Chapter 14
fourteen
EVEREST
The ruenox leaves my system a little quicker this time. Rath left me on the bed to go bathe after licking me clean like a giant fucking jungle cat. His tongue was rough, which sent tendrils of ebbing pleasure through me, and now I’m basking.
Stretching my arms above my head, I tense, then relax and drop my fingers to my chest. I can’t help but touch my nipples—the C-rings pierced straight through them. They ache a little, but not the kind of pain that human piercings cause.
I wonder if shops will start buying that zitha stuff from the monsters. It would be a pretty fucking lucrative business.
As I flick the right one, I think about the ones in Rathyn’s chest and wonder who marked him. Was it a claiming thing for him, too?
Sitting up, I wrap the sheet around my shoulders and watch the bathroom door.
There’s steam drifting from the gap, and it’s not long after that he appears, freshly washed and smelling like a fucking meadow.
His long, wet hair is tied in a messy bun on the top of his head, and the light glints off all the metal in his body.
As he strides over to me—stark fucking naked—I catch a glimpse of his slit. It’s barely there, but now I know what lies beneath it, and my mouth waters a bit.
He leans over and sniffs.
“Back off, bud,” I tell him, pressing a hand to his chest. “You got your fifteen.”
“There is always an option for you to offer more,” he murmurs. His tongue darts out as his head dips lower, and he touches the tip to my right nipple.
I gasp. Fuck, he’s starting to equate getting cum with turning me on now. More than he did at the clinic. More than he did when he first took me on as his.
But I’m wrung out.
“Why don’t we cuddle?”
His brows dip. “Cuddle.”
“You know, like…” I scoot back on the bed and make grabby hands at him. When he crawls onto all fours, I guide him into my arms and wrap around him. His tail snakes around my waist as his legs tangle with mine, his clawed feet digging into the already torn mattress.
“This is…cuddle?”
“Mm.” I rest my head against his wet locks, and his ear flicks, batting me in the chest as it settles over my pec.
“It is very strange that humans have one heart,” he says again.
“Yep. We’re not weak, though. We just have to be careful.” I pause and then ask, “So, if one of your hearts stops working, does the other take over?”
He nods.
“Cool. Yeah, if we lose ours, we’re toast.”
He scrunches his brow. “I do not know this toast. But I know you will die. You are so fragile.” His words are tinged with something like sadness. “Short-lived and delicate.”
I don’t really know what to say to that, considering I know firsthand how true it is. My parents didn’t stand a chance when the pandemic swept through our town.
I touch a piercing in his ear instead, to distract myself. “Who gave you these?”
“My commander,” he says. “For completion of my first year of training.”
“So, they’re not all about, you know, companions?”
He stiffens and sits up, looking down at me. “Do you ask if I am a companion?” There’s unexpected tension in his voice. And offense.
“Excuse you. I’m one, so obviously I’m not insulting you.”
“That is not…” He trails off with a huff. “Why would you assume?”
“Oh, I don’t know…” I flick the C-ring in his nipple, and he rolls his eyes.
Leaning over, he digs into the nightstand and comes back out with a small black pouch. Sitting up with his tail still around my waist, he tips the contents into his hand.
It’s a small, delicate chain. It’s some kind of metal, but not one I’ve ever seen before.
It almost looks like it was carved out of opal, but with the same texture as silver.
He holds it up to the light to find tiny clasps on either side, and before I can ask him what he’s doing, he clips each end to one of my nipple rings.
“Um.”
He drags his finger along the chain, then hooks that digit under my chin and lifts my gaze to meet his. “Your mark is complete.”
I swallow heavily. “This means I’m yours.”
“This is my mark,” he says. It explains so much without explaining anything at all.
I touch his chest again. “So these…”
“The mark of my rank,” he tells me.
I touch his jaw. “And your tongue?”
“A gift from my sire.”
Sire…sire… I frown, trying to place the word. I read it once in a vampire romance. It’s what the main character called the one who turned him.
But that can’t be it in this instance.
“Your father? Mother?”
“My egg bearer.” He says the words quietly, almost like he’s not supposed to speak of it, and maybe that’s the truth. Because egg bearer?
“Are you going to get in trouble for telling me all this?” I ask.
He huffs a small laugh and drags a touch across the chain again, then pulls it, making me gasp. It doesn’t hurt. No, the opposite, in fact. My cock is spent but twitches in a valiant attempt to get hard again.
“What use would that information be to you?”
He’s got a point.
“So…you get pierced for every significant moment of your life?”
