Page 37 of Leviathan

Then my world exploded as he pulled out, just a little, his skin dragging inside of me, slipping and sliding even as his chin lifted and his eyes fluttered closed for a brief moment, the expression of pure pleasure on his face matching the rising peak of my own until the only thing that existed was him and me, the movement and touch of our bodies, the sound of his groan as he pulled out until his tip was the only thing left inside of me, the emptiness a shock that was too quick to process as he drove back into me with a slow, steady thrust.

My head rocked back as my entire body moved with the force of his penetration.

Then he was pulling out again and filling me, possessing me, taking me with a slow, sensual deliberation.

"Talk to me," I begged, losing all sense of dominance as he held me down and took me.

"I've relaxed my knot, and now I am going to fill you with my seed over and over again and knot you again until it anchors there, and our young begins to grow," he rumbled, his eyes finding mine, anchoring there with feral intent. "I am going to mate with you, breed you, keep you, and never let you go. You are mine. You will always be mine."

"I am my own," I said, a small but fierce part of me rising up to meet the challenge in his gaze.

His eyes burned with a fire that matched my own, as he shifted the angle of his hips, changing the soft wave of my pleasure to rise higher than before. I felt the soft touch of one of his neuro filaments brushing in between my lower lips, stroking me there to match the slow, methodical rhythm of his overwhelming thrusts and then I was climaxing again, my toes curling, a scream ripping from my throat as my back arched and all the muscles in my body tightened in response to the full body cascade of stars exploding throughout my senses. I heard him let out a roar as he slammed into me, his pace rapid and frantic, his length twitching inside of me even as I clamped down on it like I could suck him into me with the sheer force of my body.

His heat filled me, and I knew he was right: in this moment, I was utterly and completely his.

As I came back down, held in the warmth of his arms, in the embrace of his entire being, he leaned down to gently kiss my cheek.

"Then I am yours," he whispered in my ear.

FOURTEEN

LYRIEN

"Why didn't you have me work on your weapon systems first?" Maria asked me as she worked on the neurofilaments that controlled the pitch of the long-distance cannon. It was a huge job that had taken us fifteen of her sleep cycles, though it could have been done sooner if I hadn't taken so many breaks to fuck her senseless. Even now, as she worked, bent over, I could see the small dribble of my seed oozing out of her. I longed to seat myself back in her to push it back into place, but she had made it clear we had to get a certain amount of work done before she'd let me have her again.

"The contaminant is designed to target weapons and defense systems," I said. "If I had you clear this area first, any other spots would have been drawn to the energy signatures and contaminated everything in their path to recontaminate them while you were working on the rest of me. Standard procedure is to clear the targeted systems last."

"Even so, wouldn't having your weapons working be more of a priority than having me swim around in a pool?" she asked. "If you had let me know that something this important was damaged, I wouldn't have wanted to take so much downtime."

"The best way to win a fight is to avoid it in the first place and focus on the long game," I said. "I'd much rather hide than risk having my birds be collateral damage. They don't like the restraints I have to hold them in to keep them safe from battle maneuvering, and with my stealth systems intact and the sheer number of potential hiding places in this system, there is a good chance the hunter has arrived and moved on already, unable to find us and worried that we are slipping further and further away as they dawdled searching individual pockets. Having you work at a breakneck pace and burn yourself out would have weakened us more than taking the time to rest and do things right."

"You don't know for sure if the hunter has even arrived in this system?" she asked, the surprise in her voice.

"We are hidden," I said. "Any attempt of mine to monitor or scan this system would be detectable. We are not going to make the slightest peep until I am certain we are ready to run or fight at my highest capability."

"We should secure the birds in advance of that," she said. "I know it will stress them out, but it is important not to have to worry about them in case it comes down to a fight."

I really didn't want to fight. Being willing and able to engage in violence was a completely different thing from being eager to do so. Even a pacifist has the capability to fire a weapon, especially with a clear awareness of the evil that awaits them. I would use my weapons to defend myself and my love without hesitation.

Even so, the fact that the first thing my love thought about was protecting my aviary made me happy.

"Yes," I agreed. "It would be safer for them to come out of hiding at top speed and make a run for it."

"Do hunters generally use the same kinds of ships?" Maria asked, jumping straight into her next question.

"Yes, they have standardized configurations," I said.

"Do you have blueprints for that?" she asked.

"Why?" I responded, curious as to where she was going.

"You said that your weapons systems are top of the line," she said. "If they are that good, and you know enough about what the hunters ship might be, then we can put together a plan for if they're waiting out there for us. Instead of just running, we should come out swinging and then run. Maybe we can disable their systems like they tried to disable ours."

I loved that she said ours.

Even though everything was a part of me, built out of my body, the fact that she claimed ownership of me the way she did, tickled me almost as much as the feeling of her bare feet when she walked along my metal-stripped corridors. With her permission, I began changing the hallways and corridors in most of the spaces she inhabited to expose them to neurofilaments, so I could feel her everywhere she went, rather than having metal separating us. Her bedroom, we left the way it was, a haven where my presence and attention weren't allowed except by express invitation. When we next docked at a space station, I planned to acquire the materials I needed to turn her bedroom into a full-functioning shuttle with its own environmental system, multiple suites for any children, and navigational controls for the unlikely event that I would want to use it as an escape vessel. It wasn't likely that we would ever need it, but like my investment in my weapons system, it was important to spend time planning for the worst-case scenario so I could spend the rest of my life enjoying the peace.

Even so, that word ours settled in the back of my mind, rolling over and over again in a soft murmur as we worked to finish up the last of the sections that would allow us to break free from hiding.