Page 24

“Say it plainly,” I tell her. “I need it clear. If you’d rather I went and stood at that window until morning, say so, and I will, and nothing about tomorrow changes.”

“I don’t want you at the window.”

“Say it.”

“I want you here.” She reaches up and puts her hand flat against my chest, over the scars, deliberately, the way she does everything. “I’ve wanted you inside me since the causeway and I’ve been extremely annoying about it inside my own head for two weeks. Is that plain enough, or would you like it in writing?”

I have spent fourteen years being very careful with human beings.

I am careful now, and it takes everything I have.

She’s a third my mass and comes up on her toes anyway, and I go down to meet her. The first kiss is slow because I need the data: the exact pressure that makes her breath catch, the way her lower lip softens when I test it with my teeth, the small sound she makes when my tongue finds hers. Her hands slide up the plating along my forearms, mapping the seams, and when her fingers reach the base of my spines I feel them lift under her touch before I can stop them.

“That’s new,” she says against my mouth.

“It’s involuntary.”

“I’m choosing to be flattered.”

“Be flattered.”

I push her jacket off her shoulders. The ruined shirt follows. Her breasts spill free into my palms and I groan at the soft weight of them, thumbs brushing the hardening nipples until she gasps and arches. I take one into my mouth, tongue circling, teeth careful, and her fingers tighten in my spines hard enough to sting.

I drop to my knees. The floorboards are cold under me. I drag her pants and underwear down together, lift each foot free, and then I’m looking at her—slick already, the dark curls between her thighs gleaming in the low light, the soft pink of her cunt visible when I spread her gently with my thumbs.

“Fuck, look at you,” I growl. “So wet already. This pretty cunt is dripping for my dick.”

I bury my face between her legs. The first long lick from entrance to clit makes her hips jerk. I settle in, tongue flat and slow against her, then pointed and focused on the swollen bud while two thick fingers push inside her. She’s tight—so tight my knuckles stretch her—and the heat of her is almost shocking after the cold air. I curl my fingers, find the ridged spot that makes her thighs tremble, and work it in steady rhythm while I suck her clit between my lips.

Clara moans, loud and unguarded, fingers tangled deep in my spines, hips rocking against my mouth. I let her use me. I want her using me. Every small shift of her weight, every broken sound, every time her inner walls flutter around my fingers is information I’m filing for later.

“Draeven—please—I need you to fuck me.”

I rise. The last of my armor hits the floor. My cock springs free, heavy, ridged along the underside, the head already dark and leaking. She stares, then wraps both small hands around the shaft, stroking from base to tip, thumb smearing the wetness. The contrast of her soft human skin against the harder ridges makes my spines flatten completely.

“So big,” she whispers, voice gone low and wicked. “I want you stretching me open.”

I lift her onto the bunk frame. The wood protests our combined weight with a long creak. I settle between her spread thighs, the head of my cock notched against her entrance, and push in slowly—inch by thick inch—watching the way her body yields and then grips, the way her mouth opens on a silent gasp when the first ridge catches and then slides past.

“Shit—Clara—you’re so fucking tight,” I groan, burying myself to the hilt. The last inch seats deep and she makes a sound that is half pain, half pure want. “Gripping me perfectly.”

She cries out, legs wrapping around my waist, heels digging into the small of my back. “Harder. Please.”

I give her what she asks for. Long, powerful strokes that drag every ridge along her walls, the wet sound of it filling the bare room under the roar of the storm. Her breasts bounce with every thrust. I brace one hand beside her head, the other gripping her hip hard enough to leave marks she’ll feel tomorrow, and I fuck her with the full weight of everything I’ve been holding back for nineteen days.

“Yes—right there—fuck, Draeven!” she moans, nails raking down my scaled back. “Don’t stop, I’m gonna come on your cock.”

Her walls flutter, then clamp down hard. She comes with a broken cry, pulsing around me, and I keep driving through it, chasing the way her body milks me. When the last tremor fades I pull out, flip her onto her hands and knees with one careful hand under her belly, and slam back inside from behind in a single stroke.

The new angle drags a fresh moan out of her. I grip her hips and set a harder rhythm, the slap of skin on skin loud under the rain. One hand reaches around to find her clit again, rubbing in tight circles while I pound into her.

“Take it,” I growl, the words rough against the nape of her neck. “Take every inch of this dick like a good girl.”

She pushes back to meet every thrust, whimpering, greedy. A second orgasm builds fast—I feel it in the way her thighs shake, the way her voice breaks on my name—and when it hits she drops to her elbows, face pressed to the thin mattress, and I follow her over the edge with a guttural roar, burying myself as deep as I can go and pumping her full of hot cum in long, pulsing jets.

We stay locked like that while the aftershocks fade. My forehead rests between her shoulder blades. Her breathing is ragged. Outside, the storm has gone from roar to steady drum.

Eventually I ease out. Cum slips down her inner thigh. I gather her against me on the narrow bunk, her head on my shoulder, one of her hands tracing the plating at my collarbone with absent fingers.