Page 35

He followed me into my room. It was small and warm, and his scent was still here from his sleepover. That scorched-sugar Kelvane smell that made me want to lick him from head to toe. Maybe I would.

Rennick stood in the middle of the room, and his expression was the same as when I’d begged him to fuck me. Wanting. Waiting.

I put my hands on his chest, and his breathing changed. The muscle underneath his shirt was taut, coiled, running hot, and the ridged lines I’d already traced were right there under the fabric, raised and warm enough to feel.

“Do you need another release?” he murmured. “The neural flash is still troubling you?”

“This isn’t about what the ship did to me.” I looked up at him. “Or a neural flash. This is mine. I’m choosing this. We clear?”

His hands came up to my face. “Clear.”

I pulled his shirt over his head, and I got my first proper look at what I’d only touched when fueled with adrenaline and ghost-memories running through my nervous system. Broad. Warm skin over dense muscle, textured where the raised lines tracked from his shoulders down his chest and across his ribs. The lines ran hotter than the rest of him, darker, like veins of ore through stone, and when I traced a fingertip from his collarbone to his sternum, his body locked.

I traced it again, slower, pressing harder, and his head dropped forward, forehead almost touching mine. A sound rolled out of him, low, not quite a growl.

I unzipped my overalls to the waist and peeled off my tank top. His gaze dropped and stayed. The restraint it cost him lived in the tendons of his neck, the way his jaw worked, his hands curling at his sides.

“You can touch me,” I whispered.

His hands moved before I finished the sentence. Rough palms against my ribs, thumbs tracing the underside of my breasts. Calluses caught on my skin, dragging heat low in my stomach.

His mouth found my throat. Open, hot, tongue just below my ear, and I tipped my head. My fingers dug into the raised lines across his shoulders, and his hips jerked forward, an involuntary thrust that pressed the hard length of his cock against my stomach. Big. Bigger than I’d braced for, thick through the fabric.

“Bed.” I walked him backward. His knees hit the edge, and he sat. I stood between his thighs and looked down at him. Three hundred pounds of alien with his hands on my hips, his cock straining against his pants, his face tipped up, the aching desire for me clear.

It was so fucking hot.

I pushed him flat and climbed on.

His hands gripped my thighs the second I straddled him. I rolled my hips, grinding against the ridge of his cock, and the sound he made rumbled through me. My fingers spread across those hot raised lines, and I rode the pressure between us until my thighs trembled and the seam of my underwear was soaked.

I tugged at his waistband. “Get these off before I cut them off, and I like you enough not to ruin your clothes.”

He chuckled, lifted his hips, and stripped. His cock was thick, flushed dark, the skin textured along the shaft the same way those lines tracked his chest. Those warm ridges made my mouth water and my pussy clench in anticipation of how delicious that friction would feel every time he thrust inside me.

I shoved my boots, overalls, and underwear down in one move and kicked them off the side of the bed.

His gaze moved over my naked body, slow, cataloguing, and landed on the scars across my left hand and up my forearm, the shiny pink tissue from a detonation that happened a second too early. He caught my wrist, turned my hand over, and pressed his mouth to the worst of it, like he was memorizing the texture with his lips.

I pulled my hand back and wrapped it around his cock. I had no time for pity kisses.

He bucked into my firm grip. “Cass. Fuck!” His hand covered mine, showed me the pressure he needed, and I learned it fast.

The sounds he made when I got it right were addictive, and I tested and teased, alternating rhythm, swiping my fingers over the head of his shaft, making my hand sticky with him, his pre-cum mingling with my sweat.

I straddled him again and positioned myself over his cock, the head pressing against my wet pussy, and paused. “You’re clean?”

“Monthly medical. Everything checks green.”

“Good. I’m safe, too.” I was as horny as a fucking teenage boy, but not as reckless.

His hands found my hips, steadying and guiding.

I sank onto his cock, and the stretch forced my breath out in a rush, the ridged texture of him dragging against every nerve ending. I took him inch by inch until my hips sat flush against his. Full. Impossibly, overwhelmingly full, and the heat of his cock inside me pulsed in time with my heartbeat.

“Fuck,” I moaned.

“You...” He couldn’t finish the sentence. His head pressed back into the pillow, throat exposed, and every line on his body blazed hot under my hands.