FOURTEEN
“IT’S SAFE, RIGHT?” his female asked.
Vikan almost smiled and he reached out to squeeze her hip. “You cannot give up now.”
They were standing on the edges of the shore. The sky was a dark indigo, a million stars glittering high above, next to Luxiria’s moon.
“I would never let any creatures harm you, luxiva,” he murmured when she hesitated yet again.
And Vikan felt a warmth in his chest when she eventually nodded, tossing him a small smile. She trusted him to protect her. That knowledge made him feel higher than any fix of yikava ever could.
“I will go in first if you’d like,” he murmured, remembering their afternoon at the inlet. How’d she’d made him turn until she entered the water.
She put a hand on his arm. “No, it’s alright.”
And then, Vikan went still because slowly, as if unsure of herself, his female tugged up the hem of her tunic, before pulling it over her head and off her body.
The soft, thin material hung limp in her fingers before she let it drop to the sand, baring her body to his eyes for the first time.
Vikan’s breaths came quickly. His pupils flared until he was sure his eyes looked black, devoid of all color. And a steady growl rose up in his chest, unable to look away from his female.
She was perfect. Utterly perfect.
Her pale skin shone in the silver light, revealing full breasts tipped with dusky pink nipples, a narrow waist that led to lush, rounded hips, before ending with long, shapely thighs he imagined wrapped around his body in the aggressive throes of mating.
His Instinct pushed into the forefront of his mind, making him feel on the edge of madness. But he hung onto that thread of control, not wanting to scare his mate by letting his Instinct make itself known.
Taylor was giving him this…this rightness. Nothing had ever felt more natural to him than gazing upon his lush mate in this way.
She didn’t know how close he was to falling on her like a crazed beast. But instead of that, somehow, some way, he slowly untied the laces of his leg coverings before baring himself to her, for the second time that span.
And just as she’d done that afternoon, her eyes traced his body—her arousal rising up so he could scent her—gliding over his chest and abdomen before resting on his cock. It pulsed for her, more drops of pre-cum shimmering at the broad head.
Taylor’s tongue swiped out to wet her bottom lip and Vikan groaned.
“Female,” he rasped. “I only have so much control.”
His voice sounded nothing like his own, another indicator of how close his Instinct was to the surface.
“One time,” she murmured, “I’d like to test the limits of that control.”
It took him a moment to realize she was teasing him.
He growled. “You already are.”
Taylor smiled, her blunt white teeth flashing. He liked it when she smiled.
That smile turned into a shocked gasp when he reached out and snagged her around the waist, hauling her up into his arms. The feel of her skin against his…was unparalleled.
Even with Nitav, he had never felt his intense connection, this intense need.
He waited for the guilt to plague him at that realization. But to his surprise, he felt only desire for his luxiva.
He was purring as he led them both into the Lopitax sea and the sound deepened when Taylor wrapped her arms around his neck to steady herself even further.
She shrieked when a cresting wave splashed up and hit them both on their bare skin.
“It’s freezing!” she exclaimed, but then she laughed, pressing closer to his warm body. “Oh my God, whose idea was this?”
Vikan’s face pulled into an expression he hadn’t made in quite some time at the sound of her genuine, pleasing laugh.
When Taylor saw it, her lips parted and Vikan swore her eyes softened. “You’re smiling,” she breathed.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
Just then, a large wave crashed into Vikan’s body, drenching them both. Taylor sputtered, blinking the salty water from her eyes as Vikan trudged on, taking them out to calmer water. When he reached the space where the waves were nothing more than mere ripples and he could no longer touch the bottom of the sea floor, he stopped.
He was reluctant to let his female go, but he was perilously close to losing control, to breaking the words he’d told her, that they wouldn’t mate that night. That had been before he’d felt her naked flesh against him.
“Is the water too cold for you?” he wondered, slowly letting her drift away from the circle of his arms.
Her hair hung in wet tendrils around her face, but her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright.
“No,” she answered, surprising him by drifting back towards him. “I’ll get used to it soon.”
Vikan gripped her bare hips, growling, when she came to him. His Instinct purred in satisfaction as she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing their bodies together.
