26. Garrek
26
GARREK
I woke with an unusual sensation saturating my bones. My body felt pleasantly heavy, my heartbeat slow and sated. It was such a disorienting feeling of peace, of physical relaxation, that I did not trust it. I was not used to it and did not really know what to do with it.
Awareness expanded with wakefulness, and I found the source of this novel bliss at once.
Magnolia was in my arms.
And she was naked.
Because I had mated her.
My heart gave a hot, languorous throb as memories from last night galloped through me.
My cock throbbed, too.
This was the first time I’d woken with Magnolia and had not felt sick and terrified and guilty about my joy.
The last time I’d woken with her body pressed to mine like this, I’d nearly lost control .
And then I’d run.
Perhaps that was why my body felt so curiously weighted. It knew there would be no more running. It knew that, for the first time, it could lay down its load. I could rest my head beside hers as I did now. I could feel the morning sun with her. And there was nothing to fear.
Morning sun…
I realized with no small level of astonishment that it was well past dawn. I could not remember the last time I’d slept in this late.
Had I ever slept in this late?
I gave the sweetly sleeping creature in my arms a look of wondering suspicion. Is this what mating could do to a man? By the blazes, it had taken me down like a drug.
A drug I gladly would have given into again, if it were not for the sudden shout of my name.
“Quiet,” I said at once as Killian bounded into the cabin. “She’s sleeping.”
“She’s sleeping? Here? With you? ” Killian slammed to a halt, his feet skidding. At least he had his boots on without being told for once.
“Yes,” I grunted. “You know we plan to marry, don’t you? I’ve told you this.”
“That doesn’t mean you should be sleeping with her!” Killian cried, as if shocked to the very core of his being at the idea. “And… Are you naked?!”
The mere possibility sounded deeply repugnant to him. He visibly recoiled, white flooding his eyes.
“You’ve bathed with Magnolia before, haven’t you? ”
“I’m not talking about her!” he gasped with disgust. “I’m talking about you! ”
“The bedroll is covering me,” I pointed out, slowly disentangling myself from Magnolia and sitting up with the leather hiding my lap. “Quit complaining.”
“No! There’s barely any room in that bedroll! She should not be subjected to your… your nudity this way!”
He lunged for me, and I wasn’t sure if he meant to drag me from the bedroll or throttle me for my indecency. Maybe both. I swatted him away.
“She’s fine with it. At least I think she is.” I glanced down at Magnolia’s peaceful sleeping face. She certainly hadn’t asked me to dress again after mating. But then again, she’d fallen asleep very quickly afterwards. Maybe she’d been too tired to instruct me on her expectations. Maybe she would wake up and be similarly horrified, as Killian was.
I was not horrified. I could not think of anything better than waking up with her nude body so smooth and deliciously warm against my own.
Killian glared, aimed a hostile tail-tip in the general vicinity of my covered genitalia, and imperiously sniped, “Absolutely horrendous.” Then he positively careened out of the cabin, the soles of his boots smacking the wood before he leaped out into the grass and disappeared.
A muffled snort, followed by shaking, told me Magnolia was no longer asleep.
“Oh, you enjoyed that, did you?” I asked, crossing my arms and narrowing my eyes at her .
Her eyes opened, and they were so beautiful, so lit with mirth, that I could already feel the hardness I’d tried to maintain in my expression melting away. Like I’d been frozen for cycles and her joy was a tiny but unrelenting flame.
“I did. Immensely,” she trilled, her voice lilting with laughter.
“Didn’t feel the need to jump in, then?”
“Nope! You seemed to have everything under control!”
“He called me horrendous.”
“Yes, well.” She paused, as if thinking of something else to say. But I supposed she must have given up, and settled on just that for her response.
“Thanks,” I grumbled.
“Come here,” she said, opening the lithe, brown lines of her arms to me. I could not refuse her.
I’d never been able to. I did not think I ever would.
I scooted back down in the bedroll until we faced each other.
“I don’t think you’re horrendous,” she said sweetly.
My ribs ached.
“I think you’re beautiful.”
All at once, the glee in her eyes, in her smile, vanished. Her breath snagged. Her lips parted.
“I want to try something,” she said. She pushed my shoulder with her little hand, and, unsure of what she wanted, I let her, rolling onto my back. Slowly, miraculously, she peeled herself out of the bedroll, revealing the glory of her nakedness beneath the sun. It lit her plaits, her skin, turned her into a shimmering vision as she moved up onto her knees and then slung one leg across my waist.
“What are you doing?” I choked out, my cock twitching, already swelling beneath her weight. Her silken skin and the crisp fluff of the odd, enticing curls between her legs made my flesh twinge with need.
“Something I’ve wanted to try for a while. I didn’t think I was up for it last night. But I’m feeling so good today…” She gasped quietly as she rocked herself against my rapidly hardening cock. My hands flew to her waist, marvelling at the perfect fit of them at the gorgeous dip and flare of her.
A groan tore from my throat when Magnolia placed one pretty hand on my abdomen and the other moved between her legs. I stared, transfixed, as she stroked herself. Her nipples, which she’d corrected me about last night, went pebble-hard.
It had never occurred to me that a human female might pleasure herself this way. I had not read it in Oaken’s files. I’d stroked my cock to her countless times by now. The fact she did something similar inflamed me. I ground myself desperately against her, and she gave a whimpering moan. The sound went like lightning to my cock.
“I’m wet,” she whispered, her hand circling faster. My brain was bludgeoned by need for her but even then I knew that wet was good. Yes. Wet meant arousal. Wet meant want.
She wants me.
That was like a hot coal dropped through me. She loved me. That was a sacred revelation I still was not sure I was worthy of.
But it was not just love, was not just care she felt. She wanted me on a base, primitive level. She wanted me as a man. As a husband. As a mate.
It made me so cursedly hard.
“Please,” I rasped. My cock tail was frantic, already dipping inside her, searching for contact.
“Yes,” she mewled. “I need you.”
I could do nothing but give her what she needed. What she needed was my body’s deepest calling. The greatest purpose of my life.
I moved to flip us, to rut into her as I had last night, but with a hazy smile, she stopped me.
“No,” she murmured, “like this.”
I gaped at her, throat going dry, heart battering at me like a shuldu’s hooves, as she positioned herself above my cock. Taking me in one of her hands, she aligned our bodies, then slowly sank down, down, down, until the soaked silk of her insides enveloped me.
I couldn’t get enough of looking at her. I dragged my gaze from one startling prism of perfection to another. The glazed glitter of her eyes as she began to move upon me. The pulsing column of her throat. The erotic undulation of her hips as she worked her cunt. The way her fingers still stroked her sensitive place as my cock tail writhed against her fingers.
“Oh,” she suddenly gasped, her pelvis twitching as her cunt fluttered and clenched, “I’m already-”
My broken growl cut off her words as my climax took me in white-hot claws and shook me. Burned me. Blazed through me like the fire that had destroyed so much of what I’d worked for. The fire that had put me on the path that led to her.
I bathed her insides, spewing over and over again, helplessly jerking up against her convulsing body. Her legs gave out, and she collapsed forward without warning. I caught her shoulders, eased her descent. Laid her down upon my chest like the perfect treasure that she was as I bucked up into her body one final, obliterating time.