28. Darcy
28
DARCY
W hile I was washing the pink dye from my hair in the shower, Fallon must have cleared away the dishes and remnants of dinner. Because when I came out into the kitchen, the table was clean. There was no sign of Fallon, so I headed for the bedroom, stopping in the doorway when I saw him.
He was fast asleep, but in such a position that it looked like he’d been trying to stay up and wait for me. He was sitting more than lying on the bed, propped up against the wooden headboard, the quilt only pulled up to his hips. His big arms were crossed over his gently rising and falling chest. His head was tipped back, his expression serene, his hands stained slightly pink. He looked so cute, so perfect, that I wanted to hop right into his lap and wake him with a kiss. But I knew he needed rest, and I wanted to give my hair a chance to dry after washing it, so I sat myself down on a chair in front of the low fire in the kitchen.
I fingered the ends of my hair as they went from soaked to damp to mostly dry. The colour was darker than before, more of a bright fuchsia than the pale pink it had once been. I checked my appearance in my comms tablet’s camera, and decided I like the new shade. Really liked it, actually. I was struck with the urge to wake Fallon again, this time to show him how pretty my hair had turned out, and to thank him for it.
I toyed with the idea, but footsteps and snuffling from outside the kitchen window distracted me. A quick look outside told me that Sora was wandering around out there, patrolling in her boredom now that the bracku and Fallon were resting for the night.
With Fallon’s story about her strangling me, I wrapped my robe tighter around myself and headed out the door.
She barked and bounded towards me the moment she saw me. I laughed and embraced her as she did her utmost to tackle me on the porch.
“Shh! Your daddy is sleeping,” I told her with muffled giggles as she made a solid effort towards licking my face off. Eventually, she chilled out – slightly – and was content to pace back and forth on the porch, her shaggy tail going absolutely bananas.
“Fallon told me about what happened to you two,” I said to her, scratching her ears when she sat in front of me. “I’m so glad he had you. That you had each other.”
I couldn’t help but picture it. A young, scrawny Fallon, maybe about the size of that Killian kid, and a little baby Sora. Both of them taking care of each other. I wiped my eyes and smiled.
“I love you, good girl,” I told her, getting down on my knees and hugging her neck. I buried my face in her fur so that I couldn’t hear myself say the next part. “And I think I love your daddy, too.”
A little while later, after I’d given in to Sora’s big, pleading eyes and had bestowed the magical gift of a spare bit of meat upon her, I went back into the house. It was very late now, the stars and three moons bright and silvery in the black sky behind me as I shut the door. I stole quietly down the hall and into the bedroom. Fallon was still mostly sitting with his arms crossed, but he’d slid down a little bit. His chin was now tucked down against his chest. It did not look comfortable. At all.
Strangely, it wasn’t my mother’s voice reminding me that a husband’s comfort was of the utmost importance. It was my own self deciding that Fallon sleeping in such an awkward position was unacceptable. I wanted him to sleep well. I didn’t want him to feel stiff and sore when he woke up.
“Lie down, Fallon,” I murmured, gently pressing my hands against his shoulders. But apparently he was stubborn in his sleep. He grumbled without opening his eyes and didn’t move. After several unsuccessful attempts at either guiding him down to the pillows or waking him up, I gave up, shaking my head at him with my hands on my hips. My own exhaustion was creeping up on me, so I decided to just leave him be. If he was sore in the morning, I could give him a neck rub or something.
I shed my robe and hurried naked into the bed on the other side, pulling the quilt up to my chin. As if my entrance into the bed had flipped some switch in Fallon’s sleeping brain, he suddenly flopped down gracelessly onto his side facing me, his head on the pillows, his eyes still shut. Instantly, his tail was around my left thigh, and a heavy arm closed over me, drawing my back against the hard curve of his front.
He was naked, just like I was. My eyes flew open, my heart pounding, exhaustion forgotten as my skin met his.
“Fallon,” I whispered, heat pooling low in my belly. “Are you awake?”
The only reply I got was a growly sort of sleep snort. I smiled into the darkness of the room, wiggled against the warm comfort of Fallon’s body, and closed my eyes.
The next time I woke, the light had changed.
So had the state of Fallon’s body. Cracking my eyes open against the early flare of dawn, I became aware of the swelling twitch of Fallon’s cock against my ass. When the silky tip of his cock tail went snaking across my bare skin, I didn’t flinch or fall out of the bed this time. Instead, I turned myself in Fallon’s hold to face him.
His eyes were open, glowing a soft white in the dim light.
“Do you like your hair?” he asked, his voice raspy as he ran his fingers through the strands, examining the effect of the dye he’d made.
“I love it. Thank you,” I whispered. It felt so good to be with him here, in this cocoon of warm safety, before the sun had even fully risen. Moving purely on instinct, wanting more of that feeling, more of him, I nuzzled closer, drawing my leg up over his hip until the tip of his rapidly hardening cock was flush with my pussy. Fallon groaned, his eyes falling shut as he rubbed himself against me.
My arousal was so strong, so sudden, that it only took a little bit of that rubbing, combined with the rhythmic flicker of his cock tail over my clit, to get me wet. I reached between us, gripping his heated shaft, loving the way all of his abdominal muscles tightened in response to my touch.
I shifted closer, still holding him, guiding him until his tip was nudging inside me.
Fallon began to move. It wasn’t quite as quick and frantic as yesterday had been, up against the wall. This was slower, sleep-tinged and sensual, Fallon stroking in and out of me with a raw sort of tenderness.
