down. Over his hips. Past his thighs. Steps out of them. Stands against the bulkhead in nothing, and I —
I have seen him shirtless. I have seen the chest and the arms and the ridges, and the iridescence. I have felt both of him in my hands and in my body. But I have not seen him. Not all of him. Not like this.
The iridescence covers everything. Not just the forearms — the chest, the stomach, the hips.
Bronze and copper and gold threading through the emerald in patterns that shift when he breathes.
The musculature is not bulky. He is built the way a predator is built: long, lean, everything functional.
Every muscle is visible. The V of his hips descending to —
Both.
I have held them. I have felt them inside me and against me.
But I have not looked. The claiming shaft is larger than I remembered.
Which is saying something. The ridges along it mirror the forearm ridges — raised, textured, dark bronze — and they are flushed.
Warm. The other is sleeker, smoother, curved differently, and both are ready.
The evidence of nine days of waiting is visible and impressive and doing things to my higher brain function.
I drop to my knees.
His whole body tenses. His claws scrape the bulkhead behind him. A low, involuntary rumble comes from his chest — the sound of a male watching his mate kneel before him.
“Lorri —”
“You’ve had your turn.” I look up at him from my knees.
Naked. On the deck plate. Looking up at a male who is leaning against a bulkhead with his claws in the metal and his pupils blown and his whole body vibrating with the effort of holding still.
“Nine days, Jazil. You spent twenty minutes with your mouth on me. You edged me three times. You told me everything you were going to do. Now it’s my turn. ”
His jaw locks. He does not move.
I wrap my hand around the claiming shaft first. The ridges pulse under my palm — warm, textured, each one responding independently to the pressure of my grip. I stroke once, and his hips jerk forward, and the rumble in his chest drops an octave.
“The manual had a lot to say about these ridges,” I say. Conversational. Studying him. “Nerve-dense, hypersensitive. I’ve been thinking about that for nine days.” I stroke again. Slower. Watching his body respond. “I have questions. Practical ones.”
“Lorri —” His voice is wrecked. “If you are going to quiz me while your hand is on my —”
I put my mouth on him.
The sound he makes shuts down every adjacent system in my brain.
His hand finds my hair — not gripping, resting, trembling — and I work the claiming shaft with my tongue.
The ridges under my lips are textured in a way that is fascinating.
Each one a slightly different height, a slightly different temperature, and when I run my tongue along the primary ridge, his whole body locks and his hips buck, and his hand in my hair tightens.
The taste. Mineral-warm. Concentrated. The river-stone scent turned into a flavor that is alien and clean and his.
I taste my way from base to tip, learning the geography, mapping the ridges with my tongue, and every time I cross one he makes a distinct sound.
Lower for the thick ridge near the base.
Sharper for the sensitive ring at the tip.
I am going to know this body better than the manual does.
I pull back. Switch. The other one. My hand still on the claiming shaft, stroking slow, while my mouth finds the secondary.
Different shape in my mouth — smoother, the curve hitting differently against my tongue.
Different taste — sweeter, less mineral, something almost floral underneath the salt.
When I take it deep his hands leave the bulkhead and find my shoulders, and the grip says I am dying in every language.
“Lorri — I can’t — if you keep —”
I look up at him. Both in my hands. His in my mouth. His eyes on mine. I hold the eye contact, and I take the secondary deeper, and I stroke the claiming shaft, and his claws extend into the bulkhead behind him, and the scrape of metal fills the corridor.
“Enough.” Rough. Desperate. He reaches down. His hands under my arms. He lifts me as if I weigh nothing, and I am against the opposite wall and his mouth is on mine and he is tasting himself on my tongue, and the growl that comes through the kiss is from somewhere primal.
“My turn,” he says. Against my mouth. “Finish what I started.”
He drops to his knees.
The third edge breaks me.
He brings me up three more times — three more — on top of the three from before, and the sixth time he holds me at the crest his tongue does something new, both tips vibrating in tandem, a micro-frequency I have never felt, and I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me so hard my knees give out entirely, and only his hands keep me from hitting the deck plate.
