“There is no need to preserve water,” Auby chimed in from somewhere behind Levant. “The Digmaster recycles everything, and its water tanks indicate that they are full.” Levant swept me into his arms, lifting me against his chest. He proved just how bendy and agile his body was as he squeezed the two of us into the narrow cleansing room. All black coils and gleaming scales. The door began sliding shut behind him with the press of his hand against the control panel. I only just heard Auby exclaim, “Rude!”
Chapter 13
Felicia
The two of us in a space that was probably no more than fifteen square feet in total was… interesting. Those were very tight quarters, and undressing was pretty difficult, especially since my flight suit was made of sturdy but fairly stiff fabric. I feared that Levant would get fed up and simply tear the suit off me; he had the claws to do it. He didn’t, and each moment he spent carefully undoing zippers and pulling on sleeves and pant legs was charged with sexual tension.
I was crazy for doing this, but I had made a resolution for the day, and I was sticking to it. Levant’s body glittered and gleamed, his scales shiny and pretty and dotted with gold and green in intriguing patterns, more thickly marked on his shoulders, back, and the outsides of his arms, and almost completely solid black along his front. There, the glowing marks that always ignited when we touched burned fiercely.
He didn’t wear any clothing, which was a good thing, because I wouldn’t have been anywhere near as patient as he was about undressing. Greedily, I let my fingers trace his body and map out all the interesting differences. So many textures to explore, from the way scales changed in size depending on the spot on his body, to the way his muscles shaped his flesh. Ridged abs, impressive pectorals, and pure strength in every coil of his tail.
“You are so soft and pale,” Levant said as he freed my arm and traced the veins visible along my wrist with his tongue. “Soft,” he growled again. I might not have considered pale the bestcompliment in normal circumstances; at best, it made me feel pasty. I knew I didn’t tan—I just burned if I caught too much sun—and it had been a very sore spot in high school. With Levant? He could have said anything, and I still would have believed he meant it in the best possible way. It was the tone of his voice, and the admiration in his eyes. You could get high on that look, that’s how clear it was he liked what he saw.
Once he had me naked, which had taken way too long, he opened the door just enough to toss them outside so they wouldn’t get wet. Auby, perhaps sensing the mood, said nothing at all, and then it was just me and Levant again. Water began filling the tub-like area at the bottom of the room. It was hot but didn’t scald, and it smelled like something sweet and fresh.
“Let me wash you,” Levant groaned against my throat, fangs scraping sensitive skin, tongue lapping. I caught his horns in my hands, yanked his mouth up to mine, and kissed him instead. Better, much better. He laughed at my eagerness, then moaned and pressed deeper into the kiss. His hands moved me, pressed me against him, spread my legs so a thick coil of his tail curled against my sensitive folds. Washing was overrated when you had a guy like Levant worshipping every inch.
With pleasure rolling through me, tighter and tighter, it was hard to remember the important things. Why ask when it was clear we were headed in only one direction? But I had to ask, to make sure. “Levant, shouldn’t you be resting? I found you passed out on the floor…” It was terrible that it had taken me this long to say it. I had let him take care of me, when he deserved to be cared for just as much. This wasn’t a one-way street.
“Later,” he said, shifting me in his coils and forcing me back so I was reclining against him. His eyes were locked on my naked breasts, and the look on his face was one I recognized instantly. It seemed that was universal to males of both our species: he liked what he saw. Liked it very much. “I will rest when I have you in my coils, sated and seeded.” Oh fuck, who said something like that? And why did I find it so freaking hot?
He smelled far too good, like salt and sin. The scent made my mouth water. As he explored me, I wanted to explore him and find where the scent came from. Stroking my hands along his chest, I spread my legs wide so he could see straight to my core. Long fingers found my folds, stroking and petting. He was very quickly very good at figuring out exactly how and where I liked to be touched.
My hand had trailed low enough along his body to find the slit at his front where his cock was hidden. As I touched the spot, it slid out, thick and impressive. Instantly, that mouthwatering scent intensified, and I found myself pushing off against his tail and reaching forward. That cock deserved a closer investigation, with my hands, and definitely with my mouth. He caught me by the shoulder, forcing me to spin around in his arms, my back against his front, my legs spread around his thick tail, and that cock rising between my thighs. “No,” he hissed in warning. “You can’t taste me, my sweet mate.” Levant was always so accommodating that the stern tone caught me by surprise. Then he added more gently, “I have other plans.”
“Other plans,” he said, and then he found my folds again with his fingers as he forced me to arch back against him. He found my clit and flicked it with just the right pressure while his cock rubbed against my opening. The tip wasn’t normal, it movedon its own, writhing, splitting wide and pressing back together. Split like the tip of his tongue. That felt crazy good when it pressed against my sensitive entrance. So good, I saw stars in moments, and my first orgasm rose hard and fast, cresting so suddenly it caught me by surprise.
I was surrounded by heat: the warm steam rising from the water, and the heat from Levant’s body. The small bathing area might be slightly impractical, and it was probably dark, but that didn’t matter. Everywhere I looked, Levant was there—his coils, his arms, his body pressed against my back. And he glowed. Those intriguing marks on his body glowed with light—warm, pretty, safe, and definitely sexy. He also moved, and the way the marks on him swayed and shifted in the steam was almost hypnotic, my eyes tracking them as my vision blurred.
