Page 104 of Command

Threxin frowned. He must have expected more. More questions, or hesitation or something. “Alina, you must thi?—”

“I’m sure,” she cut him off. “Do it.”

He must have been satisfied with the resolve in her eyes, because Threxin stepped forward. The heat of his long fingerssoothed her as he held her outstretched arm steady. He positioned the injection gun at her bicep, cool metal chilling her skin.

He looked at her once more, and she met him with a nod.

The sting hurt a lot, but Alina barely flinched. The sharp pain soon morphed into a dull ache deep in the muscle.

It was in her now.Reallyin her. A vaccine. The thing she’d been fantasizing of since before she could even admit to the fantasy.

Alina’s mind raced, but all the questions she had fell away as soon as they appeared. None of them mattered anymore, because whatever the consequences, there was no going back for any of them. Because this wasn’t just forher. An exorin vaccine could fix everything… a lot of things, anyway. It would make sharing a planet with the uhyre, especially this new, calmer, logical,evolvedversion of the uhyre, so much smoother and more practical. If they could normalize human-uhyre relations in this new reality, maybetheycould stop hiding too.

If he wanted to.

“How long until it works?” Alina asked. She was lying there in a torn shirt and no bottoms, Threxin looming close above. Her thighs were slightly sticky with her own moisture. She felt the sudden urge to sit up and cover herself, to grab the quilt from the edge of the bed and pull it over her.

“It already has.”

Alina’s heart skipped. “So fast?”

“The RNA nanozymes are powered by microcontrollers. They will have already circulated through your body and induced replication of protective enzymes.”

Alina’s eyes fell to his mouth when his tongue darted out to moisten his bottom lip above her. It left a trail of black in its wake. Alina’s hand trembled as she reached up, flinching slightly with the pain of lifting her injected arm. Threxin remained still as she pressed a fingertip to the center of hislower lip. It came away black on the pad, and she twisted her wrist to see the thin film of exorin pool into her fingerprint.

Alina looked up at him tentatively, hesitating. Threxin’s breathing was even, chest rising and falling slowly, but she could feel the tension roiling from him in waves. Alina parted her lips and pressed her marked finger to the flat of her tongue, closing her mouth around it. She closed her eyes too, as her first ever taste of exorin seeped onto her tastebuds.

Iron. Bitter with a hint of sickly sweet, like narines. Blood too. Something that instilled a certain chill. A sense of dread. A warning from her body.

What if it doesn’t work?

Alina pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and swallowed.

And then he swallowed her.

Their limbs fought for control as their mouths collided. Hard and haphazard, the kiss was a desperate grasp. His tongue dripped black with his arousal, spiked with his hunger, and it left its mark on her mouth. It scraped against her own tongue, driving in faint scratches and filling them with bittersweet iron. The exorin was thick and heady, engulfing her senses, blacking out the room. Threxin’s hands were at her temples, shoving her head to one side as he twisted his to the other, forcing her mouth open wide to take the kiss delivered with the twisting of tongues and clashing of teeth. Until Alina could take no more, overwhelmed by the volume of this new thing seeping down her throat.

She came up for breath, nausea creeping up. She twisted her head away and his teeth followed, nipping along her jaw and down her neck. Alina’s stomach settled while Threxin put one knee up on the bed, then the other. He shoved an arm beneath her waist, lifting her effortlessly as to drag her farther up.

She parted her knees for his hips to nestle between them, but he did not stay there. His talons raked at her sides as heslithered down the length of her body to position himself between her legs.

Alina couldn’t help it—her hand was at his head, grasping his spikes, her knees parting as he let her pull him toward her.

But just as she felt the heat of his breath on her clit, she hesitated, holding him in place by two spikes on his head. His eyes were shrouded in blue fire when he looked up at her from between her legs.

Shit, she hadn’t showered. And she… She hadn’t done that in a long time. She never even particularly felt comfortable receiving like that—Alina had much preferred to give.

“You don’t have to do that,” she whispered.

Threxin hissed frustration through his teeth, the flash of fangs making her even more nervous. She tried to shift her hips up the bed, but he grabbed her thighs and yanked her into place.

“I don’thaveto do anything, Alina Argoud.” His growl wormed into her gut, buried itself in her soul, made her fall limp and open for him in its assertive certainty. “Imeanto devour you.”

When the dripping spikes of his tongue finally pressed against her, her brain short-circuited, a million sensations flooding her at once. Her mouth gaped open as she threw her head back, the pressure on her swollen clit spiking tendrils of ecstasy up the length of her body to culminate in sparks behind her eyes.

Her body melted for him as it finally received this fuller extent of his touch that it had been craving for weeks.

And it was safe.Hewas safe. Her eyes flew open, hands clutching at his spikes when his tongue pressed past her folds and into her pussy. It stretched her, filling her with wet heat—damn, uhyre tongues were longer than she’d expected! She doubled over, shoulders curling off the bed when he thrust the appendage deeper still. The texture of his tongue rubbedagainst her upper wall, freakishly strong and seemingly under his perfect control.

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