Chapter 7
Kellat’s mouth was on hers, hard and demanding, and Delilah forgot how to breathe.
Her back was flat against the door, and the metal should have been cold, but she couldn’t feel anything past the heat rolling off him. She surged up into the kiss, meeting him with a desperation that scared her a little.
Because the old reflex was already stirring. The one that had gotten her out of every good thing before it could go bad. Run before they figure out you’re not worth the effort.
She pulled back an inch, her lips swollen and tingling. “This is…”
Pulling her back, he kissed her again and groaned, the sound vibrating through her chest. His hand slid from the wall to the curve of her hip as he pressed closer.
Stop talking, and kiss him back.
He broke the kiss to trail his lips down her jaw, then over the sensitive skin of her throat. A small sound escaped her as her head fell back against the wall. God, he smelled so good.
Then his hands found the edge of the gown where it crossed her shoulder, and she froze for a moment. He was a doctor, from a species that had no women. How did she know he wasn’t—
He felt it. Of course he felt it. Pulling back, he scanned her face.
“You’re not a project,” he rasped.
Then he found the crossover at her shoulder and gave a gentle tug.
The gown that had taken her five minutes and a wrestling match to get into came undone in a single practiced pull, unraveling around her and sliding down to pool at her feet in a sigh of shimmering fabric. She looked down at it.
“Oh, that is just insulting.”
Then she realized she was standing in nothing but her panties and her cheeks burned.
Automatically, she crossed her arms over her bare chest, shoulders bunching…
she was soft, curvy in places a warrior’s mate probably wasn’t supposed to be, and every insecurity she’d ever owned trotted out and lined up for inspection.
But he didn’t look away. He didn’t even blink. Instead, his gaze raked down her body, slow and thorough. It wasn’t a doctor’s look. There was absolutely nothing clinical in it. It was raw hunger that heated her skin everywhere it touched.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
Her breath hitched as an ache pooled low and heavy between her thighs.
He moved in, big hands spanning her waist, and lifted her like she weighed nothing at all. Gasping, she wrapped her legs around his hips as he carried her across the room and laid her back on the biggest bed she’d ever seen. She didn’t feel small; she felt tiny against the sheets.
She reached for him, tugging at his leather jacket because she wanted his skin against hers…
Heat and the weight of him over her. He stripped fast, peeling the jacket off and shoving the rest down, and when he moved over her, she couldn’t stop her small gasp.
He was a mountain of muscle and those silvery scars, his braids sliding over his shoulders.
The mattress dipped under his weight as he braced himself above her, caging her in.
“I’ll take it slow,” he murmured, but within seconds, she realized he was a good liar.
He didn’t take it slow.
His head dropped, and his mouth closed over her breast, sucking the peak in, his tongue swirling until she arched clean off the bed with a moan she couldn’t have held back even if the whole crew had been listening in.
Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him closer. Sliding a hand down her stomach and under the lace of her panties, his blunt fingers parted her and slid straight through the slick heat of her folds.
“Fuck.” Her hips rocked against his touch. “Kellat… please.”
He watched her, his gaze locked on her face as his thumb found her clit. He circled it, his fingers pushing deeper, and her head fell back. The friction was perfect, everything low in her body tightening until her vision blurred at the edges.
Then he shifted down the bed, hooked her panties off her legs, and settled between her thighs. Her breathing stopped altogether at the first slide of his tongue against her, her hands mangling the sheets.
He learned her fast. Every flick against her clit that made her gasp, he repeated.
Every angle that made her hips jerk, he came back to, his breath hot against her wet flesh, until she gripped his shoulders with her nails biting in.
The whole world had narrowed to his mouth and the sound of her own ragged breathing.
Then it hit.
She shattered apart, his name a sob on her lips as her hips jerked up against his mouth. He pushed her right through it and straight into another shattering climax, then drew it out, not letting her down until the last tremor faded.
When he moved back up her body, his chest heaved, and his eyes were nearly black. There was no hint of the doctor left in him at all. Just a man, looking at her like she was his.
Settling between her thighs, the broad head of his cock brushing against her, and she sucked a breath in. He was huge, utterly huge… she was no innocent but, God, that was never going to fit, was it?
