Page 58 of Silent Lucidity

Thatwas a true connection between souls, wasn’t it? Not all the races in the Infinite City talked about it, but enough did for Tenthil to have heard.

He sat up, guiding her legs around his sides. Abella wrapped her arms around his neck as he rested his forehead against hers. He stared into her eyes, and she stared back. This moment was more than fucking, more than a claiming. It was a joining at the highest level. She hadn’t voiced what she wanted, but she was showing him with her expression, with her eyes, with her body.

And he wanted it, too. Wanted to know there was one person in all the universe he was closer to than anyone, that there was one person for whom he’d do anything, one person who would do anything for him.

He slid his hands to her ass and rocked her back and forth on his cock, continuing the slow, deliberate pace she had set, and watched her face as their mutual pleasure grew. He increased the speed only when the pressure in him bordered on pain.

Instinct bade him to claim her with his bite, but he held back, kissing her instead. Her wicked little tongue slid along his fangs to sample the venom flowing from them. When he felt the first stirrings of her climax, he rocked her harder, faster, and deeper, pushing her over the edge. The quivering of her tight sex dragged him along with her, plunging him into a chasm of ecstasy as his seed spilled into her.

Breaking the kiss, she screamed his name, and he roared hers as they came undone in each other’s arms.

Twelve

Abella ate from one of the bland-tasting food packages and watched Tenthil clean and reload the blasters. She focused on the play of tendons beneath his skin when his fingers moved, on the definition lines as the muscles of his forearms flexed and relaxed, on the way his claws extended when he curled his fingers just enough.

She’d felt those hands, those claws, all over her body.

A shiver raced through her, and she squeezed her thighs together to alleviate the sudden pulsing of her sex. If not for the soreness between her legs, she’d have stripped her clothes off just to feel his hands upon her again, to feel his lips brush over her skin, to experience the delicious friction of each ridge and knot as his cock moved inside her.

Hell, she was tempted to despiteher soreness.

Abella’s gaze roamed to his face. His brow was creased in thought, and his cheek scars stood out starkly against his pale gray skin.

He was beautiful.

He’s my captor…

But he’s also my savior.

Her heart sped as his earlier words echoed in her head.

I am not what you chose, but I want to be all that to you.

Abella forced herself to look away from Tenthil. He was so…lonely. He’d given up everything, had turned against everyone he knew, forher. She was all he wanted. And in his eyes, she was already his.

She raised her hand and lightly touched the tiny puncture wounds in the tender spot between her neck and shoulder. They didn’t really hurt; whatever venom he’d injected into her had not only heightened her pleasure but had acted a healing agent, sealing the wounds far faster than they would have naturally.

If he continued biting her there, she’d likely end up with some scarring; she found the thought of it oddly appealing.

Sometimes, it was easy to forget Tenthil wasn’t human, that he’d been raised in an entirely different culture. The Order had shaped him, but whatever upbringing he’d had before that, with his own people, was far removed from Abella’s experiences. From what he’d told her, his species lived in hunter-gatherer tribes that would’ve been more at home on Earth ten thousand years ago than here in this city of claustrophobic technology.

The rules and values with which Abella had been instilled didn’t necessarily apply to Tenthil.

For all his intelligence and skill, Tenthil was still a member of that primitive, bestial race. The blood of an instinct-driven animal flowed beneath the veneer of training and education the Order had provided him; that instinct had pushed him to stake his claim upon her. A claim she couldn’t bring herself to reject.

What did that say abouther?

She knew the rules, knew what was right and what was wrong. She didn’t have to accept his claim because of what he was or what he’d done for her. And yet…she did accept it. Tenthil wasn’t the one who’d taken her from home, wasn’t the one who’d enslaved and humiliated her, wasn’t the one who’d hurt her repeatedly over the last four years.

He’dsavedher.

He just happenedto have grown a little too attached along the way. And maybe she had, too.

Would it be so bad to be his mate, to claim him as hers?

Abella stilled.

I had sex with him.

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