Bane: A SciFi Alien Romance (The Ladyships Book 2)

by Bex McLynn

  Therion glanced down at his own cock, a deep frown on his face.

  She reached out and stroked his chest. “Slow and shallow, right?”

  “Aye, no brace. I need to…” he trailed off as he lifted her.

  Oh my. He hoisted her up, as if she were a feather, and repositioned himself on his knees. He sank back onto his heels and resettled her astride him. Seated like this, her knees could barely reach the deck. Hardly any leverage at all.

  When she glanced at him, to gauge his thoughts on the matter, she found him gazing down. His attention was riveted to where his cock rested against her belly and his anthers stroked the hair of her mons.

  “Therion?”

  “Aye,” he said as he placed his hands lightly on her shoulders. “Your pace.”

  Ah, she understood. She would determine depth of penetration. Well, that was easy. All the way. However, they’d get there together, going at his pace not hers.

  She reassured him with a soft kiss to his chest. Then another one on his neck. The third she placed on his lips, only after she cupped his face and guided him down. He stayed pliant in her care, which encouraged her to shimmy closer. With a ragged inhale of her own, she planted her hands on his shoulders and lifted herself up.

  Exhaling, she sank down. The mushroom head of his cock bumped her wet core, and together they moaned. Maude rocked her hips, coating him in her slick arousal, and then pressed down. She took the tip of him inside.

  Therion took a ragged inhale and his hands spasmed on her shoulders. His eyes locked on his cock and her flesh that stretched to receive him.

  Maude paused. When he nodded, she lifted up, then sank back down, taking more of him.

  “Too much!” Therion jerked and clamped his hands to her hips, stopping her progress. “Too much.”

  Ah. She needed to give him feedback.

  “I feel good, Therion. It’s really good.” She tilted her head to better read him. “Are you good?”

  His chest heaved. “Aye. Good. I’m good.”

  “More?”

  He nodded without lifting his rapt gaze.

  Unlike Therion, she didn’t need to watch him penetrate her. Her body registered every inch of his girth and length. As she sank over him, she focused on his face, reading him by his responsive expressions. She wanted to take care with him.

  “Fuck Unholde.” Astonishment grated Therion’s groan. “You’re taking me. You’re taking me.”

  His hands flexed on her hips, once again communicating his desire to hold her tighter. Telling her that he wanted her badly, yet restrained his own strength. Oh, how he crushed her. How her heart ached for him.

  She rose up, then slowly sank back down a bit deeper. He didn’t stop her. She set them on repeat. Gauge. Rise. Sink. Each repetition lowered her further and further while his chest expanded more and more with each breath. Finally, she slid down him—surprised to see his anthers tuck into the base of his cock—and settled on his lap. Her mons bumped his pelvis as his hands locked on her hips, sealing them together.

  Good lord, he felt so damned good.

  Maude moaned, voicing her extreme pleasure at what they’d achieved together. All the blood that swelled within her core had awakened her nerves, creating a tight, pulsing sleeve for his cock. He’d spread and filled her, stretching her gradually while his beveled praal rubbed all the right places. This exercise in restraint had wrecked her with toe-curling bliss. Therion’s pace had been perfect for them both, because if not, she would have split herself in her enthusiasm.

  “You took me.” He chanted as his chest sawed with his ragged breathing. “Oh, fuck Unholde, your tiny little cunt took me.”

  Maude cupped his cheeks and guided his gaze up. She gave him an honest, astonished smile. “Aye, it did and it’s good. And I’m good. Everybody’s good.”

  His eyes roved over her as if seeking proof. She suspected, though, that he sought permission to move, to take this irresistible sensation and turn it into a shattering orgasm.

  Yeah, he totally had her permission to do that.

  “Therion, are you good?”

  “Good.” He adjusted his grip, rippling his many-jointed fingers. “Good.”

  “Loosen your hold a bit.” She began to wiggle her hips. “Ease up.”

  Therion released a choppy exhale and relaxed his hands.

  “Good.” Maude started slow and steady, her focus on his reactions.

  Up. Down. Oh. Maude’s good intentions fled as she closed her eyes and lit up with pleasure.

