Page 149

Before I could say another word, she turned and left. My mate was gone as quickly as I had found her.

chapterthree

natalie

My fingers shookas I punched a few glowing buttons on the control panel. Thankfully the alarm didn’t require much brainpower to address, simply letting me know that it had been an hour since I had put theGokstadon autopilot. I was honestly thankful for the interruption.

The weight of Eacus’s glowing red gaze had been so heavy that it raised a layer of sweat on my skin. His pupilless red eyes should have been unnerving and alien, but instead, they held more feeling than I could have imagined—feelings that reminded me I hadn’t been touched in a very long time. Even now, it made me want to strip out of my pilot’s jumpsuit just to relieve the heat building in my flesh.

That was another thing. Eacus’s touch had awoken something in me that had been dormant for months now. Even something as innocent as his palms cradling my cheeks made sparks dance over my skin. And when his tail—a lion-like appendage I somehow hadn’t noticed until I transferred him to the med-bay—trailed up my thigh, I thought I would combust on the spot.

His insistence that we were mates didn’t help the roiling inferno building within me either.

Even now, I could feel a foreign, though not unpleasant weight in the back of my mind. Even if I had wished his claims were untrue—which I wasn’t sure I did—I could tell he wasn’t lying.

The question was, what should I do about it?

Before the alarm had broken me out of my trance, I had been about to tilt my head back and ask him to feed from me again. To open my mind and body to this male I could somehow sense wouldn’t betray me or leave me alone ever again.

Thanks to theGokstad’sinterruption, I had a chance to think on the decision with a clear head. Or I would have, if my traitorous body wasn’t begging me to go back and press my lips to his.

Maybe I just needed to give my body what it wanted, and then I could assess the situation with a clear head. After all, it had been months since I last sought release, my desire, like my appetite for food, shriveling up and dying inside me after weeks on end of listlessly drifting between galaxies.

Now that a male—a gentle, muscular, alien male—had banked the fire within me once more, I needed to satisfy it before I could decide anything.

Slowly, I pulled down the zipper at the front of my utilitarian khaki jumpsuit. As I did, my other hand drifted up to cup my breast, large enough to overflow my hand.

But it would fit perfectly in Eacus’s large palm.

With that thought, I trailed my other fingers down my now bare stomach. They lingered at the elastic of my briefs, tracing back and forth for just a moment, before dipping underneath.

I had never been one to take my time with pleasure. Years in the military with minimal privacy made release something to be accomplished quickly and efficiently. Now, I didn’t waste a second in reaching for my pleasure point for a different reason: desperation.

My core tightened instantly, somehow already wet from the short moments of contact with Eacus—his velvety black and red wings creating a cocoon around me, or his tongue darting out to lap at the blood on my wrist. The thoughts alone made me groan, and I used one hand to brace myself on the control panel while my other fingers quickened their pace.

Somehow, it still wasn’t enough. The newfound presence in the back of my mind echoed my arousal back at me, amplifying it in the process.

Slowly, I worked a finger inside myself, and when I met little resistance, I added another. I found myself imagining it was Eacus’s fingers instead. His cock.

It would surely be as big as the rest of him.

I hoped it was.

Another desperate sound tore from me as I thrust my fingers deeper. My breath was so ragged, nearly drowning out the subtle hum of the engines, that it took me a long moment to register the sound of footsteps behind me.

I whirled around, finding Eacus standing in the doorway to the cockpit, and froze. Slowly, his gaze trailed down my body, taking in my exposed, heaving chest and the hand I still had shoved into my underwear.

I swallowed thickly.

He took one step further into the room, then stopped. He stayed there, although his tail flicked back and forth, the black tuft of hair at the end swishing across the durasteel floor. His wings flared slightly, showing off just how beautifully the glossy black feathers shifted to red at the tips.

Blood red.

“You think I couldn’t feel you touching yourself, my beautiful mate? Thinking about my cock as you did so?” His words should have made me blush, but they didn’t seem scolding. Instead he seemed curious, although the huskiness of arousal tinged his voice.

Carefully, I moved my fingers inside myself once more, and his muscles rippled as a wave of pleasure ran through me.

Hecouldfeel my actions.