But no, she could still feel her fingers and thighs and toes bursting in twitching aftershocks. She could still smell his inexplicable sandalwood-and-spiced-vanilla musk. She could still hear. Torek was roaring in her ear.
She turned her head and forced her eyes open. His face was still half buried in the pillow, but his scarred right eye was visible, screwed shut and frowning. His mouth was open, his fangs exposed, as he bellowed. His entire body tensed. The only part of him moving was his cock. It was vibrating inside her. Not pulsing. Vibrating. His warm cum—well, genok, she supposed—sprayed a constant stream into the deepest part of her.
She tried to work up an emotion—awe at the amount of genok he’d produced, distaste with its sticky slide as it oozed between them to coat her thighs, niggling doubt regarding its ability to stop conception, something—but she trusted Torek with her life. She certainly trusted him with her body, and her body was singing his praises. Her vagina was still throbbing. Her muscles were still quivering. She closed her eyes and sighed, content.
She’d never felt this way, not ever and especially not after sex, and only now that she was experiencing it did she recognize its absence. The fact that she was feeling it now, on Lorien, was perhaps obscene—Stockholm much?—but Torek was the furthest thing from obscene that she knew.
He collapsed beside her on a low, agony-filled moan, smothering himself fully on the pillow. Her arm was trapped under him, so she curled it around his neck and stroked his hair. She twirled a lock around her fingers, massaged her nails through his scalp, and fingered the base of his horns.
He stirred a moment later, just enough to roll his head half toward her. His heavy-lidded, icy-blue electric gaze skimmed over her from head to toe before meeting her eyes, as if double-checking his work. Still attuned to her. Still seeking feedback. Whatever he saw must have been satisfactory because his eye drifted closed, and his cheek lifted in a smug grin.
“Something amuse you?” Was that throaty rasp her voice?
He nodded but didn’t elucidate. Speaking would probably waste too much energy, energy he needed to catch his breath.
Delaney grinned a little smugly herself.
“You.” He took a deep breath. His eyes were still closed, his face still buried in the pillow. His grin still widening. “You are self-sabotaging.”
Delaney glanced at him with a sly side eye. “A few visits with Shemara Kore’Onik, and suddenly, you an expert of mind and behavior?”
“I’ve seen her weekly for nearly half of Rorak. That’s more than just a few visits.” He turned his head to face her and shuffed. His grin had spread across his entire face. “I may not be an expert in mind and body, but I’m quickly becoming an expert on your mind and body.”
Delaney turned away to stare at the ceiling and shuffed right back in mock indignation. Maybe she should feel real indignation, but she simply couldn’t work up the energy.
“You take pleasure in sex,” he continued.
She scrunched her nose. Was he really going to hash this out now?
“I could see and feel your enjoyment. Don’t try to deny it. Yet you tried, again and again, to thwart my efforts to pleasure you.”
“I not thwart you,” she denied.
“But you not help me either. Supposedly knowing your place of pleasure, but refusing to tell me,” he insisted. He rolled onto his side and brushed the curve of her collarbone with the back of his knuckle. Her breast puckered at his grazing touch, and his grin turned salacious. “Because you are self-sabotaging.”
She lifted a brow. “Does that matter? You find it on your own.”
His fangs peeked out from between his lips. “I sabotaged your sabotage.”
She barked out a surprised laugh. “You want a reward?”
His nostrils flared. “Sure, I’ll take a reward.” He rolled onto his back, fingers laced behind his head, and waited. His cock was still out. Still hard. Still ready.
She stared at it blatantly. “How is that possible?”
“It can be a reward of your choosing. You may place your mouth on mine again or nuzzle my throat.” He glanced down. “Or my—”
“I know how ‘giving a reward’ is possible. How is that possible?” She pointed.
“Biology? The product of my gender? I’m not sure what you—”
“You came! The evidence is dripping out of me.” She swept her hand down to wave between her legs in case they were experiencing another language barrier and not a deliberately obtuse one. “How is it possible that your cock is still hard and ready for another round?”
