Chapter Eight
Her sweet little berry-like lips pressed into his, and her words burned into his soul. My King.
After this.
We can pick.
Keep being with.
With a little growl of want, he pulled her closer, into his lap, kissing her back, prepared to end it swiftly so she wouldn't overheat, and so she wouldn’t make that horrible, sickening fear smell because of him.
Instead, she made her own sound, a throaty, desperate noise as she pulled him closer, one hand on his shoulder, one in his mane. “Aren’t you too warm?” he asked, trying to find a center of calm in the dizzying spiral of lust and want.
“Don’t care.” Sasha stroked her hands over his shoulders now, down his back, as best as she could reach. “You’re beautiful, you know? Inside and out.”
The spiral went wild. “You don’t have to—”
“I would never lie to you.”
The scent that had addicted him earlier made him woozy now.
There was so much of it, so much of her, surrounding him, but it changed, with notes that were darker and deeper.
Sweeter. He buried his muzzle in her neck, gave up his manners, and licked a long line across her throat, tasting her pulse, tasting the way her blood pounded under his touch.
“Yes,” Sasha gave a single, breathy word that unlocked his reserve.
His tongue and lips wandered together, a dozen little presses, a bouquet of trailing, teasing licks that were constantly drawing him down, down to where the scent was sweetest and strongest. “I don’t know what you want me to do, my Queen.
I know what I want to do, but I don’t want to make you afraid, or make you think I want us to complete certain acts without proper preparation.
” Gideon let out a shaking breath, holding himself in check.
That sentence had been made with his last firing brain cells, his last bits of propriety.
“W-what do you want to do?” Sasha asked, and there was the tiniest shift in her scent, an undercurrent of the panicked scent that he’d smelled when she first woke up beside him.
“Keep kissing you. Licking you. All over. Find my way across your body and leave a thousand kisses all over you. So I can keep the taste of you in my mind, always. Even after.”
“Listen,” Sasha’s voice was still breathless, but it had a commanding note that made him instantly alert. “Unless you’re the world’s best actor, you’re an awesome guy. Better than awesome. I don’t want there to be an ‘after’ if you mean ‘after this is over.’”
He nodded. He did mean that, even with all she had just said.
“No, no.” She shook her head fiercely. “There is no ‘after,’ because one event can end, but the people involved in the event? They don’t have to end. They can choose to still be together, right?”
“Right. Yes!” His heart dared to hope. To believe.
“I know we’re rushing—”
“We have had so many years alone, leading to the part where we find each other,” Gideon soothed.
“So we are rushing to unite—because perhaps we were always supposed to find one another. Why else would Bastet move Farhet to take this path, and you to have a roommate who could not commit to meeting the deadlines, but you could do the work, and I could be his substitute?”
“I don’t know much about Bastet, but I know that this was supposed to be business—and now?” Sasha looked at him, eyes bright. “I would rather keep you than the money.”
“Without the money from this, I wouldn’t be able to have you, my Queen,” Gideon said.
In a world where young Knights didn’t stand a chance compared to the wealthier, older Felids who could provide for a Queen and promise a wonderful future for their cubs, he had always known he wouldn’t stand a chance.
And Sasha might not realize it, coming from Sapien-Three, but there would be thousands of Knights waiting to offer her the world on a platter. Still, he was beginning to wonder.
She said she might fall in love with me.
That’s here. Where there are no others to show her that I am the least favored option. And if I let her believe that... If I am so selfish as to keep her from better options, and later she finds out the truth, what then?
“You could do so much better, my Queen. I must be truthful and tell you this,” Gideon rasped, swallowing over a lump of pain and lies in his throat. “I wish I could tell you that I am truly the best option, but—”
“But you really are. Because only someone who can love with his whole heart, who would put someone else’s happiness above his own, would say the things you say, or do the things you do.
And me? The girl who doesn't like all the physical stuff?” Sasha scooted deeper into his lap, a look of lust in her eyes.
“I’m feeling all the things right now, Gideon, and I’m making sure I show you tonight, before the shot kicks in all the way.
Why? So you know it’s me who wants you, not some injection. ”
A ragged noise of want and disbelief tore from him before he claimed her mouth, kissing her harder than he should, paws greedily massaging her back. “Thank you, my Queen.”
“My King.”
