23 Penny
“Here,” I said, shoving my stuffed bunny into Natascha’s hands as I pushed her into the closet.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m just going to help him with the dishes and then he’ll fall to sleep. He always does.”
She didn’t believe me, but she wanted to. You could do a lot by wanting to believe something, even convince yourself it was true. But we both knew what would happen. Devin would order me about as he finished off a twelve pack, but he wouldn’t hurt me. Not like that. He used a heavy hand on me.
…A gentle hand on Natascha.
No matter how many times I put myself in between them, Devin never wanted me. He wanted Natascha and her perfect rosy cheeks and her bright blond hair and bright eyes. He liked her innocence. Her naivety. I was too rough around the edges already. To mature.
My stomach tightened at the thought and if I had to endure a drunken slap to my head while I put the dishes in the dishwasher, I would, because a smack on the head went away. What he liked to do with Natascha would stay forever. A smack to my face. A kick to my ribs. No food for a day or two.
I could take it…
I reached in, squeezing her hand. “I’m going to protect you, Nat.”
“Who’s going to protect you?”
I smiled. “I don’t need protection. I’m a big girl.”
Earth felt millions of miles away.
In truth, it was much further than that, but something about the expanse made things feel unreal. I kept thinking I could jump back to Earth at any moment, but I was in the middle of nowhere on a ship with a man—an alien—that my heart was aching for against all odds and reason.
I stared out of Thilar’s window, standing in his room like a lonely puppy with my arms hugged around my waist. He told me his door would remain unlocked and he wasn’t lying.
That room, however, wasn’t really his. It didn’t smell like him.
It had nothing of his in it. We were both stripped bare after Mekah.
I desperately wanted to know what a room would be like if it was truly his, filled with his things.
Then I imagined my things being beside them and had to shake the thoughts out of my head.
“He’s an alien, Penny,” I muttered to myself.
Happily ever afters were silly…
They were something Natascha believed in so much that every hardship just shattered her fantasies… until she turned to anything that could blind her to reality.
I sighed loudly, lowering my head.
I missed her. I spent my whole life protecting her and she spent her whole life getting into trouble. Never once did I think about looking after myself, I realized. I joined the military to protect better. I planned to join the police force to protect.
In the end, I couldn’t do any of it.
Another wave of sorrow hit me.
I would never know if the men responsible for her death (and mine) had been caught or if they ever would.
When I could finally lift my head again and face the endless blackness we were flying through, my eyes happened to refocus on a reflection in the glass. Thilar was standing behind me, leaning against the doorway, quiet as still air.
I turned to face him and immediately he doused the burn in my gut over Natascha and everything I left behind on Earth.
“You’re so quiet,” I said.
“And you are so deep in thought.”
His body was so big. So solid. So warm. I wanted to step forward and bury myself in it and pull his arms around me, but my walls were creeping up knowing that we’d have to part ways soon.
I could not get addicted to leaning on him or I’d forget to stand on my own and standing on my own was something I’d been trying to perfect my whole life.
“What are you thinking about?” Thilar asked.
“My sister. She would have liked space a lot more than me. She’d be thriving in the stars. She had a much more fantastical view of the world.”
“And you? What is your view of the world?”
I smiled. “I would call myself a cynic. I think the worst of everything so that I’m not surprised when I’m let down.” Staring at Thilar, I felt my smile falling and my heart fell with it. “And then you happened. And you keep not letting me down. Every promise you make, you keep it.”
“I always keep my promises.”
“That’s the problem.”
His brows furrowed and that pull I felt only got more difficult to resist. I had to change the subject. My stupid mouth had gotten away from me. Perhaps it was being away from Earth and the Nexus that got me. I was feeling homesick… despite not having a home.
“Sorry, I’m not really like this on a normal basis. Space is getting to me.”
“Don’t apologize, Penelope. I enjoy every side of you.”
“Stop it. You don’t know every side of me. And you never will. Because I’m being sent away again to be someone else’s problem.”
“That is not what you are.”
“Should we be trying to get away from each other? To, you know, ease into this inevitable separation?”
He remained calm and collected through everything I said.
