Page 13 of Claim
The way he held her, flush against his body, her heartbeat reverberated through him.Her Earther circulation was faster than his, but like two celestial bodies finding their center point, they matched in some cosmic way.His ichor rushed through him, as if seeking a way to her.Always his heart had beat for theDeepWander, but with each pulse now, it wanted her.
With one hand, he lifted her chin, tilting her face upward to his.He aligned their mouths, his ichor surging low and hard.
“May my first kiss be not a carnivorous bubble blower?”
“I’m not much, but at least I’m not that.”She anchored one hand behind his neck and pulled him down to her kiss.
He’d known her mouth would be soft, but he’d never dreamed (most of his dreams were about finding himself floating in space, which was how he lived most of his life, except in his nightmares he floated without theDeepWander) just how soft she’d be, so soft.And sweet, not just with the lingering flavor of the dewdrop, but something that was all her, only her.It soothed the frantic surge of his ichor, the hard throb seething beneath his carapace that threatened to erect in a flare of wings, to bear him way, not floating but flying.
For a moment he gloried in that rush, and she let out a noise, softer than her lips, sweeter than her breath, and the explosive need that raged through his veins was like the tiniest flame set to pure oxygen: the seeming nothingness that was there before transforming instantly and violently to all-consuming flame.
All his arms wrapped around her, claiming that heat and light as his own.She made that little noise again, and what was left of his control and common sense flashed into an ash so meaningless even theDeepWander’s heaviest, most brutal compressor wouldn’t be able to crush his discipline back into shape.
Spinning and senseless, he pressed her back against the nearest surface, angling himself close to her, wanting her all around him, every molecule merging…
She slicked her hand through his antennae, teasing them forward into a position of utter focus.As if he could pay attention to anything else besides her.The caress wrenched a shuddering groan from him, and she slid her hands down to wrap her fingers around his tusks, hanging on tight.With a little tug, she angled his head, just so, no longer perfectly aligned, but somehow even better.Her little tongue darted out to touch his, and what had been soft and sweet and just a bit precarious became something else, slick and hungry.It was a sensation he’d never known before, that would haunt him forever like the grotto phantoms of orc myth that hunted the deepest caverns of their long-lost world, rending their victims and turning bones into stalactites of gemstones and ichor into hidden pools of liquid gold, diamond, and mimeticphyre.
The kiss might’ve gone for another eternity but he had to gasp for breath, and he became aware of the slightest pressure against his torso as one June’s spread hands eased him back.
“Mag,” she whispered through lips roughed scarlet and shining as the finest tumbled garnet.“Please.”
“Please…” He blinked at her, stunned.
He’d held her sprawled on the command dais, his thighs braced on the seat, and her knee slung over his forearm.Her heel swung precariously close to the comm panel where an accidental flick would send a live broadcast throughout the ship.
His own breath stuttered.“I…”
Her fingers, which had been splayed in a hot star over his torso, contracted into a small, tight fist.
Revealing the glyph carved there.
Apex.
Slowly, he pulled back.The sight of her spread upon the seat of his command pierced him.He had once accidentally splashed a refining acid on his carapace.That had hurt less than this moment peeling himself away from the little Earther woman.
She gazed up at him as he carefully disentangled his arm from her leg.
He swallowed hard.“If Illgattoa kisses like that, maybe the rest of my life as its prisoner won’t be so bad.”
June touched her fingertips to her lips.“Don’t even joke about that.”
He didn’t joke.But since the idea obviously bothered her, he let it go.“I should not have done that.”
She lowered her hands to the sides of the seat, levering herself upright at the same time she lifted her chin.“Oh?Because you are apex, I suppose.”
Since he’d stepped back and she was the one in the command position—and her chin was very high—for once she was taller than him.
“Because I need to focus on saving the ship,” he countered.“And I can’t do that while my ichor burns for you.”
When she set her upper teeth at the corner of her mouth for a moment, her lower lip jutted out, the flesh bright and swollen.Then she mumbled, “That might be the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
The urge to kiss her again seized him, to make her forget anything anyone else had said to her, ever.And since she was even now sitting in the place he’d always thought was his, this need to claim her seemed preordained.
Vug.With one kiss, the i’lva had taken him.
Chapter 5
She hadn’t meant to kiss him so long or so hard.Or at all.
