25. Magnolia
25
MAGNOLIA
“ H e had to build the whole thing inside the bottle. Isn’t that incredible?”
Killian held the bottle up to his face, squinting eyes that were gold and brown more than they were white these days. It had been a little over a week since I’d woken up after the bite.
“So it really is a ship ,” Killian said, his tone sour with disappointment.
“Of course it’s a ship,” I said with a chuckle. “I told you it was a ship in a bottle. What else would it be?”
“Don’t answer that,” came a stern voice. A voice like gravel and smoke. A voice I loved.
Garrek entered the bedroom – Oaken’s bedroom – which had become my convalescence headquarters. I felt more than a little guilty about stealing Oaken’s bed – especially since he had his own injuries to contend with, not to mention the fact I’d decided not to marry the poor guy – but he wouldn’t hear of me sleeping anywhere else .
Oaken had some spare bedding and camped out in the kitchen at night, while Garrek and Killian had been sleeping in their bedrolls in the frame of the new cabin they were building. When that cabin was finished being constructed, Killian, Garrek, and I would move in there and I’d finally be able to give Oaken his bed back.
“Go on,” Garrek grunted at Killian. “Time to sleep.”
“No! I’m not tired!” Killian said.
“Hey, Killian,” I whispered, as if I had some delicious secret for him. “If you listen to Garrek and go get comfy and cozy, you can bring the ship with you and keep it.”
His eyes flashed white. Despite the fact he’d seemed less than impressed with it a second ago, he now clutched feverishly at it before glancing down at his own claws as if to make sure it was still there.
“Goodnight, sweet pea,” I said with a smile.
Killian bolted away, his new treasure held fast in his hands. Garrek closed the door and sat down in the chair beside the bed. My portable lantern was lit on the side table, casting a warm orange glow that lent his dark blue skin shades of burgundy and burnished bronze. Whispery little thrills – like rainbow birthday candles – lit all through my belly at the sight of him. At once, I was reaching for him, but he was already there, both his hands closing around mine.
“Busy day?” I asked, already knowing that it had been. Garrek worked tirelessly – or maybe not exactly tirelessly, based on the exhaustion I saw etched around his eyes – on Oaken’s property. Between assisting his injured cousin with his various chores, taking care of his own herd and shuldu, keeping an eye on Killian, and building the small cabin, his list of tasks was never-ending. And even with all that, he still found time every day to make sure I ate properly, bathed in a big tub by the fire in Oaken’s kitchen, and had everything I needed.
Everything except…
Except him. I missed him when I was stuck here recovering. I wanted to sleep beside him. But we both felt it wasn’t right for us to share Oaken’s bed as a couple. And if we were sleeping beside each other, then I’d probably try to jump his big blue bones, and Garrek gave me the impression he was slightly terrified of that possibility right now. Like he was worried that he would break me.
But I was feeling so much better. Today had been a turning point. I probably couldn’t get on top of him and give him the energetic cowgirl-style ride I’d fantasized about countless times already, but I could at least get nakey and touch his dick a little. If he let me.
“Yes,” he grunted. “But the floors and outer walls of the cabin are up.”
“Oh, wow! Can I see?”
Hey eyed me speculatively.
“I can do it,” I told him stubbornly. “I’ve already been walking to the outhouse all on my own lately!”
The outhouse was a pretty decent distance from the house. It had been a major milestone for me to make it all the way there and back without one of the boys supporting me .
“What?” Garrek asked, looking astounded and angry and guilty all at once. “Why did you not call for me? I would have come running.”
“I know you would have. But I wanted to do it on my own. And it was fine. I’m getting better. I promise.”
He gave an incredulous sort of rumble in his throat.
“I’m OK, Garrek. I’m really going to be OK.”
He watched me in the lantern-lit quiet for a moment before sighing and standing.
“Alright. Let’s go. But if I see you wobble even once,” he warned, “I’m picking you up and bringing you right back here.”
“Deal,” I said, excitement zipping through my blood. I couldn’t wait to see how the cabin was looking from the inside. I’d only seen the structure from a distance so far.
