by V. K. Ludwig
When he lifted his hand, I half expected him to grip my hair, but he brushed my curls aside instead, exposing my neck to a kiss.
Two.
He whirled me around by my arm, eyes immediately fixing on mine as he pressed his hard shaft against my belly.
Three.
Gripping my waist, he lifted me up and, with a sidestep, sat me on the counter beside the fruit. The edge of the cool stone seared against the back of my thighs, but the passionate kiss he pressed to my mouth burned it away. His lips branded themselves onto mine, deepening the connection.
My palms roamed over every muscled inch of his shoulders before I dug my fingers into his hair. It was soft. So soft and strong it refused to tousle no matter how I ran my fingertips along the base of his horns while he kissed me breathless.
He glided me along the counter, around the corner, and lined my back up with the living area. “Will you let me taste you?”
Lost in a haze of lust, I nodded.
The back of his hand stroked up along the inside of my thighs, nothing but the faintest of touches but I spread eagerly. Opened up for his fingers to push my panties aside, where he circled my drenched entrance, taunting a mewl from me because he didn’t dip inside.
“So wet for me.” My lust coated his fingertips, glistening between us as he stopped feasting on my lips and suckled his fingers instead with a groan. “Mekara help me, I can’t stay away from you, Jessica.”
“Why? I’m not in heat.”
“Because the goddess told me that you’re supposed to be mine,” he whispered and glanced over my shoulder back at the living area, no doubt making sure Kam wouldn’t walk in on us like this. “Every second since your scent faded away explained to me why. Your cheerful nature, how open you are to those around you… it’s tormenting me with longing.”
A longing I shared in as I shifted my pelvis in search of the hard feel of his cock. “Then don’t stay away.”
“I don’t know if I can deserve you.”
That very statement proved that he did, but he needed to realize that for himself. “What do you know?”
“I know that, had another male challenged me the sun I carried you here, truly challenged me, I would have killed him. The thought of another Jal’zar claiming you…” He growled and, with one quick move, he slipped me off the counter, turned me around, and flattened my hands on the stone, his whisper hot against my ear. “I want, no, need to taste your cunt. By Mekara, say no while my thinking isn’t slipping into a rut, and I swear I will curb my urges.”
I didn’t want him to.
So I said nothing.
A kiss between my shoulder blades. “Keep your eyes open.”
His hand stroked along my spine and to the small of my back as he sunk to his knees. Fangs carefully nibbled their way up along my thigh, one hand wrapped around my calf. The other pushed the train of my dress up, and my panties aside.
Painfully long seconds later, the broad of his tongue prickled along my pussy with a long, leisurely swipe. His horns pressed against my ass. I let out a gasp and rose to my toes, the way I arched my back involuntary but all the more invitation.
His tongue immediately accepted with strategic licks between my labia and along my slit, exploring me, probing me with wicked intent. There was something very affectionate in the way he briefly stalled at each of my moans, gasps, or when my calf tensed in his hold. He was studying me. Still, he never touched where I needed it most.
I slipped my hand between my legs, and further fumbled my panties aside so I could work my clit. Two fingers pressed against the pulsing bud, I started to circle.
Less than a breath later, he was right there with me, covering my fingers with his. “Show me. Help me learn you.”
He lapped me up, suckling on my lower lips while his hand followed my orbiting movements. He didn’t interfere, didn’t change speed, or rhythm, or intensity.
Instead, he adopted it all while gently prodding my fingers away. “Let me please you. I want to taste every drop of your pleasure on my mouth.”
With the steady pace of his hand and how he dipped his tongue into me, I lost myself in a cloud of lust. I writhed when he whirled his tongue along my walls, and bucked each time he carefully scraped his fangs along my labia.
When I convulsed and moaned his name, his lips hardened as if a smile stretched them wide. It did nothing to temper that throb in my clit, which burst and sizzled along every nerve in my body.