“What are they?” I asked, my voice hoarse because I’d shouted when I came, my body lying limply against his chest. He was still gently rubbing my clit, and his slick, alien cockhead kept teasing my core. The orgasm had taken the edge off the sharply rising passion, but it hadn’t made me want him any less. I’d never ached for a guy before, ached to have him fill me, but I wanted Levant with every fiber of my being. Right now.
“My mating sigils,” he said, the rough edge to his voice almost a growl, his breath ghosting hotly over the sensitive skin on my neck. He leaned in, and I felt his mouth brush against my skin as he explained. “You are my fated mate, and my mating marks glow only for you. When we mate, we will be one, and you will understand me even when we do not touch.” That almost sounded like it wasn’t technology that made us able to understand one another. I’d ask him about that later. There were far more urgent matters on my mind.
Fated mates, he’d said—he’d called me sweet mate. He had not once hidden that he wanted me. Heck, he’d assumed I wanted him too, back in his tent, andhe’ddenied me because he assumed I wanted sex when I was still recovering from stasis. This guy was coming on hard and fast, and in the chaos of my arrival here, I kind of liked that. I liked that he wanted to be my anchor, that he was offering to be my port in the storm. Why not stay with him, pleasure him, and let him pleasure me? Probably there were all kinds of reasons I should think this through, but when his cock rubbed through my folds, I couldn’t think of a single one.
“You feel so good, Levant. Make us feel good,” I demanded, and that was all it took. Like I’d unleashed a beast, he growled, and his body bucked beneath mine. That huge, intriguing alien cock slid through my folds, a hot bar of steel, then lowered and found my opening. When he surged back up inside me, he speared me deeply, filling me with one rough thrust. I wasn’t ready, but I was. I screamed in pleasure and shock, aching to let him sink deeper.
We were so different that we shouldn’t work, shouldn’t fit. His body was huge, his cock so thick he stretched me more than anything ever had. Yet at the same time, I was slick and so was he, and we fit perfectly. As we moved together and the pleasure mounted all over again, tears stung my eyes. It was like coming home, a merging of bodies but more. I knew it in my core, this was where I belonged. “Stay with me, Levant. Stay,” I begged as he sank deep.
Together, we came. This time the pleasure was so bright and powerful that I forgot to breathe. Shuddering in his arms, my core clamping down on his length. Inside me, he swelled, kicked,twisted. The strange split end stroking my walls as he spurted inside. It felt warm, and there was a lot, burst after burst of sticky sweetness. There was so much of it I could see the white, pearly liquid squeeze out around his thick, dark shaft.
Watching myself stretched around him, with seed dripping down my thighs and his shaft, was enough to send me through another wave of pleasure. Ah, fuck, it looked so hot. He owned me with that cock, filled me, and yes, he’d seeded me, just like he said he would. I was sated, I was seeded, and now it was time to rest. Once we had, I’d probably convince him to seed me again. I liked the sound of that.
Chapter 14
Levant
Five days into our journey aboard the Digmaster, as Auby called it, we finally finished analyzing the data on Felicia’s black box. A black box was actually a flight recorder; Naga vessels were all equipped with something similar. The data on theFuture’srecorder only confirmed what we already knew. Her ship had crashed into Serant a thousand years ago and caused the axis of the planet to shift by a few degrees. With the distinction that her Faster-Than-Light drive, as she called it, had caused the ship to materialize essentiallyinsidethe planet. The very edge of it, but too deep into the planet to be safe.
For centuries, that engine had only emitted power faintly, but in the past two dozen years, it had begun to power up at intervals, falling back on what Felicia called emergency programming to send the ship back home. Except, buried under ice and snow, its heat vents had been blocked, and the ship kept overheating. The engine kept shutting off each time that happened, and the cycle between starting and shutting off kept getting shorter.
“I don’t think it’s ever going to be able to leave the planet,” Felicia said as we stared at the data on my datapad. It was in her language, and it had taken me some time to create the right interface between her flight recorder and my tablet. She had said, I want you to stay, stay with me, when we had sex, when we mated and I seeded her. She said it each time we came together that way ever since, proving that the mating bond was not a one-sided thing between a human and her Naga male. She felt the same intense things I felt for her, but even though we’d boundourselves together intimately, I knew she was not yet truly mine. Part of her still lived on her ship, in the past, as much as she tried to push that away.
“No,” I agreed. “Even if we dig it out with the Digmaster, the engine is still too unstable to use. You would never make it.” Her eyes locked on my face, and I imagined they said something like, We’d never make it, or I’m not leaving anyway. She bit her lip, and no such words came out.
“Fine, it’s shut down now. We can deal with this later. Tell me what you found out about our current heading. I know you were up late again after I fell asleep last night.” She patted the side of my chin gently, but there was censure in her tone. She did not like that I pushed myself so hard and slept so little, but how else was I going to get everything done that needed to be done? There were so many tasks to juggle, like studying the Revenant, studying Auby, and analyzing the data from her flight recorder. Those were tasks big enough for three males together, and I was only one.
She tucked herself into my lap where I sat, coiled in front of the controls. She tapped one of the small screens where the energy lock was displayed. “That’s an energy signature similar to my ship, right? Is it another ship? What do you think it is?” We had puzzled over it several times already, and the only answer I could come up with was the fisheries at Serqethos.