I wished I had that same control.
“Would that make things easier for you?”
I swallowed hard and then admitted, “No.”
He stepped forward as if someone had unhooked him from his chains and he took my face gently in his hands, bringing my lips to his.
The instant heat from his mouth sent fiery streams through my whole body until I moaned, helpless.
I grabbed hold of his arms and held onto him, wanting nothing more than to hear him promise not to leave my side.
I would have killed for that promise. I would have leapt right back into the arena and fought for him to say it.
When we parted, he pressed his forehead to mine, breathing me in.
“Penny, I want you to know, if I had it my way, you would be mine,” he said, his voice and the deep growling undertone of his words making my body melt beneath me like hot wax.
“You want to know what scares me?” I whispered, opening my eyes and gazing up at him, eyes stinging. “I already am.”
He stilled, his eyes flitting back and forth between mine, his breath coming in longer, louder rhythms. I wanted to know what he was thinking, but then he moved away from me, reaching back to slap the control on the door and close it.
When he turned back to face me, he gave me no time before his mouth crashed into mine again, hungrier than ever.
I rose up on my toes, arching into him as his big hands pulled at my waist. His tongue slid into my mouth as if he owned it and he did.
I was all his and I relished the idea of him losing control over his urges.
Thilar drove me toward the window until my back pressed into the cool glass.
I gasped at the shock and he immediately tugged me away from it, moving himself toward the bed until he was sitting down on the edge.
I stood between his knees looking down at him as his fingers slid up beneath the hem of my jacket.
I was panting, my body too hot to notice the cold anymore.
I traced his jaw with my fingers as he began to pull the magnetic closure of my jacket apart, slowly unwrapping me like an offering.
“What do you want?” I whispered as my breasts fell free, my nipples pebbling as soon as they hit the frigid air.
His hands moved toward my pants next, tugging them down my hips, his eyes never leaving mine.
“I want you to get out of these clothes,” he rasped.
I instantly shimmied the jacket off and stepped out of my pants and boots, eager to feel Thilar against me.
As soon as I was bare, he shrugged out of his own jacket, tossing it aside.
I loved seeing him like that, his strange markings out for me to see.
I reached down, my fingertips moving slowly over the pearlescent script along his ribs.
“What are these?”
“Toel kef markings. A record of my experiences. All monrians begin to collect them after their first contract.”
I sighed, realizing I could listen to him elaborate on that all day, but I was too eager to touch him.
Feel him. Judging by the way Thilar’s gaze traced my naked body, he was eager to feel me, too.
He gently grabbed my hips, pulling me toward him so he could brush his lips across my newest scar, a thin line where the nozun had stabbed me beneath my ribs.
“Let me see you,” I whispered.
He paused, tilting his head back to look up at me.
I stepped back and he slowly stood, towering over me as he tugged the snaps and buckles apart on the front of his pants.
I realized then that the only other time I even got a glimpse of his entire body was in the communal bathing area on Mekah, and I’d been trying to avoid staring.
I watched him eagerly as he slid his pants down his muscled thighs, my eyes settling immediately on his thick cock.
It stretched keenly upward beneath the prominent “v” of his toned lower abdomen.
I swallowed, suddenly astounded that it had been inside me.
He was not only thick, but he was also long, the tip tapered like a dull arrow with a slight upward curve.
The gray color of his skin faded toward the end into something paler where thick veins coiled along the sides.
I glanced back up at Thilar, my core setting fire to my nerves when he pulled me close to him and sat back down on the bed.
His cock prodded my thigh, tantalizing and terrifying at the same time, as he slid his hand between my thighs.
I was not surprised at how wet I was. My body salivated at the mere thought of Thilar’s touch.
He slid two fingers deep into my body and as if on command, I let out a long and satisfied sigh.
Leaning in, he kissed my belly, traveling upward slowly before sucking my pert nipple into his mouth.
I braced my hands on his shoulders, trying to stay upright, but he was flooding my body with sensations. As his tongue lavished my breast, his fingers moved inside me, stretching me as if in preparation.
But I wanted more and I knew he did, too.
I shoved against him and he instantly gave in, laying back on the mattress in surrender.
