Chapter 10 #2
She comes against my mouth. Hard. The hardest yet.
Her whole body convulsing, her thighs shaking around my head, my name torn out of her in a voice that fills the cabin and bounces off the bulkheads and I hold her through it — tongue working her down, hands on her hips, my mouth gentling as the waves subside.
The taste of her when she comes. I will never have words for it. Every language I know fails. It is the taste of being alive. Of being wanted. Of being the male who made this female fall apart on his sheets and who is going to do it again.
I kiss up her body. Slow now. Tasting the aftermath on her skin.
The salt of sweat. The flush of heat. Stomach.
Ribs. The space between her breasts, the hollow of her throat.
The freckle. Her mouth. She tastes herself on my tongue and makes a sound — half-moan, half-laugh — that vibrates between us.
“That,” she says against my mouth, wrecked, barely a voice, “was —”
“The beginning.”
“There’s — more?”
My fingers find her. Still sensitive. She gasps and grabs my wrist.
“I can’t — I just —”
“You can.” Against her ear. “Trust me.”
She trusts me. My fingers this time — two, sliding inside her, curling, finding the spot that makes her eyes roll back.
My thumb where the tongue was — circling, light, building pressure in counterpoint to the curl of my fingers.
My mouth on her breast. Tongue on the nipple.
Three points of contact — fingers inside, thumb outside, tongue on her chest — and the combination is devastating.
She is arching off the mattress. Gripping my forearm — the ridges — and the contact sends dual fire through both of us. Her hands are on the ridges while my fingers are inside her. The feedback loop closes, and the loop is going to break us both.
“Jazil — I can’t — I’m going to —”
“Let go. I have you.”
She lets go. The next one is harder than the first. Higher.
Longer. My name is in it and the sound echoes through the cabin, and she is shaking and gripping the ridges and the grip is sending shockwaves through my arms and I hold her through it, fingers slowing, thumb gentling, my mouth soft on her throat.
She is a beautiful, flushed, trembling wreck on my sheets with her hair on my pillow and tears on her cheeks — the involuntary kind, the kind that come when the body processes too much sensation at once — and she is the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen.
I pull her against me. Cool arms around warm body. Her face against my neck. Her breathing is ragged and slowing. Her fingers still on my forearm, on the ridges, tracing without purpose.
Her hand drifts. Down my chest. My stomach. The muscles tensing under her fingers. She reaches the waistband. Lower. Her fingers find me.
She stops.
Her hand moves. Explores. Her eyes open. Widen. Her fingers trace the full shape. Both.
“Is that —” Mapping. Learning. “Are there —”
“Yes.”
“Two?”
“Yes.”
Her hand moves more deliberately. One, then the other. The shape, the size, the way they respond independently to her touch. She grips one. My vision whites out. My hips jerk forward. A sound comes out of me — raw, animal, from the chest.
She grips the other. Both hands. Moving in opposite directions. My arms give out. Face against her neck. The sound I make vibrates through both of us.
“Oh,” she says. Softly. Wonderingly. Her hands still moving. Exploring. Learning me with the thorough attention she gives everything — the gauze, the ridges, the cargo manifest. “Oh. You’re built like that.”
“Lorri —” Into her neck. Barely functional. “If you keep —”
“I want to taste you.”
The words hit me like a hull breach. Her mouth. On me. Both. The image floods my brain — warm lips, warm tongue, her looking up at me — and my claws extend fully into the mattress frame, and the metal groans.
“Not yet.” The hardest two words I have ever said. Harder than defective. Harder than anything. “Lorri. Not yet.”
She stills. Looks at me. Reading my face. Her hands slow down but don’t leave.
“There are things I haven’t told you.” My voice is barely holding on.
Her hands are still on me, and every nerve ending I own is screaming.
“About what this is. What happens if there’s a bonding?
A claiming. If you touch me like that while the instinct is this loud, I will lose the line.
And you need to know what you’re choosing before I let that happen. ”
“What I’m choosing?”
“A bond. Permanent. One mate. Lifetime. Skiveth claiming is — it’s not a decision you make on a bunk with a male you met this morning.”
She is quiet. Processing. I watch her process — the information clicking alongside the section she skimmed past on the datapad.
“The section I skipped,” she says.
“The section you skipped.”
“The long clinical one about pair bonds and claiming.”
“That one.”
A beat. She looks at me. The hazel eyes still dark. Still wanting. But underneath the wanting — the careful, sharp intelligence of a woman who has just understood what she wasn’t told.
“So you — all of this — the hunt, the tongue, the ridges, that’s all part of —”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re holding back.”
“I’m holding back.”
“Because I didn’t read the manual.”
The laugh comes out rough and startled. She is lying on my bunk, wrecked and bare, with my taste on her tongue, and she has just called Skiveth pair-bonding biology the manual.
“Because you didn’t read the manual. And when you do — if you want what’s in it — I need you to choose it knowing what it means.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means forever. One bond. No going back. It means I will know where you are in any station from three levels away. It means I will taste you in the air for the rest of my life. It means you will be the only female who ever makes my ridges go dark.” My forehead against hers.
“It means everything I am rearranges around you. Permanently.”
Quiet for a long time. Her fingers on my forearm. The ridge. The idle trace.
“And you want that,” she says. Not a question. “With me.”
“I have wanted that my whole life. I didn’t know who it was for until you walked up my ramp in a lucky top and set off my quarantine.”
Her mouth twitches.
“So tonight —”
“Tonight, I give you everything I can without crossing that line. And the holding back is killing me, Lorri. You have no idea what it costs to have your hands on me and not —” I stop. Breathe. “But the cost is mine. The choice is always yours.”
She looks at me for a long time. Then she lifts her hands from me — slowly, deliberately, a choice — and puts them on my jaw instead. Her warm palms framing my face.
“I’m going to read the manual,” she says. “Every word. And then I’m going to make you a very informed decision.”
“I’ll wait.”
“You’ve been waiting your whole life.”
“I’ll wait as long as you need.”
“I won’t need long.” Her eyes hold mine. “I won’t need long at all.”
The hunt-instinct — the fire, the screaming — goes quiet. Not gone. Quieted. The eye of the storm. Her hands on my face. Her warmth against me. Her certainty, which is not yes but is not no and is something more important than both: I’m choosing to find out.
I kiss her palm. My tongue flicks against the heel of her hand. Her breath catches.
“Jazil.”
“Mm.”
“If I run again —” Soft. Sleepy. The crash coming. “Will you catch me?”
My arms tighten around her. My mouth against her hair.