CHAPTER 52

 

BRAX

 

If I could nearly see our bond forming between us a mere click ago; now I get to watch as it shatters.

I believe I’ve an idea what drove Gelert to—

“Brax, focus.  Why is Tara crying?  On you?”

Tara pulls back from me, her eyes stricken—that’s when I see it.  Guilt.  She wears a deep flush of guilt as she cringes and looks to Tac.

She thinks what happened was wrong.  She thinks we are wrong.

Too late, veetling: I’m bonded, and you’re right with me.

Another realization occurs to me: she thinks she and Tac are exclusive.  Why?  Because his kind are monogamous?  So are mine.  She can be monogamous with me.  I wholly approve this possibility.

“Tac,” I manage through gritted fangs.  “Tell her I belong to her.”

Tac hops closer, and Tara’s body might be attempting to rise off of me.  I don’t know: I’m not letting it. I’m not letting her go.

This makes circumstances awkward when Tac opens his arms, and Tara shifts to go to him—but can’t.

“Brax,” he warns.

I’m waiting for her to look at me.  From the way she ducks her head when I try to capture her gaze, we could all be waiting a very long time.  “Tara.”

Carefully.  I shake her.

Tac’s goes apoplectic.  “BRAX!”

Tara’s hand, still fisted in the fabric of my uppersuit, tries to shake me back.  “Dohnt shayyk mee!  Ahnd Eyem weeth Tac!”

‘Weeth.’  I knew it.

Now that she’s meeting my gaze, I attempt to repeat her words.  Less room for misunderstanding, hopefully, plus it gains favor, and with her I need all the favor I can muster.  I’m not above employing tactical manipulation.  I believe there’s a time and place for it.  That time is now, with her nearly bouncing on my lap in outrage.  Making it hard to concentrate, veetling…  I clear my throat and try again to mimic her.  “Tara weeeth Brax.”

When her expression only darkens, I realize immediately that I need to make a concession here.  “Ahhnnd… weeeth Tac.”  The last two words fall off my tongue quickly and without conviction.

She cups a hand behind her ear as if she needs to amplify their capability to catch sound.  I remain silent.

She shakes my uppersuit again.  “I mees-hurd.  Eyem weeth Tac ahlone!”

Ahlone?  Ahlone?  Ahlone is a bad word.  Ahlone means she doesn’t want me to follow her into the B.C.U.  Ahlone-tyyme means she doesn’t even want my tail touching her.  Ahlone is a bad word.  But she lets me override ‘ahlone’ all the time.  Especially if I call to her for a few spans.  Her guilt over leaving me chained and ignored works to fabulous advantage then.

“Noh ahlone.”  My fangs squeak as I clamp my jaws.  I see her eyes flicker to the muscle I can feel jumping in my cheek.  “Tara weeth Brax—ahnd... Tac.”

Eyes narrowed, she challenges, “Whot now?  Saayy it slooww so I understond you understond.  Ahnd ohnly Tac thees tyyme.”

Grrrrwwwl. “Tara weeth Brax—”

I can’t manage it as a single, unbroken sentence.  It’s impossible.  I believe I’m experiencing physical pain merely attempting it.

She crosses her arms, and I’m not certain what her purpose was, but my eyes zero in on the way her movement is forcing the twin swells of her breasts to press in beautiful relief against the fabric of my shirt.

She snaps fingers under my nose.  “EYYES UHP HEE-URE.”

“Tac!”  I snarl.  “Tara ees weeth Brax ahnd Tac,” I switch back to my language for the next word because I don’t know hers for it, but I believe she’ll understand what I’m asking.  “Agreed?”

Now her face turns mulish and she sticks her nose up in the air.  “Noh.”

This word.  This is the other word I do not care much for.  It is an irritating cousin to ‘stohp’ and she applies it to everything she could possibly deem inappropriate: growling, snapping at the others, crowding her—even preventing my ability to keep her safe while she’s in the B.C.U.  ‘Noh!  Keeep yor tayyl too yorcellf!’  Stomp.

I strenuously reject her right to refuse.  “You can’t claim ‘noh’ here—we’re bonded!”

Tac’s eyes bulge, revealing the white rims, he’s got them held open so wide.  “I certainly see why you think this is the approach to take.  You ordering her to change her mind has worked so well for you in the past.”

