Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
ARTURE
The lounge smells delicious, rich with a salty sweet nectar. It’s her arousal, and when I open my mouth, it's like I can taste her. Fuck, I nearly shift into a Selthiastock so I can analyze every compound with that super sensitive nose, but I'd probably explode my load in my pants.
Because I'm hard. Really fucking hard. So hard I might pass out from the lack of blood in the rest of my body.
“A–Arture,” she stammers. “All okay?”
I could ask her the same thing. I've totally forgotten why I came in here. Oh, right, she said my name… wait. She said my name, and she smells like that.
It's all I can do not to crawl up to her and beg her to sit on my face, demand that she use me as she sees fit.
I want her.
I want her so badly it's almost like the pulse of my orders, except instead of a spike in my head, it's a pull in my chest. Something missing, something she can fill.
As an elite clone I had all the training of a True Born son, including pleasuring females. And, as in all my training, I excelled at it.
“Can I help you with your…wash?” I purr. “I would absolutely lick you clean.”
With a shake of her reddened face, Nic-coal practically sprints out of the lounge. “N… no, I'm just going to wash up.”
The refusal stings like a slap. “I… yes. Of course.”
Why won't she use me? As she retreats, her scent fades, but there's a strong smell of her on the cushions I slept on. Fetching out one with the most intense scent, I press it to my lips and nose, inhaling deeply. My mouth waters, tongue poised to sample her.
But she didn't want me.
Hugging the pillow to my chest, I sit down, back against the wall. It’s obvious why. I kidnapped her. I have to make it up to her first.
And I so so fucking will.
“Ready?” Nic-coal stands by the final pump.
Putting my shovel aside, I wipe my palms and reflect. I don't think I’m prepared at all.
The last few days have been, without exception, the best in my life.
Working side by side with her has been sweet torture, being near her but without touching her the way I want to.
Cooking for her is a sublime pleasure; there's some primal thrill in the way the food I've prepared for her fuels and pleases her.
I don't think I'll ever use a machine to make meals ever again.
At nighttime, each breath lifts her back in a slow, trusting rhythm, steady and close.
The sound threads straight into my skull and stays there, pulsing.
The scent of her skin floods the space, warm and human and wrong for how deep it settles in my chest. Each time I draw breath, it sinks inside me to fill every broken crevice.
I lie rigid beside her, eyes open, counting the seconds between inhales.
My arm is a useless weight at my side, every instinct screaming to move it, an inch, a fraction, close enough to feel the warmth properly.
I don’t. Instead I curl my fingers into the fabric beneath me until it creases and bites into my palm.
If the steady pulse of my orders wasn't driving me on, she would be all I think and care about.
But matching her pace and work ethic has meant that… it’s over. The comfortable life cooking for her, watching her enjoy the dishes I make her, making sure she’s warm at night, marveling at how she works her magic over the large beasts who respond to her calm… It’s coming to an end.
The back of my head beats solidly. I have to refuel the ship so we can fly to Oloria, so I can deliver a female and see Prif Samara.
I’ve worked on the arm covering, peeling off rows of scales to fit against it so it will change color with me, and started to develop something similar for my mechanical eye.
Soon, no one will be able to tell I was ever damaged, and she won’t flinch when she sees me.
Prif Samara won’t flinch, that is. Nic-coal has never turned away from my prosthetics.
“Go ahead.” Nic-coal’s voice breaks the quiet. “Turn it on and we can celebrate.”
Flicking the switch should have felt like a victory. One step closer to following my orders, fulfilling my purpose. But as the pipe shudders with the volume of water being sucked up and a light starts blinking at the refueling hatch, signaling success, I don't feel elated.
I feel like I'm back at the Euthanization Center, chained into the queue. An official countdown for our departure has begun.
Nic-coal lets out a deep sigh and pushes a strand of hair out of her face. “Great. Now we’ll get some power back, right?”
“Yes.” I check the refueling gauge. “It says it’ll take three days for the ship to break down the water into enough hydrogen to fully refuel.”
“Well, great.” She puts her shovel down, searching the horizon for the herd. “Woo hoo. What shall we do for three days?”
‘You,’ I want to say, but I can’t. She hasn’t approached me, and for all my confidence, I’m not sure how to make anything happen between us. I want to show her she’s more to me than a mission.
