Page 35 of Dead Drop

"Ada." Just my name. Like something he's been holding a long time.

I find a rhythm.

Slow at first. Learning the geometry of this by feel. There's an inch I can lift and an inch back down, and within that inch there is a narrow band where the friction is exactly right. Weight forward—pressure against the front of my walls, the vibration concentrating where I'm most swollen. Weight back—the fullness of the knot pressing outward in all directions, a different kind of pressure, wider and deeper.

My thighs are doing the work. Shaking, burning, pressing down against his hips to lift and resettle. Four years of climbing stairwells and running routes built these muscles for a different purpose. I'm using them now to grind on a vibrating knot while a nine-foot male lies beneath me and watches with those amber eyes.

The slick sounds of it are mortifying. Four days of his cum sealed inside me have made my body so wet that every movement comes with its own soundtrack—the slick friction of his cock against my walls, the obscene noise of the knot shifting against my cunt, my breath going ragged in a way that no amount of military discipline can control. On the wall, I was silent. In the barracks, I was silent. In the dark with women who knew not to make noise, I was silent.

I am not silent now. A moan comes out of me on every downstroke. Low and relentless, pulled from somewhere below my ribs. His cock flexes to meet my movement—the muscle pressing against the spot I've been hunting, holding the angle. The vibration spikes when I bear down. My clit grinds against the knot. The sensation is so precise it feels targeted, like hisbody is reading mine in real time, adjusting the frequency to match my arousal.

It is reading mine in real time. Four days, and his cock has learned my rhythms better than I know them myself.

Forward again. There.

I chase it. Set aside the old warrior self—the one who would never, who would rather, who would die before—and I chase the pleasure. I grind against the knot. My hips roll in a circle I didn't plan, didn't choose, that my body invented on its own because it has learned what it likes. The vibration spikes when I bear down. I bear down harder.

Sound comes out of me. I rock forward again, chasing the spot. The vibration spikes—higher, sharper, the frequency climbing with my movement like it's following me—and my thighs tighten. I find it again. I am grinding on him and I have given up pretending I'm not. I'm using him. That's the honest word for it. The slick sounds of it are filthy. He flexes inside me to meet the spot I'm hunting. The vibration spikes with my arousal.

The orgasm rolls in like the conclusion of something that's been building for a very long time. My walls grip him in long clenching waves. The vibration doesn't stop—so my body doesn't either. It just keeps going. Cresting, cycling, refusing to resolve. I cry out, the sounds echoing off the canopy roof. My hands fist against him.

He lies beneath me and takes it.

That's the thing I can't make sense of—he could flip us, pin me down, drive into me the way he has for days. I would not be able to stop him, and some treacherous part of me would not want to. Instead he lies still and lets me set the pace. Watches my face with those amber eyes like I'm the only thing in the ruins worth looking at.

I press my forehead to his chest when it finally passes. My whole body is trembling. I'm still clenching around him—aftershock after aftershock—and every clench shifts the vibration and starts the climb again. His chest is warm beneath my cheek. His heart slams behind his ribs—faster than its usual measured beat. I did that to him. Two inches of movement and my voice and I did that to something that could lift me with one hand.

I chose it. The thought arrives quietly. I chose to move. I chose the rhythm. I chose to chase the spot that made my vision go white. He lay beneath me and let me use him. The most powerful thing in this territory held still while I ground on his cock and chased my pleasure.

The balance of power in this aerie is more complicated than I thought.

His tail recovers from its sulk and makes a slow hopeful loop around my ankle. I let it. The tip curls against the arch of my foot—not quite tickling, not quite stroking. Testing. The tail is always testing, always negotiating for more contact. I've started to think of it as the honest part of him—the part that can't pretend, can't hold still, can't hide what it wants.

"Don't push it," I tell the tail.

The tip curls tighter. I let that happen too.

My body is cooling from the orgasm, the sweat drying on my skin, the flush receding from my chest. The vibration has settled to its baseline—present but not climbing. His cock is still inside me, the prehensile flex slow and idle, maintaining the connection without seeking anything. Just there. I've stopped being surprised by how natural it feels to have his cock inside me. That stopped being surprising around day three.

What surprises me now is how empty I feel when I imagine it not being there.

Outside, the canopy is going pale at the edges. Dawn. The thirty safest minutes of any given day. I know this window. I've run more routes in it than I can count.

I stay where I am.

His hand moves slowly up my spine. One vertebra at a time. Stops between my shoulder blades and rests there, heavy and warm.

"I tried to die," I tell him. It comes out very flat. The words sit in the warm air of the aerie like stones dropped into still water.

The dawn window is open. Outside, the canopy is waking—the red-throated birds starting their morning chatter, a breeze carrying the smell of wet bark and the sweet rot of fallen fruit. Somewhere below, water drips from the leaves with a rhythm that sounds like counting.

"I know."

"You stopped me."

"Yes."

I wait for the explanation. The justification. The possessive grunt that would make this about the rut—about territory, about the feral need, about what taking a mate means to something that runs on instinct. He doesn't give me any of that.