Chapter 7 Claiming Surge
Claiming Surge
Cetus
We break apart like we’ve been burned. Pickles’s voice cuts through the charged atmosphere with all the grace of a meteor impact.
“What.” My voice comes out as a growl. “Is. The. Alert.”
There’s a pause that feels suspiciously calculated.
“It has been resolved,” Pickles says finally. “My timing was... unfortunate. I shall be occupied with other monitoring tasks. Extensively occupied. For an extended duration.”
Dove makes a sound that’s half-laugh, half-frustration. “You have terrible timing, Pickles.”
“I neither confirm nor deny the quality of my temporal awareness,” he responds. “However, I note that I shall now be conducting comprehensive diagnostics that will require my full attention for approximately the next three hours.”
“You’re giving us privacy,” Dove says.
“I am conducting essential system maintenance,” Pickles corrects primly. “Any secondary benefits are purely coincidental.”
She’s still standing close, still within arm’s reach, and we’re both breathing harder than the situation warrants.
“We should probably—”
“Yes.”
Neither of us moves.
The air between us is thick with interrupted momentum. With promises almost made. With the awareness that we’ve crossed some invisible line and there’s no going back.
“You should rest,” I say finally, forcing myself to step back. “It’s late.”
“Are we going to talk about what just—”
“Four days,” I interrupt, because if we talk about it now I’ll say too much. Want too much. “We have four days. We’ll... figure this out tomorrow. When I can think clearly.”
“And right now you can’t think clearly?”
“Not even remotely.” Honest. Raw. Too revealing.
Her smile is soft, and it does dangerous things to my cardiovascular system. “Good. Neither can I.”
She moves past me toward the guest quarters, and I catch the scent of vanilla and cherricus fruit mixed with something uniquely her. It takes every ounce of discipline I possess not to reach out, pull her back, finish what we started.
She pauses at her door, looks back. “Four days, Cetus. Let’s not waste them being smart.”
Then she’s gone, and I’m standing alone in my kitchen, markings blazing, temperature regulation completely failed, every nerve ending screaming at me to go after her.
I don’t.
Instead, I force myself through the motions of securing the residential pod for night cycle. Check the atmospheric monitors. Confirm Tavia’s sleeping peacefully. Verify all environmental systems are functioning optimally.
Anything to avoid thinking about Dove twenty meters away. Probably not sleeping. Probably thinking about what almost happened.
“Four days,” I mutter to the empty kitchen.
Four days to have her. Four days before she leaves. Four days to somehow keep my species’ claiming instincts under control while giving us both what we want.
It’s impossible.
But I’m going to try anyway.
I make it approximately forty minutes before admitting defeat.
Sleep is impossible. Meditation fails. Even reviewing atmospheric data can’t hold my focus because every equation makes me think about the curves of her body, the softness of her skin under my palm, the way she looked at me and said “make me yours.”
Heat spreads across my chest, down my arms. My markings pulse in the darkness of my quarters.
My body knows exactly what it wants, even if my mind is trying to be rational about this.
I need... distance. Perspective. Cold water and discipline.
Except when I reach my quarters—the small, efficient space I claimed after we moved here, after Seraphina was already gone—the walls feel too close. Too confining. My skin runs too hot, my markings too bright, my control too fractured.
The shower. Cold water. Discipline.
But the water runs hot despite my temperature settings, because apparently my body has decided that normal function is optional tonight. Steam rises in thick clouds as I strip off my clothes.
I catch my reflection in the mirror and pause.
My markings blaze in patterns I haven’t seen in years. Brighter than when Seraphina and I were courting. More intense. More claiming.
Different patterns entirely. Because what I feel for Dove isn’t what I felt for my mate. It’s more possessive. More desperate. More consuming.
I step under the spray, brace one hand against the wall, and try to breathe through the need coiling tighter with each passing second.
This is logical. Biological imperative meeting three years of celibacy. Perfectly natural to want someone. To respond to attraction.
Except this doesn’t feel natural. It feels inevitable. Like every moment since she walked into my station has been leading to this breaking point.
Her hands guiding mine. Her warmth against my chest. “Make me yours.”
My cock is already hard—has been since the kitchen, aching and insistent. I wrap my hand around it, and the relief is immediate and insufficient in equal measure.
