“I don’t want you using this cream on anybody else,” I say darkly.
“Raingar, I…” She swallows a shaky breath. Her pitch wavers and is enough for me to open my eyes and raise my head. I look into her gaze, hovering only slightly higher than mine even though I’m seated on this low chair and she’s standing to her full height.
“What?” I snarl, “You were planning on using this on other males? Will you lie to them, too, and tell them that you’ll be professional?”
Her lower lip juts out and her chin puckers. She steps away from me, pulling her hands into her chest and holding them there like injured victims of a crime she didn’t mean to commit. But make no mistake, there has been a crime, one taking place in my head. Thousands of males slaughtered for daring to take a single touch from her that is mine by right. My horns tighten and burn as she reads the warning in my eyes and takes a step back.
“Raingar.” She stiffens. “This isn’t easy for me, but Merquin…Merquin said I needed to stand up for myself and I…I don’t like the way you’re talking to me.”
She can’t meet my gaze. She doesn’t have to for her words to slam into me like a battering ram. I manage to find the strength to brace through them and stand.
She stumbles back — back toward the bed. “Raingar?”
“Get on the bed.”
She looks over her shoulder at it and crosses her arms over her chest. “Raingar, I don’t understand.” Her voice quivers and her scent intensifies around me, an echo of the fresh rain falling outside of our window. Spring flowers covered in dew. The storm at its peak. I need to taste it. I have no restraint.
“Essmira…” I moan, agonized. “Get. On. The. Bed.”
“Raingar, I thought…”
“I thought you wanted to be a pleasure female.”
She frowns, looking torn, looking hurt. “I don’t…”
“I see. I’m the problem. You don’t want to be mated to me. Is there someone else?” I’ve advanced on her far enough now that her knees hit the edge of the bed. She plops onto it, unable to catch herself.
“Raingar, you’re scaring me. I’ve never seen you like this. I…I didn’t mean to make an aphrodisiac.”
I chuckle, though the sound is dark and threatening. “You didn’t need to. It’s your scent. It’s you.”
Her expression hardens and fire enters her gaze, reminding me of the moment she threw the statue at my face. It only fans my desire. Before she can say anything else, I grab the fabric at my waist and rip the front of my pants free of the back, destroying most of her work in the process. She doesn’t look down at my angry cock, though I know she sees it. She does an admirable job of keeping her gaze — and her anger — trained on me.
“I was trained to be a pleasure female. I’m not trying to seduce you. I’m not trying to seduce anyone!”
“You don’t have to try…”
“You said I didn’t have to be a pleasure female. I thought I was doing a good job here as a member of your clan…”
“I don’t want you to be a member of my clan.” I drop my fists onto the mattress on either side of her knees. She tries to pull away from me, but I grab the front of her dress and hold her in place. “I want you to run my clan.”
She freezes. Her big, beautiful eyes blink. “What?”
“You’re my mate.” The words just come out, blunt and without ceremony. I can’t control them. They rappel from my lips like climbers, free-falling into an unknown abyss. “Merquin’s horns only flaked white when she met Librida. White horns mean we’ve found our mates and my horns started flaking the moment I entered the atmosphere of Quadrant One. You,” I accuse.
“Me?” She whispers.
“You,” I say.
I wait for a rejection…that doesn’t come. Because in the next moment, the frustrated fear that had been clouding her expression, making it murky, is wiped clean. A brilliant, clear smile is what’s left. She beams at me.
“You’re serious, Raingar?”
“Yeffa.”
“Is that why you’ve been so mean…you’re jealous?” She gasps and brings a hand to her mouth and, when I don’t answer, she shakes her head and immediately moves onto her knees. “If I’d known, I’d have understood. I would have let you know clearly that I didn’t touch any males like I touch you. I…” She smiles. “I like you. I was hoping you’d choose me for a mate.”
“There is no choosing. The universe chooses. This is Xiveri.” I bow my head so that my horns rest just beneath her.