That tenderness found its reply inside me. I kissed his mouth, my chest tight. Everything he’d told me last night came back in a rush. I kissed the man who’d once been the boy in the sad story he’d told. The boy who hadn’t been wanted by his parents, by his empire, by his whole fucking planet. Who’d only had a scruffy, stray dog and some strange, stern warden to lead him into adulthood.
And look what an amazing fucking man he’d turned into. A man that I wanted, even if no one else did.
And suddenly, I had to show him that. I needed to show him how I felt about him more than I needed air.
I pushed against Fallon’s shoulders. Instantly, he froze, as if he thought I was telling him to stop.
“Lie back,” I breathed against his mouth. Slowly, he did so, and I made sure to move with him, keeping his cock inside me as I went. I wasn’t willing to lose our connection even for a moment. I planted my palms against his tense chest and settled my knees against the mattress, straddling him.
Once I felt a bit more used to the position and Fallon’s size inside me, I straightened up and sank a little further onto him. Easing into the motion, I rocked gently at first, then faster and harder, building and building until I was fully riding him. Fallon’s eyes were wide and white, his face slack with astonished reverence as I bounced.
I could feel the way his gaze gobbled me up, the way it went from my hair to my face to my bouncing tits, and then finally coming to an intense, staring stop at the place our bodies met.
He groaned deeply as he watched me sink and slide along his shaft, his fingers skimming up my outer thighs to grip my hips. I caught his wrists and pulled his hands upwards, settling his warm palms on my breasts. His white eyes just about popped out of his head as he watched his fingers envelop my flesh. He massaged me needily, his callouses bringing my nipples to agonized points.
“You’re perfect,” he stammered, his breath hitching and his hips starting to rise off the mattress in time with my rhythm. “My perfect wife.”
I was far from perfect, but in that moment, I almost let myself believe him. He certainly seemed to believe it. And I couldn’t help but love how into this, how into me he was. He touched me, looked at me, like everything I gave him was a gift.
It made me want to give him more.
I increased my rhythm, panting hard, heat swirling in my core. I wanted to make him come so hard he couldn’t think, couldn’t even breathe. But I was the one in danger of actually exploding. The helpless writhe of Fallon’s hips beneath mine, the exquisite pleasure of his cock, the flutter and squeeze of his cock tail around my clit, his hands on my breasts, his eyes on me, always on me…
It was intoxicating.
In the end, though I tried my best not to, I came apart first. With a cry, I spasmed and stilled. Then I sagged forwards, my hands going back to Fallon’s chest. I couldn’t do anything more than just rock on him as ecstasy gripped me. He gave a shattered, strangled sound, grinding upwards and into my clenching tightness until, with a rasped shout, he began to spill into me.
“Merciful Empire, Darcy, blast ,” he groaned, throbbing and spewing so hard I could feel it. He wrenched his hands from my body, raising them above his head and plastering them to the edge of the headboard.
I gave a weak moan when I saw his claws dig into the wood. In places, the planks began to crack beneath the pressure of his grip. Every thick tendon in his neck, every muscle in his chest, shoulders, and arms jumped into taut and swollen contrast. His back arched, his hips jerked over and over as he spilled everything he had.
Our movements grew weaker, slower, until I was basically just sitting on him, panting while he stared up at me in wonder.
“Put your hands back on me,” I told him, missing the feeling of them.
Fallon obeyed without hesitation. His hands shot to my waist, caressing the curve there so sweetly that my eyes fluttered shut in response.
“Sorry,” he said unsteadily, “I was worried I would squeeze you too hard.”
“You were?”
I mean, his hands were very strong. The fact he even had the presence of mind during the height of his orgasm to be careful with me, to not want to hurt me, made me want to hug him and cry all at the same time.
I leaned further forward. The light was brightening, but my dark pink hair made a curtain around our faces as I brought my mouth closer to his for a kiss. He stopped me, though, his hands rising to cup my jaw, his eyes glowing.
“Let me look at you for a moment,” he uttered softly. “I just want to look at my wife.” His thumbs brushed tenderly back and forth against my cheeks. “I love these little brown marks.”
“My freckles?” I asked, surprised. My mom had always insisted that I wear makeup to cover them or get them permanently lasered off before I got married. And here Fallon was. Just loving them. Like the rest of me.
“Freckles! Is that what they are?” He grinned. “I asked Cherry to describe you once, before you arrived. She told me how beautiful you were. And she told me you had freckles, but I didn’t know what that meant until now. Freckles aren’t mentioned in my book.”
I loved my husband so much in that moment that it physically hurt. So much that I felt like my lungs might explode if I didn’t tell him. And tell him right fucking now.
“Fallon, I-”
My comms tablet began to vibrate, startling both of us. I licked my lips, my gaze darting to the table where it lay.
I would have ignored it. Chucked it out the fucking window if I had to. What colossally bad timing.
Only, it could have been Magnolia trying to contact me. A sudden spike of worry for my friend had me reaching.
Fallon was faster. He kept me firmly in place on his lap with his hands on my hips, using his tail to snap out and grab my tablet, passing it up to me.
But when I answered the call, it wasn’t Magnolia’s voice I heard, but the deep grumble of the warden’s.
“Darcy? There’s a human-piloted ship demanding permission to land.”
“Oh… OK? Do you need me to do something about it?” I asked, unable to fathom why the hell he’d called me about it.
Until his next words.
“The owner is onboard. Annette Dubois. She claims that she’s your mother.”