Chapter 41
Trove
This was what he wanted.
It wasn’t enough.
But it was more than he ever thought he could take.
He couldn’t take this anymore.
Not without getting more.
Her wet heat. The shaking of her body as she became fatigued moving over him. The strain in her muscles as she forced herself to keep going.
She was so beautiful. So pure and perfect.
She wasn’t taking from him.
He wasn’t controlling her.
They were moving together. They were enjoying each other. Building each other’s pleasure. They were cooperating. They were mating.
And it wasn’t complete, it wasn’t enough, but the motions were still familiar to him. Primal and easy and deliberate.
He grabbed for the front of his pants. Wanting to rip them away. To shred them. But he had no claws. Just the dull pads of his fingers.
He snarled. Angry. Denied that simple action that most any other male could do.
If he pushed her off, if he moved her, he could find the seal and remove them. But he couldn’t force her away. He didn’t think he’d continue living if he lost this connection between them. He wouldn’t survive it if his cock was no longer bathed in that sweet heat.
So he put his hands back on her hips and pulled her harder into him. Thrusting up. Rubbing and humping and groaning.
Chee gasped, falling over him. Grabbing his shoulders. Her movements stuttered, losing rhythm for a moment. But he didn’t stop. He grabbed two big handfuls of her luscious ass and continued pulling her into him. She shook and shuttered but, with a gasp, managed to get back into the movement.
They weren’t joined, but they were still one.
They were mates.
And this thing between them was not about shame, about power, about control. It was not the selfish demands of one on another.
This was their pleasure. Theirs.
And it struck them at the same time. Chee let out a cry, stiffening and trembling as he grunted. The pressure of her body weight right there on his knot sending him over the edge as the heat of his seed spread between their bodies.
Chee collapsed over him, panting and shaking.
He tightened his arms around her waist, keeping her right there. Not at all willing to lose the connection between them.
And if some part of him still screamed that he didn’t deserve this, that he was weak and worthless, he didn’t hear it under her weak pants and moans that continued alongside the twitches of her pleasure continuing to wrack through her body.
For what greater purpose could a male have than this?
***
Chee was sleeping on Trove’s chest. Her hair was an absolute mess, a violent messy cloud around her head. One leg was thrown over his. She twitched occasionally in her sleep. Her lips were parted. She was so mussed and so perfect.
Trove couldn’t help but smile at his pretty mate. Her scent was clinging to his skin, and he never wanted to wash it away. She was clinging to him, and he was fine if she never detached herself. Her touch wasn’t a burden; it was a necessity. As vital to him as breathing.
He didn’t get much sleep last night, but he’d never felt more energized. If it weren’t for Chee weighing him down, he probably had the strength and energy to rebuild the Vainglory by himself.
His gaze went from her to his fingers. He stared at the warped, scarred beds where his claws should be, thinking.
It had been so long since the night they were ripped out, he barely remembered the pain.
He was a domini. Pain and death and violence didn’t imprint itself on his brain as it would other species.
The sexual part of what he was put through did however, so the loss of his claws always existed in some kind of space between those two things.
It wasn’t so much the pain of losing his claws that was burned into his brain, but the reason he had lost them.
Last night wasn’t the first time he had been forced to compromise something because of their loss. He had to change his entire fighting style from the natural, instinctive drives that utilized the claws so much, and he focused more on shooting things from afar.
And that worked out just fine. He was adapted to his life without claws and hadn’t once been inconvenienced enough to make him want to do something about it.
Until he realized he couldn’t rip his clothes like he had hers, and there were no claws to rip through the tough fabric that resisted tearing in a way her sweater did not.
There were definitely situations in his life where claws would have been useful, when not having them had made things more difficult.
But he hadn’t actually felt the urge to get his claws back.
He’d just adapted to the situation and overcome the problems through other means.
Fighting his pants was probably the least important thing he could have tried to use his claws to remove.
But it was the first thing that ever made him look at his claws and actually be angry that they weren’t there anymore.
Perhaps it was because Chee had just brought it up recently.
Or maybe since sexual desire and release was so new to him, crossing that last barrier between himself and his mate suddenly seemed like the most important thing in existence.
Or maybe he had just overcome something in his mind. A block that had always prevented him from getting the healing. This, the first inconvenience he came across, since losing that block, just happened to be this thing between them that, yes, he found very important.
As he was staring at his fingers, contemplating, Chee suddenly began moving.
He looked down, watching as her mouth closed and she made a humming, mumbling sound.
Her leg and arms tightened around him as she turned her face into his chest, like she was trying to bury her face into a pillow. It was adorable.
He put the hand he had been studying so carefully behind his head and just enjoyed watching her coming around to full wakefulness.
It was a slow, gradual process. One that wasn’t complete when her bleary eyes opened.
She blinked a few times, seeming to have difficulty keeping them open, as she tried and failed to focus.
She yawned, sniffed, then looked up at him.
A smile pulled at her lips, though she still wasn’t focusing fully. “Good morning.”
He chuckled. A strange greeting. A human one. But it felt apropos. “I certainly think it is.”
She hummed in joy and let her head rest back on him. She didn’t go back to sleep, but her fingers trailed along his abdomen in lazy motions. Sometimes tracing the lines of his muscles, other times making her own nonsense shapes.
Neither of them made any attempt to move until, with a grumble of discontent, she admitted she had to use the toilet and quickly moved. She had, apparently, held it as long as she could. Trove just laid back, enjoying the way her ass jiggled and bounced as she jogged to the privy.
Only once she was gone did he stretch and get up.
She took her time in there, so he discarded his soiled clothes, and picked up their room.
After a moment, he went to the control panel on the wall and used a slider to open the curtains across the window.
He wasn’t worried about being seen from inside.
He didn’t know of private windows that weren’t treated to be tinted from the outside.
The room filled with bright light that burned slightly on his eyes, but he enjoyed the warmth.
As he was standing there, the intercom through the same control panel beeped and the old male San’s voice came through.
“I’m sorry to bother you both. Master Hyde wishes to speak with everyone. If you can meet me down in the entrance hall, I’ll take you to his office.”
Trove felt the same anger from last night, but it was banked now. More of a low simmering irritation at this person that would use his mate.
But it was hard to have that same righteous fury because Chee was right. If it weren’t for their meddling and their experiments, the two of them wouldn’t have met.
“We’ll be there soon,” he replied evenly as the privy door finally slid open, revealing Chee. Her hair was back under control and her eyes were bright and awake, but she was still so beautifully nude. And his cock twitched and began to harden.
A reaction he couldn’t hide, because she grinned at him as she walked past, aiming for the furniture where she kept her clothes. Very deliberately rocking her hips for his enjoyment.
“You play a dangerous game, little mate,” he growled, his cock fully hard now as he stared at her.
She sent him a playful look over her shoulder, fluttering her eyes at him.
“We have a meeting with Hyde, dearest. Focus.”
“I will make him wait,” he promised.
She just laughed, turning to grab some of her clothes. She didn’t think he would grab and fuck her right against that dresser.
The ferocity of his determination to do so was the only thing that stopped him.
He was getting very comfortable in his own body, in his reactions to her, but the strength of those reactions was stunning.
And if he didn’t want their first time to be a rushed, quick, heated fuck, he would have gone to her right then and explored those reactions at this moment.
She was on borrowed time though. He was going to have his female, he promised himself as he went to the privy. He was determined now.