Chapter 5
MARDOK
Mate?
I wonder if this is one of the language gaps and I’m not hearing her right.
Or maybe it’s hard to concentrate when her gorgeous, supple body is pressing up against mine and she’s completely naked, her skin scorchingly hot and slightly damp.
It makes me picture what she looks like in the light, all blue curves, skin gleaming, her thick hair wild over her shoulders, those bare horns…
I have to suppress a shudder or I’m going to take myself in hand, right here.
I need to focus on what she’s saying. “You say resonance. What does that mean?”
Her nose brushes against mine, and I think she’s going to put her lips on me again.
I’ve never experienced anything like her mouth-on-mouth kiss before.
I’ve seen it in the kind of vids that no decent woman ever watches.
And I’ve read about it, but I’ve never actually done it.
All of the women I’ve had relationships with in the past have been brought up by modern society, concerned more with hygiene and disease control than the intimacy of putting her mouth on me.
I’ve rarely even touched bare skin. But Farli?
She is unafraid and unashamed of who she is, and she revels in caresses and the touches that everyone else I know would eschew.
It makes touching her have a forbidden feel to it, even more so given the captain’s longstanding ship orders.
I know if we’re caught together, I’ll be dumped at the nearest port and given severance.
That doesn’t mean I can stop stroking her soft skin or that I can push her away when she rubs up against me like a nilu cat seeking attention.
“Resonance?” she murmurs, her voice sweet and soft. Her hand glides over my arm and down my chest, and she presses her palm against the cartilage plates there. “It begins here. The khui sings a song to let me know when I have met my mate.”
“Singing?” I press my hand between her breasts, to the same place she’s touching me.
“Here? When you purr?” Even now, I can feel the vibrations in her chest. It doesn’t sound like a song to me, more of a low-pitched, steady thrumming.
It does sound a little musical, now that I think about it. “So what do you mean by mated?”
She chuckles, and I feel her tongue flick along my jaw, tracing the lines of it. Gods above, but she’s sensual. “What do you think it means?”
“Sex,” I say bluntly, and the stub of my tail tightens its obsessive grip around hers. “Lots and lots of sex. But I’m guessing there is more than that.”
“I will tell you if we can kiss again,” she teases, and nuzzles my nose again.
Her hand moves up my shirt, fingers sneaking into my collar so she can touch my skin.
I don’t think she can figure out the fastenings, because she tugs at the front of my clothing and then gives up.
I should push her away, but everything in me wants more of her innocent touches, more exploring and caressing.
I pull my shirt open, and she responds with a happy sigh, her hands moving over my chest, exploring me.
“You want kisses?” I ask, brushing my hand over her hair.
I move my body slightly, until she’s under me and I’m over her, leaning on an elbow.
The primal male in me wants her under me.
Doesn’t matter how wrong it is. I want to claim her innocence, even if only for a moment.
I take the lead on the kiss this time, tasting her luscious mouth, and when she opens for me, I drag my tongue against hers.
She makes a soft mewling noise of pleasure, and I feel it all the way down to my cock.
Mine. She’s mine.
I can fight it all I want, but I know that she belongs to me.
My kiss grows more possessive, my mouth more aggressive as she responds under me.
She arches, pressing her breasts to my chest, and her hard little nipples scrape against my shirt.
I nearly come at that smallest of touches.
I keep my hands respectfully on her arm and in her hair, though I want nothing more than to slide my fingers over her pussy and see if it’s soaking wet for me. I bet it is.
I abandon her mouth with one final, suggestive lick, and she pants, dazed. “You are very good at that, Mardok.”
“I had a good teacher.”
“Who?”
I nip at her lower lip, drawing another shudder from her. “You.”
“Oh,” she says, shy. “Am I your first, too?”
My first? “First what?”
“First mating?”
Does she mean having sex? “I’ve had sex before. Uh, fornicated.” Damn, even the word sounds too filthy to use when it comes to her. Farli would never fornicate. She would make love. Hell, and now I sound like a lovesick poet. “Not in a long time, though. Haven’t wanted anyone to touch me.”
I feel her fingertips dance over my chest. “Is it all right if I touch you?”
I think I’d die if she stopped. I swallow hard. “Yeah.”
