“Not done.” I push his chest. He goes onto his back on the deck plate — and I am straddling him and looking down and the power of this position. The hum-sense is live and I can feel his heartbeat through the frequency and the feeling makes me bold.
I pin his wrists. He lets me. Claws retract. Eyes wide. A male twice my size letting a human woman pin his wrists because she asked.
I lower my mouth to his ridges. One long stroke from wrist to elbow and a groan tears through him, vibrating the deck plate under my knees.
“Lorri —”
“My turn.” The other arm. Tongue on the ridge. His body arches under me and his hips buck and the claiming shaft is still inside me and the buck hits deep.
I ride him. On the deck plate. Hands on his wrists. Setting the pace. Slow. Then not slow. His jaw locked and his eyes on me, and the claiming shaft responding to every movement — the ridges pulsing in counterpoint to my rhythm.
“Say my name,” I tell him.
“Lorri.”
“Again.”
“Lorri.”
“Again.”
“Lorri — Lorri — Lorri —”
I come. He follows. The hum-sense sings through both of us. The bond settling. Deeper. Steadier. The frequency finding its groove.
The shower.
Three feet from where we are on the corridor floor. Three feet that we could not wait for and did not wait for. The head is closer than the bed and the shower wins.
He carries me. Legs unsteady — my private achievement. The shower activates and the water hits us both.
The temperature difference. Hot water on me. Cool water on him. Where his chest presses against my back — warm and cool mingling on over-sensitized, post-bond skin. Every droplet is a different temperature. Every point of contact is a conversation.
He presses me against the shower wall. Cool tile on my chest. Hot water on my back. His mouth at my neck.
“One more,” he says against my ear. “You can give me one more.”
“I can give you one more.”
His fingers find me from behind. Curling. His thumb at the base of my spine doing something that makes my forehead drop against the tile. The claiming shaft pressing against the back of my thigh — hard again, because Skiveth recovery time is a thing the manual mentioned, and I filed underoptimistic,and the manual was not being optimistic.
He enters me from behind. Slow. The water making everything slick. The angle deeper — different ridges hitting new places. I brace my hands on the tile, and he sets a rhythm that is unhurried and devastating, and I do not have words left. I have used all of my words. What I have is sounds and his name and the tile under my hands and the water and his mouth on the back of my neck.
The other one finds my hand. I reach back. Grip. He groans into my neck and the vibration travels through the water and through my spine.
He brings me over with his fingers and the shaft simultaneously. The pressure from inside and outside, and the hot-cold water, and his mouth on my neck, and the hum-sense singing — the orgasm rolls through me in long, slow waves. The venom has eased. The sensitivity has settled from cataclysmic to profound. This one is the gentlest. The deepest. The one that feels like coming home.
He follows. Against my back. Forehead between my shoulder blades. Arms around my waist. Still inside me. Both of us under the water.
“Three,” I say. Against the tile.
His laugh vibrates against my spine.
“HORATIO canceled your shift,” he says. “Medical exemption. Post-bond physiological adjustment requiring twenty-four hours of supervised rest.”
“HORATIO can’t cancel my shift.”
“Mother approved it in nine seconds.”
