The crack in his chest widened, and emotion flooded through that he had no name for.
She moved lower.
Her hand found him where he had emerged from his sheath, already hard, already aching, his body responding to her presence with an urgency that bordered on pain. When her fingers wrapped around him, a sound tore from his throat that was not a word—feral and hungry, the sound of a thing caged too long.
"Show me," she said. "Show me what you like."
He could not think. Could not form coherent instructions. Instead, he let the bond open wider, let her feel what he felt, let his pleasure guide her movements. Her grip tightened, loosened, found a rhythm that made his vision blur.
Then her mouth was on him, and he stopped thinking entirely.
Wet heat and pressure. The impossible softness of her tongue tracing the ridges along his length. Through the bond, he felt her enjoyment—she liked this, liked the taste of him, liked the power of reducing him to incoherent need. The knowledge pushed him higher, and the predator in him roared against its restraints.
He gripped her shoulder to stop her before he lost control completely. His claws dimpled her skin, not breaking it, but close.
"Enough," he managed. The word came out guttural, barely language. "I need?—"
"I know what you need."
She rose above him. Positioned herself. Sank down onto him in one long, slow movement that made them both gasp.
His control shattered.
His hands found her hips, grip bruising-tight, and the sound that ripped from his chest was pure animal. Not words. Not anything the translator could parse. Raw, savage satisfaction at being inside her, at being claimed by her, at being chosen.
She did not flinch. Through the bond, he felt her answering heat—she liked his ferocity, liked knowing she had broken him loose from the cage he kept locked away from everyone else.
The angle was different like this. She controlled the depth, the pace, the rhythm of their joining. He could only lie beneath her and watch as she took her pleasure from him, her head thrown back, her body moving in waves, her hands braced on his chest for leverage.
She wasmagnificent.
The thought was the same one he had felt in the clearing, watching her fight. But this was different. This was not violence. This was surrender—his surrender, willing and complete, giving himself over to her in a way he had never given himself to anyone.
His tail coiled around her thigh, pulling her down harder onto him with each movement. Not to restrain. To feel her everywhere he could. To anchor himself to her so completely that the abyss could never pull him back.
"Makrath." His name on her lips, broken and breathless. "I can feel—through the bond, I can feel?—"
"Yes." He did not know what she was trying to say, but the answer wasyes. To everything. To anything. To whatever she wanted from him, now and always.
Her pace increased. He matched her, thrusting up to meet her, and the feedback through the bond spiraled higher with each movement. Her pleasure and his, braided together, amplifying until he could not tell where he ended and she began.
She came first. He felt it through the bond before he felt it around him—the crest and crash of her orgasm rolling through their shared consciousness like a star igniting. Then her body clenched around him, and his own release followed, torn from him with a roar that sent birds scattering from the canopy above.
She collapsed onto his chest. He caught her, wrapped his arms around her, held on like she was the only solid thing in a universe trying to tear him apart. His tail coiled around her legs. His claws retracted so he could stroke her back without cutting her. Through the bond, he felt her exhaustion, her satisfaction, her bone-deep certainty that this was right.
This. This was what he had been dying without.
He had been so close to falling. So close to becoming the thing that lived in the dark spaces of his mind. For years he had felt himself slipping, the hunger for violence growing stronger than his ability to contain it. The civilians at Central Station had been proof. He had been failing, and he had known it, and he had seen nothing ahead but the inevitable end.
She had changed that. She had looked at the monster and decided he was worth saving.
He was not alone anymore.
The thought should have been simple. Should have been obvious. But he had been alone for so long—decades of purpose without connection, of service without intimacy—that the absence of that aloneness felt like being reborn.
"Stay," he said. The word came out raw, stripped of everything but need. "Stay with me."
She lifted her head. Looked at him with those eyes that held no fear. That had never held fear, not really, not even when she should have been terrified.