He considered her a moment. “Are human males not always like this?”
She blinked. “Are you?”
He reached down and tucked himself back into the slit between his legs with a quick press and flick of his wrist. His eyes were still intent upon her face, scrutinizing her expression.
His abdomen flexed, and his cock sprang free, jutting out and up into the air.
She jerked back, gaping.
He laughed. “Oh, your face. Anatomy wasn’t a part of your space curriculum? Just astronomy?”
“I learn anatomy. It just, I assume—” She shook her head, still staring. “Male humans are hard while feeling desire, and then after sex, they become soft. And stay soft until they feel desire again.”
“I’m feeling desire again.”
She tried to shuff, but it emerged from her lips as a giggle. “Yes, I see that. But it takes longer for a human male to recover.”
His nostrils flared. “Recover? From sex? Desire isn’t a disease.”
She rolled her eyes. “Recover, like the way you need to recover from running a long distance.”
He looked skeptical.
“The way I need to recover from running a long distance,” she amended.
“You can’t run long distances.”
She growled in the back of her throat. “The way I need to recover from running a short distance, then!”
He threw his head back and laughed.
She shook her head and glared, suppressing her own amusement. “Go reward yourself. I not feeling desire.”
“Hmmm.” He grazed his knuckle across her collarbone again but continued a direct path to her aching breast. He stroked a thumb over the areola and pinched lightly.
She shuddered.
“Really? You’re not feeling desire? Not at all?”
She narrowed her eyes. “No.”
He leaned over and licked her nipple.
She bit back a moan.
“Do human females require time to recover?” He swirled his thumb over her saliva-slickened breast, alternating between light teasing and hard pinching.
“Yes,” she gasped. Her eyes fluttered closed of their own accord, and she did moan then, a sighing, exhausted, guttural sound. How embarrassing. She moaned again.
Jesus, she was losing her mind along with her heart and body, but she honestly couldn’t drum up the energy to care.
He moved on to torture her other breast. “Should we test that theory?”
“It fact, not theory.”
“Hmmm,” he murmured noncommittally. He rolled away from her.
Her eyes shot open. Wasn’t he going to test it?
He stood and walked to the sink, soaked a cloth, and brought it back to the bed.
One look at the intensity in his expression, and another grin tried to take over her face. She strove to remain chiding and aloof.
He smiled, seeing through her facade. Standing over her, he lifted the sopping cloth and wiped her thigh, cleaning his genok from her skin.
She startled. The water was freezing!
He chuckled, a low, deep vibration that turned into a viurr. “Lie back. Considering I’m the cause of your exhaustion, let’s see if I can’t help you recover.”
She eyed his exposed cock dubiously.
He nudged her shoulder. She looked up, meeting his eyes, and the calm, predatory anticipation in his gaze jump-started her pulse. Against her better
judgment, but in accordance with her baser instincts, she conceded and lay back.
He swept the cloth up her thigh again, and she shivered from the cold and his touch. The combination of his gaze and the texture of the cloth against her bare skin was erotic—what wasn’t erotic lately?—and stole her breath. It was a miracle she was still alive considering the time she’d recently spent breathless.
His strokes were long and luxurious: in the crease of her bottom, down the inside of her thigh, behind her knees, up the outside of her leg to her hip, across her stomach, and down her other leg. He’d produced a shocking amount of cum. The majority of it had dripped down between her thighs, which he’d already cleaned with a few efficient strokes, but she couldn’t bring herself to tease him about the mess. A person needed breath to speak, and she’d lost hers hours ago.
He leaned down, buried his muzzle between her thighs, and inhaled deeply. “Mmmm,” he murmured in satisfaction. And that was her only warning before he shifted up and claimed her nipple with his mouth.
