Fiona Epilogue #2
"Ceylon cinnamon, not cassia," he murmurs, his voice going rougher.
"Madagascar vanilla extract, European-style butter with a higher fat content than standard American varieties, and granulated sugar with traces of.
.. turbinado? The residual molasses compounds create a more complex sweetness profile. "
"Show off," I breathe, but I'm impressed despite myself. "What else can you taste?"
"You," he growls, and suddenly the air between us crackles with familiar tension. "Your skin carries traces of the cinnamon. The oils have transferred from your hands to your face, your throat..." His pale eyes darken to storm-cloud gray. "I can taste your arousal beginning to spike."
Heat pools low in my belly at his words, at the predatory focus that's replaced his earlier curiosity.
This is what happens when you bond with an apex predator from a species that evolved to hunt in pack formations—every physiological response becomes data, every scent shift tracked and cataloged with devastating precision.
"Show me," he says, but it's not really a request.
I pick up another cookie, still warm, and take a deliberate bite.
Cinnamon and butter coat my tongue, the sweetness almost overwhelming after tasting nothing but ship rations for the past week.
When I lean up to kiss him, I watch his control snap like a severed cable.
He tastes the sweetness on my lips, his alien tongue chasing every trace of sugared cinnamon, and the rumbling sound he makes vibrates through both our chests.
His tongue is longer than human, with a slightly rougher texture designed for extracting maximum flavor compounds.
When he deepens the kiss, exploring my mouth with methodical thoroughness, I can feel him cataloging every taste—the butter, the cinnamon, the vanilla, and underneath it all, me.
The claiming bond flares between us, carrying echoes of his sensory experience, and for a moment I can taste what he tastes: sweetness layered with complexity, comfort food transformed into something almost narcotic by alien biochemistry.
"More," he demands against my mouth, his hands finding my waist.
I break off a piece of cookie and trace it along his lower lip, watching the way his breathing hitches.
The cinnamon sugar leaves a glistening trail that makes his fangs gleam when he parts his lips.
When he opens his mouth to taste it, I slip my cinnamon-sugar coated finger inside instead, feeling his tongue curl around it with devastating precision.
The wet heat of his mouth, the careful scrape of fangs against my skin, the way his tongue works to extract every grain of sugar—it sends fire racing through my nervous system.
Through the bond, I can feel his reaction: the sweetness hitting his enhanced taste buds like a drug, the way my finger feels against his tongue, the barely controlled hunger that makes his hands tighten on my waist.
"Fiona," he growls around my finger, his voice vibrating against my skin. When I slowly withdraw it, his fangs catch gently, not enough to break skin but enough to make me gasp. "You're playing with fire."
"I know exactly what I'm doing." I crumble a bit of cookie and dust it across his throat, watching the granules cling to his alien skin. "Besides, it's Christmas. Time for new traditions."
I lean forward to lick the sugar from his throat, and the taste of him combined with cinnamon sweetness makes my head spin.
His skin carries that unique alien flavor—salt and ozone and something indefinably otherworldly that makes my hindbrain purr with satisfaction.
The claiming bond pulses between us, carrying echoes of sensation back and forth until I can't tell where his pleasure ends and mine begins.
He makes a sound like a dying star and lifts me onto the counter in one fluid motion, his alien strength making it effortless.
The claiming patterns along his arms blaze brighter as his hands find the hem of my shirt, and I can feel his desperation through the bond—twelve hours of routine courier work dissolving under the assault of sugar and skin and the promise of something much more interesting than hyperspace calculations.
"These clothes," he mutters against my throat, alien dexterity making quick work of my shirt buttons, "are an obstacle to proper Christmas celebration."
"Then remove them," I challenge, working at his uniform in return.
His courier uniform is designed for function over form—thermal regulation layers, communications equipment, emergency supplies all integrated into a suit that can handle everything from vacuum exposure to atmospheric entry.
But I've had twelve months to learn its secrets, and my fingers find the hidden clasps and seals with practiced efficiency.
