“She trembled before his masculine authority as he growled, ‘You belong to me now, little star.’”
I practice the line quietly, trying to channel Commander Blade Starfire’s apparent success with female partners. “You belong to me now, little star.”
My forked tongue makes the words come out as “You belong to me now, little sssstar,” which doesn’t sound quite right. The sibilance ruins whatever commanding presence I was attempting to project.
I try again, focusing on keeping my tongue properly positioned despite the way Velogian vocal anatomy makes certain human sounds challenging. “You belong to me now, little—fuck.”
The sibilant sounds are getting worse, not better. Perhaps I should focus on approaches that require less speaking and more... meaningful glances? The book mentions something about “smoldering intensity” and “eyes that promise dark delights.”
I attempt a smoldering look at my reflection in the galley’s polished surface.
I look constipated.
Behind me, Jitters makes a sound that might be encouragement or possibly concern for my digestive health.
This is going poorly.
I scroll to Chapter Five: Reading the Signs
“Commander Starfire could smell her arousal despite her protests, could see the way her pulse fluttered when he entered the room. ‘She fights the bond,’ he told himself, ‘but her body knows what her mind refuses to accept.’”
I freeze, staring at the screen.
How do human authors understand exactly what I’m experiencing? This passage describes my situation with uncomfortable accuracy—Zola’s scientific mind insisting on professional boundaries while her body responds to the bond with increasing intensity. The way her scent shifts when I’m close. The flutter of her pulse that I can track through the connection between us.
From the bunk, Zola shifts in her sleep, her breathing quick and shallow. Through the bond, I can feel she’s caught in some intense dream scenario, her body responding with heat and need that makes my own biology scream with frustrated desire.
Her hand reaches across the bunk, searching for something—someone—and the unconscious seeking gesture hits me like a plasma blast to the chest.
I’m contemplating whether to return to the bunk or continue my clearly failing educational research when my body makes its demands impossible to ignore. The prolonged arousal, the bond’s insistence on proximity, the echoes of her dreaming bleeding through our connection—all of it has created a physical situation that requires immediate attention.
“I will be in the refresher,” I inform Jitters quietly, because apparently I’m now reporting my activities to an anxious blob creature. “Do not disturb me. Or make coffee. Or do anything except stay exactly where you are for the next fifteen minutes.”
Jitters vibrates with what might be understanding and turns a diplomatic shade of neutral gray, carefully looking away as if he understands exactly what’s about to happen and wants to preserve my dignity.
The Precision’s refresher is compact but functional, designed for solo operations. I seal the door behind me and lean against it, trying to ignore how the distance from Zola makes the bond pull uncomfortably even as I desperately need this space.
The shower activates with a thought, water warming to temperatures that would scald a human but feel perfect against my overheated golden skin. Steam fills the compact space as I strip off my torn coveralls with shaking hands.
My reflection in the mirror shows exactly how compromised I am—pupils dilated to near-black, golden markings pulsing with my elevated heartbeat, skin flushed darker with arousal I can no longer pretend doesn’t exist. The luminescent secretions I’ve been producing since the bonding glisten along my temples, my throat, places where the mate-recognition pheromones concentrate.
I look like I’m about to claim someone. Like my biology has given up all pretense of restraint and is simply demanding satisfaction.
The hot water sluices over my scales as I step under the spray, and I brace one hand against the shower wall while the other slides down my body with desperate purpose.
This is necessary. Purely biological necessity. The bond has been flooding my system with arousal for hours, Zola’s unconscious dreaming providing sensory feedback through ourconnection, and my body has needs that won’t be denied simply because I wish to be respectful.
I wrap my hand around myself with a groan that’s probably louder than it should be, hoping the water covers the sound. Every stroke sends heat racing through my system, intensified by the bond until I can almost feel echoes of what this would be like with her touching me instead. Her smaller hands learning my alien anatomy. Her scent surrounding me. Her voice saying my name with that breathless quality it gets when she’s affected.
The fantasy spirals out of control—Zola beneath me, around me, crying out as I finally claim what my biology insists is mine. Her green eyes dark with want. Her body arching into my touch. The soft sounds she’d make. The way she’d feel.
I come hard with her name on my lips, the release explosive after hours of restraint. My hand slaps against the shower wall for balance as sensation overwhelms me, the bond flaring bright and hot as if it knows what I’m doing and approves enthusiastically.
For several long moments, I can only stand there shaking while water pounds against my overheated skin and reality slowly reasserts itself.
That was... necessary. Purely biological necessity.
Nothing to feel guilty about.
