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Of course he’d grabbed her bag. It’d been sitting on the ground between them when she was taken, and he knew it was important to her survival.

Good boy?

He didn’t know why these two words curled his tail with a thrill while piercing his cock with a deep throb. His orbs changed to a darker purple than normal, and he had to grip his seam shut to stop his cock from extruding.

“I’m a good male,” he agreed, liking that she saw him as this.

He didn’t know why Emerie was acting this way when she’d been afraid inside that female Mavka’s burrow. He didn’t understand why her scent was growing tangier by the second, but he didn’t want his uncontrollable desires to upset her.

She was calm and giving him thesekisses.He didn’t want her to stop. Not when he wanted her to give him more, to lather his entire skull with them.

Emerie paused with her lips near the end of his beak, and her eyes slipped to his orbs. They crinkled with fondness and perhaps... humour?

“Did you like me calling you that?”

Then, she gave him slower, deeper, and wetter kisses up the curve of his beak, while she leaned her body more and more against him.

“Yes,”he grated, wrapping one arm around her to bring her even closer, while keeping the other on his seam.

“Your orbs have turned purple.” When she was right before his orbs, that were focused and unwilling to move from her face, she nibbled at her bottom lip. Her knee bumped against the back of his knuckles, like she was trying to feel him. “I really want to give you a reward right now for being so good.”

I will get a reward for being good?But all he’d done was save her after failing to protect her. When he realised this, he didn’t feel as though he deserved one.

“I did not protect you,” he rejected, his orbs turning a reddish pink when shame trickled down his spine.

“Because I wanted to be alone. That’s not your fault, but mine, and you still came and saved me.”

She gave him a lingering kiss on his cheek bone. He was still about to reject her, but her hand started slipping down his chest. It made an obvious path down his abdomen, meaning her destination could only be where his hand was stopping his dick from slipping from him.

She... wants to touch me?

This was the first time Emerie had reached for him like this, had wanted to touch him when his cock wasn’t already waiting and achy. Although it throbbed and was stiffening behind his seam, he wasn’t desperate.

But he did crave her, and that’s what almost broke him when she lowered herself just enough to brush her welcoming palm over the backs of his knuckles. The idea sent a spike of need through his groin. When he wouldn’t let his seam go, his tentacles squirmed. Then they swirled around his growing erection in the strangest comforting cuddle.

He felt them tugging down to aid him, to keep him in.

As much as Ingram wanted her hands on him, he wanted something much,muchmore.

He braved releasing his hand from his seam and was thankful he didn’t extrude. It allowed him to skate his hand and claws up the front of her hips and under her shirt.

“I want to touch you, Emerie,” he pleaded.

If she was offering a reward, and since he was selfish enough to take one, he would prefer this.

She stood and yanked the bottom of her shirt down. The desirous heat in her gaze fizzled into worry. “I told you why you can’t.”

He brought his hand up between them and demonstrated what he’d learned. His claws slowly retracted, giving him no pain. Her lips parted in surprise, eyes wide and riveted to them.

“I did not know I needed to learn this until you told mewhyI needed to,” he explained, wanting her to be more open and honest with him in the future.

Ingram had only gained much humanity recently. He’d also spent all of his life with his kindred, who he had never needed to change or be different for. His kindred was as hard, sharp, and rough as he was; he’d never held someone soft and delicate.

But he was willing to learn, wanted to more than anything if it meant he could be closer with her.

To demonstrate his control, and that she no longer needed to fear him, he ghosted his very fingertips against the ridge of her jaw. Then he danced them down the pulsing jugular of her throat, somewhere so vital and fragile.

Emerie’s gaze was locked on his skull, her blue eyes flicking side to side as they bounced between his purple orbs. The hue of them darkened when she didn’t stop his fingertips from slipping lower, and lower, until he was at her hand fisting the bottom of her shirt.