Page 19 of Dead Drop

His wings slam open—both of them, full span, the tips scraping the canopy ceiling—and he roars. It fills the aerie and goes out into the dark above the wasteland. His hips drive forward one final time, shuddering, and the knot locks.

The stretch at my cunt blooms wider, deeper, and then it's done. Sealed. He can't pull free. I can't get away.

I know it with my body because my body is the only thing still operating.

The vibration starts.

From the knot, pressing directly into my clit at my center. The knot is right there, right against that nerve cluster fromwithin, and the vibration hums into it: relentless, not cycling, not building toward something. Just there. Just that warm constant hum pressing into my clit from inside my own body.

His cock throbs against my G-spot. His pulse in it—every heartbeat, his cock pressing on that spot, every beat.

I'm drooling against the furs. I'm aware of this. I can't stop it. I don't care.

He rolls his hips. Small and deliberate, working the knot where it's seated. Short, low grunts with every roll, the sound so deep I feel it in my chest.

His weight is enormous on my back. The vibration presses into my clit without pause. His cock throbs on my G-spot.

I'm moaning into the warmth of the nest and the moaning doesn't stop.

I don't stop coming.

"Mine," he says against my hair. Low. Like it's already true.

I lie in the furs and shake.

The aerie is warm. His chest is against my back. Below the edge of the nest: the drop I chose, the long fall, the correct decision.

He caught me before I got there.

I'm going to have to find a new way to be certain about things.

His wings fold around us. Both of them. The light goes. Everything goes except his warmth, his heartbeat, the vibration, the knot, the fullness of him inside me. The way I'm still shaking.

His tail wraps loosely around my ankle—not restraining, just there. The tip resting against my skin. His heartbeat thuds into my shoulder blades—slower than mine, deeper, the rhythm of something built at a different scale.

The vibration doesn't stop. It doesn't stop for the orgasm. It doesn't stop for anything. His cock pulses against the front wall with every beat of his heart. The hum runs through the knotinto my body. My body keeps responding, clenching, each clench feeding the next without any help from either of us.

I lie in the dark behind his wings. The furs are soft. His chest is furnace-warm against my back.

I've looked for the exit. Every angle I have.

Five miles east-northeast, my settlement is in the aftermath of the raid. Dov is managing without a commander, which means managing on instinct and whatever's left of his authority. The second-years are on the wall without anyone to correct their footwork when it goes wrong under pressure. The bad generator. The supply runs that need rescheduling now that the eastern gate is breached. The intelligence maps that were folded against my ribs are somewhere on the canopy floor fifty-three stories below.

None of that waits. All of it is happening right now without me, and the specific, blunt horror of it is that nothing I decide tonight changes any of that.

The knot holds. The venom holds. The wings hold. There's nothing I can reach tonight.

So I stop trying.

Not surrender. Triage. The difference between giving up and choosing which battles to fight right now.

I'll fight every battle this situation contains. Just not tonight. Tonight my body has been taken apart by something nothing in my training had a category for. The vibration still hums. My walls clenching around his cock in slow rhythmic pulses that I did not choose, can't stop.

Resource management. I'll conserve what I have left and fight tomorrow.

That's what I tell myself.

It's the first lie of many.