Page 131 of Tracked and Taken

“Yes.”

“And the only.”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

She pulls me down and kisses me harder and bites my lower lip the way she is shortly going to bite my throat, and the growl that comes out of me is not a decision I participated in.

I get us to the bunk.

Her back to the mattress and my weight over her at the angle of my body. My mouth at her jaw. My hand at her hip. My thigh between hers, because she needs something and I will not make her ask for it, and she is riding it inside four seconds and neither of us remarks on that.

My tail comes up.

It has been at my waist since the corridor in the configuration a Draelith tail is held in when its male has been pair-identified and not answered. There is no reason to hold it now. It wraps around her ankle. Then her calf. Then the back of her knee, a slow claiming slide, and then the taper of it finds the inside of her thigh, and finds what is waiting there through the cotton, and my whole spine goes rigid.

She is soaked.

She walked down one floor and stood in my corridor and touched my chime like that.

“Tael.”

“Mm.”

“Tell me how this works.”

“The marking?”

“Yes. Before I forget how to ask. Before you put your mouth on me and I stop being a person who asks questions.”

My head comes up off her throat.

Of course she is asking. She is a woman who pre-files a lunch order. She is going to walk into the most permanent configuration her body will ever be in with the procedure understood, and she wants it explained while my hips are grinding a slow answer into the seam of her is the single most Natalie Torres thing that has happened in five days.

My hips do not stop. I have the rest of my life. That sentence is new.

“My canines pierce the skin at the spot at your throat. Two punctures, two centimeters apart. The compound at my canines sets the pair-signature into the wound. Your chemistry locks to mine. The mark heals in some hours. The scars are small. They are permanent.”

“All right.”

“For me, your teeth do not, by the anatomy your species carries, pierce Draelith skin. The compound in your saliva is the conduit. You have to bite. Nip. Lick. Suck. Whatever shape your mouth makes at the spot, the chemistry in your saliva is the medium. The intent is the setter. You set the mark in your head. The chemistry goes through the intent.”

“My mouth at the spot.”

“Yes.”

“My teeth.”

“Yes.”

“Should I leave a mark on you?”

“I am not opposed to a mark on me. I want your teeth on me, Natalie. I want to wear you. I want every male who looks at my throat for the rest of my life to know I was claimed by a woman who walked into my quarters and told me to take my shirt off.”

Her eyes close. Her hips lift. My tail feels what that does to the cotton and tightens on its own.

“You first.”

“All right.”