I catch my reflection in the mirror and pause.
My markings blaze in patterns I haven’t seen in years. Brighter than when Seraphina and I were courting. More intense. More claiming.
Different patterns entirely. Because what I feel for Dove isn’t what I felt for my mate. It’s more possessive. More desperate. More consuming.
I step under the spray, brace one hand against the wall, and try to breathe through the need coiling tighter with each passing second.
This is logical. Biological imperative meeting three years of celibacy. Perfectly natural to want someone. To respond to attraction.
Except this doesn’t feel natural. It feels inevitable. Like every moment since she walked into my station has been leading to this breaking point.
Her hands guiding mine. Her warmth against my chest. “Make me yours.”
My cock is already hard—has been since the kitchen, aching and insistent. I wrap my hand around it, and the relief is immediate and insufficient in equal measure.
Because this isn’t what I want.
What I want is twenty meters away, soft and curved and human and completely off-limits for at least another twelve hours.
But my hand is here, and my control is gone, and I need something.
I stroke slowly at first, trying to maintain some semblance of discipline. My cock is proportional to my height—eight inches, substantial enough to require preparation with a human partner—with the ridged texture along the underside that’s designed specifically for a partner’s pleasure.
Rows of raised nodes, quarter-inch intervals, that provide friction and stimulation and pressure in exactly the right places. Smooth when soft, but they swell and become pronounced with arousal—designed to create texture that enhances every thrust, every drag of penetration.
Seraphina used to make these breathless sounds when those ridges dragged against her most sensitive spots, each one catching and releasing as I moved inside her. Would Dove sound like that? Would she gasp or moan or say my name in that rough voice she gets when she’s affected?
The thought makes me stroke faster, my grip tightening.
My anatomy runs hotter than human baseline—I’m probably running fifteen degrees warmer right now, enough that the steam rising around me has nothing to do with the shower temperature. Would that heat feel good to her? Would she press closer, seeking that warmth? Or would I need to be careful, monitoring her comfort while I take her apart with pleasure?
The ridges swell more with each stroke, becoming more pronounced. More textured. They’re designed to lock into placeduring claiming—to ensure deep penetration and maximum stimulation for both partners. To create a seal that prevents separation during the vulnerable moments of climax.
Right now they’re flushed darker than the rest of my shaft, nearly purple with the amount of blood rushing to engorge them. Sensitive to every pass of my palm.
The fantasy builds, vivid and unstoppable:
Dove beneath me, her soft curves yielding to my harder frame.
Her thighs wrapped around my waist as I finally—finally—sink into her heat.
That first moment when she’d feel the ridges. When she’d realize exactly what Lividian anatomy can do.
Her eyes going wide with shock, then dark with want as the first ridge catches against her entrance, as I push deeper and the next one drags across nerve endings humans don’t even know they have.
“Cetus—”
My hand moves faster, gripping tighter. Water cascades over overheated skin. The markings along my shoulders and arms blaze bright enough to turn the steam gold.
Taking her slowly the first time. Slow enough to watch every microexpression as her body adjusts. To the size—stretching her carefully, making sure she’s wet enough, ready enough. To the texture—each ridge a separate sensation as I sink deeper. To the heat that makes human partners gasp and arch and beg for more.
The ridges dragging against her inner walls with each careful thrust. Catching on that spot inside that makes her vision blur. Creating friction and pressure and stimulus that no human male could match.
Finding that perfect angle, that perfect rhythm that makes her forget to breathe.
Her hands clutching my shoulders—she wouldn’t mind my claws, she’d probably find them fascinating, maybe even ask me to let them extend, to scratch careful lines down her back that prove I was barely in control—
My claws score deep grooves in the shower wall. I’m beyond caring about property damage.
