Chapter Nine #2
He bends to catch my mouth, his teeth grazing my lip. My nails drag lightly over his shoulder, drawing a low growl.
I lean back and draw him closer.
“Touch me like you want me,” I whisper. “I know I’m injured, but I am also painfully, ridiculously turned on, and if you make me beg politely, I’ll throw something.”
“My fierce little human,” he murmurs.
I freeze.
His face stills instantly. “No?”
I swallow. “Say it again.”
“My fierce little human.”
Then his hand slides to my hip with the pressure I asked for.
The last of my clothes come away under his hands. Cool air hits my skin; his mouth finds the unbruised places that make me arch and a ticklish spot at my waist that makes me laugh. I clutch at his horn, and he groans.
He does not rush.
I try to make him.
He refuses with his mouth against my stomach, hands firm on my hips, voice rough with amusement and torment.
The mattress adjusts beneath us until I curse at it and Rhazek tells the ship to stop helping in a voice so strained I almost laugh. Then his mouth moves lower, and laughter becomes impossible.
His mouth pauses against the soft skin below my navel, controlled enough to make me ache and cruel enough to know it.
“Careful,” I warn, already pulling him lower.
His growl answers that like a vow.
He kisses the inside of one thigh, then the other, breath hot, claws buried in the sheets so they cannot catch me. His mouth works inward with maddening patience. When his tongue finally drags through the slick between my legs, the sound I make is not dignified.
He groans like I have offered him something sacred and obscene at once.
“Elara.” My name comes out wrecked. “You are soaked for me.”
“Yes. Don’t narrate it like a medical chart.”
His laugh vibrates against my cunt.
He maps me with his mouth: long strokes through my folds, then a focused, textured pull over the swollen peak that makes my thighs shake. When he sucks, I nearly come off the bed.
His tail slides up the outside of my calf and stays there, warm weight, not wrapping.
I hook one leg over his shoulder. “More. Inside. Fingers. Not—” I swallow. “Not you. Not that.”
“Not mating,” he says against me. “Only what you named.” He retracts his claws before pressing two thick fingers into me, slow enough that I feel every ridge of his knuckles.
I am tight. Soaked. He works me open with care that still feels indecent, curling those fingers until he finds the place that makes my vision spark, mouth never leaving me. I roll my hips onto his hand and take what I want.
“Look at me while I make you come,” he rasps.
I do. Gold burns through the markings on his shoulders. His mouth is shining with me. His eyes are blown black-gold and starving.
Pleasure builds slowly, then breaks open all at once. I come with his name in my mouth, clenching around his fingers, thighs shaking against his horns. He groans and keeps licking me through it until I shove at his head, oversensitive and done.
Rhazek stills when he lifts his head, eyes fixed on my face, mouth wet with me.
The gold markings across his body blaze so bright the room fills with light.
The Black Star shudders beneath us.
Rhazek kisses my temple. My cheek. The corner of my mouth.
I catch his face. “Did that count as mating?”
“Intimacy,” he says, voice wrecked. “Not mating.”
I slide my hand down his chest, stopping over the deep beat of his second heart. “Show me what you want tonight.”
He shifts beside me and guides my hand down the ridged markings of his stomach. I loosen his trousers. When I slide my palm inside, I find him thick, hot, and already wet at the tip.
He is not human.
Dark silver-black like the rest of him, heavier in my grip than I expected, with subtle ridges running the length of his cock in the same pattern as the markings on his chest. The head is broad. A slow pulse of heat beats under my fingers, timed to his second heart.
“Fuck,” I whisper, because there is no medical word for this.
His breath shudders. “Elara—sweet star, your hand—”
“You’re a lot,” I whisper, tightening my grip.
I stroke him the way he shows me: firm at the base, a twist under the head, my thumb smearing the slick he leaks. His hips jerk once and then lock still, warlord discipline fighting a man who wants to thrust into my fist. I lean down and lick the wetness off the tip.
The taste is mineral-sweet and hot. He makes a sound I have never heard from him, raw and broken.
“Elara.”
I take as much of him as I can. He is too big to swallow easily, so I use my hand on what will not fit and suck the rest, messy and determined. His claws tear the sheet. His tail slams once against the floor and goes rigid.
He says my name when he finally shatters.
His body bows over mine, one hand braced beside my head, the other locked in the torn sheet so he will not grip me too hard.
Heat spills over my tongue and down my fist, thick and shocking.
I swallow what I can and work him through the rest until he is shaking.
The markings blaze until they paint my skin.
Then every light goes soft.
Rhazek breathes hard beside me, careful even in collapse not to crowd me. His tail lies along the edge of the bed like it has exhausted itself too.
My body feels warm and boneless and dangerously peaceful.
So naturally, panic slips in through the gap.
I sit up too fast.
Rhazek moves away instantly.
He is off the bed in one motion. He fastens his trousers, then holds his hands open, chest bare and markings still glowing.
“Elara.”
“I’m okay.”
I drag the blanket up over myself. My hands are shaking.
The room that felt warm now feels huge. The closed door is suddenly too close to pod glass. My body still hums with him, but my mind is catching up.
I press a hand to my mouth.
Rhazek’s voice is quiet. “Door open?”
I nod.
The door opens immediately.
Nima appears in the doorway.
“Elara?” she asks.
I huff. “I am not okay, but I am not hurt.”
“I will leave,” Rhazek says from across the room.
“No,” I say.
“Just… give me a second.”
He stays where he is while I slow my breathing.
I look down at my hands.
A faint mark remains in the center of my palm, like a tiny star beneath the skin.
My stomach flips.
“Uh,” I say.
I hold up my hand.
The little star glows once.
Then his markings answer.
Not everywhere this time. Just over his heart.
He kneels beside the bed. I place my hand in his, and the mark brightens.
“What is it?” I ask.
His jaw tightens. “I do not know.”
Nima says, “I’m getting Seryn.”
“Go,” Rhazek and I say together.
Then she leaves.
With the door still open, I curl my fingers around his. Fear remains, but I cannot make myself regret this.