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With that brief pulse of her essence against his, he’s well and truly lost. All sense of caution, all sense of himselfashimself, fails in an instant. Only for an instant—but it’s enough.

He won’t have another chance, not like this, locked onto her and shrouded on the dark side of her world, in a night that’s all too short. If he lets go, velocity will slingshot him out of orbit, faster than her gravity can hold him still.

It’s now or never. He reaches for her, curling fingers of force and shadow around her. She trembles, going rigid at his touch.

She fears him. The realization shakes him. Her terror flows out like a black wave. Her call fades into silence.

No. No, no, no.Panic flaring, he folds her closer, his body shielding her from gravity, acceleration, heat as he places her in emergency stasis. It’s too cold for her in his hold, even at his core.

Now that hehasher, the singular hunger that drew him temporarily sated, he can spare attention for logistics, long-term plans. A thousand processes launch at once. His sensors back online and working overtime, he samples her home environment, running comparisons.

Even the atmosphere in his hold is wrong. She needs oxygen most, but tempered with nitrogen, argon, trace amounts of carbon dioxide, neon, helium, and methane, with enough water vapor to keep her body supple and skin hydrated, all at a very specific mercurial pressure.

Void take him for a fool, she’ll need so many things. Air, warmth, water, sustenance. Human biosignatures mark them as omnivores, but whatthishuman prefers will be individual, unique, unknown. Her den yields few clues, but he gleans enough to make a start.

What brought her to the peak of ecstasy that called to him across the light-years? From her small surface den, he collects a handheld data pad and a stimulator tool of some sort, a starting point for study and iteration. But to master her species’ expectations for mating rituals, he must satisfy her ineveryway, not merely fulfill physical necessities.

He must delight her mind and tantalize her senses. He needs her tofeelfor him. His nanoprobes range more widely, gathering samples from local food sources, tapping into a million data streams to gather cultural context, physiological diagrams, electronic libraries, human attempts to parse the mystery of their own sexual diversity.

He keeps her in stasis while he prepares to host her. He must get this right. That brief burst of energy she gave him, all unknowing, told him everything he hoped and feared was true.

She’s perfect. She’s everything he craved in those long epochs of waiting, his end and his beginning.

His fate. His fuel. His freedom.

With the power she holds, she can save him…or destroy his last chance to fulfill his purpose. But no matter how his gambit ends, he knows one thing.

He’s not alone anymore. It’s more than he thought possible. And for a moment, with her wrapped safe and sound within his hold, it’s enough to drive him forward.

* * *

He stalks closerwith a smirk playing across his beautiful face. His eyes glow red as a predator’s, one native to the shadows gathered close around her. They hold her rooted in place, helpless before his slow advance.

“How you tremble for me, little one.” His voice rumbles low and deep, poised between a purr and a growl. It seems to stroke her very skin, raising chills along her spine. “How your heart races. You can’t hide that from me. Not your fear, and not how much you want this.”

“I don’t,” she whispers. Lying. Every word, every step toward her stokes the ache in her core, even as she shrinks from him. Heat throbs between her legs as tendrils of shadow tighten at her calves, her wrists, and gently, inexorably, around her throat.

“Your body betrays you.” He really growls this time, eyes flashing. His shadows twine around her thighs, an inexorable caress that spreads her open. They pull her down to her knees, and she tips her head back, rewarded by the faint curve of his mouth.

The proximity overwhelms her. She could beg him to stop, to leave her alone, and yet. She cannot bear it. “Please…”

He nudges himself against her lips—silky, hot, hard as steel. When she flicks her tongue over his tip, eagerly tasting the precum glistening there, his groan shakes them both. Gripping the back of her head, hands fisted in her hair, he pushes in deeper, fucking her mouth with abandon.

His shadows are more solid now. They slither between her legs, strumming her clit. She cries out around his cock as one thick, heavy tendril pushes into her pussy, while a second presses warm and insistent below it, gently working her open.

Then they pull back, and she moans with a sense of utter loss. She was lost the second she dreamed of belonging to him.

“Please,” she whimpers, lips numb, jaw aching. “I want you everywhere. I want?—”

Before she can finish, he’s there. Everywhere. Deep in her pussy, spearing her ass, invading her airway, growling in her ear.

“You…are…already…MINE.”

And she comes apart, lost in a sharp and shattering pleasure, a surrender so complete she could fall into it forever.

Kat wakes with a start, her own wordless cry still echoing in her ears.

The dream dissolves, already no more than shreds and flashes of half-remembered depravity, but heat still pulses through her body, and her panties cling damply to her skin. She reaches down to relieve the heavy desire suffusing her limbs?—