Page 21 of Defiance (The Intersolar Union #7)

I did it. I survived a social dinner with Chairwoman Poxy Cow sitting seven seats away and didn’t cause an intersolar diplomatic catastrophe. I didn’t dump my drink on her stinking crest or chuck fistfuls of food at her. Because every time I felt the awful itch to stab her with a bident, I met Novak’s encouraging stare.

One flick of his ear and the selfish yearning for petty vengeance fizzled out. The only way Novak and I were going to catch any whales was by working as a team, even if we couldn’t coordinate. Even if I’d never done anything like this before. He knew I could handle the painful outrage the same way I knew he wouldn’t let me fall. Because we trusted each other.

“Tonight was lovely,”

Sath said, strolling beside me through the gates of the guest riad. Both of us wore slippers that hushed against the polished stones. Hja Qiyua was quiet at night. There was no hovering traffic or flashy tourist district. Just whispering sand and potted ferns that rattled in the dry breeze.

“It was,”

I agreed automatically. Sath was deep in thought, smiling up at the sky through the open arches. I glanced behind me to see Novak stalking at a distance, his tail thwacking one side of the hall, then the other with impatience.

“I’ve cherished our time together.”

“Mhm.”

I still stared at Novak over my shoulder. All the danger I’d ignored for two weeks was charging at me like a stampede. I needed his reassurance and confidence or else I might just hurl up dinner. We needed to talk about—

Sath took my hand, rubbing the lengths of my much smaller fingers in long, slow strokes. He squeezed my wrists and forearms, staring at my freckled skin.

“Charlie,”

Sath started.

“Would you do me the honor of spawning together?”

My panicked train of thought screeched to a halt. I blinked at him, jaw dropping open.

“Come again?”

I stammered. Well. That was one way to conquer a rising panic.

Squash it down with a new one.

He shook his head.

“I’ve come to admire and care for you. We would create an extraordinary brood, not just for our genetic mixing but for the affection that’s grown between us. It… would be a dream come true to spawn with such a vibrant friend.”

We drifted to a stop in front of my suite, my heart hammering out of my chest. Sath smirked, lifting one side of his mouth enough that his rear fangs caught the amber lamps.

“Hjarna aren’t like other species, you know,”

he teased, still completely at ease while fire ate up my cheeks and ears. He leaned in with a big-eyed wink.

“We can be friends and spawn, yes? I’m not asking for you to be my vira. What do humans call that?”

“H-husband and wife,”

I choked out. Sath laughed, taking both of my hands in his. The gold fob and chain on his crest tinkled delicately, his tunic open far enough to show the shallow valley of his chest. I stared at the v of marigold flesh in a panic.

“Sath, I—Humans don’t make babies by spawning.”

“Sex, yes. I know.”

His smile simmered like spices in a warm pan, not innately flirtatious, but willing to be if I wanted that.

“Hjarna spawning can be quite sterile. Your eggs. My milt. Naked writhing and penetration not required. Unless you’d like me to learn, of course. I am capable.”

“Jaysus,”

I swore under my breath.

“Friendships like ours are how hjarna build their clusters. It’s the highest form of admiration in our eyes. And my cluster would raise them, of course. There are no binding long-term obligations that we don’t agree on together. Contracts are unique to the parties involved.”

Sath squeezed my hands, then let them go.

“So say you’ll think about it, yes?”

Sath didn’t know I had no eggs to go with his milt, and I couldn’t shatter that glimmer of hope in his eyes with the usual, sorry but no, without causing real damage. If I rejected him outright, it wouldn’t be like saying no to a date. It would be like shutting down your best mate’s coffee shoppe business plan because you didn’t have faith in their dream.

“I’ll think about it.”

I managed a smile. Letting him down after a few days of pretending to think about it would be less of a slap, wouldn’t it? “But no guarantees.”

Sath’s complex eyes saw straight through me, but he didn’t push me any harder. Instead he curled over me and pressed his crest to my forehead.

“Consider it a standing proposal,”

he murmured, backing away.

“Now, yes, or in the future.”

His long fingers slid off my hands and he bowed.

