by Amanda Milo
While I’m at not letting my eyes widen for things, I don’t let the realization that Tac’s not going to fit the same as Brax play out on my face.
This is something I can never voice aloud. Unspoken rule: thou shalt not audibly compare penis sizes, shapes or ‘features’ between the alienmen in your life.
I simply tear open the packet, kneel, and lick over each one of his heads. I try to project confidence when I struggle to dig the latex ring out from behind each shroom rim where it wants to stay squeezed, and when I finally manage to get the condom fitted all the way on, I think Tac’s about done.
His teeth-gritted exhales, his low grunts as I licked—and squeezed, and tugged and half-pumped him—have gotten me ready to go though, so no matter how long this will or won’t last, I’m game for real now.
When I stand, Tac grabs me by the hips and lifts me, and I obligingly wrap my legs around him, giving his neck a hug, and this is where I cling. It’s been nice to feel like someone’s got me. Being a single parent is one long, solitary road, with struggles so hard I’ve been scared they’d break me. It can get lonely, and oh, what I would have done to have someone half as good as Tac put their arms around me and tell me, ‘It’s going to be okay: I’ve got you.’ So yeah, I’ve been soaking this up just about every chance that I can. I sigh and squeeze his neck a little tighter.
“This is good,” he lips say against my ear, and his voice has gone guttural.
I take the opportunity to tease him now that we can understand each other. “I can’t help but notice that this doesn’t seem a whole lot different from how you carry me lately.”
“Unlike you, my fantasies involving the two of us took place in every bay on every level of this ship, including this one, including this position.”
Really! “Oh yeah? What’s your favorite one?”
His smile shows a little strain, but it’s tender. “Holding you, almost like this.”
I frown. “Almost?”
Tac’s fishy brows pop up. “May I?”
I give him a stately nod.
He slides his arms under my legs until my knees are locked over his elbows. I’m spread wide, and the stretch of my muscles is as exciting as the not-so-tiny thrill of fear that zips up my back. It’s a lot like the zip you get when you turn away from a dark closet in a dark room and you just know the monster is going to reach out and grab you. Or like when you’re glad you’re alone because you’re a darn adult but you’re still going to pull an Olympic qualifier of a long jump to make it onto your bed without getting your feet near enough to the bottom of it to get dragged under it.
You know. Like that.
But I do trust that Tac won’t let the monster kill me. And I trust that he’ll do his best not to let it eat me.
But I’m also prepared to take one for the team.
I shiver.
“I’ve got you,” Tac whispers, and his eyes hypnotize me.
I believe him.
With a deep breath, I reach between us, where his cock is pulsing against me, hot, and so hard. And I squeeze my legs so that I rise up enough to line up with his tip.
And then I sink down.
I hope Brax doesn’t hear the sounds we’re making now. Tac must be thinking the same thing, because he “Vssshps” me softly.
And then he raises his arms. This pulls me up and almost off of his cock… before he drops his arms and gravity brings me banging down on him.
I sink my teeth into his shoulder and use it as a sound muffler. I think Tac finds the hollow of my neck for the same reason, but he jerks his head up and stills so that I’m left to set our pace. Such a gentleman. I experiment, rising and falling and panting and gasping—so good.
And I learn something new. I’ve never had a lover hold me up during sex to know this, but my leg muscles are tightening and releasing in a workout that heightens everything. PLEASURE explodes inside me as an orgasm sneaks up and slams into me out of nowhere.
Just like the Culc when it leaps on my back.
CHAPTER 64
TAC’MOT
I nearly go deaf as Tara shrieks in fright.
Her heavenly inner muscles are clamped around my cock so gloriously tight that for the briefest moment, I can’t move. And I would have warned her that the Culc was approaching, but I hadn’t wanted her to lose her release. She’d been so beautiful chasing it.
I chatter my teeth as I find mine, and bust harder than I ever have before. I’m relearning how to breath when my silky sweet haven of snugness is ripped away as Tara scrambles to dismount.
I could ever so cheerfully strangle this Culc for being a cock disruptor.
Instead, I settle for speedily sliding my hand between Tara’s smooth back and its main mouth, and hooking my fingers behind its upper palate to get a good hold on it.
As expected, it sinks its teeth around my hand, but I have a Rakhii to heal this—though, judging by the racket he’s making now, he might not be inclined to spit on me once he confirms how close the Culc came to harming Tara on my watch for the second time. Rakhii, inasfar as I’m aware, are the only species that consider spitting on someone to be a form of an honor.
Coaxing your female to mate with you while she’s being hunted is perhaps not the most deserving of acts. But I feel I’ve been punished enough considering I’m still hard, and she’s disengaged us. Abruptly.
Perhaps it’s due to adrenaline from the capture, but I could go again.
Culc secured with a tight pinch between its eyes, I chance a hopeful glance at Tara in the event she might be made interested in a celebratory—
She’s panting, and at my look, she bares her teeth. “Don’t even think about it.”
