“I would feed you delicacies from their bones.”
“Okay, a little much there… but I can get definitely get down with feeding me. In all ways. Gods, I need you,” she ground out as her hands continued their upward movement.
A low rumble met her touch, and his eyes slid shut with pleasure as she slowly ran her hand up to the tab at his collar that sealed his armor. Pressing it, she hummed with delight as the material split beneath her hand, falling away from the dark silver scales of her mate’s chest.
“Anastha,” he hissed as her hands trailed down his body to cup the swollen sack that his cock—rather, his civix—rested inside.
At the pressure of her hands, his dark civix slipped out in a rush. It was so thick that she couldn’t even close her fingers around it. It slipped and writhed in her grasp, the hook at its tip twitching as the tiny tubes that ran up the length of his sex began to drizzle lubricant into her hand. Veral’s face pinched, his hips twitching with need.
She began to drop to her knees, wanting to taste him on her tongue and drive him crazy with her mouth, but his hands on her arms tightened, stopping her. Instead, he drew her closer until her bare chest was plastered against his, his vibrissae vibrating and twitching as they coiled against her breasts, along her neck, and into her hair.
All of her attention, however, was fastened on his hotly glowing eyes as his head dropped and his lips claimed hers.
The feel of his two tongues invading her mouth sent a bolt of desire punching through her. She sank into him, her single tongue tussling eagerly with his slender pair. As her arms twined around his neck and his vibrissae clung to her, their bodies slid together, simulating the instinctive movements of mating. His hands dropped, sliding down her sides to cup possessively for a moment over her still flat belly before sliding down to the back of her thighs. With one swift movement, he yanked her up into his arms and walked to the edge of the sleeping platform.
Holding her firmly against him, he slid onto the bed. Though the movement kicked up clouds of dust, neither of them paid any attention to it. They were far more interested in the contact points between their bodies that had been touch-starved for days since their separation. Terri could feel the energy between them, that connection of their bond, practically hum with intensity as they grew increasingly frantic.
At some point, her legs crept around his hips, pulling him tightly against her until they were pelvis to pelvis. Veral’s back arched to maintain their kisses despite their height discrepancy. At the contact of his civix gliding along her sex, a shudder ran through her, and Terri gasped into his mouth. He pressed tighter to her, swallowing every sound that she made, muffling it so that they wouldn’t be discovered.
His sex slid against hers several times, flicking her clit with each pass until she was jerking her hips against him in a silent plea, her arousal a slick coating on her pussy and the inside of her upper thighs. He pulled back, looking down at her, eyes hooded with desire. His lips parted, the tips of his tongues pushing through as the tip of his cock notched at her opened. With a jerk of his hips, he slid deep within her.
Terri’s hips rose to meet him, a strangled sound barely escaping her throat as she felt his civix glide and twist within her as he began to move. He clutched her ass at an angle off the bed as he drove into her with every snap of his hips. Dazed, she watched as his large body moved gracefully above hers, the muscles in his jaw tensing with effort as he picked up into a hard rut, his mandibles slowly stretching wider as his breaths puffed from his lips in eager pants.
It took everything she had to cling to him, her body tightening as tiny tremors began to quake through her. Her muscles instinctively tightened around him, needing more, her fingers tangling among his vibrissae, gripping them as she dug her heels into his ass, her hips jerking frantically as she rode the rapid rise to her peak.
She was aware of the exact moment that Veral’s flexible hook scraped and caught hold, his cock swelling rapidly. A scream tore from her, muffled once more by his mouth as he ground into her, his own hips shuttling in a broken tempo until he snarled against her mouth. His release broke from him as hot seed splashed deep within her. His breath left him in ragged pants punctuated by growls and snarls with every twitch of his cock as it continued to release until he dropped onto his elbows, his body spent.
As she lay there beneath him, Terri’s stroked his back, relishing the feel of his hard muscles and slick scales beneath her palms. A soft trill vibrated in his throat as he nuzzled her. Everything was so perfect that she could almost forget there was a group of murderous pirates waiting for them.
Everything that mattered was within that moment.
A sigh left her as she snuggled her cheek against him. “I don’t want this moment to ever end.”
“That is a peculiar thing to say.”
“It means that in this moment I’m happy and hate for it to end and go back to the shit that’s been going on.”
“Anastha, we will survive it. I would rather go through the struggle with you at my side than be locked in an eternal moment where everything that we are ceases to exist. I do not wish for this moment to continue forever, but to have many years to find thousands of new moments.”
A soft laugh left her as she brushed her nose against his scales. “How is it that whenever it sounds like you’re going to be all cold and clinical, you can still say the strangest and yet most romantic things?”
“Perhaps because humans are a strange species. I was not speaking romantically. I do not understand how one endeavors to be romantic. I only relay simple truths to you, anastha.”
“You call my species strange but offer to leave body parts as love tokens,” she said.
“That is a logical gesture. There is no greater show of devotion that a willingness to fight for your mate and vanquish their foes. It reinforces the uniting of the family unit and demonstrates the male to be a fit caretaker for his family.”
“And what about your females? Do they promise to slay your enemies?” she teased.
He paused, his head tilting as he considered. “There have been a few known occasions when a female has bested the enemy of her male. This is especially the case in our most ancient legends which speak of powerful females of great skill and cunning who attempt to secure males for themselves. The only thing that saves the male is the strength of his mate standing up to the sorceress.”
Terri’s brows winged up at that. “You’re this great, advanced civilization—and you have sorceresses?”
Her mate frowned down at her. “They are legends from different times, not to be taken as factual but to glorify our ancestresses who were willing to match wits to help their mates vanquish their enemies. It was because of the first legend, the story of Emnawalath and her mate Etmangoluvarthi, that the males make their oaths, for it was the oath he made to her when she gave everything to him. Although we do not expect our females to vanquish our enemies, we still give the oath to acknowledge that they are sacrificing to open their household to accept their mate that he might join her family.” He dropped his head, his lips grazing her jaw. “You deserve no less honors—you who have given up more than most Argurma females to be mine.”
“Yeah, well, it was a pretty good trade, I think,” she replied softly. “I left a pretty miserable life to have one in the stars with my big mate. I wouldn’t make any other decision.”
He paused, an uncertainty flashing over his face. “You have been restless and less happy of late. It has been distressing.”