85. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
S avannah
“Explain the null thing again,” I demand the moment he re-enters the bedroom. Something’s not right. My equilibrium is off. Not my balance, but my emotions. My thoughts have been erratic since he knelt in front of me in the cellblock.
“I’m an empath. I feel things, know things. Finding a null is difficult. Finding the right null is even harder. When a good viate is formed, only death can tear it asunder.”
I feel his sadness. No, not sadness. Grief. It’s so heavy it’s a burden. I feel like a hundred pounds of weight has been loaded onto an invisible backpack.
I’m sitting at the foot of the bed and pat the spot next to me. When he chooses to sit at the small table in the corner, I join him there.
“When a son is born on Coronis, every parent begins looking for signs he’s an empath. It’s a sign of status. No. It’s more of an honor. Every parent would love for their son to be one. But it’s also dangerous to have an empath who isn’t identified. Dangerous for the child.
“Empaths are sensitive, easily upset. From the moment they’re identified, they are isolated from other’s emotions.”
“Why?”
“They can be overwhelmed. Imagine being only a few lunars old and experiencing someone else’s rage, or grief, or lust.”
His blue gaze darts to me, then to his lap. It’s odd, but I don’t just wonder if he had a sexual thought, I’m certain of it. A picture of me naked, but with the proportions wrong, flashes in my mind for some weird reason.
“Parents begin looking for the signs in the hospital room shortly after the birth. When the baby is calm, they will dredge up unpleasant emotions and see if the child responds. It’s important to identify empaths early.”
I remember my friend Dusty telling me her sister had banged spoons together in her hospital room to see if her infant could hear. The baby had genes for deafness on both sides of the family and they wanted to determine her hearing ability early in her life. I guess it’s similar to what they do on Coronis to identify the empath trait.
“As soon as the child is identified as an empath, the household routine changes. I was cloistered from my two older sisters. Annums later, my parents told me they were rambunctious and jealous and were immediately separated from me.”
“What about your parents?”
“They tried to keep their feelings at bay when they interacted with me, but they often left me alone to keep the burden of their emotions away from me.”
“You must have been lonely,” I say as I softly grab his hand.
“Very. The best day of my life was when I met my null. The goal is to form viates where the empath and null are approximately the same age. The dyad works better that way. But most parents of nulls don’t want their child to leave their home in infancy. I didn’t meet Maleen until I was six.
“Huge gymnasiums are filled with six- annum -old boys. Adult empaths walk up and down the rows, looking for an end to the assault of others’ thoughts and feelings. There’s no science to finding a null. The empath just knows he’s found a null when his mind quits being bombarded. Then the room is cleared of those who don’t carry the null trait and boys like me are led in.
“We walk the rows, looking for our match. I found Maleen the first day I tried, and we were viates until his death in an arena two annums ago.”
Another gust of his grief bombards me.
“So, I’m your null now. What’s my part in all this?”
“The null just has to be nearby. It’s just a quiet place for my thoughts to find peace. It’s possible to fight your effect on me. I can read others if I need to. It’s just a great deal of effort when my null is around.”
When I cock my eyebrow in question, he continues, “Even though you were sitting next to me at dinner, if I needed to, I could have forced my way into one of their minds. It’s easier if you as the null know what I want to do. If you’re anything like the nulls of my species, you’ll learn how to retract your powers, to help me climb into someone’s mind if that is the goal.
“It’s helpful, for example, in medical techniques so I can assess and diagnose. Empaths on my planet are useful in the priesthood to enter into others’ minds to soothe and calm them. We can help slow learners, ease into their minds and see what’s not working correctly, then instruct the student on how to work on their strengths. There are many things empaths are useful for. It’s an honor to have the skill.”
“Something’s weird with me since I sat down in the cellblock,” I admit. “You may be less telepathic, but I’m more. I’ve never had a woo-woo bone in my body. But I can read you. Kind of.”
