Chapter Fifteen
Trunk
Irun.
The jungle swallows us the moment I step past the tree line, and I do not slow down. My Bride is in my arms, her face pressed against my chest, her small hand fisted in what’s left of my torn shirt. Her scent fills my lungs with every breath. I cannot get enough of it.
Forty rotations I have waited and now she is finally mine and I am carrying her through the warm Timbur night and I can feel her two hearts beating against mine. Well, her one heart. She only has one. I will have to get used to that.
I know exactly where I am taking her. There is a clearing deep in the jungle that I discovered as a boy, before our parents were murdered, before Daxon was banished and before the world turned against our line. Back when I used to wander the jungle alone just to think, just to be somewhere quiet. I have been to this clearing many times over the rotations, alwaysalone, imagining what it would be like to one day bring a Bride here.
I never believed I would. Not really.
And yet.
“Texon.” Her voice is soft against my chest. “Where are we going?”
I cannot answer her. My voice is gone. My entire body is a single, coiled thought and that thought isclaim her, claim her, claim her.
I run faster. The clearing opens up before me exactly the way I remember it. Soft mossy ground with a stream winding along one edge. A canopy of giant leaves overhead with purple flowers blooming in clusters where they catch the moonlight. The two green moons are high in the sky, silvering everything.
I set my Bride on her feet in the middle of the clearing.
For a long moment I just stand there, looking at her. She is filthy. There is a smear of blood on her cheek that is not hers. There are leaves in her dark curly hair. The sleeve of her shirt is torn where the mercenary grabbed her. Her eyes are huge in the moonlight, fixed on me. And she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
“By the gods,” I rasp.
“Texon.” She takes a step toward me. “Are you okay?”
I almost laugh. “No. I am not okay. I am enflamed and I have waited my entire life for this moment and I don’t know where to begin.”
She smiles up at me.
And then she reaches up and starts unbuttoning what’s left of her shirt.
My cock throbs so hard it’s almost painful. I watch her small fingers work the buttons, one at a time, her eyes never leaving mine. The shirt falls away. Then she removes the rest of her human clothing and soon she is naked in the clearing.
I have never seen a naked female in my life.
Her skin is golden in the moonlight. Her breasts are full and soft with pink nipples that have tightened in the warm night air. Her waist curves into the flare of her hips. The dark curls between her thighs glisten with her arousal. I can smell it, her scent is thick now, rich and fertile, unmistakably my Bride’s.
“You’re staring,” she whispers.
“Yes.”
“Now you.”
I tear off my own torn clothing. Buttons scatter in the moss. Then I am naked in the moonlight too.
She makes a small sound in her throat. “Holy crap,” she breathes.
I look down at my own body as she looks at it. My cock is enormous, flushed dark, a bead of seed already leaking from the slit at the tip. I have seen my own body a thousand times, but I have never seen it like this. Alive and ready.
“Is it going to fit?” she whispers, staring at my cock.
“I’ll make sure you can take it.”
Her eyes come back to mine. They are shining.
