Chapter Four
The intercom crackled into silence.
Zara's heart hammered against her ribs, a cold spike of fear now flooding her veins. Seven minutes. A Bailiwick patrol ship. Her career, her freedom—everything she'd been willing to risk—suddenly materialized as concrete consequences.
"Zara."
Zain's voice cut through the panic. She realized she was still straddling him, their bodies still joined, his hands still gripping her hips.
The bioluminescence along his sides had dimmed but not extinguished, a faint pulse of light that seemed to match the slowing of her heartbeat as she focused on his face.
"Seven minutes is an eternity," he said.
"Are you insane?" She pushed against his chest, trying to dismount, but his grip tightened. "I need to get dressed. I need to—"
"You need to breathe." One hand released her hip and came up to cup her cheek.
The scaled texture of his palm was grounding.
"The patrol ship hasn't arrived yet. My vessel's stealth systems are active.
They'll need to pinpoint my exact location before they can board, and that assumes they have authorization to board a Tylician diplomatic vessel in the first place. "
"Diplomatic?" Zara's laugh was sharp with disbelief. "You're a commander in the Deep Fleet. There's nothing diplomatic about—"
"Every Tylician vessel carries diplomatic designation in neutral space. It's a technicality, but technicalities buy time." His thumb traced her lower lip. "Time I intend to use."
She should have been furious. She should have been terrified. Instead, looking down at him—his silver eyes steady, his sculpted mouth curved with that infuriating confidence—she felt the panic receding.
"You want to keep going," she said.
"I want to finish what I started." His hips shifted beneath her, a subtle roll that reminded her he was still hard inside her. "I told you I wanted to explore every inch of you. I meant it."
"But the patrol—"
"Will not find us." He sat up in one fluid motion, his abdominal muscles contracting in a way that made her breath catch.
The new angle seated him deeper, and Zara's protest dissolved into a moan.
"My crew is running interference. We have more than seven minutes.
" His lips brushed her collarbone. "We have as long as I say we have. "
She should argue. She should insist on dressing, on leaving, on salvaging what remained of her military career.
But his mouth was tracing a path down her sternum, and the textured surface of his tongue was leaving trails of fire on her skin, and she'd already crossed so many lines tonight that one more seemed almost irrelevant.
"Six minutes and forty seconds now," Zain said against her breast. "Let's not waste them."
He lifted her off him with an ease that made her feel weightless, depositing her on her back atop the mercury-slick fabric of the sleeping platform. Before she could form a coherent thought, his mouth was on her stomach, that impossibly textured tongue circling her navel.
"What are you—"
"Exploring."
The word vibrated against her skin, and Zara's protest died in her throat.
Zain's tongue traced a slow, deliberate line from her navel to the curve of her ribcage, pausing at each indentation between her ribs as if cataloguing the terrain.
His hands followed the path his mouth had taken, palms flat against her flushed skin, those thousands of nerve endings in his scales reading her body's responses with terrifying accuracy.
"Your pulse is elevated here." His finger pressed gently against the hollow of her throat. "And here." It drifted lower, resting at the point where her ribcage ended. "But not from fear anymore."
"No," she admitted. "Not from fear."
He lifted his head, and the expression on his face was one of pure, predatory curiosity. "I've been with humans before. But never one who responded so... thoroughly. Your body is remarkably expressive."
"I'm not sure if that's a compliment or what."
Zain's laugh was a low rumble that traveled from his chest into the mattress.
"It's a compliment. The highest one I can offer.
" He lowered his mouth to her hipbone, and his tongue traced the sharp ridge of bone beneath skin.
"Tylicians value expressiveness. Our scales make subtle body language difficult.
A flicker of bioluminescence can mean desire, or it can mean indigestion.
" Another kiss, this time to the soft flesh just inside her hip.
"Humans have no such ambiguity. Your skin flushes when you're aroused.
Your breathing changes. Every nerve in your body announces what you want before your lips can form the words. "
"And what do I want?"
"This."
His mouth descended between her thighs.
Zara's back arched off the sleeping platform as that ridged tongue found her center with unerring precision.