What I don’t voice however, is that there is a choice. One that’s hers because she has no horns and no ability to feel Xiveri from her hybrid heritage either — at least none that I can see. She has a choice, but I don’t want her knowing it.
“You’re sure it’s me?” She takes my horns in her hands and my shoulder blades bunch beneath my ears, tense…ready.
“Yeffa. My horns wouldn’t have flaked for anyone else and they’re flaking now. Do you see?”
I reach up and blindly fumble for one of her hands. I yank it off of my right horn and we both look down at her palm between us. There are small black flecks on her skin. I look at them and am reminded of a collision of stars. A collision of ships sailing through space. Then I look up at her face. In all its infinite mass, how incredible is it that these two wrecks can find one another like this?
“And I need you. I need relief,” I choke, desperation making my words blunt and clumsy. Embarrassment rushes up my neck, making the heavy muscles in my throat pull. “I just…I’m not a pleasurer. I will need your guidance.”
I tug on the front of her dress too hard, hand curling without my control. The dress is tailored loosely to her shape, but I can still see down the front and catch sight of straps lacing over her breasts. Undergarments. These must be more of them. I groan.
I don’t know why I find them so arousing. Perhaps because I find them so frustrating in the same measure? They act as barriers preventing my gaze from honing in on what it wants. The only thing I’ve sought out these past solars. Every inch of her bare skin. To see how far the red goes.
“Lemoran horns don’t lie. They ache for you. I ache for you everywhere. I can’t stand this, Essmira. Please…tell me you feel…something! Anything.”
And then she kisses me. Her mouth crashes against mine with none of the tenderness I showed her earlier. Instead, her lips part and she bites my bottom lip between her teeth, sucking it into her mouth and sending my mind scattering.
“I can’t believe it. You should have told me sooner,” she says wildly as her arms coil around my neck. She pulls and I follow her down onto the bed, body coming to cover hers. I love the feeling of crushing her into the mattress and I can’t keep any of my weight off of her as I grind my pelvis against her soft stomach.
“The dress,” I snarl.
“Let me…”
But I don’t have patience for her. I grab the collar and tear it down the front seam. Her body comes into view, almost bare, and I’m fairly sure I die in that moment and fall into my greatest dream.
“You…your…the red,” I gasp. My fingers claw at the straps that cross her chest and cup her breasts. I pull and yank at them until they come undone.
A small flicker of pain crosses her face, but she lets me do what I want, so I assume it can’t hurt her that much. I pull and rip until she’s completely naked and sprawled out on the black bedding underneath her. It makes the red in her skin glow vibrantly, like a burning asteroid headed straight for my forehead. I’m undone. I’m going to come.
“I’m going to come,” I gasp, both horrified and elated.
Essmira sits up, as if on command, and grabs my cock with both of her hands. The moment I’m clasped firmly in her oily grip, semen explodes out of the tip of my cock and all over her perfect breasts. Her red breasts.
She’s red from breast to the bare, exposed slit between her legs. Like a suit that covers her entire stomach, the red is flawless across her entire mid-section. The
brown and the red clash over her hip bones in perfect lines of symmetry. Her hips and legs are brown all the way down to her feet, except for a single red spiral that covers her right leg and not her left, and ends on top of her right foot.
I grab her by the back of the neck and squeeze as I empty myself all over her body…her face, her chin, her lips. “Open,” I tell her and she hesitates, but only for the first instant. Then her jaw unhinges and she licks my cock clean.
“Your tongue,” I groan. She has a Voraxian tongue. It has ridges riding up its center and they feel ohring fantastic against my cock. “Ohr, Essmira. Your tongue feels fantastic.”
I grab her by the sides of her head and close my eyes as I give myself up to the pleasure that this pleasurer knows how to provide. I pull her forward and she brings her hot mouth around my cock while her nails scrape meaningfully over the sensitive skin of my sack, below it.
