Chapter 19
NINETEEN
DOM
I stand in the center of El-len’s machine shed. Gasoline smell fills my lungs as I breathe deeply and evenly. Law-rah comes in and closes the door against the midday sun.
“Greetings, Law-rah—”
“Strip.” She yawns. “I've got another three documents to review before lunch.”
My stomach curls. The last Earth month has slid slowly into this, an empty dance that gets more hollow with each failed attempt at understanding the mind-sync.
Law-rah works long hours, returning home after sunset, worn down by the day.
In my opinion, she's often too drained to take part in any activities, but it isn’t my place to question a female’s choice.
She pulls out her red lipstick but doesn't slick it on.
Turning the case over and over in her fingers, she considers me.
“You still haven't undressed. What's wrong?
Everyone's gone for the day; Ellen's at the supermarket, and the other aliens are off fixing fences. Does Ilia suspect my cover story of ‘needing protection?’”
I shake my head.
“Then what's the matter?”
Everything. “We're no closer to discovering the key to the mind-sync, despite all our attempts.” Worse, each progressive failure plants a seed of frustration that grows, tightening into a hard knot within her chest. The more it builds, the more it blocks her, until she shuts herself up behind her shield again.
I let out a low breath. “Our initial theory was that the key to the mind-sync lay in the peak of physical pleasure.”
“Right. So let's get to it.” She snaps her dark lipstick open.
Holding my hand up forestalls her, and she halts. I say, “But even though we accomplish the physical act, it seems to… to draw you further away.”
She frowns. “Isn't that what we want, though?”
Not me.
I don't want her to be so alone.
During the day, we pursue our separate duties, crossing paths with a polite distance.
When she’s not shielding, I hear her thoughts, loud and unfiltered, and I cherish them all.
Law-rah meets me in the machine shed every night, guiding me, replaying the moment we first stumbled into the mind-sync, as if dissecting it could unlock it again.
But despite how the sessions leave me hollow, there’s a tinge of shame in how much I want this, how often I seek her out, how she lingers in my thoughts even when I should be focusing on Nevare and my duties.
During these appointments, I'm not fully present for my Apex, leaving Arik to bear the weight alone.
And even when I'm not with Law-rah, my mind is divided, restless, always drifting back to her.
Her.
But I want her as she was, vital, happy.
The spark in her eyes has dulled, only flaring to life when we’re alone together, when we steal a moment from the grind of our days.
Her aura reflects her exhaustion, flecked with spikes of steely blues and muted grays, shadows of the brightness I know lies within her.
All I can do is hope breaking the bond will solve all that.
Resolved, I nod and begin taking off my belt. She approaches and, despite my mounting concerns, my body responds as if conditioned to her nearness, scales yielding to her, yearning for her touch.
I get to my knees on the rough stone floor, gritty beneath me, and face her.
“Close your eyes,” Law-rah says, and they slide shut at her command.
I want this. I want to get back to where we were.
Because I need this, too. This… whatever we do together relieves my pressure, helps me find my way to equilibrium.
If only there was a means I could help both her and Nevare.
I'd endure a thousand lashes if they'd help me stabilize them both.
Law-rah drags something over my shoulder and my eyes shoot open. It has handfuls of little cloth strands with small beads of metal on the ends, sparkling in the beams of light creeping through the cracks in the shed.
“I think it’s technically a flogger, but it’s a play one,” Law-rah explains. “I’ve been practicing in between meetings.”
On another playmate? My jaw tightens to think of her doing this with someone else.
She chuckles. “Jealous, much? I mean on a pillow.”
The tails trail over the cap of my shoulder. I swallow hard, my cock already swelling to bursting from her nearness, my crinis desperate to break free.
She bends down to whisper in my ear. “I’m going to drag either this or my hands over your scales until you come undone.
Then you’re going to open my pants and eat me out until I come.
If I like your technique, I’ll do it again some more as a reward.
If I don’t, I’ll do it again anyway as punishment.
This is what humans call a win-win situation. ”
I can hardly speak, my words breathless. “Yes, Law-rah.”
Her thoughts soften at her name, and at last gold shimmers across the bond. There, there it is, the intimacy we've been missing.