This time, he’s the one who cocks a brow.
“Think of a color,” I say.
He nods.
“Blue,” I say. He nods again, his eyes narrowing.
“Think of a planet.”
After he nods, I say “Marentine” even though I’ve never heard of it before.
He nods, his eyes widening.
As we do this several more times, I feel his anxiety rising.
Lightning arcs between us as we sit at the small corner table. He feels it too. I experience my emotions and then an echo of his vibrates through me. It’s strange and fascinating and scary.
He squeezes my hand as his gaze searches my face.
“I feel your feelings, Savannah. You null the feelings of others, but yours bleed easily into me.” He closes his eyes, his nostrils flaring slightly as he searches for something.
“Compassion. For me. I haven’t been the recipient of a tender feeling for a long time.”
His angelic face softens. I doubt he’s relaxed or allowed himself to let his guard down in years.
“What’s an angel?” he asks.
“Wh-what?” Why would he ask that unless he was rummaging around in my head?
“What’s an angel?” he repeats.
“I thought I nulled you. You’re able to read my thoughts?”
“Aye.”
“That wasn’t the deal,” I protest.
“I agree. I didn’t see it coming.”
“An angel is an imaginary thing in some religions. Like a messenger or helper of God. Usually winged.”
“In ancient days, my people thought the same thing about empaths—that we were sent from God. Why would you think I look like one? I don’t have wings.” He shrugs.
Busted. I’m so busted.
“They’re usually portrayed as beautiful,” I admit.
He cocks his head. Dumbfounded.
“It’s not that surprising. Certainly, girls have found you attractive before.”
“On Coronis, I always read it as curiosity. When I was a recipient of those attentions as a gladiator, I read it as lust. I never received this interest before.”
“ This ?”
“Pure.”
Oh, poor, deluded Tarrex. There’s nothing pure about my interest right now. Maybe it was my little masturbation session in the shower last night. Maybe it was the finality of my discovery that there will never be more than friendship between Theos and me. I like Tarrex, and I know he likes me. But pure? No.
“Pure as in your interest is about me , the male Tarrex. Not as an empath or a gladiator.” He places his fist on his heart. “But me.” His other hand is still holding mine, more tightly now.
“You’re right.” How do I deny my interest when he can read me like a book? I’m new at this empath thing. I receive broad swaths of his strong emotions and thoughts, as well as vague partial flashes of pictures. I think he gets sentences and paragraphs and books with full-color illustrations when he reads me.
“And I know how you’re feeling, too,” I say.
“Oh?”
“Anxious.”
“Aye.”
“Wait. Not just anxious, there’s a tinge of guilt in there. Give me a moment and I’ll figure out what you’re guilty about.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.” That angelic face changes almost imperceptibly, but I see the tiny muscles around his mouth tighten, his lips twitch.
He’s here in the midst of me and all my friends and he just admitted he’s hiding something. He’ll be sleeping inches from me. He could be an enemy, one of Khour’s spies. Who knows? Now I must get to the bottom of this.
I watch him and concentrate. Even though I’ve only been a null for two hours, I’m quickly figuring out how to manipulate this skill.
Think, Savannah. What’s he hiding?
All of a sudden, I don’t just know it. I feel it. Attraction. Angel man is attracted to me. No. Not just attracted, sexually attracted. I feel a burst of energy in my pelvis. NO! Not my pelvis. My penis .
It’s as if I’m inside his skin. My body is muscular and powerful. My mind is shrouded in mystery. I’m suspicious of everything. And I’m attracted to the brown-haired female sitting across the table from me.
My cock twitches. Like a dowsing rod, it’s pointing at the female. I don’t just want to touch her, I want to devour her.
“Stop!” I push my hand out, palm toward him. “Think of clouds!”
“What?”
“Think of something soft and fluffy and not feminine. Think of something that will make your cock soft, Tarrex! Your… shit is bleeding into me. Stop it!”