“Sleep well, Charlie. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He left the way we’d come, disappearing around the square turn in the passageway. Novak was nowhere to be seen, leaving me alone with the stars and the wind and a sense of growing unease.

The breeze that had been so calm before now felt sinister by myself. Was that a brush of a shoe on stone, or the gentle hiss of sand? I scanned the eaves of the central courtyard, anticipating shadowy hands that would grab me and silence my screams for help.

“Novak?”

I called out timidly. I glanced inside of my room and the unease grew. I cleared my throat, stopping with the toes of my slippers over the lip of the first step. The room was dark save little pinpricks of the sky in the window’s stone lattice.

“Novak, are you in here?”

“Sleep in my suite,”

his voice came in a rough growl from the far corner.

“Other side of the courtyard. It’s secure.”

“What?”

“Sweeping your room.”

“Oh.”

I hugged myself, feeling a little lighter.

“Actually, can I stay while you sweep? Talking to Guei—”

I bit my tongue. I was still in the hallway, not within the comfort of a privacy puck.

I stepped into the room and the door closed behind me, taking the warm lampglow with it. I squinted into the dark.

“Talking to Guei turned my stomach. I don’t think I’ll be able to stay until I’ve gotten some of this paranoia out of my system.”

I found Novak’s shadow in the room thanks to the way his scales shifted like knives, cutting up the shoulders of his tactical shirt. He curled over the bedding with one hand over his muzzle, tail strangling my pillow. His lungs pumped like great bellows, in and out, in and out.

Novak squeezed his eyes shut, baring his teeth.

“I can’t,”

he snarled.

“The morning. Maybe.”

What a cheeky liar. He wasn’t sweeping shite! I blinked at him, how he drooled venom onto my pillow, his white fangs catching the pallid glow of moonlight. If I’d seen it the first night we met, I might’ve been cowed, but now all I felt was exasperation.

“For feck’s sake!”

I huffed, putting my hands on my hips.

“I couldn’t take Sath up on the offer if I wanted to!”

He glared at me.

“I don’t, by the way. I’ve had enough of the trials of baby-making and don’t really care to try again.”

“You like him.”

“For the record, I like you too.”

“Charlie,”

he warned.

“I’m not safe.”

“Oh get tossed.”

I rolled my eyes and walked around the bed. Novak reeled back, pressing against the wall.

“It’s the scent burn, right?”

“Back up,”

he panted, pronged tongue practically rolling out of his mouth. He winced, abdomen clenching.

“Room, give us a warm glow.”

The recessed lighting glowed just enough to feel like candles in the corner of the room, bringing out the raven iridescence of his scales. I met Novak’s stare with equal ferocity and his glare moved north to the powder pressed into my forehead.

“Feeling possessive?”

I challenged. His eyes snapped back to mine, pupils blowing wide open even as he stood deathly still. I piqued one brow.

“Isn’t that the opposite of tucking your tail and running like you’re supposedly hard-wired to?”

He bared his fangs, licking their shocking white glow against his black scales as a wrinkle formed atop his snout. He actively pressed himself into the wall, trying to stem the venom leaking from his glands.

“Charlie!”

he snapped.

“My room. Go. Lock it.”

“Fine! I’ll go rub meself all over your things if that’s what you want. But I could also—”

He met my stare with such fear that my breath caught in my throat.

The chamber in my heart hiding all my wants spilled open like a notebook full of glitter gel pen confessions. I wanted Novak to walk next to me instead of trailing far behind. I wanted him to sit beside me during all these fancy dinners and include him in conversations because he deserved to be there. Leading a guild and housing orphans? The first advenan covert elite free agent?

And he was pretending to be my bodyguard?! He should have been my bloody date.

More than anything, though, I wanted to hug him with a burning ache in my chest. But if I tried, his scales would cut me to ribbons. He needed something different. Something primal and desperate.

He needed to feel loved. Even if he didn’t know it.

“What?”

he rasped, watching me raise my hand. I brushed my palm against his hip and he bucked. I bit my cheek.

“I could help.”

His lungs pumped with shock, colear? swollen. A bulge pressed against the latches of his pants and he clawed at his own trousers, tearing them apart instead of maiming the wall and leaving evidence. His claws scratched against the scales of his thighs like knives on dubloons.