She arched off the bed, gasping. He flicked her areola with his tongue, laved the nipple in determined, pressured strokes, sucked hard, and bit lightly. The long strands of his coarse beard abraded the hypersensitive skin along her ribs. She gave in to the mounting feelings, gave in to him, and moaned shamelessly. Again.
He leaned back and dipped his head questioningly. “Are you feeling desire now?”
She choked back a laugh. “No,” she gasped. “Not yet.”
He clucked his tongue. “A long recovery indeed.” And attacked her other breast with the same thorough attention as he had the first.
She writhed under his ministration, so focused on the attention he was giving to her breasts that she didn’t notice the slow glide of the cloth across her thigh until it reached her clitoris.
“Oh!” Her hips bucked defiantly, resisting the sensation. She was too sensitive. This was too soon, too much, too…
“Do you feel desire now?” he whispered. His lips and breath caressed her ear as he spoke. He licked its shell, nibbled the lobe, and then breathed again.
Something emerged from her throat. It wasn’t words, or any type of intelligible response that she was aware of, but then, she wasn’t aware of anything beyond his mouth, the vibration of his voice, the swirl of his finger pads—when had they replaced the cloth?—and the shivering inferno that raged through her skin.
“Say it. I want to hear you say it.” His lips spoke against her neck now, whispering his way across her collarbone, kissing down her breast, nipping her nipple as he passed it on his way to nibble her stomach, and all the while his fingers—those deft, strong, capable fingers—worked their expertise.
“You desire me,” he murmured.
His voice vibrated against her inner thigh, and she jerked taut. His whiskered cheek nuzzled against her self-inflicted scars. His right hand still swirling her clit. He leaned over and licked the mess of scars on her left thigh, then nibbled his way higher, continuing his path to its ultimate goal, as if the ruined skin on her thigh was just another part of her body ripe to ply with his pleasure. His eyes—both the brown and the scarred blue—focused on her face as he kissed and licked and tortured her until he reached the center of her. His fingers didn’t stop, but his face leaned in close. He breathed on her, then breathed her in.
“Admit it,” he insisted.
It took her a moment before she could pick up the thread of their game. “What? You not know for yourself? You not see it? Smell it?” She smiled with inspiration. “Maybe tasting it will convince you.”
But he didn’t smile back. “I desire you, Delaney,” he said, his eyes serious, nearly melancholy at the admission.
He wasn’t playing anymore.
Her breath caught. “I desire you, Torek. I not want to, and I know you not expect to—”
He shuffed.
“But here it is. And I not take it back.”
“Neither do I.” He did smile then, flashing all his pointed teeth and fangs, before dropping his gaze, angling his head, and replacing his fingers with his mouth.
Delaney’s hips bucked up off the bedcover. Sensation, too sharp and penetrating to be considered pleasure, shot through her body from her core outward. She cried out and fisted Torek’s hair for purchase, but he was relentless, gripping her hips with his strong hands to hold her in place and heating her body even against its will. The tide turned in a sudden drop, nearly from one tongue stroke to the next, from aching pain to burning desire, and Torek, feeling her yanks on his hair switch to pushing encouragement, switched from licking to sucking.
“But… I am about…to…oh!”
Torek entered her in one smooth thrust. The combination of her juices, the natural slick of his cock, and his new confidence made it easy this time, but once inside, he stilled. He leaned forward, bathing her cheeks, her eyelids, her temple in tender kisses. His hips pressed forward and then eased out, a languid torture that was both delicious and frustrating. She could feel her pulse slowing, the flames inside still stoked and expanding, but somehow starting anew, and an inhuman growl emerged from her throat.
She bucked against him, attempting to roll him over, but he was too heavy. “Let me up,” she gasped. “I want on top.”
He leaned back and blinked as if waking from a dream. “You?”
She frowned and then she couldn’t help it. She laughed at the dumbstruck expression on his face. “Yes, me. You have a problem with that?”
“No, I just never…” He shook away whatever he’d been about to say with a toss of his head. “Why?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You do everything I want without me asking. Now I asking, and you want to know why?”
