I take her mouth, swallowing the rest, and lift her fully off the deck. She wraps both legs around my waist, ankles locking at the small of my back, and the new angle presses her core flush against my cock. The ridges swell further—engorging to their full, pronounced state, each node a quarter-inch of textured sensation that she can feel through every layer between us.
She breaks the kiss with a gasp. “They’re—oh God, they’re still—”
“Getting harder. Yes. They won’t stop until—” I can’t finish. Can’t explain what happens when the ridges lock during climax, what they do, what it means. Not with words. I want to show her.
My hand slides up her ribs under her shirt—bare skin under my palm, hot and yielding, my claws prickling lightly against her waist. She shivers. My thumb traces the underside of her breast.She arches into me, pressing harder, and the friction of her body against the engorged ridges drags a sound out of my chest that is not a growl and not a moan and not anything I’ve ever made before.
Her fingers find the collar of my shirt and yank. A button pings off the wall. Her palm lands flat on my bare chest—directly on the bioluminescent patterns—and my entire marking system detonates. Gold light blazes so bright it casts sharp shadows down the corridor. The pleasure is blinding, annihilating, her touch on the markings creating feedback loops that spiral through my nervous system and converge between my legs where the ridges pulse in time with my heartbeat.
“Mine,” I groan against her throat. “Say it again. Say you’re mine and I’ll give you everything—every ridge, every—”
“SPECIALIST STORM, COURIER FOXTON, THIS IS JUNCTION ONE. DO YOU COPY?”
Mother Morrison’s voice fills the operations center like a hull breach alarm.
We freeze.
Dove’s legs locked around my waist. My hand under her shirt. My claws embedded in the wall at two separate points. Gold light blazing from every marking on my body, pulsing in claiming frequencies that are probably registering on sensors three sectors away. The ridge-line pressed against her center, swollen and aching and absolutely not something I can conceal.
“Please respond. I know you’re there—Pickles is transmitting biometric data that suggests you’re both very much alive and very much occupied.”
“Cetus,” Dove whispers. Her chest heaves against mine.
“I heard her.”
“We should—”
“I know.”
Neither of us moves. Five full seconds of shared agony—the knowledge that we have to stop, that we’re this close, that our bodies are screaming to finish what we started.
Dove unwraps her legs and slides down my body. Every inch of the descent is exquisite torture—her center dragging along the ridge-line, each node catching and releasing against her as she lowers, and the sound she makes is quiet and involuntary and I will remember it in precise detail for the rest of my natural life.
I step back. Adjust my shirt over a situation that no amount of willpower is going to resolve. The ridges are fully engorged, visibly distending my pants, and they won’t retract for at least twenty minutes. Lividian biology does not accept “interrupted” as a valid command.
I hit the comm panel. My voice comes out wrecked. “Junction One, this is Station KS-7B. Go ahead, Mother.”
“Well, you sound like you’ve been running atmospheric diagnostics in full gravity.” Mother Morrison’s voice carries twenty-three years of managing everyone else’s crises. “I’ll keep this brief since I’m clearly interrupting something my medical officer keeps sending me alarming charts about. Three items.”
“She’s here,” I say, before she can ask.
“Of course she is. Item one: Inspector Luzrak has completed his analysis of the evidence package compiled by your station AI. Six hundred twelve exhibits of systematic fraud. He’s described it as, and I quote, ‘the most thorough prosecution brief I’ve seen from a non-legal entity, and several that I have.’”
“Pickles will be insufferable,” Dove murmurs, tugging her shirt straight with unsteady hands.
“I am already insufferable,” Pickles says from the speakers. “The Inspector’s assessment merely confirms what I have always known.”
“Item two.” Mother’s voice shifts. “The STI has formally voided your debt, Captain Foxton. The entire seventy-threethousand. Original balance, fraudulent additions, accrued interest—wiped clean. Blackstar Collective is under full federal investigation. Their assets are frozen pending review, and every account they’ve managed is being audited. You don’t owe anyone a single credit.”
Dove makes a sound—small, sharp, nine years of tension snapping like a wire cut clean.
“Say that again,” she whispers.
“Your debt is voided. All of it. It’s done, kid.”
Dove’s knees buckle. I catch her elbow, steady her, and she leans into me—not dramatic, not collapsing. Just letting go of something she’s been carrying so long it shaped her posture, her choices, her entire life. Nine years of running. Nine years of calculating escape routes instead of planting roots. Nine years erased by six hundred twelve slides and one sarcastic AI who expresses love through statistical analysis and will never admit it.
Her free hand covers her mouth. Above her fingers, her eyes are wide and swimming.
