His skin looked pale in the greenish glow, but I found myself staring up at the lines of his chest and arms, feeling the view of him hit at me somewhere significantly lower down than my brain. A flutter started somewhere in my belly, and then his mouth descended on mine once again, and we were kissing for real.
I barely noticed when he started undressing me.
Even so, thoughts continued somewhere, in the further reaches of my mind.
I found myself remembering the last time we really got into this, with Ledi watching us from the other end of the room. It occurred to me that we’d barely touched one another since, apart from that brief make-out session next to that indoor park on Nik’s home world.
Thinking about that made the heat in my chest grow significantly more intense.
Nik’s hand slid down my side, caressing my skin under my shirt until that feeling in my gut worsened, right before I wrapped my arms around his back, digging my fingers into the muscles just below his shoulder blades.
He startled me when I did it, letting out a low groan.
I fought not to remember that he wasn’t human, that I had no idea how he really reacted to this. I fought not to think about how many other women he’d done this with while we were on Palarine. I tried to forget about the fact that he’d been sleeping with women on the ship for weeks, long before I asked him to cut it out...
“Stop, Dakota...” Nik raised his head, panting down at me in the dark. A taut expression crossed his face once he was looking at me, right before he pressed against me, closing his eyes, letting out another low sound, what sounded almost like a growl. His skin had warmed, and he sat astride me now, pinning me to the sagging mattress of the couch.
“Stop it, Dakota...please...stop thinking about that...”
Hesitating only a second, I nodded, feeling my skin flush.
He meant about him and other women.
He must have felt some of that through the lock.
When he lowered his mouth to mine again, I found myself stroking his chest, feeling his heart beat under my palm as he pressed down against me. I decided I didn’t really care that much that he wasn’t human, whatever Gantry had said.
I felt increasingly intense flutters off Nik as his weight grew heavier, and then his hands were exploring me a lot less cautiously. He started shifting his body over me, moving so that he lay most of it directly on mine. I felt him press deliberately against my inner thigh and let out a half-startled sound, mixed with a gasp that held a longing that even I could hear.
My fingers curled into his hair, pulling him down to me again.
I wanted to do this with him.
I was pretty sure I’d wanted to do this with him for a long time...before we got to Palarine, if I was being totally honest with myself. Back then, I hadn’t even been sure Nik could have sexual feelings for someone like me, much less the will or ability to act on them.
I wanted you... he assured me through the implant, kissing my neck, parting his lips as he used his tongue, working his way slower up to my jaw. I wanted you, Dakota, believe me...I wanted you...
My hands tightened on him more.
I found myself looking down at his body as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, and realized he was still wearing pants. My hands found the front of them in seconds, and I was unhooking the top button on form-fitting jeans he must have gotten from Jake, fumbling for the zipper to get them all the way undone. Nik pressed against me as my hand slid under his clothes, even as another, more intense shot of that liquid heat pooled somewhere in the middle of my chest, right around where I usually felt him through the lock.
Nik let out a low sound when I didn’t stop, then caught hold of the elastic on the fuzzy pajama bottoms I wore, probably the least sexy thing imaginable in my universe of not-sexy things, but what I’d been borrowing out of Irene’s dresser to sleep in since we got there.
Nik didn’t seem to much care about their lack of sexiness.
He yanked them down and I saw his arms tense as he pressed against me again, right before he started working the pajama bottoms all the way past my hips and thighs, his hands practiced now, and dextrous enough to throw me a little.
I let out a low gasp when he had those off me entirely, and another one when he caught hold of me, jerking me against him once more, kissing my mouth.
Those misgivings were getting really faint at that point.
The feeling of him through the lock got stronger.
I let out a startled gasp, wrapping my arms around his neck when he pulled me up, stretching me out more deliberately on the creaking mattress before he wrapped his body around the length of me for real. His legs rested between mine once we settled, and he pressed his chest and weight on me harder, earning another low cry out of me. His fingers coiled around my wrist then, pinning me to the edge of the mattress. He looked down at me, struggling to slow his breathing, and it hit me suddenly that we were both more or less naked, and that I could feel his skin pretty much everywhere.
He met my gaze, still panting lightly, his skin even hotter than before.
“I’m going to do this,” he said. “Unless you want me to stop, Dakota...I’m going to do this. Tell me not to, if you don’t want it...”
“No,” I whispered, conscious suddenly of Irene in the other room. “No, I want to. We just have to be quiet, Nik...okay?”
He nodded, but I saw a taut look cross his expression after I spoke.
“I’ll try,” he said, looking down at my body again.
He kissed me again before I could second-guess any of it, his tongue hot in my mouth. Then his free hand was on my hip, moving me under him until he had me where he wanted me. I found myself holding my breath, gripping his arm with my free hand where I lay under him, when he stopped again, looking down at me.
“I want us to be monogamous after this,” he said.
I fought to control my breathing, looking up at him.
“Aren’t we now, Nik?” I said.