Garrek watched me intently as I wiggled out from under the coverings and swung my feet over the side of the bed. If he was waiting for a sign that I was too weak, a sign that I was going to falter, well, he wasn’t going to get it. It was nice to stretch my legs a little as I settled my weight upon them. Even my left foot, which had been tender for a few days, felt pretty much back to normal now.
“Boots,” he growled before I could even take a step.
“As if I would forget,” I chided gently.
I knew that Garrek had been traumatized by what had happened to me. I couldn’t even imagine how I would have felt if our roles had been reversed. If I’d had to stand by and watch Garrek go through something that, by all accounts, should have killed him .
Luckily my boots had been among my things that Killian had retrieved when he’d gone back to our temporary campsite the day I’d been bitten, so they were close at hand. Very carefully, so that I didn’t lose my balance and give Garrek a reason to toss me back into the bed, I put on the boots. By the time I straightened up, Garrek had my jacket ready and waiting in his hands. He stretched it open, and, feeling suddenly a little shy, a little nervous, and more than a little infatuated, I turned around so I could stick an arm in one sleeve, and then the other.
I paused for a moment, just to feel the warm bulk of him behind me. Just to bask in the shivery sensation of his presence. So big and solid and mine.
“Come on,” I murmured.
He took my hand before I could reach for his.
We left the bedroom and entered the kitchen. I struggled to hold back a snort of laughter.
“For someone who said he wasn’t tired,” I whispered, not wanting to wake Killian, “he sure didn’t make it very far.”
Against the wall of the kitchen, in Oaken’s bedding, Killian was curled up into a tight little ball, fast asleep. The ship in a bottle was tucked beneath his chin, held with both his hands.
“I’m not getting my bed back tonight, am I?”
Oaken’s voice made Garrek and I turn in unison towards the door. He limped in, using a crutch, and grimaced down at Killian.
“I will move him,” Garrek said, already bending to do it .
“Don’t,” Oaken said softly, grimace shifting to a smile. “He worked hard today. I saw him busting his tail to put up those walls with you.”
“Can’t blame him,” Garrek replied. “He was excited to help build his own room.”
“Sorry, Oaken,” I said on a hush. “You keep losing your bed!”
He turned his lovely smile on me.
“I’ve been alone here a long time,” he said. “I find that I don’t mind so much.”
Please, please, let him get an awesome human wife.
He deserved one. Even if it wasn’t me.
Oaken rested his crutch against the table and awkwardly got down onto the floor. He leaned back against the wall near Killian, stretched out his legs, crossed his arms over his brawny green chest, and closed his eyes.
“Let’s leave them to it, shall we?” I asked, giving Garrek’s hand a squeeze. His thumb brushed the tender skin of my inner wrist in response.
He led me out the door Oaken had just come through. The frame looked like it had been recently repaired.
I took a dreamy breath as we stepped outside.
The mountains - and Oaken’s property within them - were absolutely stunning. Oaken’s cabin was nestled in a broad, lush valley between piercing mountain peaks. During the day, those peaks gleamed in shades of pink and copper and rose gold. Like this, at night, they were painted in silver and ink, so huge it was as if the very bones of the planet had broken and pressed through the skin. The grass was a thick carpet, rustling in the wind. Fenced-in pastures housing the bracku and shuldu only took up a tiny portion of the sprawling valley, which was bisected by a wide, clear stream.
On the other side of the stream was the cabin.
It was even smaller than Oaken’s. The walls were now complete, a cozy, wooden box among the grass and mountains. From this distance it looked like something you’d house toys inside. The roof wasn’t on yet – it only had a frame so far.
“Few more days’ work,” Garrek told me as we walked over the springy grass. It wasn’t as dry here as the lands we’d left. The ground felt bouncy, the grass well-watered. There had been rain at least three times that I’d been aware of since I’d woken up, and Oaken had told me this was typical for spring in the mountains.
When we reached the creek, rippling like a ribbon of pearly silk, Garrek led me along the bank until we reached a little natural bridge made of large stones.
