CHAPTER 75

 

TARA

 

TODAY’S THE DAY.

Our ETA on landing is seven and a half “Earthen hours.”

Beth’s men have all the calculations.

Seven and a half hours.  It’s nothing.  Compared to how long it’s already been…

I have to squeeze my eyes shut at the thought.

Compared to how long it’s already been, this is a blink of an eye.  But it feels like forever, and I can barely hold still.

I haven’t been able to sleep.  The room is dark, I’m in bed, I’ve got an alien keeping me warm, but I’m juiced.  My thoughts are racing.  Amy had been crashing on my couch.  The State or whoever handles children whose parents… they’d have let her keep the girls.  She’d stay at my place, and watch over them.  So the last place that we lived is the first place I am going to check.

I keep telling myself this, trying to keep myself calm.  But it’s the next part, the ‘what if’ that has kept a perpetual lump in my throat, and a knot in my stomach.  Not to mention keeping me from sleeping now.  If they’re not there…

I’ll figure it out.

I’ll figure it out.

Somehow, I’ll figure it out!

“Have you gotten any rest?” comes Brax’s rumble.  Tac left a bit ago to help with preparations but he tweet-croaked when I tried to get up with him.  He’s got the right idea: I need sleep.

I just can’t catch it.

Brax doesn’t wait for me to answer.  He begins to massage my muscles, working out some of the knots, and growling whenever I unconsciously tighten up again.  When he can’t seem to make headway, he sits up, dragging me to stand on the bed next to him.

“Wha—

“Here,” he says, “And here.”

He just used his tail to pick up each one of my hands, and place them against the wall.  I look at him over my shoulder, and I’m about to make a face.

But his hands circle my hips, and then he’s nosing under my skirt.

“Right now?  Really?”

He directs his answer to my pussy, his voice going all sexy-affectionate as he rumbles matter-of-factly, “Well, if you’re going to squirm around, it might as well be on my face.”

Well, then.

So, I squirm around on his face.

A few days ago, I finally told Brax why I don’t want him to go down on me.

I know some women have tried it with multiple lovers, and have found by process of elimination, that oral just isn’t their thing.

I can now confirm, it is my thing.  It just took me several flinches (like, a lot) before my body could accept that no teeth were going to attempt to sever my clit.

My ex was fine in most aspects, but he could be a dick when he didn’t want to do something, and the first and only time I’d had someone go down on me was an experience I’d thought I’d never have the nerve to repeat.

Brax’s first reaction to hearing this wasn’t to dive his face between my thighs.  Instead, it was to aim creative curses at my ex.  I was particularly fond of “BY MY FLAMES I WILL BRAISE HIS ORGANS IN HIS OWN BLOOD!” and “I will feed him every one of his teveking teeth!”

It took him a long while to calm down.  I’d have fallen asleep, if he could have managed to lower his ranting volume.  If he’d had Grake’s wings, I’d have suggested we give him a space suit and chain him to the outside of the ship, because his rage alone could power us to Earth.

I thought about that suggestion quite a bit.  And I mostly convinced myself it was impossible.

Mostly.

After asking if I would allow him the honor of learning my body in this way he assured me that despite never having done it, he wasn’t a fucking dick.

Those weren’t his words.  His words had lots of clicks and no translation so I’m guessing and supplying what I feel are appropriate conversions.  He spent all night slowly showing me how gentle and gooood he could make it feel.

And when Tac heard about it later, he showed me sweet.

The grateful wonder on his face.  It made me feel…

Desired.  Special.  Cherished.

Loved.

After everything we’ve done prior, it’s a surprise that an act, this act, could bring us closer.  Maybe due to the level of trust involved, there’s a tenderness that’s sprung up now, it’s even more tangible than before, and it’s not just with Tac and I.

Brax is kissing between my legs now.  Lapping, and nuzzling, his fingers pressing firmly into my thighs, keeping me braced but still allowing me to move on him.  He’s been an excellent learner—heck, he’s been an excellent teacher.  At first, I was afraid to get too excited as I didn’t want to hurt his nose, or suffocate him, but he reassured me, he helped me move on him, helped me find out what I liked, and so now, he knows just how to give it to me, and he’s got me rocking on his face, almost there, I can feel it, I’m close, I—

CRACK!

