by Bex McLynn
“I don’t want a thane.” Nothing against thanes, naturally.
“You do. You really do. You need someone with more prominence and clout than what I’ve got to stand next to you and keep the rest of the bastards at bay. What I’ve got is just shit.”
“Shit?” She echoed in disbelief.
How could he say that? He rescued her from a hellhole. He saw her safely to Seph. He remained at her side although she was pregnant and the child wasn’t even his. He’d proven himself to her over and over.
Oh no.
Her stomach sank. She thought that he wanted her. She cast her mind back to the Gwyretti compound—to the moment after Therion had first kissed her. He’d told her that he was her man. He’d infused his voice with such earnest hopefulness that her heart melted for him. Hell, he’d captured her then and there, but her determination to get home swept it all under the rug.
So, she wasn’t wrong. She was his as much as he was hers. He only needed a reminder.
Her own thoughts had occupied her for too long. Therion had retreated to the bulkhead and had his back pressed against it. His chest heaved and his nostrils flared with his bellowed breathing. A mixture of many emotions—desperation, dread, and longing—swirled in his green-gold eyes.
Shame on her for keeping him waiting.
She softened her voice as she gazed at him. “Would a thane take advantage of me?”
He gave her a perplexed, horrified look. “What? No. The right thane would treat you like a lady.”
She brushed that aside. “Would the right thane connect with me in a matter of hours?”
“Maude? I don’t understand.”
“Would a thane be totally my man?”
“Maude?” He growled her name, but it sounded more like begging.
Well, she could be less torturous and more obvious. And people assumed that she was always nice.
She gave him the rundown. “You offered to take advantage of me, but only if I requested it. You connected with me within hours. And you offered to be my man.” She paused, looking for an indication that he remembered those words. Therion said so much, shooting from the hip most of the time, yet she truly believed that those words, spoken in a dungeon while their limbs twined around one another, had been sincere. Therion without a mask. “Do all those offers still stand? Are you offering to be mine?”
He dragged in a ragged breath, then said thickly as he exhaled, “I’m always yours.”
Poor man sounded defeated. Well, he’d soon learn that he wasn’t her conquest or her prisoner. He was her home.
She tore the blanket aside as she rose from the bunk. He watched her like a deer caught in headlights. He could have run, but he didn’t. He stood stock still, his eyes blazing with intensity, as she crossed the small cabin and put her arms around him.
She gazed up at him. “I’m yours too, Therion.”
“Maude,” he groaned as he dove down, meeting her as she rose up.
Her name echoed throughout the cabin as he kissed her. The raw arousal in his voice heated her belly and spread warmth to her pulsing core. His tongue took possession of her mouth with hungry strokes as he snatched her up, lifting her from the deck and crushing her to him.
She never knew how good it could feel. To have someone pressing her close, yet sense that he checked his strength, because he wanted her, but didn’t want to hurt her.
Therion held her like that, and it absolutely crushed her.
He had entwined their bodies, yet she longed for him to wrap around her tighter than Kora. She needed him seeping under her skin and settling deep inside of her.
“Gods, Maude.” Therion broke their entanglement to moan into her neck. “Choose me.”
Within a stride he reached his bunk, smoothly twisting and ducking to lower her to the mattress. She squirmed, impatient for him to settle his weight over her and press down between her legs. Therion held himself over her, his fists on either side of her head, as he stared at her. His nostrils flared as he clenched his jaw.
She reached up from him. “Therion?”
When she cupped his cheek, he squeezed his eyes shut. He dropped the weight of his head into her palm. “Choose me.”
Her heart kicked at his pleading tone. “I do.”
Therion laughed, a hollow, broken chuff. He opened his eyes and rocked back as much as the tight bunk would permit.
Confused by his retreat, she nodded to reassure him. “Yes. Aye.”
Her chest clenched at the pained, desperate look he gave her.
Hell, she was missing something. Something big.
She fisted him by his shirt. “Therion, come here.”
