Chapter 13
- Nora -
Then a roar shakes the chamber.
It comes from above.
I want to look up, but something hard hits me and knocks the searing air out of my lungs.
There’s pressure, warmth, coolness, movement, the sound of wings beating, the hardness of a carapace, and the pressure of being held by arms as strong as steel.
Krix’vorr.
For an instant we continue falling together, and I wonder if he's arrived too late.
Then his wings snap wider and a massive wash of heat from below catches them. Suddenly we're climbing.
The change is so violent that my stomach lurches. The small, burning sun drops away beneath us. Heat and wind hammer against us from every direction. I bury my face against his chest and cling to him with both arms while the hard plates beneath my hands radiate warmth.
Krix'vorr says something in his own language.
The translation flower can't keep up.
It doesn't matter. I know exactly what emotion I'm hearing. He's furious.
But I don’t think it’s me he’s mad at. The realization surprises me even in the middle of everything else. His voice carries the kind of fury people reserve for something that has taken what belongs to them.
The thought sends a quick thrill through me.
The furnace walls rush past. Several times rising currents catch beneath his wings and throw us higher. He rides them effortlessly, using the Beast's own digestive fire to climb toward safety.
Only when we're far above the rivers of flame does he angle toward a broad ledge protruding from the wall. It looks organic like everything else aboard the ship, but wide enough to stand on.
We hit hard. His feet strike first. Mine don't.
Krix'vorr absorbs the impact and keeps hold of me while his wings fold against his back.
For several moments neither of us moves.
My heart is trying to escape through my ribs.
His chest rises and falls beneath my cheek.
The air here is still painfully hot, but compared to the furnace below it feels survivable.
Slowly I realize that I'm alive. Actually alive.
I pull back enough to look at him. Krix'vorr is staring down into the furnace and the expression on his face is terrifying.
His mandibles are spread wide. Every line of his body radiates tension. Below us the furnace continues to roar, flames still bursting upward as though nothing happened.
For a moment I genuinely wonder if he's considering diving back down there and fighting the ship itself. The thought should be ridiculous, but instead it feels entirely plausible.
Only after several heartbeats does he finally look down at me. His gaze moves across my face, my scorched clothing, and my shaking hands. The fury is still there, but something else has joined it now. And I think it’s relief.
“Nora.” My name emerges as a low rumble. The way he says it feels different from before. I can't explain why. Perhaps it's the memory of seeing him dive into a furnace after me. Perhaps it's the realization that he could have let me die and chose not to.
Or perhaps it's because, when I was falling toward that fire, I knew exactly who I wanted to come save me. And he did.
“I tried to escape,” I admit. My throat is raw and I smell the burning from my wrap.
Krix’vorr looks down at me for a moment. “You’re a warrior. I should have seen it.” He changes his grip on me and lifts me in his arms, turns and walks through a big membrane that opens. Trailing my singed wrap, he marches fast through corridors until we’re back in his chamber.
He places me carefully on the alien bed and gently removes the singed wrap, or what’s left of it.
“Are you injured?” he asks, gaze sweeping over me from head to toe, as naked as I’ve ever been.
“A little,” I manage. The relief of having escaped death is starting to wash over me, and my whole body shakes. I’m not in any pain, but I feel like I must have some second-degree burns after the intense heat of that furnace.
But I was saved. And now I have an intense urge to enjoy my life, for real. Hard tingles shoot down my bare body as big, strong hands stroke my skin with a gentleness that makes my head spin.
I watch him move around me, checking for injuries with the same relentless focus he brings to everything else. A little while ago I was convinced he was going to hand me over to a torture specialist. Before that I was certain he was a monster from humanity’s worst nightmares.
Maybe he still is. He harvests worlds. He serves a Queen who would strip Earth without a second thought. Yet when I fell into that furnace, he came after me without hesitation.
I can still remember the feel of his arms closing around me, the thunder of those impossible wings, the certainty that as long as he held me I wasn't going to die.
Looking up at him now, huge and powerful and completely intent on my welfare, I feel something dangerous uncurl inside me. Gratitude, relief, attraction, or some reckless mixture of all three. Whatever it is, it makes my pulse race.
“I see bruises on you,” Krix’vorr rumbles. “And you’re trembling. I will heal you.”
My whole body twitches when I understand what he means. Suddenly that’s the only thing in the universe I want. “Yes,” I urge him hoarsely. “Heal me!”
It's not a joke, either. That furnace could traumatize me badly, and I know on some primitive level that I need that terror drowned out, put in the shade by something bigger, something really good.
Krix’vorr looms over me, eight feet of carapace and restrained power. His thin wings are half-open behind him, trembling. His antennae flick forward, as if tasting the air around my body. The huge eyes glitter with bright emerald. “I will.”
My gaze snaps down to his midsection. The bulging shield of his carapace is parting.
What it reveals makes my mouth go dry. It's thick, heavily ridged, flushed a deep, living crimson.
It has bulbs and flared segments that look both intimidating and totally perfect for turning that furnace into only a vague memory.
I want it. I need it.
He pulls me to the edge of the huge bed and settles between my thighs.
The first brush of his mouth is careful, almost reverent. And the mandibles…
“Ooh,” I moan, as the memory of the first healing returns. It was just like that. So gentle and still sooo right–
“Oooh!” It turns intense. That alien tongue, long and clever and textured, finds me already slick and open. He knows exactly how to do this. Days ago he used this same mouth to pull me back from the edge of death. Now he uses it to pull me away from the memory of that furnace.
