Page 60 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded

The sound sent a jolt to my groin, and I muttered a curse as I surged suddenly closer to the edge. I sped up my thrusts, then blurted out a strangled sounding, “You can… come again… if you want to.” I gave two more thrusts, then I was seeing stars as my climax burst out of me in pulsing waves.

I felt Dax’s hand steal in between us, stroking himself frantically, and then he groaned and tensed, a few ragged soundswrung from his throat. Well. He’d seemed to enjoy that even more than I’d expected.

Feeling like a rag doll, I managed to pull gently out of him, then flopped down beside him on the bed. “Fuck,” I groaned, rubbing a hand over my face. “God, Dax, that was…” I glanced over at him, then, unable to resist, I leaned clumsily over and kissed him. “That was fucking amazing.”

He grinned as I pulled back, thoroughly pleased with himself. But his grin quickly faded to a frown of consternation. “I should go and clean up,” he said, dabbing a finger into the mess over his abdomen. He’d come all over himself twice, not to mention whatever mess the lube had made. Speaking of which, I should probably clean myself up a little, as well.

I followed him to the bathroom, where we both snagged washcloths to wipe ourselves down. I was halfway through the cleanup process when I felt myself being watched, and I glanced up. I caught Dax’s reflection in the mirror, watching me intently, even as he moved to wipe up the mess on his own belly. “Everything okay?” I asked him, not sure what his fascination was about.

“Yes, sir,” he said, his voice sounding a little tight. “I just…” He ducked his head, a flutter of violet shimmering across his collarbones. “Thank you,” he said softly, worrying the cloth in his hands. “I didn’t expect…” He seemed to be on the verge of tears, though at the same time, he didn’t seem to be upset, as such. More like overwhelmed.

“Hey,” I said, gathering him into my arms. “I love you. I hope you know that. You’re absolutely amazing. And I want you to enjoy sex,” I added, as I suspected that was what this was ultimately about. I’d rewarded his excellent behaviour with sex. I’d allowed him to climax twice. But perhaps that was a little too much reward, for a dimari who had been all but ignored, up until only a week ago.

He nodded, seeming lost for words. “Thank you, sir,” he said eventually, wrapping his arms around my waist and burying his face in my shoulder. I might have been mistaken, but I thought I heard him say, “I love you, too.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Dax

The protestors were back the following morning. And this time, they’d brought backup. Yesterday, most of them had been humans and Solofs, but today, there were a dozen or more Denzogals in the mix, tall and imposing, and more than willing to stare down the Ranzors, since they were the only Alliance species that could match the fearsome lizard-like creatures in height.

Goroz, of course, wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated. He growled at a handful of the protestors, then called Borl to take over his position at the park gates, coming to give us a report on the previous night.

“There was a small argument between two families over one of them making too much noise,” he stated, as he sharpened his claws on a fist-sized rock he’d picked up from somewhere. “The noise was because one of the children was crying. We told the one that was complaining that they could always go back to Hazharu if they didn’t like it here.” The blunt solution didn’t surprise me, coming from a Ranzor, but I still had to wonder whether it was appropriate.

Apparently, my master was not entirely impressed. “Dax, make a note to get some ear plugs delivered that’ll fit a Halagal’s ears,” he instructed me, and I hastily opened my comm to start taking notes. “Anything else?” he asked Goroz.

“Two humans tried to sneak into the camp. I don’t know what they wanted. Gatik saw them coming and they ran away. There were also a handful of givarids trying to break into the food supplies. We should order sturdier storage containers.”

I made another note to look into that. The givarids weren’t generally dangerous, but they could make a nuisance of themselves, if attracted by the scent of food.

A wave of shouting drifted up towards us, and we looked over towards the protestors. They’d broken off their chanting now to shout insults at the three Ranzors guarding the gate. I noted the way my master tensed and stood up straighter. One of the protestors attempted to break past Borl, who reached out, quick as lightning, and pushed him back. From the looks of it, the mild swipe had cost the huge Ranzor no effort at all, but the man went stumbling backwards. He tripped over, then landed on the ground, a look of shock and outrage on his face.

Goroz bared his teeth, taking a step towards his soldiers. “I’ve told them not to be too rough,” he muttered, but my master interrupted him.

“Don’t bother,” he said sharply. “It’s fine. This is a thing humans do sometimes. He’s just pretending that Borl pushed him harder than he actually did. Playing the victim in the hopes that he can get you into trouble.”

Goroz looked aghast at that news. “There is no honour is such behaviour!” he snarled. “This man is a coward!”

“You’ve got that right,” my master agreed. “Unfortunately, humans are a very mixed bag. A lot of them are very honourable people, but there are always a handful who just take what they can get at everyone else’s expense.”

“Hmph. Ranzors are the same,” Goroz admitted, with a grumble. “Most fight with courage, but a few pretend to have won a fight, when all they did was stumble upon the dead body after the danger was over.”

The fact that both species had members willing to dishonour themselves was intriguing, and I took a moment to wonder whether there was a similar set of behaviours in the dimari. We were trained to be obedient, so did that mean that if our masters behaved in dishonourable ways, we would emulate them? Or was there an equivalent way for a dimari to manipulate those around them?

All of a sudden, my own recent behaviour rushed to mind, and I felt my scales flutter at the realisation that I had been behaving entirely dishonourably. I had lied to my master, in order to push him to make different choices. I had stretched the boundaries of his orders as far as I could, to suit my own purposes – even if my purpose had ultimately been to help him. I had been insolent and stubborn, in the face of his obvious displeasure, because he hadn’t directly banned me from doing so.

My heart sank. Even with all the progress we’d made lately, I was still behaving like a terrible dimari – regardless of the fact that my master seemed to prefer things that way. But if Goroz found out about that, he was likely to tell me very bluntly what he thought of it, and I dreaded the idea of being responsible for the breakdown of the tentative relationship my master was forming with him. But the problem was that if I changed the way I was approaching my tasks, it would be a lot more difficult to provide my master with the care he so obviously needed. So how was I supposed to resolve this?

“Your crew mates are arriving today, is that correct?” Goroz asked, once he’d finished giving his report of the night’s dramas.

My master nodded. “Gasrin will be here about ten o’clock, Ru will be arriving a bit later. She’s catching a transporter from Adavi, which is a whole lot easier now than it used to be, given that we’ve managed to tame the Geshtoch. We were fighting over territory in the desert south of Hon,” he filled Goroz in. “But now we’ve switched tactics. We started sending them regular deliveries of coloured fabric – which they apparently love – and they’ve started terraforming the eastern part of the desert into forest. Now that they know that transporters bring them gifts, they’ve stopped trying to shoot them down.”

“Hm. Geshtoch are odd creatures,” Goroz mused. “We have them on Ronz as well. We find them to be-”

He was cut off by a sudden burst of shouting, exponentially louder than the last wave had been. We all spun around, and then a string of curses flowed from my master’s mouth as we saw the crowd of protestors surge forward, bursting straight through the line of startled Ranzors and into the park.

“What the fuck? Soll! Len! Get over here,” my master shouted, dashing off towards the park entrance. Goroz and I were hot on his heels, but the protestors simply ignored us. They pushed past us, heading straight for the lines of tents and the startled Halagals, and I was shoved multiple times as the crowd surged around me.