“You will be my first,” she tells me. “I have waited for my mate.”
Just like that, my heart stutters. “Your first…mate?” Is she a virgin?
When she nods, I groan and press my forehead to hers.
She’s more innocent than I thought, and I wonder if she’s going to regret being here with me, touching me.
Doing lascivious things with her mouth. I’m craving her like Trakan craves his carcinogels, but I’m not an asshole.
Very slowly, I detangle my tail from hers and pull her hands away from my chest. I press my mouth to one palm.
“Maybe you should go back home and wait to resonate to another nice guy, the one you want to marry.”
She’s quiet, and then she gives another light giggle. “You only resonate to one person ever, silly.”
What? “Are we talking about the same thing? I’m talking about sex.”
“I am talking about resonating. When your khui chooses someone for you.”
Farli’s throwing me mixed signals here. “If it chooses for you, I don’t understand what you mean by ‘you waited.’”
“Mating with someone is nothing,” Her tail flicks on the blankets, and I wonder if she’s growing frustrated with me.
“People take pleasure-mates all the time. It is like…scratching an itch. But you only resonate to your true mate.” Her fingers touch my chin again, as if she is trying to force me to concentrate.
“Like I said, the khui chooses. It selects the male and the female that will be best together so it can bring about the strongest kits.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Everything inside me screeches to a halt. I swallow hard. “Kits?”
“Yes. The khui chooses the perfect person to father my young. It always chooses, and it chooses well.” I can practically hear her smiling in the dark.
All the while, her chest is doing that thrumming, purring thing.
“I have waited for resonance, because I have waited for my mate. I have had offers to share my furs, but it has never interested me…until now.”
Because she wants to make babies? Somehow, I don’t think that’s it. She really believes that if she purrs to me that we’re somehow destined to be together and I’m going to make her pregnant? That’s the craziest thing. I don’t know what to make of it.
I also don’t know what to make of the jealous surge that rises in me at the thought of her getting all kinds of offers to ‘share her furs.’ I shouldn’t be this possessive of her, this fast. Maybe she’s right about the ‘resonance’ thing, but I’m not sure I’m grasping all of it. “But I’m not resonating, Farli.”
“Not yet.” She pats my chest as if to soothe me. “You do not have a khui yet.”
Her parasite? “I don’t think I want one.”
“But…you have to.” A note of panic enters her voice. “You cannot live if you do not have a khui. Those without one will sicken and die. You cannot stay here with me without one.”
I remain silent. Stay…here?
On this iceball of a planet? The familiar terror lodges in my chest.
Left behind.
It won’t happen. Ever. I pat Farli’s shoulder awkwardly in the dark, not wanting to tell her my thoughts. I don’t want to hurt her feelings. “You should get some sleep.”
She doesn’t fall for it. Her arms go around my neck and she presses quick, frantic kisses to my face, as if terrified. “Mardok,” she breathes. “Tell me you will stay here with me. Please. I just found you. I cannot bear to have you leave me.”
I stroke her back, and lust rises inside me again.
She’s naked and pressing herself against me, I tell myself.
Any man would feel hunger in this situation.
But it feels different with Farli. In the past, when I was freshly discharged from the military, I’d get approached by women in spaceport bars looking for a quick, rough hookup.
Some of them were far more forward than Farli is, and yet I felt… nothing for them.
I’m afraid I’m feeling too much for Farli.
At the same time, I can’t imagine living in this frigid, desolate place. Being stranded here, forever. I close my eyes, pushing past the memories that threaten to rise. “I haven’t seen much of your planet,” I hedge. “You could come with me.”
“No, I cannot. You cannot remove a khui once it has become part of you. The humans say that there is no leaving once you are here.”
That sounds like even more of a death sentence. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
I expect her to protest again, but she only presses another kiss to my mouth. “Yes, in the morning I will show you my world. You will love it.”
Somehow I doubt that. But I hold her close and stroke her as she settles in to sleep.
I tell myself that a planet with someone like Farli on it can’t be that bad…
but then I keep thinking of the bitter blast of the wind striking my face the moment I opened the door.
The desolate, white landscape that seemed to be nothing but shrubs and rocks and snow.