“Get on my back,” Garrek said, turning and getting down on one knee.
“I can walk on the little rock steps,” I protested. “It looks like fun!”
“If you want to get across this creek and see the cabin,” he growled, “then you will do it on my back or not at all. I won’t have you falling in the water tonight.”
“Fine. You’re so bossy,” I clucked.
“I have to be,” he said flatly. “How else would I keep you and Killian alive? ”
I nodded, even though his back was to me and he wouldn’t see. He was right. How many times had I heard him tell Killian to put his boots on? And not wearing boots had nearly been my downfall.
I slid my hands along his warm, bare shoulders. He tensed at my touch and then inhaled jaggedly when I hooked my legs around his waist, my sex firm against his spine.
“It that alright? Am I hurting your scars?”
“Yes, it is alright. No, you aren’t.” He rose swiftly, causing me to yelp and tightly hug his neck. “The vest helps.”
“Good,” I said, feeling inordinately pleased with myself. I was just so glad that something I’d made for him had helped. I’d seen him wearing it a few times during the day when I’d spotted him through the window in Oaken’s room.
Garrek gripped my thighs, and pleasure moved through me. Subtle at first, patient and slow, but building, building, until my pussy was throbbing against his back as he carried me. He made short work of the stepping stone path across the creek. He didn’t have to hop or leap between rocks as I would have. His long, thick legs could make the strides with ease, even with me on his back.
He didn’t put me down once we’d cleared the creek, and I didn’t ask him to. I just enjoyed the reliable strength of him beneath me, between my legs, heat gathering in my body with every step and shift of my weight.
There was no door to open into the cabin yet, just a doorway. Garrek carried me through it, and I was suddenly reminded of the human tradition of carrying your bride across the threshold. I was pretty sure she was supposed to be in the groom’s arms, not on his back, but did it really matter? We weren’t even technically married yet, and that didn’t seem to matter much right now, either. Even though we did plan to complete the ceremony as soon as I was all the way recovered.
Once inside, Garrek finally put me down. The freshly-cut wood of the floor and the finished walls smelled woodsy and spicy in the best way. I crossed the clean, smooth floor with my hands on my hips, enjoying the satisfying click of the heels and soles of my boots as I went.
“I can’t believe you and Killian did all this so quickly,” I breathed, taking in the perfectly straight walls, the carefully-aligned floorboards.
“It’s not a complex structure,” Garrek said, flicking his tail to shrug off my praise. “Only two rooms – one for you and me and one for Killian. No kitchen. No running water. Roof’s not even on yet.”
“But still!” I tilted my head back, grinning up at the open sky visible through the beams of the roof’s frame. The stars were so thick in the sky of this world. Like mist. The three moons only added to the illumination, sending buckets of milky light into the cabin.
That light poured over Garrek, turning his body, his skin, his hair into velvet and stone. His eyes glowed, fastened on me.
“What do you see,” I asked, “when your eyes do that? ”
“This,” he gestured at his face, “does not change what I see. It’s what I see that changes me.”
And he saw right now was…
Me.
“Have I changed you, Garrek?”
The snort he gave in reply seemed to imply I should already know the answer.
“Still not sure if I should thank you or curse you,” he muttered. He left the spot he’d been standing, crossing the empty, roofless room to me. “But I do know that I’m no longer the man I was before you. And I believe it is the same for Killian.”
“He’s not a man yet,” I pointed out.
“No,” Garrek agreed. “But he will be soon. And he’ll be a better one for knowing you.”
Garrek’s words got lodged in my throat. I tried to swallow but couldn’t.
Instead, I raised my hands to slide over the heated curves of his chest. His abdominal muscles contracted sharply when I skimmed my fingertips over them.
His breath became a strangled hiss when they fell to his belt.
“Please,” I whispered, already undoing the shiny buckle at the front. To my delight, I could see a bulge forming below it already, Garrek’s flesh straining for me even as his mouth said, “You need to rest.”
“Fine. We can get on the ground, then, so I’m lying down. But please,” I repeated, desperation twisting. “I need you, Garrek. I’ve missed you so much.”