I carefully straddled his hips, settling myself against his cock as I kissed him.
He raked his fingers through my hair, turning my head to deepen the kiss as he pushed his hips upward, letting his dick slide between my wet lower lips.
“I want to remember what it feels like to be inside you, Penny,” he said between kisses, those words making my pussy flutter with need.
“Then do it.”
His lips crashed hard into mine once more, his hand sliding around the back of my neck as his other dove down between us.
I rose up a little higher, moving my hips until the tip of his cock was notched at my entrance.
I recalled the pain the last time, but I didn’t care.
I wanted him anyways. Desperately. I wanted to feel that overwhelming claim he had made over me.
As he slowly lifted his hips, I began to sink down onto his length, relishing the way I began to stretch around him. At my small whimper, Thilar stopped, but I didn’t want him to. I wanted all of him. I wanted to give him all the pleasure he wanted and deserved.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he rasped.
I shook my head. “You’re not.”
I started to sink further onto his girth, taking him deeper as I claimed his mouth in another ravenous kiss.
The stretch made me ache, but I was so damn wet, he slid in with incredible ease.
When he could go no deeper, Thilar let out a throaty, relieved sound that made me want to bend to his every will.
Braced on my hands, I said, “I want to feel you come.”
His breath shuddered out of him like my words were nails lightly scraping down his skin.
He tugged me toward him and kissed me hard, unrestrained, and then gripped my hip with his free hand.
And as soon as his tongue delved deep into my mouth, he began to move, pumping his hips upward.
Slow at first, but gradually his movements hastened.
I moaned against his mouth, my core swelling with heat at every thrust. When I felt like I was suffocating, I pulled from our kiss and dropped onto my elbows, gasping for air.
The sound of Thilar’s rugged breaths sawing out of him woke every sleeping nerve in my body.
I didn’t know how, but I needed to feel him deeper. Harder. I needed to remember what it was like to have him inside me long after we parted ways, so I began to rock against him, encouraging him to lose control. To take what he needed at whatever pace he desired.
“Whatever you want, Thilar,” I panted. “Take it.”
He grabbed my hips with both hands, moving me against him.
He quickly abandoned the control he held so dear and he fucked me, his body tensing for the oncoming release.
I pressed my mouth to his neck, screwing my eyes shut as my walls tightened possessively around him.
His fingers bit into my flesh, marking me, and I could sense every fiber of his body reaching for that pinnacle he’d been denying himself.
I wanted to see him lose his grip and unravel.
I wanted it so desperately. I turned my nose into his neck and I breathed him in, whimpering softly into his ear before I opened my mouth and bit down on the skin just beneath his ear.
He groaned, throwing his head back and thrusting deep, burying himself to the hilt inside my tight channel.
I felt his almost unbearably hot seed flood my insides and like a match striking and igniting, my own orgasm rushed up on me with little warning.
I bit into him harder, confident that even if I meant to break his flesh, I couldn’t.
He breathed in clipped and uneven gasps, his body twitching beneath me like the pang of my bite had thrown him over the edge.
And every time a wave of pleasure hit him, it made the remnants of my own release that much more potent.
My whole body was rippling with torturous awareness as the climax ebbed, leaving me a shaking mess astride Thilar’s form.
Cum leaked from inside me and as filthy as it was, I wanted nothing more than to savor the feeling—the sense of being filled with Thilar until I could not contain him. The thought of him marking my body like I’d marked his, though, already, the crescent marks of my blunt teeth were fading.
Slowly, the two of us caught our breath. He brought his hand up and combed the hair from my face. As he did, I found the strength to lift my head and look at his heavy eyes.
“I don’t like that this felt like a goodbye,” I muttered.
“Neither do I,” he returned, breaking my spirit a little.
He’d been reassuring in every way, but he couldn’t reassure me about that.
There was a lot more that I wanted to say.
A lot more that I wanted to complain about and scream about, but I couldn’t.
I didn’t feel that it was worth it. So, I laid my head against his broad chest and I savored his heat.
The sound of his steady heartbeat. I savored every bit of it because soon, it would all be relinquished to my memories.