It skewered me a little. The way she’d phrased it. Just like the story I’d told her, about asking my uncle to hold me like a parent might.
But hers was not like a parent’s touch upon me. It sent little fires burning all through me, until my entire being burned, like I’d been tossed onto a funeral pyre. Like I was going to die, or dead already, simply because she’d laid her little cheek against my chest. Simply because I could smell her sweetly strange human scent, intermingled with the familiar fragrances of the water and the cleansing moss of my mountains. She smelled like here and not here.
She smelled like home.
“Tell me to stop, and I will,” she said. Her breath was torturous against me. “If you don’t like it-”
“Don’t.” The hissing vehemence of the word surprised me.
Maybe surprised her, too. She moved to pull away. “Don’t touch you?”
“Don’t stop.” My hands shot up to clasp at her back, to keep her there just a little longer. She stiffened, and the reaction nearly slayed me. That by returning her embrace, she tightened up with discomfort.
“Look at me.” My words were a command but my hand was a plea, sliding up over her hair to cup her jaw. Gently, I touched her chin, tilting her head back. Her eyes glittered under the blue light. There was moisture on her cheeks, seeping from her eyes. I let my thumb trace the silk of her damp skin, marvelling at this wondrous ability of hers. So much water in her. It felt to me a sign that she was meant to be here, among my mountains and lakes, and not in the desert.
A sign that she was meant to be with me.
But…
If she were meant to be so, the Vrika would have come.
My arms tightened around her. As if I could summon the Vrika myself, simply by how closely I held her.
Please.
The word echoed in my head as I stared down at Nazreen’s achingly beautiful face. For a moment, I thought she had said it, before I realized it came from within myself.
I was asking for something. Begging. For something I wanted. That I wanted for me and only me.
I wanted Nazreen. There was no way to hide it, no way to bury it, no way to cut this down. Even my uncle’s knife could not have amputated this desire from me. Vrika or not, my mateor not, a terrible part of me had already decided she was mine. Even though no part of her was mine to claim.
If Gahn Seerak could only see me now.
He would likely be ashamed. Just as I was of myself.
But not ashamed enough to let her go.
Her breath was upon my mouth. A swallowed groan made my ribs ache. I leaned towards the sensation – I could not help it. Could not stop myself. An entire life of discipline crushed beneath her sweetness.
And, curse the Deep Sky, it was sweetness. Our lips touched, inadvertently at first, but she opened her mouth to me at once. The luscious, heady taste of her had me groaning again, and this time, I could not hold it back. She made a little sound in response, a breathy sort of whimper that went straight to my groin, my cock leaping painfully against her.
She removed her hands from my back, but I did not have time to worry about what that might mean, because she soon wrapped her arms around my neck instead. Dazedly, my thoughts sluggish as if I’d been struck in the temple, I wondered if she wanted to be even closer to me. It seemed absurd. Impossible. Reserved, guarded, elegant Nazreen, that agonisingly perfect creature with her always perfect distance.
But there was no distance now. And this was far too vivid to be a dream. Her back arched, her breasts pressing into me as I claimed her waist with my claws. By the skies, I could nearly span the entire circumference of this precious spot with just my fingers and thumbs.
“Thaleo,” she breathed against my mouth.
I gripped her hard. I liked when she called me that. No one had called me anything but “Gahn” or “Gahn Thaleo” in ages heaped upon ages.
“Yes,” I said, my voice a fevered fracture of its former self. In that moment, I was certain that I would grant her anything.
But she seemed not to want anything from me at all. At least, she did not ask me for anything with words. With a hot sigh, she simply met my mouth once more, letting the tip of her single, sweet tongue prod experimentally against the writhing segments of my own.
I had never done such a thing before. I did not know what she expected. I did not even know what this meant, especially to one such as her. A human from another world entirely.
All I knew was that this could not stop. I had to keep her here. My body demanded it; my heart spasmed at the thought of letting her go now. A pleasurable torment built in my cock, throbbing as if with a second pulse of its own. There was no way she did not feel it bucking possessively against her. She had to feel my need for her. Human women could mate with men from our world. Their men must have had anatomy at least somewhat similar to mine.
So she must have known. Understood the ardent agony of my arousal as she arched against me, her tongue meeting mine. And she did not recoil.
