Chapter 18 #3
The wet, driving sound of our bodies fills the alcove. I drive into her in deep, grinding rolls. Every thrust pushes a ragged moan out of her throat. Every moan rips through my chest like claws.
“Eh-ree-kah.” I chant her name in the mindspace, the syllables tearing up my throat. “Eh-ree-kah. Eh-ree-kah.”
She pulls my face down to hers and presses her mouth to mine with a slick, open-mouthed hunger that tastes of salt and dust and her.
Her internal walls begin to spasm.
The tight, rapid contractions clamp down around the thick ridges, creating a friction so perfectly agonizing that my body decides the battle is over.
I throw my head back, my body stiffening.
A deep grunt rumbles my chest as my body is breaking open. I do not know what the shattering release is. I only know that I am sharing my essence with her, a scalding, thick liquid flooding the deepest parts of her body. It pours into her, a deluge designed to fill her completely.
Beneath us, the second shaft throbs against the cleft of her rear, spurting its own thick, hot stream directly onto the furs.
Eh-ree-kah clamps down against me, her thighs shaking before she suddenly collapses beneath me, boneless, gasping for air, trembling.
I wrap both arms around her and roll us onto our sides so my weight does not crush her. I press my face into her mane, her face, her neck, breathing in the overwhelmingly sweet scent of my mate.
We stay locked together, panting.
And then, something monumental breaks open.
I feel her entry like something piercing through a mountain of rock.
The mindspace crashes into existence around her.
I see her. I hear her. I feel her.
I look down at my mate, and I can look out of her human eyes.
I do not see the terrifying dra-dam the rest of the clan sees. I see the male who sat quietly by the fire. I see the huge, gentle hands that carved a smooth stone while she slept. I see a lonely, desperate creature who slept on the cold stone floor just to breathe her scent.
Eh-ree-kah stills. She tilts her head and looks up at me, her dark eyes glinting in my dim light.
“Kol?” Her mental voice rings out clearly. It is sharp. Confused. Different from when we pressed brows together.
I stare down at her, my rumble humming quietly in the base of my throat.
“I am here,” I project back.
Her dark eyes go round.
”Holy shit,” she projects.
A sudden, baffling image of sacred waste flashes across the connection. I frown deeply.
”I’m in your head,” she finishes, the realization hitting my mind with the force of a falling rock smashing down from the high ledges.
“You are in my mind,” I correct her. I pull her back down against my chest, wrapping a thick arm over her bare shoulders to trap her against the heat of my skin. ”And you are very loud. Go to sleep.”
She lets out a sharp, breathless sound of disbelief, her body stiffening for a half-second before she sags into the furs against me.
“Bossy,” her mental voice mutters against my skull.
The sheer, exhausted relief radiating through the mindspace settles deep into my bones. I close my eyes, burying my face in her soft mane. She is mine. She is safe.
And then, the memory of her words from the cold cavern entrance hits my mind.
We grow them. We carry them here. Inside our bodies.
My eyes snap open in the dark.
I stare down at the soft, fragile expanse of her bare stomach, pressed flush against my hip. I had just filled her. The scalding fluid of my release is currently pooling deep inside her heat.
The ancient carvings in the Hall of Knowing crash through my memory, along with Jah-kee’s frantic explanation to Tharn. The egg comes from the woman, the sperm comes from the man. During the act of joining...
“Eh-ree-kah,” I project. My mental voice is suddenly sharp enough to shatter stone.
She flinches against me, her eyes flying open. “What? Kol, what is it?”
I slide my hand flat over the soft curve of her lower belly. I can feel the erratic flutter of her fragile pulse beneath her skin.
“The joining. The fluid I placed inside you.”
Her thoughts instantly flood with a chaotic, blinding mix of embarrassment and realization.
“Oh. Oh my god. We didn’t—I mean, I can’t believe I didn’t even think about...”
“You carry the newly-formed young inside your body,” I project, the panic rising so fast it physically burns the back of my throat. “For a complete half orbit of Ain.”
Her mental projection stutters. “Yes, but Kol, it’s really hard to get pregnant on Earth. I’m human...and you’re Drakav. We might not even be compatible—”
“The dust made me compatible to you,” I rumble in the mindspace. My arm tightens around her shoulders, clamping her so tightly against my chest she gasps. “I restructured my very bones to fit your heat. If my fluid takes root, you will grow a Drakav inside this fragile shell.”
“Kol, you’re crushing me,” she gasps aloud, pushing frantically against my chest.
I loosen my grip by a fraction, shifting my weight so my upper body hovers directly over hers. I bracket her head with my claws, staring down at her in the dim light.
“How do they come out?” Despite my efforts, the thought still bleeds terror into the space between us. I remember Tharn’s same fear in the Hall of Knowing. “You have no seams for a Drakav to come through. You are too soft. Will you crack open like the Giving Stone? Will it rip through your flesh?”
Her dark eyes go wide. “Crack open? What? No! God, Kol, no! Humans don’t crack open like rocks!”
“Then how?”
“Through the same place you just put the fluid!” she projects, a hysterical edge bleeding into her mental voice. “It’s called birth! It’s difficult and painful, but women don’t explode!”
My thoughts go silent.
I stare down at the narrow, delicate spread of her hips.
I stare at her small frame. Then I try to do the mental calculation of a Drakav youngling, with claws, exiting her body.
It has been many moons since we have had to take a dying warrior to the Giving Stone.
Many moons since I last saw a youngling.
But we leave the stone ready to fight. A Drakav youngling is almost the same size as Eh-ree-kah.
A low, guttural noise tears from my chest. It is impossible for one to grow within her.
“You will be weighed down,” my thoughts pour directly into her mind. “You will be slow. And then it will tear you apart. And even if it does not, I can never place my shafts inside you again. I can never share my water with you. It is too dangerous.”
A soft, sudden sound echoes in the mindspace. It takes my frantic brain a full second to realize she is chuckling.
“Kol, breathe,” she projects warmly, the humor radiating from her. “Human babies don’t start out that big. They start out smaller than a pebble. And human women have been having babies since the dawn of time. I am not going to explode.”
”A pebble?” I project back, stunned.
“A pebble,” she confirms. And then her soft, slick hips deliberately roll upwards, grinding directly against my hyper-sensitive ridges.
A breathless, ragged groan rips out of my throat. My claws dig into the furs as both shafts jump wildly between our bodies.
“And for the record,” she projects, her mental voice suddenly flushed with heat, “you are still allowed to put your shafts inside me.”
My logic shatters. The panic is instantly vaporized by a tidal wave of hunger.
“Even so,” I press my forehead flush against hers, crushing her against the furs as my possessiveness surges back.
“You will not leave the safety of this alcove. I will bring you all the food. I will bring you water. I will slay any creature that looks at the entrance to this cave. You will not walk outside again until the young are safely removed from your body.”
“I am not spending nine months in a pile of furs!” she shouts out loud, slapping my solid chest with a loud smack. “I have chores! I have a schedule! You can’t just mandate bed rest for an entire year over a hypothetical pregnancy!”
“I can,” I project. “And I will kill anyone who tries to hand you a water filter.”
Her pulse spikes wildly against my hand. The absolute, unyielding wall of my possessiveness crashes against her in the mindspace.
“Say it,” I command, pinning her under the weight of my focus. “Say you will remain in the furs.”
She glares up at me. “I’m not saying that.”
A low rumble builds in my chest. “Then I will not let you sleep.”