Tarrex
How could I ever have dreamed this would happen when I asked to share a room with this female? I thought I’d found the bliss of a quiet mind—a new null.
I never expected to be able to climb into her thoughts. That never happened with Maleen. And for her to read me ? To know my feelings? She doesn’t deserve this. No one deserves to become an empath as an adult. It’s too overwhelming, overpowering, uncontrollable.
I need to fix this for both of us.
“Take me back to the cellblock,” I thunder as I walk to the door and palm it open. “Better yet, call Zar or one of the other males. Have them take me. Then stay away from me. I apologize.”
Zar’s admonition not to leave this room without an escort rings in my ears, so I stand in the doorway, waiting for her to call someone on her wrist-comm.
I don’t want him to leave , I hear. It’s written all over her face, too.
“I’ve offended you. Of course, you want me to leave.” The evidence of my lust is still visible. It’s straining against my pants.
She considers for a moment, her thoughts flying so fast I can’t latch onto them, then she says, “I want you to stay.”
Although I can read my new null’s thoughts and feelings, one thing is different about her than other people—it’s easy to differentiate hers from mine.
I feel her interest, her desire.
“Why did you want me to think about clouds?” The answer seems important.
“I was inside your skin for a moment. I don’t know how I did it. For a brief moment, I had a penis.”
My head whips back in shock. What have I done to this poor female?
“ Your penis. And it was hard.” She pauses a moment, then, “It still is.”
“I apologize,” I tell her sincerely.
“Close the door, Tarrex. Do you really want to squander this moment?”
“Squander?” I echo numbly.
“If the males on this ship have their way, you’ll be embarking on a dangerous mission in a matter of days. It’s no secret you might not come back from it. Are you sure you don’t want to palm that door closed and stay?”
Yes. I want to do just what I pictured in the shower earlier. She’s right, although she phrased it so carefully. The blunt way to say it is I’ll most probably be going to my death in a few days. Why not find heaven in this beautiful female’s arms?
I slap my palm on the door plate to close it, but stand where I am, near the threshold just inside her room.
“We’re going to play a game,” she says. “Don’t move.”
A game?
“Tell me one thing you like about me. We just met, I know, but you can do this.”
“Your kindness,” I blurt, without having to think or even wondering why she’s asking. “You don’t know me, have no reason to trust me, yet you allowed me into your room to provide me comfort. I’ve learned firsthand there are few kind people in this galaxy.”
She smiles, but I don’t need her visual cue to know my words pleased her. I felt warm happiness generating from her heart center.
“Now I’ll tell you one thing I like about you, Tarrex. You’re an interesting juxtaposition of incongruities: a big, strong body, a difficult life, and a soft heart. It’s unique.”
I push her words away. I’m a master at that. Then I allow them in, rolling them around in my head, allowing myself to absorb them in the same fashion she absorbed my words of praise. I know she felt me accept her compliment when she flashes me a soft smile.
“One more round,” she says. “Another thing I like about you is your ability to know your emotions. And share them. I haven’t met many men capable of that. Well, correct that. I haven’t met any.”
I feel the veracity of her words and the sadness that accompanies them.
“Theos,” I say his name the moment I receive it from her, suddenly knowing one of the males I’m supposed to rescue is her lover. My muscles tighten. For a moment I thought our little game was a prelude to joining our bodies. Why didn’t she want me to palm that plate and go back to the cellblock when she has a lover?
Without prompting, she tells me about her abduction and her horrible first week in the cell with Theos. I feel her pain assaulting me in waves from across the room.
“It was never right between Theos and me, Tarrex. I accept that now.” She has somehow discovered how to show me things in her mind. It’s a technique it took me annums to perfect at the training guild, and she’s mastering it in the span of minimas .
“Awkwardness,” I narrate what I’m seeing and feeling. “Stunted.” She flashes more pictures. “Disconnected.”
“Exactly.”
