20. Rhykor #2
"When Daxos ordered the purge—" The sentence fractures in my mouth.
I start again. "When I stood in that chamber and heard him authorize the extermination of four thousand people, the numbers and political calculations vanished.
" I turn my head, and she's right there, kneeling beside me, gauze in one hand; those eyes lock on mine with a focus that peels back each layer I've built.
"All I could see was you in one of those sectors.
When the fire came down. That single image tore through the oaths I've ever sworn, the chain of commands I've ever served, and left nothing standing. "
The fever in my palms spikes. I clench my fists against the concrete, and the stone darkens against my knuckles.
"I would raze through every compound between here and Central Command before letting them touch you.
The orbital platforms would be torn from the sky by my bare hands, and I would burn Kor-Viir to its foundations—burying Daxos in the rubble.
" The tone is savage and wrecked, and I hate how uncontrolled I sound—how far from the measured, uniform delivery I've spent thirty-four years perfecting.
"Beyond strategy and military assessment, Cassia. Just—what I am now. What you made me."
She sets the gauze down.
"I didn't make you anything." She says it quietly and fiercely; she says everything that matters like a coordinate on a map, like a dosage on a chart.
"The rescue missions, the refugees you carried through the dark, the orders you refused—you chose that.
I merely happen to be the person standing next to you while you figure out who you've been choosing to become. "
She reaches up and rests her palm against my heart, right atop the oldest marking—the scar from when I was fourteen and screamed in the dark while blades carved loyalty into my skin.
"I don't fear what is inside you, Rhykor.
" Her fingers curl against the fused tissue, and the rhythm of her heartbeat transfers through her palm into mine until the two pulses blur.
"I watched you kill men on rooftops and melt combat drones with your fists.
Those displays of power never affected me, but the night you said please on the observation platform and walked away remains the most significant moment of my life.
" She tilts her chin up. The firelight from outside catches the amber in her eyes and turns it molten.
"The monster was easier to fight. But the man underneath him?
" Her voice drops, fierce and trembling.
"That man wrecked every wall I ever built. And I'm done pretending otherwise."
The crushing defense inside my ribcage gives way, a lock turning, a seal breaking, a tension I've been carrying since the first night I woke on her clinic floor with her scent flooding my senses finally releasing all at once, a weight I've been white-knuckling through.
The release is staggering. It leaves me hollow and trembling, and my hands—the hands that melt steel, that have ended more lives than I can count—shake against the concrete like I'm fifteen again, standing in the academy pits, trying to remember what I was before the cutting started.
My body moves before my mind gives permission.
My hand finds the back of her neck, careful, claws curling away, fingers threading into the dark curls that escape her braid, and I pull her to me.
The kiss hits with the desperate force of a collapsing dam.
The nights on the observation rooftop and the arguments in the med bay collided with the restraint I've spent since the transit station, pouring into a single point of contact.
She grabs me by the shoulders and pulls, dragging me closer until her chest collides with mine.
The sound I make when her mouth opens against mine—raw, guttural, torn from somewhere primal—fills the ruined penthouse and bounces off the bare concrete walls.
She tastes like reprocessed water mixed with the iron tang of a day spent wrist-deep in other people's wounds and a hint of antiseptic, and underneath all of it, that warm, clean scent that's been unraveling me since day one.
"Tell me to stop." I murmur it against her jaw and throat, trailing down to the curve where her neck meets her shoulder. My breath comes in ragged, open-mouthed bursts against her skin. "This is your last exit, Cassia."
"We already passed the last exit." Her fingers rake up my chest, nails catching on the scars, and the sensation arrows through me so viciously my wings snap open and slam into the walls on either side. "In a transit station underground. Remember?"
"That was—" Her hand closes around the base of my left horn, and the remaining parts of the sentence evaporates. A shudder rips through me, full-body and devastating, and the growl tearing out of my throat drops into registers that make the glass shards on the floor vibrate.
