Enki knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he could give his mate everything she desired; everything she needed. His first taste of her had been sweet and satisfying, because he had dipped his tongue into her arousal and realized how responsive she was.

And now he had found the mythical female organ called the clitoris; that tiny, delicate pearl of flesh which gave him such great power. He sucked on it, enjoying her salty, musky sweetness; enjoying the sound of her voice as it crescendoed from a whimper to a full-throated cry.

So responsive.

Enki might be a hard and soulless bastard at the worst of times, but he was no fool. On many occasions, he had listened to his brothers discussing the intriguing subject of female pleasure, and even though he’d dismissed such talk as pointless—at the time he’d considered the likelihood of him actually finding a compatible mate of his own to be slim-to-none—he still remembered everything.

And of course, as was Kordolian custom, he had visited the sendar back on Kythia, at the General’s insistence. The wily old man had given him a theoretical instruction in the finer points of pleasuring a female, and Enki had remembered every single detail, because that was how First Division warriors were wired.

He was pleased to discover that the pleasure points of a human female were exactly as he’d anticipated, and every time he touched on a new area, Layla twisted and writhed in his grasp, the most delicious sounds escaping her lips.

Truly, she was an exquisite thing. For Enki, who had never known anything good and decent and pure in his life, she was everything.

Such sweetness. He almost felt he was too damaged, too tainted to deserve her, but he couldn’t help himself.

And he was determined to make her come, because the sound of her voice—laced with a hint of desperation now—was taking his arousal to new heights, and to hear her; to feel her beneath him in the throes of release would be the most satisfying thing.

Thank the Goddess the Tharian had truly retreated, or gone to sleep, or whatever it had said it would do, because for the first time since returning from Tharos, he felt alone inside his head; he felt like himself again, and it was glorious.

The Fever pumped through his black veins, enhancing his already sharp senses, stretching his self-control to its very limits, turning his lust into a potent, painful thing.

His horn-bases throbbed.

His cock was beyond hard.

He was on the very brink of savagery, but he would not let go just yet, not until he made her scream.

Enki removed his hands from her thighs and pressed his fingers into the soft surface of the pod as his claws extended, piercing the sheets. He sucked the tender pearl of her clit, circling it with his tongue, listening to her sweet cries, absorbing her very essence.

Just a little more…

He held her there for a moment, listening to the rhythm of her soul—the rapid patter of her heart, the breath leaving her lips, the slow movement of her limbs as she twisted this way and that, arching her back, rustling the sheets.

He held her suspended in a fragment of time, and everything else ceased to exist.

There was only her, and he was about to send her over the precipice, and he would gladly fall with her.

There.

That sweet spot. He knew it. He caressed it with the tip of his tongue, watching her face as she squeezed her eyes tightly…

There.

“A-aah…” she whimpered. “Please, Enki.”

How satisfying it was to hear her beg.

There, my love.

He gave her release.

She finally screamed.

And it was sublime, even as his primal need to fuck her spilled over, becoming too excruciating for him to hold back any longer.