TWENTY-THREE

Rixavox’s blood was thick and rich.  It flowed over her tongue and down her throat like an expensive wine.  It was strangely pleasant.  She hadn’t expected that.

Once he was sure she’d taken the first draw from him, he leaned forward, craning his neck down to do the same.  He kissed her neck, a light brush of his lips, that she found sensual and sweet.  And then he sucked at the blood.

“Ohh,” she moaned, eyes rolling into the back of her head.

Unbelievable.

With that small suck, it felt like his lips were everywhere, over every inch of her body.  He began his claiming rhythm between her thighs again and then he sucked more, lapping at the sides of her neck to catch stray drops.  Just when she thought her pleasure couldn’t get any more intense…he proved her wrong.

“Take me, luxiva,” he urged, cupping the back of her neck and pressing her forward.  His other forearm was braced on the other side of her head and out of the corner of her eye, she saw his muscles shift and expand.  He grew stronger from sex, she realized.  More powerful.

With a soft cry, she latched her lips over him and began to take his blood.  It sizzled into her stomach like whiskey, warming her from the inside, and the burn felt good.  So damn good.

Everything in her world was focused on him, on the pleasure he was masterfully creating between her thighs, on the small space on his neck that brought them even closer together.  If any other man had asked her to literally suck his blood, she would’ve told them he was crazy.  But this…this was something else.

Cecelia didn’t know if it was the Fates’ influence or the magic of the Rillirax or the power of Luxiria…but this felt natural and primal.

Then something began to happen within her.

Cecelia gasped.  She felt Rixavox.  Not just thrusting into her, but she felt him.  Inside her mind.  His presence was soft at first, just a light touch, but then grew and grew and grew.

“W-what?” Cecelia whispered, pulling away to look up at him.  She licked her lips and tasted his blood.  “What’s happening?”

“The fellixix,” Rixavox murmured down to her.  “Feel, luxiva.”

And then he plucked the bond between them and she felt it.  Suddenly, his desire, his pleasure swarmed her mind and she reached out to accept it with a cry, acting purely on instinct, before she did the same for him, opening up her own mind without truly knowing even how.

Rixavox bellowed into her neck, his thrusts becoming out of sync, jagged.  He fucked her thoroughly into the furs and she clung to his shoulders, holding on, as another orgasm washed over her, so wonderful that it was on the edge of being painful.  Pleasure and pain and blood and magic and love.  That was what this ravraxia ceremony was.

Rixavox was close.

Cecelia could feel the burn of his orgasm building through their blood bond.  He was right on the edge and when she squeezed her inner muscles around him, trying to draw out his seed…he was there.

Rixavox’s eyes flared, pumping his hips hard and fast, as his pleasure crested and then exploded.  Mindlessly, he fucked her, his cock vibrating inside her with the intensity of his purring growl.  Then a moan filled the cavern, Cecelia’s moan, when she felt his hot cum bathe her inner walls, so forceful and powerful that she’d almost mistaken it for a thrust.

He was murmuring down in Luxirian to her, telling her she was beautiful, that she was his, and it took her a dazed moment to realize she understood the alien words.  Was it the blood bond at work?

Cecelia smoothed her hands over his back, feeling those delicious muscles flex under her fingertips, as he emptied himself into her, filling her up with his seed.

With a strained groan, he collapsed, only managing to roll to the side at the last moment so he wouldn’t crush her.  But he brought her with him so they were lying side-by-side, her leg slung over his outer thigh so that he didn’t have to take his cock out of her.

He was purring so loudly against her, her big, content Luxirian who had just brought her more pleasure than she thought possible.

So many emotions welled up within Cecelia.  She was so overwhelmed as she kissed his face and ran her hands over his body that tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes.

Rixavox made an alarmed sound and brushed them immediately away.  “I have made you unhappy?” he rasped, his voice so anguished that it made her cry harder.  His purring stopped and the quietness seemed deafening.

“No,” she whispered, smiling, pressing a reassuring kiss to his lips, holding them there until she could taste her tears.  “No, never.”

“Humans do this when they are sad though, tev?” he asked, frowning.

“And also when we are insanely happy,” she added, pulling away to look into his eyes.  His horns were straight and his pupils were dilated.  His cock was still hard inside her even though she knew he’d orgasmed like crazy.

Running her hands between them, over his strong pectoral muscles, brushing over his nipple piercings in a way that made his chest rumble, Cecelia felt…home.  She’d never really felt like she had a home before.  And with him, she knew where she stood, where she belonged.  More importantly, she knew who she was again.

He’d given her that.

“You are happy with me?” he questioned softly.

“Yes,” she whispered, smiling, unable to keep her hands off him.  “How couldn’t I be anything but happy?”

To prove it to him, she tested their blood bond, that strange, new, comforting sensation inside her.  She opened up her heart to him, her mind, until he could feel everything that she felt at that very moment.

Then he did the same.

