Page 88 of Fought and Found

Wet heat. Suction. Her tongue working the ridges one at a time while her hands pump the length she cannot swallow — and she cannot swallow most of it, the scale making the attempt obscene, her lips stretched around the head, her cheeks hollowing, the wet, filthy sounds filling the berth in defiance of Sprout's industrial soundproofing. My hand finds her hair. Not pushing. Anchoring. My claws stay sheathed by an act of will that deserves a commendation, because every instinct I own is roaring at me to thrust, and I do not, because she is conducting this operation and I have learned what happens to my composure when she is in command.

She pulls off with a lewd pop, lips shining, and looks extremely pleased with herself.

"Hypothesis one confirmed: the ridges are sensitive from the outside too." She crawls back up my body. "Enough appetizers. Clothes off. All of them. I need you inside me right now."

We remove the rest. Not elegantly. Her trousers catch on her boots. She kicks free. I lift her — one hand, her whole body, because I can and because the look on her face when I move her with one hand is the expression that a man would commit actual treason for, and I have, so the precedent is established.

She is bare above me. Freckled. Scarred at the shoulder. Soft where I am hard and warm where I burn hot and small where I am seven feet of crimson problem, and she is not hiding anything. Not pulling the sheet up. Not dimming the light. She is sitting on me in full illumination, glistening and ready, and letting me look.

"Beautiful," I say.

Her eyes soften. Her hand finds my jaw — the fuzz, the bonding texture that she strokes with her thumb. "You too, lovey. You too."

She knows the anatomy now.

That is the difference. Last time was discovery — the shock of the ridges, the first encounter with the knot, the overwhelming novelty of alien biology meeting human desire. This time she has the map. This time she is using the map to conduct a military campaign against my composure and the campaign is succeeding.

She rises over me, lines me up with one hand, and sinks onto me with a control that was not present the first time. Slow. Deliberate. Taking each ridge in sequence — a moan for every band that stretches her open — and I can feel her adjusting the angle, tilting her hips to drag the textured ridges across the exact spot she found last time. The spot that made her scream. She is not screaming now. She is biting her lip and making a small, concentrated sound of satisfaction as each ridge slides home.

"God — yes — every one of them —" She bottoms out, grinding down so the swelling knot presses insistently against her entrance, and exhales like a woman completing a docking manoeuvre. "I have been thinking about these ridges," she says, conversational, as though she is not currently stretched around Xarthian anatomy and adjusting her angle with the precision of a woman berthing a ship in a tight slip, "for approximately fourteen hours."

"Fourteen —"

"Since the last time. Through the Morrison conversation. Through the Drask call. Through the market. During the delivery. While you were flying my ship with those forearms." She rolls her hips. The ridges drag. We both inhale. "I have compiled a mental inventory of what each ridge does and I would like to test my hypotheses now, if that's acceptable."

"You have hypotheses about my —"

"I have seven hypotheses and a working theory about the third ridge from the top. The third ridge does something specific when I —" She adjusts her angle. Presses down. The third ridge drags across a precise point inside her and her breath punches out and my vision whites and my hips flex up and a sound leaves me that can only be described as defeated. "Yes. That. Hypothesis confirmed. For both of us, apparently."

"You are — scientifically cataloguing — my —"

"Someone has to. Your arrogance requires peer review." She grins. From above. Moving now — deep, rolling grinds that drag every ridge along her walls in both directions. "Finish the sentence, lovey."

I cannot finish the sentence because my tail has made a decision. The prehensile tip abandons her thigh, slides between us, and finds her clit — swollen, slick, exposed by the stretch of taking me — and begins tight, vibrating circles in counterpoint to her rhythm.

"The tail —"

"The tail has additional hypotheses."

"The tail is — oh — fuck — the tail is on my clit while I'm riding you and that is —" Her rhythm stutters. Recovers. Doubles down. "An unfair advantage. Twelve muscle groups on my clit is an unfair — don't stop — don't you dare stop —"

"I am a Tier 1 operative. Multi-objective operations are standard training."

"Don't you DARE be arrogant while your tail is — oh god —" Her hips grind down harder, chasing the ridges and the tail at once, her head falling back, her whole body given over to it. "Make me come. Just like this — the ridges and the tail — make me come on this cock, Xor —"

She grabs my horns. Both of them. Full grip. And the thought disappears. The sentence disappears. Every smug, arrogant, tactical observation disappears because her hands on my horns while she rides me while my tail works her clit is a feedback loop that the Dens did not train me for and the circuit closes and we are both making sounds that would require Sprout's soundproofing budget.

She comes the first time exactly like that — riding me, gripping my horns, my tail relentless — her walls clamping around every ridge in a cascading wave, her cry bouncing off the berth walls, her rhythm dissolving into desperate, grinding pulses that milk the shaft and drag me to the edge of my own control.

And past it.

I flip us. One movement — her body weightless in the strength ratio, my horns scoring the ceiling — and she is beneath me, still fluttering with aftershocks, her eyes flying wide and then going molten as I hook her legs over my elbows and open her completely.

"Yes — " Breathless. Greedy. "Finally. Wondered how long the illusion of control would —"

I drive in deep. The sentence dies. I set a rhythm the biology has been demanding since the door — powerful, rolling thrusts that work the swelling knot against her entrance with each stroke, wider each time, the stretch making her gasp and claw at my shoulders and angle her hips up for more.

"The knot — give it to me — I want it — lock us —"