Keeping my eyes closed because of her order becomes hard. I want to see her face, see the expression there, know what it is that makes her light up like that.
“And, I’m also going to do this.” She stoops and picks up something from the floor, circling it so it digs around my upper arms and chest. My own belt cinches tighter.
“Is that acceptable?” she asks, voice softer. Her true self, something real in the play between us.
I open myself to her, baring all my secrets, opening up everything bar the chamber in my mental Euthanization Center.
“Yes,” I say and affirm mentally. The added embrace of my belt is restricting, but not too much.
I could flex and snap the plasfabric easily, but I don’t want to, and she knows I won’t want to.
‘Correct,’ Law-rah says in my mind, her smile wry. And I can tell she likes it, the shimmer rising. She's really here with me, at last, finally!
She removes the gentle flogger, its whispers like soft feathers rather than the sharp drag of a real lash. A thin trickle of hot sweat trails down my scales. Silence surrounds me, the machine shed quiet, except for her breathing.
Her soft otherworldly touch glides over my scales. The contrast against the fabric of the flogger makes me jump, then lean into her hand. My scales ripple, heightening in sensitivity to feel her fingertips as they brush over my back.
She trails the flogger again, slower this time, letting it tease across the muscles of my chest. Each strand whispers along the edge of sensation, delicate as morning mist. I brace for impact that never comes, just this maddening softness.
Her hand.
Warm, bare, and sure, it glides over the same path. The difference is exquisite. Flesh against scale. She alternates between the two: fabric, then skin. With every switch, my breath catches in my throat, focusing in on her and only her, the world falling away.
This is what I need. She’s showing me what she can do—what I can feel—when I stop resisting.
“Breathe,” she murmurs, not commanding, coaxing. Her hand follows the words, stroking along my side, slow and deliberate. “Let it in.”
I do. I breathe. The air tastes like her, warmth and salt and something sharp beneath, like citrus and heat.
I lose sense of time, of duty, of Nevare's distant hum.
There's only this: her fingers drifting across my scales, the softness of the flogger, and the way I seem to be centering without pain.
The ripple of my scales deepens, flexing to meet her palm as if drawn by instinct. Need coils low in my belly, but it’s different from the wild, destructive urge that often threatens to swamp me. This… this is manageable. Contained. Pleasurable.
She drapes the flogger across my shoulders again and leans in close, her breath skimming the nape of my neck. “Still with me?”
“Always,” I rasp, surprised by the roughness in my voice.
Her hand slides down, firmer now. “Good. Then let’s keep going.”
And I do.
Because every moment under her touch feels like learning to exist; this time, with a choice in what I do.
With her.
I focus on my breathing, slow and steady, drawing in air through my nose, letting it out in controlled exhales, a rhythm to anchor myself.
There’s only this singular moment between me, Law-rah, and the pain. No past, no present. No future to worry about. Nothing and no one else in the universe, nothing but scattered heartbeats. No locked rooms inside ourselves, just this, open and honest. This is what I am, this is all I am. This.
When she draws away. I keep my head down, breathing ragged. Every nerve stays alert, attuned to what’s next, but I hold steady, waiting for whatever comes next.
“Well?” she says. A challenge. “Open your eyes.”
With my arms still bound, I twist to face her. She looks down into my face, calculating, assessing, seeing how close I am to the edge. If she’d open to me, she’d know, but that’s not the point of this exercise. We’re trying to excise the mind-sync, not rely on it.
Slowly, I reach for her with my upper arms pinned to my sides.
My thick fingers fumble the tiny buttons of her pants.
Her smile widens as she watches me struggle, and she drags the starshine flogger over my shoulders and the back of my neck.
A promise of pleasure only, no need to flinch, only endless openness.
When I finally get her buttons and zips loose, I have to roll her pants down.
They're so tight they cling to her skin, and each roll bares more creamy expanse.
I run my tongue along the inside seam of her leg, and she lets out a low moan.
I keep her shoes on, her weapons. Because while I am open, Law-rah needs her fortifications still.
Even though I wish it wasn’t so.
She lowers herself to the blanket she put on the floor and bucks upward. I need no further invitation, grasping her panties and pulling them down to join her pants at her knees. I roll the collection to her calves, and position myself between her legs to dip down for my first taste.