  But this wasn’t about her. She’d been selfish last time with Therion. Never again. Shivering and feeling a bit out of her depth, she snapped her attention back to him to gauge his response.

  “Again,” he heaved, his eyes bright with arousal. “Do that again.”

  Well, then. He’d recovered just as she began to fall apart. Perfect timing.

  “Lift me.” Her bold instruction surprised her, but he complied.

  He dragged her up his slick ribbed cock. She gasped as her hands clenched his shoulders. Before she could exhale and speak, he pulled her back down. His girth and length opened and stretched her, soothing yet spurring the sweet ache inside of her. He had her gasping and grasping at him all over again.

  He repeated the move.

  Up. Down. Therion released a long and low groan, her whole body thrumming with the vocalization of his pleasure.

  He worked her over his cock again. Light burst behind Maude’s eyes. He’d hit it. Good lord, he’d hit her g-spot. Her body clenched damned well everywhere. Her limbs. Her chest. Her pussy.

  “Good, Maude?” Therion grated out, sounding pained.

  She opened her mouth to find herself speechless. Desperate for more, she nodded her head wildly while tugging at his shoulders, urging him onward.

  He lifted her.

  “Gods, I hope that’s an aye, ‘cause—” He devolved into a guttural, apologetic groan as he pulled her down while thrusting upward. He thrust again, and when he spoke, uncertainty and a bit of alarm strained his voice. “Maude? Tell me that was good.”

  Good? Each of his firm strokes had slid him deep inside of her, and his size and texture had ignited her whole body. Hell, her eyes had rolled back in her head.

  “Maude?”

  She gasped. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  Therion laughed, one sharp chuff of amazement and relief. “Fucking love that human word.”

  She’d been chanting in English, hadn’t she?

  “Yes, Maude.” He adjusted his grip on her. She’d have bruises in the shape of his hands; she was sure of it. “Gods, yes.”

  Therion thrust up into her again and again. He rambled and grunted, the deep rumble of his voice strumming her nerves. She gripped his shoulders as she arched her back, tilting her hips to better receive him. He rewarded that adjustment with filthy praise for her cunt along with short, smooth pumps that had her keening.

  If he found a steady rhythm, she never caught it. Her composure had fled. She was panting, her body coiling and tingling as stars danced at the edge of her vision. Two more strokes from him stretched open the clenching ache of her core, and Maude shattered. Her orgasm tore through her, stealing her breath as it blasted through her limbs.

  Therion gripped her hips harder, baring his teeth as he pumped through the grip of her release. His movement faltered, and then his jaw dropped on a soundless groan.

  They collapsed into one another. He dropped his head to her chest, while she pressed her cheek to his shoulder. Their exhausted panting echoed in the cabin.

  “Maude.” She’d no idea how he found the strength to speak. “Is it always like this?”

  No. Never like this. But words wouldn’t come, leaving her to weakly shake her head and hoping he felt it against his shoulder.

  He stumbled over his words, giving several false starts before saying, “No wonder my brother is such a desperate bastard. I had no idea. No fucking clue.”

  Unsure of what he meant, Maude responde
d to his bewilderment with soft reassurance by patting his shoulder.

  “We need to do that again.” Therion raised his head and gave her a sloppy kiss over her ear. He’d probably gotten a mouthful of her sweaty hair. “Again and often and right now.”

  “Now?” She couldn’t move. But for another orgasm like that? Aye, she’d try. An earnest, limp try.

  Therion rose up, and she felt his thighs shaking. He resettled himself on the hard floor and pulled her flush against him.

  “Here.” He jostled her a bit as she felt him twisting and reaching. The sound of crinkling foil was followed by him slapping ration bars to her chest. “Eat.”

  “Did you just pull these out from under the bunk?”

  “Eat, Maude. We are doing that again because that was brilliant. But in a minute.” His chest sawed with ragged breaths. “So, eat.”

  She eyed the dusty wrappers. “How long were these under there?”

  “Seriously, you’re pregnant and need to regain your strength.”

  “That didn’t answer—”

  “Eat.”