CHAPTER 65
BRAX
Tara steps through the door, and only now am I able to rise off of her drawing where I’d been spread out, clutching her favorite marker and the last spoon she’d had in her mouth. Her eyes are wide and she looks shaken, but otherwise appears whole, and healthy. Her hair is damp and clinging prettily, and my chains shriek in my attempt to lunge for her. She crosses the distance between us and lets me drag her in and sniff her over for injuries—
I inhale.
Smoke covers us.
I inhale again.
Now all I smell is smoke.
Tara has NO SCENT.
Not of herself, and not of me.
TARA DOES NOT HAVE MY SCENT.
MY FEMALE DOES NOT SMELL OF ME!
Needing to remedy this before I lose my teveking mind, I drag my tongue down her throat, and grasp her unscented, unmarked shirt in my hands.
My spines rise when another male dares to enter our haven. My vision bleeds to tanzanite. And I attack.
CHAPTER 66
TARA
Brax’s tail had wrapped my wrists together and dragged me behind him the moment before he lunged for Tac. I was alarmed when he went from yellow to nearly red and reacted so violently to Tac just being in the room. Brax has been doing so good. I was confused when his tail released my wrists.
But I am scared to death when the chain snaps.
Faster than my eyes can follow, Tac’s pinned against the wall, and Brax is in his face, and Tac’s gone reverse cheetah—his skin flooding with color, with light pinprick spots dotting all over him, and those lazy sundae-topping trails of emerald turn into bold red and black squiggly cheetah-tears shaped spots. It’s interesting. It looks dangerous. It looks serious. But despite this severe alteration in pattern and color, he’s calm when he reaches out a hand and places it on Brax to drop him.
Just like that.
Fight over.
Only…
Brax doesn’t drop.
Nothing happens to Brax at all.
The realization that steals over me must look much the same as the horror that dawns on Tac’s face.
“Everyone here is afraid of your spots,” I’d said to Tac after my translator was installed. “I’ve seen you take down Brax—”
Tac had hugged me ti
ghtly. “You’re safe. On our mating ceremony, we shared essence.”
Essence.
Bodily fluids.
Sperm.
Splooge!
Brax is as immune to Tac as I am now!
My brain finally gets my mouth to work. “STOP!” I shout at the top of my lungs. “Brax, STOP!”
CHAPTER 67
BRAX
“GET. OUT.” I tell him, and we both see the way my hands are shaking. The way my muscles are tensing.
The way my tail blades slice at the air.
When Tac sets his jaw, I know he wants to look at Tara. One of those quiet, speaking looks of his that she treasures.
Don’t do it, Tac. Right now, I can’t share her. I do not have the control to watch her share her love with another male. I feel too unstable.
And in this moment, this terrible moment, I am afraid I know just how far Gelert was pushed until he finally snapped.
And it will be me snapping if this male so much as attempts to make a connection with her—even so small a thing a glance.
When no one moves, I take a breath. And another. This male. My friend.
I smell his blood, and from the odd tang, I know the Culc is responsible. Culc bites are nasty. I draw back my lips and spit on his hand, making Tara jump.
I sink my tailblades into the wall next to him.
“Go, Tac,” I manage.
With that—Thank Creator—he does.
I don’t know if Tara would have cursed me out, praised me, or followed after Tac. Likely all three, and in that order, not to mention her mood would likely be grudging for the second, and furious with me by the third.
I don’t wait to find out.
My tail rips from the wall, looping softly to catch her by her throat and she’s so startled it works to hold her fast as I grab her up and toss her onto the bed.
I scent mark her so thoroughly, she slips right out of my hands. Not because she was attempting to escape, but because my glands have gone into overproduction and she’s this slickly coated with it.
Breathing hard, I meet her eyes to gauge her, and I see a faint wry quirk to her lips.
My hearts leap. In her eyes is… it’s close to the vicinity of understanding, if not forgiveness for going after Tac.
She may be too slippery to keep a grip on now with my hands, but my tail spirals around her and keeps her in place as I rejoin our wrists by the leather cuff.
An alarm sounds, but it’s distant enough it doesn’t disturb my concentration.
“Why does he keep nagging you all the time?”
I’m so confused at her question that inhale to snort—and my frame immediately relaxes. Her scent—that would be her body chemistry’s emissions blended with mine. MINE!—is restored, and instantly, I feel a sliver of peace. “Tac?”
She gasps. “Tac doesn’t nag you! I meant the Culc owner! That’s what the alarms have been for, all this time? ‘Vid’ and picture updates?”
“Some of them,” I confirm. I make certain our gazes lock. “A being can grow very attached to an exotic pet. Even if they don’t own them yet,” I finish on a whisper.
Her eyes have an alluring, luminous quality that makes my hearts work erratically. I snare her ankles now and pull her towards me, then I use them to swiftly bounce her up and flip her over.
Her startled noise makes my dorsal spines clack together.
I prowl half-over her, and wait.
She doesn’t raise her hips for me.
I snap my teeth and earn a look so full of warning that I see I need to reverse my method straightaway. I swallow a cringing wince and bring my hand to her flank, and pet her over her already drying clothes.
Her rump sways a little in response.
My next stroke is testing: I run my palm softly over the covered round of her rump cheek, down the back of her thigh, and when I get to the silky hollow behind her knee, she’s twitching in place a little. Her arousal was evident during my tongue’s first frantic coverage, her body melting into my squeezing hands.
