Chapter 6 #2
She comes on my cock. The clenching of her channel is ecstasy, a velvet vise that tightens around my shaft in rhythmic pulses, milking me.
“Yes!” she cries out, her body bowing off the furs. I grit my teeth. Deny the release that pulls my balls up tight against my body.
Not yet, the Commander orders.
So, I thrust faster, deeper, harder, her body’s lubrication slicking the way. She comes a second time. A longer climax that makes her scream my name. Her channel clenches so tight around my cock that my vision darkens at the edges.
The rut demands release. The beast demands to take. The Commander needs to claim.
With one final thrust, my cock pulses, releasing its seed deep inside of her in great, surging spurts. Relief rockets through me, a white-hot cascade of pleasure and possession that makes our mating feel like more than just a physical act.
The air ripples around us.
A golden, burning sensation snaps between our chests.
Not pain, exactly, but pressure. A tether of light and heat that binds my heart to hers, forging a connection that feels like being cracked open and remade.
The ward-light in the room blazes bright, then dims. The stone hums at a frequency I have never heard.
This is the mate bond, I am certain of it.
A weight settles in my chest, warm and permanent, an awareness of Layla that lives in my blood now. Her heartbeat alongside mine. Her breath timed to my breath. Two rhythms becoming one.
“What...” She gasps beneath me, her hand pressed to her chest where the bond blazes. “What’s happening?”
I lower my lips to hers, softly, gently, reverently. “It is the mate bond. The old gods have blessed us, Layla. Two have become one. You are safe.”
Her eyes fill before leaking again. I feel it before seeing it, the bond transmitting her emotion. I feel her joy and terror through our tether, a surge of mixed emotions that steal my breath.
The sensations are sharp and unfamiliar, yet wholly satisfying. And the beast quiets for the first time since I scented her on the Lottery floor.
“I don’t understand,” Layla says. “What’s the mate bond?”
The words come slowly. Not because the meaning is unclear, but because the human language makes it difficult to explain what lives in my chest.
“Among my kind, there is a bond that cannot be forged by will or won by strength. It is not chosen. It chooses.” My hand presses flat on her chest where the golden warmth pulses.
“What does that mean for me?” Layla asks. “For us?”
“When the bond forms, what was two becomes one. Your pain is my pain. Your heartbeat lives in my chest. Your death would be my death. Not just from grief, but because the bond does not survive the severing.”
Her eyes widen. The fear spikes through the tether, sharp and bright.
“Do not be afraid, Layla.” My thumb traces circles on her chest. “It is a claiming that goes both ways. I belong to you as surely as you belong to me. The bond makes no distinction between the one who is stronger or the one who is smaller. It blesses the match.”
“Has this happened before? Between one of the monsters here at the Bastion and a human woman?”
“Never.” The word settles between us. “I believe we are the first.”
A small laugh of wonder escapes her. The bond transmits the sound as a bright, sudden flare that reminds me of clean air after a dust storm.
This is what the old songs meant. The ones my clan sang before the Veil tore and thrust some of us into the humans’ world. Into the Gray. Songs about the special bond that sometimes turns two into one, a blessing from the gods that gives a warrior a new purpose in life. A new reason to survive.
I gather her against me. She is so small in my arms. So impossibly, devastatingly small. Yet she is mine, and I am hers, and the dawn can come whenever it pleases.
We will be ready.
Layla
Hours pass. The room smells of sweat and the dark, heady musk of sex. The furs beneath us are damp and tangled, kicked to the edges of the bed, then dragged back when our skin cools and dries. The floor is riddled with discarded ration bar wrappers.
At some point, our frantic fucking turned into making love. Our repeated coupling becoming slower and sweeter and more exploratory, driven by the ticking clock counting down until dawn.
Our need for each other never really faded. If anything, it was sharpened by the knowledge that every kiss, every caress, every thrust was made on borrowed time. We were both insatiable and hungry, which seemed to trigger some sort of primal satisfaction within Krog.
And even now, as we lay exhausted, the bond pulses between us, a warm, steady hum that I feel in my chest, timed to his heartbeat. When he touches me, it flares. When he pulls away, it dims, aching.
It is a living thing, this tether, and it has changed the fundamental architecture of my body. I’m no longer just Layla. Instead, I’m half of a bonded pair.
I’ve never felt anything like this before.
Certainly not in the Wastes, where touch meant violence or transaction.
Not in the Bastion dorms, where women often huddle for comfort.
Not even with Eloise, whose hand in mine was the closest thing to connection before Krog decided I was his…
and proved it with blood and exile and hours of lovemaking.
This is what it means to be claimed. Not owned or caged. Chosen with such ferocity that the claiming itself becomes its own kind of shelter.
Whatever happens in the Wastes, whatever horrors are about to come our way, I’ll always carry this experience with me and use the memory of Krog’s hands on my skin and my name on his voice to spur me forward.
“Sleep,” he murmurs into my hair. My back is pressed to his chest again, his arm draped heavily across my waist, his massive body curled around my small frame. His calloused palm rests flat against my lower belly, warm, grounding, possessive even in the drowsy aftermath. “You need some rest.”
I do need some rest before we’re Recycled into the Wastes.
But this time I’ll have Krog with me. A wall of scarred muscle and devotion who’ll do everything in his power to keep me alive.
And I’m not the same young woman who sought asylum in the Bastion.
Now I’m part of a bonded pair. And that will give me added strength and resilience.
To be honest, I don’t want to sleep. Sleep will steal time we can’t afford to lose. But my body is heavy, wrung out, thoroughly and completely claimed. His arm tightens around me, and his nose buries deeper into my hair, breathing me in.
Something in my belly stirs beneath his palm. A fluttery sensation so slight I almost miss it. Must be a residual effect of the bond between us settling into place. That puts a smile on my face as I close my eyes.
His breathing slows behind me. Deep. Even. The steady exhale of a warrior who has made peace with what comes next.
“I’m glad we’re together,” I whisper into the darkness.
His arm tightens. His lips press against the curve of my shoulder, warm and deliberate. An emotional reply that needs no words.
Despite what’s coming to break us, I fall asleep in the arms of my orc. The last thing that flits through my mind is how comforting that tiny pulse is beneath his palm. A reminder of our strengthening bond.