Chapter 19 #2
When the kiss breaks, neither of us moves very far. I remain pressed against him, my forehead brushing his jaw while I catch my breath. His hand continues moving through my hair, and the simple gesture makes it difficult to remember why I was worried a few minutes ago.
"I've been thinking about this since we left the command chamber," I say, my voice hoarse.
A low rumble moves through his chest beneath my hand. "I’ve been thinking about this since we left this chamber last."
“Oh… me too,” I admit.
His fingers travel across the tape wrapped around my body. The material creaks softly beneath his touch. I feel his attention on it and follow his gaze downward. "I still maintain that this is excellent clothing."
I laugh despite myself. "You're the only male in the universe who thinks a roll of repair tape is fashionable."
"It serves its purpose," he replies. His expression remains perfectly serious. "You're protected."
"From meteorite impact,” I state as I run my hand up his hard abdomen.
His hand cups a breast outside the silly tape. “And assassins.”
“Is that a real danger?”
His hands slide down my body. “At the Nest, certainly.”
At his touch, long strips fall away and gather around my feet while Krix'vorr watches with the complete concentration of a male observing something he enjoys very much. When the last section finally releases, his gaze rises to mine.
The warmth in his eyes leaves no doubt about what he's thinking. For a moment neither of us speaks. I become aware of my own heartbeat, of the closeness between us, and of the certainty that neither of us wants to be anywhere else. Then his hand rises to my cheek. I lean into it without thinking.
This time, when he kisses me, the last remnants of distance disappear.
His mouth moves from mine to the curve of my throat. I feel the careful graze of his mandibles against my pulse point, then the slow drag of his tongue along the tendon of my neck. My head falls back and my hands grip the hard ridges of his shoulders.
"If this is the last time…" I whisper, and immediately his arms tighten around me.
"Don't say that." His voice vibrates against my skin.
"But if it is…" He lifts me off the floor entirely, one arm beneath my thighs, the other cradling my back, and carries me to the resting platform as though I weigh nothing at all.
He sets me down and stands over me, and the sight of him, enormous, armored, wings half-spread, eyes burning with that impossible green intensity, makes something low in my belly clench hard.
"If it is," he finishes, lowering himself over me, "then I intend to make sure neither of us forgets it."
His mouth finds mine again, deeper this time, hungrier. One hand traces down my side, following the line of my ribs to my hip, then across to my inner thigh. His fingers are warm and surprisingly gentle for their size, and when they brush between my legs I gasp against his mouth.
"Already," he murmurs, and there's something almost reverent in the way he says it.
His fingers slide through the slickness he finds there, parting me, exploring with the same patient attention he brings to everything.
One thick finger presses inside me while his thumb finds the spot above that makes my hips jerk.
"Krix…" His name breaks apart in my mouth.
"I want to learn every sound you make," he says, working me slowly. "Every one. Before we walk into that Nest." A second finger joins the first, stretching me, curling forward. His thumb circles in a rhythm that's almost cruel in its precision. "Give them to me, Nora. All of them."
I do. The sounds come without permission. Broken moans, sharp gasps, his name repeated until it stops sounding like a word and becomes something closer to breathing. He watches my face the entire time, those alien eyes cataloguing every reaction as if committing it to permanent memory.
When I come around his fingers it's sudden and fierce, my back arching off the platform, thighs clamping around his wrist. He doesn't stop. He eases me through it, then keeps going, gentler now, drawing out aftershocks until I'm trembling and pulling at his arm.
"Enough," I pant. "I need you. Not your hands. You."
The shield at his midsection has long since parted. I can see his alien cock fully now, thick, ridged, deeply flushed, the heavy segments already glistening. The sight of him ready like this, for me, sends a fresh wave of heat through my spent body.
He settles between my thighs, and I feel the broad head of him press against me, hot and blunt. He pauses there, eyes locked on mine. "Tell me."
"Yes." I wrap my legs around the hard plates of his hips and pull. "Now. Don't be careful. Be you."
Something changes in his expression. The measured patience he usually holds himself to cracks, and what's underneath is raw and urgent. He drives forward in one long thrust that buries him to the hilt.
The sound I make isn't language. Every ridge, every textured inch of him drags across places that are already swollen and oversensitive from what his fingers did.
The stretch is enormous and I want every fraction of it.
My nails scrape uselessly against carapace as I try to pull him closer, deeper, though there's nowhere left to go.
"Again," I manage. "Harder."
He obeys. The first real thrust shoves me up the platform.
I brace one hand against the living headboard and use the leverage to push back against him.
The rhythm we find is nothing like the slow, reverent pace of other times.
This is urgent, almost rough, driven by the knowledge that tomorrow is uncertain and tonight is ours.
His wings spread fully now, casting shadows across us both in the amber light. The sight of those vast translucent membranes trembling with each thrust is so alien, so impossibly beautiful, that something in my chest cracks open alongside the pleasure.
"Look at me," he growls, and I do. His face is close to mine, mandibles parted, antennae flat against his skull, every line of him stripped of composure. For the first time since I've known him, Krix'vorr looks completely undone.