Muscles play across his chest and arms as he crawls up my body, until his thick cock dangles right over my pussy. I’m still gasping from aftershocks of delight, but I still reach for him anyway.
“You’re mine,” he growls. “No matter what anyone living or dead has to say about it.”
He’s not expecting a response from my shivering, climaxing form and he doesn’t get one. Not verbally. But as he glides inside of me, my pussy contracts hard, as if it’s trying to draw him in and never let him leave.
“You are perfection,” he hisses through gritted teeth as he enters all the way. Then he thrusts, and my mouth forms an o. My weak limbs try to clasp at him, but mostly he just ragdolls me. My cries are undulating with every thrust, and I crash through the walls of another climax in less than a minute.
He stops for a moment, but just long enough to flip me over onto my belly. I lift my haunches as best I can, but he muscles me up the rest of the way with clawed hands firmly gripping my hips. I scream into the mattress as he delivers me into paradise with powerful thrusts of his cock.
When he cums inside of me, I bask in the sublime rush, and then groan as his member shivers like the most expensive vibrator in the galaxy. I lean back into him, wanting to feel him inside of me as long as possible. No pun intended.
We settle on our sides, him spooning me with his big red body. I nuzzle up to his arm, using it as a pillow and sigh.
“I love you,” he whispers in my ear.
“I love you, too.”
Our lives are our own. And I am his.
Forever.
CHAPTER 40
GHAR
The stars beyond the forward viewport look nothing like destiny.
They do not arrange themselves into omens. They do not burn with secret instruction. They scatter across the black in cold, brilliant silence, each one distant enough to humble every argument ever made beneath its light. The command deck of the Wayward Thesis hums around me with steady power, smelling of warm circuitry, clean metal, recycled air, and the faint smoky bite of karreth cooling in a cup near my station. Beneath that is Anita’s familiar scent, coffee and paper and the sharp citrus soap she pretends not to like because I was the one who bought it. The ship glides through superluminal wake toward a region of space not yet claimed by any polished map.
It feels like a door.
Anita stands beside the central console with one hip braced against it, arguing with the navigation display as if the mathematics have personally disappointed her.
“No,” she says. “Absolutely not. That gravitational shear reading is either wrong or flirting with me.”
Brakk’s voice crackles from engineering. “If the readings are flirting, reject them. They have no money and terrible stability.”
Sira, seated at the linguistic station, glances up from her overlays. “The shear readings are consistent with the probe’s earlier data.”
Anita points at her without looking. “Do not bring consistency into this. I am enjoying suspicion.”
“You enjoy suspicion often,” Sira says.
“It keeps me young.”
Brakk snorts over the comm. “Nothing about this job keeps anyone young. I found three gray hairs this morning and blamed all of you in alphabetical order.”
“You do not have hair,” Anita says.
“I have fur. Do not dodge accountability.”
I lean back in the security chair and let the conversation move over me.
Once, I would have searched every unknown reading for ambush vectors first and meaning never. Now I still search for danger, because wisdom does not require stupidity, but the habit no longer consumes the whole of me. The bridge is alive with voices, data, irritation, affection, and the ordinary absurdity of people choosing to work together while carrying secrets that could crack civilizations if mishandled. The shard remains sealed in the initiative vault three decks below, watched by safeguards, dissent protocols, and enough locks to make Brakk personally proud. The full truth remains deeper still, buried under the grave of Nareth-Kul, waiting for better questions.
Anita turns toward me. “You’re doing the quiet smile again.”
“I am observing.”