Chapter 31 Alemayehu
ALEMAYEHU
Isit on the top step of the cabin with my elbows on my knees and my ridge extended in the night air, replaying the ceremony that ended an hour ago. My name chanted by a hundred voices around a fire that has since gone dark. Kendra’s hand on my head. Sister-son. I cannot stop hearing it.
You are sitting outside replaying a memory that happened an hour ago, my Bouda says, and his voice carries none of its usual sharpness. We could be in bed. We could be doing anything other than staring at a dirt road like a lovesick cub who has never been touched.
I do not move. I have a title now, First Guard, the title the Matriarch considered giving me on the night before our village burned, the title that Zaki told me about in the tall grass while the sun bled red across the highland.
It lived in me as a wound for three years, the thing I almost became before everything was taken, and tonight my fated mate put her hand on my head and made it real.
I hear the SUV before I see it, the engine climbing the dirt road through the trees.
The headlights sweep across the front of the cabin and she parks beside the porch and cuts the engine.
I stand when the driver’s door opens because my body will not let me sit when she approaches, not tonight.
I take the stairs and reach her before she can close the door, pulling it shut behind her.
She is still wearing the ceremonial garment, indigo and ochre bright under the moon, the beads in her hair clicking softly when she moves.
She closes the door and walks toward the cabin.
My body will not let me sit when she approaches.
Especially tonight. After what she gave me in front of the fire.
She climbs the stairs and each step brings her closer.
Kendra stops in front of me and the beads scatter light across her skin and she is so beautiful that my body heats before she opens her mouth.
“I love you too.” She says it looking straight at me, no hesitation, and the four words hit me hard.
My Bouda surges forward and then goes perfectly still. I take her face in both hands and kiss her. There is no urgency in it, no leash straining at its limit.
I bend and hook my arm under her legs and lift her, and she wraps her arms around my neck and her fingers find the back of my head and I carry her through the front door and up the stairs and into our bedroom.
I unwrap her slowly, the cinch at her waist first, loosening the cord that has been pressing into her ribs all night, pulling it free and setting it aside.
The draped fabric next, lifting it from her shoulders and sliding it down her arms, the woven cotton warm from her body.
I reach for the beads in her hair and I remove them one at a time, each one clicking softly between my fingers as I set them on the nightstand beside the bed.
Her curls fall loose around her face when the last one comes free.
She lies on the bed in her underwear and nothing else.
She reaches for my shirt and I let her pull it over my head, her fingers trailing along my ridge as she lifts the fabric, and every blade flattens under her touch, one by one, a surrender my body offers no one else. She runs her hands down my arms and across my chest.
I lower myself over her and my mouth finds hers and the kiss deepens, her tongue meeting mine, her hands sliding down my back, her fingers pressing into the muscles on either side of my ridge.
I reach behind her and unclasp her bra and slide the straps from her shoulders and her breasts settle free and I cup one in my palm, my thumb tracing her nipple until it hardens, and she arches into my hand.
I trail my lips down her neck, over the claim mark where my tongue traces the scar and she gasps, and lower to her collarbone, to the slope of her breast where I take her nipple into my mouth and she grips the back of my head and holds me there.
“Just like that,” she breathes, and I give her other breast the same attention, my tongue circling, my lips pulling gently, her breathing climbing higher with each pass of my mouth.
Her hips are moving beneath me, pressing up into me, and I can feel the heat of her through the thin fabric still between us.
I hook my fingers into her underwear and slide them down her legs, and she lifts her hips to help, and when the last barrier is gone I settle between her thighs and press my mouth to the inside of her knee and kiss my way up.
She shudders when I reach the sensitive skin at the top of her thigh, and her hand finds my head and her fingers tighten.
This time I do not make her wait. I press my mouth between her thighs and the taste of her floods my tongue, warm and slick and sweet, and she gasps and her hips lift off the bed and her fingers grip the sheets.
I hold her thighs apart with both hands and run my tongue through her in a slow full stroke, finding every place that makes her breathing change, learning her the way I have learned her body over these two months but slower now, with more attention, my eyes open and looking up at her while my mouth works.
“Oh god,” she breathes, and her eyes meet mine over the length of her body and the eye contact while my tongue is inside her makes her face flush and her thighs tremble.
I hold her gaze and circle the place that makes her legs shake, my tongue pressing flat and then pointed, alternating the pressure until her hips are rocking into my mouth and her hand moves from the sheets to the back of my head and holds me there.
“Alemayehu, right there, don’t stop.” Her voice is climbing and her thighs tighten on either side of my face and I feel the orgasm building in her body, the tension gathering, her hips losing their rhythm, her breathing going ragged and sharp.
I keep my mouth where she needs it and watch her face as the wave hits, her back arching off the bed, her eyes squeezing shut, her mouth open on a moan that fills the bedroom.
I kiss my way back up her body, over her stomach, between her breasts, along her neck where I trace the claim mark with my tongue and she shivers, and when I reach her mouth she pulls me into a kiss that tastes like her and me and the salt on both our skin.
“I need you inside me.” She says it into the kiss and her hands are already reaching between us.
I guide myself to her entrance and press forward slowly, watching her face as her body opens around me, the heat and the wetness from the orgasm making the slide effortless, and the tightness of her gripping me as I push deeper pulls a sound from both of us that neither of us controls.
