18. Home
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Flossie
He is asleep and I am pretending to be and my body is a map of everywhere he has been.
The bite mark on my shoulder pulses with my heartbeat.
The bruise across my ribs — tail-shaped, dark already, tender when I breathe — aches in a way that sends warmth spreading outward instead of pain.
My hips are sore. The specific soreness of a woman who took more than her body was built for and would do it again immediately and without hesitation.
Between my legs I am swollen and tender and when I shift against the sheets, the friction sends a low, sweet throb through me that makes my breath catch.
His arm tightens. In sleep, his body registers every movement I make.
My shift becomes his pull — his hand flattening against my belly, drawing me back against his chest, and his cock stirs against my backside.
Not hard. A thickening. The ridges pressing through the fabric of whatever he pulled on while I was drifting, and the sensation of them against the curve of my arse makes me bite my lip because my body is insane and it has been three hours and I want him again.
His purr changed while he slept. I noticed the shift — a deepening, the frequency dropping to something more vulnerable. The awake-purr says she's here. The sleeping-purr says something he would not authorize if he were conscious. Something that sounds like please don't leave.
I press my hand over his. His palm covers my belly from hip to hip — the span of him, the scale, my hand resting on the back of his like a small thing on top of a large thing, and the feeling behind my sternum resolves.
It is not formless anymore.
The feeling that has lived there since day one — the one I couldn't name, the one that flared when his purr came through the wall and when he read my notebook at three in the morning and his hands shook — has found its shape.
His heartbeat. Physically. His heart pressed against my spine, the rhythm synced with the purr, and I can feel it in my sternum.
The formless thing was never formless. It was the shape of what was missing.
Through my eyelashes I watch him sleep. The jaw unlocked. The combat tension drained. In sleep the weapon casing peels back and beneath it is the male who smiled three times and promised more. His claws retracted even in unconsciousness — the gentleness chosen so deep it's structural now.
The sheets smell like both of us. Sex and pheromones and peppermint. I press my face into the pillow that smells like his fuzz and breathe and the scent goes straight between my legs.
I was flying alone with an empty co-pilot's chair. Was. Past tense.
Morrison is going to kill me.
I grin into the pillow. Worth it.
He makes tea and I nearly lose my mind.
He is shirtless in my galley. The markings visible from collar to waist. My scratch marks on his shoulders — four parallel lines on each side, pink against crimson, the evidence of my nails during the second round when he circled his hips and the knot ground against the spot and I stopped being a civilized person.
He carries two mugs in one hand because his hands are large enough to do that.
He has made my tea perfectly — strong, milk, half-spoon of honey, exact temperature. He learned this without being told.
I am standing in the galley doorway in the blue cardigan and the thin shirt and nothing else and watching a seven-foot alien who was inside me three hours ago make tea in my kitchen and the domesticity of it combined with the scratch marks and the memory of the sounds he made is producing a response in my body that is frankly unreasonable.
I want to push him against the counter. I want to climb him. I want to wrap my legs around his waist and feel the ridges against me through the fabric and bite the marking at his throat until his purr rattles the mugs off the shelf.
I take the tea instead. Sip it. Perfect.
"Thank you, lovey."
His eyes track from my face to the bite mark visible above my collar.
Down to my bare legs. Back up. His nostrils flare — the scent response, my arousal in the morning air, the male who can smell exactly what looking at him shirtless does to me.
His tail unwinds from his calf and finds my hip.
Not a wrap. A stroke. The tip tracing from my hip to the curve of my waist through the cardigan, slow, possessive, a good-morning that speaks his language.
"You are staring," he says.
"You're shirtless in my kitchen with my scratch marks on your back. I'm allowed to stare."
"The scratching was not expected."
"The second orgasm while knotted was not expected either. We're even." I drink my tea. Walk past him toward the cockpit. His tail follows — the tip dragging from my hip down my thigh as I pass, and the heat of it through the thin shirt makes me squeeze my thighs together.
He follows me to the cockpit. He sits in the co-pilot's chair.
Too big. Horns nearly brushing the console. The armrest cracked where his claws punched through during the kill order. The cushion no longer pristine. A male sitting in the chair nobody has ever sat in, settling in like it's always been his.