I feel her sadness, regret, closure, and some obligation, but no love or longing for the male.
“He’s in the past, Tarrex. Do you believe that?”
“Yes. I feel it.”
“Your turn. Another thing you like about me.”
She leans back and shakes her shining mane of hair. She’s beautiful. Before I can say how exquisite she is, I hear her thoughts loud and clear, Don’t make it about what your eyes see, Tarrex. What does your heart see?
You’re a smart female. Perceptive.
“You’re loyal,” I tell her. “You don’t love Theos, but you’re willing to risk your life to rescue him. I don’t want you to do that, but your willingness to do it shouts of who you are, Savannah. Loyal, courageous, someone I could count on.”
She likes my words, but I don’t need to sense it because she says, “Ding, ding, ding. Two correct answers each. For the lightning bonus round, you have to answer my questions immediately and with one word, either yes or no. Understand?”
“Yes,” I answer without pause, feeling my lips lift into a smile for the first time in annums . Many annums .
“Does your body want me?”
“Yes,” I answer immediately. It couldn’t be a trick question. She already knows that answer. At some point in the future, I’ll have to ask her how it felt to slide into my body. I’ve been an empath my whole life and have never done anything like that.
“If I asked you to join me in my bed, would you say yes?”
“Now?”
“Unh!” She makes a guttural, honking sound. “Yes or no, Tarrex. Yes or no.”
I’m paralyzed. Perhaps I should have known that question was coming, but I didn’t. Do I want to join her in her bed? Yes. Now? We’ve only just met. I was training for the priesthood. I never expected to bed a female. Empaths are expected to be celibate—relationships don’t work when a life partner can read your mind. Or that’s what I was told.
“Maybe that was unfair,” she says. “Here. I’ll go first.” She cocks her head in one direction as she asks, “Savannah, do you want Tarrex to join you in your bed?” She cocks her head in the opposite direction when she answers her own question, “Why yes, Savannah, I do.”
She spears me with a serious gaze even though her words were in jest. She’s waiting for my answer.
“Crawl in,” I invite her into my mind and show her pieces of my childhood. Specific memories of religious instruction as far back as I can remember. I was sent to live in an empath boarding school at age six. We were told we could never have a female. They explained that we empaths were bound for more altruistic pursuits and that mates couldn’t tolerate our ability to read their minds. We were taught the Serentine Technique to combat our sexual urges.
Then I show her a calendar. I have no idea what day it is, but I show her a calendar with three days on it and then a big red ‘x’. This is what I assume will be my date of death.
“You don’t want to do this with a dead man, my Savannah.” Curious how easily those last two words slipped from my mouth.
“You just clinched it, Tarrex. I’ve been around all these gladiators long enough to know what that means. You called me yours. That tells me all I need to know. Join me in bed.” She’s so beautiful, sitting there, her gaze not leaving mine as her pink tongue licks her lips.
Savannah
I haven’t done anything crazy in a long time. I believe the last time I did anything this impulsive was the day I graduated boot camp and got a tiny ‘Semper Fi’ tattoo on my hip. I’ve never regretted it.
I’ll probably regret this, though. We’ve known each other less than four hours, and he’s going on a suicide mission in a few days. I want this, though. And through the magic of mind-reading, I know he wants it, too.
“What was the game for?” he asks.
“To show us both that we know each other better than we think, and that we respect each other, and that we have this interesting empath thing going that proves we have something deep.”
He smiles and nods. You’re a smart female .
“Here’s another game. Why did you take so long in the bathroom? Either show or tell or both,” I say before I can censor myself. It may have been a tactical error. Tarrex from Coronis doesn’t seem capable of lying. If he did, I would know, and I might not like his answer.
He retreats, planting his back against the door, then relives masturbating in the shower. I experience that wild ride of being inside his skin, feeling the water pelting on me, watching my muscled forearm and thick wrist as I grab my cock and… I stop my thoughts and somehow crawl out of his head.