My twin spurs are pulsing and sensitive, but there’s nowhere for them to latch — they’re meant for her core — but Essmira has a solution for this too and gently massages them with her other hand. She works me all over, fully, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
I use her mouth to come not once, but four more times before I finally free her. She swallows my seed down every time and when I pull back, my eyes are hazy and glazed. I can barely focus. All I know is that I want to taste.
I push her back onto the bed and kiss a line down her body. I’m fascinated by her breasts and spend an eternity suckling her dark red nipples. I suck hard and bite and grip her waist and hold her still when she squirms.
“Essmira, you feel so ohring perfect,” I whisper and I wish I’d paid more attention to her response as she whispers, “I’m glad, my Lord.”
Instead, I moan loud enough I’m sure they can hear me in the great hall, but I don’t ohring care. I don’t care about anything except for the scent of rain and Walrey honey coming from between her legs. I fall flat onto my stomach and pump my hips into the mattress as I lick every inch of her red mound. It’s swollen and puffy and tastes like the cosmos. A drug made just for me, and I’m devastated by it. An addict from the start.
I shove one finger inside of her, wanting more of her flavor, but her body tenses and I have a hard time sticking a second digit into her tight wetness. “My cock will fit in here, won’t it, Essmira?” I ask, nervous.
I look up her body and her eyes are closed, her jaw and fists are clenched, she isn’t looking at me at all. I frown. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she whispers tightly.
I lick her seam again, finding the folds she has all fascinating. There’s a little nub at the top of her slit as well that feels soft and smooth under my tongue, but when I suck on it, she releases a small yelp.
“What is it now?”
She’s panting. Not like I’m panting, but panting nonetheless. It doesn’t arouse me though, like I feel it should. It’s like she can’t catch her breath. “It’s sensitive, my soft skin. If touched properly, I can feel immense pleasure through it.”
A rumbling comes from deep within me at the thought of bringing pleasure to my mate. My horns start to vibrate, sounding like a gong rung to the tune of the challenge laid out before me. I pull up on the skin surrounding her pleasure center and immediately return to it with my tongue. I lick and kiss and my mind goes ohring wild when she twitches and bucks beneath me. My hips dive into the mattress ruthlessly, rutting it like I plan to rut her body — savagely.
I suckle on her nub and bite it just a little with my teeth. She yelps again and her hips lift from the mattress and against my fingers, still lodged in her body, I feel a rush of liquid. Her inner core starts to tremble, too, spasming around the finger I’ve got inside of her. Is this her pleasure? I caused her pleasure?
I suckle her nub even harder and she shouts and the trembling of her inner walls gets more violent. I shove a second finger inside of her, wanting to taste more. Wanting to taste everything. My teeth nip at her feathery lips and I hold her hips down with my free hand, wanting her still so I can take more from her.
She moans above me in a tight, controlled way, but I want her to unravel like I’m unraveled, so I return to her soft skin and I suck it again and again and again until she comes for me again and again and again, each time spiraling faster than the time she came before. But I want it slow. Longer, more drawn out. Maybe the key to that is inside her body? But she’s so tight!
I manage to get a third finger inside of her, though she squeezes me deliriously as I roughly pump in and out, hoping to prepare her for my cock because there’s no ohring way I’m leaving this bed without having spent in her hot, wet channel.
Her inner walls vibrate around my fingers and, before she’s finished, I move up onto my knees, grab her hand, which is fisted in the sheets, and fit it to my cock. She pumps me and I spend all over her stomach and all over her slit. I rub my fingers through my milky grey seed and plunge them back inside of her.
“I’m going to spend in you again and again,” I whisper, voice hard and gruff. I grab onto her hips and wrench her down the bed, lifting her ass as I position my cock to her weeping wet entrance.
But just before I can shove deep inside of her, my gaze strays to her breasts and I notice something…
“Ohr. Am I coming blood?” My cock feels fine — better than fine, my cock feels magnificent. But there’s a little pink mixed in with the grey on her chest. I reach up and smear my thumb through it and she makes a sound. Not a pleasure sound or a startled one, either. It’s a pained sound.
