14. Before We Go
Before We Go
Tael
I’m not sure how long I lie against her.
My forehead against her collarbone. My breathing is audible. The purr settling back from the peak register to something close to ambient. Her hand in my hair. Her other hand tracing the rosettes at my shoulder. I am still inside her. Neither of us moves.
“I am not done with you, Tael.”
“I hear you, Natalie.”
“Roll me over.”
I lift my head. I look at her.
She is — dark eyes still blown, mouth still swollen, hair still across the pillow — not kidding. There is come on her thighs. She wants more.
“Sweetheart, you have come apart for me three times in the last hour. Your nervous system is—“
“My nervous system can take one more round. Don’t insult me. Fuck me again.”
The smirk rebuilds. The cocky version this time.
“Noted.”
She reaches up. Her hand at my cheek.
“How — how do you want me?”
Something turns over inside my chest.
She has handed me the running of this. Not because she has surrendered. Because she has decided that she wants me to run it, and she is asking me how.
The word for it in the Draelith language is the word we use for a mate who has given us the small operational trust of how, when she could have given us none. There is no human translation. I will not translate it for her. I am going to show her what it means.
“On your knees, sweetheart. Ass up. I want to watch my cock go into you.”
I turn her over.
Her elbows at the mattress. Her hips lifted at the pitch my tail is setting — wrapped at her waist, holding her exactly where I want her, the same tail that has been positioning her all night.
I wrap my fist around her hair.
Controlled. My grip is not pulling, just holding. Her head tilts back enough that her throat is exposed over her shoulder, and her dark eyes find mine.
She makes a sound.
“Tael — I can’t take more—“
“Yes, you can. You asked for it. You are going to take it.”
“Tael—“
“I am going to go slowly, Natalie. Tell me if it is too much.”
“Okay.”
“Good girl.”
Said into the side of her neck where my mouth can reach her without letting go of the hair. The gravel at a different register than the first two — lower, the possessive starting to thread through.
I push in.
Slowly.
The ridges catch at the new angle. She is so wet from both of us that I slide to the hilt in one long stroke. She makes a sound that is not quite a word — half gasp, half my name — and her elbows tremble at the mattress.
“Tael — this — this angle—“
“I know. Deeper like this. You can feel all of it.”
“Oh.”
I move.
Slow first, then the rhythm her body is asking for, then a little harder than the rhythm, because I have, in the last hour, learned her body well enough to push her past what her mouth asks for into what her body actually wants.
The purr at full, through her back where my chest is pressed, through the skin at the side of her neck where my mouth is.
She is not bossy anymore. She is making sounds I have not heard her make. Sounds that are not words. The unfiltered vocabulary of a female whose body is being taken apart by a male built for her. She tries to say something.
“Tael — harder—“
Her voice cracks halfway through.
It is the most unbearable sound I have ever heard.
I go harder.
“Tael — wait — I said—“
“You said harder, sweetheart.”
“I know but—“
“But what?”
“But I — I cannot — I—“
My fist in her hair tightens a quarter-inch. Her head tilts back further. Her throat exposed at the angle my mouth can reach.
“You can, Natalie.”
“Tael—“
“I have you. Take it.”
She makes a sound at the I have you, I am going to be carrying for the rest of my life. The breaking of a female who has been in command for four years and who has been given the gift of not having to be.
My tail slides.
From her waist. Down. Under her body. The articulation of three and a half feet of prehensile muscle allows it to reach where my hand cannot, because my hand is in her hair and my other hand is at her hip. The tail comes up between her thighs from underneath — lower and forward, at her clit.
“Tael — your tail is — your tail is—“
“I know.”
“Oh—“
“I am going to make you come on my tail, sweetheart. And on my cock. At the same time.”
“Oh, oh, Tael—“
The tail presses. The ridges on the tail — yes, the tail has them too — move at a rhythm different from the rhythm I am running.
Two frequencies. My cock at the rhythm her body is asking for.
My tail at the rhythm her clit is asking for.
The purr through her back. My fist in her hair. My mouth at the side of her neck.
She comes apart.
The whole thing.
The arch, the sound, my name in her mouth at full Draelith shape, her elbows giving out at the mattress, her hips locked between my hand and my tail.
Her body clenches around me at the peak.
That undoes me.
The rhythmic lock of her body on mine — a Draelith male’s biology cannot resist it. The pair-bond configuration triggers a sympathetic response in my system that overrides my discipline, overrides the pace I was setting, overrides the composure I have been running on. My regulatory system gives.
