Page 15 of Victoria's Embrace

Victoria exhaled sharply at the image he made, staring up at her from between her thighs, his purple eyes dark with desire, his beautiful, olive green skin contrasting sharply with her paleness.

Proving he remembered every inch of her he’d explored with his hand in that closet, his tongue unerringly zeroed in on her clit, circling the swollen nub teasingly before he closed his lips around it, sucking gently.

Her thighs tensed and a shuddering moan vibrated her throat. Letting her head fall back, she reached down, burying her fingers in his dreadlocks and held on as he teased her ruthlessly, pushing her right to the edge of an orgasm only to back off until her thighs stopped trembling. Over and over, he tortured her until she was gasping hoarse threats and pulling none too gently on his dreads.

Finally, he seemed to emerge from his absorption enough to realize she was panting out promises to maim him if he didn’t come inside her. With a hoarse chuckle, he crawled up her body until he was looming over her. Hooking one of her legs over his hip, he reached between them and lined his cock up with her opening but hesitated before pushing inside her. Brows tented questioningly, she gazed up at him.

“There’s no goin’ back after this, little flower. I won’ be able to let you go. I need to know you want this.”

He looked so serious, but Victoria couldn’t help herself. Huffing a breathless laugh, she eyed him disbelievingly. “I’ve wanted this for weeks, you stubborn male! You’re the one who’s been playing hard to get. Now, get down here and kiss me.”

His brows shot up, but a smile curved his lips. “As you command.”

Dropping down so he was propped up on his forearms, he held her gaze as he curled his hips forward, pushing his cock inside her one slow inch at a time.

Groaning, she dug her fingers into his back, her eyes falling closed at the feeling of his thickness, slick with the lubrication he produced, stretching her.

She knew from their time in the closet that he was built differently than a human man. His shaft was thick and wider in the middle. He was uncut, the head was shaped like a peach. Where a human man would have hair, Vi’kail had frills that undulated when he was about to orgasm and a knot that swelled near the base. She remembered every detail, but feeling him inside her was an entirely new experience.

Victoria moaned deeply and opened her legs wider when he got to mid-shaft, panting through the sense of fullness. Reaching between their bodies, Vi’kail circled a thumb around her clit, making her breath catch in her throat and her walls flutter warningly, forcing a choked grunt out of him.

He sank inside her to the hilt then withdrew just as slowly before setting a hard, fast pace that had her breathless and writhing in moments.

An orgasm hit her out of nowhere, bowing her back off the floor and freezing the breath in her lungs, trapping the scream that tried to erupt. Bodies straining to pull the other closer, he came with her, the rhythmic clenching of her walls dragging him over the edge.

Even through the pleasure drowning her, she felt him bury the swollen base of his cock inside her, making her gasp sharply as he stretched her impossibly wider. She felt the hard jerk of his shaft as he emptied himself in wave after wave, filling her to overflowing, the frills below his knot fluttering around her stretched opening, across her clit, heightening her orgasm until everything outside the mind-blowing pleasure ceased to exist.

For endless moments, they were lost in each other, until their peaks receded, and they could breathe again.

Barely catching himself from collapsing on top of her, Vi’kail let his head fall forward, resting his forehead on her shoulder, his rapid, panting breaths gusting across her flushed skin.

Chapter 10

Victoria lay boneless across Vi’kail’s chest, feeling deliciously languid and very, very satisfied. She opened her mouth, but hesitated, not wanting to ruin the moment, but she might not get another chance to find out more about him so, with a quiet, bracing breath, she spoke.

“Tell me about you?”

He stiffened under her, his hand going still on her head where he’d been brushing his fingers through her hair, but after a long pause, he blew out a breath and began speaking, his smoky voice low and quiet.

“My homeworld, Dha’hea, is a hard place. It’s just off a popular trade route and has been used as a way station for rougher sects of traders for years. My people were fairly early in their development, and havin’ that sudden influx of tech and crime did us no favors. We’ve no infrastructure outside what those traders provided. My mother was a pleasurer in one of the ghettos that grew to surround the land ports. She died when I was four. I grew up an orphan on the streets.”

Victoria swallowed hard. She regretted asking and, yet, she didn’t tell him to stop. He needed to know she could handle the ghosts of his past as much as she needed to know more about him.

“There’s nothin’ in place to take care of parentless children. We’re left to live or die by our own means, turnin’ feral, little more than scavenging animals. Most join a gang. Safety in numbers to try and stay free of predators who take advantage of kids with no one to miss ‘em. Course that don’ protect you from the gang itself. They’d slit your throat quick as a flash the second you showed weakness, had somethin’ they wanted, or to save themselves.”

There was something in his voice that told her he’d seen exactly that happen on more than one occasion.

“I opted to go it on my own. It wasn’t a pretty life. I had to steal everythin’. Had to kill. Crik, I think I gutted that first one at seven? Six? Crikking bastard learned I wasn’t the easy prey he thought.”

Victoria tightened her arms around him, her heart breaking. Imagining Vi’kail as a child—alone, starving, no one to care for or love him—tore her up.

“When I was around sixteen, a recruiter came, roundin’ up street kids to join the Federation, promisin’ adventure, money. I didn’t care nothin’ for adventure. It was the promise of food, a bed to sleep in, and training that got me. So I joined. Spent the next ten years as a soldier. I was good at it, good at killin’, takin’ orders. I ascended the ranks quickly, made a name for myself, but not in any way I wanted. I was feared, hated. I did… horrible things. It’s like I was walkin’ around in a haze, not really thinkin’, just doin’ what I was told. Wasn’t till I found Snitch half dead in an unlicensed lab that I started to wake up. Took another year before I could get out.”

There was a long pause before he added, voice rough. “I thought I was a monster for a long time. Thought all the honor I’d tried to cling to was a lie, that I was just as soulless as those predators that preyed on kids back on Dha’hea. That’s why I pushed you away. I was tryin’ to protect you from myself. But, Rellik, he thinks the Federation Veiled me. I want to believe that, badly. Crik, it makes sense, and I damn sure wouldn’t put it past ‘em, the bastards. But the fear that he’s wrong, that I really did do those things—”

He cut off when she propped herself up to look at him. She hurt for him, ached at seeing the tortured look in his eyes. He’d lived through terrible things, had done things that haunted him, but she never doubted that he’d only done those things to survive. Whatever horrors he’d committed during his time as a soldier, she believed wholeheartedly he wouldn’t have done them if he’d had the choice to refuse.

She caught the question in his eyes, could almost feel him trying to brace himself, retreating away from her, not physically but emotionally, because he expected the worst.

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