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“Do not distract him, human,” Threxin commanded coolly, though said human had probably already gotten the idea.
“I found the entry,” Lesthin announced quietly, reaching beside him for the final piece: the port itself. Morbid curiosity got the better of him, and Threxin opened his eyes to watch.
Lesthin plucked the port from the gel with a pair of large tweezers and shook it slightly to remove excess gel. He held it by the metal end and dangled the ends of the thin tendrils just above the catheter. His apertures twitched rapidly with tight concentration as he threaded the swaying tendrils into the opening.
It was as though they scented blood. The tendrils came to attention, growing taut as they stretched within the transparent tube. Lesthin lowered the tweezers to the catheter, and soon enough the tendrils disappeared under Threxin’s skin. He felt them moving in there.
It was cold. Threxin wished suddenly for warm, soft fingers working at him with practiced ease. Or perhaps dampening his apertures one by one, stroking along the sensitive flesh. Maybe even tracing his brow and speaking some soft words of comfort—not something he remembered witnessing Alina Argoud do, but a strange wisp of a memory nonetheless.
Then the tweezers unclasped and the port slid down the tube of the catheter in a blink. Pain stabbed through Threxin’s arm as it lodged itself at the opening, then again as something expanded right underneath the skin. Threxin permitted himself a hiss as the catheter was removed with a swift yank.
“Did it work?” He stared at the glint of the port in his forearm, placed between two apertures, which had grown needle-thin in protest.
“You will need to plug in to find out,” Lesthin said, unclasping the restraints around Threxin’s arm. “It will hurt more if you use it now, but it should work if the procedure was successful.”
Threxin rose from the chair, the pit in his chest loosening when he was finally free.
“Then we will know shortly.”
Threxin spent the remainder of the day in his quarters, trying to shake off the sick remnants of the medbay and the smells of old blood and astringent disinfectant. Renza had offered to keep him company, but Threxin refused. He did not need coddling from anyone, and Renza would be more useful finishing jump preparations and keeping the humans in check. Threxin, in the meantime, monitored his ship’s vid feeds, especially those in the rear dock.
The humans had been maintaining and cleaning their craft since his arrival. When questioned some time ago, the dockmaster’s explanation was that ships would be needed to scout the planet, as well as in case of attack should they encounter problems on the way to… wherever this was. Threxin had begrudgingly allowed the maintenance work to continue under his cohort’s close watch—he assigned uhyre to monitor the video feeds of the docks.
Now he monitored them himself, for he knew that waswhere Alina Argoud had been assigned. He needed to keep a closer eye on her, make sure she did not snap after the night before. After all, she was the one with the most information to betray.
So he watched as she sprayed and scrubbed the Ariel craft late into the night. She was not getting enough sleep. Yet she seemed more relaxed compared to her distraught state the night before. Renza found himself reclining in his bed, watching the female’s practiced work. She looked just as at ease scrubbing the hull of one ofColossal’svessels as she did moistening his own apertures—almost like she fell into a sort of trance with the repetition of the movements.
Layers of clothing had come off over the hours in which she worked, her skin growing reddish as it overheated with the physical exertion. A sheen of sweat was revealed on the back of her neck when she paused to wipe her oily hands on a rag and tie her dark hair back in a loose shamble on her scalp.
She was down to a black singlet, and Threxin’s apertures tightened when it rode up her waist as she lifted her arms over her head, small back arching with the stretch. Threxin shifted his hips slightly, wincing as the fabric of his briefs rubbed against him.
If he was hard, it was only because he hadn’t had time to release pent-up urges since his arrival onColossal. And if he palmed his erection over his pants at the sight of her propping a slender leg on a notch in the Ariel’s hull, it was only to release the tight tendon in his groin. He tried very hard not to follow the bunched fabric of her pants to the bare beige skin at the curve of her calf.
The limiter should kick in soon, shouldn’t it? He wanted it to. Only the limiter wasn’t designed to suppress this particular urge. How would his kind survive otherwise, without fucking? Threxin remembered prior experiences with his partners and focused on those far more appropriate scenarios.
Fucking amongst uhyre was a violent and extensively bloody experience before the limiters, but Threxin had never known that way. He mostly knew the way of measured stoicism, slow and controlled movements to avoid letting out the deeper, less tasteful urges that would activate his limiter. It was common to fail at it when they were younger. They’d get going when the urge to claw at your partner’s throat or impale her on your cock until she couldn’t help but show that it hurt would explode out of them, triggering the implant so suddenly that they’d have to fling themselves back and lose any urge to finish the job.
Threxin reached down slowly and unclasped his briefs with measured movements. He shoved them low on his hips to free his shaft. He palmed it down, biting back a groan as a bolt of current twisted up into the root of him and dissipated into liquid heat in his gut.
One time he came close. He had taken a training mate into theElysian’scommand center when his father was gone. He had made a bet with Renza that he could have her. She hadn’t had anyone before, but she would have him—he could see in the way her spikes rose and her apertures melted when he looked at her.
Threxin fisted his shaft, and when a drop of precum beaded at the tip, he palmed it over the overheated skin to slick his way. He glanced at the human on his screen, but forced his eyes away, staring instead straight ahead at the wall on the other side of the cabin. He refused to look or think about this human in such a moment.
His memory would take his mind somewhere safer. He’d shoved the uhyre female against the hull right across from the ship’s old commander, strung up on his wires and tubes. She kept looking up at that half-alive male over Threxin’s shoulder.
“He’s watching,” she had told Threxin, but that was silly. The alien’s eyes saw nothing and the watching she felt wasRenza hiding in the shadows, getting his proof. Probably tugging himself off to it too.
Threxin pumped his fist, breath hitching as he caught an involuntary glimpse of the human bending over the curved hull of the Ariel to reach a difficult crevice with her scrubbing tool. Threxin raked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, the spikes dragging his skin raw.
When his training mate kept insisting the human commander was watching them as Threxin mated her against that wall, Threxin had clasped a palm over her incessant mouth. Her eyes had flashed with unsuppressed anger and she bit his hand, and then Threxin had clamped his own teeth into her throat before the limiter could catch up.
The female on his screen wouldn’t flap her mouth like that. She would be quiet, her big eyes black with invitation like they had been when he captured her on his finger. He would keep her in her daze, like he knew he could now. A fragile, helpless thing following his whims.
His sack tightened. The spikes at the underside of his shaft had emerged, leaking exorin along his fingers, moistening the way for his grasp. He held his breath. He would not come like this, with the human in his head. He took himself back to theElysian.
It—the bite—had only lasted a moment before both of their limiters brought them back into the fog of artificial calm, but that moment had been enough for the two of them. He had pumped her full and she had screamed her release around him, and both of them had seen how it was supposed to be. It was a curse, the knowing.
Threxin locked his knees straight, thighs tensing, trembling as he thrust his hand along his dripping shaft.