“Luxiva,” he rasped when he felt her hard nipples brush against his chest.
“We’re pretending, aren’t we?” she murmured. “We’re pretending that we belong to each other.”
Vikan’s chest heaved from her words, from the slick feel of her. When she wrapped her legs around his waist, he hissed out a breath, his cock head brushing the bottom of her thighs.
Pretending.
In a sense they were, but in so many other ways, they weren’t.
“We do belong to each other,” he corrected.
“Do you?” she whispered, her breath drifting over his cheek, she was so close. “Do you only belong to me?”
Vikan’s jaw ticked at her words, understanding the unspoken question.
Before he could reply, she shook her head, saying, “Never mind. Tonight is only us, right?”
Vikan let his shoulders loosen. “Tev, female. Only us.”
“In that case,” she murmured, her voice carrying softly over the sea water, “I really want to kiss you, Vikan.”
He stilled. “Tev?”
Taylor’s gaze flicked down to his lips. “Would that be okay?”
Vikan swallowed, fearing that if she kissed him in the way he’d seen the other human females kiss their mates, he wouldn’t be able to keep control.
But how could he deny her?
Besides, he didn’t want to deny her this.
And even though she clearly believed they were still ‘pretending,’ Vikan’s only goal was to show her something beyond that, something that would make her rethink her decision to leave. At least for a little while.
“Tev,” he purred.
Her hands slid up the back of his neck, to the sensitive flesh there, and he groaned low in his throat. It had been so long since he’d been touched in this way, with soft hands, a gentle caress.
He could perceive her heat against his lower abdomen. He was maddeningly aware that if she slid a little lower, he would be poised at the entrance of her cunt.
“You do not know what you do to me, female,” he said, his voice nothing more than a dark rumble.
Taylor didn’t waste another moment. Her fingers fluttered on his neck briefly and then she pulled him forward.
When her lips connected with his own, he heard roaring in his ears, heard her small, breathy gasp that sizzled straight down to his cock.
His female had the softest lips and he growled when she pressed them against him even harder.
Kissing was not something Luxirian partners did, although, as his mate kissed him, Vikan couldn’t think why not. Sparks of pleasure trailed up his spine and every brush of her fingers, every small movement of her lips caressing his own was sublime.
When he felt her tongue trail across the seam of his lips, he groaned, allowing her inside.
And then the kiss became something else entirely.
A soft moan tumbled from her lips and the sound of sea water trickling met his ears as her arms rose and tightened around him.
Quickly, he learned to reciprocate and match her kiss, stroking his own tongue deep inside her mouth.
It was like mating, he thought. It was as close to the act of mating they could get to in that moment. And as he slid his ridged tongue against her own, exploring her taste and warmth, he felt her hips begin to move.
“Luxiva,” he rasped, his tone bordering on desperation, as he broke away. She moaned, pulling his head back.
His fingers clenched into her hips, the tips of his claws pricking her skin before he remembered himself. He was torn between holding her hips still or guiding her to grind into his abdomen harder.
“Vrax,” he cursed, feeling his body begin to grow, his muscles bulging.
Luxirians drew strength from sexual energy, from arousal and the act of release. They grew stronger from it, literally. And he was beginning to feel those effects. Sex had the ability to triple a Luxirian’s strength. There was a reason why they were the most feared warriors in the Four Quadrants.
“Vikan,” she moaned between them, her breaths coming out fast. “God, why do you taste so good?”
Because they were made for each other, he couldn’t help but think. Because no other would ever be more compatible for either of them, ever again.
Her tantalizing tongue licked and delved and drove him to madness. And when she sucked on it, drawing his tongue between her lips? He felt even more pre-cum push from the tip of his cock, readying his body to mate his female.
“Don’t stop,” she pleaded, her hips rotating against him, when he was forced to pull back once again.
“Female,” he growled, his breaths ragged. He was coming undone, that thread of control unraveling. “I am on the edge. I cannot—”
And then she did the unthinkable. As if of her own instinct, she grabbed his straightened, hard horns, her fists wrapping around their base, and forcefully dragged his lips back to her. She couldn’t possibly know that she might as well have grabbed his cock, that a Luxirian’s horns were as sensitive when aroused.