He inclines his head sharply, just once. “These are my marks of valor.” He touches the top of his ear. “From my commander.” He touches each nipple. “From the one who schooled me.” He touches his navel.
His lips are parted, so I slide my fingers past his fangs and touch the metal in his tongue. “And the one who made you.”
He nods, closing his lips around my fingers, and sucks. His tongue curls around them for a moment, and I shiver as I pull free. His eyes are a little hazy, and I wonder if he could dip into my head and feel it when he pleasures me, too.
I don’t ask.
Not yet.
“And you all come from eggs?”
He tilts his head to the side. “Yes. I have recently learned your kind does not.”
“Well, we do, but it’s not the same. The egg is super fucking tiny. Like, microscopic. And the sperm that lives in the cum you like so much fertilizes the egg.”
His eyes widen with horror. “We have been consuming breeding seed?”
“I mean, yeah. Did you not realize that?” I frown at him.
He goes the Vyastil version of pale. It’s like a sickly periwinkle, and he tries to pull away, but I don’t let him. I can tell he’s panicking.
“How could you part with something so precious? I did not realize that was how humans…” He stops. “It is not…precious?”
I almost laugh? Precious? Fuck no. We have it in abundance.
“Relax,” I command. I twist away from his tail and straddle his hips, giving him all my weight.
I know damn well he can throw me off if he wants to, but his breathing starts to even out as I lie on him.
“Relax,” I say again. “Almost every person with a cock on this planet produces sperm. It’s not a loss, okay?
We’re not, like, affecting the birthrate from monster blow jobs. ”
His nostrils flare, and his ears are still twitching, but I can sense him calming down. After a short forever, he turns his gaze back to mine. His fingers trace a light touch down my arms. It’s tender. Soft.
They link with mine, and he squeezes both of my hands in a pulsing rhythm.
“We do not breed often,” he says. “All males are tested for seed bearing. Those that are fertile are sent to Aurelis to be mated.”
“How many children do you have a year?”
He looks shocked. “A year?”
“Uh…I mean, how often are children born?”
He frowns, then shrugs. “Breeding season is once every twenty of your years. There are two—maybe three children per season.”
Holy fuck. Well. That answers that.
“Sometimes, in the case of war, when our population is decimated, more will be hatched. But that hasn’t happened in…” He stops for a long moment, and I wait, but he doesn’t finish his sentence.
I get the sense I shouldn’t push it. Maybe someday, but not yet.
Dropping back against him, I rest my face in the crook of his neck, and I can feel his hearts beating against my chest. It’s soothing. More than I expected.
“Vyastil don’t do this either, do they?”
“Not after we are weaned,” he says. Before I can speak again, he wraps his tail back around me, and then his arms. “This is considered a useless distraction.”
“Well, to properly love and care for your human,” I tell him, “we do require physical affection along with food, water, and regular sex.”
“Sex…”
“Fine. Orgasms,” I clarify. “That obviously won’t be a problem.”
He huffs a sort of purring laugh and nuzzles my temple with the tip of his nose. I can feel his ears flicking in amusement. I’m starting to read them a little better, and I don’t know what that says about me.
“Do you require food now?”
“Nah. I ate a Pop-Tart earlier. Before you tried to rip Cielo’s hand off.” I sit up abruptly and stare at him. “Would you have actually torn his hand off?”
Rathyn huffs. “He touched what is mine. It would have been an appropriate punishment.”
I groan and flop back down. “I’d prefer you didn’t de-limb someone for that. I didn’t know.”
“He should have.”
“Well. I guess he does now.” I push up on his chest and meet his gaze. “Can you, like, not hurt anyone because of me, though? I don’t want to walk around terrified I’m going to get someone’s arm ripped off, or eyes gouged out, because I pushed boundaries. That’s kind of my thing.”
He stares for a beat, then lifts his fingers and claws through my hair. It’s gentle enough, but I like the way they scrape along my scalp. “I have noticed. It is…different from most humans I’ve encountered.”
“How many did you have before me?”
He blinks.
I realize I don’t actually want to know how many dicks he’s sucked. It doesn’t matter anyway. He likes mine best. “Do you have human friends?”
“I do not.” He flicks his tongue over his lips, wetting them. “There are others here who have companions as well. They are not like you.”
I don’t imagine they are. I wonder if they’re more like those zombified people at the clinic, desperate to get off. The thought makes me feel weird.
“Vyastil tend to prefer a certain…temperament in their humans. They are unused to a tongue like yours.”