I pull at his clothing, needing skin against skin, needing to map the body I've been imagining for days. The fabric parts and he pulls back long enough to shrug free.
Charcoal skin over carved muscle, built for violence and capable of a gentleness that still surprises me. Silver threads through the darker tones, catching the amber light until he shimmers. The striping I've glimpsed before traces down his ribs, across his spine, markings that brand him as apex predator,as other, as everything I shouldn't want and can't stop reaching for.
I rise onto my elbows and press my mouth to his sternum. Salt and heat and a taste that’s distinctly him. His entire body shudders, a full-length tremor that passes through him and into me where we're pressed together. The sound he makes vibrates against my lips, a low rumble that tightens my nipples and sends an answering pulse between my thighs.
“More.” I trace lower, following the darker patterns down his abdomen, learning the texture of him with lips and tongue. “I want all of you.”
His fingers thread through my hair and grip. Not painful. Present. Stopping my descent an inch above his waistband.
“Not yet.” His voice has dropped into a register that scrapes along my nerve endings like a physical touch. “You first.”
He presses me back into the mattress and follows with his mouth, tracing my collarbone, the swell of my breasts above the fabric still covering them. His fangs graze the sensitive skin, not breaking it, and the threat alone sends a flood of arousal between my thighs.
My remaining clothes disappear in a blur of clawed hands. Claws that never once nick my skin. He could shred me without thinking, and instead he's careful, so careful, even as he strips me bare and maps what he's uncovered with lips and tongue.
His mouth closes around my nipple. My spine bows, and the sound I make doesn't belong to anyone I recognize. He swirls his tongue around the peak while his other hand finds my neglected breast, rolling, pinching, until I'm writhing beneath him and grinding against nothing, chasing friction I can't reach.
“Please.” The word escapes without permission. “Drazex. Please.”
His pupils swallow the silver until only a thin ring remains. His fangs extend past his lower lip, gleaming against charcoal.The controlled enforcer is gone. The male looking at me has stopped fighting.
“I've thought about this since you walked into my receiving room.” His mouth moves down my stomach as he speaks, the words hot against my skin. Ribs. Navel. The jut of my hipbone. “What you'd taste like. The sounds you'd make.”
He exhales against my cunt, and the warm rush of air makes me whimper. I cant my hips toward him before I can stop myself.
He slides off the bed and kneels beside it, hooks his hands beneath my thighs, and drags me to the edge until my legs drape over his shoulders. The position leaves me open. Exposed. Spread for a predator whose hunger should terrify me.
He lowers his mouth to my center and I forget what fear tastes like. He drags his tongue through my folds, slow and thorough, tasting every inch of me. Cataloguing my responses. A flick here pulls a gasp. A long stroke there drags out a moan. When he seals his lips around my clit and sucks, I lock my thighs around his skull and hold on. He growls against my swollen flesh, and the vibration rolls through me, winding me tighter than I'm ready for.
“You don't get to come yet.” His words buzz against me, and I whimper when his mouth retreats. “Higher first. Then you break.”
Two fingers slide inside me, claws retracted. Thick. Hot. Curling against a spot that whites out my vision. His mouth returns to the place I need him most, tongue and lips working in rhythm with the thrust of his hand, building me toward a crest that keeps climbing.
The first orgasm slams into me without warning. One second I'm reaching, and the next I'm shattered, crying out against stone walls, my fingers fisted in his hair hard enough to hurt. He doesn't stop. His fingers keep their rhythm while his tongue gentles but doesn't leave, coaxing me through the aftershocksand then pushing me toward another peak before the first has faded.
“Too much.” The words splinter. “I can't...”
“You can.” His tongue flicks, and my body bows. “One more. Give me one more, and then I'll give you everything.”
The second orgasm builds faster, cresting before I'm ready, rolling through me. I'm still trembling when he rises from his knees and crawls over me, his mouth finding mine in a kiss that tastes of my pleasure and a hunger that hasn't been satisfied.
He pulls back just far enough to reach between us, and I mourn the loss of his weight for the half-second it takes him to grip the hem of his shirt and drag it over his head. The movement is careless, impatient, nothing like the controlled grace that usually defines him. He wants this badly enough to be graceless. The shirt drops somewhere I don't bother tracking.
His hands move to his waistband, and I prop myself on my elbows to watch. His fingers work the fastening with a dexterity that shouldn't be possible given how badly they're shaking. He's wrecked. Coming apart. For me.
The fabric parts, and he shoves the material down his hips in one rough motion, kicking free of boots and pants together. Then he straightens at the foot of the bed, chest heaving, and lets me look.
I've seen bodies. Hundreds of them on operating tables, in field hospitals, in the bloody aftermath of battles that left more dead than living. I've catalogued anatomy across six species and learned to read flesh the way other people read words.
None of that prepared me for him.
Seven feet of lean muscle stretches above me, built for speed and violence. His shoulders block out the light, broad enough that I could lie across them, tapering to a narrow waist and muscular hips. Charcoal skin covers every inch of him, darker than shadow and threaded with silver that catches the amberglow of his quarters until he shimmers. The striping I glimpsed before traces down his ribs in patterns that scream apex predator, marking him as other, as dangerous, as everything my hindbrain should be running from.
My eyes travel lower.
His abdomen carves into ridges of muscle that flex with each breath, a trail of darker skin leading down from his navel toward...
Oh.