My muscles jump, and the unbearable tidal wave of tension releases in a burst so sudden I’m left stunned, nerves firing, body boneless, and I’m nearly sliding down the wall.

Brax eases me to the bed, and when I’m stretched out, limp as a starfish, still struggling to recover, he stalks over me, smug, and smirky, and proud. “’You know this, don’t you?’”

Smug, smug, smirky and he’s not asking, he’s quoting me, so I don’t answer him.  But my traitorous body starts shaking with silent, suppressed laughter.

He leans in and breathes into my ear.  “I believe the words you’re searching for are, ‘Your esteemed Highness, you can make me come on command.’.”

 

***

 

He’s on his back, his horns keeping him from fully reclining, but he says it doesn’t hurt.  He invited me up onto his chest, something he has probably seen Tac and I enjoying, I realize with a little start.  He isn’t jealous about it though, I just think he must have thought, ‘Hey, that looks nice.’

And it is.  The side of his big thumb sweeps along the muscles of my neck, making it so I can’t be bothered anymore to keep my head up.  My cheek is sticky with sweat so it feels like it sticks to his scales a little, but neither of us are complaining.  I try to answer his question. What had he asked about? Oh.  “One day, he decided he didn’t want our life anymore.  We tried things—or, I tried things to make it work, but when we found out I was pregnant with twins?  He left.”

His magic-thumb massage stops.  I can hear him gaping down at me.  “What a fool.”

Like my neck is broken, I don’t exert the strength it will take to lift my head.  I just roll enough until I can see him, and I’m snickering.  “Yeah.  He was a tool.”

His ear raises a fraction.  “I said fool.”

“Oh.  We say ‘tool.’”

Brax’s mouth pulls sideways and his nose scales bunch in confusion.  “Tools are useful.”  Then he seems to consider this.  “Ah, but only for one thing.”

Oh my land, he’s thinking of sex.  About me having sex.  With another man.  A man he wants to flame broil.

“Yet, for a fact, I know he wasn’t ‘useful’ in this either.  Only ‘successful,’” he snarls.

If Brax were a crayon, right now his label would be changing from California Gold to Blackened Amber.

I cough, and try to redirect.  “You know, it disgusts me that he was…”

“Weak.”

I am so pleased with Brax’s support, I’m suddenly feeling magnanimous.  “Actually, If he couldn’t handle it, it was better that he cut and run early, I guess.”

“You did not leave.”

Now it’s my turn to gape at him.  “I couldn’t—I had kids that needed me.”

“He had offspring and a mate who depended on him.  Worthless male,” he sneers, his lip curled up so high it exposes one long white fang.  Even agitated, his stroking hands stay light.  “We are true mates.  We will never ‘cut and run.’”

‘We?’  He just referred to Tac and himself in the same sentence and recognized that he as well as Tac share ‘matehood’ with me.  Will wonders never cease!

“They say ‘third times the charm,’ where I’m from.  It only took me two tries and three guys,” I say, grinning.

Brax’s smile for me is fond.  But it disappears quickly.  “This would imply you had a first time.  But this ‘ex’ was nothing more than a brief, underwhelming coupling.”  He curls that lip again, showing angry fang.  “And that’s giving him too much credit.”

...He’s still angry about the clit-biting thing.

Fair enough.  My clit’s still angry about it too.

I tug on our cuff.  “I’m glad you are a proper mate.  I love that you and Tac are proper mates.”

He bumps our noses.  “I’d miss you.  I’d miss you fiercely.”

One side of my mouth kicks up.  Now that he has a translation upgrade, he knows what this really means.  But it’s become its own little endearment.  I say it back to him.  “I’d miss the heck out of you too.”

His big hand cups my cheek gently, and that's the last thing I remember before Tac and Brax are on either side of me, peering down at me, both of them gently taking my shoulders and more massaging than shaking me awake.

They’re touching me at the same time.  No growling!

Dohrein’s formula is the stuff of magic.

So is this moment.  “Is it—”

“It’s time.”