Page 86 of Tracked and Taken

“Tael — your tail is — your tail is—“

“I know.”

“Oh—“

“I am going to make you come on my tail, sweetheart. And on my cock. At the same time.”

“Oh, oh, Tael—“

The tail presses. The ridges on the tail — yes, the tail has them too — move at a rhythm different from the rhythm I am running. Two frequencies. My cock at the rhythm her body is asking for. My tail at the rhythm her clit is asking for. The purr through her back. My fist in her hair. My mouth at the side of her neck.

She comes apart.

The whole thing.

The arch, the sound, my name in her mouth at full Draelith shape, her elbows giving out at the mattress, her hips locked between my hand and my tail.

Her body clenches around me at the peak.

That undoes me.

The rhythmic lock of her body on mine — a Draelith male’s biology cannot resist it. The pair-bond configuration triggers a sympathetic response in my system that overrides my discipline, overrides the pace I was setting, overrides the composure I have been running on. My regulatory system gives.

The purr goes to a register I have never previously reached — deep enough that the bulkhead vibrates, deep enough that her body, pressed against mine, feels it through every point of contact. The rosettes on my forearms and my chest go off at peak saturation; the pheromone broadcast makes the first one look like a courtesy. My tail tightens involuntarily at her waist — not a choice, a lock, the muscle memory of a Draelith male whose mate has pulled him past the line.

My canines extend.

Involuntary. The drop — my mouth is at the side of her neck where the mate-mark spot sits, and my canines have, at the peak, dropped to the threshold where one more degree of pressure would break skin and set the bond.

I hold the threshold.

My discipline — the discipline that keeps me operational — holds at the millimeter. My mouth opens against the spot. My canines are against the skin. I do not bite.

I come inside her.

The full thing.

A sound comes out of me that has no place in either language — the sound my biology makes the first time it is taken apart by a female built to take me apart. My hips lock. My tail locks at her waist. My chest at her back. The purr is not a purr anymore; it is a frequency, one her ribcage is receiving at the register the bond-chemistry uses to inform a mate that her male has emptied inside her.

She feels it.

I know she feels it because her body does the thing a second time — a smaller aftershock, the final answer of a nervous system that has given up the ghost four times tonight.

I say it into the side of her neck. Low. The gravel cracking on the syllable.

“My good girl.”

The possessive. My. Said into the skin at the mate-mark spot I am not marking. The word lands against her pulse, and her whole body responds once more, smallest, the last.

My.

Mine.

My canines are still at the threshold.

I lift my mouth off the spot. I move it six inches up her throat to the line of her jaw. I kiss there instead. No canine. No claim.

She makes a sound that is half gratitude, half grief. Her hand finds my fist in her hair. Loosens my fingers gently. Brings the hand down. Laces her fingers through mine.