He huffed, caught unaware as she tugged him down. Rolling onto her side, she shimmied against the bunk’s back wall. He settled next to her, and with the light emanating from behind him, shadows concealed his face. But she’d deal with this disadvantage because he complied with little fussing.
“Therion,” she said gently. If he were human, she’d ask him to talk to her. But they had exchanged words, and it wasn’t enough. “I need your help with all of this.”
“The Athela always chooses,” he said stiffly.
“I know this. I decided.”
“Aye.”
“Do you doubt my decision?”
“Maude.” He drew her name out, and she knew that tone of voice. The sound of someone exasperated with her, their frustration mounting. “I want you to choose me, but I’m worth shit in the Teras Dominion. I’m not a technopath. I’ll never be a thane. I’m the commander of a psychopathic spirenought only by Seph’s good graces. I’ve been twice Unsworn, have broken dishonorably from clades, and not even marauders want me. You need a thane from a Teras Great House who’ll—”
“I told you. No thane,” she said hotly and jostled him a bit. “I want you.”
“But you’ll need a thane. Perhaps a Teras Ero politician. A Fleet admiral would—”
Her thoughts tumbled as he rambled. Clutch. He was systematically listing clutch members. Hell, he’d thought about this. He’d also squeezed her shoulders each time he said ‘choose.’ ‘Choose me.’ Is that what he wanted? Something that she was determined to give him anyway?
“Only you, Therion,” she blurted out.
He inhaled sharply. Wanting to soothe him, she reached out and pressed her fingertips to his cheek and stroked the bevel of his praal along his cool skin.
Something Therion had said rolled through her. The Teras take swearing very seriously, Maude…
She searched his eyes out in the shadows and steadied her voice. “I swear, Therion. I choose only you.”
Silence. Had she read this wrong?
A low growl filled the room, spilling forth from Therion as he descended over her in a shadowy wave.
He spoke, his voice deep with conviction. “I am Teras. I am House Borac. You fucking have me, Maude.”
Therion had learned at Gummy’s knee: the Athela always chooses.
Of course Gummy called bullshit on the rest of it, that the Athela must choose amongst the provided suitors. She’d hard-lined that archaic courtesy into an absolute. Aye or nay, none of this ‘pick your bed.’ Because Gummy did pick her bed, and then chewed up, swallowed, and shat out any arse dumb enough to crawl under the covers without an invitation.
It was much for a five-year-old to absorb, but Therion walked away with the important bits. Don’t fuck with an Athela.
Decades later, doing his damned best to honor that lesson had almost broken him.
Hell, Maude had broken him.
She had him on his knees, begging her to take his oath and refuse all others. To not welcome other illustrious Teras men into her clutch. His possessiveness meant she would be cut off from other allies.
He should be wallowing in his selfishness, but how could he? She’d chosen him. Only him.
Fucking praise Direis.
Fueled by unfettered desire and humble gratitude, he crested over her, dipping his head and capturing her
lips. He adored that Humans kissed like the Teras. That they opened their lips and tangled their tongues with their partner. Letting the other person slide inside and taste them. Sip at them like heated wine. He poured his longing and humility into her. She needed to know that she spurred ferocity yet gratefulness. Dominance, yet submission.
For all that he loomed over her, Maude poured herself into him as well. She filled him with purpose beyond his own twisted agenda. For once, he gazed upon his past—that he’d woven himself into the shadows so that Zver and House Borac would remain in the light—and appreciated its worth despite what it had cost him. All those years spent drifting in the dregs, blackening his honor and his soul, had provided him the means to scheme on Maude’s behalf. He admitted that regardless if she’d chosen him or a thane, he still would have used his nefarious skillset to keep her safe. But this way, because he’d been chosen, his honor would remain dirty while Maude would wipe his soul clean.
Therion, such an appreciative bastard, moaned into her mouth as she devoured him in turn. Her small hands pressed on his back, then tugged at his shoulders, pulling against his arms that propped him up like struts.