He renewed his slow, torturous movements, and Delaney closed her eyes on a pained groan. “Please!”
“Why?”
“You not doing it right!” The words just flew from her mouth, more sensation than thought, and she stilled. Shit. She opened her eyes.
He barked out a laugh. “I hadn’t heard any complaints.”
She relaxed, suppressing an answering grin. “I complaining now.”
“So you are.” He gripped her hips and held himself inside her as he rolled. She straddled atop him, all that chiseled muscle between her legs, hers for the taking. “By all means, show me how to do it right.”
Both his fangs peeked out from between his lips. He was watching her with a strange expression on his face, both amused and anticipating, and her body flamed with self-consciousness. She should just have let him go at his pace. However slow they’d been traveling, at least they’d been going somewhere. She froze on top of him, surrounded by air instead of his body, unsure of herself, of what she wanted, and too shy to seek it out.
He stroked his hands up her hips to her ribs. She shivered and placed her hands on the rippling cuts of his flexed abdomen. They contracted under her cool touch. His breath caught.
She grinned to herself. Yes, let him be breathless for a change. She traced the long, raised scar across his belly with a gentle finger, then scratched her nails lightly down his lower stomach and contracted her inner muscles.
His eyes rolled back and closed on a groan.
Something powerful and addictive coursed through her veins at his reaction. She rocked her hips forward in a smooth thrust.
His groan cut short. His grip on her hips tightened.
She lifted and pressed again, slower and more agonizing than even he’d been moving before, just to see the awe-filled pleasure bloom across Torek’s face. His hands on her hips were shaking. She did this to him. This massive, powerful man who commanded an entire army, who protected an entire country, who battled aquatic alien monsters, whose touch could be as gentle as it was strong; this man trembled under her.
She began to move in rhythm over him, still slow and agonizing, but steady. The spark between them was so deep, it felt as if the tip of his cock was caressing the insides of her nipples. But the more she moved, the more they ache
d. She pinched them with both hands, rolling her areolas between her thumbs and forefingers. Her head fell back in equal parts relief and heat.
Torek growled.
Delaney glanced down. He was watching her, his heavy-lidded gaze drinking in the sight of her hands on her nipples. He bucked up into her, forcing her to a faster pace. She braced herself on the swells of his shoulders, lifted her hips and took back the rhythm, impaling herself on his cock as hard and deep as she could. She withdrew until the wide brim of his tip stretched her opening, then slammed home again and again and again as the heat that they’d stoked suddenly surged between them.
His hands at her hips lost their rhythmic urging and kneaded at her in needy abandon. His face was flushed. His eyes closed again. His brow was furrowed, nearly in pain, except his mouth was lax, his voice a growling moan that grew louder as she moved faster.
She leaned back, seeking a new angle. Just a little more… There! Oh, whatever that was, it was heaven, and Delaney pummeled it with every ounce of strength and finesse she possessed. Her nipples tightened, her vagina throbbed, her abdomen tingled as her fingers and toes caught fire. But it still wasn’t quite enough. Maybe her weight alone wasn’t enough pressure. Maybe he’d need to be on top after all, and she could—
“Look at you,” Torek murmured.
Her gaze shot down to meet his.
“You’re incredible.”
Delaney watched Torek watching her. The need and want and affection in that one look was more powerful than all his brawn. His need tipped her over the edge where hers couldn’t. She climaxed, her entire body seizing in exploding abandon.
His growls turned into a roar. His every muscle clenched—his arms around her, his thighs beneath her, his stomach against her—as his cock vibrated inside her.
She fell onto his chest in a boneless, quivering heap. His heartbeat under her ear was racing, his breaths deep and labored. She grinned to herself, catching her own breath.
His hand flopped up and rested against her lower back, deliciously heavy. The soothing tickle of his wandering fingers caressed along her hip, and she breathed a deep, contented sigh.
Beyond the Next Star Page 26