“Tevek off—” I feel the muscles in my tail tighten as I prepare to whip it for emphasis, but a small hand clamps down on the end of it and shakes it in an offensively impolite manner.  I gape down at Tara.

“Yoo Stohp being meeen too Tac,” she warns.

Smoke clouds the air in the scant inches between our faces when I exhale.  “You agree Tara ees weeth Brax ahnd Tac,” I counter.  When she doesn’t look convinced, I fall back on the point I’d been hoping to avoid.  First male vs. second male.  Rutting luck of it: if I hadn’t fought so hard against the inevitable bonding in the first place, I’d be her first male right now.  I saw how she looked at me, watched me.  Grrrwwwll.

Not the same way she is looking at me now.  She’s immovable.  She’s intractable.

My nostrils flare and more smoke fills the space between us.  Follow command: receive reward.  “Fyyyne. Agree Tara ees weeth ...Tac—”

She raises her chin and narrows her eyes even further, expecting a trap.  This is just insulting.

“—ahnd Brax,” I finish, and I watch Tac’s small jolt of surprise at my capitulation.

She moodily delivers one infuriating word.  “Noh.”  As if sensing my impending need to argue, she holds up a stalling hand.  “Tara ees weeth Tac ahnd Brax ees… ees…”  She looks to be at a loss for words—even her own words.  “Eez lyyka frenndeh.  Bot noh sehx.”

‘Frenndeh?’  ‘Sehx?’  I’ve not the smokiest of clues what these two words mean.  If she’s attempting to take them off the bargaining lot, then naturally I would initially surmise it is something she knows I will want.

But if it associates with the word noh?  It can’t be good.

She startles us all when she suddenly laughs.  “Whot em eye evun sayyng?  Tooo?  Tooo gyyys?  Kahnt hoff bowwth!”

I only have one play to gamble.  “If you don't want Tac’Mot broken into smaller granules than the soap bars you stomped, I think you should reconsider,” I tell her.  I angle my horn at Tac and raise my brow ridges.  “Tac?  Mime ‘dying.’”

Tac tips his head the opposite direction of mine as if he’s studying a particularly unfortunate beetle that overturned on his back and is unsuccessfully trying to right himself with lots of effort but poor results.  I resent the implication.  “You want me to mime ‘death’ when she recently lost two loved ones to a violent end?  Have you truly lost all your sense?”

I flick my tail blades open and shut, with Tara still holding to the part a few finger spans behind them, watching this warily.  I suck in air through my teeth.  “Fair point.”

But Tara catches the gist of it all perfectly fine.  “Yoo weel bee nyyce too Tac?  ‘Noh meen’ too Tac?” she says, hooking the first two digits of both of her hands and bouncing them.

I snort.  “Tara weeth…Tac…ahnd Brax?”

She deliberates for an age.  And she looks uncertain when she utters—in our language—the quietest, weakest imitation of agreed.  She follows it directly with a cautious nod.

I’m not like her.  I’m not about to school her on her pronunciation when she made it close enough.  I give a meaningful look to Tac.

Tara senses that he’s readying for his departure.  “Whot?  Weeth Braax nowww? Allhone?  Ryte NOWWW?  Noh Tac?”

I tilt my horns.  “You heard the princess.  ‘Noh Tac.’  Be gone.”

She flicks her finger against a thick scale plate at my neck, making me twitch in shock.

Tac ignores me, affectionately scritching his claws against her scalp, digging his fingers through her strands in a way that makes her lids fall to half-mast.  She’s instantly contented.  And quiet.

I am stealing this trick.

Then he bends down and presses a soft kiss to her forehead.  “We will join again later,” he tells her over the sound of my growling—which I cannot prevent, so she should stop glaring at me.

Tac reaches for his pillow but this seems to upset Tara to an unbearable degree—she even begins attempting to extricate herself again.  “Waayt, Tac, dohnt goh, yoo shouldent bee alohn!”

“Leave the pillow,” I bite out.

Tac looks unimpressed.  “You want my pillow too?  Is there anything else I can give you Brax?  Anything at all?”