Like hell he was going to press his hips to hers. He couldn’t trust himself not to thrust into her. After the freighter, when he had her cunt pressed to his mouth and then slid his finger inside of her—gods, he didn’t go deep, but she had clutched at him. Constricting around him as she came.
With one last heated kiss, he crawled out of the bunk, grasping her hand and lightly tugging her along. He didn’t want her to think he was leaving, that he was done with her.
Her golden brows furrowed. “Therion?”
“Aye, Maude.” He settled on his knees. “I know how this works. We’ll brace at your pace.”
Therion knelt on the hard deck for a reason. Sex outside of a brace was unconventional. There existed a subculture of men and women who enjoyed the experience, but Therion had never considered himself one of them. To lie prone over a woman was considered both taboo and revered. A darkly decadent kink that could forever shade a person’s reputation. A pregnant woman could comfortably have sex in that position. He’d even heard whispers that those women found it pleasurable, but only for a brief window—when the medullary bone had been absorbed and their belly wasn’t overly large.
Aye, Maude was pregnant, but he wouldn’t recklessly assume anything by blindly—and to be honest, enthusiastically—thrusting into her. Therefore, she’d be the one to set the depth and pace, and gods willing, she could take him. Hopefully enough of him to get his anthers on that single glorious cilia she’d repeatedly called her clit. That one, responsive nub would receive all of his anthers’ lapping and undulation—if he could reach it. If not, he had ten dexterous fingers and one eager tongue ready to please her.
Her brow furrows deepened, pitching into steeper slopes. “My pace? You mean go slow?”
“Slow and shallow,” he assured her, though his hands shook as he peeled off his shirt. “Always at your pace.”
Her eyes roved over his chest, and his skin prickled and tightened everywhere her heated gaze lingered, making him damn grateful for his tattoos. She seemed captivated by each one of them.
Her sloping brows reversed course, flipping into wonderment. “My pace?”
“Aye,” he said thickly.
He could do this. There wasn’t a brace in the cabin, but how hard could it be to settle her astride him—
Maude tackled him.
Launched herself from the bunk and knocked him flat on his back.
Maude mumbled her apologies as her hands flew straight to the fastenings on his pants.
Going at her pace sounded like a fantastic idea.
“Maude?”
The uncertainty in his voice refocused her attention from his pants, which she’d peeled halfway down his thighs, up to his heaving chest and wide eyes.
“Too fast?” she asked.
He propped himself up on his elbows and shook his head wildly.
She pulled her hands back. “Are you sure?”
He started toeing off his boots. “Fuck no. Aye. I mean aye. Fucking aye.”
She gave him one last look, wanting to be sure, then yanked his pants off his legs. Which left him in a tight pair of tented shorts. Well-tented shorts. Like someone pitched their tent using a redwood.
Her pussy clenched as her breath hitched. She needed to get her hands into those shorts.
But first, she sat back on her heels and started with her sleep shirt’s fastenings. She fumbled a bit, having to break eye contact with him to part the seams. She lacked the courage to keep his gaze. Plopping onto her backside on the deck, she yanked off her sleep pants. All she wore was a scrap of fabric over her hips. A scrap that was now damp with her arousal.
Where Seph was a near-six-foot-tall voluptuous bombshell, Maude was more of a streamlined missile. Flat chest. No booty. Boy hips with narrow shoulders. She was actually excited about the pregnancy ‘ripening’ her figure.
As a self-conscious blush heated her already sunburnt skin, she hoped that Therion found her attractive without her clothes. That, perhaps, he’d continue to be enthralled with her non-turquoise pastiness.
Gathering her resolve, she raised her eyes and caught her breath. Therion gazed at her, his hands fisted and his jaw clenched, appearing like a coiled snake, ready to strike. She exhaled a shaky breath, waiting for him to pounce. Then she remembered. Her pace.
He lay there, sprawling on the deck, trembling with coiled muscles, because she set the pace.
