Chapter 18
WELL, THOSE ARE TWO WAYS TO SOLVE A LANGUAGE BARRIER
ERIKA
Iam a highly organized, deeply practical woman.
I have a Master’s degree. I have successfully managed international software deployments. I know how to synthesize complex Jira tickets under extreme stakeholder duress.
But right now, lying flat on my back on a pile of animal furs, pinned beneath the male that is going to be my mate, my brain is failing me.
Specifically, it is failing at basic anatomy.
Kol’s broad chest is still rising and falling against me, but he hasn’t awoken.
His starfield skin is starting to fade. I can see that the gold is returning which I assume means the transformation is complete.
How it works, or what causes the Drakav to go through this is a mystery I’m sure I’ll figure out at some other time.
But that’s not what is currently short-circuiting my nervous system.
It’s the pressure pressing heavily against the apex of my thighs.
Even unconscious, his ‘thing that never was but now is’ is fully awake. And it is impossible to ignore. A thick, scorching, ridged length is pulsing insistently against my pelvic bone. Every time his chest heaves with breath, the overwhelming friction drags it flush against my core.
I can process that. He is a male, I am a female, we are pressed together. Basic biology.
What I cannot process is the second shape.
Immediately beside it, thick and curving slightly inward against the first, the other distinct pressure is dragging insistently against the exact same spot.
No, my brain supplies. That doesn’t make any sense. There cannot be two.
I stare up at the ceiling.
“Kol, you’re going to have to get up and explain yourself.”
What evolutionary purpose would two possibly serve? One is historically sufficient for reproduction across almost every mammalian species on Earth. Two is just... biologically greedy. It’s structurally redundant.
But then my memory helpfully supplies a piece of horrifying trivia Justine dropped around the fire.
That they think Drakav biology is adaptive. When they find their mate, their DNA literally rewrites itself to perfectly accommodate the female’s deepest, subconscious desires. They transform into exactly what she secretly wants.
I go completely still under Kol’s dead weight.
My deepest, subconscious desires.
I slowly close my eyes in the dark.
Has my subconscious been a giant, undeniable whore this entire time?
No, definitely not. I am a respectable woman. I do not harbor completely unhinged fantasies about taking two separate cocks at the exact same time.
But the thick ridges pulse persistently against the center of my body. The second, curved tip flexes involuntarily right next to it.
Well, maybe a little.
I groan out loud, covering my face with my free hand. I am never making fun of Jacqui, Mikaela, or Justine again. My subconscious is evidently a raging freak, and now I have the physical, seven-foot proof of it passed out on top of me.
My heart is hammering wildly against my ribs. I try to shift my hips backward, desperate for a single inch of breathing room, but I’m trapped.
In response to the sudden movement, Kol groans above me.
His overwhelming frame curls tightly over me, and his face buries into the curve of my neck. The low, chest-rattling sound vibrates straight through my collarbone as his thighs flex against mine, the pressure dragging upward against my core.
Ohhhhhh, fuuuuuck.
His thick, dark eyelashes flutter against my skin. His nose drags along my jaw.
Mine, a raw, fragmented pulse of emotion bleeds into my brain as he takes a deep breath, his chest expanding against mine, inhaling the scent of my skin.
I feel as his eyes slowly open.
KOL
The agony is gone.
I open my eyes, my vision swimming in the dark shadows of my high alcove.
Far below us, the bright, harsh light of mid-sol washes across the distant cavern floor, but the glare cannot reach this high up the steep rock face.
Up here, there is only protective gloom.
The thick scent of salt, hot stone, and the sharp, staggering sweetness of storm-wind fills my lungs.
And something small and soft is pinned beneath me on the furs.
I jerk my head up, my claws instantly snapping out into the hides beneath me.
Eh-ree-kah is staring at me. Her dark eyes are wide, her face flushed with heat, and her digits tangled tightly in my mane. A groan rumbles out of my chest at the sensation of it.
But then I recall the bone-breaking transformation. The pain. The terror of hurting her.
I freeze.
I shift my weight. My shoulders are wider. The muscle across my back is thick and dense. I push up on my claws, and the stone face feels brittle beneath them. I am larger. Harder. Denser.
And then, I feel something else.
Pressed flush against the soft, fragile heat of her body. Something hot.
Hot. Solid. Thick. And completely, ravenously hungry.
