Chapter 21 Brux
brUX
Brux could scarcely believe his good fortune.
The wonderful woman who had rescued him in his primal form cared for him enough to help him keep his humanoid form.
His mate–he thought of her that way, though he didn’t say it aloud–was willing to do almost anything to keep him from sliding back into the void.
Even now—days after the Vorn attack, after the revelation, and after Kiera had brought him into her bed and used her own body to hold him in the light of reason—some part of him still expected to wake and find it had all been a dream.
Expected to find that he was still locked in his primal form…
still trapped somewhere between instinct and emptiness…
still unable to tell her what she meant to him.
But it was no dream–he was here with her. And somehow—by some miracle he still did not fully understand—Kiera had chosen not to fear him.
She had seen him shift…had seen what he was. And she had seen how unstable he still remained–how easily he could regress if he wasn’t careful.
But instead of pulling away–like any other woman probably would when faced with an unstable Lykan– she had drawn even closer.
The memory of that first time in the bed with her lingered in his mind and in his body. The feel of her bare skin pressed to his…the sound of her sweet voice urging him to stay with her…the generous way she had offered her own body to keep him from going primal when he had needed it most.
Brux loved her so much it hurt–loved her with the desperate, aching certainty of a male who had once believed himself dead inside and had suddenly, impossibly, been called back to life.
And Kiera…his sweet Kiera was so willing to help him.
At first she had been shy about it—understandably so. Both of them had been.
The morning after the Vorn attack and his first real conversation with her, they had moved through the home-dome in a strange, charged sort of carefulness.
Everything had changed between them and yet the ordinary rhythm of the sanctuary still had to go on.
Animals still had to be fed and checked.
Work—bots still had to be directed. Fences still needed monitoring after Higgs’ sabotage.
So they fell into a new routine, one built around the old.
Brux remained at Kiera’s side always now, not in beast form but in his humanoid shape. He still shifted back sometimes when he slept too deeply or when a strong emotion caught him off guard, but the more time he spent close to her, the easier it became to hold the bipedal form.
At least at first.
But slowly, the primal part of him began creeping back…seeping into his life more and more often.
Kiera noticed it before he did the first few times.
They would be working—walking the sanctuary grounds, checking feed stores, tending the more delicate animals—and suddenly she would stop mid—sentence and say, “Brux—your eyes.”
And he would know it was happening even as the primal wolf in him surged forward, trying to take control.
He could feel the pressure building inside him but even worse, he could feel the terrible drag toward the void beginning once more.
The first time it happened after their night in bed together, they had been in the spooler enclosure, trying to coax one particularly stubborn, turquoise—furred menace out of the drainage pipes where it had gone to sulk.
Brux had felt a heaviness come over his mind–a strange dulling at the edges–but had told himself it was only fatigue.
Then Kiera turned, looked at him sharply, and her eyes widened.
“Oh no,” she said. “No, no—come here.”
He had not understood what she meant at first. Then she had taken him by the hand and all but dragged him behind the nearest service shed where the work—bots couldn’t observe them.
“Kiera?” he had asked, still trying to hold onto words and her name felt heavy in his mouth–as though he was trying to speak with a mouthful of pebbles.
But she was already pressing close to him, cupping his face in both hands and looking up into his eyes with fierce concentration.
“They’re gold again,” she told him. “And your face is starting to…starting to change.” She bit her lip. “You need more contact, don’t you?”
Brux had nodded because speech was already becoming harder, and his mouth was losing the ability to form words.
But Kiera wasn’t about to let him go. The next moment she had put her arms around his neck and pressed herself flush against him.
The heat of her warm, curvy body had gone through him like a shock.
Her soft curves molded to his hard frame and her breasts crushed against his chest–her nipples hard little points he could feel even through her shirt.
Her hips ground against the growing bulge of his dual cocks, making them both throb with sudden, desperate need.
And when that wasn’t enough—when the pressure in his skull and spine still kept building—she had looked around, made a tiny frustrated sound, and then whispered,
“All right–fine. We’re doing this.”
Then she had pushed him gently down until he was leaning against the side of the shed, straddled his lap, and hiked up her skirt.
Brux’s eyes had widened–she was wearing no panties. Her bare, glistening pussy was right there, inches from his face, the sweet scent of her feminine arousal hitting him like a drug.
“Is this what you need?” she murmured, her voice breathless with a mixture of determination and desire. “You need to taste me again?”
Brux had nodded, still unable to talk. Yes, this was what he needed–her honey straight from the source…
her sweet little pussy grinding against his face as she moaned and begged and pulled his hair.
He needed to part her pussy lips with his tongue and taste her–to give her pretty little clit a tongue—bath while she panted for him.
“Good–then I’m going to give it to you,” Kiera told him. “Going to let you taste me until you remember who you are.”
She guided his face where she wanted it, pressing her hot wet pussy against his mouth and Brux had nearly lost his mind—but not to the void.
To her.
His tongue plunged into her slit without hesitation, thick and hungry, fucking deep into her tight heat.
She was drenched…her juices coating his lips…
his chin…dripping down his throat. He growled against her clit, sucking the swollen bud between his lips, making her gasp and grind against him harder.
“God, yes,” she moaned, her fingers tangling in his hair and holding him exactly where she needed him. “Taste how wet you make me… how much I need your mouth on me…your tongue in me…”
Her hot dirty words and the sweet taste of her…
the feel of her soft pussy grinding against his mouth was almost more than Brux could take.