“I can’t bite you. Pioden will know.”

“We have the sakharel.”

“Chemia is a signature, remember? Not a simple scent. The sakharel fools venandi and yiwreni noses, but not a colear?.”

He snarled again.

“Fuck! I didn’t expect an advenan… Guei has never had one in her security detail before.”

I trailed my fingers over his waistband.

“So keep your mouth to yourself and let me use mine instead.”

His ear twitched in disbelief, but his tail was already committed, the cheeky whip. It slithered up my bare leg inside my dhoti. I hooked one finger in his waistband and pulled. He groaned like a racehorse, deep bass breaths stuttering out of his lungs.

“You’re going to bite me?”

he breathed with confusion. I grinned.

“No, love.”

I pulled the cushion off the window bench and knelt on it on the floor. Even if I wanted to bruise my knees on the stones, I needed the extra height for his long figure.

“Not unless you want me to.”

I unlatched his pants and he jolted as they fell partway off his hips.

“Srac…”

He grimaced, saying my name like a prayer. “Charlie.”

His helices spilled out of his cloaca immediately, already so swollen that precum glistened on their tongue-like tips. I gathered them up between my palms and he groaned, pushing his shoulders back into the wall.

I looked up at him for guidance.

“How do I—?”

“Like this.”

He gripped my hands in one of his at the base of his three-part cock and squeezed hard. They obeyed under pressure, the throbbing muscles spiraling together into a single organ that gripped itself and maintained its shape. Novak panted, his claws flexing on air.

“It’s called spinning.”

“So you’ve spun for me, then?”

Novak’s scales flew up like hackles and the orange beneath practically glowed in the low light. I gazed up at him from where I knelt on the floor as he licked his teeth again, swallowing down venom.

“We only say it like that when it’s an obsession. When we can’t stop thinking about what we can’t have.”

“You mean when you fancy someone.”

He didn’t reply, but I felt how right I was by the way his tail squeezed the crux of my elbow like a possessive hand. I worked the inside of my mouth, drawing saliva onto my tongue, wetting my lips.

“Yes!”

he panted desperately.

“I’ve been spun for you since before the river. When you were only a scent. You haunted my dreams, Charlie.”

His gnarled confession made my pussy clench. I kicked off my slippers and balanced my weight with one hand on his thigh. The muscles jumped under my palm as Novak stared down at me with wide eyes.

“I like that you think about me,”

I confessed.

Novak snarled.

“I don’t think about you,”

he snapped.

“I’m possessed by you.”

“Even better.”

I whispered my lips down the side of his shaft and squeezed, pressing kisses into the long spirals of muscle. Novak’s eyes rolled back and his nostrils flared.

“Fuck,”

he snapped, his claw digging into the top of my hair on instinct. I moaned unbidden and his four fingers twitched, loosening and flexing as if he were fighting himself.

“I like that. Do it again,”

I breathed against him. He hesitated, but the full weight of his palm pressed gently into the back of my head.

His cock jumped as I slid my tongue in a sloppy arch across the top to wet his length. I kissed his tip, collecting the precum from all three of its helices’ slits on my lips, then slid him into my mouth with hollow cheeks. I worked myself halfway, undulated my tongue and pulled off with a pop, making my mouth wet again.

When I sucked him back in, I looked up at him. Our eyes remained attached as I bobbed my head and stretched my throat. I’d always been quite vanilla, but the way he looked at me, begging with his whole body… It knocked something loose and made me feel powerful.

When his twisted head hit the back of my throat, I focused on staying wet and relaxed. Saliva slid into the seams between his helices and coated my chin. I closed my eyes, luxuriating in the swing of my breasts and the way my pussy rubbed against my heels, the wet sounds of suction.

His tail, still wrapped around my elbow, slithered around my ribs too. He bound my arm to my side as he tied me up with it so that I had to balance with one hand pressed into his thigh for support.

When his hand cupped my jaw with a snarl, my eyes popped open again. He pulled out of my mouth, one hand smearing saliva under my chin, the other sliding into my plait of hair, and stared. His entire body quivered with tension.