“You should be in a bed. Soft and warm,” he groaned as I tugged his belt apart and peeled the leather of his trousers away. “I don’t want you on the cold hard floor. I want to take care of you.”
“You’ve done nothing but take care of me,” I whispered, my veins heating when Garrek’s swelling flesh sprang forward. “And don’t you remember? That very first night? I said I’d be fine out under the stars.” I took the huge, hot length of him in my hands. “It’s my turn to take care of you.”
Still holding him, I got down on my knees. He followed at once, his knees hitting the boards so hard I was sure it had to hurt.
“Just sit back,” I told him. He watched me, his gaze piercing, unsure. He listened, though, sitting down and giving me space to shuffle forward between his thick, spayed thighs.
I gasped at how reactive he was, his cock leaping and throbbing with every nimble touch and stroke. This was the first time I’d ever seen it. I lowered myself so that it was at my eye-level.
And promptly reared back when something darted and nearly poked my eye out.
“Um, Garrek, what is that?” I asked, slowly opening one eye, then the other, to see some wiggly little bit of… something… attached to the base of Garrek’s dick.
“It’s my cock tail,” he said, his voice serrated with need. A tantalizing bead of moisture appeared at the smooth, dark tip of him. “I know that human men do not have them,” he went on. “Oaken let me see his book.”
“OK, what is with this book everyone keeps mentioning?” I asked. “Oaken talked about it, and I remember Cherry saying something about it at Fallon and Darcy’s wedding.”
If I remembered correctly, Cherry’s exact words were, “That fucking book.”
“Oaken has it downloaded on his data tab. It is a guide,” Garrek groaned, his hips twitching. A heavy dark sac beneath his shaft visibly pulsed.
“A guide to what?”
“To… To understanding human females.”
I gave a shout of laughter, because wasn’t that the most dopily optimistic thing I’d ever heard. Anyone who thought they could nail down all the quirks and quandaries of human ladies with something like a book was kidding themselves. But Garrek looked absolutely serious, bless him.
“Alright,” I said, giving him the benefit of the doubt, “if this guide is all about human females, how do you know what human men are packing? Or, aren’t packing,” I added, giving the wiggly tendril at the base of Garrek’s cock a wary glance.
“Because I saw no cock tails in the pictures.”
“Hold on. Pictures?”
“Yes. The mating pictures.”
“You’re telling me you were looking at pictures,” I said, not sure whether to laugh or be offended, “of humans mating.”
“Yes,” he said at once. Then, his voice going thick. “It was… very informative.”
Jesus fucking Christ. I’d bet it was.
Something told me that I should warn Oaken that he might need to disinfect his data tab after letting Garrek borrow it.
“Well, tell me what you learned, then.”
Garrek’s throat contracted on a swallow. Powerful glee danced through me. It was enthralling to see him like this. I lowered one finger to the tip of his cock, smearing the gathered fluid there. His whole body vibrated.
“I learned,” he huffed on a hoarse breath, “about mating positions. And female erogenous zones. Like the clitohorses.”
Clito-what-now?
My finger paused in its languorous exploration of Garrek’s silken tip.
“The what? ”
“And your nip-holes.”
Oh God.
“Garrek, what in the holy hills of Terra are nip-holes?”
“The…” He was for a moment lost for words, as if contemplating the exotic reality of human nip-holes while I tickled the tip of his weeping cock was just too much for his virgin cowboy brain to handle. “The tips of your… Blast, I forget the human word. Your… teats…”
I have clitohorses, nip-holes, and teats now.
Learn something new every damn day.
“Are you talking about nipples, Garrek?”
I shrugged out of my jacket, letting it fall to the floor behind me. Then, I worked open the buttons of my pyjama top, until the slippery fabric was completely undone. I pulled the sides apart, letting Garrek see my bare breasts for the first time.
The look on his face was one I’d never fucking forget. It almost made the whole nip-holes debacle worth it. His eyes blazed, roaming over my exposed chest and belly. With a guttural sound, he gripped his cock in a murderous fist, squeezing tightly. More viscous fluid oozed from the tip.