He frowned, but I felt another sharp dagger of that heat hit my chest. It occurred to me only then that he was still holding it back, whatever “it” was. I remembered him saying that sex with us “wouldn’t be as good” with his lock closed. I also remembered that his lock was wide, wide open now. I remembered telling him I loved him on Palarine, too, and that I didn’t want to come back to Earth without him.
That pain in my chest worsened, right before his fingers clenched tighter on my wrist.
“Gantry wants you,” he said.
“What?” I stared up at him, incredulous, but Nik’s gaze didn’t waver. “Where the hell did that come from?” I said.
Nik went on as if I hadn’t spoken.
“...Don’t do this with him, Dakota,” Nik said. “I’m asking you. Please.”
Relaxing a little, I shook my head, massaging his chest with my free hand. “Gantry and I aren’t sleeping together, Nik...you know that.”
“You were. Before.”
“Yeah,” I retorted. “And you were sleeping with half the female humans on Palarine before, too, Nik.”
He writhed under my hand, right before he shook his head. “You understand. I know you do. If you can’t tell me that, then I don’t want to do this, Dakota...I really don’t.”
I stared up at him. As I watched his face in the near-dark, I realized he was right.
I did. Understand, that is.
I knew how Nik saw the two of us.
Well, okay, I didn’t know precisely how Nik saw us, but I had some ideas. He’d been open about it, at least once we started talking about things in something other than his bizarre morph-code-speak when it came to relationships. I’d also heard enough cracks from humans on Palarine...and even on the ship...to have some idea of how his culture viewed things with me and Nik, now that we were lock mates. And yeah, I was his lock mate.
I knew that meant a lot to him...to any morph.
I just wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.
Like, I knew Nik had been
lock-mates with Razmun, back when they’d both lived on Palarine. But I also knew Nik had been dating Razmun’s sister during that time, so presumably the thing with Nik and Razmun had been platonic. So more of a brother thing? Family? I honestly had no idea, but I definitely got the sense from some of the things Razmun said that it had been intimate.
Meaning, even without him and Nik being, you know...intimate.
Even apart from the whole cultural thing and Nik’s past girlfriends and Razmun and whatever else, I also wasn’t entirely sure what the whole lock-mate thing meant to me, or how I felt about the implications of that connection, given that I still knew next to nothing about him. Heck, I wasn’t sure I really understood what a lot of those implications were...especially here, in the context of both of us being back on Earth, in my home city of Seattle. I still hadn’t entirely adjusted to the idea of bringing Nik along with me, now that I was more or less back in my old life.
Nik told me once that lock-mates could influence one another’s thoughts, their feelings, even their perceptions of the world...their very reality. Truthfully, that idea scared the shit out of me. Of course, Nik also said that “good” lock mates respected one another’s individuality and free will, and didn’t use that connection to manipulate or control or to impose their own will on their partner. He said that the connection could bring total honesty and acceptance between mates, too...a kind of unconditional love based on knowing someone at an intimate level, warts and all, stripped of whatever masks they might show the world.
That scared the hell out of me, too.
Feeling him reacting to something he must have felt on me just then, while I was thinking about all of that, I gripped his arm tighter in my hand.
“I love you, Nik,” I said. My face warmed as I realized I meant it. I let my voice drop to a murmur. “You know I do. You know I love you.”
His eyes met mine. I could see them faintly in the blue-green light of the fish tank.
I had no idea what color they were, though, or what the stare meant.
His voice was gruff.
“You love me,” he said. “But you don’t want to promise me that?”
Hesitating, I shook my head. “No, I don’t. Not yet. Not forever like that.” Watching his face, I waited for Nik to think about my words before I added more cautiously. “...It’s too soon for me, Nik. But I’m not doing this...or anything else...with anyone else. And I won’t, okay? Not without talking to you first. I just need more time, all right?”
“I would have with her,” he blurted. “Razmun’s sister. I planned to give my lock to her. When we were married...before, most likely.”
I tensed. I could tell he was trying to reassure me somehow, or maybe clear up what he thought was some kind of misconception on my part about Razmun, and whatever he’d caught me thinking about the two of them. But it didn’t reassure me, not really.
Not at all, actually.
In fact, it kind of pissed me off.
“Okay,” I said, fighting back annoyance and mostly failing. “What am I supposed to do with that information, exactly, Nik?”
I felt the heat behind my words hit him somewhere via the lock connection.
I couldn’t tell how, exactly, though.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just thought––”
“Forget it,” I said, again fighting the anger out of my voice. “So what are you saying? You don’t want to do this now?” I heard the disappointment in my own voice. “Do you want to wait, Nik? On the sex, I mean.”
He seemed to think about my words.
While he thought, I couldn’t help picking up flickers of things through the connection we shared. I felt desire there, a frustration that he didn’t seem to be bothering to hide. I felt a kind of anger aimed at himself, too, mostly around his knowledge that he’d said the wrong thing in trying to reassure me about Razmun...or maybe Razmun’s sister...or maybe both of them. That frustration worsened as it mixed with the desire, clouding his ability to think.
I caught glimpses of pictures in his head even as I thought it, most of them pretty graphic as he thought through what we’d been about to do, and if he was willing to wait. I didn’t say anything while he thought through the different implications of my question.
