Page 65 of Fought and Found

"You're shirtless in my kitchen with my scratch marks on your back. I'm allowed to stare."

"The scratching was not expected."

"The second orgasm while knotted was not expected either. We're even." I drink my tea. Walk past him toward the cockpit. His tail follows — the tip dragging from my hip down my thigh as I pass, and the heat of it through the thin shirt makes me squeeze my thighs together.

He follows me to the cockpit. He sits in the co-pilot's chair.

Too big. Horns nearly brushing the console. The armrest cracked where his claws punched through during the kill order. The cushion no longer pristine. A male sitting in the chair nobody has ever sat in, settling in like it's always been his.

I stand in the doorway. Mug in both hands. Looking at him in the chair.

The feeling in my sternum — his heartbeat, the resolved thing — expands until my ribs creak.

I set the mug down. Cross the cockpit. Two steps. I climb into the chair with him.

It doesn't fit. It is absurd — a woman in a cardigan climbing into a too-small co-pilot's chair on top of a seven-foot Xarthian, my knees on either side of his hips, the armrests digging into my thighs, his horns catching the overhead panel. I don't care. I take his face in both hands — my palms barely spanning his jaw, the same grip from last night — and I kiss him.

Not the frantic corridor kiss. Not the hungry shower kiss. Slow. Morning-slow. Peppermint on his mouth and honey on mine. His hands find my waist — both palms, fingers spanning me from hip to ribs — and he holds me in the chair the way he holds me in bed. Completely. The purr starts in his chest and travels through his mouth into mine and I feel it in my teeth and my jaw and the tender place between my legs.

I pull back. Forehead on his. Gold eyes, warm.

"Nobody's ever sat in this chair," I say. Quiet.

"I know."

"I never folded it down. Ten years. Sprout asked once and I changed the subject and never answered."

"I know that too."

"It was waiting for you." The words arrive without permission. True in a way that makes my throat ache. "I didn't know it was waiting for you. But it was."

His hands tighten on my waist. His forehead presses harder against mine. His eyes close and the purr surges and I feel the emotion hit him — the processing failure, the vocabulary crumbling, the male who does not know how to hold what he is being given.

"Flossie." Wrecked.

"Don't say anything noble. Just sit in the chair. It's yours now."

Sprout's orb descends from the ceiling. Warm amber. "Junction One is close. Morrison has sent three messages. I recommend emotional preparation. Also: the mattress needs replacing."

I laugh against his mouth. He catches the laugh with his lips and it turns into a kiss that turns into his tongue and his hands sliding from my waist to my hips and pulling me closer in the chair and his cock thickening beneath me through the fabric and the ridges pressing against me and —

"Not enough time," I gasp. Pulling back. Hands on his chest. "We need to talk before we dock. Actual talking. With words."

"Your body is suggesting a different priority."

"My body has had five orgasms in one night. My body can wait. My brain needs logistics."

"Six."

"What?"

"Six orgasms. The second round produced two. You lost count." He is smug. Insufferably, gloriously smug.

"I did not lose — the second one was basically a continuation of the — that is not the point." I press my palm against his mouth. His lips are hot against my hand and the purr vibrates through my fingers and his tongue touches my palm and I snatch my hand back. "Stop that. Talking. Now."

We talk in the chair.

I don't move. His lap is warm and the chair is too small and his hands rest on my thighs and his tail winds around my ankle and wehave a serious conversation about the future while I'm straddling a male who is hard beneath me and both of us are pretending this is normal.