Page 29 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded (Rogue Bonds #2)

Zeke

G oroz’s words stayed with me all evening. We packed up our equipment and stored most of it in the office – the only space around with a lock on the door. I explained to Goroz what we expected of the Ranzors overnight, and he agreed easily, stating that they were here to prevent trouble, not to create it. For my own part, all I could do was hope for the best. And then I sent the rest of my team off home and headed up the hill with Dax.

“How are you feeling about the camp?” Dax asked, once we were away from the park and could talk in privacy.

“Tired,” I answered, stating the most obvious response first. “It’s been a long day. But it’s also… invigorating. We got a hell of a lot done. And we’re doing incredibly well in creating a positive relationship with the Ranzors. Not that it’s all perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than I was expecting. All in all, I’m very pleased with it.”

Dax smiled, seeming both smug and bashful at the same time. “I think you’re doing very well,” he said. But even so, he sounded uncertain, as if he didn’t have the right to be commenting on my performance.

Okay, maybe it was time for me to cut the bullshit. “I’m still very much in two minds about this,” I admitted, after we’d walked a way further. “There are moments throughout the day where I feel very much on the verge of a breakdown. I had no clue what to do when the Ranzors arrived, and the fact that things seem to be working out there is mostly just thanks to gut feeling and luck. I’m terrified that shit’s going to hit the fan while we’re away tonight, and if it does…” I shuddered. “I think that could send me right back into a downward spiral. This is a fantastic opportunity for me to prove that I’m still useful for something, but it’s also the perfect storm to prove that I’m a total basket case.”

Dax stopped, right there in the middle of the street, and took my hands. “What I’ve seen today,” he said softly, “is that this assignment is far more pressure than you were intentionally signing up for. We were going to go to the base to just have a chat with Henderson. Instead, we’re playing peacekeeper between Halagal refugees, Ranzor aid workers and Alliance protestors. You’ve been given an assignment that requires long days with no clear end in sight. Yes, you are struggling under the pressure at times. But at other times, you’re thriving on the challenges and coming up with solutions that are well outside the box. I think that even if parts of this fail, it doesn’t prove that you’re useless. It simply shows that you need an assignment that falls within more controlled parameters.”

I sighed and shook my head. “A week ago, I was drowning in alcohol and couldn’t handle any challenge more complex than putting a puzzle together.”

He grinned. “And today, you earned the respect of one of the most badass species in the galaxy. That’s a remarkable step forward.”

I let the wave of relief and warmth that his words generated wash over me, for once, without trying to tell myself I wasn’t worthy of feeling that way. How the hell had I spent an entire year thinking that Dax was nothing more than an annoyance and a burden? Sometimes, I could be an absolute fucking idiot.

“Thank you,” I said, turning to continue our walk home. But I didn’t let go of his hand, not until we arrived at the house and I needed to open the front door.

“Let’s have something simple for dinner,” I said to Dax, as I shut the door behind us. “I think we both need to go to bed early.”

He nodded and headed for the kitchen, returning ten minutes later with two bowls of canned camel stew and a plate full of toast. In the interim, I’d been looking up the answers to a few questions I had on Ranzor culture, to try and keep ahead of the inevitable issues that were going to crop up tomorrow.

And speaking of tomorrow, I was surprised to find that I was actually looking forward to seeing Ru and Gasrin. For a long time, the thought of seeing them again had filled me with dread, for fear that it would dredge up too many bad memories. Or that they would blame me for their injuries and their ongoing trauma. I’d been the leader of our doomed mission, and for a long time, I’d believed they would have been within their rights to hate me for it.

But in the space of just over a week, Aiden, Dax and a large dose of soul searching had made me realise that their survival was something to be celebrated. No, I hadn’t managed to save everyone. And no, they hadn’t made it out unscathed. But they had their lives, and all three of them, Matchi included, seemed determined to make something useful out of what they had left.

I avoided thinking about the natural extension of that idea – that if I should be celebrating their survival, then I really should be celebrating my own, as well. For too long, I’d given up on any hope for the future, and recent developments were too new for me to feel any kind of security in them yet.

But that didn’t mean that I was dismissing the opportunities here entirely…

Dax cleaned up the kitchen, then we went through our usual routine of getting ready for bed. It wasn’t terribly late yet, but then again, even though we were going to be in bed, I wasn’t planning on going to sleep just yet.

