“Take it all, Poppy. Claim me as your mate."
She matches my pace, her hips rolling against mine.
I feel the moment she goes over the cliff of pleasure, and I smile down at her, satisfied to watch her unravel. Her skin’s a beautiful pink all over, her lips swollen from my attention. She stiffens in my arms, her toes curling against my back with a shattered cry. Poppy shudders, her cunt gripping my shaft with an agonizing pressure that triggers my own release.
I pump into her, holding her upright, as she’s lost to the pleasure.
Slowly, the tremors fade.
I keep her pinned against the tree, my chest heaving against her breasts, my nose buried in the scent of her hair. I am entirely undone.
I am a captive to this tiny human female, and as my tail wraps tightly around her ankle anchoring her to me, I know I can never let her go.
CHAPTER 18
POPPY
My legs areliteral overcooked noodles.
I look down, half expecting to see the tentacles from the weird bug, but no, they’re still just my legs.
Vael-Torin slowly lets my weight slide down the mossy bark of the tree until my still-booted feet touch the grass.
My spine’s tingling, my brain short-circuiting from the orgasm he just hammered out of me. Every single square inch of me feels thoroughly wrecked.
In the best way possible.
I lean against the trunk, gasping for air, and tentatively sniff my own shoulder.
Gross.
"Ew," I mutter, wrinkling my nose. "Do I smell like sulfur and raw seafood? Fantastic. Romance isn't dead, it just smells like a bait shop."
Vael-Torin doesn't seem to understand the words, but he looks down at me with a deeply satisfied expression as he pulls his pants back on. His cold detachment’s faded, replaced by a dark possessiveness that tells me he is officially a goner. He reaches out, his thumb gently wiping a smudge of dirt off my chin.
“I liked that,” I tell him, putting my arms through my suit. He grins at me, zipping up my suit. It’s a sweet, thoughtful gesture, and I grin right back at him as I try get my boobs back where they belong.
Thank god for alien tech, because if this were a normal earth onesie, these boobies would be flipping and flapping every damn where.
A buzzing noisefrom the grass sounds, and I practically jump in Vael’s arms before I realize it’s not another space bug.
My silver comms tablet vibrates in the dirt where it fell out of my jumpsuit. I scramble over, snatching it up as the screen blinks with a fresh influx of notifications from the group chat.
Before I can even unlock the display to read Lily’s inevitable death threats, a familiar chime echoes from the boughs above.
A drone plunges through the leaves, hovering directly in front of my face. The blue recording light blinks, and a holographic projection of a human expands in the air between Vael and me.
"Attention, underdogs," the voice crackles, sounding entirely too cheerful for a threatening a death match. "A brief update on station branding. Contestant Ellison Price has seen fit to give my neural network a name. She calls me 'Ken.' Apparently, I remind her of a plastic human male. I find this highly insulting, but test audiences find it hilarious, so Ken it is."
The words hit me like a physical blow, and I suck in a deep breath.
Ellison is alive. She is surviving. Not only that, she’s still sassy enough to insult a homicidal artificial intelligence to its weird ass digital face.
A wave of relief crashes over me, shattering whatever composure I thought I still had. An ugly sob shakes my shoulders. Tears instantly flood my eyes, cutting clean tracks through the grime on my cheeks.
"She's alive," I choke out. "Ell is okay. She's naming this asshole."
“That is not an asshole,” Vael observes. “In fact, it doesn’t have an asshole,” he says, walking around the hologram.