Guilt actually reaches me and I hang my head.  “No, I mean… come back.  Give us a span… or—three.  And then come back.  Just…”

Tac waits.

I meet his eyes once more.  “Just let me have this with her.”

Slowly, he nods before he keeps an uncharacteristically stiff back as he hops away.  The door closes silently behind him.

“Don't look at me like that,” I tell her when her tear-filled eyes meet mine.  “Tac is coming back tonight,” I explain, knowing she knows some of our words, enough to grasp what I’m telling her.

She isn’t crying actively now, which is good but…I have a cockstand that is raging at me and a princess I would very, very much like to comfort. And the last element that worked to bring about closeness and comforting was talking about her fallen guards.  She’s been attempting to talk about them for spans and spans now.  Before, the words meant nothing; then I realized they were names.  With my jealousy banked, I can see her repeated attempts mean she needs to share this.  Perhaps revisiting her memories of them will give her more peace.  It isn’t just at night that she cries for them; I have seen her sadness throughout the rotations also.  It feels like a teveking knife to the ribs.

I place a hand on her mane.  Her eyes narrow, but this doesn’t deter me.  “Tell me of your Meyyghan and Siimowwhn.”

I’m a teveking genius.

Her eyes water and her ire melts—as does she.  Right against me.

Yes.  We don’t have to spark off the other like flint shards.  We could be like this all the time.  As she relaxes enough to lay her head on my shoulder, I take the opportunity to do something that’s been nearly sending me over the edge: I take hold of her dangling tether and replace myself in the empty half, sliding it over my hand and sighing with relief when it settles over my wrist once more.

And she tells me about her beloved guards.  And rut me but I… I hold no jealousy now.  She loves them keenly, so much that I can see plainly that there will be no wresting her from her feelings.  And why push her away by resenting and begrudging their specters? As she pours her hearts out to me I become more confused: her tone is one of active pleading regarding bayybeees and neehed and Meyyghan and Siimowwhn.  But unless she is desiring a proper burial for them, surely she must know they aren’t alive to be needing anything anymore…  So what is it?  What is it she is pleading for?

For the lifespan of me, I can’t determine it.  We don’t have enough common words yet to act as a bridge.

I bring my thumb to the side of her forehead, rubbing slow, careful circles as I turn the matter over.  Perhaps her males aren’t dead at all.  Perhaps they are being held captive, for ransom… I shake my horns.  No.  No one would sell Gryfala like Tac described—a pen’s full of Gryfala—and only attempt to ransom their respective hobs.  I’ve heard about the market for hob wings though.  ‘Aphrodisiac.’  Nothing more than a delusive philter, surely, and so foolhardy an act to obtain I was certain it was myth that they were even collected.

Yet the proof of someone being that bold and that depraved is lying in my arms, a former auction piece herself.  What would hobs-for-parts fetch at an auction? Nothing comparative to a Gryfala’s price, but still an amount that would boggle a mind.  I hope for their sake they had a humane, swift execution.

Execution.

My head pounds at the thought.  When I feel her fingertips gently press under one of my horn bases, I lean into her touch.  My head is angled, but I can still watch her as she massages my aching skull.  Her face is still marked by sadness, and I can feel her desperation, I just don’t know how to help her.  I no longer have a desire to seduce her though.  It feels like taking a liberty, an advantage, that would stain what I want with her.

I’d been splitting my attention between her worried eyes and her lips as they bowed in sadness, moving slower either because she’s reached the end of her story, or because she is feeling that the effort to tell it is futile.  Defeated.  She looks defeated.  And for what feels like the near-thousandth time, she uses her fingers to lift the bottom rims of the strange accoutrements she decorates her face with, and she sweeps her fingers across her lids to dash away tears.

Why does she insist on wearing these?

She acts like they aid her vision: she’s always adjusting them when she peers at a thing.  They tilt as I attempt to pick them up by the leg, causing the band that fits over her nose like a tiny bridle to strain.

“Heyyy!  Queeet eet.”

I pluck them the rest of the way off and force them on my own face.

By the Creator—I’ve never seen anything like this.  Why hasn’t her vision been corrected?  Did she design these herself?  Gryfala love to create and test a myriad of things: they dabble in a little of everything, but to deprive herself of normal vision and depend on a flimsy instrument?  It makes no sense.