I stand in the doorway. Mug in both hands. Looking at him in the chair.
The feeling in my sternum — his heartbeat, the resolved thing — expands until my ribs creak.
I set the mug down. Cross the cockpit. Two steps. I climb into the chair with him.
It doesn't fit. It is absurd — a woman in a cardigan climbing into a too-small co-pilot's chair on top of a seven-foot Xarthian, my knees on either side of his hips, the armrests digging into my thighs, his horns catching the overhead panel.
I don't care. I take his face in both hands — my palms barely spanning his jaw, the same grip from last night — and I kiss him.
Not the frantic corridor kiss. Not the hungry shower kiss.
Slow. Morning-slow. Peppermint on his mouth and honey on mine.
His hands find my waist — both palms, fingers spanning me from hip to ribs — and he holds me in the chair the way he holds me in bed.
Completely. The purr starts in his chest and travels through his mouth into mine and I feel it in my teeth and my jaw and the tender place between my legs.
I pull back. Forehead on his. Gold eyes, warm.
"Nobody's ever sat in this chair," I say. Quiet.
"I know."
"I never folded it down. Ten years. Sprout asked once and I changed the subject and never answered."
"I know that too."
"It was waiting for you." The words arrive without permission. True in a way that makes my throat ache. "I didn't know it was waiting for you. But it was."
His hands tighten on my waist. His forehead presses harder against mine. His eyes close and the purr surges and I feel the emotion hit him — the processing failure, the vocabulary crumbling, the male who does not know how to hold what he is being given.
"Flossie." Wrecked.
"Don't say anything noble. Just sit in the chair. It's yours now."
Sprout's orb descends from the ceiling. Warm amber. "Junction One is close. Morrison has sent three messages. I recommend emotional preparation. Also: the mattress needs replacing."
I laugh against his mouth. He catches the laugh with his lips and it turns into a kiss that turns into his tongue and his hands sliding from my waist to my hips and pulling me closer in the chair and his cock thickening beneath me through the fabric and the ridges pressing against me and —
"Not enough time," I gasp. Pulling back. Hands on his chest. "We need to talk before we dock. Actual talking. With words."
"Your body is suggesting a different priority."
"My body has had five orgasms in one night. My body can wait. My brain needs logistics."
"Six."
"What?"
"Six orgasms. The second round produced two. You lost count." He is smug. Insufferably, gloriously smug.
"I did not lose — the second one was basically a continuation of the — that is not the point." I press my palm against his mouth. His lips are hot against my hand and the purr vibrates through my fingers and his tongue touches my palm and I snatch my hand back. "Stop that. Talking. Now."
We talk in the chair.
I don't move. His lap is warm and the chair is too small and his hands rest on my thighs and his tail winds around my ankle and we have a serious conversation about the future while I'm straddling a male who is hard beneath me and both of us are pretending this is normal.
"Right. Logistics." Morrison-mode. My hands on his chest, feeling the purr, which makes logistics challenging but not impossible.
"When we dock at Junction One, several things happen at once.
SRS believes you killed me. Drask has given us a deadline.
The container still needs delivering to the Tessaro Foundation.
Saar needs his ship put back together and a head start.
Morrison is going to want a full debrief and she's going to want it five minutes ago. "
"Morrison." His tail tightens on my ankle. The reflexive brace of a combat specialist anticipating an engagement.
"Morrison is the scariest woman in the Outer Rim and she trained me and she loves me and she is going to take one look at the bite mark on my shoulder and the Xarthian in my co-pilot's chair and she is going to lose her absolute mind.
" I trace the marking at his collar. "I handle Morrison.
That's not a suggestion — it's an order.
You do not engage her until I've had twenty minutes alone with her.
She needs context. If you walk in cold she will eat you. "
"I am a Tier 1 combat —"
"And she will eat you. Lovey, I say this with the deepest respect for your terrifying skills. Morrison is not a combat scenario. Morrison is an emotional weather event. Let me manage the weather."
His jaw flexes. The arrogance warring with the pragmatism. "Twenty minutes."
"Thirty."
"Twenty-five."
"Twenty-five and you stay with Sprout until I signal. Sprout will keep you alive."