“Charlie,”

he said. A prayer? A warning? Either way, I liked it. I felt fragile at his feet in a way I usually didn’t. Not small, but worth taking care of.

“Feed me your cock, Novak,”

I rasped, feeling the delicious strain in my throat.

“Give me a little of that obsession.”

I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue. A drop of venom fell on my cheek as he tasted the air, wavering, wanting…

Then he tightened his tail’s grip on my ribs and rubbed his tip up and down the pad of my tongue. I nodded, keeping eye contact as he slid further into my mouth, stuffing my throat full. I clamped down on my gag reflex as his length bulged and bent.

His hips rocked against my face and the more viscous saliva from my throat coated my lips, his cock, his hand. It smeared into his fingers where he cradled my chin, tapping the points of his claws against my cheek and earlobe.

When Novak surrendered, he exhaled with a tremble. He fucked my face the way he liked it. Maybe how he’d fantasized in the months when I was just a scent. When all he knew was that I had red hair and went to the river every day. His slippery palm moved to my throat so he could feel himself driving deep. I gave him every ounce of control, focused on breathing between thrusts.

He pulled out of my mouth abruptly, taking himself in his fist and I gasped for air.

Then his tail moved. It slid over my breasts and cinched the front of my tabard like a fist, exposing me to the air. Novak’s eyes fastened onto the bite marks still healing there. Bright pink and closed over, but not quite scars yet.

He growled, then crumbled into a moan. His mouth fell open and his fangs descended. I sat in awe as his venom glands pulsed in the roof of his mouth and expelled their contents down the prongs of his tongue. Jets of hot, pearly come draped across my breasts and collarbones as he stroked himself through the intense orgasm.

My channel clenched, slippery and wanton, but I smiled through the smeared saliva and flushed cheeks, satisfied in my soul.

“Just for the record, friends don’t do that,”

I teased in a slow, sultry croak.

“In case there was any lingering confusion.”

Instead of getting the chuckle I’d hoped for, he heard the quality of my voice and cupped my throat in both palms. His tail removed itself gingerly.

“Did I hurt you again?”

he asked, ears rotated back.

Again… I softened, letting the intimacy of the moment linger.

“No, love. It was grand. Just like the first time.”

His brow creased and I gave his wrist a squeeze. I couldn’t do much to reassure him unless he learned to trust himself first. But maybe my little nudges would make a difference in the long run. So when he slid the ruined tabard off my shoulders and brushed his fingers between my breasts and across my ribs, I let him.

“The red marks…”

“Normal. See?”

I ran my nails down my forearm to raise up red scratches.

He swallowed hard and gave me a subtle human nod as he helped me to my feet. I put a hand on his chest to get his attention.

“I’ve got to say this plainly.”

I took a deep breath.

“I fancy you, Novak. I want to know you better. It’s shite timing to pour my heart out, but life’s short and I’ve already lived a chunk of it. So when Piaoguo is over, I really would like to invite you back to mine.”

His nostrils flared.

“Careful inviting a stray in.”

“You’re not a stray if I give you a warm bed and call you mine.”

He adjusted his fangs with his tongue, then rubbed his thumb into my forehead with a serious expression.

“Alright, sunset, I’ll take a leap of faith. But only if you wash this off…”

This again? I smacked at his hand and ended up hitting myself on the forehead instead. His ears perked up right at the moment I gasped at his trick.

“You cheeky bastard!”

I covered my mouth in horror, because he was in fact a bastard.

Then Novak erupted with hissing laughter, countering my ineffectual batting with his tail. When he glanced at the door, the rare spark of easy mischief dimmed again.

“Stay for a bit,”

I blurted before he could excuse himself.

“Tell me a story while I wash up.”

I glanced down at my bare chest.

“I think it’s the least you could do.”

Novak loosened his grip on me with a hum.

“A story,” he mused.

“An embarrassing one, if you dare.”

I backed up with my hand over my nipples, searching for the tub.

“I said I want to know you, didn’t I?”

Novak reclined back on his elbows on my bed with his trousers still undone, a roguish grin playing along his muzzle.

“Alright, sunset. When Vin and I were pubescent little shits that shared one brain cell, we found a vent that led out of the lab…”