I arch hard, fists knotting in the sheets.
“Krix—” His name comes out broken. He hums against me, a low vibration that travels straight up my spine, and works me open with slow, deliberate strokes.
His soft, immensely alien mandibles drag over every sensitive place until my hips are rolling helplessly against his face.
The narrowly avoided disaster and leftover terror twist into pure, desperate arousal. I need more than this. I need him inside me, filling the empty, shaking places the furnace left behind.
“Please,” I gasp. “Not just this. I need more. I want all of you. Now.”
Krix'vorr lifts his head. His antennae brush my inner thighs and his eyes search mine. He moves so I can see him fully, the heavy, glistening length of him rising between us, those thick bulbs and ridges shining. It looks big and dangerous. But it also looks right.
“Nora.” His voice is a deep, resonant click-and-rumble. “That is more than healing. And you are small and fragile.” His cock twitches.
I reach down, wrap my fingers as far as they will go around the warm, hard shaft. The heat of him sears my palm and the ridges flex under my touch. “You healed me. You saved me. You’re here. I need you inside me. I need to feel something that isn’t burning.”
He studies me one more heartbeat. Then the wings flare wider.
He moves over me carefully, the carapace cool and smooth where it brushes my pale skin.
One large hand cups my hip, steadying. The broad head of him presses against my entrance.
It's hot, blunt, already wet. I am so ready that the first push draws a broken sound from both of us.
He works in slowly, inch by thick, ridged inch. The stretch is intense, almost too much, and perfect because it takes all my attention.
Every bulb and ridge drags along my walls, catching, stroking places no human lover could ever reach. When the widest section seats fully inside me I cry out, legs wrapping around the hard plates of his hips. He holds still, letting me adjust, antennae quivering against my throat.
“Move,” I whisper. “Please, Krix’vorr. Fuck me!”
He does. The first thrusts are measured, deep, giving me time to feel every textured ridge sliding in and out. Then the urgency takes him. His hips snap harder.
Outside the viewport the stars streak past as the ship travels, but all I can feel is the heavy, perfect weight of him driving into me, the way those alien contours stroke over the exact spot that makes my vision white out.
I come hard and fast, the climax ripping through me with almost violent force.
My body clamps down around him, pulsing, and the pleasure is so sharp it borders on pain.
It's exactly what I needed to burn the memory of the furnace out of my nerves.
I sob his name, nails scraping uselessly against carapace.
He follows me almost at once. A deep, resonant groan vibrates through his chest. His thrusts turn short and powerful, the ridges flare and lock for a moment inside me as he empties himself in thick, hot pulses.
The sensation of being filled, claimed, flooded, pushes a second, softer wave of pleasure through me.
I cling to him while it rolls on and on.
When it finally eases he stays buried deep, wings folded protectively around us both. His antennae stroke my damp hair. “That should heal you well. And me, too.”
I am shaking, but the shaking is clean. The fire is gone. Only this remains—his weight, his heat, the slow throb of him still inside me, and the vast quiet of space beyond the window.
I reach up and touch the edge of one antenna when his words sink in.
“You?” I whisper, astonished.
He lowers his head until his forehead rests against mine, carapace cool against my flushed skin. “We both nearly burned in there,” he rumbles. “I would like to forget it.”
Of course. He did really risk his life, and he got close to losing it. We both were mere feet from falling into the sun-like center and burning to a crisp as we fell.
I'm so used to thinking of him as totally confident and larger than life, like a superhero who's never in real danger. But he actually did risk his life for me, and it was almost the end of him.
And he was scared. The realization sends new warmth through me. He's not all locust.
“Sorry,” I hiccup as it hits me. “You almost died because of me.”
“'Almost' makes a lot of difference,” he says with a crooked smile as he gets comfortable, pulling me on top of him.
“Sorry,” I say again, but he puts one finger across my mouth.
“The Beast hates other females,” Krix’vorr rumbles under me, making my whole body tremble. “She really tried to kill you.”
“How did you know where I was?” I ask, still riding delicious little aftershocks.
He reaches up and strokes the translation flower, still in my hair. “The Kast told me. Yours and mine are from the same stem, and it seems that one Kast always knows what the other is doing. Usually they stay quiet. But my Kast told me that its sibling was in danger. And where it was.”
I stroke his chest. “So you came for me.”
“I never allow anyone into the Beast’s inner parts. It’s too dangerous. And she knows it!” He slaps the fleshy wall with one hand.
“How did you… get the Beast?” I ask, starting to feel sleepy.
“I caught her,” Krix’vorr says. “She was the leader of a flock, traveling through space with others of her kind. She was clearly the biggest and most magnificent I had seen. I fought my way inside her and tamed her over the course of many longcycles.”
“She travels in space,” I try to sum up. “And you can decide where she goes.”
“Ah, yours is a world that makes its spaceships from dead matter,” Krix’vorr says with a hint of contempt.
“But we use living things for all our needs. These spacefaring creatures were reared and farmed by a species that was Harvested a long time ago. Now they fly wild in space. Until they’re caught and tamed, like the Beast.”
“Will she try to kill me again?” I ask as I close my eyes and relax fully.
“Not for a while,” Krix’vorr says grimly. “I have ways of keeping her in line.”