I can feel my own release building. My spine is on fire. My claws are dig into the mud beside her head. “Come for me, Be’Ih,” I rasp. “Come for me.”
Her whole body arches under mine and she screams my name into the rain, my real name,Texon, and her core clamps down around me and it is too much.
My first orgasm in my entire life floods through me.
I throw my head back and let out a thunderous roar into the jungle. I feel my seed jetting into her. There is so much of it.Rotations of it. Every empty, lonely cycle of my adult life pouring out of me into my Bride. I can feel her body taking it, her womb accepting it, and I know — Iknow— I have planted my offspring in her tonight.
I collapse forward. Catch myself on my forearms to keep from crushing her.
We are both shaking. I roll us to our sides, keeping myself inside her, not ready to lose that connection. My arms come around her. Her small hands press flat against my chest, right over my two hearts.
She is laughing softly. Or crying. I can’t tell.
I lean down and kiss her. Slower this time. Gentler.
Her fingers find the bite mark she left on my shoulder. The scratches she raked down my stomach. The split in my lip where she bit me. “I did this,” she whispers.
“You honored me.”
“You have blood all over you.”
“My brothers will be impressed. You bit me, scratched me, and cracked your hand on my jaw.”
She laughs, a real, startled laugh that makes her whole body shake against mine.
And I realize I am smiling. A real one, not the tight polite thing I do while at the mine. This smile uses muscles in my face I haven’t used since I was a boy.
She notices. Her hand comes up and touches the corner of my mouth. “I’ve never seen you smile like that.”
“I’ve never had a reason to.”
Her eyes fill again.
The rain softens around us. The warm Timbur night holds us in the clearing. I can hear the stream. I can hear her breathing slow. Her body is warm and solid against mine. My Bride. My Be’Ih. The female I waited forty rotations for. She looks tired now that the pheromones are receding.
“Sleep, Ines of One.”
“Mmm.” Her eyes are already closing. “Are we staying here?”
“Yes. Xylan always sleep where they claim. It is tradition.”
“Then tradition is good.”
I pull her tighter against my chest. Her breathing evens out within a minute. She is exhausted, the stabbing, the attack, the fever, the claiming. Her body has given me everything tonight.
I listen to the rain and look up at the canopy of flowers above us, at the sliver of moonlight through the leaves. At my Bride sleeping naked in my arms in the clearing I used to come to alone.
For forty rotations I waited for this.
She was always going to be worth it.
