She is standing in a storage unit barefoot on a cargo blanket wearing nothing and looking at me with her chin up and her eyes bright, and she is not apologizing for a single inch of herself.
“The belt,” she says. Not a question.
I pull the belt free. The leather makes a sound. Her eyes track it.
“Down,” I say. “On your back.”
She lies down on the blanket. The red light on her skin. The mark on her thigh glowing pearlescent in my spectrum. I kneel beside her and lift her wrists above her head and loop the belt through the heavy cargo anchor set into the floor — the industrial kind, bolted through the deck plate. It holds. She tugs. The leather creaks but doesn’t give.
Her arms stretched above her head. Wrists bound to the floor anchor. Her body laid out on the blanket, bare, in the red light, and the sight of her is —
Three months. Three months and the sight of her still takes my breath away .
“Good?” I ask.
“Good.” Breathless. “Very good.”
I strip myself, never breaking eye contact with her. I start at her throat. Then the freckle. Both tips. My mouth working down her body with the patience of a male who has three months of knowledge and all the time in the world. I know her now. I know the spot below her left ear that makes her breath hitch. I know the spot on her ribs that makes her squirm. I know the exact pressure on her nipple that makes her pull against the belt, and the pulling is the gift — the deliberate strain toward me with her hands held.
I work her breasts with my mouth. Both tips. Alternating. The fang-drag across the underside that makes her gasp. The growl that vibrates through my mouth into her skin and makes her arch. She is loud already and I have not gone below her navel.
Lower. Stomach. Hips. The mark on her thigh — my tongue on the pearlescent shimmer, the shared pulse through the bond. Inside her thighs. She opens for me, wrists bound, and I put my mouth on her, and both tips make contact, and the sound fills the storage unit.
I take my time. Both tips working independently. The edging that has become our language — three times I bring her to the crest and hold her there, building, not letting her fall.
“Jazil, please —”
The third edge. I let her fall. She comes against my mouth with a sound that is my name and something wordless, and I hold her through it, tongue gentling.
She is breathing in ragged gulps. I kiss up her body. Slow. Tasting the aftermath. Stomach. Ribs. Breasts. Throat. Freckle. Mouth. She tastes herself on me and makes the sound — half-moan, half-laugh.
“Now,” she breathes. “Both. I’m ready.”
I kneel between her thighs. My hands slide down her hips, over the curve of her, and my fingers find —
A toy.
Small. Smooth. Warm from her body heat. Seated inside her, in the other place. She used it before the hunt — inserted it, prepped herself, ran the laps with it in. She has been hiding in a storage unit with a toy in her backside, waiting for me to find it.
“Surprise,” she says. The brave-eyes. The blush spreading down her chest.
“How long?”
“Since before the laps. About forty minutes.”
“You ran laps with —”
“I ran laps with it. Yes. It was an experience. I had to concentrate very hard on the running part.”
I press my forehead against her stomach. Breathing. Because my mate ran laps through a residential maintenance level with a toy inside her to prepare for me, and I need a second before my brain shuts down entirely.
“Can I take it out?”
“That is the idea.”
Slow. Careful. Easing the toy free. She gasps when it clears — the release of pressure, the stretch relaxing — and I set it aside and my fingers replace it. Checking. Slick. Warm. Open. Ready.
“Good girl.” Against her hip. “My thorough, sneaky, magnificent female.”
