Chapter 12
Priya
He kept his word. We had heat. We had food, technically.
And according to Vesh, we had hours of alone time.
I planned to take advantage of every second of it.
He lowered me onto the bedding beside the heat cell and knelt between my knees.
The orange coils lit one side of his face and left the other in shadow.
Vesh opened my flight suit slowly. No hesitation. No rush. He pushed the material over my shoulders and down my arms, stopping to kiss every new patch of skin. My throat. Collarbone. The top of each breast. His mouth was warm. His teeth were not gentle. I approved of both.
“You said you wanted to learn every sound I make,” I reminded him.
“I remember.”
“You’re wasting time.”
He caught one nipple between his teeth. I gasped.
“That sound,” he said against my breast. “Again.”
His tongue circled the tight peak. Then he sucked it deep into his mouth and dragged one big hand down my stomach. I made the sound again. Vesh looked pleased with himself.
“Smug alien.”
“Impatient human.”
He stripped the flight suit from my hips, careful of my bruises, and pulled it down my legs.
My underlayer followed. Cold air moved over my bare skin.
His gaze went everywhere. He did not try to hide what he wanted.
I watched his pupils widen and his chest rise on a sharp breath.
His cock pressed hard against the front of his uniform.
“Your avatar in the program didn't look like this,” he said.
“The body menu was limited.”
“A serious design failure.”
“You didn’t complain about the breasts I chose.”
He cupped both of them. “I didn't get to see those naked. These are better.”
“Obviously.”
His thumbs rolled over my nipples. My back arched.
“Still think I'm smug?”
“Ask me in five minutes.”
“I will not need that long.” He bent and kissed his way down my stomach. My breath caught when he reached the place between my legs. Vesh settled on his stomach and pushed my thighs apart.
“Look at me,” he said.
I did. His eyes held mine as he pressed his mouth to me. The first stroke of his tongue over my clit stole every sane thought from my head. “Oh, God.”
“We have discussed this. I am not a god.”
“Shut up and do it again.”
He did. His hands locked around my thighs and held me open while his mouth worked me. Slow at first. Deliberate. He watched every reaction, tested pressure and rhythm, and learned quickly. Then one finger pushed inside me. I moaned his name.
“There,” he said. “That sound is mine.”
“Less talking.”
His smile against me was slow and wicked.
He dragged his mouth over the inside of my thigh, close enough that the warm brush of his breath made my hips jerk.
I could feel how much he enjoyed every response through the bond.
Not just hunger. Attention. He was studying me with the same ruthless focus he brought to a flight plan, and the thought of Vesh cataloging every way to make me fall apart sent a fresh pulse of heat through me.
When he shifted his grip, my legs trembled.
He held me firmly but never carelessly, as if my pleasure mattered as much to him as the mission waiting outside this little pocket of warmth.
I had wanted him for so long that the tenderness beneath his control almost undid me.
My fingers tightened in his hair. I did not want gentle.
I wanted all of him, including the dangerous, possessive part he kept trying to hide.
“No.”
A second finger joined the first. He curled them, found the spot that made my hips lift off the bedding, and kept them there while his tongue circled my clit.
Pleasure tightened low in my belly. I gripped his hair.
“Vesh.” The bond carried my response to him.
I felt his satisfaction, his hunger, the hard edge of his control. Every stroke went through both of us.
“I feel you,” he said against me. “I know how close you are.”
“Then don’t stop.”
“I will not.”
He sucked my clit into his mouth. I came with his fingers deep inside me and his name echoing through the empty freighter.
Vesh held me through every pulse. He did not slow until I pulled at his shoulders, insisted he move up my body.
He kissed me. I tasted myself on his tongue and felt another wave of heat move through me.
“Your turn,” I said.
I pushed at his uniform. Vesh helped me strip it from his shoulders.
I had seen the shape of him through clothing, felt his muscles beneath my hands.
Bare skin was different. His chest and stomach were hard, scarred, and beautiful.
A pale line crossed his ribs. Another cut over one shoulder. I traced both.
“Tavik?” I asked.
“The corridor.”
I kissed the scar. His body went still beneath my mouth.
“Priya.”
“I’m here.”
I kissed it again, then worked my way lower. Vesh stopped breathing when I opened the rest of his uniform. His cock sprang free. I wrapped my hand around him. His eyes closed.
“Priya.”
“Stop talking.”
I stroked him from base to tip. Thick. Hot.
The skin impossibly smooth over all that rigid strength.
A bead of moisture gathered at the head.
I swept my thumb through it. Vesh groaned.
The sound went straight through the bond.
I leaned closer and ran my tongue over the tip. His hand went into my hair.
“If you put your mouth on me,” he said, voice rough, “I will not last.”
“Maybe I want to see you lose control.”
For a moment, I simply held him in my hand and watched the discipline leave his face one hard-won piece at a time.
Vesh had crossed a galaxy, fought an army, and kept himself locked behind armor so thick I had started to believe nothing could reach him.
But this reached him. My touch. My breath.
The fact that I was looking at him like he was not a weapon or a duty, but mine.
