by Dixon, Ruby
I do not know what arouses me more—the picture she paints or the playful tease in her voice. Gently, I slide one hand into her thick mane, and her mouth closes over my cock again. I bite back a groan as she works me deeper, her tongue dragging along the underside of my cock as she tries to take as much of me as she can.
Then her throat works and she sucks on my length, and the breath I did not know I was holding explodes out of me.
She lifts her head again, gasping, her mouth hot and frantic as she licks my length. “I like your hand in my hair, N’dek,” she pants, as excited as I am. “Show me what you like, baby. Lead me.”
“Deeper,” I grit out, and push her head down toward my cock again. If I feel the slightest bit of resistance on her side, I will stop. But Devi moans, and in the next moment, she sucks on my length again, bobbing up and down along my shaft and working me with both mouth and hand.
I thrust up against her mouth, unable to help myself.
She makes another little moan of pleasure, pulling back slightly and then taking me deeper again. We play this game, her hot, wet mouth working me with enthusiasm as I guide her with tugs of her hair and pumps of my hips. Her excitement fuels mine, and before long I am mating her face, her eyes glowing slits as she moans around my cock, my hands tangled in her hair as I feed my length into her mouth.
“Devi,” I growl, so full of need for her. “Next time, we do this with the fire going so I can watch,” I manage to grit out between thrusts into her hot mouth. “I want to see my cock pushing against your lips.”
She moans and opens her eyes, gazing up at me, and the glow from them illuminates her just enough that I can see it—the thick length of my cock stretching her lips, how my spur comes close to her face, but never close enough because she cannot take all of me, how her hand grips me at the base and squeezes, my hands in her messy mane that spills everywhere—
And it is too much. I lose control, and my seed pours forth, as furious and hot as the Great Smoking Mountain itself.
Devi makes an utterly pleased sound and drags me out of her mouth, and then the head of my cock is against her lips and I coat them with my release, spilling my seed all over her soft, perfect brown lips. We both moan at my release, and I fall back into the furs, panting, as she licks her mouth.
“I am undone,” I say, gasping for breath as she uses fingers and tongue to devour every bit of my seed. “You have emptied your mate of all the kits he can give you.”
She snorts with amusement. “I have far more faith in my mate’s stamina than you think. There’s plenty more where that came from.”
“Is that so?” Even now, my exhausted cock stirs, as if her words have brought new life to my spent member. I love her teasing. I love her enthusiasm for everything, even something as shocking—and pleasurable—as this. “How did I get so lucky, my Devi?” I murmur as she lies down next to me and moves close. I pull her against me and run my fingers through her soft mane. “No other male has so perfect a mate.”
To my surprise, she pushes her head against my shoulder, as if shy. “I’m not perfect.”
“No? In my eyes, you are everything.”
She lifts her head and smiles at me. “As long as you love me, that’s all that matters.”
“You are perfect,” I stubbornly insist, sliding my hands over her body. She is soft and lovely, my Devi, and the musky perfume of her cunt touches my nose and stirs my body. She is perfect, and I am the luckiest of hunters.
And…it seems I am very much like the Great Smoking Mountain, because I suspect I have at least another eruption waiting to pour forth. So I coax my mate onto her back, part her thighs, and show her just how perfect she is.
Epilogue
N’DEK
Waking up early is incredibly difficult.
“Come on, silly,” Devi says, pressing kisses to my face and chest. “We have to get out there early! You promised!”
“So I did,” I murmur, fighting back a yawn. It has been nearly a full turn of the moon since we fulfilled resonance, and as I promised my lovely Devi, I have woken up before dawn each morning to go down to the beach with her. I am not fond of the early hours, but I feign sleepiness so my mate will wake me with kisses.
She sits atop my chest and leans over me, kissing my face until I grin. “Are you awake?”
“Parts of me, yes.”
Devi laughs and slaps my chest lightly. “Then the rest of you needs some shrimp tea. Come on. I want to get down to the beach!”
