Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
QUIN
“If you kiss me like that again,” Vennox uttered, his voice quiet and even, each word laid down with the careful weight held just barely in check, “I will forget every promise we made to deny the bond, and I will have you beneath me before either of us remembers why we should stop.”
His words landed in the pit of my stomach like a lit match dropped in gasoline.
Heat flooded my core so fast it stole the air from my lungs.
My thighs clenched involuntarily, and I felt the slick, unmistakable evidence of my body’s betrayal pooling between my legs, soaking through the thin fabric of my pants with embarrassing speed.
My skin prickled with a flush that climbed from my chest to my cheeks, and the echo of his restraint, that raw and barely leashed hunger vibrating through the bond, made my knees go weak.
I remembered what it felt like to have him inside me.
The thick, devastating stretch of him filling me to the hilt, the ridges of his shaft dragging against my walls, the triangular flaps teasing my clit with each thrust, and the way my body had clenched around him like it was trying to keep him there forever.
My channel ached with the memory, empty and throbbing, and every instinct I possessed screamed at me to close the distance between us and take what I wanted.
But I knew better now.
Another round of sex would only tighten the thread between us, weaving another strand into a bond I was already struggling to resist. The shawra pulsed beneath my shirt like a second heartbeat, and I could feel his desire bleeding through the connection.
Not as words or images, but as pure, unfiltered sensation.
Heat. Pressure. The desperate, aching need of a male who had been denied physical intimacy his entire life and had finally found the one person who made him burn.
I couldn’t give him that. Not again. Not if I wanted to maintain any hope of walking away.
But I also couldn’t walk away from him right now. Not when his hands were warm on my waist, and his forehead was pressed against mine, and the taste of his kiss still lingered on my lips like a promise I wasn’t ready to break.
“There are other ways,” I rasped. “To ease the ache. Without... without going all the way.”
His brow furrowed, the silver of his irises flickering with confusion. “I do not understand.”
I swallowed hard, my pulse hammering in my throat. “Sex isn’t the only way to pleasure each other. There are things we can do that feel incredible without... without penetration. Without sealing the bond any further.”
His hands tightened at my waist, scales flushing a deeper shade of blue. “Show me,” he said, and the raw hunger in those two words nearly undid me.
I dropped to my knees.
The deck plating was cold against my shins, but I barely registered it.
My fingers found the hem of his kilt, and I pushed the fabric up his thighs with deliberate slowness, watching his face as his breath caught and his jaw clenched.
I felt a wicked, knowing grin spread across my lips, heady with power.
I was about to blow his mind. Literally.
The thought sent a thrill racing down my spine. Everything I did with Vennox would be his first. His first kiss. His first touch. His first time inside a woman. And now, his first blow job. The knowledge was intoxicating, a rush of heat and possessiveness that made my core clench with want.
I pushed aside the thought that tried to surface. Some other woman taking my place once I returned to Earth. Some faceless stranger who would get to experience all of this with him after I was gone. I shoved it down deep and locked it away. Right now, he was mine, and this was ours.
And there, freed from the confines of his kilt, was the evidence of exactly how much he wanted this.
His erection jutted upward, thick and rigid and flushed a deep, vivid blue that darkened to navy at the swollen, weeping tip.
Pre-cum beaded at the slit, catching the dim light, and the sight of it made my mouth water.
“You’re beautiful,” I breathed, and the words were out before I could stop them.
I wrapped one hand around the base of his shaft, feeling the thick vein pulse beneath my palm, and leaned forward.
The first touch of my tongue against the slick head drew a sound from him that I felt in my bones, a low guttural groan that vibrated through the bond and into my core.
I licked a slow, flat stripe from root to tip, savoring the taste of him, salt and musk and uniquely Vennox, and his hips jerked involuntarily.
“Quin—” My name came out broken, wrecked, and I felt the echo of his pleasure hit me like a tidal wave.
It was raw. Every sensation I gave him came roaring back through the connection, doubled and amplified, until I could barely tell where his pleasure ended, and mine began.
The wet heat of my mouth around him. The drag of my tongue along his ridges.
The tight grip of my hand at his base. I felt all of it as if it were happening to me, and the feedback loop of shared sensation built a pressure in my core that made my thighs tremble.
I took him deeper, relaxing my throat as the thick head pressed past my lips, and the groan that tore from his chest shook the bunk beneath him.
His hands found my hair, fingers threading through the dark waves with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with the desperate tension in his body.
He didn’t push. Didn’t force. Just held on, his grip trembling, as if he needed to anchor himself while I destroyed every shred of composure he possessed.
I hollowed my cheeks and sucked, dragging my lips along his length as I pulled back, and the sound he made was almost pained.
His scales had gone incandescent, the blue-white markings blazing across his chest and arms, and the thrumming pouring from his ancillary heart vibrated through the deck plating and into my knees.
I could feel his pleasure building, a tightening coil of tension at the base of his spine, the heat gathering low in his belly, the way his shaft thickened and pulsed in my mouth as he approached the edge.
And I was right there with him.