I climbed into bed, but instead of lying down, I set my pillow against the headboard and sat up, motioning for Dax to snuggle in beside me. He did, a smile on his face as he curled up and rested his head on my chest. I wrapped my arm around his shoulder and kissed his hair. I’d been hyper-aware of any physical contact between us ever since Goroz had made his shrewd observations, and as a result, I’d held back while we’d been out in public. Now, though, there was nothing stopping me touching him.

“Thank you for today,” I said, aware of the ongoing need to give him praise. “The way you jumped between me and Goroz was amazing.” I kissed the top of his head, then stroked his hair. It was soft, but at the same time, it had a tendency to stand up fairly straight, just curling a little at the tips.

Dax tilted his head up to look at me. “I thought he was threatening you. Ranzor culture is going to be difficult to learn, I think. There are a lot of differences between human and Eumadian culture, but even that seems simple, compared to the Ranzors.”

I smiled, but I felt a flush of nervousness at the same time. “Goroz said something to me this afternoon. Which was another one of those cultural misunderstandings. He thought that you and I were married.” He’d used the word ‘mated’, but by all practical measures, it meant the same thing.

I watched a ripple of violet cross Dax’s shoulders. He buried his face more firmly into my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice muffled.

I wasn’t sure what response I’d been expecting, but that wasn’t it. “Why are you sorry?” I asked, tugging him up a little to look at him. He moved willingly, but avoided my eyes.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“Why would people thinking we’re married embarrass me?” I’d started this conversation as a sideways attempt at flirting – something I was well out of practice at doing – but it seemed my efforts weren’t having anything like the desired effect.

Dax stiffened, a look of annoyance crossing his face. “Masters do not marry their dimari,” he said flatly.

Ok, so this was a class thing? The aristocracy couldn’t marry the peasants? It wasn’t surprising that he had that mindset, and come to think of it, I wasn’t sure where Alliance law stood on the issue, either. Based on what Aiden said about the state of most master-dimari relationships, I doubted it had come up before. “Well, no, we probably couldn’t,” I admitted. “But I thought it was kind of cute that he thought that.”

Dax sat up straighter, looking confused. “Cute?”

“He noticed how much we touch each other. And the way you look at me.”

That got a reaction. Dax curled in on himself, his scales rippling, his eyes opening wide. “Oh,” he squeaked, clutching onto the bedsheets like his life depended on it. “Sorr… Um… Should I be apologising for that?” Great. Now he was both embarrassed and confused. This was not going the way I wanted it to.

“Dax, it’s okay,” I said, deciding to throw my attempt at seduction out the window and just say what I was thinking. Subtle flirtation clearly didn’t work on a dimari. “None of this is a bad thing. I’m not upset, or embarrassed, or annoyed. What I’m trying to say is… I really like you. And I like the fact that other people noticed that.” I still wasn’t sure what my colleagues would think of our relationship, but as Aiden had said, the more I got to know Dax, the easier it was to tell when he was consenting to something, versus when he was just going along with what I told him to do. “My point is… I wanted to… I would really like to…” Why was I so fucking tongue-tied all of a sudden?

But the answer came after only a moment’s thought. I could just order him to do what I wanted, but I wanted to know whether he was on board with it.

Yesterday, it had been easy. He’d offered himself up to me on a silver platter, asking if I’d like his company in the shower. The fact that he was feeling frisky had been blatantly obvious – hence the impromptu hand job I’d given him. But tonight, he was harder to read, and I fervently wanted to avoid taking advantage of him.

This was fine, I reminded myself. I knew how to read him. So I’d just tell him what I wanted, and see how he reacted. He really wasn’t good at hiding his moods. “I want to have sex with you,” I blurted out, bracing myself for his reaction.

The change in Dax was immediate. He sat up, all traces of insecurity vanishing, an almost startling eagerness in his posture. “Yes, sir,” he said, all confidence and diligence. He looked around, seeming to search for something. “Here?” he asked. “How would you like to…? Do we need some lubricant? What would you like me to…?”

“Dax, calm down,” I said, a smile on my lips as I took his face in my hands. “Yes, here. And yes, we’ll need some lube, but there’s some in the nightstand. And there’s no rush. Let’s just…” I leaned in and kissed him. It was the first time I’d kissed his mouth. Before, it had always been his hair, or his temple. He tensed for a moment… and then he melted , his body turning soft and pliant. He leaned into me and made a whimpering noise, then opened his mouth at my urging.

