Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Trunk
Irun.
The jungle swallows us the moment I step past the tree line, and I do not slow down. My Bride is in my arms, her face pressed against my chest, her small hand fisted in what’s left of my torn shirt. Her scent fills my lungs with every breath. I cannot get enough of it.
Forty rotations I have waited and now she is finally mine and I am carrying her through the warm Timbur night and I can feel her two hearts beating against mine. Well, her one heart. She only has one. I will have to get used to that.
I know exactly where I am taking her. There is a clearing deep in the jungle that I discovered as a boy, before our parents were murdered, before Daxon was banished and before the world turned against our line.
Back when I used to wander the jungle alone just to think, just to be somewhere quiet.
I have been to this clearing many times over the rotations, always alone, imagining what it would be like to one day bring a Bride here.
I never believed I would. Not really.
And yet.
“Texon.” Her voice is soft against my chest. “Where are we going?”
I cannot answer her. My voice is gone. My entire body is a single, coiled thought and that thought is claim her, claim her, claim her.
I run faster. The clearing opens up before me exactly the way I remember it.
Soft mossy ground with a stream winding along one edge.
A canopy of giant leaves overhead with purple flowers blooming in clusters where they catch the moonlight.
The two green moons are high in the sky, silvering everything.
I set my Bride on her feet in the middle of the clearing.
For a long moment I just stand there, looking at her.
She is filthy. There is a smear of blood on her cheek that is not hers.
There are leaves in her dark curly hair.
The sleeve of her shirt is torn where the mercenary grabbed her.
Her eyes are huge in the moonlight, fixed on me.
And she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
“By the gods,” I rasp.
“Texon.” She takes a step toward me. “Are you okay?”
I almost laugh. “No. I am not okay. I am enflamed and I have waited my entire life for this moment and I don’t know where to begin.”
She smiles up at me.
And then she reaches up and starts unbuttoning what’s left of her shirt.
My cock throbs so hard it’s almost painful. I watch her small fingers work the buttons, one at a time, her eyes never leaving mine. The shirt falls away. Then she removes the rest of her human clothing and soon she is naked in the clearing.
I have never seen a naked female in my life.
Her skin is golden in the moonlight. Her breasts are full and soft with pink nipples that have tightened in the warm night air.
Her waist curves into the flare of her hips.
The dark curls between her thighs glisten with her arousal.
I can smell it, her scent is thick now, rich and fertile, unmistakably my Bride’s.
“You’re staring,” she whispers.
“Yes.”
“Now you.”
I tear off my own torn clothing. Buttons scatter in the moss. Then I am naked in the moonlight too.
She makes a small sound in her throat. “Holy crap,” she breathes.
I look down at my own body as she looks at it. My cock is enormous, flushed dark, a bead of seed already leaking from the slit at the tip. I have seen my own body a thousand times, but I have never seen it like this. Alive and ready.
“Is it going to fit?” she whispers, staring at my cock.
“I’ll make sure you can take it.”
Her eyes come back to mine. They are shining.
I step closer. Close enough that I can feel the heat of her small body. Close enough that the air between us is thick with her scent and mine.
I have been practicing these words since I was a boy.
Every Xylan male learns the ancient words of claiming in puberty.
I used to speak them in the empty tunnels of the mine when no one else was there, just to feel what they felt in my mouth.
I used to whisper them into the dark of my empty bedroom, never daring to believe I would say them to a mate.
I open my mouth and speak them now.
The formal Xylan pours out of me, guttural and old and older than Timbur, older than Minecorp, older than anything we have built.
It is the language of my ancestors on Chronos, before there were laws and ceremonies and testing.
Before we were civilized. I am saying that I claim her before the two moons and the stream and the old gods of our people.
I am saying that I claim her as my Bride and the mother of my line.
I am saying that I claim her until my two hearts stop beating. I am saying that she is mine.
She stands patiently and listens.
I see tears in her eyes even though she cannot understand a word of it. She understands the weight.
I reach the end of the words. My voice is rough now and my body is shakes. Every muscle is coiled tight. One last command. The one that starts everything.
“Run.”
She blinks up at me. “Run?”
“Run, my Bride.”
Her breath catches.
