Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Ines
Iwake slowly.
The first thing I notice is warmth. Trunk’s massive body is wrapped around mine, one heavy arm draped across my waist, one of his thighs pinned between both of mine. His breath is steady against the back of my neck.
The second thing I notice is that every single part of my body hurts.
I open my eyes.
My thighs ache. Between my legs is a deep, bruised throbbing that tells me exactly what happened last night in detail I don’t need. My right hand is swollen, I can feel it without even looking, the way the knuckles are tight and hot. I cracked it on his jaw at some point during the fight. Worth it.
There’s a bruise on my shoulder where I think he bit me at one point. Another on my hip. Dried blood on my thigh that is not mine.
I am a disaster.
The clearing is entirely different in the morning. The two green moons are gone. Dappled green light filters down through the canopy of purple flowers. The stream is louder now in the quiet. Birdsong drifts through the jungle. Everything is damp and glistening from last night’s rain.
I’m lying naked on moss in a Timbur jungle clearing, covered in mud, dried sweat and my husband’s blood, wrapped around the enormous body of the Xylan miner who chased me down and claimed me last night, and I have never felt more okay in my life.
I shift carefully, trying not to wake him, and twist around in his grip so I can look at him.
Trunk asleep is an amazing sight. I study the ridges on his forehead I have memorized by now.
The long bronze braids spilling over the moss beside him.
The bite mark I left on his shoulder last night.
The red scratches I raked down the ridges of his stomach.
The split in his lower lip where I bit him during the kiss in the rain.
I left my marks all over this enormous warrior and he slept wearing them like a crown.
My throat goes tight.
Two weeks ago I arrived on Timbur to write a story. I was skeptical, exhausted, cynical, working alone the way I’ve always worked. And then I met this grumpy, stubborn, honorable male who scented me as incompatible and still couldn’t quite leave me alone.
And then someone tried to kill me. He saved me, and his family took me in, and his med lab healed something I didn’t know I’d given up on. And then last night his bare palm touched mine and everything changed.
I reach out carefully and trace the split in his lip with one fingertip.
His eyes open.
They’re dark at first, watchful, the way they always are. And then they land on my face and soften so completely I want to cry.
“Good morning, my Bride,” he rumbles.
“Good morning, husband.”
His claw comes up immediately, cupping my cheek, then moving to my hair, then settling possessively on my waist. Then he smiles. That slow, real, new smile. “You are magnificent, my Be’Ih.”
I chuckle. “I know.” And then I reach down and put my fingers around his throbbing erection. “And so are you.”
He hisses and then his lips are on mine. It’s different from every kiss last night. Not desperate, just slow. His mouth against mine, unhurried, reverent. His tongue sliding in to meet mine gently, like he has all the time in the world.
Because he does. We do.
His claw traces down my body, not with last night’s frenzy but with something careful and exploring. Down my neck, over my collarbone and along the curve of my breast. He pauses there, cupping me, his thumb brushing over my nipple until I gasp into his mouth.
“Texon.”
“Shhh.” He moves down. His mouth follows his hands, pressing soft kisses to my shoulder, the valley between my breasts. He licks one of my nipples slowly, then the other, and I am already squirming beneath him.
He kisses down my stomach. Presses his lips against the soft curve below my navel and lingers there for a long moment, his forehead resting against my skin. Like he’s listening.
“What are you doing?”
“Saying hello to our first offspring.”
Oh.
Oh, for crying out loud.
My eyes sting.
He comes back up my body and settles between my thighs and enters me slowly this time, so slowly I can feel every inch. No pain this time. I’m still so very wet. All I feel is the long, steady slide of him filling me up while he watches my face.
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
He starts to move, slow, deliberate and deep. I love the feel of this Xylan inside of me. His forehead rests against mine. His breath mixes with mine. My legs wrap around him and my arms come around his neck and we move together in the morning light like we have been doing this for years.
There’s no roar this time. No snarl. When we come together it’s soft, almost sweet. His breath catches and mine stutters as we find both of our orgasms.
He stays inside me for a long time after.
“I could stay here forever,” I whisper.
“We’d miss breakfast.”
Eventually my new husband pulls out and sits up. He wraps what’s left of his torn shirt around my shoulders. It barely covers anything but it’s something.
“The compound,” he announces. “We’re going home.” He scoops me up into his arms like I weigh nothing.
I curl into his chest as he carries me back through the jungle.
The path is easier to see in the morning light.
The rain is gone and the air is warm and green and alive.
I rest my cheek against his shoulder and close my eyes and drift while he power walks.
His two hearts beat steadily against my ear.
I am almost asleep by the time the compound comes into view through the trees.
He pushes open the kitchen door without stopping.
The entire family is in there. Claws and Hook have returned with the women and children they were protecting in employee housing. All the fever brothers, the children, the women, everyone has returned.
Everyone looks up at the same time.
There is an absolute half-second of dead silence.
Then the kitchen erupts.
Cannibal bursts out laughing so hard he nearly falls off his chair. Rook is next to him, laughing too.
Roxy claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh my gods, Ines. Oh my gods, what did you do to him—”
Chief announces dryly, “Decent showing.”