“Very well,” I pretend to grumble, but I smile as I dress and fit my false leg onto my stump. We continue to tweak the setup, adjusting straps and shaving down bits of bone here and there. It is mostly comfortable at this point, and padding and calluses take care of the rest. I am no longer clumsy with it, and I even have a special shoe for it for when I go hunting with Devi or J’shel so I do not sink into the snow. Other than that, I am like every other hunter.
It is just as I wanted. I have never wanted to be special. I just wanted a mate and to be able to earn my own meat.
I throw a cloak over my shoulders and then move to Devi’s side, putting her cloak over her shoulders as well. Devi gets so excited at the prospect of what will wash up on the beach that she forgets to bundle up properly. It is adorable, and she has more of my heart with every day that passes.
She is indeed the perfect female for me, I think with a grin as she grabs my hand and tugs me toward the front of our hut. “Let’s go!”
I grab my spear as we head out, and then pause in front of our hut to kick down the ramp. We learned the hard way that if we left the ramp down overnight, the sand-scorpions and small crabs that dot the beach climbed up and made their way inside, so we devised a way to raise it and lower it overnight. The ramp makes it easier for me to get down to the sand, and I follow behind my mate as she heads eagerly out to the shore. As promised, our hut is at the edge of the cluster of homes, the closest to the water.
Devi immediately sees something on the sand and heads for it, and I follow her, expecting to see my delicate, lovely mate prying some dead creature apart with her fingers. She holds a delicate, twirling shell in her hands, a delighted expression on her face. “Another shell,” she says triumphantly to me, holding it out so I can see it. “And this one is occupied!”
“The shells are rare,” I say, amused at her joy. She loves this place so. The life here fascinates her, and she is constantly telling me things about creatures that I did not know…or even think of. Like the air-filled bladder inside a fish is to help it maintain depth while swimming. It never occurred to me that such a thing existed. I always thought a fish was just…in the water. I did not think beyond that. But Devi teaches me many things, and I have even drawn pictures on her skins for her in an effort to help her record what we see.
She studies the shell with a delighted look on her face, tilting it back and forth to see the creature within.
“Is that your morning meal?” I ask her, amused. “Shall we put it on the fire?”
“Absolutely not.” Devi moves to the edge of the waves and gently sets the shell into the water. Immediately, tentacles snake out and the creature swims forward, seeking to go deeper into the rolling waves.
“Shame,” I tease my mate. “That would have been a good meal.”
“Our baby doesn’t want to eat that,” she tells me, patting her stomach.
I move to her side, a little thrill moving through me to hear her speak of such things. I touch her flat belly, wishing that I could feel some sign of the life that is surely within. “What does our kit want to eat?”
“Dvisti,” she says. “The more charred the better.”
I laugh, because it sounds disgusting to me. Dvisti is a delicious, tender meat…but only when raw. Cooked, it is tough and stringy, and the humans love it that way for some reason. Ever since we resonated, Devi has preferred dvisti to what we pull from the ocean. She says the kit does not want it.
The kit apparently does not want shrimp tea,
either, which makes Devi sad. The taste turns her stomach right now.
“I will get you dvisti,” I say to my pretty mate. “Now, or later?”
She holds her hand out to me, a sparkle of excitement in her eyes. “Later. Right now, the beach is ours.” She gestures at the dawn, gray and bleak, and the empty shoreline, the nearby camp where everyone yet sleeps. It is still far too early for any of them except my sweet mate, ever eager to face the day. “The world is ours, N’dek.”
“So it is,” I murmur. So it is.
Author’s Note
Hello there!
I hope you found this book satisfying. I hope it was EVERYTHING you wanted for N’dek. Ever since I introduced him, my inbox has been *full* of questions about one character and one character alone.
N’dek. As in, when do we get his book????