It pulses against her. In sync. Twitching.
Oh dust, the twitching.
I grit my teeth hard enough to crack stone and slowly, carefully, push my upper body off her. My claws dig deep into the furs on either side of her head, bunching the thick hides into my fists.
When I look down, her skin is flushed dark with heat. Her thin hide-coverings have ridden up, exposing the soft, warm stretch of her belly and her chest rises and falls rapidly beneath me. The scent pouring off her is so thick and sweet that it hits my brain in a rush.
The twitching gets worse.
I clench my jaw. My claws shred through the furs.
I have seen images in the mindspace. Images of my warriors and their human females. Images of them joined together, the small soft bodies wrapped around the huge frames. Images that always made me wonder...and hope.
Eh-ree-kah’s breathing changes beneath me. Her lips part, her little pink tongue escaping to move over them.
The organ jerks against her. Hard. Hungry.
My hips roll forward without my permission, grinding the hot, swollen weight of it directly against the warm crease between her thighs.
The exact place I had buried my face. The exact place my tongue had found her slick, tight, impossibly sweet heat and licked until she screamed and blessed me with her fluids.
A thick drop of slick falls from the tip, soaking into the thin hide-coverings separating us.
I stare at the darkening patch of moisture.
It is hydration. Water. A reckless waste of our most precious resource. From the moment we exit the Giving Stone, our bodies hoard every single drop of moisture to survive the dust. My body has never done this... wasting. I am leaking purely for her.
It is a complete violation of survival. It should horrify me.
But as the intoxicating scent of her floods my lungs again, another thick, glistening bead immediately forms at the tip.
Every nerve in my body is screaming at me to push inside her. To bury myself in that small, wet heat until she breaks apart around me.
The shaft twitches again. Hard.
My gaze finally drops further and I go completely still.
There’s something wrong.
I stare between our bodies.
Two.
The first is thick. Ridged. Far, far too large to fit inside the small, tight entrance my tongue had found between her thighs. It is flushed dark, thick veins pulsing visibly, dripping with slick.
The second is directly below the first. Slightly thinner. Curved inward. Equally swollen. Equally desperate.
My brain completely stalls, frantically searching for the correct translation of what I am currently looking at. What is the word Rok called his?
Cock.
I have grown two cocks?!
I cannot fit one inside her.
I stare at the dripping thickness of them. Then I look at the narrow span of her hips.
A spike of absolute terror hits the center of my chest. I will break her. If I lose control of the feral hunger currently tearing through my blood, I will rip her in half.
I pull myself away from her, throwing my weight backward and staggering off the furs.
I hit the stone floor on my knees, my back slamming against the far wall of the alcove. I curl forward, pressing my forehead to the cold stone.
Dust. Dust and bones.
I will not touch her. I will protect her from myself.
Both shafts twitch insistently against my stomach.
Stop, I command them.
They do not stop. They pulse harder, the ridges swelling, the slick dripping steadily onto the stone between my knees. A small, glistening puddle is forming. I am hemorrhaging hydration from my cocks onto the floor.
This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, and I once had my ribs broken by a sand-grol. Except the broken ribs did not pulse with a desperate ache that feels better than anything I have ever experienced. I am losing control of my own being.
I try to cover myself with my claws. This proves to be an error in judgment. The instant my digits make contact, a bolt of scorching, electric pleasure shoots straight up my spine and rips a snarling groan out of my throat that rumbles off the cavern walls.
I snatch my claws away.
Do not touch them. Do not think about her. Do not breathe her scent.
I breathe her scent.
The thick, sweet scent that is her swims through the air and straight into my lungs and both shafts jerk upward so hard they slap wetly against my stomach. A fresh rope of slick splatters across my thigh.
I am going to die in this alcove. Killed by my own cocks. And Rok and the rest of my clan are going to find my body and laugh for the rest of their natural lives.
“Kol?”
Her voice comes from directly behind me. Remarkably steady. It lacks the terror I expect.
I do not turn around. I cannot turn around. I am currently hunched against a wall with two towering, engorged, slick-dripping shafts twitching uncontrollably against my stomach every time I inhale her scent, and if she sees the full scope of this situation I will lose her.
“Kol, turn around.”
I hear her feet pad softly across the stone floor. Getting closer.
“No. Stay back.”