And it was more beautiful than she could have ever imagined.

The purring started up again and she was glad to hear it.  Burying her face into his chest, she felt the vibration through her own body and she smiled, tears shimmering in her eyes.

“How do you feel, luxiva?” he murmured down to her, rubbing his horns over her hair.  Through the blood bond, she knew he meant whether she felt pain from the poison…the poison that Levrix had been giving her.

But she didn’t want to think about Levrix just then.  The Luxirian female, who she’d started to consider a friend, could wait.  She didn’t want anything to ruin this time with Rixavox, not even the thought of Levrix’s betrayal.

“We won’t know until Privanax runs his tests, right?” Cecelia said.  But she didn’t feel fear anymore.  She felt strong.

“Tev,” Rixavox said, shifting slightly.  He didn’t like not knowing.  Her well-being and health was a priority to him.  Through the bond, she felt just how much it bothered him that he couldn’t protect her, even it was from herself, from her own body.

But Cecelia only felt hope.  She felt faith and she’d never been a particularly religious or spiritual person.  If these Luxirian Fates had brought her to him, she truly believed it was for a reason…because they healed one another, they made each other stronger, together.

She knew, even if she didn’t have the tests to prove it, that she’d been given a second chance.  And it was all because of Rixavox.

Looking up at him, her chest swelling with the knowledge of what he’d done for her, she whispered, “Thank you.”

His brow furrowed.  “For what, female?”

She could put together the pieces of the puzzle easily.  She could understand everything that he hadn’t told her before they’d done this.

Cecelia was his mate.  His fated mate.  And they’d just bonded their blood together, becoming closer than what was even possible on Earth, to save her life.

He’d told her that she still had the option of choosing whether she wanted to return to her home planet with the other women and she knew it was true.  He would never force her to stay, even after what they’d just done.

But she also had an inkling of what that would do to him.  Feeling the intensity, the closeness that the blood bond created, she understood now why so many Luxirian males had chosen to take their own lives rather than living another day without their mates.  She understood why so many lives had been lost, not just female lives, when the Plague had decimated their population.

The bottom line was that Rixavox had tethered his life to her own.

He’d done that without knowing what her decision would be on whether she would stay.  He’d done that without knowing whether she would even survive the poison or the cancer that had infected her body.

Before the blood bond, he’d been willing to die for her, to die with her.

And he’d known that if she left him, if she decided to return to Earth, his own life was forfeit as well.

Cecelia would never find a partner like him in her life.  She would never find someone so selfless, so caring, someone that lit her blood on fire and made her feels things she didn’t even know possible in her life.

So, when he asked for what, she was torn between wanting to kiss him senseless or shake her head at him.

“For everything,” she finally said.  Then, with her heart beating in her throat, feeling the strong beating of his own heart against her skin, a soft smile crossed her lips when she asked him, “Are you sure you won’t mind not having children?  Truly?”

When she’d revealed to him that she was infertile, he’d barely blinked.  He’d told her he just wanted her, that it didn’t matter if they couldn’t have children.

But she just wanted to make sure.  To give him an out, even though she already knew his answer.

Rixavox stilled, his body going taut, as he looked down at her, his expression more serious than she’d ever seen it and that was saying something.

“What are you saying, luxiva?”

She shifted in his arms, his cock still nestled deep inside her.  Leaning up, she brushed another kiss over his addicting lips, but he remained perfectly still, as if he was afraid to move, as if moving might erase what she was implying.

“I’m saying that if you’ll have me, if you don’t mind that we won’t have children, or that it might take me a little while to learn about your people and culture, or that I’ll probably butcher your language more often than not,” she teased, smiling, “then I want to stay.  Right here with you.”

“Sessela,” he purred.

But she wasn’t finished.  “I’ve only known you for a short period of time but I can’t imagine saying goodbye to you.  I’ve tried to imagine it, of leaving and knowing that I’d never see you again, and I just physically can’t.  It hurts too much to even consider.”  She shook her head, reaching up to stroke her fingertips down his cheek.  “And you say that Luxirians have their Instincts when choosing a mate, but I’ve often wondered if humans have them too.  Because when I first saw you, I felt mine.  I mean, you made me faint in that hallway, after all.”

“I did not,” he huffed, but his soft, rare smile betrayed him and it completely melted her.

“You were shirtless.  Of course you were responsible,” she teased, laughing.

He growled low in his throat and she felt her spine tingle at the sound.  “Are you flirting with me, female?”

Her cheeks began to hurt from how big her smile was, remembering their conversation in the hovercraft when he’d asked her what a ‘big flirt’ was.

“Yes,” she said, “I am.  And I want to flirt with you and be with you and love you for the rest of my life.”

“For the rest of our life, luxiva,” Rixavox murmured, his soft purr filling her ears like music.  “And I vow to do the same, to love you, respect you, protect you, and honor you until the end of our spans together, tev?”

“Deal,” she whispered.

And then they sealed it with a kiss.