He catches me. Arms around my waist. Presses his face against my stomach. Breathing. Both of us breathing.
“Now,” I say. Above him. My hands in his hair. “Now, Jazil. Claim me.”
He looks up at me. From his knees. The blue eyes are vast and dark, and the expression on his face is reverence.
Not the hungry look from the chase. Not the feral smile.
Something underneath all of it that has been there since the corridor when I said you’re not broken.
The look of a male who is about to do the thing he was told he would never do.
He presses his mouth to the inside of my thigh. The place I chose. High up. His tongue traces a circle — both tips, slow, mapping the territory. Finding the exact spot.
“Hold on to me,” he says. “The venom starts immediately.”
I grip his shoulders. He bites.
The venom hits like sunrise. Solar. Spreading.
Every nerve igniting with desire so concentrated it has its own gravity.
His tongue works the venom in and the orgasm that has been building crashes through me — all six held edges releasing at once — and I scream and my hands lock on his shoulders, and my back arches off the bulkhead.
He rises with the venom already in my blood. Lifts me — one arm under my bitten thigh, gentle with the mark, the other gripping the bulkhead. My legs wrap around his waist. The claiming shaft finds me.
The first press of the ridges with the venom live is —
“Oh — God — with the venom, every ridge, I can feel everything —”
“I know.” Against my neck. Hips pressing forward. Deeper. “Everything is amplified.”
He thrusts deep and the deepest ridge hits a place that makes my vision white out.
“Look at me.” His voice. A command. The alpha register. His hand at my jaw, tilting my face. “Lorri. Look at me.”
I look at him. Blue eyes. Blown pupils. Claws in the bulkhead. His face inches from mine. The face of a male claiming his mate.
“I want to see your eyes when the bond locks in,” he says. Low. Rough. “I want to see you feel it. I want to watch it happen.”
He moves. Deep. My back against the bulkhead and his hands on my hips and his eyes on mine, and neither of us looks away.
The other one is between us. Hard. Slick. Leaking against my stomach. I reach between us and grip it, and his jaw locks and his rhythm stutters.
I stroke. Him inside me and in my hand. The slickness from him coating my fingers and my stomach. I pull my hand up. Wet. I rub it into the skin of my chest — his warmth, his scent, marking myself with him — and his eyes follow my hand, and his pupils blow so wide the blue nearly disappears.
I raise my fingers to my mouth. Lick them clean. Mineral-sweet. Hold his gaze the entire time.
The sound that comes out of him is not human and not language. It is from the primal Skiveth place, and the vibration makes the bulkhead shudder against my back.
His hips slam forward. The claiming shaft hits deep and the ridges lock and —
The hum-sense locks in.
Like a key. Like a containment field. Silence, and then him. A frequency. Constant. Permanent. The sound of Jazil Ereux existing in the universe, tuned to me. Found you. Never letting go.
I come. Cataclysmic. The venom amplifying and the hum-sense amplifying the amplification and his eyes on mine — he is watching; he is watching me fall apart, watching the bond lock in behind my eyes, and his face when he sees it happen is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
More beautiful than the nebula. More beautiful than anything.
His ridges pulse inside me. The other one spills over my hand and my stomach, hot, and the sounds we make together fill the ship.
We slide down the bulkhead. His back hitting the deck plate. Me on top. Still inside me. Both of us are shaking. The hum-sense thrumming.
I press my face against his neck. His arms come around me. Cool against warm. The temperature that will never not be right.
“I’m not done with you,” I say.
He pulls back. Looks at me. Wrecked. Post-bond. Post-everything-he-was-told-he-would-never-have.
“You’re —”
“Not done.” I push his chest. He goes onto his back on the deck plate — and I am straddling him and looking down and the power of this position. The hum-sense is live and I can feel his heartbeat through the frequency and the feeling makes me bold.