Page 44 of The Delver
He hooked a finger under her chin to draw her attention back to him. “Hold me. That is all you must do.”
“Won’t you be holding me?” Her voice was uncharacteristically small.
Urkot lifted his mandibles and chittered. “Not enough arms.”
She scowled at him. “That’s not funny, Urkot. This is…it’s…”
“It will be fine,” he said, withdrawing his upper arms from her to hold up both thumbs in a gesture he’d learned from Cole. “Two fines, see?”
That earned the ghost of a smile from her, barely more than a twitch of her lips—but it was something.
Collecting a wad of sticky silk, he attached it to his glowing crystal before pressing that crystal to his headcrest. He tipped his head toward Callie. “Say good?”
He felt the crystal slowly tipping forward, stretching the silk.
She laughed, shaking her head. “Goofball.” She held out her palm. “Give me some sticky string.”
Chittering, he produced a small strand and handed it to her, ducking lower so she could secure it around his head, fastening the crystal in place.
Callie lowered her arms. “That should hold.”
“Thank you.” He straightened and began drawing silk from his spinnerets, passing it to his hands in a thick strand. “My silk will hold you, and you will hold me. We have climbed together many times, yes?”
She nodded. Her pink tongue slipped out briefly to wet her lips, and it took everything in him not to fixate on the gesture.Everything about her fascinated him, called to him, but her mouth, her tongue…those were especially alluring.
He wrapped the rope around his waist and tied it tight before reaching around Callie’s waist to do the same. He gave it an extra, playful tug, drawing her closer and disrupting her balance. She chuckled as she fell into him, her palms slapping his chest.
“We are bound, female,” Urkot rumbled. He settled his upper hands on her hips and lifted her up against his body, cradling her ass with his lower hand to keep her steady. “Now wrap yourself around me.”
Cheeks darkening, Callie stared into his eyes as she wound her arms around his neck and her legs around his midsection. He felt her thigh muscles tense as she drew herself closer.
Urkot’s breath caught.
Heat—delicious, tantalizing heat—caressed his abdomen where her bare slit pressed to him.
His fingers flexed, digging into her giving flesh as a shudder coursed through his body. He became even more aware of her warmth around him, of her sweet, delicate scent, of her soft, smooth skin. His claspers stretched upward, curling around her thighs.
He never could’ve guessed how right it would feel to have her in this position, how tempting it would be, how thrilling. Nor could he have known how difficult it would make everything. How would he safely climb when all he could focus on was the press of her slit, the feel of her body? How was he meant to think when her scent filled his mind in a fog?
“You promise you won’t drop me?” Though Callie’s breath was delightfully warm on the hide of his neck, her words brought him clarity.
He held her tighter. “Never.”
Rather than succumb to the temptation to remain like this, just the two of them, Urkot returned to the cliff’s edge.
His hearts thumped. The danger of this undertaking was not lost on him, nor were the likely consequences of failure. Callie’s safety, her life, was his responsibility. Nothing else was as precious, even if the universe was eightfold larger than the impossible vastness the humans had described.
Urkot glanced down. Not even his eyes, after years of working in near complete darkness, could penetrate the blackness below. It was alarmingly easy to imagine spiritstriders lurking down there. Visions of pale vrix swarming up from below, hissing and growling as they scaled the chasm walls, danced on the edges of his mind.
A shudder threatened to course through him, and he gritted his teeth to hold it back. Callie had been unsettled enough by his talk of spiritstriders; she did not need to see the truth of his unease.
He turned his back to the pit, ignoring the way it made his fine hairs rise, and released Callie.
She gasped and squeezed him tighter. Fortunately, even without the support of his arms, she remained snugly in place, aided by his claspers.
“I have you,” Urkot rumbled.
“I know,” she murmured against his neck.
