“You touched me like this,” I remind her, letting the memory rise in my mind. When my body began to transform, her hands on my skin when the dust was ripping me apart from the inside. “You soothed my fire.”
“You were hurting. I couldn’t just—” she looks away almost as if she can’t face me now. “You were in pain.”
“You soothed me.” I move the strip across her hand. “Now I soothe you.”
I rinse the scrap before sliding it along the curve of her jaw, across the bruise at her temple. Then, I thumb away a streak of soot at the corner of her mouth.
She leans into my claw, eyes drifting shut again, and every instinct in me howls that I should take. Fill. Make her shake on my member until there is no room for fear left in her bones.
I tighten my claw in the scrap.
“Rest,” I project. “I will watch over you. No dreams of falling. Only my mind around yours.”
Mih-kay-lah opens her eyes.
“If I sleep now, I’ll dream of falling anyway,” she sends, and the honesty in the thought cuts me. “I’d rather overwrite it. Pick a different loop for my brain to play back.”
Her hand lifts, and she plants her palm flat in the center of my chest.
My dra-kir slams against it.
Her other hand reaches out, catching the edge of the scale covering around my hips.
“Mih-kay?—”
She tugs.
The knot gives. The scrap of covering falls away with a whisper.
My member springs free, aching, heavy, the head already slick. In the firestone light, it looks even larger than before: the thick crown flaring slightly wider than the shaft, the faintly luminous ridges along the length, and at the base, the swelling bulb, denser and hotter than the rest.
For a single beat of my dra-kir, I see it through her eyes.
More. Bigger. Alien.
“Too much,” I think, looking down at it. Her mind hits me like a wave.
“Beautiful,” she thinks, and I feel her awe. “Fuck.”
Her hand wraps around me, digits barely meeting.
I choke on a groan, hips jerking helplessly into her grip.
The contact is perfection. Her palm drags over the sensitive underside, thumb skimming a ridge, and my vision blurs.
She strokes me once, from base to tip, then she releases me and reaches for her scale-tunic.
“Help,” she whispers, and the single syllable shreds whatever restraint I was still pretending to have.
My claws hook the ruined fabric. One hard, downward pull and the covering shreds. It falls away to the furs.
She is bared to the amber light.
Soft. So soft. Her chest heaves with each breath. The mounds on her chest have tight dark peaks.
Dust.
This female is mine?