The words stroked a hungry, neglected spot inside of him. “If you call me that, I will lose control and devour you,” he warned, chuckling.
“I’ve never been devoured before, but I hear from Nessa that Felid tongues are perfect for the job,” Sasha teased.
Gideon’s body felt as though it had just powered on, and that his system was spiking into the danger zone, overloaded with desire and disbelief. “You mean... you have never been pleasured with kisses?”
“I think it’s more the licking and sucking part. No. I... Um. I didn’t feel comfortable enough with the partners I had to get to the point where we did more than kissing, some groping and rubbing, and then he was in me, out of me, and it was over.”
“But I may devour you? Licking, sucking, kissing?” Gideon confirmed, worried that his rapidly swelling erection would create a wet mess just from the thought of Sasha giving him permission to do such a delicious act.
“Yeah. Yes,” Sasha breathed out between kisses, nodding hard. “But if I need you to stop—”
“I will stop. It is not hard to stop doing something if stopping gives you more comfort, Sasha. I am happy when you are happy, when you are safe.”
“Yep. There’s that thing I told you not to do, or I would fall in love with you,” Sasha said, her smile soft, her lips pressing one more kiss to his cheek.
“Ah. That is the one thing I will have to disobey you in, because it is for your own good,” he warned, and let out a little gasp of surprise when his much smaller human companion pushed him onto his back.
IT WAS SO PERFECT. The snuggling. The kissing. The gradual way she shed her dress with his careful, almost reverent help.
Gideon’s eyes were so wide, she was afraid they might actually pop free. “You have seen naked women, right? Like human ones?”
“When I studied, I saw a few images, but I didn’t dwell on them. Those Queens were not mine, so I didn’t think it was right to stare.”
“You can stare at me—but maybe not too long, because I’m not some model.”
“You should be. You are incredibly beautiful,” Gideon protested, watching as she slowly undid her bra.
Gideon made a gulping noise that sounded like a vibrating hiccup, surrounded by his purr.
“By Bastet... Why were you not already someone’s mate and Queen?
For your beauty alone, men would fight for you.
And that is before they hear your laugh, before they speak to you and find out that you are so warm and full of joy. ”
“I’m not like that on Sapien-Three,” Sasha admitted. “Because there’s no one to make me feel safe and happy, Gideon. The things you like about me? You cause them.”
“As if we were meant to be,” he murmured in awe.
“Exactly as if we were meant to be,” Sasha repeated, clinging to his side, her hand stroking through the thick, plush fur on his chest. “So soft.”
“As are you. Skin like silk.”
“Fur like velvet, only such thick, thick velvet,” Sasha sighed as his paw caressed her naked back and tentatively moved to her breast. “Speaking of thick things—your pants look like they are in serious danger of tearing.”
Gideon grunted as his much larger body slid down so that his massive head and what felt like yards of mane nestled into her middle. “I will repair them.”
“I meant you could take them off.”
“Are you certain? I know you are worried about size issues. I thought if I kept them on, you would know that I wasn’t going to attempt, uh, attempt anything.”
“I already know that, that’s why I want you to be as comfortable with me as I am with you,” Sasha encouraged. “We can touch each other without having penetrative sex.”
“Oh. I knew that, but I didn’t know if that was allowable to you,” Gideon said in his sweet, polite voice that just melted her. “I feel like I have so much to learn, but it is the Queen’s job to be adored. She shouldn’t have to stop and instruct,” he let out a noise of frustration.
Sasha laughed and shook her head. “Trust me. I can already tell that you are someone who doesn’t need ‘instructing.’ It’s just a good policy to talk to your partners about likes and dislikes, expectations.”
“Mm. I will do that, then, my Queen.”
SASHA BIT HER LIP TO keep from moaning directly in Gideon’s ear as his tongue lapped over a tight nipple, and his digits stroked up and down her outer thigh.
Apparently, he had taken her directions to talk to your partner in the most literal sense of the word—and it was a fucking revelation.
Her past experiences included guys who spoke in terms of “fuck, yeah” and “yes, yes, yes!” as their entire romantic communication. Gideon?
“Mmm. This is such a little treat, my Queen. And so sensitive? Do you enjoy that?” His tongue dragged from one nipple to the other, then ended with a gentle suck that put her entire breast in his mouth.
“Ohhh, oh, God, Gideon...”