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“I don’t think I’ll need help,” she said, oblivious to my aroused turmoil. “If you can get her a little lower to the ground, that is. Her legs are so long, and there are nostuhr-ups.”
I had not the faintest idea what astuhr-upwas, but I commanded Talga to bend her many legs anyway.
I was about to reach my hand for my mate when I drew back, grunting softly in surprise. In a smooth, practiced movement, Zuh-Tephanie mounted Talga. Her tiny rump settled between my thighs. She slipped off her pack, and I fastened it to Talga’s side.
“Do you have braxilk in your world?” I asked. I knew my mate was an enormously competent woman, but the way she’d pulled herself up here with such confidence had shocked me.
“No,” she said, wiggling slightly as she settled herself. “But I used to ridehore-sez. They’re kind of like braxilk without wings. Well, not really. They only have four legs and two eyes. But it’s close enough.” She wiggled again, drawing dangerously close to my neglected cock, then sighed happily. “This feels so good already. It feels like...”
“Like what?” I pressed, needing to know what she’d been about to say when she’d hesitated.
Her answer was quiet. Nearly lost on the morning air.
“Feels a little bit like home.”
My wounding little creature, this is only the beginning. You may have left your world behind, but I will be your home.
I didn’t say it out loud. I couldn’t. I was too afraid that, if I had said it, she would argue with me. Deny me. Dash my words, my hopes, upon Gahn Thaleo’s aguir stone.
My body had almost entirely recovered. But I somehow felt even weaker than before. Too afraid of hurt, of rejection.
I cannot be afraid. I refuse it.
This was no way for a Gahn to feel.
“We will fly back to my territory, now. You will stay there with me,” I said, infusing my voice with authority. I certainly sounded like my old, commanding self.
But I didn’t feel like him.
Never before would I have waited with bated breath to see if someone pushed back upon one of my orders. If a man had so much as hesitated to act on one of my orders, he would have found himself very quickly in a world of pain.
But Zuh-Tephanie wasn’t a man. She was my impossible, perfect mate. The vicious captor of my heart. Soft and weaponless and yet somehow armed to the teeth against me.
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered at me. “Why do you think I came back out here? Obviously, I’m going back with you. You don’t need to make it sound like you’re ordering me to. I decided on my own.”
“Whydidyou decide to?” I asked. She’d seemed like she’d been about to crawl up the side of Gahn Thaleo’s mountain just to get away from me this morning. I wanted to tell myself she had come back for me because she must have seen sense and she suddenly loved me now. But I was not that much of a fool. At least, not anymore.
She hesitated, staring straight ahead, before answering.
“I... I saw you flinch. When you mounted Talga. You were in pain.”
My blood froze in my veins. My head pounded. My fangs ground against each other.
I’d nearly recovered all my strength, but it clearly meant nothing. One breath of pitiful pain, and she’d seen it. She’d come to me this morning for the same reason she’d let me touch her after the nightmare.
Pathetic.
“Save your pity for someone who deserves it,” I seethed.
“Pity? Wait,what?”
If she had more to say – which, no doubt, she did – she did not get the chance. A click of my tongues and we shot up into the air, leaving Gahn Thaleo’s putrid mountain behind.
