Page 78 of Thexan

He didn’t move immediately. He stood there, golden eyes fixed on me, and I felt the bond between us humming—steady, present, no longer urgent with survival but deep with something else entirely.

“Our first time sealed the bond. This time I would like to perform the Mesaarkan first mating ritual,” he said, his voice low and rougher than usual. “I wish to affirm our choice with a proper beginning.”

I nodded, my throat suddenly tight. “Show me.”

He began to move then, and I understood immediately why this was different from anything we’d shared before. He circled me slowly, deliberately, each step measured as if the floor itself required acknowledgment. His tail—thick, muscular, scaled—brushed against my legs as he passed, a whisper of contact that made me shiver.

His hands never left my body. As he circled, his fingers traced patterns on my skin through my clothing, then beneath as he removed each layer—my shirt, my trousers—until I stood bare before him. The patterns weren’t random. They felt like language, like story, like claiming written in touch.

My nipples tightened as the cool air hit them, a pleasant throb of desire pulsing between my legs. I stood perfectly still, enthralled by his touch and the reverence he showed me. This wasn’t the desperate urgency of our first joining, when he’d been dying and I’d been terrified. This was a ceremony we chose together.

He circled me three times—no more, no less—and each revolution seemed to wind something tighter between us, some ancient recognition that predated either of our species. His feather-light touch made me tremble with desire. When he finally stopped before me, his hands found my breasts with such exquisite care that I moaned softly.

He flicked his thumbs back and forth over my taut peaks, and I gasped, my head falling back as pleasure shot through me. I dared to meet his gaze then, letting him know my pleasure in his touch, and his eyes darkened, pupils expanding with satisfaction. It clearly pleased him to please me.

Thexan

She was magnificent.

Standing before me, her human skin soft and unscaled, her body marked by time and work and life in ways that made her more beautiful, not less. The bond between us sang with her arousal, her trust, her willingness to stand vulnerable before me while I performed the rites that should have preceded our first joining.

I had imagined this differently. In the ideal, there would have been no injury, no desperation, no need that overrode ceremony. But standing here now, circling her, touching her, I understood that this was the ideal—not despite what had come before, but because of it. We had chosen this. We had earned this.

I lowered her to the bed on her back, as was proper for the first ritual mating. She settled against the fabric covers, her hair spreading around her like a halo, and I began again at the top of her head.

I stroked her hair first, dragging my fingers through the strands with deliberate slowness, memorizing the texture. Then I traced down, light caresses over her face—her forehead, her cheeks, the line of her jaw. I touched her shoulders, feeling the tension there and smoothing it away with patient pressure.

Her breasts next, already peaked and ready, and I spent time there, learning their weight and shape, the way she arched into my touch. Then down her ribs, her belly, the curve of her hip. I traced the length of her legs, the softness of her thighs, all the way to her feet, where I paused to press my thumbs into the arches and feel her shudder with unexpected sensation.

“You’re worshipping me,” she whispered, her voice thick.

“I am honoring you,” I corrected, though the distinction felt thin even to me. “As you deserve.”

Brynn

When he finished the stroking—from my head to my feet, every inch claimed by his attention—I expected him to take me then. But Thexan had other plans.

He bent over the bed and positioned himself between my thighs. Lowering his head to my stomach, his long tongue traced patterns there, moving lower with each pass until he reached the apex of my thighs.

I moaned my pleasure when he licked through my folds, the tip swirling around my clit with delectable precision. He purred against me, the vibration adding another layer of sensation, and I ran my fingers over the ridges of his scalp, holding on as he drew me toward ecstasy with relentless devotion.

“Thexan,” I gasped. “You don't have to—”

He stopped and lifted his head, his lips glistening with my arousal, and the sight of him—so controlled, so utterly focused on my pleasure—nearly undid me right there.

“I wish to pleasure you in every way I know,” he said. It seemed only seconds later that a powerful climax wracked my body.

Each time I shuddered, he paused, then drew his tongue across my clit again.

Finally, I stopped him. “Too sensitive.”

He blinked slowly and dipped his head, accepting the limit I had given him. After cleaning the last trace of my arousal from his mouth, he pressed a kiss to my lower abdomen.

“Not completely,” he said, and there was a hint of that almost-smile I adored. “Not yet.”

He rose over me then, and I saw that his cock had extruded fully—that alien length with its mushroom head and the nubs and ridges that I remembered from the first time. He was thick and hard and ready, but he didn’t rush.

He resumed lightly caressing me from head to toe with his fingertips. The sensation was almost ethereal and left me feeling almost as if I were boneless and floating.