“The dress is coming off. One claw. And I am going to buy you a new one. Green. Because green is my color on you.” His footsteps slow. “And the thing underneath — I could see it through the fabric, Lorri. On the dock. In the light. The outline of what you’re wearing under that dress. I have been thinking about it since the cargo office, and I am going to find it, and I am going to remove it with my teeth.”
He is in the crew corridor. Close.
“When I have you — and I will have you — I am not going to be patient. I have been patient for nine days. Nine nights of tasting you on my sheets and my pillow and the copilot’s seat. I am done being patient.” His voice drops. “I am going to put my mouth on every inch of you. I am going to start at the throat and work down, and I am notgoing to stop until you are shaking and begging and saying my name, and then I am going to put my teeth on the inside of your thigh and claim you. And after that, I am going to find out what it feels like to be inside my mate with the venom live and the bond locked, and I am going to take my time because I have been waiting my whole life for it.”
Two feet from the panel. I clamp both hands over my mouth.
“There you are. The ventilation junction. HORATIO. You beautiful, treacherous ship.”
“Captain. I am on standby.”
The panel opens. Blue eyes. Feral smile.
“Caught you.”
“Took you long enough.”
He pulls me out. One arm under my back, one under my knees.
He does not take me to the cabin.
He puts me against the bulkhead.
His mouth finds mine, and the kiss is nine days of starvation. Both tips of his tongue tasting, claiming. I grip his hair and pull, and the growl vibrates through my teeth.
He pulls back. One claw hooks the dress strap. Looks at me. I nod. He cut both straps. The dress pools at my waist. Air hits my skin.
The lace. Black against me. His eyes go completely still. The pupil-lock. He traces the lace edge with one claw-tip — from my hip to the center and back — the precision insane. The claw that could gut a Vrennak, tracing lace on his mate’s skin.
His mouth finds my throat. The freckle. Both tips and my pulse jumping. His hands sliding up my ribs, thumbs finding the lace edge of the bra. He pulls it down and his mouth follows — collarbone, sternum, lower. He takes his time the way a starving male takes time with the first meal. Not fast, not slow. Thorough. Every inch of skin between the collarbone and the lace gets his tongue, his teeth, the fang-drag that leaves goosebumps.
The bra. He unclips it one-handed — I did not know claws could manage a clasp, and I am going to be thinking about that for weeks — and his mouth finds my breast. Both tips on the nipple. I arch off the bulkhead and his hands press me back. Holding me still while he works one side, then the other. The growl vibrating through my breast into my ribs. I am making sounds the corridor has never heard.
Lower. Mouth on my stomach. Tongue tracing the muscles that tense under his lips. Teeth grazing the soft curve below my navel. Hands sliding down my thighs, taking the dress. It hits the floor. The lace is the last thing.
He looks up from his knees. My lace and his eyes and the question.
“With your teeth,” I say. “You promised.”
The feral grin. His mouth at my hip. Teeth closing on the lace. One side bitten through. He moves to the other hip. Bites through. The lace falls.
I am naked against the bulkhead of his ship, and his face is level with my stomach, and his hands are on my thighs, and he has been starving for nine days.
He puts my leg over his shoulder. Opens me. Both tips make contact, and the sound I make is the sound of a woman who read clinical language about Skiveth oral anatomy, and the clinical language did NOT prepare her.
He does not rush. Both tips working independently — finding the places that make me gasp and the places that make me scream and the places that make me grip his hair and pull him closer. He maps me the way he logs the nebula. Every pass different, every angle reveals something new.
“Please, Jazil, please —”
He brings me to the edge and holds me there. Builds and builds and does not let me crest.
“Not yet.” Against my thigh. “I want to taste you when the bond is live.”
I am going to DIE. I am going to die naked against a bulkhead while a Skiveth male edges me for SCIENTIFIC REASONS.
He works me back to the edge. Holds me. Again. The third time my legs are shaking so hard only his hands keep me vertical.
But I have plans of my own. And the plans involve him on his back.