My gaze flashes to her face and the tower of epic euphoria so quickly constructed within my chest totters and shatters. It hits the ground at the same time that I grab her below the knees and pull her legs together on one side of me. Then I scramble off of the bed away from her. My feet hit the floor and I fall onto my hard ass. Essmira sits up, but she winces as she moves, which only confirms my suspicion.
“I HURT YOU!” I bellow. Outside, the rain which had been gently disrupting the solar’s earlier sunshine releases a terrible wail. Thunder crackles and wind whips into the room, snapping the white cloth hanging from the bed’s four posters. The sky darkens as if it walks hand-in-hand with my mood.
I scrabble on hands and feet away from her until I run into a side table and knock it over. The wood clunks down, unharmed, but sounding like an arrow thudding into a wooden target. Maybe my head, because it must be made of wood for me not to have noticed the entire time I was using her body for my own pleasure that it was at the expense of hers.
“I thought…” I snap my teeth, snarling like an animal while rage makes my voice shake. “Why didn’t you say something?”
Her lower lip is trembling and she’s got water in her eyes that she tries to quickly rub away. “I’m sorry, my Lord. I should have said something. And you didn’t hurt me very badly. It just hurt when your fingers were inside. And I can’t come so rapidly, but that’s okay. It’s not a problem. I want to come for you, my Lord. When you want me to, my Lord. Your touch was wonderful, my Lord. It was just the undergarments that were the problem. I made them from wego fibers. I should have told you, my Lord. I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry. My Lord.
My Lord, my Lord, my Lord.
My ohring stars.
How far I’ve fallen. What was I thinking?
I lurch up onto my feet and charge at the bed, intending to swaddle her in blankets and race her to Moreth, the village healer, so he could examine the scrape on her right breast and the red abrasions and rapidly darkening bruises scattered haphazardly across her stomach, chest, neck…arms…her…her…
“Did I hurt your…” I start, but by now, I’ve reached the edge of the bed and when I reach for her, hoping to help, she lifts her arm.
She lifts her arm.
It takes me the length of three breaths to understand why she’s holding her arm out in that funny way, but when I do, I crumble. “I’m not going to hurt you!” I shou
t, but that’s a lie, isn’t it? Because I already did, and didn’t care at all as it was happening.
I race out of the room, shamefully erect cock bobbing in the wind as I reenter the main hall. “MORETH!” My voice booms across every stone, ricocheting back to me along with whispers of shame that make bile pitch in my stomach. “MORETH!”
The creatures in the hall all stop what they’re doing and look at me like I’m mad. I feel mad. I feel crazed and delirious.
“Raingar, are you alright?” Gorman comes out of the East hall, his robes billowing around him and making him look like a king. He should be. And I should be shoved into the lowest kintarr mine for the rest of eternity.
“Nob. Where’s Moreth? I need him. Essmira, she’s…hurt.”
“Wegigichi,” Gorman says over his shoulder, and a Rekkaru comes flying towards us. “Go get Moreth from the village. Tell him it’s urgent.” Then he turns to me. “You know I have some medical training. Maybe I can help in the meantime.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him nob, that I don’t want him to see her like this, but a small, clear thought cuts through the morass that tells me Essmira’s hurt and that’s all that matters. My pride is irrelevant. My pride was taken out back and blasted the moment I saw the wounded look in her eyes and she called me Lord.
Essmira’s already covered herself with a sheet by the time I return to the guest room with Gorman. “Oh, please…I’m fine, really. It’s just a few scratches.”
Gorman moves to her side and conducts an inspection that I watch from the doorway, heel tapping on the ground triple time. Any closer and I’d have to tear his stupidly shaped head off of his narrow shoulders. No male should be allowed to look at her, comes the dark voice guided by my cock and feral, base instincts. It’s not a voice I knew I possessed. But here it is, shouting at me from its position between my legs. Here it is, the reason I’m in this mess. Here it is, costing me the one thing it wants most.
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