The shared sensation had wound me so tight that every pull of my lips sent a bolt of pleasure straight to my core.
I was soaked, and the ache between my thighs had become a throbbing, desperate need that matched his own.
I could feel how close he was, that precipice looming just ahead.
The tension in his body had reached a fever pitch, and I was right there beside him, balanced on the same razor’s edge.
His fingers tightened in my hair. “Quin—I am—”
I knew. I could feel it. A white-hot thread of sensation that connected his release to my own, and I sucked harder, my hand working in tandem with my mouth, determined to push him over—
He pulled me to my feet.
One moment I was on my knees, and the next his hands were under my arms, hauling me upright with a strength that left me gasping. His mouth crashed down on mine before I’d found my balance, his kiss savage and desperate, his tongue sweeping past my lips with a hunger that made my head spin.
His hand shoved down the front of my pants with zero finesse, and when two thick digits plunged into my aching channel, the sound I made was swallowed by his mouth. He thrust into me with the same short, desperate driving rhythm his hips were rolling, and I felt the bond snap taut between us.
“Come with me,” he growled against my lips, and it wasn’t a request.
His fingers curled inside me, finding that spot that made stars burst behind my eyes, and his hips rolled in a final, devastating thrust that I felt through every nerve ending I possessed.
His release hit him like a freight train.
A blinding, white-hot explosion of pleasure that tore through him and into me.
My own orgasm followed a heartbeat later, triggered by the cascade of his ecstasy flooding our shared connection.
The world went white. Then blue. Then a pale, incandescent gold that erupted behind my eyelids like fireworks detonating inside my skull.
My body convulsed around his fingers, inner walls clamping down in rhythmic pulses that milked every last wave of pleasure from both of us.
The bond sang between us, vibrating at a frequency that made my teeth ache, and my bones hum, and I clung to him as the aftershocks rolled through me in endless, devastating waves.
When the last tremor finally faded, I was boneless, my forehead resting against his chest, my breath coming in ragged, shattered gasps.
His hand was still inside me, his fingers gently stroking through the aftermath, and the tenderness of the gesture cracked open a place inside my chest I hadn't known was still closed.
“That was...” I couldn’t finish the sentence. My vocabulary had been reduced to ash.
Vennox didn’t answer with words. He withdrew his fingers slowly, and before I could process the loss, my back was pressed against the thin cushion of the bunk, and he was between my thighs before I’d caught my breath, his hands pushing my pants down my legs with an urgency that made my heart stutter.
“What are you—”
His mouth found me, and the rest of my sentence dissolved into a sound that didn’t belong to any language I knew.
His tongue swept through my folds with the same devastating precision as before, broad and flat and knowing, and the vibration of his thrumming transferred through his lips and into my flesh with a frequency that made my toes curl.
He licked into me like a male starving, his fangs grazing my inner thighs with careful, deliberate restraint, and the combination of hard and soft, textured and smooth, had me arching off the bunk within seconds.
“Vennox—” His name came out as a sob.
He didn’t slow down. His tongue found my clit and circled it with tight, focused strokes that built the pressure in my core with terrifying speed. I could feel the echo of his reverence—the way he worshiped my body like it was sacred, worth memorizing.
“You are the sweetest nectar I have ever tasted,” he murmured against me, and the vibration of his words sent a shockwave through my already over-sensitized flesh. “I could spend every suns-rise between your thighs and never grow weary of your taste.”
His words undid me. Not the poetry of them, but the absolute, bone-deep sincerity behind every syllable, and they cracked open the walls I'd been holding together with sheer force of will.
His mouth sealed around my clit and sucked, and the world shattered.
A supernova of sensation erupted from my core and tore through every nerve ending I possessed. My back bowed off the bunk, a scream tearing from my throat that I was dimly aware of but couldn’t control. The bond blazed between us, and through it poured his satisfaction—quiet, devastating, complete.
My orgasm didn’t crest and fade. It built.
Wave after wave crashing over me, each one higher than the last, until I was sobbing his name and clutching at his hair.
The world dissolved into light and sensation.
I let go of the fear, the anger, the grief, the impossible weight of a choice I wasn’t ready to make.
This moment stretched, perfect and endless. There was nothing but the shattering pleasure of his claim, the look in his silver eyes that said I was the answer to a lifetime of questions.
When the last wave finally receded, I had nothing left.
My arms dropped. My legs stopped shaking only because they stopped doing anything at all.
Vennox raised his head slowly, and I felt his gaze on me before I could find the will to meet it, that silver stare carrying an openness so complete I had to look away first.
He moved up beside me without a word, the bunk groaning under the shift of his weight, and I didn’t resist when his arm came around me, and I turned into his side.
His thrumming had gentled to that low, soothing frequency that made my eyelids grow heavy, and his hand traced slow, idle patterns along my spine, fingers moving with a tenderness that made my throat tight.
My body was liquid, every muscle loose and spent, and the warmth of him against me was too perfect. I pressed closer, breathing him in, the spice and musk and the clean scent that lingered beneath both, and let my eyes fall closed.