Tucking her hair behind her ears, knowing the move exposed her breasts and peaked nipples, she crawled forward, setting a course between his legs, pleased that he parted them to make room for her. Settling on her knees, she slipped her fingers under the waistband of his shorts. He hissed, contracting his abs as his hips jerked upward. All marvelously helpful reactions, because she easily slid his shorts down.
Oh my. This was marvelous, too.
His cock, long and thick, had beveled praal running along its ochre-shaded shaft and covering its bulbous head. She reached out, passing the pad of her thumb over his weeping head, then caressed his length in her grip. Circling his base, she brushed against small pulsing stubs that felt like tiny tongues.
Therion groaned a filthily erotic rumbling of her name. “Maude.”
She’d expected none of this. His penis, well, she had a pretty accurate impression of it from the brief time he rocked between her legs on the freighter. Seeing it. Holding it. It did not disappoint. But his base? These textured writhing bits were sure to line up just right with the sensitive nerves sheltered by her labia. Hell, these stubby little tongues were going to wreck her.
She cleared her throat as she ran her fingertips over the stubs, astounded that they responded to her touch, as if trying to grasp her. “What do you call these?”
“Anthers,” he panted.
Ah. Ever since Kora supplied the general meaning of a term that Therion had used so often, she’d assumed anthers to be more like testicles. She never really had a thing for swinging balls, but apparently she loved writhing anthers. Her pussy throbbed, her clit ached, and—surprisingly—her mouth watered as his anthers prodded at her fingers.
Spurred by the moan that parted her lips, Maude planted her hands on his thighs, bent over him, and closed her mouth over his praal-beveled cock.
Therion shouted, his hips snapping up, as she slid down him, sucking him to the back of her throat. Her disappointment—that she’d gotten nowhere near his base and anthers—melted away when the taste of him hit her tongue.
Good lord, he tingled like mint—crisp and cool and refreshing. For the first time in her life, she wished one of her boyfriends had coached her through deep-throating. Therion’s flavor in her mouth had shivers rippling down her spine, underscoring her craving for the cold after spending endless days on Radost.
With a self-pitying moan—pouting because she couldn’t take him deeper—she sucked. Hol
lowed her cheeks as she pressed and laved her tongue along the praal of his shaft. He was the longest, fattest peppermint stick that she’d ever had in her life.
Therion trembled beneath her as he bellowed, rambling in a language she didn’t know. His stomach, already lean with muscle, had become a hard slab of concrete. He gasped and chanted her name.
The desire to witness his responses had her giving him a long, slow lick as she withdrew. She leaned back, dragging his poor stretched-to-the-seams shorts off of him. Then, she shimmied away, intending to remove her panties.
Therion lurched forward and snagged her by the hips. With a desperate, almost pain-laced groan, he dragged her over his legs and into his lap. His mouth closed over hers, feasting on her. Her core clenched, knowing he ran his tongue through her mouth, gorging on his own flavor.
She needed him.
Breaking their kiss, she panted. “Panties. Off. Now.”
He mumbled as he sucked at her neck. “Aye.”
Then he grunted and the ripping sound of her panties filled the cabin.
Cool air hit her damp folds. Her core clench again, rocking her hips forward. She connected with his hard cock. Not with the head, but with the thickly veined skin of its length. Her heart skipped a beat as delighted shock tore through her.
“Therion,” she moaned as she rocked against him, slicking her pussy over him and trying to brush her clit with his praal.
“Gods!” He jolted beneath her as he clamped his massive hands on her hips. With a ragged breath, he stilled her movement. “Wait.”
Relentless need battered Maude’s brain, but she reined it because her pace didn’t negate his.
He leaned back and a pained expression crossed his face. “You’re so tiny, Maude.”
“Not so tiny.” He would stretch her, and that would be such a good, sweet thing.
“Gods, all those times I thought Seph was screaming because she liked what Zver was doing to her.”
Maude suspected Therion spoke more to himself than to her, but she answered him anyway. “If you and Zver are similar, then trust me, Seph likes it. A lot. And I will too.”