"Sensitive," she murmurs against my mouth, and the smug edge in her tone is so perfectly, infuriatingly Cassia that my last shred of discipline snaps loose. It is an utter, final surrender.
I sweep her off her feet by hooking one arm beneath her knees while cradling her back with the other.
A gasp escapes her as instinct drives her fingers to dig into my shoulders.
My three long strides cross the penthouse to reach the wool pallet.
She settles onto the soft surface under my painstaking care.
My wings fold inward, forming a canopy that blocks the biting wind blowing through the broken windows.
Hovering over her, my hands move to her jacket, then her shirt, peeling the layers away with a hungry reverence that fights against the animal urgency clawing at my control.
Every piece of clothing I remove earns another sweep of my palms across her newly exposed skin.
I trace the elegant curve of her collarbone and the delicate ridge of her ribs, finally lingering on the pale scar near her shoulder—a mark I’ve studied a dozen times in medical contexts.
Her skin feels cool against my palms, and this contrast makes my entire body ache with a sweetness so sharp it borders on pain.
Her fingers fumble with the heavy clasp on my belt.
I move to assist, our hands tangling together while my claws snag against the buckle.
A moment of breathless, fractured laughter escapes us, desperate and absurd given the months of tension between us.
Clothes and armor drop to the floor as I kick the pile aside to move closer.
Bare and heavily muscled, the ceremonial blemishes mapping my violent history shift as I brace my weight over her fragile human frame.
Even after the transit station, the sheer size difference between us still strikes me—the heavy, ridged length of my cock fully hardens and leaks pre-cum, dark and throbbing with my own erratic heartbeat against my stomach.
Cassia's eyes track down my torso, and the flush spreading across her collarbones and cheeks tells me everything.
There is no fear. The hesitant desperation of our first time has vanished, replaced by a dark, echoing hunger that pushes perfectly against my own.
Her fingers trace the territory marking across my chest, then the first-kill scar, her amber eyes turning molten.
"Every scar," she whispers, her gaze tracing the coarse line across my sternum. "Every single one. I want them all."
"And I’m going to worship every inch of you before I let myself take them." I drop to my knees, settling my heavy frame onto the floor between her spread thighs.
Hooking my fingers into the waistband of her pants, I pull them away and toss them into the shadows.
She lies exposed on the rough wool, shivering as cool air touches her skin, yet the heat radiating from my colossal frame acts as an immediate blanket.
Kisses trail upward along her inner thigh after I press my mouth to that soft, warm skin.
Arching into the contact, she reaches to pull at the dark hair at the nape of my neck.
"Rhykor," she breathes, a frantic catch in her voice as I part her folds.
She is soaking wet, slick, and deeply flushed for me. The sight and the sweet, metallic scent of her arousal hitting my heightened Kraaj senses blast through what is left of my restraint. I lower my head and drag my tongue right up the center of her slit.
Cassia shrieks, her hands flying to my horns, gripping the smooth obsidian tightly as her hips buck right off the pallet.
"Fuck—oh my god—" she sobs out.
I plunge my tongue deep inside her tight heat, tasting the salt and slickness of her, lapping at her swollen clit with relentless, driving strokes.
A deep, vibrating growl rumbles from my chest, reverberating powerfully against her wet pussy.
It’s dirty, depraved, and entirely consuming.
I pry her thighs wider, resting my broad shoulders against her knees to pin her open for my mouth.
"You taste so fucking good," I rasp darkly against her delicate folds, my fangs lightly grazing her sensitive flesh.
I slide two thick fingers inside her, stretching her tight, human passage, testing the limits of how much she can accommodate.
She clamps down around my digits immediately, a rhythmic, agonizing squeeze that makes my own groin throb to the point of pain.
"Please," she whimpers, her head thrashing side to side on the wool. "Rhykor, please, it's too much—I can't?—"
"Take it," I command softly, my voice a demonic rumble as I suck her clit into my mouth, rolling my tongue firmly over the hypersensitive node while my fingers thrust in and out of her dripping cunt. "Come for me, Cassia. Let me taste you come."