Her laugh vibrates against my throat, sharp as a scalpel. "Poetry now? Should I check you for head trauma?"
I carry her toward the sleeping platform, bio-luminescent algae flaring blue in our wake. "You want clinical terms?" Dumping her onto the furs, I brace over her. "Elevated heart rate. Vasodilation. Tell me, healer—" My claws shred her shirt's shoulder seam with surgical precision. "—what's your diagnosis?"
She arches into the contact, all defiance and desert-dry wit. "Acute testosterone poisoning." Her fingers dive beneath my chestplate, finding the scar she rebuilt. "Prescription requires direct?—"
My roar drowns her quip as I crush our mouths together. She tastes like stimulants and stolen moments, her tongue parrying mine. When her nails score my back, the city itself groans—conduits bursting in sympathy showers of sparks.
"Tarken." She tears free, panting. "The stabilization protocols?—"
"Are currently stabilized." I rip her boots off, flinging them across the room. One smashes a nutrient synthesizer. "Unless you’d rather discuss biomes while I’m inside you?"
Her legs cinch around my hips. "Inside implies permission."
I freeze. Centuries of discipline strain against the Jalshagar's roar. "Alana." Her name fractures in my throat. "I could lay you out like a battlefield. Map every gasp." My thumb brushes her lower lip. "Or you could lead."
She goes still—healer assessing a wound. Then her teeth graze my thumb. "Always the worst patient." Rolling us violently, she straddles my waist. Her hair curtains our faces as she yanks my harness open. "Don't move."
"Or what?"
Her palm slaps my chest. "Or I'll cite you for obstructing medical treatment."
The laugh shocks me more than her audacity. When she peels her leggings down, the scent nearly unmakes me. Her thighs glisten in the algae-light, and every Baktu instinct screams to flip her, claim her, devour.
She reads the tension in my jaw. "Control isn't weakness." Her kiss gentles, a counterpoint to her hips grinding against mine. "But losing it together?"
I drag my tongue up her seam, slow as a blade withdrawal. “You’re dripping clinical terms, healer.” Her hips jerk. I pin them with scarred palms. “Or is that another human… secretion?”
She laughs—a breathless, dangerous sound—as I suck her clit between my teeth. “Yours is the only culture that weaponizes—fuck!—oral fixation.”
The warehouse lights flicker. Paragon’s arterial conduits pulse through the walls in time with her gasps. I lap at her mess, deliberate. Calculated. “Tell me.” My voice vibrates against her. “Which of us is fixated?”
Her hands fist my hair. Pull. “You’re avoiding the Council’s?—”
I plunge two fingers inside her. She arches off the furs, a broken moan rattling the rusted shelves.
“The Council,” I growl against her thigh, “isn’t here.” Another finger crooks. Her back bows. “But you are. Open.”
She kicks my shoulder. “Bastard.”
“Try again.”
“Tarken.”
I withdraw my fingers completely. Watch her writhe. “Begging’s beneath you.”
Her heel slams my back. “Negotiation isn’t.” She props herself up on shaking elbows, sweat glazing her collarbones. “Every minute we’re here, your people are?—”
I bite her inner thigh. Hard enough to bruise. “My people aren’t your shield.”
She freezes. The warehouse breathes with us—conduits hissing, distant alarms wailing.
“No.” Her palm smacks my cheek. Not hard. A punctuation mark. “But they’re your excuse.” She drags me up by my harness, lips swollen from my teeth. “You want devotion? Lead.” Her legs lock around my hips. “Or does the great Chieftain need permission too?”
I slam into her. The crate cracks beneath us. She chokes my name, fingernails carving trenches through my ceremonial scars.
“Louder,” I snarl.
Her teeth find my jugular. “Prove it’s worth screaming for.”