Vikan snarled, breaking, and that thin, fraying thread of control snapping.
He would not mate her, but by the time he was finished with his female, he would know her body as intimately as if he had.
Taylor moaned, drunk on lust and the intensity of their attraction, and when he tugged her hips down, the head of his cock slipped over the folds of her cunt.
“Oh my God,” she breathed against him before nibbling on his bottom lip. “Yes, Vikan.”
He could not do what he wanted to her body in the middle of the Lopitax sea, so he quickly started for shore, somehow able to keep their lips connected the entire way. Her grip tightened on his horns. It was intensely pleasurable and intensely intimate.
When he reached shore and dragged their bodies from the ocean, her legs tightened around him like a vice, her lush, full breasts bobbing against his chest.
His mouth watered, needing to suckle them.
He left their clothes lying on the shore, knowing that, with what he had planned for her, she wouldn’t need her tunic. He would remember to retrieve them in the morning.
But right then, he had his female to pleasure. And nothing would distract him.
* * *
Things had escalated quickly, Taylor realized the moment Vikan laid her back onto the smooth floor of their cave.
She blinked, her lips parted, her body flushed, intense arousal and desire and need coursing through her, making it hard to concentrate on anything else.
His kiss had been a drug, his taste an addiction. Already, she was trying to grab him back to her, so she could kiss him again. And again, and again.
She never wanted to stop kissing him.
More importantly, she wondered why the hell she hadn’t been kissing him from the very beginning.
They were both still wet from the sea, but the heat from the fire was quickly wicking away any lingering moisture.
“Vikan,” she breathed, her nipples tingling, her whole body tingling.
It was their connection, she knew. This was what Vikan felt whenever he spoke of his Instinct, this crazed, lustful intensity, so thick that Taylor could hardly see straight.
All she knew was that she wanted him like she’d never wanted another male before.
“We will not mate this night, female,” he growled to her, when she rocked her hips up, her body acting of its own accord, trying to entice him.
Taylor almost groaned in frustration, her eyes falling to his hard, thick cock. Shimmering, opalescent pre-cum wet the head and she licked her lips, wanting to lap it up.
“Vrax,” she heard him curse under his breath and she knew that was playing with fire.
Vikan was a massive male, not only his cock but his body. He was approaching eight-feet-tall and probably weighed over three, possibly four, hundred pounds of pure muscle and bulk.
Just the thought of him losing control, giving into the aggression and need she sensed just beneath his surface, made her pussy wet. What would it be like to be at the mercy of all that power, of all that strength? What would it be like if he became nothing more than a wild male, giving into his animalistic need to mate, to fuck, to claim?
I already know, she thought. In their future, he’d mated her like that. In her dreams, her visions, whatever the hell they were, Vikan had fucked her like a beast when she’d teased him beyond his tightly reigned control.
Even in the present, she could recall how he felt then. How thick and heavy his cock was, pounding between her thighs, giving her all of his aggression, his desire, his primal needs, before spilling his seed into her, marking her, making her his.
Taylor whimpered, squeezing her thighs, squirming on the floor of the cave.
She was remembering it all.
Already, the cave was heady and musky with the scent of arousal. Even Taylor could smell it, so she wondered how Vikan could stand it.
He didn’t wait much longer. He repeated, “We will not mate tonight, female, but I will pleasure you well.” Taylor’s back arched. “Do you want me to?”
“Yes!” she immediately cried out. “Vikan, stop talking and come here.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded like an amused chortle. But he did as she ordered and knelt between her thighs, which she widened for him.
“Fates, luxiva,” he rasped, looking down at her body, illuminated by the firelight that played over her skin. There was no need to be self-conscious, she realized. The way that Vikan was looking at her left no room for questioning what he thought of her body.
His desire for her was written plainly across his face. As clear as a flashing neon sign.
