Page 22 of Fifth (Intergalactic Warriors #5)

Clothing went in swift pieces. The cleansing had left her skin hyperaware.

The brush of fabric down her arms touched her like a secret.

Her top whispered to the floor. He stripped his own tunic with one hand and tossed it aside without looking.

His chest was heat and hard planes under smooth skin that caught ship-light in soft gleams. She splayed her fingers over him, muscles tightening and releasing at her touch.

“Tell me if I go wrong,” hesaid.

“You won’t,” she whispered.

He smiled with his eyes more than his mouth, then lowered his head to kiss the place where her pulse raced in her throat.

His mouth was warm. He learned her with unhurried intent.

He took the time to find every point that made breath hitch and surety soften into want.

His hands cupped her through fabric, then under it, asking with touch and waiting for the way she leaned or pressed or stilled.

The first sound that escaped her was small and unguarded. It startled her. He stilled as if it mattered more than anything that camenext.

“Keep going,” she breathed.

He did. He removed the rest of what she wore like he was unwrapping something he had promised to guard and was finally allowed to touch. He traced where bruises had been as if memorizing that they weregone.

His thumb smoothed over the pale place rope had burned. “They will never mark you again.”

The vow settled in her bones. “I believe you.”

He exhaled, relief occupying his chest for a moment before heat swelled back in its place.

He kissed her mouth until her body loosened fully into his.

He kissed the slope below her collarbone, the quick beat at the edge of her breast, the path down her torso.

He pushed her back against the mattress and took his time at her stomach, pressing hungry kisses there as if the center of her carried a power he was claiming by naming it with his mouth.

When he looked up, his eyes had gone darker, adeeper amethyst that drew light like a magnet.

“Tell me what pleases you,” hesaid.

“Everything so far.” Her voice sounded gentle and new. “I like your mouth on me. Ilike your hands holding me. Ilike when you look at me before you do something, like you’re checking that I’m still choosing.”

“I am.”

He slid lower and kissed the tender inside of her knee. She felt it high under her ribs. The heat in her hips gathered like a tide pulling. He looped an arm beneath her thigh and gave her time to adjust to the openness of it, to the intensity of beingseen.

His mouth found her with hungry focus. He spread her with his thumbs and held her open with one forearm locked under her thigh, then ate at her like a man who had permission to be ruthless and the discipline to be precise.

A growl vibrated against her. He tasted.

At her arch he pressed harder. She tensed and he eased, then returned relentless until she shook.

Her climax broke through and pulled a cry from her chest she couldn’t swallow.

He didn’t let her fall. He kept her pinned in pleasure until the tremors smoothed, his palm a brand of heat at her hip, his mouth slick withher.

Words returned, and she was already reaching for him, greedy. He kissed his way up her body, as if unwilling to skip a single inch he’d already claimed with his mouth. She pulled at his pants, needing him without any more delay. He let her push them down and kickedfree.

The skin-to-skin heat of him made her gasp.

He was heavy in her hand, longer and thicker than she’d expected, adeeper bronze than the rest of him and—God—encircled with small golden-brown mounds that pulsed in an intricate pattern under her palm.

The head gleamed, already beaded slick. At the very base lay a distinct knot, an extra-thick ring she recognized from his quiet explanations.

Lower still, his balls didn’t hang as separate units.

They ringed the root of his cock in a rougher, darker band.

One sliding pass of that textured ring against her clit in the wrong position would probably break her in the very bestway.

He paused with his mouth near hers and made her meet his eyes. “Tell me again.”

“I want you,” she said. “I want you inside me. Iwant all of you.”

“Then you will have it,” hesaid.

He rolled her under him, palms framing her face as he pushed into her inch by inch and then deeper.

The mounds encircling him massaged inside her with each shallow press, pulsing in an alternating rhythm that made her gasp.

Slick warmth coated her from him—his own secretion, he had told her—turning stretch into heat and heat into hungry glide.

Control held to the last breath. She stroked his face and he stilled. She nodded and he drove.

Her hands slid up above her head. “Hold me,” she begged. He caught her wrists and pressed them to the bedding beneath, testing pressure. He pinned her there for three driving strokes, asoft sound breaking from him, then loosened and laced their fingers instead.

“Harder,” she whispered, and the rhythm turned fierce.

He gathered her and turned her to her knees, one hand flat at the small of her back, the other banding her hip.

He pushed into her from behind, deep and relentless, breath hot at her nape.

The mounds along his shaft rolled over the tender front of her, hammering that impossible spot until her legs quivered.

Each thrust dragged them over her again, again, again, his secretions keeping her drenched and pulsing around him.

His palm pressed against her belly and held her there so she felt every inch of him, the pressure making pleasure sharpen.

His teeth found her shoulder in a careful bite that sent her heart racing. After a handful of fierce strokes he drew her back to him and rolled her beneath him again so he could see her face. His mouth found her shoulder.

His voice came gruff against her skin. “You are safe with me from now on.” It wasn’t a line. It was the way he covered her, apromise made with hisbody.

When her body drew tight again, he slid his hand between them and gave her what she needed with a surety that made her fall hard and fast, abright shatter that left everything inside her rearranged. At the same breath his knot began to swell at the base, thickening where they were joined.

He groaned into her throat. “It will tighten. Say affirmative.”

“Affirmative,” she panted, the word breaking.

The knot locked behind her entrance, ademanding fullness that seated him ever deeper.

Pleasure spiked—sharp, bright—as the pulsing mounds throbbed in a synchronized rhythm, milking her from the inside while the tight ring held them together.

He braced there and breathed through his own restraint until her aftershocks softened, then thrust once, twice, and followed her into release with a quiet, discordant sound that shook his restraint loose.

His knot tightened that last incremental degree and held, the heavy throb of it syncing with the pulse of the mounds as they squeezed and rippled inside her.

He didn’t crush her when he collapsed. The knot held them joined, keeping his weight around her without pressing her breath away.

He gathered her. He stroked her hair back and pressed his mouth to her temple as if pressing the moment into herskin.

Time blurred. Quiet stretched. Her breathing returned to its normal rhythm against his chest, but he could feel the shudder there, the tears. “Do not cry,” he whispered.

“I’m not sad.” She laughed wetly. “My body is just catching up to everything that’s happened.”

He nodded and held her until she laughed for real, soft and bewildered at the same time. “If you ever need me to release my knot early, you only have to ask,” he said in her hair, voice filled with absolute honesty. “I can force my knot to ease. It is possible. Iwill do it for you.”

She shook her head, stunned by the flood of want the offer sent through her. “I like it. Iwant it.”

“Then I will give it,” he answered, simple as breath.