Page 29 of Dead Drop

His fingers press deeper.

"You're still—I'm not going to?—"

The tail increases pressure on my clit. The thought goes away.

"Tell me," he says. Low. Rough. Two words that have the weight of something that has been waiting and will continue to wait.

"No," I say.

He doesn't push. His fingers work. His cock flexes in slow rolls. The tail circles my clit with a patience that should be impossible for something driven by rut.

I come on his fingers and his cock. My walls grip him hard. The tail holds its position against my clit. I grab his wrist—both hands around the thickness of it, holding it there, keeping his fingers inside me—and come apart. Shaking. Clenching. Loud in the quiet aerie, my voice breaking on sounds I have no control over. The orgasm goes long, refusing to resolve, rolling through my body in waves that crest and recede and crest again.

I've stopped fighting what my body does in the lull. That's not surrender. It's resource management. A combat-trained woman in enemy territory doesn't waste energy on battles she cannot win.

That's what I tell myself. I've been telling myself that for about thirty-six hours. The phrase is wearing thin. The truth underneath it—which I am not ready to look at yet, which I am keeping in a corner of my mind where the venom can't dissolve it—is that the lull feels good in a way I wasn't prepared for. Not just the orgasms, though those are devastating in their own right. The gentleness. His mouth moving across my skin with attention rather than urgency. His hands learning me instead of managing me.

In the barracks, tenderness was a luxury nobody could afford. You got what you got in the dark and you were grateful for the warmth of another body. Nobody had time to be careful. Nobody had the energy to be slow.

There was a woman in the west wing. Tallis. Her hands were scarred from working the forges. She'd come to my bunk on nights when the patrols were quiet and we both needed to be held by something that wasn't cold stone or fear. We never talked about it. She'd slip into the dark, and I'd already be awake, waiting the way you wait for supply runners. The sex was quick. Efficient. Her mouth rough on my neck, her fingers pressing hard enough to leave bruises that I had to hide beneath the collar of my shirt. We never touched each other anywhere but the bed. We never asked questions. When she'd leave before dawn, the only evidence was the smell of forges and the ache in my muscles. It was the closest I got to closeness without the risk of vulnerability. Without having to admit I was scared and lonely in equal measure.

His hand moves across my ribs now—not urgent, not demanding. Learning the shape of me the way someone reads a map, slow and thorough. The calluses on his palms are rough but his touch is careful. When he found the fractured rib, he adjusted, his fingers moving around the damaged bone with the awareness of someone who could snap it with a twitchbut chooses not to. That choice is tenderness. That's what I wasn't prepared for. The deliberate gentleness of something that strong. Tallis wasn't built for it. Neither was I. We took what we could get, which was warmth and the temporary erasure of loneliness, and that had to be enough.

He has time. The rut gives him nothing but time. The lulls stretch like the quiet between storms, and he fills them by touching me like I'm something worth learning.

He's hard when I come back to myself.

I feel the change before the shaking has stopped—the density of him shifting inside me, expanding, pressing into my walls. The muscle goes from its lazy rolling to something purposeful. The lull is over. It closes in him like a door: the patience narrowing, the rut finding its way back to the surface.

Day one, I didn't see it coming. Day three, I know the signs. His breathing changes. His body goes still in a way I know. The cock hardens inside me by degrees, pressing deeper.

Knowing it's coming doesn't help. It never helps.

He moves me before I can brace. Face-down. Hips up. His hands position me with the certainty of something arranging what it owns—which I am, for the purposes of this arrangement—and the angle of him inside me shifts completely as I move around his cock. His tail wraps my waist in one smooth coil, warm and heavy, pulling my hips back and up. His hands settle over it, gripping, holding me exactly where he's placed me.

Pinned from all sides. There is no direction I can move that isn't into him.

He drives in.

Nothing careful. Both hands and his tail holding me against him, driving in hard and deep. The force of it jolts through my entire body—my breasts moving with each impact, my fingers scrabbling for purchase in the furs. It fills the aerie. The slap of him against me—the heavy, rhythmic smack of his hips meetingmy ass. The wet rhythm of every thrust. His breath. My voice, which has become something I don't recognize.

His wings flare wide above us, the membrane catching the canopy light, throwing shifting shadows across the furs. The light ripples with every thrust—his wings trembling, the membrane catching and releasing the sun, and the effect is like lying beneath water. Everything dappled and moving.

His cock on every stroke fills me completely—the shape of him pressing into the inside of me, the head driving forward, the girth stretching me open, the curl of him dragging against my G-spot on every withdrawal. The friction is devastating. Wet, hot, his cock slick with three days of cum and my arousal. I can hear it—the obscene, slick sound of his cock moving inside me, punctuated by the heavy slap of his hips. Each thrust pushes the breath from my lungs. Each withdrawal leaves me empty in a way that makes my body chase him, my hips tilting back to take him deeper on the next stroke.

He shifts the angle. Tilts my hips up with his hands—just a fraction, his grip repositioning me with the casual certainty of someone adjusting a tool—and the next thrust hits deeper. A place I didn't know I had. The sound I make is not a word. It is not even a syllable. It is something pulled from the bottom of my lungs.

"Don't stop," I say.

Which is what I said I'd never say. It's day three. I've said a lot of things I said I wouldn't.

"Tell me again," he says. Rough. Strained.

"Don't stop," I say again, louder, with his hips driving into mine.

He reaches under me and finds my clit. The next thrust hits the angle that breaks something open in my chest. I cry out—the sound ricocheting off the canopy walls, echoing back—and I have nothing left for embarrassment. He keeps the angle. Pinsme down with his weight and drives in. His fingers on my clit, the slap of his body against mine constant and rhythmic.

I'm going to come. I'm past caring.