He catches me. Arms around my waist. Presses his face against my stomach. Breathing. Both of us breathing.
“Now,” I say. Above him. My hands in his hair. “Now, Jazil. Claim me.”
He looks up at me. From his knees. The blue eyes are vast and dark, and the expression on his face is reverence. Not the hungry look from the chase. Not the feral smile. Something underneath all of it that hasbeen there since the corridor when I saidyou’re not broken.The look of a male who is about to do the thing he was told he would never do.
He presses his mouth to the inside of my thigh. The place I chose. High up. His tongue traces a circle — both tips, slow, mapping the territory. Finding the exact spot.
“Hold on to me,” he says. “The venom starts immediately.”
I grip his shoulders. He bites.
The venom hits like sunrise. Solar. Spreading. Every nerve igniting with desire so concentrated it has its own gravity. His tongue works the venom in and the orgasm that has been building crashes through me — all six held edges releasing at once — and I scream and my hands lock on his shoulders, and my back arches off the bulkhead.
He rises with the venom already in my blood. Lifts me — one arm under my bitten thigh, gentle with the mark, the other gripping the bulkhead. My legs wrap around his waist. The claiming shaft finds me.
The first press of the ridges with the venom live is —
“Oh — God — with the venom, every ridge, I can feel everything —”
“I know.” Against my neck. Hips pressing forward. Deeper. “Everything is amplified.”
He thrusts deep and the deepest ridge hits a place that makes my vision white out.
“Look at me.” His voice. A command. The alpha register. His hand at my jaw, tilting my face. “Lorri. Look at me.”
I look at him. Blue eyes. Blown pupils. Claws in the bulkhead. His face inches from mine. The face of a male claiming his mate.
“I want to see your eyes when the bond locks in,” he says. Low. Rough. “I want to see you feel it. I want to watch it happen.”
He moves. Deep. My back against the bulkhead and his hands on my hips and his eyes on mine, and neither of us looks away.
The other one is between us. Hard. Slick. Leaking against my stomach. I reach between us and grip it, and his jaw locks and his rhythm stutters.
I stroke. Him inside me and in my hand. The slickness from him coating my fingers and my stomach. I pull my hand up. Wet. I rub it into the skin of my chest — his warmth, his scent, marking myself with him — and his eyes follow my hand, and his pupils blow so wide the blue nearly disappears.
I raise my fingers to my mouth. Lick them clean. Mineral-sweet. Hold his gaze the entire time.
The sound that comes out of him is not human and not language. It is from the primal Skiveth place, and the vibration makes the bulkhead shudder against my back.
His hips slam forward. The claiming shaft hits deep and the ridges lock and —
The hum-sense locks in.
Like a key. Like a containment field. Silence, and thenhim.A frequency. Constant. Permanent. The sound of Jazil Ereux existing in the universe, tuned to me.Found you. Never letting go.
I come. Cataclysmic. The venom amplifying and the hum-sense amplifying the amplification and his eyes on mine — he is watching; he is watching me fall apart, watching the bond lock in behind my eyes, and his face when he sees it happen is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. More beautiful than the nebula. More beautiful than anything.
His ridges pulse inside me. The other one spills over my hand and my stomach, hot, and the sounds we make together fill the ship.
We slide down the bulkhead. His back hitting the deck plate. Me on top. Still inside me. Both of us are shaking. The hum-sense thrumming.
I press my face against his neck. His arms come around me. Cool against warm. The temperature that will never not be right.
“I’m not done with you,” I say.
He pulls back. Looks at me. Wrecked. Post-bond. Post-everything-he-was-told-he-would-never-have.
“You’re —”
