FIFTEEN
BY THE TIME Vikan finally let her rest, she’d been four orgasms in.
Even then, he wasn’t done with her.
By the time Vikan finally let her rest for the night, she’d lost count of how many orgasms he’d given her. What she did know was that her body was buzzing, her skin so sensitive that every time Vikan touched her, she would gasp and arch into his palm. Her pussy was tingling, as were her toes, her fingers, every limb of her body, every strand of her hair.
She felt…different. Changed.
And if this was how Luxirians treated their females, no wonder Kate, Beks, and Cecelia had chosen to stay with theirs.
What she also knew was that Vikan hadn’t cum. After her third, she’d pleaded with him for a break, told him that she wanted to return the favor, especially since his hips had been grinding and fucking the goddamn floor since he’d been so turned on and aroused.
But he’d denied her.
He’d told her that if she touched him, he would break his word about them not ‘mating’ that night. When she’d told him that she wanted his cock, that she didn’t care anymore, he’d given her the sweetest kiss that made her melt in his arms and repeated softly that they wouldn’t mate that night.
It was frustrating, but he’d quickly distracted her. And by the time he finally released her, after he finally gave into her exhausted pleas, Taylor couldn’t do much else but collapse against the cave floor and snuggle into her Luxirian when he wrapped her up in his arms, holding her tight against his chest.
And then she promptly passed out, but fell into a dream.
* * *
“You are insatiable,” Taylor murmured, gasping as he licked a line up her throat. “Vikan.”
“Can you blame me, female?” he rasped, gripping her hips, pressing her to him so she felt the hardened length of his throbbing cock.
But she pulled back, grasping the sides of his face, so she could peer at him closely. Because, strangely enough, she knew she was dreaming, but this felt different from all her other dreams.
“Is this real?” she whispered, her gaze connecting and holding his gray eyes.
“It is always real, female,” he replied.
They were in his bedroom in Lopixa, she knew. Because she’d seen it before in her visions. The room was large and it was night, the only source of illumination coming from the windows, shafts of silver moonlight filtering their way through.
She saw the bed, a platform of a dozen furs, with brightly colored cushions lining the edges. They were standing at the very foot of it, a quiet humming the only sound in the room. She knew it was the Lopitax sea, which lay just beyond the cliffs of the outpost.
Taylor bit her bottom lip, his words echoing in her mind. He was right. Because she didn’t feel like they were pretending anymore.
“I meant are you dreamwalking, right now?” she finally asked.
“Tev,” he replied. “I am. We only have a couple spans until we reach Lopixa, if that. I want to take advantage of our time together.”
Taylor softened at his words and when he stroked his claw-tipped fingers down her bare arm, her breath hitched. Her skin was still sensitive.
“How do you feel?” he murmured against the shell of her ear, inhaling her scent, before running the sides of his horns across her temple.
Taylor flushed, seeing those horns in a different light now.
“Amazing,” she replied softly. Taylor had never been shy in her entire life. Her peers and friends had always called her reserved, but she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind if she thought the occasion called for it.
But right then?
Vikan was making her shy, in the best way possible. She felt her belly flutter with a thousand butterflies as his lips curled up in response.
She loved his smile. Just a few days ago, she never would’ve thought she’d seen it, never would’ve thought he’d been capable of one.
And even though she could tell his smile was a little rusty and underused, it made it all the better when he let her see it.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be so jealous about all the females you’d been with before,” she commented, a teasing smile crossing her lips. “Because you’ve obviously learned a lot from them.”
Vikan huffed out a breath, shaking his head. “Female,” he warned.
“I just wish you’d let me return the favor,” she murmured, pressing closer.
“I do not want to mate you on a cave floor like a beast,” he rasped, his hands settling on her lower back.
Taylor’s eyes flicked to the bed in his room pointedly. “So I have to wait until we reach Lopixa? Until we are here?”
“Tev,” he replied. “Only when I have given you the softest furs, a hot, well-prepared meal, and allowed you to rest and recover in comfort. All the luxuries you deserve.”
Taylor liked it a little too much that he wanted to provide those things for her. She’d always prided herself on her independence, but she let herself off the hook that time. Vikan only wanted to make her happy and she would let him. If only for the short amount of time they had left together.
The thought was sobering and she tried to hide her frown, the sinking of her heart in her chest, from him before he asked too many questions.
