20. Draevik #3
Bypassing my confirmation, she reaches out, her palm pressing flat directly onto my chest, right over the flaring mark.
The bond detonates. Her palm grounds the storm for a microsecond, but the static in my skull quickly dials into a blinding roar.
My Reaper command structure, destabilized by centuries of stasis and flooded with combat adrenaline, is catastrophically fracturing.
A simple touch is insufficient to repair a failing neural matrix.
Our marks work both ways—I need absolute, unfiltered biological integration.
Only by merging our nervous systems physically can her stable human baseline absorb the chaotic static in my mind and anchor my overloaded grid before it fries my system entirely.
I catch her wrists, instinctively trying to push her away to spare her the chaotic fallout of my fury.
But as I grip her, I peer down at the freshly treated silver-blue Weave patching the cuts left by Rovik’s wire.
The reminder of her captivity slices through the static in my brain.
I pull her hands to my mouth, my lips brushing the cooling gel on her wrists.
"He touched you," I snarl, the sound more animal than man.
"He's dead, Draevik," she reminds me, dropping to a low, dangerous tone. She leans in, her chest pressing firmly against my barren chest, pouring her solid, fearless heat into me. "And I'm right here. We're both alive. Let go of the control."
The tension in the room shifts, thick and heavy as the cooling fluid leaking onto the floor.
The intruders are still on the ship, but the world has shrunk to the size of this bunker.
My blood is hot, fueled by the rush of the retrieval and the terrifying realization of how close I came to losing her.
My systems crave the emotional tether and biological stabilization only she provides.
I inspect her—lean, wiry, scarred, and absolutely fierce as another tremor ripples through my body.
She is searching for her match. My body responds with a violent, possessive urge that overrides the damage to my frame, compelled by an instinct older than logic and a love that has rewritten my stars.
The wounds remain, though healing has begun; I need to be close to her, to claim, binding us together to survive what remains of the night.
I wrench the final remains of my chest plate free, pushing through the tremors, the ruined metal clattering against the floor with a hollow, industrial ring.
I seize the hem of her tunic. I require verification—visual proof that the wire was the only thing that marked her and physical proximity to sync our erratic pulses.
I pull the fabric over her head in one sharp motion, followed swiftly by her scavenge-pants and boots, discarding them all into the shadows.
I must see the entirety of the skin I have claimed.
As I pull her closer during my inspection, she leans in and gives me a little nip, like a baby starcat. “I told you I’d bite,” she reminds me, her body going briefly taut as she stands exposed in the light.
She sits before me atop the secondary reactor’s cooling housing, her deep brown skin dusted with the faint scars of her life as a scavenger.
I trace the marks on her arms and collarbone with my thumb, my predatory eyes shifting into a low, intense gold.
My pulse floods through me in a chaotic surge, cutting through the ship’s mechanical distress around us and the waves of tremors.
The overwhelming mandate of my soul is to merge, to claim the absolute certainty of her survival within her warmth.
She is all lean muscle and stubborn resolve.
She reaches for the manual magnetic latches at my waist, her fingers moving with a frantic speed to strip the lower half of my suit away.
She ignores the Weave-stained skin of my side.
She focuses entirely on the body she has claimed, her own instincts seemingly mirroring the feral necessity pounding inside me.
"Draevik," she moans, her head falling back as I trail my lips down the her chest, hovering over the mark that matches mine. "Please. I need this. You need this. We need release."
I stand before her in the raw. My body unfolds a map of violence—heavily muscled and marked by the biomechanical veining that now brims with a possessive, flashing light.
My cock is a thick, pronounced weight, the dark, ash-toned length lined with the distinct, heavy ridges of my kind. It surges with the intensity of the bond, a heavy contrast to her human softness. I level myself between her thighs, the heat of her pussy radiating against my hip.
I capture her mouth in a kiss tasting of iron and desperation—a fierce, mutual clash of teeth and tongues that grounds the panicked current of my body directly into hers. She meets me with equal ferocity, her hands tangling in my hair, pulling me closer until there is no air left around us.
"Lock your legs," I growl against her lips, needing unbroken contact.
She barks a sharp, affirmative sound, her limbs wrapping around my waist with a strength that nearly matches my own.
I move my hand down, my fingers finding the slick, swollen heat of her pussy. She is soaking. I slide two fingers inside her, and she gasps, her back arching off the cold metal housing.
"You’re so tight," I moan, my thumb circling her clit with a relentless, heavy pressure. "So warm."
"It hurts," she confesses, her eyes fluttering shut. "The needing you. It’s like a fire in my bones, Draevik. Ever since you took me out of that stasis, it’s been building to this."
"The fire is out now," I assert, leaning in to bite gently at the junction of her neck and shoulder. "I am here."
I shift my grip, my fingers stretching her, mapping the wet heat to accommodate the mass of me.
She is vocal, her ragged breaths turning into sharp cries that echo off the walls.
She moves her hips involuntarily, arching against the friction as her body answers to my touch despite her mental refusal.
Her eyes snap open to lock onto mine. Her gaze burns with fierce, cornered resentment, warring with the undeniably hungry pull of the bond as our systems forcibly align.
"Please," she chokes out, her fingers digging desperately into the ridges of my shoulders as the sensation overwhelms her rationality. "Make it stop burning."
I lunge forward, burying myself inside her tight heat in one long, heavy thrust.