His eyes closed, and the low sound he made was so raw it went straight through me.
I wanted to give him everything he had given me, to take him apart with the same patient devotion. More than that, I wanted him to understand that I was not afraid of his need. I wanted it. I wanted him to stop treating desire like another wound he had to survive alone.
He caught my shoulders and lifted me before I could take him deeper. “Later. I need to be inside you now.”
My entire body tightened at the words. “Then do it.”
Vesh lowered me onto my back and came over me, braced on his forearms so his weight did not press my ribs. His cock rested against my wet opening. He looked into my eyes. “Tell me yes.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me you are mine.”
The possessive alien thing should have irritated me. It had the opposite effect. “I’m yours,” I said. “And you’re mine.”
“Always.”
“Always.”
He pushed deep. The stretch stole my breath. Vesh stopped halfway, every muscle in his body locked and held still while my body adjusted around him.
“More,” I said.
His breath left him in a rough, unsteady sound.
He held himself still for another heartbeat, green eyes fixed on mine as if he needed to be certain I understood what I was asking for.
The care in that pause made my throat tighten.
He could have taken. He never would. Even desperate, even shaking with the effort of restraint, he was waiting for me to choose him.
I lifted my hips, closing the last distance myself.
His expression broke. The bond opened wider, carrying the force of his wanting into me until my own need felt almost too large for my body.
I kissed him because I needed to give him something back, because the tenderness in his eyes was more intimate than any touch could be.
Vesh drove all the way home. I cried out and wrapped my legs around his hips.
He filled me completely, thick and deep, his body pressed hard to mine.
The mark on my neck flared. The pair bond had existed since the tower.
This was different as every barrier between us disappeared and Vesh’s pleasure poured into me with my own.
He moaned next to my ear, the sound rough and broken.
“I feel you,” I whispered. “All of you. Now move.”
He laughed once, breathless and wrecked. Then he moved. Slow strokes first, pulling almost all the way out before filling me again. I felt every inch of his hard length. Every drag. Every shudder he tried to control. I ran my hands over his back and pulled him closer.
“Harder.”
“Your ribs.”
“Are fine.”
“You are banned from using that word.”
“Vesh, harder.”
His jaw flexed. For one suspended second, he looked like a man standing on the edge of surrender.
Then his gaze dropped to where our bodies were joined, and something fierce and almost reverent moved through the bond.
He was not simply giving me what I asked for.
He was letting himself believe I could want every part of him, even the parts he had spent years calling broken.
“Tell me if I hurt you,” he said, his voice rough enough to make the words a command and a plea at once.
“You won't.” I caught his face between my hands and made him look at me. “I trust you.”
The answer hit him so hard I felt it. His control tore loose in a wave of devotion, hunger, and relief that made my breath catch.
He gave me what I asked for. One hand locked with mine above my head.
The other gripped my hip and angled me exactly where he wanted me.
His thrusts came faster, deeper, each one hitting the place his fingers had already made sensitive.
The bond doubled everything. His cock moving inside me.
My body tightened around him. His control slipped every time I said his name.
“Again,” he ordered. “Come for me again.”
“Bossy.”
He changed the angle of his hips. The next stroke wiped the words out of my mouth.
“Now, Priya.”
I came around him, my pussy going into spasms, squeezing his hard cock.
Vesh swore and buried himself deep. His body locked over mine as he came, my name rough against my throat.
The bond completed with a sharp pulse at the back of my neck.
His orgasm moved through me. Mine moved through him.
For several long seconds, I felt no boundary between us.
Then we collapsed together, sweaty, shaking, and still joined.
Vesh rolled us carefully so I rested on his chest instead of my bruised side. His heart pounded beneath my cheek.
“That,” I said when breathing became possible, “was worth crossing the galaxy for.”
His arms tightened around me. “All you want is sex?”
“The flying is fun, too.”
He chuckled. “I love you.”
I smiled against his chest. “I love you, too.” For a while, neither of us spoke. The heat cell hummed. Metal ticked somewhere in the old freighter. Vesh stroked one hand slowly down my back.
“The bond changed,” I said.
“It completed.”
“Meaning?”
“I can feel you more clearly. Distance will not weaken it as quickly. Strong emotion may pass between us without control.”
“So you can tell when I’m thinking about your ass?”
“You are thinking about it now.”
“This could be a problem.”
“For you, perhaps. I am enjoying your desire very much."
I lifted my head. He was smiling. An actual smile, not the tiny, almost-version. “You’re very pleased with yourself.”
“You are mine now.” He pressed his mouth to my forehead. “Sleep. We leave in two hours.”
“What if I don't want to sleep? What if I want to do that again?”
He looked at me, green eyes steady. "You need to learn to behave, bondmate."
“You just said we have two hours all to ourselves and you want me to behave? Now you sound like Captain Asshole.”
"How dare you?" He rolled onto his back and lifted me so my pussy lined up with his cock. One brush of my core against him and he was hard again. "You are going to be trouble."
I wiggled until he lowered me onto his hard length and made damn sure he knew exactly how much trouble I could be.