To distract herself, she looked at the bed and said, “We’re here now. Those furs look soft.”
Vikan growled, dragging her even closer to him, if possible. “Until we reach Lopixa, I will sate myself by tonguing your cunt and hearing your moans, tev?”
Taylor sucked in a desperate lungful of air. Whenever he talked a little dirty to her, she couldn’t help but respond. And that response was getting soaked between her thighs, despite the marathon of orgasms he’d given her just before they’d fallen asleep.
But dammit, the male turned her on like no other.
“Come,” he murmured, “I wish to hold you.”
He guided her onto the bed, propping himself up amongst the cushions and pulling her between his thighs, her back to his front. Then he tilted her head slightly and gave her a deep kiss, making her head spin.
“You’re…” she whispered, her eyes unfocused when they pulled away. “Why are you so wonderful?”
His arms tightened and he pressed a kiss to the back of her neck, trailing his velvety lips over the sensitive skin there.
Taylor sighed, smiling, and snuggled more deeply into him. “Is this why you brought us here? So we could cuddle and make out on your bed?” she teased. “Typical male.”
“This is our sleeping platform, luxiva,” he corrected. “But tev, I did.”
She let out a surprised laugh.
“And so we could see the view,” he murmured.
Taylor looked out the long window against the wall directly in front of them.
“Our dwelling,” he started, “is at the highest point of Lopixa. We can see everything from up here.”
Our dwelling.
Taylor bit her lip, liking that a little too much.
Before them, she could see the large expanse of the darkened ocean that stretched for miles and miles and miles. It looked like a sea filled with mercury from the light of the moon, a thick silver.
She could imagine waking up to that view for the rest of her life.
“Have you had visions of us here?” he asked, his breath drifting over her ear.
Taylor sucked in a breath, but eventually confessed, “Yes. Many.”
“Tell me about one,” he requested.
“Most of them,” she started, feeling a flush rise up her neck, “are of us having sex.”
He purred, his hands taking liberties as they slid down her front, grazing over her breasts, before cupping her between her thighs. She gasped, feeling his heat and pressure there.
But he didn’t do anything. He just held his hand there, feeling her. It felt possessive and sexy and hot as hell.
“Tell me,” he ordered.
She blew out a shaky breath, trying to keep her hips still from grinding in his hand. But it was hard, so hard.
“Umm,” she rasped. “In one vision, I saw us here, on the bed. You had me…on my hands and knees, bent over the edge.”
A rough growl tore from his throat and his hand tightened slightly over her pussy. “Continue, female.”
“I think…I think you’d been somewhere,” she said, furrowing her brow as she tried to remember, trying to think past the haze of lust fogging her mind. “You’d been gone for a little while, maybe to the Golden City, but I’d stayed behind since it was only a short trip. And when you got home that night, you were…ravenous. We had sex twice before we’d even made it to the bed.”
Vikan hissed out a breath, his cock pulsing against her back.
Taylor gasped when his fingers lightly ran between the seam of her sex. “Y-you were rough,” she whispered. “But I loved it. I needed it. I needed you. And when you made me cum, I remember fisting my hands in these furs, unable to do anything but just…just feel you.”
“Vrax,” he cursed softly, even as he lightly played between her thighs, just a whisper of a touch, nearly not enough pressure to make her orgasm.
But it felt nice. It felt…intimate, as if they’d done just this a million times before.
“Did you feel the blood bond then?” he rasped. “Between us?”
For some reason the question made Taylor feel vulnerable.
“I think so,” she replied. “I—I don’t even know if I understand what it is.”
Vikan’s fingers paused and she felt him brush a kiss across her neck again. “You wish to know?”
“Cecelia said something about it, when she came back from wherever she’d gone,” Taylor said. “And I know for certain I’d dreamt of it that night, right before you came for me.”
“What did it feel like?” he asked her.
She’d been afraid that he’d ask. But she’d gone this long without fear stopping her, so she found herself saying, “It was like we were one.”
“Tev.”
“I…I could feel you, your thoughts, your emotions. I felt everything you felt for me and I knew that I broadcasted just as much to you. It was equally terrifying and yet, it felt natural. Normal.” She turned to look at him over her shoulder, licking her lips. “I…”
She trailed off, not knowing if she could voice the words.
“Tell me,” he murmured, his free hand coming to caress the space between her brows, where a line had just formed. Then he ran that hand down to her lips.
Her lips brushed his fingers as she said, “I loved you.”