I wanted to lick it.
And if that ardu bite had taught me anything, it was that life is short.
A girl had to seize the moment…
And the alien dick.
I slipped my shirt entirely off and then lowered myself on my knees, gently knocking Garrek’s death-grip-fist away from his shaft. The whirling tendril attached to the base went wild when I got near, undulating and poking at the air.
“None of that, now,” I told it firmly. “You just settle down.” I wagged my finger at it, and it promptly snapped its lithe, wiggly form around it, like a very weird, full-finger ring.
“Are you,” Garrek panted, “talking to my cock tail?”
“Somebody has to,” I told him as the cock tail pulsed around my finger. “That thing was going crazy!”
Garrek groaned. “Why am I not surprised? You talk to fabric animals. Why would you not also talk to my genitals?”
“Trust me,” I murmured, leaning closer so that I breathed my next words on his swollen skin, “I like your genitals way more than stuffed animals. Even your cock tail.”
Garrek looked like he was gearing up for more complaints. Luckily, I’d discovered the secret strategy to silencing grumpy Garrek.
That strategy was licking his big blue dick.
I traced his tip, tasting the alien, masculine salt of him, revelling in the molten silk that was his skin. He swore, his hips canting upwards as the tip of my tongue probed the little slit at the top. I explored and licked and sucked, finding thick veins to follow all the way down to that heavy, swollen mound beneath his shaft and back up again.
By the time I took him in my mouth and started jerking him with my hand, his body was as taut as leather stretched on a frame. His breath came in little spastic hisses, his hips writhing, his cock tail squeezing. Despite stripping out of my jacket and shirt, my whole body felt feverish, my clit on fire, my thighs squeezing around nothing.
“Magnolia – ungh !”
I gasped as I was roughly shoved off of Garrek’s cock. At the same moment, a hot jet of fluid spurted across my chin and cheek.
“You didn’t have to push me back,” I told him, panting, my sex clenching at the thought of Garrek letting loose in my mouth.
He looked stunned, like a shuldu had just kicked him in the head.
“Oh,” he said at length. His cock gave another spasm, another shivery explosion of fluid. “You’d be alright… With my seed in your mouth?”
“I’d be alright with it anywhere. ”
“ Blast. ” Yet more of the stuff dribbled from his still-stiff cock at my words. Half to prove my point, and half to see just how crazy I could make him, I lowered myself once again, took his drenched tip into my mouth, and gently suckled.
His shaft twitched and swelled once more. The flesh of his thighs quivered with tension. His hands found their way to my hair, tentative at first, and then firm. Possessive.
I moaned around his dick. As fun as it was to torture him like this, I wasn’t going to last much longer. I felt so empty inside that I could have cried.
At that moment, I felt the tickle of something sliding over my hip and then into the hem of my pants. Garrek’s tail – his big one, not the one squeezing my finger like it was trying to milk it – was hooking itself into the silk. One sharp tug, and my ass was exposed. I froze, trembling, as the tip of that tail brushed the skin of my cheeks…
And then moved inward to the slick heat of my pulsing core.
Garrek seemed to stop breathing when his tail began to push inside.
I moaned again, my body already spasming to take him deeper. His tail wasn’t as big as a cock, but it was certainly thicker than a finger. It slid and stretched until I was dripping, useless on my knees, my mouth slack around Garrek’s engorged organ.
The world tilted, whirled, and suddenly I was flat on my back, Garrek guiding my head carefully against the floorboards. His tail had never left me, and he kneeled between my legs, hands on my thighs, watching with vicious white eyes as his tail slowly thrusted in and out of me.
Inside, his tail swirled and curled, prodding and stroking with more prehensile flexibility than a finger or a cock could hope to be capable of. The only other thing that might be able to mimic movement like that would be a tongue, but a tongue would never be able to get as deep as Garrek’s tail right now. I whimpered and arched, my flesh constricting on him, already so close to coming.