In response, she spread her thighs wider so he could see the most intimate part of her. And as his gaze zeroed in on her sex, it amazed her how quickly they’d gone from kissing to this. She hadn’t expected it when she’d asked to kiss him. But that kiss…
God, that kiss.
It had changed everything.
She’d played with fire and now she was about to get seared.
A moan tumbled from her throat when Vikan leaned forward and drew one of her peaked nipples between his lips. His dark hair spilled over his shoulder, caressing her body, the ends tickling her abdomen. Her back arched when he lightly ran his teeth over the sensitive bud, feeling her sex pulse in response.
He switched to her other breast, sucking and laving and devouring her, the pleasure so unbelievably intense. Taylor had never gotten off from having her breasts played with, but it felt like she was already on the verge of cumming and he hadn’t even touched her between her thighs, where she wanted him the most.
But her male was taking his sweet ass time getting there.
Because once he finished with her breasts, he licked a line with that wicked, ridged tongue down the valley between them, before dipping into her belly button and running the tips of his claws up her sides. The contrast between the warmth of his soft tongue and the pricking of his sharp claws made Taylor hold her breath, her clit throbbing like it never had before.
“Vikan,” she whispered, her voice sounding choked.
“Tev, luxiva?” he rasped, his dark eyes flashing up to her even as he ran his tongue over her pubic bone.
So close.
He was teasing her. Just a few days ago, she would’ve never believed that Vikan would’ve been like this. He’d been cold, detached, closed off to her then.
Now? He was fire and heat, hell bent on consuming her completely until there was nothing left she could give.
So much had changed, in such a short amount of time. It didn’t seem so crazy to her anymore that Cecelia had fallen for her Luxirian warrior in less than a week.
What is it about these Luxirians? she wondered.
Taylor cried out, her back bowing when Vikan shifted suddenly, running his tongue with a firm stroke between her legs, right over the seam of her sex. His ridged tongue hit every spot just right, dragging over her clit until her skin felt like it was buzzing.
“Yes,” she hissed softly. “Right there! Oh my God!”
He repeated what he’d done, a purring growl reverberating in the cave, so loud and strong that she felt it against her clit.
Unbelievable, she thought wildly, her hands trying to grip something as she felt her orgasm approaching. But she only felt the floor of the cave. Recalling his response earlier, she reached down and gripped his horns instead.
He roared between her thighs, the sound muffled because he was too busy flicking her clit back and forth with the tip of his tongue.
But he thrust his head against her hands, making his horns slide in her grip, so she figured he liked it.
So, Taylor never let go. And since they were pretending, she imagined that his horns were his cock. Every lap and lick over her pussy was a twisting pull and stroke over the hard, black bone, which made Vikan groan between her thighs.
Taylor’s lips parted, feeling that sexual power course through her. She loved giving him pleasure, making him feel as good as he was making her feel.
But all too soon, because he was so damn good, she felt the familiar rising tension through her body.
“I’m gonna cum, Vikan,” she cried out, her grip tightening on his horns, wishing she truly was holding onto his cock. “O-oh!”
Right as she begun to cum, Vikan delved his tongue deep inside her pussy, lapping at her entrance and her most sensitive inner walls. Taylor saw stars as her eyelids squeezed shut, her back arching, grinding her sex against his face as the most intense orgasm of her life ripped through her body.
And she could do nothing but ride it out, feeling her male lick that naughty tongue deep inside her and gently roll her clit with the pads of his fingers.
It seemed to last forever, but when it was finally over, it only took her a moment to realize that Vikan hadn’t stopped. She still had her fists wrapped around his horns and his tongue was still in her pussy.
“V-Vikan,” she whispered, her clit sensitive as he lightly ran the length of his tongue over the bud. “I…I need a moment to rest.”
“Nix,” he rasped, his eyes so dark that they were black, “You do not.”
And then Taylor’s breath hitched, her whole body tingling, as he went right back to work between her thighs.
Briefly, her gaze strayed up to the ceiling of the cave, watching the shadows of the flames flicker along the walls. Just then, Vikan buried his tongue inside her again, making her thighs tighten around his head.
And as she felt yet another orgasm building deep within her body, she knew that it was going to be a long, long night.