Vikan’s pupils dilated, becoming so black that she could see her reflection in them.
His voice was gruff as he said, “And I am certain I loved you, luxiva.”
Taylor swallowed past the thick lump in her throat, breaking the contact and turning in his arms so that she looked out the window at the dark sea. Her heart was pounding in her chest and she blew out a steady breath, trying to get her heartbeat back under control.
It was quiet for a moment. And then she gasped, feeling the dream changing and shifting. Vikan pulled them from their bed, pulled them out of Lopixa entirely until they stood in front of a circle of giant, stone statues.
Land stretched for miles in all directions, the sea nowhere in sight. And Taylor knew that they were no longer in the western lands, nowhere close to them.
It was dark, the full Luxirian moon still hanging overhead, illuminating the faces of the statues that towered over the both of them like skyscrapers. They were arranged in a perfect circle and Taylor counted six. Three males and three females, their expressions, weathered and smoothed with time and exposure, were calm and serene.
“The Fates,” Vikan murmured down to her, tucking her close to his body. “We are in the plains of the Ravrax’tor. This is where the mating ceremony, the ravraxia, takes place.”
“I…I don’t understand,” Taylor confessed, looking from him to the statues.
“This is where the blood bond begins, luxiva,” he said. “When fated mates perform the ravraxia, they come here, or another sacred place, and ask for the Fates’ blessing.”
“Okay,” Taylor said softly, looking up at the statues. “And how do you know if you get their blessing?”
Vikan purred, making Taylor flush. “You will know, female. It is said that once the Seeing is complete, the mating call consumes the pairing, but it is intensified. A gift from them,” he told her, jerking his head towards the Fates.
“Intensified,” she whispered, thinking back to earlier that night, when she’d been overstimulated with need and desire so potent it had scared her. She couldn’t imagine this ‘mating call’ even more intense than that.
“Tev. The fated pair stay here, on the plains, until the mating call subsides, usually a few spans,” he said.
“It lasts for days?” she gasped, turning on him with wide eyes. “Surely you’re joking.”
“Nix, I am not,” he purred. “And on the first night of the ravraxia, a blood bond is performed. It is when the fated pair, during the first mating of the night, bond themselves to one another forever by drinking one another’s blood, at the same moment.”
“Not going to lie, that sounds a little…gross.”
Vikan smiled, his smile just wicked enough to make her heart skip a beat. “In the moment, I have heard that nothing compares to it, female.”
Her voice went breathless as she said, “So after the blood drinking, what happens next?”
“The fellixix is formed. The bond. That is what you felt in your visions, Taylor. That connection.”
Taylor closed her eyes for a brief moment, remembering the way it felt. That love, that happiness, that warmth. She’d never been so certain of anything in her life, than when she’d been with him, when she’d felt him through that connection only they shared.
Everything was becoming…complicated. So, so complicated.
When she opened her eyes, she stepped forward, out of the circle of his arms. It was hard to think when he was touching her.
She wanted to get a closer look at the Fates, but Vikan snatched her quickly before she stepped into the circle.
“Nix,” he murmured in her ear. “Unless you wish for the Seeing to begin, you cannot enter past the boundary.”
Taylor’s eyes found his own. “But this is only a dream.”
He shook his head. “It does not matter here. The Fates know this is real. They know we are dreamwalking. They will come if summoned.”
“What does this all mean?” she asked softly. “Why did you show me this?”
“You wished to know what a blood bond was, in its truest form,” he replied. “And I wanted to show you this because your visions show you a path of your future. This would be a part of that future, should you choose it.”
If you chose me, was what went unspoken. But Taylor heard it loud and clear.
“Vikan,” she whispered, turning in his arms so that she could face him. “You know I cannot stay here. You know I have to leave soon.”
He went silent. And Taylor’s heart felt so heavy that she wondered if she was making a terrible, terrible mistake.
But what mistake was she thinking of? Did she think it was a mistake to lead Vikan on like this, to pretend that they had a future together?
Or was her mistake thinking that she could leave? Was her mistake thinking that she’d be able to give him up when the time came?
“Our journey is not over yet, luxiva,” he finally said, drawing her close yet again.
Taylor’s eyes slid shut when he dropped his head so he could kiss her and tears burned in the back of her throat at the sweetness of it. She clutched his neck tighter, keeping him against her.
“We still have time,” he whispered against her lips.