CHAPTER 51

 

BRAX

 

I’m confused—not to mention aroused—and this would pose enough of an obstacle on its own, but I am confused because I scented Tara’s arousal.

This nearly makes me mindless.

Yet something went wrong.  I was careful to listen for it, but she didn’t say Stohp—yet I did something wrong: I don’t know what, I can’t think—and she is leaving me!  I can’t let her leave like this—I know it.  I feel it: if she walks away from me right now, she will harden her hearts against me.

But something is sparking in my mind.  Her utter joy when I spoke her word.  I know some of her words.  “Tara!”

I bellow when she only begins to hurry away faster.

“Rrwraaowwng! Wrrroong!”

Her hand reaches for the sensor—

“Siimowwhn!”

Tara freezes.

This is it!  This is what she wants!  This will make her happy again.  Her strange language is important to her—but nothing so important as her lost hobs.

“Meyyghan,” I sound out, trying not to click my teeth over the last syllable.  This poor bastard.  His years in the hob Academy must have be hellish.  Meyyghan?  Truly?  His dam was a vengeful, barbarous sadist.

I try to think of how to pronounce the other words she cries in her sleep.  Arrrgh!  Unless she has said them with repetition, as she has her hobs’ names, they initially sound muddy to me: I can’t pick out enough to mimic any one word.  For once, I wish Tac were in this room with us, such is my desperation.  His mimicry is uncanny.

Because the moment she recognized what I was trying to say, she stopped running: she’s turned to me, her eyes impossibly wide.  Hopeful.

You have one shot.  Do not fail.  What else, what else?  Ah!  Baay… she has a word she repeats often, it is very soft, with no clicks whatsoever.  I swallow, and lock my gaze with hers.  “Baaayy—” click.  “Baaay.” click.  Tevek—!

Tara shouts, the sound joyous and heartbroken—and her hands fly over her mouth just as tearsheens cause her eyes to sparkle.  It would be a look I would like very much if she didn’t also wear desperation, disbelief, fear, worry—and her sucked in breath and leaned-forward posture looks like hope.  She is hoping I can say her word.  She needs me to say her word.

I hope I can say her word too.

I take too long.

Her hands are blown back from her mouth as she explodes, “BAYBEEE!  Brax, YESSS!  I NEEEED my BAYBEEES!”

I’m taken aback when she jumps onto me, nearly toppling us over because I was foolishly ill prepared for how exuberant my princess would be to share about her lost males.

I’m struck with guilt.  Before this, my first thought would have been resentment that I have to share our bed with Tac, let alone the specters of her two lost loves.

I haven’t wanted to hear her say other males’ names.  I’ve never encouraged her to speak more of them when she wakes because I’m a machaai, and I was too busy lamenting and feeling a grumbling jealousy.  I see how foolish I was now.  How damaging.

By ignoring the fact that they ever existed to her, I’ve neglected Tara.  It is obvious now she has needed to talk about them very badly.  “Forgive me,” I beg her, flicking a wild tendril of her hair away from where it is sticking to her skin.  She cants her head and presses her cheek into my palm, squeezing her eyes closed and sniffling most pitifully.

The broken sound that is leaving her lips amplifies until it feels like it becomes a ravaging, deleterious song in my hearts.

I sit heavily on the bed, bringing her down on my lap, and she throws herself on me further, her arms winding around my neck as she weeps so profoundly I have no hope of learning more words until she can calm herself.

I start by stroking her from the bottom of her mane to her rump.  I apply firm pressure, and the ludicrous thought occurs to me—a pair of wings must make it challenging to comfort a normal Gryfala.

‘Normal?’  Implying Tara is abnormal, not to standard.  Worth less.

I could bite my own tongue.  I don’t think of Tara any less for not having wings: this is ridiculous.  I drop my chin to her shoulder, glad that my horns are set high enough on my head that her skull can be tucked right against mine without issue.  We are like pieces of a puzzle, at least in this.  I release a weighted exhale on her back…

And watch her shiver.

She is feeling sad.  She is emotionally strained.  But I confess, my cock went rock hard when she began to cry and seeing her react to me now is not helping it calm down.

Why would her tears make me feel aroused?

I start to shake my head, to shake off this thought, but because we are fitted together as we are, the scales on my jaw rasp the side of her neck, near her ear.

She squeaks and jerks.

“Sorry—!”  A scent hits me.  I inhale again—my sniff loud enough that she breaks from her self-reflection and eyes me warily.  Is that… is she aroused from being breathed on?

My stare must unsettle her because she buries her face in my neck in what feels like a gesture of escape.

I groan.  I am desperately interested in giving chase.  Bad timing.  This would be bad timing.  Does Tac breathe on her?

I shake my ears out sharply—careful not to brush scales against her this time.  There are more important matters at play than discovering Tac’s methods to woo and rouse her: pay attention!  I make a fist against her back, trying to regain control.  I turn it so that I can drag the backs of my claws down her spine and continue stroking her.

She shivers from this now.

And… she’s adjusting her hips.  Her scent!  It is growing stronger!

She tries to bury a broken sniffle into my neck and I swear my cock gets stiffer. I’m going to hells.

I can feel my suit dampening at the collar, thus I know her eyes are still leaking—but her tears are quiet ones now.  Her inhales losing the intensity of their shake and jitter.

This next pass over her back has her fisting the fabric of my suit at the shoulders before she again resettles herself in my lap.

And when her luscious rump cheek brushes over my cock, she goes motionless.  In shock, I believe.  I receive a different shock from it—my eyes roll back.

My hands both clamp on her hips.

She lifts her face and—

And Tac earns the award for the worst timing in the history of the galaxy when he squawks, “What have you DONE?”