I felt an immediate stirring in my groin, and thank god for that. I didn’t want to dismiss the effect my trauma had had on my libido, but based on the way my body had been behaving in the last few days, I was developing a theory that at least half of my performance problems had been due to the effects of the alcohol. In addition to that, I was rapidly finding out that I was able to relax in Dax’s presence, in a way I hadn’t been able to when I’d been alone. If I had a flashback, or if I got overwhelmed, he could talk me through it. And given the way he was already plucking at his clothing and tenting his shorts, I didn’t have to worry about whether or not he was into this.

“Take your clothes off,” I told him, as I leaned over to fetch the lube.

I’d never seen anyone get undressed so quickly. He tossed his t-shirt and boxer shorts onto the chair in the corner, then scrambled back onto the bed. He slid in under the sheets and turned to face me, a look of delighted expectation on his face.

I chuckled, then slid my arm around his waist and pulled him closer. “Just relax, Dax,” I told him. “I’m not going to suddenly change my mind. I just want to take our time a bit.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, sounding entirely breathless.

I leaned in to kiss him again. He tasted like toothpaste. I could feel the friction of the bed sheets against my boxer-covered erection. I suddenly felt hyper-aware of every sensation; the coolness of the sheets against my toes; the hard press of the headboard against my shoulder; the slick feel of Dax’s tongue against my own. This was what I’d been missing out on for the past year. My attempts to drown out the negative sensations had numbed the positive ones as well.

I felt a tremor run through Dax, and I pulled back to look down at him. “Have you ever kissed anyone before?” I asked him. Aiden had said that dimari were all virgins at the point that they were sold, but nonetheless, I was curious about exactly what he had or hadn’t done.

“No, sir,” Dax said. “I was trained using silicon figures, but I’ve never kissed a real person before.”

I considered asking him if he’d liked it… but previous attempts at asking similar questions hadn’t gone down well. “Is it as good as you expected it to be?” I asked instead. He seemed to have some fairly high expectations as far as the sex itself went, so that could mean he’d contemplated the individual details as well.

“Yes, sir,” Dax said, nodding his head vigorously. I couldn’t help but grin. He was so cute when he was excited.

Reassured that Dax was a willing participant in this, I figured I may as well just ask for what I wanted. He wasn’t going to complain either way, and given that I was planning on keeping everything fairly vanilla, I didn’t expect he’d have any objections to anything I asked him to do today.

I reached for his hand and tugged it towards me, placing it firmly over my groin. “Could you massage me a bit?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes, sir.” He began a slow press-and-tug motion, and I went back to kissing him, confident that he could do both at the same time. After a few minutes, I fumbled around until I found his leg – not wanting to break the kiss to look at what I was doing – and slid my hand up until I reached his groin. He squeaked and jumped as I wrapped my firm grip around his erection. He slid his body closer, his hips lifting a little, and in response, I stroked him faster.

A few minutes later, he pulled back. “Master, I think I’m going to…”

He’d called me ‘Master’ the last time he’d climaxed, as well, and I was forming a theory that it was something he did when he was too distracted to remember my preferred form of address. After twenty years of training, the term was probably a thoroughly ingrained habit.

But this time, I released my grip on him, and he gave a surprised little groan as he realised I wasn’t going to let him finish just yet. Instead, I stripped off my boxers, letting him take a good, long look at my erection. He wasn’t the slightest bit bashful about it, his eyes tracing my length as his tongue wetted his lips.

And that was fine with me. Because although I was reasonably hard, I was still a way off from being ready for the next stage of the evening. “How about you show me how talented your mouth is?” I asked him, and his eyes lit up.

“Yes, sir!” He scrambled over onto his knees, all but diving headfirst into my lap.

“Oh, fuck,” I groaned, as his lips closed around me, and I was reminded just how skilled he was. Within only a few minutes, I was breathing heavily, my cock feeling harder than it had been in months. “Fuck, Dax, stop. That’s enough,” I managed to say, biting my lip to avoid giving in to the temptation to just let him finish me like this. I would have been perfectly happy with that, but I was fairly sure that Dax wanted more.

“Lie down,” I said next, before he could get disappointed about being asked to stop. I reached for the lube, chuckling again as Dax threw himself over onto his back, spreading his legs without being asked. His cock was visibly throbbing, the head a deep purple colour, while his shaft was dark blue – a beautiful contrast to the lighter turquoise of the rest of his body.

The sight of his cock, arching up to rest on his belly, and his balls further down, sent a jolt of desire through my groin. Forcing myself not to rush, I squirted a dollop of lube onto my fingers and smeared it around a little. “Tell me if I hurt you,” I reminded Dax, knowing I’d given him a firm instruction to that effect in the past, but he was so wound up at the moment, there was a good chance he’d forgotten.