“You’re squeezing me,” he said with a strained sort of wonder. His rough palms skimmed up my hips, pausing at my waist before sliding up to cover my breasts. My nipples, already firm from the cool air and sensitive from arousal, puckered beneath the rasping touch of his callouses. My spine prickled, my skin sang. Garrek’s chest heaved, his cock jutting and wet.
He kept slowly fucking into me with his tail as he lowered himself down to me. His mouth found the side of my throat and gave a greedy suck. My hands flew to his shoulders, my fingernails trying and failing to dig into his tough hide.
“You smell so good. Feel so good,” Garrek choked out. “Want to taste you everywhere.”
His mouth made good on his words, leaving a hot, sucking trail down to my collarbones. He moved one of his hands, baring my left breast, and gave a muted growl at the sight of my taut nipple .
His mouth closed over it. I felt the strength of that greedy suck all the way down to my clit. My skin was aglow with the force of his white gaze as he stared up at my face, sucking, sucking, sucking, until I was pleading. Pleading for what, I didn’t fucking know.
Garrek released my nipple with a slick popping sound.
“You never need to beg me for anything, Magnolia.” It was a stoic, sacred vow. “Never.”
And then his mouth was lower, his nose probing the curls between my legs. His firm, slick tongue found my clit so fucking fast that I silently promised never to get mad about him mispronouncing it again. He made a savage sound, the sound of a starving man, as he devoured my swollen, tingling nub.
His eyes were still on me, bright as stars between my legs as he sucked my clit and fucked me with his tail. He was watching my face, taking note of every gasp, every mewling moan.
When I came, the split-second before my head thrashed back and my eyes crashed closed, I saw the dark triumph on his face. The potent, possessive power there.
My body was still squeezing, still wracked by incredible pleasure when Garrek snatched his tail from me and rose unsteadily up on his knees once more. He guided his tip to my sopping entrance, before stopping in place to glance at my face, as if to make sure it were alright.
It was alright. I couldn’t imagine anything more right than this. Garrek between my soaking thighs, holding his own desire in his fist as he waited to bury it inside me.
“Yes,” I told him, nodding, the back of my head bumping the wood floor. “I want you, Garrek.”
“I have wanted you,” he hissed, nudging his tip inside, “since the very first moment that I saw you.”
And I could see it in his expression. That want, still there, maybe even stronger than ever. His face went taut, then entirely slack with pleasure, his gaze reduced to hazy slits. It was the face of a man in thrall.
Seeing him so enraptured, so undone by me, only heightened my own responses to him. Even as he stretched me beyond what I would have thought comfortable, beyond what I would have thought possible, I felt another orgasm nipping at the heels of the first. He was so hard. He needed me so badly. It made me want to give him everything.
“Are you… alright?” he panted, even as his hips started moving faster, drawing in and out, as if his body had waited long enough and it was moving on without him whether he liked it or not.
“Yes,” I mouthed, unable to force sound into the word. But his translator didn’t pick it up, and when Garrek ground to a trembling halt in response I thought that I might die. “Yes! Yes! Don’t stop,” I half-gasped, half-wailed.
His white eyes flared. The sound of a cracking whip was his tail smashing against the floorboards. His cock tail spasmed, writhing against my damp flesh until it found my clit and seized upon it, coiling tightly.
Garrek collapsed down onto his elbows, his forearms bracketing my head. I squeezed his biceps, the muscles hard as boulders as his entire body spasmed and strained, speed and urgency building, building, until I was coming for a catastrophic second time. Light filled my eyes – light that made me think that I was seeing stars. But I wasn’t. The light was Garrek’s. All Garrek’s. He watched me come undone like he’d rather die than shut his eyes, the miraculous glow of his ravenous gaze cascading down upon me.
His movements stuttered. His breath became harsh and cracking.
“Magnolia, sweet thing, I’m going to-”
“It’s OK,” I gasped, my channel convulsing on him as he surged harder into me. “You don’t have to do anything. I’ve got you. Just let go, Garrek. Let go.”