I have her primed, but not accepting.
An intention to kill her mate will do that, machaai.
I move to straddle her, leaning in to reach her shoulder, and here, I nuzzle our shirt to the side until it’s nearly falling off. As I trace a line up to her nape with the tip of my nose, I feel her hips wriggle. I exhale on the back of her ear and her head thunks facedown, and I hear a thwap behind me, and I can tell from the miniscule bucking movement under me that she just picked up one of her feet and softly dropped it back to the bed.
Curious behavior. I’ve no idea if this is positive, or negative.
As she’s reaching out for a pillow, I nuzzle the back of her ear now, and I feel her thighs spread by a fraction.
That’s it, veetling.
I readjust my weight on her, nudging my hardness into her rump. Her skin glides against mine everywhere I pet her, encountering my scent on her calms me further, and when I back off of her, her legs spread a little more.
I slide the backs of my fingers up the inside of her leg, and watch her hips rock. This encourages me to reach under her skirt, and drag the tips of two fingers along her slit, testing. The fabric covering her is saturated and it isn’t from my saliva.
Yet.
And when she presses her face harder into the pillow she begins to gain her knees. My tail wags. I fist the material of her skirt. I tug it up so swiftly it makes her midsection lift sharply, just as her front half collapses.
This rump.
Oh. This tether.
Crite.
With a deep breath, she rises back up enough to throw me a look over her shoulder that has my horn bases heating. Impatience checked, I lean in and drag my tongue over her cheek apologetically.
I can’t pull my eyes away from the way she shivers in apparent delight before sinks her back into a graceful arch, her hips lifting for me, waiting to be mounted. Slowly, she spreads her knees wider and I recognize it not as an invitation, but permission.
I don’t hesitate.
I rip the condoms from the pocket of her skirt, tear at my suit, impatiently get myself fitted, saliva-coated, and finally, I’m lining myself up with her hips, eager to—
She surprises me by reaching her bound hand under herself and grasping my cock. I want to bugle. She picks the edge of her panties up and slides them to the side, then leads me to make several slow, sliding passes to coat myself in her creamy, heated slickness. The wetness, the cling of it, the sound of it, the smell of it!
When she lets go, I find her clit, and pull my cock up slowly, raptly absorbing the sight of her netherlips parting and kissing the head of me until it settles into place.
I press forward, nearly rutted stupid from the sensation of her inner walls relaxing for my entry. I reach around to rip the pillow away from her face. “Never forget,” my rasping words are almost a hiss, “I belong to you. You will never remove me from you, never set me aside.”
When she says nothing, I draw back, and slowly ease in again. I use shallow pumps, just as she likes, pulling out and denying reentry for an extra click as her intensity builds. My jaw is locked with the effort, I’m nearly mindless as I watch her squirming but finally, she attempts to rock her hips back, trying to gain more of me.
My voice is rough. “Say it. I need you to say it. Agree, Tara.”
At another beat of silence, I pull out of her completely.
She stutters an aroused cry and moans, “I wouldn’t, Brax. I wouldn’t.”
Gratefully, I sink into her, both of us making noises of appreciation.
And desperation. My hands slide under our shirt, under her undertunic, and I find her breast compressor.
She struggles to twist up, which feels so incredible I have a difficult time deciphering her words. “Don’t, Brax! It’s the only one I have!”
I have spent much time with this garment both before and after it journeys into the nanocleanser. I quickly find the release, and her fussing for me no
t to break it ceases. I cup her loosed breasts, coming down heavily over her back as I groan and revel in the feel of being inside of her while I enjoy their weights in my palms.
“I wouldn’t break it on purpose,” I vow. “Your things are too precious to me.”
“Even Tac?”
My hips meet her hind cheeks with such a jolt that the breath is forced out from her in a low unnfff! and she lets her front half collapse again.
She’s limp all over: it’s only my grip on her hips keeping us in place. I work myself in and out, unable to silence her words in my mind. My instincts are at war with each other. Another male? Threat! Having her look, touch, smell, and feel the way she does about Tac… my nature rebels.
“Play yourself to release,” I strongly suggest to her.
I bring my hand on top of hers, careful not to cut her and feel frustrated that I can’t be the one to bring her pleasure this way because of my claws’ length and sharpness.
She however, has no such issue.
She skillfully guides herself into orgasm, and my hips pick up speed, gratified that she is sated, that she is with me, that she allowed us to connect like this after what I’ve done.
As I rest over her, regaining my breath, and enjoying her softness pillowing my frame, I can’t stop—I don’t—stop her words.
‘I wouldn’t break it on purpose. Your things are too precious to me.’
‘Even Tac?’
The threat—the fear—of being usurped, especially during inevitable moments and times when I will commit actions that displease her… my nature rebels!
Yet she is right. I have a strange feeling of… it is akin to... If she cares deeply for something, then part of me feels obliged to keep it safe also, providing it entry into the circle of my protection.
‘I wouldn’t break it on purpose. Your things are too precious to me.’
But for how long?
Did my brother say the same?