“Yes.”
He slid his fingers up and down, side to side, experimenting until he performed a tight circle, and her breath hitched. The satisfied sound he made was a bolt of lightning right to where his fingers had begun to work her in earnest.
“I can do that,” she eked out, reaching down to replace his hand with her own. She’d never let anyone do this before, never had the patience to let any of the men she’d fucked learn what she liked.
He smacked her hand away and went right back to what he’d been doing.
“I’m struggling,” he said, his voice deep and rattling with his purr. “Let me do this, please. My instincts are…” He pressed his cheek against the nape of her neck, groaning.
“What instincts?”
“Seeing you like this, it’s triggering something in me. I don’t… I don’t understand it. The things I want to do to you…”
“Tell me,” she urged, rolling her hips back and grinding against him.
He was panting. The hand beside her head, bracing him over her, curled all six claws into the dirt.
“I want to hold you down,” he admitted raggedly. “I want to hold your wrists and fuck you until your legs can’t hold you up. I need to know you’re mine. I need to feel it.”
She chewed on that, momentarily lost for words. She hadn’t been sure what he was going to say, but she hadn’t expected it to be that.
I need to know you’re mine.
Was she? Could she be?
She dug her fingers into the cool earth beneath her, hesitating.
A lifetime of closing herself off from others was not an easy thing to cast aside. Trusting a man on Earth had never been worth the cost to her freedom—but this wasn’t Earth, and Rentir had made it clear he didn’t want to strip her of everything she’d worked so hard for.
They had to be the most unlikely couple in the galaxy. Two people whose paths should never have crossed. She’d been born hundreds of years before him. She should have died on theLeto. TheCassandrashould have drifted aimlessly in space until the life support systems shut down. Yet, here she was, with this male who had also defied death to be here, fit together with him like two puzzle pieces.
For years, the fear that she was cursed had haunted her. What sense would it make to turn her back on superstition now? She had to believe that they had been brought together for a reason.
Live a little for me, Commander, Felix taunted from somewhere far beyond.
“Do it,” she whispered.
His purr stuttered and started again, layered with an animal growl. He burst into motion, shifting as he pulled both herarms behind her back, forcing her cheek into the dirt. Her arms strained as he straightened behind her, leveraging her bound arms against her.
His next thrust was brutal, but in a deeply welcome way. It startled a guttural sound out of her, and he froze in concern until she rocked back into him for more. He didn’t need any more invitation; just like that, he was pounding into her so hard that she would have gone sprawling without his grip on her. His tail took the place of his preoccupied hands, sliding between her labia and pressing hard so every shift of her hips rubbed her clit against its velvety surface. She could feel his desperation in every thrust, every grunt, every harsh breath. It was as though no matter what he did, he couldn’t get close enough to her.
When her thighs grew too weak under the onslaught to hold her hips up, his tail dipped beneath her and hauled her back up.
“We’re not done,” he snarled, sounding hardly recognizable.
“I’m not—ah!—going anywhere.”
His rhythm stumbled at that, and then he was fucking her harder, faster, until it was all just a blur of overwhelming sensation. The gathering storm of her orgasm began to prick within her, starting at her scalp and spreading down to her nipples, her navel, her toes. Every muscle wound tight with tension.
“You’re mine,” Rentir was saying desperately, his voice strangled. “You’re mine.”
She groaned, teetering on the precipice. He jerked out of her suddenly, cursing so colorfully the translator couldn’t make sense of it. Hot cum jetted over her back and she sagged to the ground, biting back a whine of frustration.
So close.
He released her arms with a growl that mirrored her own disappointment.
“It’s okay,” she began, twisting to flash him a weary smile. “It’s normal. Most men don’t?—”
