Chapter 12 #2
His jaw tightens. His lips part just enough that a flash of white fangs slides down over his bottom lip. The sight of them sends another sharp, wet jolt straight between my thighs.
To say what I need to say, it can’t be words hanging in the empty air. Words don’t carry the weight of this planet.
I step fully into his space, sink my hands into the unyielding muscle of his bare forearms, and pull.
He goes completely rigid, a harsh growl vibrating deep in his chest. But he doesn’t pull away. He lowers his head smoothly, bowing his towering frame to meet my height.
I press my forehead directly against his.
The mindspace bridge slams open. The link is chaotic. I get shadows of the heat, the change happening within him. And I feel the terror spiking in my own blood.
“I’m scared.”
The image of my chest caving in under the weight of a rival warrior burns across the link, filled with my pure, unfiltered panic.
His broad hands slam flat against the freezing rock on either side of my head.
A dense pressure floods the center of my brain. It smothers the panicked image of the rival warrior instantly. The weight of him occupying my mind presses down on my spine so hard my knees buckle.
But right at the base of my skull, the connection splinters.
A tremor bleeds through the bridge. One that hits my brain like ice.
It is absolute dread.
Kol bows his head, burying his face in the crook of my neck. His chest heaves against my collarbone in a ragged pull of air. The solid mountain of muscle trapping me against the rock is shaking.
It is the most intimate thing another creature has ever shown me.
I pull back, breaking the contact. My breathing sounds thin in the quiet tunnel.
“What are you afraid of?” I whisper aloud.
He turns slightly, his broad chest rising with a long, labored breath. He doesn’t look toward the desert where the enemy approaches. He looks down at me.
His sprawling hand comes up to touch the center of his chest, right over where his heart should be. Then, his hand sweeps the empty air between us before resting briefly over the handle of the bone blade at his hip.
Finally, he makes a sharp, breaking motion with both his hands that makes me jerk a little.
My throat closes.
His golden eyes burn into mine.
Slowly, he reaches out. His claw curls around the back of my neck, his thick thumb anchoring directly over my nape.
“Ain kah vol-ressa,” he says aloud, the guttural syllables grating against his throat. “Vol-ressa kah tor-vakh.”
My earbud crackles weakly. ...Ain... not ...fear... tor-vakh.
“Ain does not know fear.”
“Fear does not survive tor-vakh.”
My chest aches.
“It is a truth.”
The voice echoes in my head. Not through the earbud. Not through my own mind. Just... there. Before I can even parse that, his hands slam directly onto my hips, gripping me with a strength that bruises, and he crashes his forehead against mine.
The mindspace bridge tears wide open again.
“They come for the females,” his thought roars through the connection and his glow flares bright enough that I have to close my eyes. “They will not have you.”
Before I can even drag a breath into my lungs, he lifts my entire body off the ground and drives me backward.
My spine hits the solid rock wall of the narrow tunnel.
He sets me down hard on a jagged stone ledge, forearms shoving my knees apart so he can step between my legs.
And then he stops.
He just... stops. His claws are clamped on my hips, the tips sunk into the fabric, his entire body locked rigid between my thighs.
His chest heaves. The starfield is spreading across his chest and firing in erratic, chaotic bursts of white light and black, like something inside him is short-circuiting.
I don’t think... I don’t think he knows what to do next.
“Hey,” I whisper. I slide my palms up his bare chest, over the burning, shifting landscape of his starfield skin, and press them flat against the place where his heart is trying to beat its way out of his ribcage. “Hey. I’m right here.”
His golden eyes snap to mine. The pupils are so wide the amber is nearly gone.
I drag my nails lightly down the center of his chest and his eyes flicker, the amber blooming before going out entirely.
The sound that comes out of him is one I will hear in my sleep for the rest of my life.
Low, guttural, ripped straight from the bottom of his lungs.
His hands wrench my hips forward to the edge of the stone ledge and he drops to his knees between my legs so hard that the impact shakes the rock floor beneath him.
His hands shift down, wrapping around my upper thighs as he leans in. I’m not sure what he’s about to do till a deep vibration rumbles in his chest and he buries his face directly against the center of my pants and inhales.
His whole body shudders.
A snarl rips out of his chest, buzzing right against my nerve endings. His fangs catch the seam of my pants and I feel the fabric start to give.
“Wait, wait,” I gasp, shoving at his forehead. “I can take them off. I only have one pair.”