We strip each other with the controlled urgency of two people who have done this dance before but never lose the thrill of it.
His uniform hits the floor in pieces—thermal underlayer, equipment harness, the sturdy boots designed for a dozen different planetary surfaces.
When his shirt joins the pile, I take a moment to admire the play of Christmas lights across his alien skin, the way the red and green illumination makes his circulatory patterns look like living art.
The lights were my addition to the ship's galley—battery-powered LED strings that I picked up during our last Earth stopover.
Ja'war initially questioned their functionality ("They provide insufficient illumination for food preparation"), but I caught him studying them with quiet fascination when he thought I wasn't looking.
Now they cast shifting patterns across his pale blue skin, turning him into something that belongs in a fantasy rather than a spaceship galley.
I pick up another warm cookie and deliberately take a bite, letting crumbs fall onto his bare chest. They catch in the dark lines of his circulatory patterns, tiny golden specks against blue skin that pulse with his heartbeat. "Oops," I say innocently. "Better clean that up."
What follows is a systematic exploration that reduces my normally articulate alien to incoherent sounds and three different languages I don't recognize.
I trace every crumb with my tongue, starting at his collarbone and working my way down the center of his chest, following the dark veining that pulses brighter with his arousal.
His skin tastes like salt and ozone and that unique alien flavor that I've become addicted to over twelve months of exploration.
The cinnamon sugar adds sweetness to the mix, creating flavor combinations that no human has ever experienced.
I catalog each response—the way his breath catches when I find a particularly sensitive spot, how his hands fist in my hair when I use teeth as well as tongue, the alien words that spill from his lips when I do something that overloads his enhanced nervous system.
"The cinnamon," he gasps, his voice already wrecked, "combined with your mouth—I can taste colors, Fiona. Actual colors."
"Enhanced alien senses," I murmur against his hipbone, then deliberately dust more cinnamon-sugar across his skin. "Let me show you what Christmas really tastes like."
I create a trail of sweetness that leads down his stomach, watching the way his alien anatomy responds.
His circulatory patterns blaze brighter with each touch, the bioluminescent compounds in his bloodstream reacting to arousal and stimulation.
His temperature spikes several degrees—I can feel the heat radiating from his skin like a fever.
That sub-harmonic rumble becomes a continuous vibration that I feel in my bones, a sound that bypasses conscious thought and speaks directly to some primitive part of my brain that recognizes it as approval, pleasure, need.
When I finally reach the place where the cinnamon trail disappears beneath the last of his clothing, he's shaking with barely contained hunger.
Through the bond, I can feel his desperation, the way every nerve ending is firing at once, how the combination of sweetness and sensation has pushed his alien physiology to the edge of control.
"Please," he breathes, the word torn from somewhere deep in his chest.
I strip away the last barriers between us with careful precision, revealing the alien anatomy I've learned to worship over twelve months of bonding.
He's different from human men in ways that still make my breath catch—longer, with ridges and textures designed for a completely different evolutionary path.
The claiming patterns extend here too, pulsing with bioluminescent intensity that matches his heartbeat.
When I take him into my mouth, the combination of cinnamon sweetness and his unique alien flavor creates something that makes my own senses spin.
He tastes like winter air and starlight and home, with an underlying sharpness that's purely alien.
The sounds he makes—half alien language, half desperate prayer—echo through the galley like music.
His alien anatomy fits perfectly against my tongue, the subtle ridges and differences I've learned to navigate responding to every movement.
The cinnamon coating my mouth transfers to his skin, creating a sweet burn that I can feel through the bond as both temperature and flavor.
His hands shake where they're buried in my hair, careful not to grip too hard despite his desperation.
"Fiona," he manages, his breathing reduced to harsh pants that echo off the galley walls. "I can't—the sensations are—" His words dissolve into that alien language again, a stream of what sound like prayers mixed with curses mixed with my name repeated like a mantra.