Because this isn’t what I want.
What I want is twenty meters away, soft and curved and human and completely off-limits for at least another twelve hours.
But my hand is here, and my control is gone, and I need something.
I stroke slowly at first, trying to maintain some semblance of discipline. My cock is proportional to my height—eight inches, substantial enough to require preparation with a human partner—with the ridged texture along the underside that’s designed specifically for a partner’s pleasure.
Rows of raised nodes, quarter-inch intervals, that provide friction and stimulation and pressure in exactly the right places. Smooth when soft, but they swell and become pronounced with arousal—designed to create texture that enhances every thrust, every drag of penetration.
Seraphina used to make these breathless sounds when those ridges dragged against her most sensitive spots, each one catching and releasing as I moved inside her. Would Dove sound like that? Would she gasp or moan or say my name in that rough voice she gets when she’s affected?
The thought makes me stroke faster, my grip tightening.
My anatomy runs hotter than human baseline—I’m probably running fifteen degrees warmer right now, enough that the steam rising around me has nothing to do with the shower temperature.
Would that heat feel good to her? Would she press closer, seeking that warmth?
Or would I need to be careful, monitoring her comfort while I take her apart with pleasure?
The ridges swell more with each stroke, becoming more pronounced. More textured. They’re designed to lock into place during claiming—to ensure deep penetration and maximum stimulation for both partners. To create a seal that prevents separation during the vulnerable moments of climax.
Right now they’re flushed darker than the rest of my shaft, nearly purple with the amount of blood rushing to engorge them. Sensitive to every pass of my palm.
The fantasy builds, vivid and unstoppable:
Dove beneath me, her soft curves yielding to my harder frame.
Her thighs wrapped around my waist as I finally—finally—sink into her heat.
That first moment when she’d feel the ridges. When she’d realize exactly what Lividian anatomy can do.
Her eyes going wide with shock, then dark with want as the first ridge catches against her entrance, as I push deeper and the next one drags across nerve endings humans don’t even know they have.
“Cetus—”
My hand moves faster, gripping tighter. Water cascades over overheated skin. The markings along my shoulders and arms blaze bright enough to turn the steam gold.
Taking her slowly the first time. Slow enough to watch every microexpression as her body adjusts.
To the size—stretching her carefully, making sure she’s wet enough, ready enough.
To the texture—each ridge a separate sensation as I sink deeper.
To the heat that makes human partners gasp and arch and beg for more.
The ridges dragging against her inner walls with each careful thrust. Catching on that spot inside that makes her vision blur. Creating friction and pressure and stimulus that no human male could match.
Finding that perfect angle, that perfect rhythm that makes her forget to breathe.
Her hands clutching my shoulders—she wouldn’t mind my claws, she’d probably find them fascinating, maybe even ask me to let them extend, to scratch careful lines down her back that prove I was barely in control—
My claws score deep grooves in the shower wall. I’m beyond caring about property damage.
The second time wouldn’t be slow.
The second time I’d take her hard and fast, both of us desperate, chasing pleasure with single-minded intensity.
The ridges would be fully engorged by then, more pronounced, creating texture that borders on overwhelming.
Each thrust would drag them across her g-spot, relentless stimulation that would have her coming within minutes.
Her saying my name like a prayer, like a demand.
Those soft curves bouncing with each thrust.
The wet sounds of our bodies meeting, the slick drag of ridged flesh through swollen tissue.
Her clenching around me when she comes, her body trying to milk my cock, the ridges providing exactly the stimulation she needs—catching and releasing with each spasm of her orgasm—
I stroke faster, rougher, my temperature climbing until the shower feels cold by comparison. My free hand fists against the wall, claws fully extended, carving deeper grooves with each gasping breath.
The ridges would lock during her orgasm.
It’s what they’re designed for—to swell and catch and hold during those final moments, creating a seal that ensures deep breeding.
She’d feel it happening, feel me growing impossibly thicker inside her, the ridges flaring enough that pulling out would be difficult. Uncomfortable.
She’d be trapped on my cock, stuffed full and locked in place while I—
Marking her.
Not with claws—never with claws, too dangerous—but with my scent, my heat, my claim.
Making sure every part of her knows she’s mine.