I didn’t try to figure out which direction he might be leaning before he spoke, but his words didn’t exactly surprise me when he finally got there.
“I really want to do this,” he confessed.
I nodded, swallowing. “Okay,” I said. “Is that a yes then, to sex?”
“I’ve been having trouble sleeping, Dakota.”
“Sleeping?” I said, confused by that part for some reason.
“Yes,” he said. He pressed his lower body against mine, closing his eyes. “I want you. I’ve wanted you for months now...longer. Since before...like you were thinking just now. Since I met you, Dakota. It makes it difficult to sleep, especially sharing a bed.”
He met my gaze, and I saw that taut look back on his face. More than that, the utter lack of guile there threw me, even before he went on.
“I’m sorry about what I said,” he added. “You misunderstood me.”
I shook my head. “Let’s not talk about that now. Seriously.”
Nik nodded, but I saw another flicker of frustration skim his expression.
As I watched, a denser thread of desire rose to his eyes, eclipsing the rest.
“I thought you knew,” he said. His fingers slid down my face and neck, startling me, right before he started caressing my hair. I relaxed as his fingers traced liquidly over my skin, as he rested more of his weight on me, looking at my eyes. “I told you I wanted you...many times,” he murmured, kissing my throat. “I showed you through the link...I asked you for it, Dakota, even after that first offer. I thought you knew why I was sleeping with those humans...and on Palarine, why I did it again. I wanted you. I knew you wanted me, too, but I thought you wouldn’t let yourself. I thought you didn’t want to act on it because I was morph...”
His words came out in a low stream, pulling at me.
I flinched at his mention of other women, but I didn’t stop listening.
I felt my skin flush between that and what he was doing with his body and hand, but more than that, from the increasingly graphic pictures that flickered behind my eyes as he spoke...pictures I had to assume were coming to me through that line stretched between us. I felt that electrical-type charge running through my skin as those pictures came faster, the same sensation I remembered from Palarine. The only other time I’d felt anything like it was when we woke up in that abandoned residency room together, when we’d been wrapped around one another and naked like this.
I felt Nik’s indecision strengthen when I didn’t answer right away.
After a few more seconds, I felt a sharper pang from that jealousy.
His jealousy, that is...Nik’s. That time, at least.
Somewhere in that, I saw an image of Gantry, of Gantry looking at me with those intense blue eyes of his. Before I could make much sense of that––
“No,” Nik said, his voice suddenly gruff. “No, we shouldn’t.”
“Why?” I said. “Are you seriously worried about Gantry?”
“You know why. I just told you why.”
I stared up at him, frustrated. “Because I can’t tell you for absolute certain that I’ll never want to be with anyone else ever again?”
“Yes,” he said.
I let out a frustrated sigh, collapsing on the mattress. “Nik. Jesus...”
Before I could go on, though, the light flicked on.
It caused both of us to jump violently, and then to stare at the person standing by the switch.
Irene huddled there, her hair looking like an angry, dirty-blonde cat screeched silently from her head. She wore her black, silk kimono that stopped around mid-thigh and had a bright red koi fish splattered like blood across the front.
Irene blinked at the two of us, an openly bewildered look on
her face as her eyes focused enough that she understood what she’d walked in on.
I saw color creep up her neck to her cheeks as she took what must have been a pretty compromising snapshot of me and Nik, with him lying on me, naked, and me below him, also naked, with him gripping my wrist in one hand while I clutched his bicep in my other one.
Despite the increasingly embarrassed look I saw crawling over her face, Irene still blurted out the words that she must have come out here to say in the first place.
“Someone’s outside!” she said. “I just saw them, in the tree!”
Before I could make sense of what she’d said, Nik was already on his feet.
He walked directly back to Irene’s room––still nude, I might add––before I’d finished fumbling around the rumpled blankets for my shirt.
By the time I found it, had it over my head and climbed off the creaking mattress, stubbing my toe on the metal frame and cursing while I hopped, Irene had already followed Nik back to her bedroom. When I caught up with them, Irene crouched behind Nik while he stared out her window. The light was off, either because Irene never turned it on, or because Nik turned it off so he could see better in the dark. I angled closer to the two of them, pushing my hair behind my ears and waiting for my eyes to adjust after that sudden influx of light from Irene blinding us in the other room.
I couldn’t see anything.
Well, that’s not precisely true.
I saw the tree outside Irene’s window, and the thick, bald and winding branches that always made me think of that movie, Poltergeist, where the tree smashed through the window and then proceeded to yank that little kid out of bed and try to eat him.
But I didn’t see anyone there.
Even as I thought it, Nik gave me a glance.
Then, as if by mutual agreement, we both moved directly up to the window itself, pressing our faces to the glass and peering out into the darkness to the ground below. Irene followed behind both of us, clutching Nik’s arm as she peered from behind him.
I thought I caught a flicker of movement, and I saw Nik flinch.
“Did you see who it was?” I asked him.
Nik shook his head. Even so, his face looked more taut than usual.
Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two Page 15