“Yoo arrr goheeng too brayyk tem!”

These do not help me see, not at all.  How does this improve her clarity of the world?  Everything looks bubbled outward and strange, and all is blurry through these glass spheres.  The distortion is like viewing through outward curved portholes.  More confused than before, I carefully place them back over her nose, watching to make sure the sticks on the end slide over the top of her ears like she makes them do.

It takes two tries to do this.  It is actually quite difficult to avoid poking the ends into her little ears and—typical of her kind—she is quick to grow irritable and impatient with me but I don’t let her take over.

Satisfied for now even if my curiosity isn't close to sated, I ignore the indignant poses of her furred brows and tenderly stroke the back of my finger against the middle of her chin, working my way up to the velvety soft dip right below her lower lip.  The tip of her pink tongue darts out, tapping me.  Our eyes catch, and she’s the first one to breathe.  But it’s a silent inhale, slow, as if she’s afraid to move at all.

And after all the trouble I went to in order to fit them onto her face—she starts pulling her decorated vision correctors off then half-climbs over me in order to set them on the bedside table.

In order to balance, she grasps my horn.

I’m flipping her onto her back and coming down on top of her before either of us realize I’m even moving.  I’m locked into such an immediate, extreme state of arousal that I don’t see the startled look on her face.  I see her gorgeous lips.

I slam my mouth over hers and I wrap a fistful of her mane around my wrist, the one that binds us together as one.  I feel her breasts against my chest and her heat between my legs as I kneel over her and I’m lost.

Especially when she works my lips apart with the soft slickness of her little tongue, and sucks my bottom lip between her silky ones.

And bites down.

A LOVEBITE.

A LOVEBITE!

Chaos grips my senses so completely that my next blink finds me staring at the softness of her lower belly, the flare of her hips drawing my eyes, and this plain petticoat of a garment that she wears is caught fast in one of my hands.

My other hand is cupping the heat between her legs, my fingers trapped between her closed thighs, clamped too far down to touch.  I snarl. This heat!  I feel it.  And the silky softness of the material under my palm—the silky softness of the skin on the insides of her legs!  My nostrils fill with her scent and I tuck my chin and move to crash my tongue against her—

I freeze when I realize the upward curls of my horn tips will be dangerously close to her face.  I feel a feral grimace steal over my face, making my lips draw back, and vaguely, I taste blood in my mouth.  My blood.  My princess has marked me well. Pride fills my chest, and pleasure makes my spine tingle when I grab up her luscious hips and flip her over onto her stomach.  Placing my palms on each gorgeously rounded rump cheek, I drag her hindend upward as I eagerly drop behind her, bumping my nose between her legs so I can better breathe her in.

A surprised sound erupts from her as she tries to jump forward.  My hand planting on her back locks her weight down and traps her on her knees, where I need her.

“Brax!”

I drag my hand along her spine, blissfully enjoying the softness under my palm as I stroke.  “Tara.”

I exhale in ecstasy, aiming the moist steam between her legs to trap it, causing her to moan, and squirm, and I can almost see her body melt.  I slide my tongue along the gusset of panty fabric that covers her.

“Stohp!”

My tongue is mid-lick, my throat is mid-groan, my taste buds are lighting up like the emergency panel on a crashing ship and she wants me to stohp? Now?  Is she crazed?

Not the right sort of crazed.

I pause.

...Why isn’t she the right sort of crazed?

I can nearly hear my limbic system grinding as it attempts to assign duties in a new, distinctly less pleasant direction.  COMMAND: STOP ACT OF MATING.  Meanwhile, my blood flow sluggishly redirects to assist with higher brain function, and I’m able to back a handspan’s length from her, and drop a distracted kiss to the dimple at the base of her spine that is begging to be licked.

…Unable to help myself now that I’ve noticed its needs though, I quickly swipe my tongue over it and enjoy the light tang of her sweat.

Slowly, her hindquarters sink to her heels.

I drop my buttocks onto my hocks and try to focus.  It’s as if a haze is clearing from my vision.

She peeks over her shoulder at me and her look is undeniably…leery.

“Tara?”