“I’m going to teach you something I doubt they taught you in priest school, Tarrex. Lie to me. Tell me you were thinking about me when you did that. Don’t let me believe otherwise.” All my brash questions and game show quizzes fall away and reveal my self-doubts. The wrong answer will devastate me. What if he was thinking about someone else?
He lunges away from the door and arrives in front of my chair in three huge steps. Pulling me out of my chair by my upper arms, he sticks his huge, beautiful face into mine and says, “You.” To prove his point, he presses his forehead against mine and shows me pictures of me naked, then blasts me with the cataclysmic bliss of his release. “You, Savannah.”
He kisses me hard on the lips. I don’t think my feet are on the floor. I’m dangling in his grip. He’s plying me with kisses. They’re kisses of desire, kisses of declaration, kisses of ownership.
Then he sets me down, my feet between his, his fingers still curved around my arms.
I’m not letting you get away.
Oh, the possession in those words. But then he backtracks. “Unless you want.”
“Don’t stop and don’t ask again unless you hear me use the words… semper fi. Otherwise, I’m yours.”
He must have taken me seriously because he rips my t-shirt down the middle from the collar to the hem in one bold move. I consider sliding out of my pants before he can ruin them, but decide not to interfere with his passion.
He doesn’t rip them, though. He fumbles with the button long enough to undo it, then pulls my pants off and tosses them to the side.
“Come inside me,” he whispers in my ear, his hot breath fanning my skin.
It takes me half a second to realize what he means, then I crawl under his skin again.
I’m in the eye of a hurricane! The depth and breadth of his emotions are enough to swamp me. My knees go weak and the only reason I don’t slip to the floor is that his hands are gripping my elbows.
I see myself through his eyes. I’m beautiful. Gorgeous, actually, with luminous eyes filled with wonder and lust. But it’s not what he’s seeing that is the main attraction. It’s what he’s feeling. The level of his lust is DefCon 1. No, it’s bigger than that. Is there a DefCon zero? Or minus one hundred?
His pulse is beating in his heart and in his carotid and in his, no my , no our enormous cock.
I nudge him with my mind to pay attention to it. It’s not just pulsing with lust, it’s desperate. I experience the depths of his desire to plunge into me. I feel the strain in every muscle as he holds himself back, restrains himself.
Don’t hold back , I urge, then wait to feel what happens when he lets go. But he doesn’t.
Tarrex, please. We can make love all night. This first time? I want to feel you take me… unleashed. Give me whatever you’ve got. I’ll say semper fi if I need to.
I stay inside him long enough to feel the metamorphosis. It makes me picture a slavering dog of war being released from his chains. The whirlwind gathers strength, and every muscle pulls even tighter.
I leap out of him because I want to experience this as me, Savannah.
His face doesn’t look angelic anymore. It’s so full of lust and passion it barely resembles the male I met when he removed his helmet. He’s still so fucking beautiful I can barely tolerate it.
He takes his hands off me long enough to pull off his clothes. He’s just about to pounce when I communicate one request—for him to pause.
I fully take him in for the first time, drinking in his perfection. Did he say he was studying for the priesthood? That would be a crime against humanity. His body is perfection. And his skin. It’s otherworldly. It reminds me of a combination of a fire opal and a nebula strewn with stars. The colors remind me of the prettiest sunsets back in Georgia. It’s as if something is moving under his skin, even as the surface shimmers. It’s mesmerizing.
His face is that of an angel, and his body is made for sin. And that cock? I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s long and has a thick head with fleshy beads on it that look like they would arouse every inch inside my channel. It’s even more colorful than the rest of his skin, as if a nebula of pinks and opals is swirling inside of him.
I couldn’t stop the action forever. He steps forward, then places two fingers at my breastbone and presses hard enough to make me fall backward onto the mattress. That’s right, big guy, don’t hold back.