He doesn’t move. His dark eyes flick up to mine from between my thighs, uncomprehending, his fangs still hooked into the fabric.
I yank the button at my waist loose and shove both my pants and underwear down my hips. He jerks the tangle of fabric the rest of the way off with one impatient swipe of his massive hand, tossing it into the dark behind him.
The freezing air hits my bare skin for half a second.
Then his mouth replaces it.
His tongue is nothing I have a reference for. Hot. Rough. Long and flat and large. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t need to. His mouth finds my centre and he just...licks into me.
My head slams backward into the rock.
“God.”
He makes a choked, deep moan against me, and the vibration of it lights up every nerve ending I have.
His hands are gripping my thighs so hard I’ll have bruises shaped like his fingers for a week.
Under my palms, the tight, roped muscles of his shoulders are shaking, his whole frame trembling as he rumbles against me and licks again.
“Oh!” I fist both hands into his hair and drag him harder against me.
He groans. The raw, shattered sound of it reverberates straight up through my core.
My brain whites out. My hips buck against his mouth and he snarls, clamping my thighs down, pinning me to the stone with the full strength of his arms while the heat of his tongue drags directly against my center.
It’s too much. The sensation is drowning out the panic I’ve been running on all day. I try to drag myself backward on the freezing stone, my hands shoving weakly at his shoulders just to catch a breath.
He doesn’t let me.
His claws tighten into my thighs. With one hard pull, he drags my hips right back down flush against his face. A deep rumble vibrates straight into my core as he ignores my attempt to escape. The thick stroke of his tongue turns ruthless.
The tension strings so tight inside my chest I can’t even draw air into my lungs.
I come so hard my vision actually goes black. My spine arches off the stone as his name tears out of my throat, echoing off the narrow tunnel walls.
Kol rumbles again. He stays clamped exactly where he is, his arms locking my thrashing hips down, his mouth riding out every spasm until my muscles give out and I collapse backward against the rock.
He doesn’t pull away.
His mouth stays pressed against me, his breathing ragged and deep, his shoulders still trembling. A low, rumbling sound vibrates out of his chest. Purring.
He’s purring.
The vibration of it pulses directly against my oversensitive skin, and I jerk hard, a broken whimper escaping my throat.
He finally lifts his head.
His mouth is slick, his eyes still black, the amber at the rim slowly returning. The expression on his face is feral. As if he would do it again. And again. And again.
I drag a shaking breath into my lungs.
“Tor-vakh,” I whisper.
The sound he makes is a raw, gutted exhale, punched straight out of his chest.
He surges forward, pressing his burning forehead hard against my bare stomach. His arms crush around my waist. His whole enormous body curls in around me, shaking into the stone, and that deep, involuntary purr keeps rumbling out of his chest and vibrating through my bones.
I don’t know how long we stay pressed together in the freezing tunnel. Five minutes. An hour.
Eventually, the cold air sliding through the fissures begins to cut through his heat and I shiver.
Kol’s head snaps up.
He stands up slowly. The dense, roped muscles of his thighs flex as he rises to his full height in the dark. Turning, he locates the dark shape of my discarded clothes on the stone floor, and picks them up.
He holds them out to me.
His hand is steady now, but his golden eyes are still half dark. He watches me, eyes on my bare skin as I take the pants from his claws and pull them back up my shaking legs.
Once I’m done, his arms slide under my knees and my back, lifting me off the ledge.
“I-I can walk.” My voice betrays me by trembling.
He ignores me, turns toward the deeper tunnels, and starts walking.
The rock walls close around us, cutting off the wind, and I drop my head against his chest. The purring is still going, vibrating steadily against my temple. I’m drained of everything, but the panic in my chest is gone.
We reach the main cavern. The fire is out. The women are gone, already evacuated to the deepest tunnels. The warriors are exactly where they were before, stationed in stillness at the lookouts along the walls. Nobody looks our way. Nobody makes a sound.
He carries me straight to the tunnel entrance, the line he intends to hold, and sets me down carefully on my feet.
His hands stay on my hips, then he forces himself to take a single step backward.
Slowly, he points one long, claw-tipped finger toward the deep chambers.
I don’t move.
Instead, I slide my hand into the deep side pocket of my cargo pants. My fingers brush against the cold, smooth surface of the rock I’ve been carrying.
I pull it out, raise my hand into the space between us, and slowly open my fingers.
The dark stone sits in the center of my palm.
I tighten my grip on the stone, and wait for Ain.