So, it’s FINALLY here and I hope you loved it as much as I loved writing it. I originally wanted to pair him with Bridget, but she’s been going through a few things (understatement!) and when I tried to get them on the page together, it wasn’t working for me. So I focused on who he would ask about his prosthetic, and of course it was Devi and from there, the book just exploded everywhere. Her bright, inquisitive outlook was perfect to combat N’dek’s bouts of darkness. Her relentless need to understand how things work would let her focus on the HOW of the project and not the emotions behind it, whereas Bridget is far more emotional about everything. Looking back, the pairing was obvious and they make me so happy together.
A quick note about the very dinosaurish slant to this book - since each one is written in first person, I try to see the world from that particular character’s eyes. They only notice what that person will notice, so a hunter will be more focused on game trails or the environment…or the scent of his mate. Devi sees types of rock, dinosaur footprints, and ties all of the local ecology back to its ancestors. She wants to understand the world around her by learning its past, which is why there’s so much talk about ice ages and extinction level events that wouldn’t occur to say, barista Sam.
Will we continue down this line of thinking in the future? Yes, but only to the extent that another character would show interest in it. There might be interest in ice ages (of which we are clearly in one) but extinction events and how a spaghetti monster is related to a kaari and vice-versa? Probably not. Will you ever have an *official* answer as to what has happened on the planet? Also probably not? Geologic time moves very slowly, and whatever left the footprint tide pools might be millions of years gone. Or I might throw it in the next book. Who knows! I like to keep my options open so I can make each book exciting and feel fresh.
For N’dek, I felt it was important to show that him getting the ability to walk once more was important, but it’s not the entire basis of the book. A lot of the time my stories focus on “How do I, as X, fit into my new tribe” and this one is no different. N’dek sees his missing leg as a massive liability, and with good reason - it affects his day to day living. When he gets the ability to walk again, no one else blinks an eye. Of course he figured out the answer to his question - why wouldn’t he! They don’t understand the effort that goes into his side, and he doesn’t want them to. He wants to be just like everyone else. That’s one reason he falls for Devi - she doesn’t baby him. She helps him make a leg and the rest is up to him.
That being said, I tried to approach his injury with sensitivity. It’s never my intention to insult, so I hope I did his story justice. It’s my goal to do more things right than wrong, so even if I get something wrong, I still want to write it so everyone sees themselves (or their husbands, their children, etc) in the story. If you would like to read a bit more about prosthetics, a wonderful fan suggested the book A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas by Warren Berger. A lot of it is about asking questions as to why we accept things instead of trying to improve them, but the framework of the book is about prosthetics and a man who strove to make them better.
I also wanted to emphasis (like everything) that this isn’t a quick fix. N’dek’s leg isn’t magically better. He’s still going to lose his balance. His stump is going to hurt. He’s going to be forever changed…but the ability and the potential is there. One more note about his leg - I did play with the timeline and his ability to walk. In reality, it would take a lot of time and effort for someone like N’dek to get the ability to walk and balance again, but for the sake of story, I shortened it. I figure if we can believe in 4 armed chameleon aliens with amazing physiques, maybe we can also lean into the idea that they can recover that much faster. :)
Another housekeeping note - NAMES. All right, I fully admit that I back myself into corners with names a lot. With the Ice Planet tribe, a lot of the names sound the same because they’re hereditary names and syllables are re-used a lot of the time. That sounds great in theory, but when you write a scene with Haeden, Hassen, Harrec, and their respective children, your eyes can cross. I wanted the islanders to have their own naming convention to reflect how the language has changed and morphed over time, hence the slurred first syllable. I’ve been asked how they’re pronounced, but since this is a written medium, I always go with you pronounce them how you feel is appropriate in your head.
But if you WANT to try and pronounce them like I do, here we go.