His lips are beautiful, perfectly shaped, but I have no desire to kiss or be kissed. I want the main event. There will be plenty of time for kissing after—if I live through the coming onslaught.
His huge palms circle my neck, then slide down my body, graze my breasts, skate over my hipbones, and cup my sex.
Mine. His telepathic assertions must not feel possessive enough, so he says, “Mine,” out loud. It comes out as a declaration. No, a fucking manifesto.
One thick finger slides along my folds from my core to my clit and back again.
Do you need more time?
The preliminaries are over, Tarrex.
He bends his head to nip the hard nub of my breast, then slides his tongue from the valley between my breasts to my mound and then farther south to my clit.
Talk to me. I’ve never been here before and I want no mistakes.
No male has ever admitted to being a virgin in such a sexy way.
I shoot him a diagram, then tell him the tiny lump of flesh at the apex of all those folds is the key to pleasure. It’s all the tutoring he needs.
This isn’t lovemaking. It’s an assault. I’m loving it. All hail the conquering army. His blunt tongue isn’t quite right, but with our little secret weapon, I urge him a bit to the left and tell him harder and he’s on his way to victory.
It doesn’t take more than a minute for blunt force to become a surgical strike.
“Fuck! Tarrex.” He’s got the perfect spot and the right motion, and when I think the word “finger” we both hit the jackpot.
Even as I start spasming around his one thick digit, I think the word “two” and through the magic of telepathy and a second finger, my impending orgasm blasts through me like a cyclone. I spasm hard. My pelvis thrusting up against him so savagely to garner more pressure, I half expect to hear bones crunch. But that wouldn’t be possible over the sound of my shrieks of pleasure.
My toes are curling. My eyes are rolled in the back of my head, and any words I’m saying are simply coming out as grunts of animal gratification.
He backs off, although his mouth is still suctioned to my clit.
Do it again , I tell him, slightly embarrassed to be so demanding after the galaxy’s best orgasm.
And he does.
This time he takes me to the precipice, then spears his tongue into me with a grunt of satisfaction.
I could live here , he flashes to me, then returns to thrusting and lapping me up.
He returns to my clit and teases me with flicks and hard, flat licks, then begins another relentless assault with his only goal being to provide me with another cataclysmic release.
I’m trying not to grip him so hard I create furrows in his magnificent fiery opal skin, so I force myself to release his shoulders and grab his beautiful blond hair. He’s so fucking gorgeous.
I’m looking through the valley of my breasts at his bobbing head as he devours me. He’s grunting with the pleasure he’s providing me. His shoulder muscles are bunched as he clutches my ass cheeks. All that unleashed power is focused on the one square inch at the apex of my thighs.is His
Fuck me. I urge. I don’t want to wait a minute more for him to take me.
He gives me one last flick with his tongue and lifts his head. After changing my position, putting my head on the pillows, he edges back between my thighs, then lifts my legs over his shoulders and places himself at my entrance.
When he pauses, I shake myself from my lust-filled stupor and gaze at him. He’s looking at me, requesting my presence. I hope I’ll have many more opportunities to feel him penetrate me with that gorgeous cock. There will be only one time I can experience his first time inside me.
I crawl into his mind and, for a moment, my senses go haywire. It’s a mindfuck of the first order to go from being fully in my feminine body, having an empty channel that wants to be filled, and then hopping into his head, where one-hundred percent of his attention is focused on the throbbing cock between his legs.
Although my desire has never been this high nor my lust this potent, being in his body catapults my passion by a thousand. Instead of my usual need to be taken, I now have the urge to take.
See how beautiful? he manages to say even though I barely have enough brain cells left to think.
I look through his eyes to see my glistening pink folds with his opalescent cock sitting at my entrance, just waiting for the starter pistol.
Fuck me, Tarrex.
He slides into me slowly as we both savor every moment. For all his masculine bluster and bravado, he has none of it now. Awe. He’s in awe of this moment.
