Chapter 41
Cass awoke with her entire body aching. She felt like she’d gone ten rounds with a prize fighter in a boxing ring. Someone had pummeled her good, but at least the pain told her she was still alive.
She gasped and jerked into a sitting position, then moaned at the agony that speared through her head. Suddenly, a familiar feeling of scales sliding over her skin caused her to open the eyes she’d clenched shut at the pain.
“Nahash?” she whispered, not daring to believe it was really him as his tail coiled around her, its weight comforting as it settled on her lap, cradling her baby bump.
“I’m here,” he said, his voice in her ear. That was followed by his arms embracing her as he lifted her off the bed she’d been lying on and pulled her onto his lap. “We’re safe, Casss.” His tone sounded skeptical, despite his words.
They were in the dark, so she couldn’t see him, but she could feel the sleek, smooth surface of his scales beneath her palms as she stroked his tail. In a way, she didn’t want the lights on, because she was afraid if they came on, she’d be back in her prison in the monastery, staring at an empty room as she had awakened to so many times before.
“Where are we?”
“We’re on an Akrellian ship, bound for one of their colonies. Apparently, they have a place for us there—a place for former Iriduan test subjects to make a new life, where the Iriduans can’t reach them and recapture them. I’m not the only freak, Casss. There are others.”
She hugged him, her arms closing around a chest that had grown far too thin since she’d last held him. She feared he’d suffered greatly in the time he’d been away from her.
“You aren’t a freak, Nahash. You’re a miracle! An awe-inspiring wonder. And you’re also the most beautiful sight I’ve ever laid eyes on.” Then the rest of his words really sank in. “There are others like you?”
He hissed softly. “Not like me, exactly. They were other types of experiments, designed for different purposes, but they were all intended to create enhanced soldiers for the imperial military. Halian said they would probably understand what I’ve been through better than anyone else.”
She stiffened in his arms, the hands she was stroking over his chest pausing their movement. “Wait! Did you say Halian?”
He sighed, his exhale ruffling the hair on the top of her head. “I did. I don’t trust him because he’s a traitor, but he appears to be willing to help us.”
She pulled back from him and tried to make out his face in the darkness, failing miserably. Maybe it was better that she didn’t for her confession.
“They told me that he’d imprinted on me. I thought that he… I was….” She swallowed the lump in her throat, working up the nerve to tell Nahash the truth that weighed on her. “I was so lonely, and I feared I would never see you again. With these hormones and—“
His lips crashing down on hers silenced her, then his tongue sliding into her mouth claimed her, letting her know that there would never be a need for her to search for another lover.
His tail slid off her lap so Nahash could slip his hand between her legs, going unerringly towards the wet heat there. He paused just before touching her where she wanted him to the most. Then the back of his hand brushed over her belly, which parted the silk robe she wore. He lifted his head.
“Is it safe? For us to be together right now? It won’t… will it hurt our son?”
She smiled at the awed tone in which he said “our son” as if he still couldn’t believe he was blessed enough to say those words. “The doctor said it would be fine to have sex at this point in my pregnancy.” Her smile faded as she recalled that the same doctor had told her that to get her to sleep with the crazy, two-faced Halian. Still, she knew the woman hadn’t been lying. She never would have risked the baby’s health.
Nahash breathed a sigh of relief, then his lips returned to hers with a hunger that wasn’t held back any longer. His tongue delved into her mouth, tasting her as if he wanted to memorize her flavor forever. His fingers found her soaked panties, and he tore them apart to access her wet entrance.
Then his fingers sank inside her, slipping in and out easily because she was so excited and aroused she was soaking wet.
Nahash didn’t waste any time readjusting her so he could replace his fingers with one of his thick cocks, impaling her on the spiny head of it, which tickled her inner walls, stimulating them to clench around him until he moaned into her mouth.
She lowered her hand to seek the other cock, closing her fingers around his shaft as soon as she touched it. As he moved sinuously between her legs, thrusting into her with each powerful shift of his tail, she stroked his other cock until she felt the trembling of his body beneath her thighs.
The rest of his tail coiled around her legs as she rode him, clinging to his upper arm with one hand while her other helped bring him to his orgasm. It didn’t take long for him to shudder with his release, his seed spurting over her hand as well as inside her.
“You didn’t come.” He sounded breathless, but also disappointed. “I failed you.”
She chuckled. “You know, you don’t have to make me come every time, right?”
“I disagree. Besides, it’s been a very long time. I want you to come. I need to taste you.”
Without waiting for her response, he lifted her back onto the bed, settling her on her back before sliding down her body with his lips and tongue forging a heated path down to her clit. When his lips closed over it and he began lashing it with his tongue, it didn’t take long for her to climax, shuddering in his hold as he slid back up her body. His belly scales tugged gently on her skin as he moved upwards to press kisses along her neck.
He arranged his body around her, the tip of his tail wrapping around her belly as he curled up beside her. He was in that position when their baby kicked, causing him to jerk upright on the bed.
“Lights!” he called out in a gruff, nervous voice.
Sudden light filled the room, shining on them. Cass winced and clenched her eyelids shut. “Wish I had known it was that easy earlier.”
“Your stomach moved!” Nahash said, staring at it as if he expected an alien to pop out of it, which, Cass thought—on the verge of hysterical laughter—was exactly what would happen at some point, though hopefully not in the way it did in the movies.
“Our son, Nahash. He was just kicking. I guess he wanted to say hi.” She patted his chest, noting how much weight he’d lost, and determined that she would feed him until he was as healthy as he’d been when she’d met him. She wanted nothing to threaten to take him away from her, ever again.
Nahash touched her belly with one finger, like he wanted to poke at it but managed to remain aware of the fact that it was still attached to her. “Does he do that a lot?”
She nodded, grinning at the uncertainty in his eyes. “Usually when I’ve just drifted off to sleep after fighting insomnia for hours. Then he decides it’s time to play kickball.”
“I don’t know anything about babies,” he said, a panicky note in his voice as if he was just realizing that now he would have to think about those things.
She stroked his arm reassuringly. “Well, if things proceed as they have been, you’ve got a little time to learn, at least.” She pushed herself up on the bed to snuggle against him, hugging one arm around his waist. “You’ve never been around a pregnant woman before, have you?”
He gave her a “duh” look. “Iriduan females lay their young in egg sacs. They aren’t born live like the ape m—the humans are.” He shrugged into her silence, as she ignored the almost slip where he called her people ape-men. “Even if they did have live births, we never would have seen it. Pregnancy and labor are all carried out in secret crèches with the highest level clearances. I know only what I remember from being in my own crèche, and that was before my first meta, when life was very… different.”
She rubbed her belly with her free hand. “Well, the doctor who was monitoring me thinks this baby will follow a human pattern when it comes to birth and development. I don’t think he will ever go through a metamorphosis.”
Nahash shook his head. “I hope not. We don’t have a spinner for his cocoon. He’d be trapped in his juvenile form for life!”
That reminded Cass of something she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten until then. “Cici and Jia! I need to know what happened to them!”