I slide in until there is nowhere left to go and I hold myself there, buried in her, our foreheads touching, our breath shared, and the fullness of it makes her eyes go wide and her lips part and her fingers dig into my shoulders.
“God, yes,” she whispers, and her legs wrap around my waist.
I move slowly, each stroke deep and unhurried, pulling almost all the way out before pressing back in, and she meets me on every one, her hips tilting to take me deeper, her body gripping me tighter each time I push forward.
Her breasts press into me with each stroke and I can feel her nipples hard on my skin and the friction of our bodies moving together sends heat through me that is not my body’s doing.
I watch her face and her eyes are open, looking up at me, and the intimacy of being seen by her while I am inside her is more overwhelming than any physical pleasure I have known.
“Right there,” she breathes, and her thighs tighten around my waist. “Just like that, don’t stop.”
I hold the pace and the angle and her first orgasm from the inside builds slowly, her body clenching around me in waves that tighten with each stroke until she breaks, her back arching, her voice breaking on my name, her walls gripping me so hard that I have to stop moving and press my forehead into her neck and breathe through it to keep from finishing with her.
She pushes on my chest before I can start moving again and I pull back, confused, but she is already rising, her hands on my shoulders, guiding me onto my back.
She climbs on top of me and straddles my hips and sinks down onto me in a slow motion that makes both of us groan, and the depth from this angle is different, deeper, and I can see every inch of her above me, her breasts, the claim mark on her neck, the way her stomach flexes when she rolls her hips.
She rides me slowly, her hands on my chest, her fingers spread wide over my heartbeat, and the rhythm she sets is unhurried and rolling, her hips circling before lifting and dropping, taking me deep and then deeper.
I grip her hips and let her control the pace and I watch her body move above me and the sight of her, confident and powerful and taking exactly what she wants from me, does something to me.
“You feel so good,” she says, and her head drops back and her hips grind down and I feel her body start to tighten around me again.
I sit up without pulling out, wrapping my arms around her waist, pressing her body into mine so her breasts are warm on my skin and our faces are level, and she gasps at the shift in angle and wraps her arms around my neck and we move together, her hips rolling into mine, my hands on the small of her back guiding her rhythm.
She comes with her forehead pressed against mine, her body clenching around me in contractions that I feel all the way up through my abdomen, and the sound she makes is my name, whispered into my mouth.
I lay her back and pull out and she makes a sound of protest that makes my Bouda stir for the first time since we started, a low rumble of amusement that fades as fast as it came.
I turn her gently onto her stomach and she understands, pulling her knees beneath her, and I press into her from behind, slow and deep, my hands running up her back along either side of my ridge’s shadow, up to her shoulders where I grip gently and pull her into each stroke.
This angle is tighter and deeper and she buries her face in the mattress and the sounds she makes are muffled until I slide my hand beneath her and lift her slightly, my arm across her waist, her back pressed into me, and the new position lets me reach around her body and cup her breast while I move inside her.
She turns her head and finds my mouth over her shoulder and the kiss is awkward and perfect and she moans into it while my thumb rolls her nipple and my hips press forward.
“I love you,” she whispers, and the words vibrate through both of us.
I pull out and turn her onto her back again.
She reaches for me and I settle between her legs and slide back into her and the heat of her body welcoming me again after the brief absence makes my arms shake.
I press my forehead to hers and move with a rhythm that is no longer slow but not frantic either, a steady building pressure that carries both of us toward the edge at the same speed.
Her breathing goes ragged and her hands move from my shoulders to my neck, her fingers sliding into the space beneath my ridge, and her grip locks.
I feel the orgasm building in her body, stacking on everything that has come before it, her walls gripping me in waves that come faster and harder with each stroke.
“Don’t stop, please don’t stop.” Her voice is wrecked and raw and I give her everything she is asking for.
Her arms lock around my neck and she pulls me down and I feel her mouth find the place where my neck meets my shoulder. Something shifts in her body. Her grip changes from desperate to intentional. Her breath steadies against my skin even as her body shakes. I know what is about to happen.
“MINE.” She says it into my skin with a voice I have never heard from her, almost primal, and her teeth sink into my neck.
My orgasm hits at the same moment the bond seals and the force of it clears out my vision and locks my arms and tears a sound from my throat that is part roar and part cackle and part a frequency I have never produced.
I press into her and hold myself there while my body empties, and for a few heartbeats the only thing that exists is the heat between us and the bond pulsing in both directions and her teeth still buried in my skin.
Her mouth loosens and her arms fall from my neck and her head drops back and her eyes close. Her breathing goes deep and even in a single exhale, and she is gone, unconscious, the bond taking her.
I hold myself above her and I look at her face, peaceful and slack with sleep, her lips slightly parted. I touch the mark on my neck with my fingertips and the scar is already forming, raised and warm, the pattern of her teeth preserved in my skin as mine is preserved in hers.
I pull out of her gently and lower myself beside her and I do what I did after the first night.
I get the warm cloth from the bathroom and I clean her, careful strokes along her skin, her neck, her thighs, the sweat that has dried on her collarbone.
I pull the blanket up to her chin and tuck the edges around her shoulders and press my lips to the crown of her head and her scent fills my lungs and it is rain on dry earth and wild honey and me, all three woven together, inseparable, permanent.
I lie beside her and the silence in my head stretches on.
Then, softly, from somewhere deep: She is ours, Alemayehu. Fully and completely ours. And we are hers.
I press my face into Kendra’s hair and close my eyes.