She was still sensitive from her previous climaxes, and the overstimulation was almost too much.
But Zain didn't press deep. Instead, he traced the outer edges of her folds, mapping her shape as if memorizing it for future reference.
"Every inch," he said, the words muffled against her flesh. "I meant it."
His tongue dipped into the crease where her thigh met her body, and Zara's hands flew to his horns.
The smooth warmth beneath her palms grounded her as he explored territories she hadn't known were erogenous.
The hollow behind her knee. The arch of her foot.
The space between each toe, which he attended to with a focus that was almost absurd—except that when his tongue traced the sensitive webbing between her third and fourth toes, a jolt of sensation shot straight up her leg and pooled in her core.
"Oh," she gasped. "That's—"
"Yes." His voice was thick with satisfaction. "I know."
He worked his way back up her body with excruciating slowness, his tongue finding every forgotten inch of skin along the way. The inner curve of her thigh, where the skin was thinnest and most sensitive. The crease of her hip, where he paused to breathe against her, his exhalation hot on her skin.
"Tylician tongue ridges serve a purpose," he said, lifting his head just enough to meet her eyes. "They're not merely decorative."
"I'd gathered that."
"Each ridge contains chemical receptors.
We can taste emotional states. Stress. Arousal.
The subtle compounds your body releases when you're on the verge of release.
" His tongue traced a single line up her inner thigh, and Zara shuddered.
"Right now, you taste of adrenaline and oxytocin and something I've never encountered before. "
"And what does it make you want to do?"
The smile that spread across his face was sharp and hungry. "Devour you."
He buried his face between her thighs again, but this time there was nothing exploratory about it.
His tongue laved through her folds with focused intent, the ridges catching against her clitoris.
Each pass sent cascading waves of sensation through her nervous system, the unique texture of his alien anatomy stimulating nerve clusters that no human partner had ever reached.
Zara's grip on his horns tightened. Her hips bucked against his mouth, but he held her steady with those large hands splayed across her hipbones, pinning her to the mattress.
The combination of restraint and stimulation was dizzying—she couldn't move, couldn't escape, could only lie there and feel as he wrung pleasure from her body.
"You're close," he said against her. "I can taste it."
"Don't stop."
"I have no intention of stopping."
His tongue plunged inside her, and Zara cried out.
The ridges that had been devastating against her clitoris were even more intense against her inner walls, each one finding a different cluster of nerve endings.
He fucked her with his tongue in slow, deep strokes, and the bioluminescent glow from his scales cast strange shadows across the cabin's ceiling.
The climax built from somewhere deep—deeper than her previous orgasms, deeper than anything she'd experienced before. It spread through her like warmth through cold limbs, a gradual uncurling of tension she hadn't known she was carrying.
When it finally broke, it was almost gentle. A long, rolling release that made her muscles go slack and her mind go quiet. She didn't scream this time. She sighed—a sound of profound, bone-deep satisfaction that seemed to go on forever.
Zain lifted his head, his lips glistening, his expression one of unmistakable pride. "There. Now you understand."
Zara couldn't have formed words if her life depended on it. She lay boneless on the mercury fabric, her chest still heaving, her skin slick with sweat and bioluminescent residue. The cabin's indirect lighting had shifted to a deep, pulsing violet that matched the rhythm of her heartbeat.
"Time?" she finally managed.
"Irrelevant." He crawled up her body, his arousal still prominent, still leaking faintly at the tip. The tapered head left a trail of luminescent fluid across her stomach as he positioned himself above her. "The patrol hasn't breached. My crew hasn't signaled. Which means we still have time."
"Time for what?"
Instead of answering, Zain rolled onto his back and pulled her atop him once more. But this time, instead of guiding her to mount him, he hooked his hands beneath her knees and lifted her until she was straddling his face.
"What are you—"
"My turn to explore from a different angle."
His tongue found her from below, and Zara nearly collapsed forward.
She caught herself on her hands, her body arched over his like a bridge, her breasts swaying with each desperate breath.
From this position, she could watch his horns curve against the silver fabric, could see the way his throat worked as his tongue delved into her, could feel the heat of his breath against her most intimate places.