Her shorts are gone. I don’t remember removing them. My trousers are around my thighs and her hand guides me to her entrance and she’s wet—soaked, the scent of her arousal thick and intoxicating, triggering the pheromone feedback that makes my cock pulse and leak.
I push into her.
The first ridge catches her inner wall and she cries out—sharp, breathless, her body clenching around the node as it drags through. Second ridge. Third. Each one a bump of textured heat that her body grips and releases, the friction generating those small, wrecked sounds that I have catalogued and memorised and replay in my head during every hour she’s off-station.
“Fast,” she demands, pulling me deeper with her legs. “Hard. I’ve been thinking about this since breakfast when you reached over me for the coffee and I could feel you against my—”
I slam home. Every ridge buried, the basal knot pressing deep, and she arches with a moan that would carry through the hull if not for the sound insulation. I brace one hand beside her head—claws sinking into the cockpit wall, the screech of metal lost under the sound of her breathing—and the other grips her hip,thumb pressing the crease of her thigh, holding her open and tilted at the angle that lets the third ridge catch her G-spot on every stroke.
“There—right there—don’t change anything—”
I don’t change anything. I give her exactly what she’s asked for—hard, fast, each thrust a full-length drag of ridged heat that makes her clench and gasp and dig her nails into my shoulders. The patterns under her fingers blaze gold, the pleasure-pain of her touch on my markings feeding back through the bond in a loop that doubles, triples, makes my cock throb harder inside her until the ridges are swelling toward lock.
“I can feel you getting bigger,” she breathes. “The ridges—they’re—oh God, Cetus—”
“They respond to you. To how wet you are, how tight. They won’t stop swelling until—”
“Until you come inside me.” Her eyes lock on mine. Dark. Fierce. “Do it.”
The words detonate through my biology. Every node engorges fully—locking, sealing, the pressurised grip of ridge against wall that holds me deep and triggers the cascading release. I bury my face against the claiming mark and groan as my cock pulses—wave after wave, thirty seconds of rhythmic contractions that the bond amplifies into shared sensation, her pleasure and mine overlapping until I can’t distinguish which orgasm belongs to whom.
She comes with me. Around me. Her body clenching in spasms that milk each ridge, that extend the lock and draw out the release until we’re both shaking, both gasping, my markings blazing bright enough to illuminate the cockpit like an emergency beacon.
“This is never going to get old,” she whispers into my neck.
We stay locked together. Four minutes, twelve seconds—I count, because I count everything, because that’s who I amand she loves me for it. The ridges soften. Release. Each node deflating in sequence, and the slide of withdrawal draws twin shivers.
“Eighty-three minutes remaining,” I murmur.
“Don’t tempt me.” But her hand is already tracing the markings on my chest, following the patterns down my sternum, and the touch is gentle enough to be affectionate and precise enough to be a promise. “Round two after the colonist meeting.”
“That meeting is four hours long.”
“Then you’ll have four hours to think about it.”
She is going to be the end of me. I accept this willingly.
We are three minutes late to retrieve Tavia from the greenhouse. Dove’s collar is adjusted to cover the flush on her throat. My markings have dimmed to a level I classify as “plausibly professional.” The cockpit console will require recalibration.
Tavia emerges from the lab with soil samples, four data-pad sketches of fungal networks, and a request that catches us both off guard.
“I want to come on the next OOPS run.”
Dove, to her credit, doesn’t immediately say no. She looks at me. I look at her. The parental negotiation is silent and takes approximately two seconds.
“You’re eight,” I say.
“Almost nine.”
“You’re eight and three-quarters.”
“Pickles says the Rolling Pin’s life support can accommodate three passengers. I checked.”
“You checked,” Dove repeats.
“I also packed a bag.” Tavia produces a small rucksack from behind the lab bench. It appears to contain three data pads, a stuffed animal, a jar of soil, and what I recognise as emergency ration bars pilfered from the supply depot. “I’m ready to go.”
“Small person,” Pickles says, “while I admire the initiative, I must note that your bag contains no clothing, no hygiene supplies, and enough emergency rations for approximately four hours. Your preparation score is two out of ten.”
