Page 78 of Tracked and Taken

“Oh.”

I hook one claw at the hip of the lace.

“I told you I would ruin these.”

“You did.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Ruin them. Please.”

The lace gives with a sound like a held breath. It lands wherever. She is bare and glistening, and I have to close my eyes for one second, so I do not come just from looking.

“Fuck. Look at you.”

My mouth at her inner thigh. My tail holding her other thigh at the angle I want. My tongue finds the place her body has been waiting for my tongue to find since the bunk an hour ago. The Draelith tongue is longer and rougher than a human’s, and the difference is a register her anatomy reads as specific to me. I lick a slow stripe up her cunt and she comes off the mattress with a sound that is not for any channel her operational life has previously known.

“Tael — oh — Tael—“

“Don’t stop.”

I do not stop.

I take her there at the pace her body is asking for. Flat of my tongue. Then the point. Then I suck her clit and she swears. My hand at her hip holding her down, because her body is trying to push up into my mouth faster than I am going to let her. My tail steady at her other thigh. Two fingers slide into her — tight, soaked — and I curl them while I lick. The rosettes at my forearms release the scent compounds at full saturation. Her pulse is climbing, climbing, and she is saying my name in a register that is closer, each time, to correct.

She reaches a hand down.

Her fingers in my hair. Not an anchor — a guide. She is running the rhythm. I am the male delivering.

“Tael — slower — wait — don’t you dare—“

“Sweetheart. You do not get to come yet. Not until you ask.”

“Tael — I said slower—“

“Copy.”

I slow.

She is close. I can read the close in her pulse and in the small sound she is making through her teeth and in the tightening around my fingers. I slow further. I make her wait. I lick around her clit and do not give her the pressure she wants.

She grinds against my mouth.

“Tael.”

“Tell me what you want.”

“I want to come.”

“Ask me.”

Her pupils blow.

I watch the moment a female who has been directing traffic for ten minutes realizes that asking is a different register, and is a register she is going to have to use.

Her jaw works.

“Please.”