“Breathe,” he says through clenched teeth. His jaw is tight, tendons standing out in his neck. His whole body vibrates with the effort of staying still. “Take your time. We have—” A strained exhale. “We have all night.”
I sink lower. The second ridge pops past my entrance and I moan—loud, shameless, a noise that would embarrass me if I could think. Each ridge is a separate sensation: stretch, catch, drag, ache. I accommodate him in increments, adjusting to the warmth and the size and the texture creating friction in places I’ve never been touched.
Third ridge. Fourth. I’m trembling now, thighs shaking, sweat beading between my breasts. The sensation is extraordinary—not painful, not anymore, but overwhelming. Like learning a new language, one written in warmth and pressure and the rhythmic throb of each ridge pulsing in me.
And then the fourth ridge swells. Throbs. Locks—just for a heartbeat, a reflexive clench of engorged flesh that seals him in me and sends a shockwave of pressure against my walls that whites out my vision.
Panic. Brief and electric—too full, too deep, can’t move, trapped—
He feels it. His hands gentle on my hips. “Breathe. It released. I’ve got you. That was—an involuntary response. It won’t lock fully until—”
“Until you come.” I finish for him. The ridge softens, relaxes, and the relief is almost as overwhelming as the pressure was. Ithrob around him, adjusting, accommodating, and underneath the panic is a hunger darker and more ferocious than fear: I want it again. Want that lock. Want him sealed so deep we share a circulatory system.
“Don’t hold back,” I whisper. “When it happens. I want it. All of it.”
His eyes blaze. “Dove—”
“Don’t you dare stop.”
The fifth ridge—the basal knot, the thickest—stretches me wide and then I’m seated. Fully. Every inch of him buried deep, the ridges lodged in a pattern pressing against spots I didn’t know existed. We both freeze.
“Dove.” He says my name like a prayer. His hands tighten on my hips and his eyes are bright with awe. “Your heartbeat. I can feel it. Through the ridges.”
“Yours too.” Pulsing in me, synchronized with the patterns blazing across his chest. Connected. “Cetus. Move.”
He rocks upward. Slow. The ridges drag against my inner walls—each node catching and releasing, texture and warmth and friction building in a cascade that starts at my core and radiates outward. I roll my hips. The angle shifts and the thickest ridge catches my G-spot and I see the whole galaxy behind my eyelids.
“There—right there—don’t stop—”
We find a rhythm. Slow at first, learning each other—his upward thrusts timed to my downward rolls, each stroke a full-length drag of ridged heat that makes me cry out. Then faster. Harder. His hips snapping up to meet mine, driving the ridges deep, and every thrust hits spots that human anatomy could never reach.
“Feel that?” His voice is guttural, barely words. He thrusts up and the third ridge catches my G-spot with devastating precision. “That ridge. Made for you. Made to find every spotinside you and—” Another thrust, deeper, and I cry out. “—wreck you.”
“Then wreck me.” I grind down, taking him to the hilt, and his eyes roll back. “Harder. Break me open, Cetus, I can take it—”
He snarls. The sound is pure alien—harmonic, subsonic, vibrating through his cock inside me until the ridges themselves seem to hum. His grip on my hips turns bruising. He drives up into me with a force that lifts my knees off the mattress and I scream—not pain, God, not pain—pleasure so sharp it could cut.
The second orgasm builds like a storm system. Pressure and electricity gathering in my core, tightening with each ridge-stroke, each pulse of his heat inside me. I brace my hands on his chest and ride him—taking what I need, setting the pace, and his eyes go dark watching me.
“You—” His voice cracks into harmonics that make the bed frame vibrate. “The way you move—riding me like you own me—”
“I do own you.” I roll my hips in a slow circle that drags every ridge against every nerve ending and his jaw drops open on a moan in Lividian—guttural syllables that sound like worship and profanity in equal measure. His patterns strobe. His claws extend—sinking into the mattress on either side of my hips, shredding the fabric because he won’t shred me, will never shred me, but his body is running out of safe places to put the force of what he feels.
His restraint breaks.
I see it happen. The precise, methodical, scientific man shatters under me. His bioluminescence blazes so bright the room turns gold—not ambient glow, not soft pulse, but blinding light racing across every inch of his skin. His hands grip my hips and he surges up, flipping us, pinning me beneath him with his full weight.
The new angle drives him impossibly deeper. The ridges press against my A-spot and my thoughts dissolve.
“Mine.” The word tears out of him in a harmonic register I feel in my bones. He drives into me—hard, feral, all that leashed precision finally unleashed. “My mate. Claimed. Scream it.”
“Yours—” I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, needing more even though more shouldn’t be possible. “Yours, always—harder—break me, Cetus—”
He obeys. Each thrust buries the ridges to the hilt and drags them back in a long, devastating stroke hitting the deepest spot in me. The friction builds—too much, too intense, every nerve overloaded, I can’t decide if I want to run or shatter—
And then it decides. Not run. Never run again.
The second orgasm hits like electromagnetic interference—all signal, no thought. I clench around him, around the ridges that drag and catch and lock against every nerve ending, and the sensation cascades through me in waves that make me scream his name.
