Page 16 of Bound

“You can’t force me to eat,” Chrissie says, but it’s a challenge, not a threat.

I feel my fangs over my lips.

“I do not need to, sweet mate.” I swipe up a particularly attractive sliver of roast meat and take a bite. “Because you will eat with me.”

I offer the food to her lips. She glares at it for a moment, but then they part, and her white, blunt little teeth bite into the juicy chunk.

My cocks are insanely painful. They need to be inside this sweet morsel, filling her, making her mine. I release the groan slowly, silently as she chews, swallows, and takes the rest from my claw, her lips touching my skin.

My feathers lift, rippling with the pleasure of feeding my mate.

“That’s really good,” Chrissie says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Usually I find the food tastes of nothing.”

“This is good food. Better than the dome.” I eat another chunk before offering her some of the vegetation we were always forced to eat.

“Did you like it?” Chrissie asks as she chews. “The dome, I mean.”

She shifts slightly on my lap, and the friction nearly causes an explosion.

“It was all about control,” I say, in an attempt to hold back, hold on, not mate her on the surface of this table, enjoying her as my meal, rather than the food presented on it.

“Control?” she asks, her beautiful eyes blinking at me as she eats the green and red veg.

I’m mesmerized by her mouth, the way her delicate jaw works as she eats, the curve of her lips, the way her eyes are bright as she looks at me.

“Yes, control,” I force out. “We weren’t forced to fight. But there was control. We believed we were indentured.”

“Oh, I don’t like the sound of that,” she says, eyes wider than ever. “You were slaves?”

“Not slaves, as such, but certainly not able to leave easily.”

“So”—Chrissie swallows, and I watch the bob of her neck, desperate to span my hand around it, to taste the spices on her lips, to spread her out like the delicious meal she should be—“why are you not still there?”

“I was set free,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Sounds like you don’t enjoy freedom much.” Chrissie's eyes dance, and all I want to do is consume her.

“I’d have enjoyed it more had the dome handed over the credits which belonged to me. Instead, I am here. With you.”

“I’m sorry.” Chrissie blinks.

“Don’t be.”

The air is heavy between us. Her scent, the food, the way her lips glisten as the tip of her pink tongue swipes over them…

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” I rasp.

Beneath me, her body trembles slightly, but her gaze doesn’t waver from mine.

She is mine. Chrissie cannot belong to anyone else ever again. I dip my head. Her hand cups my cheek, and her mouth is enticingly close.

Then the entire ship lurches to the left. It sends the food dishes crashing to the floor, and it’s only because I slam my claws into the wall behind us we don’t tumble with it all. Air hisses, loud and insistent. Alarms shriek. Chrissie clings to me.

“What’s happening?” she yells over the noise.

“Either we’ve been hit with something or we hit something,” I shout back.

The ship rights itself with a jerk, and Chrissie is thrown against me, and the force of her body sends me onto my back, meaning I have a little mate riding me.

---