Page 82 of Tracked and Taken

I do not come.

I told her I would not come before her and I am not going to. The discipline is killing me. My balls ache. I hold.

When she is down enough to speak, she puts her forehead at my shoulder.

“I can’t—“

“Can’t what.”

“I can’t keep up with you.”

“You do not have to keep up with me.”

“You — you have not even come yet.”

“I am in no hurry. I am going to fuck you through another one first.”

She laughs.

The small laugh of a female that she just come apart twice and is alive enough to find my operational patience ridiculous.

“Tael.”

“Your turn on your back.”

I lift her off my lap. I lay her on her back.

Her dark eyes on mine. Pupils blown. Mouth swollen. Her hair across the pillow. Her thighs part for me without the part being asked for. She is dripping. Some of it is her. Some of it is going to be me.

I get on top of her. My forearm at the bulkhead. My other hand at her hip. Her thighs at my ribs. The angle of a Draelith male on a human female in a bunk that was not built for the purpose.

I push back into her.

The ridges catch at a familiar angle — we have done this already, her body knows what to expect now — and she arches for me without the arch being asked for. Her hand at the back of my neck. Her eyes on mine. She is not looking away.

“Tael.”

“Watch me, sweetheart.”

“I am.”

“Don’t stop.”

“I am not going to stop.”

I move at the pace that has, in the last hour, become the pace her body agrees with. Slow first, then less slow, then the rhythm that comes out of the synced pulse and my purr at full through her sternum and the ridges catching at every stroke. Her eyes stay on mine. Her hand at the back of my neck stays. Her other hand at my shoulder, fingernails at the rosette there, her nails through the skin.

“Harder,” she says.

I give her harder.

She is watching me.

She has not, all night, looked at me the way she is looking at me right now. The attention of my mate, who wants to see what her male is going to look like when he comes apart for her. She is running a different operational question from the one she has been running — she is studying me, and the study is going to undo me.

The build comes fast.

My body has been running on the edge for ninety minutes. Every sound she has made. Every time she has said my name in a register closer to correct. The discipline has been holding because I told her I would not come before her, and I did not, and her second time on my lap released the obligation. The biology has been waiting.