"Don't you dare!" she says, spinning to face me. "I love it! It looks exactly like the star shape of my tattoo!"
I let out a captive breath. That was what I was aiming for.
"How did you get the pieces of life-stone to glow like that? I thought they only did that when they've been touched?"
I let a smile show on my lips. The shards of life-stone fill in Ah-Lanah's star shape, held into the carved star by dried clay - the very same method I'd used to attach the little sparkling stone chips to the beams above us. But this one - this star,Ah-Lanah's star, I'd wanted it to glow brightly for as long as possible. "There is a leaf in the jungle," I begin, reaching for one of the many pots placed on the shelving, "that leaves a sensation on the skin when a body brushes past it. 'Fool's Mate', the healers call it. Generations ago, when we were punished, and our females were taken from us, it is said that the remaining males lost their wits and used the plant to rub on their skin to emulate the sensations of being touched by a female." I dip my finger into the paste inside the pot, ignoring the odd feeling on my skin. Gesturing for Ah-Lanah's arm, she offers it freely and curiously. On the inside of her wrist, I rub on a small amount and pull away, watching as her little human brow furrows.
"It... it feels like you're still rubbing," she says, quickly looking up at me but then back to the patch of skin. "It really feels like you're still touching me."
I grunt and nod, placing the lid back on the pot. "The plant's properties don't only work on living skin." I smile up at the twinkling life-stone star. "The stone thinks it's being touched. That is why it still glows long after I rubbed the balm onto it. It will last now until the suns rise this next day. The method is often used with younglings who do not wish to be left in the dark and I-" I hesitate, my eyes going to her arm, where her special skin-etching lays hidden and pressed to her body.
Ah-Lanah turns to face me. "And you?..." she prompts, seemingly eager for me to continue.
"I... I thought that since you take comfort in your mother's star that..." Goddess! Why am I tripping over my own words? What is wrong with my tongue? "Maybe you would like your youngling to have something similar? That is why I put it above the cage-"
My voice dies in my throat as Ah-Lanah approaches me, stopping when we are toe-to-toe and her beautiful face is turned upward. Her pretty warm brown eyes are round and lined with tears. I start to curse myself. I must have gotten something wrong for her to be upset.
"Crib," she whispers hoarsely, her hands smoothing up my chest. Does she feel the thunder of my heart beneath her touch?
"What?" I'm temporarily dumbfounded by her nearness like a youth downing his first fermented fylli drink.
"Crib," she repeats, her arms reaching up around my neck and her watery eyes dipping from mine down to my mouth. "You keep calling it a cage, it's a crib."
Those are the last words before she tugs me down to her and her plump lips are suddenly on mine.
And the space between my heartbeats is flooded - filled in with her scent, her touch, the wet roll of a single tear on her cheek. My pulse trips over itself - stutters and starts again with more vigor and desperation than ever before.
Ah-Lanah is...keesingme.
Sheis keesingme.
The act is both strange and wonderful, and I do not know how it is I am meant to participate.
Ah-Lanah's small hands cradle my face as though she means to keep me in place while she does as she wishes with my mouth. I will happily comply. She can do as she pleases with any part of me as long as it feels like this.
Temple save me, even if it doesn't feel like this - I am hers to play with as she will.
Her firm but soft presses of lips feel like nothing I've ever known but I try to match it. The pleased rumbling from my chest has never been so loud. Not when I learnt my wings, not when I completed my Spear Trial, and not when I was named as Rynn's Second Spear. Never has my purr been almost deafening as this.
I wrap my tail around the back of both her legs, pulling every bit of Ah-Lanah as close as I can possibly get, hunched over her smaller form, letting this little female become my whole... my wholeeverythingin this moment.
But then her hot little tongue swipes across my lips and I part them in surprise. She distracts me so thoroughly and pushes into my mouth, brushing tongue against tongue. The sensation so overwhelming my knees almost buckle. The groan that comes from my throat must surely belong to someone else. I have never made such a noise.
But there is no one else here.
It is just us.
Just Ah-Lanah.
Just Ah-Lanah.
My trembling hands flex into her flesh and I realize belatedly I'm gripping onto her lush hips, my fingers digging into her softness like I'm scared she's prey that might escape and flee. I try to release my hold, but I cannot let go - not while her tongue is stroking mine, coaxing me to delve into her mouth as she had done mine, not while she opens up for me.
I try my best to emulate the wonderful things she does to my mouth, and I must do something correctly, for she makes a sighing sound and pushes those gorgeous teets into me like she's trying to get closer still, trying to hide herself in the cage of my ribs. I would gladly let her. I would shelter her and keep her safe.
All too soon, Ah-Lanah pulls away from her keesing of me. And I -utter fool that I am- whine pitifully and try to chase those lips of hers - to try and recapture them, try to get them back, try to prolong this feeling that is better than soaring on an updraft with the twin sun's rays warming my feathers.
When it becomes apparent she will not let me have her on me again, I dazedly open my eyes to Ah-Lanah standing there, one hand on my chest as she breathes heavily and looks up at me with the softest of smiles. "I don't think not-mates are meant to do that," she whispers. "Sorry."