  When she simply lay there, settling into the afterglow, he jostled her again. “Not fucking around here, Maude. If you want my anthers tickling that clit of yours, eat.”

  With shaking fingers, she ripped open a ration bar.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Therion leaned against a wall in the anteroom of the Sacana Turris meeting hall, his head bent over his WristCune as he kept his ears open to the room.

  Last night, while Maude had used her unbelievable body and even more unbelievable kindness to shatter and remold him, Lady Arana had requested another meeting with the Trine on the space station.

  What a fucking mess.

  Therion didn’t need to raise his eyes to know that Livvek, the man standing across the anteroom with his arm in a sling, glared at him. The man had spent the entire meeting yesterday staring at him as well. Like Therion gave a shit about Livvek’s shredded shoulder. The idiot had pointed a bullpulse rifle at Seph while she’d been standing on Prykimis’s bridge. For all the fucks, what had the man really expected to happen?

  What did happen was that decades of camaraderie between House Borac and House Conari had fallen apart because of one overeager shit. Weeks ago, the ordnance that Prykimis fired at Officer Livvek from House Conari, shredding his armor and shoulder, also tore through the treaties that bound the two houses. Hell, the moment Conari had won the TerTac bid for Prykimis, those bonds had begun to snap. Zver probably could have salvaged the situation. Could have run some convoluted scheme to have won Prykimis back, but Seph and the ship had taken matters into their own hands. When Prykimis shot Livvek, well, that severed the Borac-Conari bonds rather decisively.

  A shadow settled over Therion, followed by Dius’s pissed off grumble. “Want me to redirect that fucker’s eyes?”

  Dius canted his head toward Livvek.

  “Want? Aye. Need?” Therion shrugged. “Also aye. Not above begging here, Di. Food, shelter, and Livvek’s eyeballs rammed up his ass are my base needs at the moment.”

  Right on cue, he heard what he always heard, because the Teras had phenomenal hearing.

  “Fucking Therion,” Livvek spat.

  Dius stared at Livvek. “I’m gonna pull his stomach out his anus while I’m at it.”

  Therion raised his voice. “I heard your ass pucker from all the way over here, Livvek.”

  Wies, Seph’s head entourage guard, swore under his breath and strode over, blocking Therion’s view of the asshole clencher. Well, Wies would have blocked Therion’s view, but Direis blessed Therion with his grandfather’s height. At the most, Wies’s noggin would be the perfect chin rest as Therion continued his glaring contest with Livvek.

  But when Wies locked onto him, his eyes like laser targets, Therion couldn’t break the glare. He began to shift uncomfortably. Not even Zver did this to him. “What?”

  “You know fucking what,” Wies said, his voice eerily flat.

  Therion bristled and jutted his chin at Livvek. “He started it!”

  Wies canted his head toward Livvek without taking his eyes off Therion. “You think I’m not gonna finish it?”

  “You know I don’t do well with multiple-choice questions.”

  Wies’s mouth remained a harsh line. It didn’t twitch into a smile or downturn into a frown. But Therion had already gotten his read on Wies. Livvek had pointed a bullpulse at Seph while she’d been under Wies’s protection. The strike captain wanted his pound of flesh.

  Wies dipped his chin. “We clear, Commander?”

  “Aye, we’re clear,” Therion grumped. “But if he fucks with Maude, I’m tearing his arms off at the elbows. Then I’ll use ‘em to shove his eyeballs up his ass.”

  Wies regarding him a moment longer, remaining his typical, unflappable self.

  “And I’m gonna use the elbow end,” Therion added. “So it’ll take longer and hurt more.”

  Wies simply tilted his head left—the tell that his comm pinged him. “Athelas are on the move.”

  The strike captain barked an order, and his men snapped to attention as the doors to the meeting hall banged open.

  Seph stormed out. “Another stupid, pointless crapfest. Wies! I’m calling it.”

  Therion ran his eyes over Seph, assessing her to be wholly well, yet wholly pissed as hell. It was a replay from the day before, when Seph stormed out of that meeting as well. His concern for Seph scattered when Maude exited the hall, her brow furrowed in compassion and confusion.