Scar, deadpan, eyeing Trunk’s chest, “Three bite marks. Two sets of scratches. Split lip. Jaw contusion. Impressive.”
Heavy yells out to his bride, “Her hand — Jana, get the med kit—”
Jana is already moving.
Lila slaps one hand over Argylia’s eyes.
Roxy places a hand over Zora’s eyes.
Cannibal, still laughing, reaches out and covers baby Rux’s eyes with one giant claw while Rux blinks underneath in confusion.
Naomi, mouth full, “Oh my god, are we covering the baby’s eyes? We’re covering the baby’s eyes.”
Trunk does not stop walking.
He does not even pause.
He walks straight through the ruckus in the kitchen with me wrapped in his shredded shirt in his arms and growls, “Later, brothers. My Bride needs her alone time.”
Cannibal, gleefully, shouting after us, “See you in a week!”
Leah, a beat too late, “Ines, wait, I need details—”
“Later, Leah!” I call back over Trunk’s shoulder, laughing into his chest.
He carries me down the hallway and kicks open the door to his room and kicks it shut behind us. Texon sets me down gently on the edge of the bed.
I sit there in his torn shirt, dirt in my hair, aching everywhere, and look up at him standing in the middle of our bedroom and I cannot believe this is my life now.
How lucky am I?
My tablet is on the nightstand. I pick it up. It’s been over twelve hours since I’ve looked at a screen. There are two hundred and forty-seven messages. I scroll.
“The story transmitted,” I tell him. “It went out exactly when I programmed it to, right when the Green Horns were emerging from the jungle. It’s published. It’s running in Singapore. It’s running in the four sectors. It’s running on New Earth.”
My editor has sent me twelve messages, each more delighted than the last.
“Oh wow,” I say. “The other outlets are lining up for follow-ups. Two offers for exclusive interview series. One offer for a book deal.” I look up.
“This means Grytel’s credential-revocation threat is publicly, comprehensively dead.
He tried to silence me and I exposed him before he could. He cannot touch me now.”
There is also a message from Grytel himself. “There’s a message from Grytel.”
I open it with some trepidation. It is not what I expected.
“What does he say?”
“He’s asking me — not demanding, asking — for a conversation. He says there are things he did not know. Things he wants to understand. He says the story I ran has made him look at his own administration differently and he does not like what he sees.”
“Heh.”
“Right? That’s unexpected. It makes me think Kryzon was telling the truth when he said Grytel didn’t know.”
I lower the tablet slowly.
Trunk sits down next to me on the bed and trails one claw down my spine. “What will you write about now, my Bride?”
“I’m going to start with Timbur. The miners. The real story, not the one the four sectors think they know. Your family. This place. I’m going to write the truth about who you are.”
His slow, proud smile spreads across his face.
“That is a worthy story.”
“It’s the best one I’ve ever been given.”
He reaches over and gently takes the tablet out of my hand and sets it on the nightstand, face down.
“Later,” he growls. “Cleansing unit first.”
“Yes, sir.”
The cleansing unit in his bathroom is enormous. It’s built for a Xylan, which means I could practically live in it. He programs it and steam begins to billow immediately, the warm Timbur water hissing out of a dozen jets.
We step in together.
He washes me first. Texon starts with my hair, his huge claws surprisingly gentle as he works out the mud and whatever else I picked up in the jungle.
The water runs brown down the drain. He massages my scalp for what feels like an hour.
Then my shoulders and back, down the curve of my spine.
Around the bruises on my hips, which he kisses before he cleans them.
My breasts. My stomach. Between my legs, where he is reverent and careful and not even remotely sexual about it. My thighs, calves and each foot.
By the time he’s done I am boneless. I have never been so thoroughly cleaned by another person in my entire life.
“My turn,” I say.
He stands still in the steam and lets me wash him the way he washed me.
I start with his braids. The water runs red at first from the blood that got caught in them last night. I work my fingers through until the water runs clear. Then his massive shoulders and the bite mark I left there, I lean in and press my lips to it gently. He rumbles low in his chest.
Then my hands are on his chest, where I scratched him. I trace each red line with my fingertip before I wash it.
“I could heal these fast with a med lab patch,” I tell him.
“No.”
“No?”
“Leave them. I want them to stay as long as possible.”
“You’ll have to hide them at the mine.”
“I will not.”
I look up at him.
“I will not hide anything,” he says. “Every Xylan on this planet is going to know what my Bride did to me.”
I wash the rest of him. His stomach. His hips. The length of his thick cock, which twitches under my touch but he controls himself with a low rumbling breath. Down each muscular thigh. His calves and each foot.
When I’m done he pulls me against him under the warm water and wraps both arms around me and tucks my head under his chin. His claw slides down my stomach and rests there, flat and warm against my skin, just below my navel.
“I planted my offspring in you last night, my Bride.”
“You don’t know that yet.”
“I know.”
I don’t argue with him. Because I don’t know how to explain it but I know too. Something in me has shifted. Something feels different.
I place both of my hands over his, lacing my fingers with his claws, pressing his palm flat against my belly.
Bare skin on bare skin.
Both our hands together where our offspring is already growing.
“I love you,” I remind him.
“I love you too my bride, until days run into time.”