Even as my thighs tightened around his face, my pussy overwhelmed with the intensity of it all, he kept sucking. His fingers stilled on my clit when I urged them to, yes, but he kept lapping as if starved for every drop of my orgasm.
It wasn’t until my heels finally sunk onto the tiles again did he stand, and wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Did you like it?”
“I loved it.”
“I’ll get better once I’ve had the time to learn you better.” He cupped my jaw and tilted my head to meet his eyes, the demand in his strong hold clashing with the trembling lips he pressed to my mouth. “Kamenji will show up any moment now after you screamed my name.”
Warmth crept into my cheeks. “Was I that loud?”
His hands tugged the lace of my panties back in place before they stroked the ruffled fabric of my dress down. “I loved hearing the sound of your peak wrapped around the syllables of my name.”
I reached behind me, and Katedo didn’t interfere when I stroked my fingertips along his stomach and inside his pants, finding a streak of pre-cum. “You can’t continue to deal out guard duty like that whenever jealousy rides you.”
“Sure I can.” When I glanced back at him and lifted a brow, the sexiest smirk played around his lips, but he eventually nodded. “I promise I won’t do it again, but jealousy isn’t an emotion I have much experience with.”
“You’re sending very mixed signals.”
“I know, Jessica,” he whispered. “Please believe me that it’s all with your well-being at heart.”
Because he didn’t want to fail me. That said a lot about the worth of this male. No matter how frustrating this “one step forward two steps back” thing was between us, it was hard not to want him. Imagining myself being courted by any other Jal’zar? Impossible.
Especially after last night, when I’d discovered an entirely new side of Katedo. One where he laughed, told stories, and smiled. He’d told me that, whatever I saw in him, he was much less. On the contrary. He was more. So much more, there was no doubt it would hurt if he walked out on me again.
I was falling fast and hard.
He groaned when I stroked his ava, wanted me as much as I wanted him, but his eyes remained locked on the stairs at the opposite side of the room.
“We’ll talk later, I promise,” he said. “First, I have to take care of Kamenji.”
“Sure.” But Kam didn’t show. “Last night wore him out good, huh?”
“Hmm.” It was all he said before he grabbed my coffee, took a sip, then handed it to me. “I’m sorry. I never even asked if you drink it black.”
“Black’s fine,” I said and stroked an escaped strand behind his horn. “You should wear it like this more often.”
“You like it?”
His hair was gorgeous. “It looks very handsome.”
His brows furrowed for a moment, as if he thought I was messing with him. “Then I’ll do that for you.” There was a hint of concern in his voice, which reflected in how his eyes kept flicking to the stairs. “Let me check on him. If he sleeps too long, he won’t be tired tonight, and it’ll just circle from there.”
“Okay.”
I drank my now-cold coffee and watched as Katedo crossed the room, enjoying how soft warmth lulled me into a sense of belonging. He’d said we would talk. Perhaps he would finally let me in and face the facts: we wanted each other.
When Katedo returned, I put my mug down. “Is he still asleep?”
Chest heaving, frown lining his forehead, he looked at me wit
h nothing short of dread in his eyes. “He isn’t in his room.”
Thirteen
Katedo
Breath burst in and out of my lungs, pulling a thick lump of fear down my throat and into my hollowing stomach. “He somehow sneaked out.”
My hands shook like twigs during a solar storm when I fastened my boots. By Mekara, I should have paid more attention.
“Where would he go?” Jessica asked and slipped into her shoes.
Sweat broke on the back of my neck, cold and nasty. “To tame a yuleshi.”
She sighed before she mumbled, “That could have been avoided.”
I turned for the door. “Yes, it could have, had I focused on what should be my priority.”
“I’m coming.”
“No, you’re not. I checked when I woke, and the weather conditions are unsafe.” Numb feet carried me toward the door. “You could fall off Rogon, slip down a ravine, and drown underneath layers of wet ash while—”
“Or I could slip on a spill in the hallway, hit my head on the stone, and slip into a coma!” Her shout stalled my foot mid-air. “Dammit, Katedo. Twice, you walked out on me, and I know you’ll take this as another opportunity to tell yourself it’s your fault.”