My hands jumped up to grip the sides of his jaw. I roughly dragged his face down to mine. We were too hungrily chaotic in our movements, too lost in pleasure to figure out a proper kiss. Instead, we just panted and moaned against each other, sharing breath and brushing lips and tongues until, with a rasping shout, Garrek came. An aftershock of my own orgasm echoed through me in response, chasing his pleasure, squeezing and squeezing him until he was violently shaking above me, around me, inside me.
We remained that way, our bodies connected, catching our breath. Sweat cooled on my skin, and the cold air contrasted with the velvety, all-encompassing heat of Garrek’s body.
“Sweet thing?” I murmured, smiling against his mouth. “That’s new. ”
Garrek gingerly pulled out, both of us giving a soft groan at the loss of contact. My body didn’t feel right without him now.
“I did not have it in me to call you sweet urine, human term of endearment or not.” He huffed out a breath. “I won’t do it. So don’t even ask.”
“Sweet… What? What are you talking about?”
Garrek’s tail slid along the floor, grasping his bedroll from where he’d been sleeping the past few nights. He opened it and guided me inside. I did so without argument, wiggling with the delight of pure coziness when he joined me and drew me possessively against his chest, sealing my bare back to his front.
“Sweet urine,” he said again, as if repeating it would somehow make it make sense. “That is what you call Killian.”
“I absolutely do not!” I cried, twisting my head to look back at him. “I call him sweet pea. Oh. Wait. Shoot.”
There likely was no equivalent for the pea plant in Zabrian. So the translator had defaulted to pee like urine.
“No,” I groaned, covering my face with my hands. “I feel so bad! I can’t believe Killian thinks I’ve been calling him that kind of pee this entire time! Why didn’t he say anything?”
“He doesn’t care what the words mean,” Garrek said. I could feel the rumble of his smoky voice vibrating against my back. “He only cares about what they mean to you. He knows you care for him. That is enough. ”
“I love him,” I said fiercely. “And tomorrow I will definitely clarify that for him. Peas have very nice flowers! They’re beautiful and fragrant and there are delicious little pea pods and… Ugh. I’ll find a picture to show him on my comms tablet. Poor kid.”
“Poor? No. I think he is very fortunate.” Garrek’s chin bumped the top of my head. His tail snaked possessively up my calf. “I think I am fortunate, too.”
“I still can’t believe you’ve loved me for so long,” I whispered, wrapping both my arms around the one he held me with. “You did a hell of a job hiding it.”
“Glad to hear it,” he said dryly. “I’ll have you know that trying to conceal my feelings caused me a significant amount of stress.”
I laughed.
“I feel like stress is just your default setting,” I said. “Don’t blame it on me. You are a worrier, through and through.”
“I will blame it on you,” he retorted darkly. “You and Killian. I never felt as if my heart was going to give out on a daily basis before I met the two of you.”
That would have made me sad, knowing that we caused Garrek that much inner turmoil, until he gruffly, softly added, “I suppose that stress goes hand in hand with caring. The more you love something, the more you worry. And want to protect it.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, “I think I know what you mean.”
“It is worth it,” he said. “I’ll take any amount of chest and stomach pain if I get to keep you.”
“Stomach pain too?! What, you’re telling me I make your tummy hurt?” I laughed. “You know, I’ve got some teas from home that would help with that!”
Garrek sighed. “No. No teas.”
“Yes, teas! They’re good! Very soothing.”
“I don’t need soothing.”
I snorted, because the sassy bite of his tone certainly suggested otherwise.
“Such a salty boy,” I teased, loving every fucking second of it.
“I do not require any salt, either. Especially in the tea.”
“Yeah, well,” I murmured, closing my eyes and relaxing in the shelter of his embrace, “that’s what you think.”
“That’s what I know.”
“And you know everything?” My words were coming slower now. Thicker. I wasn’t fully recovered yet, and the stupendous double-orgasm sex session had really taken it out of me. Sleep was coming for me, and fast.
“Of course I know everything.”
“You didn’t know I was falling in love with you,” I whispered sleepily, already drifting.
I barely caught his quiet reply of, “Thank the blazes I know it now.”