She’s turning enough that I can glimpse her chest, and am able to watch her breasts rise beautifully with her deep inhale before she’s shrieking at me.  “Yoo scared the crahp owwt uf mee yoo eensensahteev JERHK!”

Why is she shouting at me?

Too much white is showing around her eyes now.

My ears are pinned and I feel my shoulders hunch as I lower my head a fraction.  “Stohp?”  I rumble quietly.  It always pleases her when I follow her command! “I obeyed when you said stohp.”

She makes a noise of sharp, loud irritation as she lunges at me, smacking my chest.  She carries this punishment out with the flat of her hand, cuffing me like my dam would use my ear for correction.  It doesn’t hurt, it is more contact than sting, but with the way she’s looking at me, with the intent behind it, she may has well have slapped me across face.

What have I done?

What signal did I miss?

She narrows her eyes and throws her hand out again.  She isn’t aiming for me, but since I don’t know that, I flinch.

Her lips flatten and she huffs.  “Eyy deednt theenk yoo wood stohp.  Eyye wahs skeered!”

I drop to my stomach, and lower my eyes in submission.  “Wrrong?”

I chance a glance up.  She is gritting her flat teeth at me now, and although her voice isn’t loud this time, she sounds strained as she expels the words.  “Yasss wrrrONG, veeery, veeery WRRONG—dohnt yoo evher doo thot ageen!”

I inhale, trying to identify her emotions.  I can smell her arousal, and…anger.  Her anger smell reminds me of burning meat, and I normally enjoy this—after all, fiery, crisped meat tastes delicious—but now I am fearing I am about to find out why you never let a woman reach a charred state of rage.

Nobody can eat charred meat, for one thing.

For another thing, allow me to emphasize the crux of the matter: nobody can eat when the meat is charred.

I press my newly textured tongue to my upper palate, the flavor of her panties ebbing with every swallow I take.  A travesty!  The bumps are for her.  I’ve overheard talk of females becoming hopelessly enamored with their Rakhii guard for his skill of tongue.

She doesn’t seem impressed by mine.

My ear tips touch the bed, they sink so low.

I am very confused.

Hearing the shakiness in her outburst tells me I should scent fear, but I don’t—and if I had a moment ago, I’d have instantly been on the alert for danger.  I have smelled her fear before and it tastes revolting on my tongue and makes my spines start to leak.  Surreptitiously, I awkwardly bring my untethered wrist over my back to swipe my spines in order to check this.

Dry.

I didn’t miss the true emotion, but I did miss a boundary cue.

A severe boundary cue.

One never, never to cross again.

Feeling punished, and not knowing how to correct my mistake let alone prevent myself from repeating it in the future, I dig my claws into the blanket, and feel the pop of the punctures as I sink past the fabric and into the mattress stuffing.  I feel so disconcerted, I can feel myself growing anxious and I can’t stop myself—I stretch my tongue out and drag it across her bared knee.

She peels it from her skin, flings it off and slaps her skirt down.

I cower.

“Stohp eet!”  She demands, a stern finger stabbing towards me so forcefully that I blench.  This earns me yet another outburst.  “Eyy deednt hurrt yoo!”

Creator, my hearts are aching I don’t know how to make what I’ve done better.  I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.

I stay still and keep my eyes downcast.

After several agonizingly painful clicks of silence that seems to inject me with a fiery, venomously painful mix of doubt and self-loathing, she sighs.  Her tone is a mix of bewildered and exasperated.  Smoked meat?  Not charred?  “Brax.  Sumtheeng wahs lawst een tronslayshun.”

My body is wracked with a shiver of relief when she firmly grasps me under the jaw and jerks my head up.  Like the words are being dragged out of her, confusion now plainly written on her face, and on her furrowed brow, she tells me, “Yoo stohped.  Thot EES goohd.  Okaay?”

By now, I know okaay means she wants my agreement.  That at least, I feel sure of.  I give a solemn nod.  I heave a dark-smoked breath of relief that she keeps her hand on my face, and when she slides it up a fraction, I butt my head against her palm, and arch my neck to force her to pet me in forgiveness.

She makes a small noise, but I can’t tell what it means.