And then she turns and sprints into the jungle.
I force myself to stand still. One heartbeat.
Two. I must give her a good head start. This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.
My cock aches. My claws flex. I can hear her bare feet on the jungle floor, fast, determined, pushing through the undergrowth.
She is running from me and hiding so I will have to work to claim her. She is giving me this gift.
Five. Six.
The first drops of rain hit my bare shoulders. Warm Timbur rain. The jungle fills with the soft sound of it hitting the canopy overhead.
Ten.
Her scent is still in the air where she stood.
Twenty.
I cannot wait any longer. I throw back my head and roar.
The chase is on.
I move through the jungle like I was born for it, because I was.
My night vision picks up every leaf, root, and low-hanging vine.
I chase after her, my own legs pumping as I run.
Her scent is a bright trail in the darkness.
Her bare feet have crushed moss, broken twigs and left little smears of her blood on the sharp rocks.
She is faster than I expected. She is running like her life depends on it, arms pumping, legs driving her forward, and I can hear her short, sharp breaths.
The rain begins to fall harder.
I catch glimpses of her in the distance, through gaps in the dense jungle. Her dark hair is already wet. She darts left through a stand of giant ferny plants. I follow. She leaps a fallen log and I leap it behind her. She splashes through the stream.
Clever. Trying to lose my scent in the water. It doesn’t work. I can smell her anywhere now. I’m closing the distance. Three strides. Two.
She reaches another small clearing, a patch of soft moss where the canopy opens up and the rain falls in silver sheets through the two moons overhead.
I wrap my arm around her waist like a band of steel.
She shrieks.
I lift her off the ground.
“No!” my bride screams.
She twists, kicking, pounding her fists against my arm. She’s soaked. Her hair is slicked back and she’s glorious.
I spin her around in my arms and my lips slam down on hers.
The kiss is hard. Desperate. I’ve been kissing her in my head for days and now and I finally have her mouth and it is better than anything I imagined.
Her lips are soft. Her tongue slips against mine and she tastes like rain and wild arousal.
I grip the back of her neck and hold her to me and I kiss her like I will never kiss anything else.
She melts against me for one long moment. Then she bites my lower lip. Hard. I taste my own blood and it is the most erotic thing that has ever happened to me.
She shoves me away, pushes hard against my wet chest. She is panting. “This is meant to be hard for you,” my feisty female gasps.
I grin. “Then make it hard, my Be’Ih.”
She kicks me.
Not a wild kick, a real one. She pivots on her back foot and drives her heel into my thigh with everything she has. I grunt and catch her leg. Use it to drag her off balance and to the mossy ground.
She lands on her back and the wind knocks out of her. She gasps.
I cover her.
Ines isn’t done. She swings her fist at my throat.
I duck. Her knuckles connect with my jaw and I hear the small crack of her hand.
She hisses in pain but doesn’t stop. She scratches my chest. Her blunt human nails rake red lines down the ridges of my stomach. Blood wells up. The sting is exquisite.
She bites my shoulder. Hard enough to break skin.
Good.
I’m going to wear these marks proudly. My brothers will see them. They’ll know my Bride fought for me.
I pin both her wrists above her head with one of my hands. She’s so small. Her arms disappear into my one grip.
She screams with frustration.
“Mine,” I snarl down at her.
I smell the flood of her arousal hit the air between us. She is drenched for me and the rain is running down her face and her chest is heaving and her pink nipples are tight and pointed at me and I have never wanted anything as much as I want her right now.
She struggles again. Bucks her hips, trying to get out from under me.
“Mine,” I growl again.
“Prove it.”
I let go of one of her wrists and shove two fingers inside her.
She gasps. Her back arches off the moss. She’s so wet. Her body is soft and tight around my fingers and I have never felt anything like this. I curve my fingers up, searching for what I’ve studied in the mating classes, the spot that Xylan males are taught to find in their mates.
I find it.
She cries out. Her whole body jerks. “Oh my gods, Texon—”
I pump my fingers in and out, watching her face, watching the way her mouth drops open and her eyes flutter closed. I could do this forever.
I pull my fingers out.
Her eyes open in protest.
I bring my fingers to my mouth and lick them clean.