Page 88 of Tracked and Taken

I sit down on the bunk.

“Water.”

She opens her eyes. She pushes up on her elbows, slowly. I hand her the cup. She drinks half of it. I take it back. I set it on the bulkhead shelf.

“Lie back down, Natalie.”

She lies back down.

The warm cloth.

She makes a small sound when the cloth touches the inside of her thigh.

“Tael — you do not have to—“

“Let me, sweetheart. This is mine. You came on my tongue and on my cock and I am going to clean what I did to you.”

Her eyes close.

I clean her. The inside of her thighs. The places my mouth and my tail and my cock have been. The cloth is warm. My movements are slow. The purr at the ambient register is audible to her because I am two inches from her.

She lets me.

It is the most trust she has given me yet.

I fold the cloth, set it on the shelf with the cup. I pull the thermal blanket up to her ribs. I climb back into the bunk behind her and I pull her back against my chest and I wrap my arm across her ribs, and I put my tail at her waist, and I settle.

She finds my hand with hers. She pulls it up to her mouth. Her lips at my knuckles. One at a time.

The tenderness although she has no energy left for anything other than kissing knuckles. She kisses the pad of each finger. She turns my hand over and kisses the scar at my thumb.

She does not ask about the scar.

She kisses it.

“I didn’t think it could be like that.”

A pause.

“I know, Natalie.”

“Is that — is that always how it is for you—“

“No.”

“No?”

“That was with you. That is how it is with you. No one else. Ever.”

She is quiet, processing a sentence she was not prepared to receive.

I find the slight bruise at her hip where my thumb was ninety minutes ago. I bring my mouth to it. I kiss it — gentle, the apology without the word.

She makes a small sound. Her hand in my hair.

“I am going to have marks in the morning.”

“I know.”