Fingers grasp and lift my tail, and I feel her cradle it to her chest.  “Braaax…”

It’s anxiety-knotted beyond recognition.  It’s a heavy mass, like a snarled ball of yarn.  And when she crosses her legs and drops it into her lap and begins to carefully pick it free of itself and unravel it, I groan in gratitude and bump my nose under her arm.

She works around me, her elbow resting just before the jut of my horn on my forehead, and I’m rubbing my temple back and forth against the fabric at the side of her breast and inside of her arm slowly enough I hope she doesn’t notice.

I feel instantly better with a fresh application of my scent mark coating her.

And when she’s done fixing the mess of my tail, she uses her other arm, the one we’re jointly tied at, to reach under her armpit, hook her fingers into the soft tissue of my nostrils and drag my head into her lap.  “Yoo arr SUHCHA PAYN sumtyyms.”

From her tone, I gather she requires an apology.  I angle my chest to land over her knee and lean my weight on her.  “I’m sorry I upset you, Tara.”

She grumbles and shoves my shoulder, but not hard enough to dislodge me, and she doesn’t tell me to stohp, so I pretend as if I didn’t notice she tried.  “Thot SOWNDED goohd, yoo oaf."

Sensing that she’s relaxed enough to hopefully discuss the point I’m most confused about, I point to my lip and speak slowly, and low.  “...At what point after this did I stop pleasing you?  You gave me a lovebite.  A lovebite, Tara.”

I’m shocked when her chin goes up, her eyelids sink seductively low, and if I thought that I felt pride that she bit me?  There is PRIDE shining in her eyes as she owns this bite she bestowed.  “Yehss eyyy deed.  Yoo deeseervt eet.”

And she snaps her teeth at me.

More confused than ever, but feeling emboldened with how pleased she is suddenly looking, I study her.  I study the way her lips are still slightly parted to show her teeth.  I flick my gaze up to her eyes, to see she’s watching me in silent… challenge?

Is this a second chance?

I still don’t know where I went wrong.

My tail starts to loop up to twist on itself before she firmly brings a hand down on it, flattening it to the covers.  Steeling myself, I try to think quickly.

I think—I hope—that by displaying her teeth, this was demonstrating a willingness to lovebite me again.  Another chance.  Holding my breath, I tentatively reach my large hand towards her small mouth.

When I stop a breath away from her lips, she stares hard into my eyes.  And almost as if she can’t quite believe my audacity, hers narrow.

I lower mine.

And I feel her teeth snap over my fingers.

Crite!

I’m on top of her again in an instant.

Tara’s eyes are the size of saucerships.  She spits out my hand as I drag my tongue up the side of her sweetly scented throat.  “Ohh sheeeet, eyy dohnt theenk it means whot eyy theenk eet meens.  Brax...”

“Tara,” I answer into her mane, and I lap at her ear, enjoying the way she shivers under me.

Her voice comes out sounding a little breathy.  “Thees ees a kultoorahl meescommewwnahkayshun.”

I stroke my hand along her side, and fight back a trill of relief as she stretches into it, her body showing satisfaction.

I pet her other side, then smoothly slide my claws under our shirt, and under her blouse layer, until my fingertips come into contact with that wicked stomach slash.  As I examine it again, never letting up on my slow, sensual petting of her body, I hypothesize that this may be from another Gryfala.

“Seeseckshun skarr.  Tweens,” she tries to explain.

If I ever hear of a Gryfala named Tweens or Seeseckshuns I will retaliate in kind. Their nails could easily make this damage, and just because it’s a single slash doesn’t mean a princess didn’t land her strike with a poised, single claw.  Hm.  Maybe the round puncture above it was made by a thumb claw.  And maybe this is why she isn’t brooding over the nest Tac assembled for her.  Maybe this has damaged her egg production somehow.  Perhaps this too is yet another reason she gets a faraway sadness about her.

I lap at it until Tara shoves my nose away.

Shoves my nose away—and down.  Right to the waistband of her petticoat.

Finally feeling invited, I twist my neck so my horns will angle away from her face and I dive in, the material stretching somewhat tightly around my head and making my eyelids peel up a little.

“Brax!”

The taste of her arousal meeting my tongue through the fabric of her panties has me performing an act of greater self-control than I’ve ever shown in all my lifespan.  

I pause.  

And I wait for ‘stohp.’