Savannah.
Take your time or go fast, Tarrex. Ride me however you want. I’m in here with you, and I. Am. Loving. It.
He finishes his slow slide in, blissed-out as he feels every inch. It’s sex and lust and I think what he likes best is the feeling of ownership. Mastery.
He’s in to the hilt, then slides all the way out, even his tip, so he can plunge back in with a grunt of pleasure. I feel the extreme bliss of his cock inside my warm, tight channel, and the twinge in his balls as they seem to lift in anticipation of release.
Another delicious slide out and in, accompanied by a grunt and a moan.
Savannah? Is this possible? So good.
Magic, Tarrex, I say. Trying to memorize every second of this journey: the sex, the hunger, the amazing feelings I’m experiencing through his body, but most of all, his emotions. He’s full of arousal and possessiveness, but the feeling of wonder at how well we fit together is the best part of the package.
He pounds into me, giving complete control over to his desperate lust. Through our psychic connection, I feel Savannah’s body—my body—holding onto his shoulders for dear life. This experience is so beautiful and powerful I can’t think anymore. I just dive even more fully into the encounter.
It’s surreal to be totally inside his mind and yet still distantly aware of myself. It’s like soft background music that you know is there, but not the center of your attention. I have no idea how this works. How can I be in two bodies at the same time? I would have to be able to retain some mindfulness of my own self and actions or my body would become lifeless. I stop trying to analyze the situation. I focus on the sensations storming Tarrex’s body.
His balls tingle and then surge. The moment of his release is like shooting fireworks as he comes. I feel the pulses of his fluid and the deluge of excitement so profound it’s almost too much pleasure.
I stay inside his skin a moment longer as he falls on his side in a huff of exhaustion, then I pop back into my body to receive the onslaught of his appreciative kisses.
“You rode through that?” he asks between earlobe nibbles.
“I was a warrior on my planet. That was child’s play. I wondered if you’d make it through.”
His next nibble is a little more of a bite.
Naughty , I scold as I swat his bottom.
Couldn’t resist, he replies as he swats me back.
This is so good. Aside from the mind-boggling sex, now the amazing cuddling and sweet nothings and playful ass-slaps. If I could have put in a special order for the best evening ever, I could never have imagined anything half this good.
My mind flashes me the picture he shared with me right before we joined each other in this bed, the one with the calendar and the big, red ‘X’ signaling his possible demise. My heart almost stops beating in my chest.
“What?” he asks. Of course, he feels it. Our emotions are intertwined.
“Nothing,” I say, just as I’ve said to lovers before when I didn’t want to answer a question. I should have known that wouldn’t work with Tarrex.
It’s about the big red ‘X’, isn’t it? Do you regret what just happened here? Between us?
“I regret the expiration date. I don’t regret one second of what happened in this bed. And if I play my cards right, I won’t regret what’s hopefully going to happen up against the wall, or in the shower, or with me bent over the table.” Just to help him along, I flash him a picture of that very thing, my bottom naked and waiting as my torso is flat on top of the little table.
“Should we go back to playing your game?” he asks as he tips that handsome head to one side.
After I nod, he says, “Yes or no is Savannah a naughty female?”
“I’m not going to answer that. You’re going to have to find out on your own.”
He rolls to cover me with his body and nips along my jawbone, down the column of my throat, and makes a beeline to my nipples. First one, then the other, until my body is ready for round two. Or is it round ten?
I stay in my own skin this time, which is a good choice because the desperate attack of our first session has been replaced by the sweet kind of sex that only two people who have an intimate connection can experience.
Tarrex is a fast learner , I say when we’re spent in a ball of sheets that long since lost their mooring. “I need a nap, and then if it’s okay with you, I’m going to trim your hair. Nothing drastic, just even it out. I assume you’ve been your own barber for a while?”
I receive no answer because he’s already fast asleep. He’s even adorable when he snuffles.