The purr goes to a register I have never previously reached — deep enough that the bulkhead vibrates, deep enough that her body, pressed against mine, feels it through every point of contact.
The rosettes on my forearms and my chest go off at peak saturation; the pheromone broadcast makes the first one look like a courtesy.
My tail tightens involuntarily at her waist — not a choice, a lock, the muscle memory of a Draelith male whose mate has pulled him past the line.
My canines extend.
Involuntary. The drop — my mouth is at the side of her neck where the mate-mark spot sits, and my canines have, at the peak, dropped to the threshold where one more degree of pressure would break skin and set the bond.
I hold the threshold.
My discipline — the discipline that keeps me operational — holds at the millimeter. My mouth opens against the spot. My canines are against the skin. I do not bite.
I come inside her.
The full thing.
A sound comes out of me that has no place in either language — the sound my biology makes the first time it is taken apart by a female built to take me apart.
My hips lock. My tail locks at her waist. My chest at her back.
The purr is not a purr anymore; it is a frequency, one her ribcage is receiving at the register the bond-chemistry uses to inform a mate that her male has emptied inside her.
She feels it.
I know she feels it because her body does the thing a second time — a smaller aftershock, the final answer of a nervous system that has given up the ghost four times tonight.
I say it into the side of her neck. Low. The gravel cracking on the syllable.
“My good girl.”
The possessive. My. Said into the skin at the mate-mark spot I am not marking. The word lands against her pulse, and her whole body responds once more, smallest, the last.
My.
Mine.
My canines are still at the threshold.
I lift my mouth off the spot. I move it six inches up her throat to the line of her jaw. I kiss there instead. No canine. No claim.
She makes a sound that is half gratitude, half grief. Her hand finds my fist in her hair. Loosens my fingers gently. Brings the hand down. Laces her fingers through mine.
“Tael.”
“Sweetheart.”
“You did not mark me.”
“No.”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome, Natalie.”
I lower her to the mattress.
Gently. My tail unwraps from her waist. My arm under her shoulders, turning her, so she is on her side and I am behind her and my chest is at her back and my mouth is at the top of her spine between her shoulder blades.
She is shaking.
Exhaustion. The kind a body has when it has given everything four times in ninety minutes and is running on the empty that follows. Cum on her thighs. Marks on her throat. My scent all over her.
“I cannot move.”
“You do not have to move.”
“I cannot feel my legs.”
“You are not supposed to.”
I kiss the top of her spine.
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome, Natalie.”
I slide out of her slow.
She makes a small sound of protest at the absence. I kiss the spot between her shoulder blades.
“I’ll be back, sweetheart. Hold on.”
“Where are you going.”
“Water. And I am going to clean you up before you try to walk.”
She makes a sound that is half laugh, half whimper.
“Tael, I cannot even protest.”
“Then don’t.”
I get up.
The bunk releases me reluctantly. I pull the thermal blanket up over her hip before I go, because the cabin air is at 18.5 degrees and her body is at the configuration where she is going to feel cold within the next four minutes.
I get water in the cup I have had on Helia’s Reach for three years. I get a soft cloth from the med-kit, warm it under the tap at the temperature on my overlay says matches her skin. I come back.
She has not moved.
Her eyes are half-closed. The thermal blanket at her hip. Her hair across the pillow. The shape of my mate who has been taken care of.
I sit down on the bunk.
“Water.”
She opens her eyes. She pushes up on her elbows, slowly. I hand her the cup. She drinks half of it. I take it back. I set it on the bulkhead shelf.
“Lie back down, Natalie.”
She lies back down.
The warm cloth.
She makes a small sound when the cloth touches the inside of her thigh.
“Tael — you do not have to—“
“Let me, sweetheart. This is mine. You came on my tongue and on my cock and I am going to clean what I did to you.”
Her eyes close.
I clean her. The inside of her thighs. The places my mouth and my tail and my cock have been. The cloth is warm. My movements are slow. The purr at the ambient register is audible to her because I am two inches from her.
She lets me.
It is the most trust she has given me yet.
I fold the cloth, set it on the shelf with the cup. I pull the thermal blanket up to her ribs. I climb back into the bunk behind her and I pull her back against my chest and I wrap my arm across her ribs, and I put my tail at her waist, and I settle.
She finds my hand with hers. She pulls it up to her mouth. Her lips at my knuckles. One at a time.