Chapter 9 #2
“You’re going to beg,” Low. Almost a growl.
The predator-register that comes from the chest, not the throat.
“Not because I’m going to make you — because you’re going to want to.
Because my tongue is going to find the place that makes you lose your mind, and I’m going to work it until you are begging me to stop and begging me to never stop at the same time.
And I’m going to listen to every sound you make.
Every gasp. Every moan. Every time you say my name.
And I am going to earn every single one. ”
Her heartbeat is a drum. I can feel it through the deck plating. Through the bulkheads. My body is tracking her the way a navigation system tracks a signal — constant, precise, the bearing narrowing with every step.
“And then, when you’ve come against my mouth and you think you’re done —” I stop.
The crew corridor. She is close. Very close.
Within ten feet. I can taste her as if she’s in the same room because the ventilation has carried her to me undiluted, and the taste is — I grip the nearest bulkhead, and my claws leave gouges in the metal.
“— I’m going to use my fingers. And I am going to make you come again.
Harder. And you are going to let me because you will not be able to do anything else. ”
I give her three near-misses. Not kindness. The chase.
The first: crew quarters, head. She is behind the door. I can taste her — concentrated, close, the scent so dense it’s almost tactile. I walk past. Slow. My footsteps are audible. She hears me pass, and her heartbeat drops a fraction. She thinks she’s won the round.
I give her four seconds of that before I double back and walk past again. The second pass is slower. Closer to the door. She can hear my breathing. Slow. Controlled. The breathing of a male who is in no hurry because the hurry is for prey, and she is not prey. She is the reason the hunt exists.
Second: storage alcove. Her scent pools there — she was in it; she’s gone.
Moved while I was at the head. She is counter-tracking me.
Adjusting position based on my footsteps.
Using the ventilation ducts to pull her scent away from her actual location, the way she used the evacuation drills — not just hiding but running the game.
She is playing this with the strategic intelligence of a female who survived a childhood by being invisible, and I want her so badly my vision has tunneled to the narrow, crystal-sharp focus of a male whose entire sensory system is calibrated to one person.
Third: the narrow section. Between crew quarters and the cabin.
The trail is blazing. The arousal thick enough that my hands are clenching and my jaw is locked and my hips ache with a need so specific it has a shape and the shape is her body pressed against mine and moving.
She is within fifteen feet. She is broadcasting want at a volume she doesn’t know she’s producing.
The not-knowing is the most erotic thing I have ever experienced.
Her body is screaming for me, and she doesn’t even realize how loud she is.
“You’re good at this,” I say into the dark. “Better than anyone. Better than the drill officers. Better than anyone who has ever tried to find someone.”
From close — very close — breathless, bright, brave:
“That’s it? Nine years on this ship, and you can’t find one human?”
My whole body floods with heat. The bravery.
The play. She is hiding in the dark, trash-talking a male who has just spent ten minutes describing in explicit detail what his forked tongue is going to do between her thighs, and she is enjoying herself.
She is having fun. She is laughing in the dark as she moves and taunting me, and the taunt lands in my chest like her hands on the ridges.
I have wanted this my whole life. Every year of empty. Every physician who said differently. It had never been broken. It was waiting. For a female who hides in my ship and calls me out while I hunt her.
“One more corridor.” My voice is raw. Every layer stripped back to the animal underneath.
“One more turn. And then I am going to find you, and I am going to put my hands on you, and I am going to make good on every single thing I just said. Every. Single. Thing.” A beat.
“And you’re going to wrap your legs around me and say please, and I am going to take you apart so thoroughly that you will feel my mouth on you for days. ”
Silence. Silence that is the sound of a female in a dark corridor pressing her hand over her own mouth and failing to contain the sound underneath it.
HORATIO has not spoken. Not once since the hunt began.
The lights at my preference. The ship at the configuration I need.
HORATIO knows what this means — not to himself but to me.
Nine years of one mug. One plate. The appointment.
The emptiness his captain wore like a second skin.
Tonight it ends, and HORATIO is honoring it the only way he knows how: by being exactly the ship I need without being asked.
The corridor dead-ends at the cabin hatch.