Page 29 of The Delver
Urkot encircled her with all three of his arms, drawing her against him. A shudder wracked him as she pressed closer. He could feel her heat through the silk, could feel the softness of her dark brown hair on his hide, and her scent… It overpowered everything around them. Earthy and sweet, but now it was enriched by the headiness of her desire.
Desire…for him.
Unbidden, Urkot’s claspers stroked her hips.
Her arms draped around his neck as she danced against him, and his body swayed along with her, complementing her motions. He lost himself in the rhythm, in the fluid movements, in her feel and her smell and her nearness. Lost himself in her.
Each brush of her ass against his sensitive slit sent a torturous pulse of pleasure to his core. Only his stony resolve held back his surging desire and denied his instinct to claim the female in his arms, but every bit of delicious friction between their bodies was like the strike of a pick, chipping away at a crumbling rock.
When he claimed Callie, it would not be before the eyes of others. He would not share any part of her. She was his alone.
Callie turned her head and tipped her face up, meeting his gaze. Those dark, dark eyes glittered with reflected light from the crystals. Her lips curved as she cupped his jaw, her fingers on either side of his mandible. “Urkot…”
“Callie!” a chorus of human female voices called.
Both Urkot and Callie’s faces turned toward the voices. Lacey, Ahmya, and Ivy hurried toward them, with Rekosh and Ketahn trailing behind.
Callie dropped her hand and stepped away from Urkot. “Hey!”
The females gathered around Callie, taking her hand and tugging her farther from Urkot.
Urkot stood rigidly in place. He gritted his teeth and fought back the urge to snarl at the females for daring to take Callie from him, his hearts pounding more thunderously than the drums.
“Come dance with us,” Ahmya said.
“We need some more girl time,” Ivy said. “And Ketahn’s not much of a dancer.”
“I dance,” Ketahn said, narrowing his eyes.
“You’re too stiff.”
“Rekosh is a really good dancer,” Ahmya said.
Rekosh chittered and leaned down to nuzzle her hair. “I am, but you females go. Enjoy yourselves.” His crimson eyes shifted to Urkot, gleaming with a knowing light. “We will have some…male time.”
Ivy released Callie and walked up to Ketahn. She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down, pressing her mouth firmly to his as she grinned. Very quietly, she said, “We’ll perform the mating dance later.”
Ketahn trilled, brushing his foreleg along hers before she withdrew to join the other human females.
As the group led Callie away, Lacey stepped up to her, peeking at Urkot. “Did I seriously see you kiss Urkot earlier?”
The hide around Urkot’s mouth tingled with the memory of Callie’s lips, so soft and warm. Callie glanced back at him, smiling a sultry little smile, but she was already too far away for him to make out her reply to her companion.
Had Rekosh and Ketahn not moved directly in front of him, Urkot would’ve given chase. Even now, some part of him demanded he shove his friends aside and go after Callie. She was his. How could he let her go? How could he let her be taken from him?
He needed to be as stone, unmoving, steady, controlled. Everything he felt was too new and intense, and he could not let it seize him. He could not surrender to this…this…
Frenzy.
That was the word. This was the onset of a mating frenzy. He’d resisted the pheromones of female vrix, had gone through his whole life without feeling even a shred of such desire. Callie had unraveled him in a single, all too brief dance.
And in the aftermath of that dance, his entire body throbbed and ached, and his hide thrummed with the ghost of her touch—of her rubbing against him, of her hair brushing his chest, of her arms around his neck.
What would it feel like to have her slit close around his stem, to have his shaft buried in her soft body? What would it feel like when she came undone around him?
He had no experience with mating. He knew only what little he’d heard. Yet the strength of what he felt for Callie, the depth of it, only made his yearning for her all the stronger.
His claspers cinched tighter around his slit, intensifying the ache behind it, and he dragged a hand down his face. He needed to turn his mind awayfrom such matters. But there seemed to be room only for her in his head.
