Chapter 29
Trove
Trove’s head was spinning.
He’d spent years pleasuring females. He knew their bodies better than his own. He could make them dance and sing and bend them to his will. He’d done it so many times, it wasn’t even a challenge anymore.
It had never been like this.
He controlled his Chee absolutely and completely.
But he’d lost control of himself in the process.
He told himself that he needed to slow down, that he was pushing her too hard, that he was going to hurt her. She was going to hate him. She would never want him to touch her again.
But he couldn’t stop.
He didn’t want to.
He’d won. He had his control. But he didn’t have his satisfaction.
Because he had the taste of his mate on his tongue. Sweet juices that filled his mouth, his throat, his belly. He drank from her eagerly, thrilled when more of that wetness seeped from her and fed this hunger he had for her.
Her shaking muscles around his head were driving him forward. Making him do more. Reach for more. Demand more from her. Her skin, just rubbing against his, was a caress he’d never get enough of. Her thighs, so warm and soft and plush, pressed against his skull.
And her screams…
She panted and moaned and begged his name so prettily. It stoked a fire in his belly that he didn’t even know could burn. It put a heat in his blood that ruthlessly razed to ash any lingering fear he might have that she’d touch him again.
Because this was his mate. She wouldn’t do something he didn’t want her to. She wouldn’t use him like a toy. She wouldn’t see him as a faceless customer just there to give her a fun night she could brag about to her colleagues.
This was Chee. And she’d never moved like this for another. She never screamed like this for another. And she never would. She was only his.
As he was only hers.
And really, would it be so bad if she touched him again?
It was an insane thought, quickly buried by the way she shrieked. Her voice, broken and warbling and punctuated with gasps and wordless vocalizations. Because that’s what he’d reduced her to. She wasn’t capable of anything else.
But though she was weak and thrashing, though she was mindless and wordless, her hands were still pressing hard into the bed over her head. Keeping herself from touching him. Keeping herself from violating that barrier he put on her.
He loved that. He adored her for the trust he knew he could place in her.
And he knew he had complete control over her, he knew she was at her limits, but he didn’t want to stop. He didn’t want this to end. He could live between these thighs, just watching her mind melt with pleasure and her body break from overstimulation.
But she was past her limit. And he knew she wasn’t accustomed to something like this. She wasn’t accustomed to being used and broken. He needed to let her have a chance to breathe before she really was shattered beyond repair.
Still, it was only with great reluctance that he parted his lips from hers. His face was slick, with his spit and her release. The scent of her was all over his skin, and he never wanted to wash it away. He would bathe in it, in her, exclusively if he could.
Maybe he would just bathe with her. Clean himself only with her in his arms so that he would always smell of her. So that she was seeped into his skin, and he was in hers, so deeply that they’d never get untangled.
He needed his scent on her that way. He needed all who possessed a nose to smell her and know that she was his and his alone.
But as he held himself up over her, as he looked down and finally got a good look at this sweet mate of his, all those thoughts flew away. All reason flew with them.
Because there was his Chee, laid out on his bed, covered in a sheen of sweat that glistened against her skin.
Her chest was heaving with quick, desperate breaths, each one filled with a babble of words that made no sense at all.
Her eyes were rolled back, glistening with tears that shed down her temples into hair that was even more wild than usual.
Even though he had stopped touching her, great, heaving, wracking jerks kept shooting through her, like she was being electrocuted. She couldn’t focus on him. He didn’t even know if she realized his tongue and hands had freed her.
She was a mess.
A broken, shaking, babbling, shameless mess.
Beautiful.
So unspeakably beautiful.
Look what she let him do to her. Look at the state she allowed him to put her in. Look what she let him and no other male do. He was not a toy for her pleasure. He was a vehicle of her destruction. And she took it so well.
He loved it.
He loved her.
Deep in his belly, the burning that lingered in his groin like his gaze on her body, surged upward. Razing him deep to the bone. Flickering through his veins. Sending fiery tendrils into his chest that pierced in through his heart.
And lower still, the burning spread like heated water, pooling through his limbs. Rushing along with the blood through every artery and vein.
Pooling in his groin.
Burning up through his cock.
It hurt.
It stole his breath.
The aching twitch. The throbbing pulse. A piece of him long since dormant, thought dead and rotted away, surging forth to painful life.
Because look at his female. Look how weak and destroyed she was. Look at how she had let him reduce her to nothing but a blithering, blabbering, blundering mess. She cried and ached and hurt for him. She let him do whatever he wanted without once asking for anything.
How could he look at her like this, how could he bear witness to such a marvelous sight, and not feel for her.
Only Chee could do this to him. No other female could possibly have such power over him. No other female would ever be able to bring his broken body to life.
Still, Trove was shaking as he let his eyes move down. Stunned by the completely unfamiliar sensations rushing up his cock.
Definitely up, because there was a tenting there at the front of his jumpsuit that was wholly new and strange. He knew what it was. Of course he did. But it was just such an oddity to be attached to him that, for a heartbeat, it was all he could do to stare at it.
His cock was hard.
He knew he was capable of getting hard. He got hard without desire, that still happened just fine. It never went anywhere, and he didn’t need to touch himself to get rid of it. The point was, there was nothing wrong with his body. It was his mind that kept him broken.
This was the first time he could ever remember being hard from desire. It was the first time he had ever felt his body reacting.
It was strange.
It was painful.
His cock was throbbing, aching like a bruise. It only got worse with each beat of his heart.
This couldn’t be normal, right? Something was wrong, wasn’t it?
Chee wasn’t thrashing anymore. She was completely limp, boneless and unmoving but for the series of hard twitches that kept wracking her frame. Her breathing hadn’t slowed at all, her eyes were still rolled back and unfocused.
His cock heaved. It twitched so hard he felt it against his pants and he groaned, nearly collapsing from the sensation.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe after so long without ever hardening properly, his cock was broken and he was suffering for it now.
Genuinely concerned that something was wrong, he grabbed for the front of his jumpsuit and ripped it open. It wasn’t sexual. He was certain he’d pull apart the gray fabric and see that his cock was ripping open from the amount of blood in it.
But no. His cock was…
Well, normal for his species. Hard, twitching in the open air, a drop of precum glistening at the tip. It hurt even worse now that it wasn’t contained.
Trove stared at it. Somewhere between confused, horrified, and hungry.
He knew what to do with his cock. He’d never used it before, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew he could push Chee’s legs apart and make space for himself before thrusting deep. And the way her inner muscles were clenching and twitching right now, he knew it would feel good.
At least, for him. He had her so sensitive and swollen right now, it would hurt her more than it would feel good.
But he could fuck her. He could fuck his mate. His female. He could…
“Trove…”
Chee’s voice was rough, uneven. He looked up and caught her gaze, though it was partially unfocused and completely foggy. She was barely able to look at him, and he could see her struggling just to stay awake.
But her gaze was on his cock as well. She looked scared, but not uninterested.
He could fuck her. He could.
And that thought made him sick.
“I’m sorry,” he barely managed to say before pushing himself off her. He gathered his jumpsuit around himself, hiding his shame, before he jogged from the room. Breathing hard, still with the scent of her imprinted on his nose.
Part of him was screaming to go back, to take from her what he’d never had from another female. An experience that would be theirs and only theirs. Something that couldn’t be tainted because it was exclusive to them.
But the very idea made him sick to his stomach, and he didn’t understand why.
So, like a coward, he got away before he did something that would taint this thing between them.