"I’m going back to bed," she says, voice light but laced with the fatigue etched across her features. "It’s too hot out here. Be sure to drink some water."
“Sure.” I watch her retreating back, recalling her longing gaze at the hot pool. Our irrigation channels are muddy but effective, and they bring the rich warm mineral waters close to the ship. Close to safety and the comforts inside.
We have three more days left before I can’t delay it any longer and we have to leave. I intend to use all of them to best effect.
I have to win her over. I have to.
It makes no sense. I am taking her to Oloria, and I will kneel before the Prif regardless. Nic-coal’s consent is not a requirement. And yet every time she looks at me, something in my chest twists as if I’ve failed a test I don’t remember agreeing to take.
Clones don’t get chosen. Females don’t want tools as their mates, they want individuals. True Born sons. Not something grown in a vat.
I survey the ground as my instincts tug in opposite directions: the command burned into me, and this other pull.
Quieter, calmer, gentler, but still just as strong.
Could it be a bond stirring, half-formed and unacknowledged?
Or just the damage in my own head, misfiring and attaching meaning where there is none.
I don’t know.
I only know that she matters.
I get to digging.
“Nic-coal, are you awake?” I knock on her bedroom door. Our bedroom, really, but I'm not truly privileged in that way with her; I'm a tool for ensuring she has a comfortable night.
But hopefully that will change.
“Yes, I am.” Her voice is a little strained. Have I interrupted her again? The idea of her, spread on the bed, whispering my name as she pleasures herself, makes me reel against the corridor. I have to grab on to the doorframe so I don't fall.
She comes to the door. The diaphanous fabric she wears is like morning mist, shrouding her in mystery but hinting at creamy skin underneath.
Her breasts lift as she ties her hair up, her strong shoulder muscles rippling, her thighs and hips alternately obscured and revealed through the fabric as she approaches.
A keen want surges through me, wrapping itself around my cock so strongly I stagger forward a step, as if to meet her.
She frowns. “Everything okay?”
“More than okay.” I gesture, making the lights in the room gently rise.
“Oooh, we have power. Excellent. Warm shower, here I come.”
“Perhaps there's something better than that. It's outside. Come this way.” Drok na, that might be taken as me ordering her around. “I mean, will you come this way, and I'll show you?”
She nods with a small smile, and I tear my gaze from hers with an effort like lifting the weight of the craft.
The faint hum of machinery purrs in the silence of the ship, a soft, steady ticking as it cycles through its processes.
The night outside is velvet, deep and endless, stretching out in dark swathes under a canopy of stars.
Cool air breathes against my scales as we step outside, the slight rustle of her presence beside me turning them super sensitive.
“What do you want to show me?”
Everything, I want to say. I've bared so much to her, and yet there's a lot I don't know about her. I want to give her everything of myself so she can choose whether or not what she sees is good enough for her. Even though I'm undeserving, I want to try.
Instead, with a flourish, I lead her to the side of the gangplank, gesturing to her own personal hot spring I've spent hours preparing. Water bubbles up from the pipe I installed, clear and fresh, thanks to the filter I worked into the system to keep out the muck. Rocks line the pool’s edge, forming a natural border, and above it all, I've strung lights, small, glowing orbs that cast a gentle, golden glow across the water, flickering like fireflies caught in suspended animation. At one end, I’ve built a woven ramp that slopes into the pool, so she can step in and out without risk to her footing on the stones.
“Ta da,” I say.
A soft gasp escapes her lips. The way her face lights up with pure, unguarded wonder warms me like nothing else, and in this moment, she’s the only thing in my universe.
I want her laughter, her presence, her everything.
I want to protect her, to be the reason she feels safe and happy.
I want her in a way that seizes my entire being, down to my very bones.
But deep down, truth knaws at me. I don't deserve her. I’m too much of an unknown, with the murky darkness of what I can't remember yet, and the threat of secrets lurking inside me. She deserves light, freedom, and I’m nothing but chains.
Just for now, I let myself stand beside her, watching her gaze dance over the pool and catching glimmers of light on her face, as if all the stars in the sky have gathered here just to illuminate her.
And even though I can never truly be her everything, this fleeting moment, her smile… it’s almost enough.