“Shhh, I got you,” he murmured, and pushed inside her.
Inch by inch, he stretched her around him in a slow, relentless ride of pure sensation.
She watched him watching her as he pushed, not pausing, not stopping, and her breath caught.
She’d never experienced anything so erotic.
So hot. He filled her to the point of aching, and her eyes fluttered shut.
He was bigger than any man she’d ever taken.
“Eyes on me, kelarris,” he growled, and her eyes snapped back open as his hips met hers.
He stilled, buried to the hilt, braced over her with his jaw tight. She could feel his heartbeat. Actually feel it, throbbing inside her, as the burn faded. She sighed, softly, as her body settled around him and the darkness in his eyes flared.
Pulling back, he drove into her again. And again. Slow at first, a rhythm that filled the quiet room with the sounds of skin and breath, then harder as she opened more to him.
His hands gripped her hips hard, as if anchoring her to him. Leaning down, he buried his face in the crook of her neck, his breath ragged against her skin and a low, possessive growl rolling out of him on every thrust.
“Mine,” he rasped. “You’re mine.”
The word cracked her open. She clung to him, her legs locked around his waist. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
He took her harder then, and she met every thrust with a tilt of her hips. Her third release built fast, the pressure climbing until she was right on the edge.
“Kellat… now…” she begged. “Please, now!”
He roared, low and guttural, slamming into her one last time and burying himself to the hilt. His whole body shook as he came, his cock jerking and pulsing inside her.
The first hot spill of him inside her shoved her right over the edge.
She’d been teetering, so fucking close, and the wet, scorching rush of his seed bathing her inner walls was the only push she needed. Her third orgasm detonated without warning, not a wave but an explosion.
Her back snapped into a hard arc, her nails digging into his shoulders as her body locked up tight around his.
She milked him with ruthless, rhythmic spasms, her pussy fluttering and clamping down like it never wanted to let him go, and the pleasure was so sharp it bordered on pain, ripping through her nerve endings and wiping her mind completely blank.
Oh god…
“Kellat—“ she gasped.
He was still jerking inside her, still marking her with thick, pulsing heat, and every twitch of his cock triggered another aftershock that made her whimper against his throat.
Slowly, the spasms ebbed, leaving her limp and trembling around him. She didn’t let go; she couldn’t… she just held on as the aftershocks faded into a warm, heavy bliss that turned her muscles to liquid and her thoughts to static.
For a long time neither of them moved. The room held nothing but their heartbeats and the slow, exhausted drag of their breathing.
Eventually he shifted, rolling to the side without letting go and pulled her over him to settle against his chest.
She lay there, stunned. “Oh, wow. That was…”
She’d never known it could be that good.
He rumbled deep in his chest, as his arm tightened around her waist, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
“Sleep, kelarris,” he murmured.
She didn’t know what the alien word meant. It sounded soft in his mouth, softer than anything she’d heard him say, and she tucked it away to ask about later.
Nestling against his larger, more powerful body, she closed her eyes and, for once, did as she was told.
Delilah closed her eyes and groaned as she dropped her head back.
This shower was amazing. And huge… like it had been designed for a small army.
There was even a bench built into the wall, big enough for someone normal-sized to sleep on.
She’d spent her first few minutes in here just figuring out the controls, which had involved a lot of guessing and one brief, alarming blast of freezing water that nearly sent her sprinting back out the door.
But she’d cracked it, and now the water came down in a heavy, steaming curtain that turned the whole room into white mist. Standing in the middle of it, she let the heat soak into her skin and wash away the evidence of a night that had rewritten her entire life.
She was happy. Actually, genuinely happy.
Which was terrifying, and she didn’t trust it.
She’d spent twenty-odd years being the disaster, and waking up in the bed of the most beautiful male in the galaxy felt like a glitch in the universe.
Yeah, she was dreaming; she had to be. Which meant that any second now the alarm would go off and she’d be back in a drafty apartment wondering if she could manage five more minutes under the warmth of the bedclothes.
The steam shifted, the light dimming for a second, and then Kellat was there.