Both his shafts stood up against his belly, aching for relief but all he wanted was more of her–more of her sweet honey and the feeling of her pulling his hair and bucking against his tongue.
He devoured her like a starving beast–lapping at her folds, then circling her entrance before thrusting back inside and curling his tongue to stroke the sweet spot that made her gorgeous, thick thighs tremble.
He spread his fingers wide and gripped her ass, loving how her soft flesh filled his palms. Then he spread her wider, pulling her down onto his face until he was drowning in her sweetness.
He loved her flavor and her scent but almost as good were the little gasping sounds she made when he sucked her clit just right.
“Oh God, right there…right there!” she moaned, grinding against him. “Don’t stop–you’re going to make me come!”
The pleasure he got from eating her–from tasting her honey right from the source–often made him come even if he wasn’t touching himself. But pleasure wasn’t the only benefit he got because somehow, it worked.
Every single time he tasted her and gave himself over to the urgent sweetness of making her come, the darkness receded, and reason returned.
The dulling of his thoughts eased, and he could think clearly again.
And the most obvious symptom–the gold in his eyes would slowly ebb and the blue come back.
After the third or fourth time, Kiera stopped pretending it was only some kind of emergency medical procedure and seemed to simply accept it for what it was—something intensely intimate between them which was necessary to hold him to his humanoid form.
And it was something that bound them closer together with every passing day.
Not that she ever spoke of it that way.
Kiera, practical as always, preferred to say things like,
“Well, this is certainly one way to solve the problem,” or, “You know, if anyone ever asks what kind of research I’m doing out here, I’m absolutely not telling them this.”
But Brux knew it was drawing them closer–bringing her closer to being his mate–and he suspected she did too.
She started watching him more carefully than ever–alert for the first flicker of gold in his eyes or the first roughening in his voice. Whenever she saw it, no matter what they were doing, she would abandon the task at hand and pull him somewhere private to let him taste her.
Sometimes it was behind a stand of chiming trees…sometimes in the bathing suite.
Once, memorably, in an empty equipment shed while a pair of theebles perched outside on a railing and cheerfully repeated, “Good boy! Good boy!” in high, ridiculous voices until Kiera was laughing so hard she nearly cried.
But every time, no matter what else was happening, she let him anchor himself in her.
Gods, she was generous, Brux thought. More generous than he deserved.
She let him watch her in the bathing pool in the evenings too, just as she always had—but now it was different, because now she knew he was watching as a male.
And instead of pretending not to notice, she would sometimes glance over her shoulder at him with a small secret smile that made his blood heat at once.
The pool itself had become a special place for them.
At day’s end, after the animals were settled and the fences checked and the work—bots sent to recharge, Kiera would lead him into the warm, misty bathing chamber and shed her clothes without embarrassment.
The steam curled around her full, naked curves, making her creamy skin glisten.
Her heavy breasts swayed as she moved, her berry—dark nipples already tightening in the humid air.
Brux would follow her into the water eagerly, knowing what she was offering.
The pleasure blooms still grew along the far ledge beneath the trailing branches, crimson and waxy and sinuous. Kiera still used them from time to time, though now she often beckoned Brux to her when she did.
“Come here,” she would murmur, eyes half—lidded and smiling. “If I have to put up with these ridiculous flowers, you can at least help.”
Brux did more than help. He held her…touched her…and watched as the flowers fucked her.
The blooms moved with eerie intelligence, their thick crimson petals unfurling to reveal glistening, nectar—slick filaments.
They would wrap around her thighs first, spreading her wide, exposing the sweet, swollen folds of her pussy.
Then the sinuous tips of the longer ones would seek her out—one circling her clit with maddening precision and another plunging deep inside her, fucking her with slow, rhythmic thrusts.
Kiera would gasp, her back arching as the flower stretched her…filled her…the slick cylinder of petals thrusting in and out of her pussy.
“Oh, Brux…” she’d moan, her fingers digging into his forearms as she leaned back against his chest. “It’s so deep… feels so good…”
He loved holding her in his arms while the blooms fucked her…loved the sounds she made when she was close…the way her breath hitched, and her moans turned sharp and desperate.
He watched, mesmerized, as pleasure overcame her.
Her pussy would clench visibly around the invading bloom, juices dripping down her thighs to mingle with the steaming pool water.
Her clit would swell under the relentless teasing, flushed and throbbing, until she came apart in his arms, crying his name.
Sometimes she would arch into the attention of the blooms while his mouth and hands tended to her elsewhere…he loved teasing her tight peaks and whispering hot, dirty words in her ear to make her come even harder.
“That’s it… let it fuck your sweet pussy,” he would growl. “Open your thighs and let it in–love to watch you get fucked, baby…love to see you come.”
And the sight of her—wet and flushed and beautiful beneath the drifting steam and trailing branches, her pussy stretched and spasming around the crimson invader and her full tits heaving as she cried out her release—nearly undid him every time.
It made him so hot Brux thought he might combust from the inside out…but it also steadied him.
There was something about being allowed such closeness, such trust, such profound intimacy, that kept him from slipping into his primal wolf form more than anything else.
Those evenings in the bathing pool often carried him all the way through the night without a single slip backward.
He could sleep beside her in his humanoid form, wake in it, and hold onto it through the next morning.
As he got better and better at staying bipedal, he began to hope tentatively that perhaps the worst was behind him. Perhaps, with enough time and enough closeness with Kiera, he might yet become stable.
Perhaps the Goddess had not entirely turned her face from him after all.
Then came the day of the birth, when he nearly lost himself entirely…