“It is my fault!”
“Yes, it is!” The anger in her voice cut me bone deep. “But not for the reasons you believe. This could have been avoided by going with him to tame that damn yuleshi in a safe way.”
“He isn’t ready.” Why didn’t she see that? “Go to your quarters, Jessica.”
“Oh no, you’re not going to walk out on me again like this. What if you need a healer?”
Her words strung around my lungs like thin wire, cutting into my air until I nearly choked while pictures of Kamenji’s old head wound assaulted my memory. How his black hair had still been crusted with dried blood once I’d regained consciousness, his scalp held together by the scar forming underneath.
“I’m coming, whether you like it or not,” she said, her tone resolute.
We left my quarters and sprinted toward the Pekeni gate, and I barked an order into the centralized communication system. “I want Sevja to ready four groups of scouts right now. Kamenji escaped again.”
“Yes, my urizayo,” came back.
Pounding steps carried us along a metal-lined corridor, which widened where dunewalkers and other equipment were parked to one side. At the end of it, the gate already lifted upward and retreated into the rock.
A gust of wind hit me straight in the face, the air so wet I sensed the moisture tingle my face as it settled there like a fine mist. It triggered a violent itch along my cheek, so I scratched it.
It wouldn’t go away.
I kept scratching it, dragging my nails over it until the prickle turned to pain. Served me right. How could I have let this happen? I’d known that he would try again, so why had I been this irresponsible?
Two guards stood outside the gate and awaited my approach, both soaked from the torrent. It formed little drops along my arms, which streamed down my skin in filthy browns and grays.
“A yuleshi,” I barked. “Now!”
One of them straightened immediately and ran toward a yuleshi, which stood saddled and tied underneath a small overhang. He ignored how the beast roared displeasure at the rain pelting down on it, its black ears flattened tightly against its skull.
“We’ll ride fast, so you better hold on tight.” I lifted Jessica into the saddle, mounted behind her, and grabbed the reins. “Have you seen Kamenji?”
“No, my urizayo.”
One strong kick of my heels, and the yuleshi angled its haunches. It catapulted us forward into a sprint, which would have tossed Jessica out of the saddle if I hadn’t anchored her to me.
We rode up along the incline leading into the plains. Streams of water gushed down, but the narrow grooves chiseled into the rock in hundreds of triangles guided it toward the middle. There, it gulped down a central drain to feed the Noja cisterns.
My heart pumped faster the longer we rode along the foot of the mountain that crowned Noja. Soaked through, my hair no longer shifted when I turned my head this way and that, the desperation in my blood poisoning me with a new sense of failing.
“Kamenji!” we shouted over and over again, but the torrent roared around us, the plains ahead nothing but a mess of distorted lines.
Hand trembling from how the rain washed all warmth from my skin, I wiped my face and blinked over the jagged ridges to my left. Sludge oozed down a ravine, bubbling where the thick roots of a tree blocked its way, guiding it around a leap of yuleshis.
“Katedo!” Jessica patted my thigh and pointed left. “What’s that blue thing over there in the tree? Above the yuleshis.”
Five of them huddled together on the ground, sheltered from the rain by the lush, pinkish foliage above. And there, between thick branches and quivering leaves, was something… blue.
His favorite yuleshi pants!
“Kamenji!” I choked out, leaning forward as my mount gained even more speed so I could reach him before he jumped.
“Stay up there!” Jessica shouted.
At my fifth shout, his eyes snapped my way. Even through the rain, I could tell he flinched, and my stomach quivered when he looked down at the increasingly restless yuleshis again.
He crouched on the branch.
His tail stiffened behind him.
“No!”
All blood drained from my veins.
Too late.
