Page 193 of Tracked and Taken

She holds it open between her two hands.

She leans forward.

She lifts the cord over my head.

The cord settles at the back of my neck, under the short hair at my nape.

The disc settles in the hollow. At the spot where her mark sits. Where her pheromone has been at the warm for three months. The brass touches my bonded skin.

I make a sound.

The sound of a bonded male whose body has just been told a thing about the female he is bonded to that he has hoped against every instinct she would tell him.

She tells me.

Her hands stay at the cord at the back of my neck. Her thumbs at my nape. Her dark eyes find mine.

“Tael Vosk.”

“Sweetheart.”

“You are mine.”

“I am, sweetheart, yours.”

She lowers her hands. Her thumbs trace the cord at the front, at my collarbones, at the disc. The brass warming under her thumbs. My bond at her throat, opposite, conducting the chemistry through the bond at a joint frequency the matched pair has started running at.

She kisses the disc.

Then she kisses my mouth.

Then something in me that is not protocol breaks.

The reservoir is pumping my own scent back at me off her skin. Her pulse is over a hundred. The spike Velran built hits the air between us like a hand around my spine. She smells like I have just fucked her and like I am still inside her and like every male on this station is going to know both things if I take her into a corridor right now.

I make a sound against her mouth that is not civilized.

“Tael—“

“Sweetheart.” My hands are on her waist. Lifting. “I need you again.”

“You just—“

“I know what I just did. The disc is doing the rest. You smell like mine. You smell like I am in you. I need to be in you.”

I put her on her back.

I push in on one stroke because she is still wet from me, still open, and the sound she makes is startled and filthy and yes. The discs knock together when my chest hits hers, brass on brass, her name on my throat, my name on hers, and I fuck her like that, forehead to forehead, the cords tangled, the pheromones spiking every time her pulse jumps.

“On your knees was protocol,” I tell her. My voice is gone. “This is not.”

“Then take it.”

“Say it.”

“Take it. I’m yours. The disc is yours. Please—Tael—harder—“

I give her harder.