Page 68 of Fought and Found

"I would like it noted," he says against my lips, "that SNAG is a terrible name."

"I would like it noted that you accidentally created it."

"This is slander."

"This is the truth and Sprout has it on record."

"Confirmed," Sprout says. "Archived. Backed up to three separate servers. Proceed."

We have until approach control starts squawking. I know exactly how I want to spend it.

He is still beneath me in the chair. The strategy is done. The company is named. The tea is cold. And he has been hard under me for the better part of the morning — polite about it, disciplined about it, his hands respectful on my thighs while the ridges pressed against me through the fabric every time I shifted — and I have decided his discipline has had enough exercise for one day.

I set the notebook on the console. Deliberate. His eyes track the movement.

"The logistics are concluded," he says. Carefully. Hopefully.

"One item left on the agenda."

"The agenda is —" I roll my hips, slow, intentional, and the sentence dies in his throat. His hands clamp on my thighs. The gold goes molten. "Ah. That item."

"Quick and quiet, lovey." I'm already pulling the thin shirt over my head. The cardigan stays — the cockpit is cold, I am a practical woman, and the way his eyes go back and forth between the wool and my bare breasts is its own reward. "Docking soon. Morrison after that. A broker after her. So this one's mine — you sit in your chair and let me have it."

"My chair." The purr detonates. His hands slide up my ribs — thumbs settling beneath my breasts, careful of the tail-bruise without being told. "Say it again."

"Your chair." I get his waistband open and he lifts his hips to help, obedient in a way seven feet of apex predator has no business being, and then the ridges are hot against my palm and he makes a sound like a male being martyred. "Your chair. Your ship. Your co-pilot." I line him up. "Yours. That's the entire agenda."

There is nothing under the shirt but me. I got dressed this morning with intentions.

I sink down onto him.

Slow. I am sore from last night — swollen, tender, every nerve already educated — and the first ridge parting me lights the whole map up at once. Too much. Exactly right. I take him ridge by ridge with my hands braced on his chest and his heartbeat slamming under my palms, and the stretch is easier than last night and better than last night, my body already shaped to him. Already keeping the lesson.

"Flossie." Wrecked. His head tips back against the chair, horns finding the gap beside the console — geometry, always — and his throat is bare, so I lean in and bite the marking at his collar and he bucks up into me and seats the last ridges at once and we both cry out.

Full. Morning-full. The knot a hot swell at my entrance — outside, this time. Pressing. Not asking.

"The knot," he grits. His hands are shaking on my hips. "If I lock us now, we will still be locked when the docking clamps engage. The restraint required will be — significant."

"Then be significant." I lift and sink and his eyes roll. "You're good at everything. Prove it."

The sound he makes is not agreement. It is not disagreement either.

I ride him. There is no reverence in it — that was last night. Last night was a cathedral. This is a woman in a daisy cardigan in a cracked co-pilot's chair taking exactly what she wants at exactly the pace she wants it, morning cycle through the viewport, tea going cold on the console, the ridges dragging over every tender place until I'm making sounds I would deny in any court in the Reach. He watches me the whole time. Gold eyes open. That is his reverence — total attention, the face that catalogues everything filing me away at maximum resolution: the cardigan sliding off one shoulder, my hands on his chest, the exact moment the angle turns incandescent.

"There — right there —"

He plants his feet and holds — not thrusting, a fixed point for me to break myself against — and his thumb finds my clit, blunt and careful, the purr carried down his arm and through it, and the ridges and the thumb and the gold eyes and his chair collapse me inward like a star.

I come with my hand fisted in the fuzz at the base of his horn and my forehead pressed to his, clenching around him in waves, fast and hardand bright — the pared-down cousin of last night's slow detonation — and he growls my name and holds the knot back. I feel it swell against me and stop. The discipline of it shakes his whole frame. He follows me over with his face buried in my throat and his tail wrapped ankle to hip, spilling hot inside me while the purr rattles the console.

The chair creaks. Something in the armrest gives up entirely.

We stay. His heartbeat slowing under my hands. My legs have resigned. I regret nothing.

"Restraint successful," he says into my throat. "Barely. I would like it noted."

"Noted. Logged. Archived." I kiss the base of his horn. "Next time you lock us. When we own the clock."