Kamenji jumped off the branch, and landed straight on a yuleshi’s back. Little hand grappling for mane, arm slung around the beast’s neck, tail pressed against its rump… Kamenji held on as tightly as he could as the yuleshi fought.
Through the violent bucks, the pawing of claws, and the high-pitched yelps of the animal, he sat tight. How strong he was. How determined. His mouth stretched into a wide smile, and my ribcage widened at the pride in his face.
Until the yuleshi reared.
Kamenji clasped tighter, his smile morphing into clenched lips when the yuleshi lost footing. Its hind paw slipped out underneath them, ripping the animal sideways before it hit the pool of sludge with a deafening splash.
My heart stopped for a second, eyes darting in search of him while my roar shook the back of my throat. “Please, Mekara, don’t take him from me.”
I reined to a stop and jumped down. Each time I fought a foot through the sludge toward the tossing animal, my muscles wanted to stiffen more.
I wouldn’t let them.
I had to find him. Had to—
Crying, shivering, wheezing with exhaustion, Kamenji kicked his little legs, and pushed himself away from where the yuleshi struggled back onto its paws. A thick layer of sludge covered him from top to bottom, except for where tears streamed down his face.
I wrapped my arms around him as tightly as I could, and carried him toward the trunk of the tree as the leap of yuleshis sprinted off. Heart shriveling at each of Kamenji’s high-pitched screams, I let my hum rumble from my chest.
“I got you,” I said on a weak exhale as I frantically brushed my trembling hands over his body. “Are you injured?”
“Kam!” Jessica kneeled beside us. “Show me where it hurts.”
“Right here.” Another wail as he pointed at his slightly flexed arm. “I can’t move it. It hurts, adi.”
Jessica ran her fingers along the limb. “No fracture.” She felt along his elbow. “Ah, there we got it. Popped that thing right out, buddy. Let me just…” With a precise maneuver, she bent and flexed his arm, and there might have been a faint pop. “There we go. Can you move it again?”
Kamenji nodded. “It still hurts.”
“Only for a little while, sweetie.”
Throat parched dry, I grabbed Kamenji underneath his arms. “Come on. Let’s get you to med—”
He dodged my hands and backed away from me. “I was so close, adi! Why did you stop me? Why?”
“You could have gotten seriously in
jured.”
“Because you shouted and scared them, and I had to jump before they’d run off,” he snarled, his entire posture closed off. “I can walk on my own.”
“Kamenji, we don’t have time for this now.” But with each step I took toward him, he took a longer one away from me. “You’re injured. Let me carry you.”
That whole-body tremble encapsulated him once more, the one that often came over him before he said that he hated me. His lips trembled, pain stuttered his inhales, and he clutched his scrawny little arm to his body… but he would not even take my hand.
Would not show weakness.
That in itself took tremendous strength, and that realization echoed inside my empty core right along with Jessica’s words: maybe he doesn’t feel the need to prove how strong he is with me.
My chest ached with painful clarity.
She was right.
This could have been avoided, had I taken Kamenji to the plains so he could tame his first mount under supervision. Instead, I’d suffocated him with my love, my fear, my guilt, leaving him no other option but to put himself into that very danger I’d tried to protect him from.
He’d told me that he was ready.
So many times, he’d told me.
Not only to tame a yuleshi.
To leave the pain behind, the grief, the many tears he’d cried into my uniform. And I had been holding on to him, tethering him to me and, as a result, to that pain. A pain I was so fucking addicted to I could have lost my son over it.
I was the one who hadn’t been ready.
To let go of the guilt.
To let go of self-blame.
To allow myself happiness.
But I wanted to.
Wanted my son small and weak in my arms from time to time. Wanted those laughs and giggles in my life again, the easy nights filled with stories and mokhot, and suns where I could sprint across the plains with the wind in my hair….
…and Jessica in my arms.
I glanced at her.
She stared at me, saying absolutely nothing while the storm around us did the talking. Let him be strong. Then, she jutted me toward Noja, one brow arched in expectation, just as the ground shook beneath my boots.