  Maude stared after her cousin as Seph stomped through the anteroom with her entourage swarming around her. It amazed Therion how such a tiny woman had cut a swath through the overcrowded room. Numerous contingents of security guards for the various Athela overflowed the space, yet all the men scattered, pressing themselves along the walls as Seph barreled through like Unholde himself guarded her back.

  Maude drifted through in the wake of that storm, her compassion radiating from her like warmth from the sun. It was unmistakable, and something he wanted to bask in for always.

  In two strides he reached her, his arms already pulling her close. “Aye, Maude?”

  She wrapped her arms around him, and he felt Kora slither away, removing herself from their embrace.

  Maude gazed up at him, her head tilting back and exposing the column of her throat. “I don’t know what to do for her, Therion.”

  “Now why would you have to do anything?”

  He knew Maude, and thus, he knew the answer, but he’d asked the question anyway. Because, damn all, she shouldn’t have to carry Seph’s demons as well as her own. Earth was lost, but Seph, with desperate stubbornness, was holding onto her hope. He couldn’t blame Seph; he knew her reason. He simply didn’t like that Maude took on Seph’s suffering.

  However, he did learn, that in this regard, he and Maude were alike. He knew how families and love worked. That some people, like himself and Maude, were programmed to do whatever they could to make those they loved happy.

  “She just—” Maude faltered and shook her head. “I just think things are going to get very difficult for her. And I wish there was something I could do about that.”

  “She’s got Zver,” he said.

  “And I’ve got you.” She squeezed him and his heart thrummed in his chest.

  She did have him.

  It boggled him that only hours ago he and Maude were twined together in his cabin. She had practically inhaled those two ration bars. Then she’d tugged him into the bunk, rolled onto her back, and welcomed him into her body again. He’d made excellent use of that padded little alcove. Had the bump on his noggin and the bruising in his elbows and tailbone to prove it.

  Maude had shown him some very interesting positions last night, and his anthers still twitched at his suspicion that Maude had tempered his initiation, only sharing the basics with him. She’d assured him, that after her baby was born and her body had healed, her cunt would remain open to him. Human woman
didn’t have a medullary bone. Then she’d spoken of Human manuals dedicated to the art of sinking a cock fully into a cunt, all the while having no idea that he’d never been so profoundly affected.

  She’d welcomed him without the use of a brace. While powerful men schemed and bartered to have access to a pregnant woman for several months, Therion would have soul-shattering sex for a lifetime.

  Fuck that. It wasn’t the sex. It was Maude. He would have Maude for a lifetime.

  Here in the meeting room, he dipped his head, pressing his brow to her crown, not caring that armed men from his house stared at them. Those men should be used to this exchange. Aye, Zver didn’t coddle Seph in public, but Therion’s parents were affectionate at all times. Well, his mother was, same as Dyr was with ornery Gummy. And it gladdened him that Maude wasn’t like his grandmother, but welcomed his embrace.

  “Come on, Maude. Let’s go.” He tucked her close and guided her from the room, trusting Dius and the entourage guards to clear their way.

  Maude huffed, an outward sign of frustration that he’d witnessed from her before. “That meeting really was a waste, Therion. We could have told the Trine over comms that I wasn’t going to the Academe. Hell, we could have told Gummy over breakfast and been done with it.”

  “That would have been amazing, but it’s not the way of things.”

  “I am starting to notice that more and more.” She sounded rather despondent to admit such a thing. “I have some adjustments to make, to the Teras way of doing things.”

  “That was all a show of force,” Therion said. “Folks flexing their egos for the entire Dominion to see. The Trine had to come and establish their authority, even if they ended up backing down. To the rest of the Dominion, they could say that you all have come to an accord.”

  Maude snorted. “Seph threatened them with a battleship.”

  Therion squeezed her shoulder. “That will do it.”

  She flicked her eyes to him. “They also mentioned our clutch contract.”

  He suspected as much. Last night, they’d cuddled—naked and sweaty and exhausted—and drafted and submitted a clutch contract. It was official, since the Athela always chooses. The entire Dominion now knew: Maude had chosen him.