The ‘stuff’ before the apostrophe is almost swallowed. The closest approximation by a human tongue would be N’dek as Nuh-DECK whereas they might pronounce it more enn-DECK and even that isn’t quite right. Which is fine and dandy until we get to the fact that the old tribe pronounces things one way (Bree-shit) whereas the ‘new’ tribe would pronounce it their way (B’shit). It gets messy when you have names like Angie, since I’ve established that the G is mispronounced and so her name ends up looking more like A’nshee when in reality it would probably be A’shee if we truly went by the naming conventions I established. Gail would be slurred to S’ail…and then everyone would be writing me wondering who the fuck are S’ail and A’shee. SO. I tried to make the name understandable and when it wouldn’t be possible (looking at you, Gren) I left it alone.
Also, I’m sorry. Haha. Other authors take note - DON’T DO THIS. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES.
I think I’ve vomited out about this book enough. Let’s talk about what’s coming up next! For this tribe, we have a few different ways we could head. Thrand needs a book. A’tam and Bridget need a resolution. Callie and M’tok need a resolution. T’chai and Marisol need a resolution. S’bren desperately needs to get a clue. I haven’t figured out which direction I’ll head yet but I’ve got a few months to figure it out.
For the summer, I have a bit of a different line-up!
In June, I have TWO novella releases. The first one will be ICE PLANET HONEYMOON: GEORGIE & VEKTAL. I get asked *all* the time for more IPB stories. Everyone wants to hear more about their favorite characters, or a sweet epilogue, or babies. Always more babies. I thought it would be fun to do a small spinoff series of ‘honeymoons’ - as in, we revisit the characters right after their book ends. There’ll be a little plot, a lot of snuggling, and basically just hanging out with old favorites. The first one comes out early June and will be Georgie & Vektal, and after that, I’ll probably do Liz & Raahosh a few months later. These won’t be every month, but I hope to do a few a year.
As for the latter half of June, The Club ladies are teaming up to do another story crossover! We took the theme of Pretty Woman (aka Rags to Riches) and did our own riff off of it. All of the stories will have PRETTY in the title and share similar covers. Mine will be called PRETTY HUMAN and it features a very hoity toity mesakkah lord who takes one look at a human ‘present’ and has to have her. It’s connected to another story that’s still a secret, but you’ll hear more about this soon!
For July…I have something completely different. I’ll tell you more about it soon.
August is dragons! I’m asked constantly when the next dragon book is going to hit, and Gabe and Teva will be Augu
st! Then we’ll circle back around to Icehome and IPB because by that point I’ll have missed my characters too much. :)
All best,
<3 Ruby
PS—I would love if you left a review on Amazon! Reviews help my books get visibility AND they help other readers know what to expect. It’s a win-win for everyone! Thank you! <3
The People of Icehome
The New Arrivals (Icehome Tribe)
Lauren/Lo – Adult female at the beach camp. Once had glasses. Likes to be a problem solver. Resonates to K’thar, newly pregnant. Friend to Marisol.
Marisol – Terrified adult female at beach camp who is fond of hiding. Gets stranded with Lo on the island. Resonates to T’chai. Due to his sickness, their resonance is ‘turned off’ by the healer.
Hannah – Resonates to J’shel when the island tribes arrive. Newly pregnant. Resident busybody. Now assistant to Veronica.
Angie – Adult female at the beach camp. Pregnant with mystery baby when awoken. Gives birth to Glory (a clone female). Resonates to Vordis.
Glory - A qura’aki clone baby, implanted in Angie. Newborn and cute as hell.
Willa – Adult female with a southern twang. Lo’s friend. Gren’s most ardent defender. Resonates to Gren.
Gren (rhymes with HEN) – Beastly, feral ex-gladiator male. Attacks on sight. Resonates to Willa. Soft and fuzzy, according to Aayla.
Veronica – Newest healer on the planet. Resonated to Ashtar upon arrival. Bit of a klutz. Needs to work on her bedside manner. Has enlisted Hannah to be her assistant.
Ashtar (Ash-TARR) – Flirty golden ex-gladiator and former slave. Drakoni male who can shapeshift to a “battle form” as a dragon and has the ability to communicate telepathically. Resonates immediately to Veronica. Stud.