He nodded, then whimpered as I reached down and circled his entrance with one slick finger. I was about to ask him if he was okay, when he spread his legs wider, and I took the sound to be eagerness, rather than apprehension.

When I slid the first finger into him, he gasped, his eyes rolling back, and his back arched. I probed him gently, adding a second finger a minute or two later. “Oh, stars,” he muttered, his fists gripping onto the sheets.

“How does that feel?” I asked him.

“So good,” he moaned, his hips lifting a little.

I added a third finger, feeling his body slowly loosen around me. “Do you think you’re ready to take me yet?” I asked eventually. I’d considered leaning down to suck him while I was doing this, but given the way he was leaking and throbbing, I’d decided that would probably be overkill. If there was one thing I could say about him, it was that he was an enthusiastic lover.

“Yes, sir,” he replied emphatically.

I wasn’t going to argue with him. My own throbbing erection was demanding some attention, and I wasn’t going to be able to draw this out any further. I slicked a bit more lube over my cock, then positioned myself between his legs, pressing them a little further apart. Dax looped his hands under his knees and pulled his legs back, allowing me easier access.

“Such a good boy,” I murmured, as I lined the head of my cock up with his entrance. He gritted his teeth and made a low, grumbling sound at that. I was sharply aware that I had not yet given him permission to come, and even in my own haze of lust, I was paying close attention to his physical reactions. I wanted to push him to the point that he really enjoyed this, that his climax was a fitting reward for a day of hard work, but at the same time, I didn’t want to push him too far, so that all he ended up feeling was frustrated and resentful. Just let me get inside him, I decided, and then I’d tell him he could come.

I pressed forward, groaning as I felt the tightness of him, the heat of his body. God, it had been such a long time.

Hazy memories drifted through the back of my mind, as the stray thought attempted to remind me exactly why it had been such a long time, but I firmly dismissed the images, focusing on the muted flutterings of green and black across Dax’s scales. Black? I hadn’t seen his colours do that before.

I paused as I felt his body envelop the last inch of me. Oh, fucking hell, that felt amazing. Dax’s breathing was coming fast and shallow, his eyes squeezed shut, and I fully expected his reaction to be explosive when I leaned down and whispered into his ear, “You can come now.”

As predicted, he cried out, a wordless combination of agony and relief as jets of fluid spurted immediately from his cock. His passage clamped down around me, his legs squeezing my hips, his head thrown back as his climax ripped through him.

“Oh stars,” he muttered, when he finally began to relax. “Thank you, sir. Master. Thank you. Oh, stars, that was wonderful.”

I grinned, then rocked my hips forward just a fraction – a gentle reminder to him that I hadn’t finished yet. He made a startled noise, then finally opened his eyes. “Oh. Yes, sir,” he said, as if I’d asked him a question. “Yes. Please…” He lifted his hips again, feet now planted on the bed to give him better leverage. I cupped his right buttock to hold him steady, then set up a slow but firm rhythm. I thrust in deeply, then pulled out almost all the way, relishing the way his body rocked with my movements. I wasn’t anywhere near as strong as I’d been a year ago, but feeling his small body beneath me made me feel powerful.

And from the sounds he was making, Dax had no objections to the slightly rough treatment. He wrapped his legs around my waist and clung to my shoulders, watching my face eagerly for signs that I was going to climax. The intense scrutiny made me nervous for a few moments. But unlike any human lover, who might get impatient for me to finish, or be waiting to revel in the arrogance of knowing they’d made me come, Dax was simply wanting to know that I was enjoying this. For all his own spectacular orgasm, his goal was to please me. And that took so much of the pressure off, when I was already feeling off balance and out of practice.

It took longer than I had expected – longer than I would have liked. And after a few minutes of thrusting, I felt my arousal ebb a fraction, as doubts began to swarm in my head. Was he going to get bored? Was I going to make him sore? Was he just going to think I was incompetent, or useless, or…

A wavering moan drifted out of his chest, and that was when I registered the firm lump pressing against my belly. Oh. He was hard again. And far from getting bored, he seemed to be revelling in the slow rise to what was very likely to be another climax.

That bolstered my confidence. I reached between us, gripping him firmly, and began stroking him in time with my thrusts. “Oh, stars,” he muttered, gripping my shoulders more tightly, and then his breath hitched.

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 sounds wrung 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.”