Page 279 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Reaching a hand between our bodies, I flicked at her sensitive nub, testing her.

Her legs shook, her eyes grew wide. Tilting my pelvis, I made sure my mating ridges made contact just right.

It wouldn’t take much, she’d come for me.

I would make certain of that. Each time I thrust inside her, she groaned around my invading tail, and shivers rushed across my spine.

A Kertinal had many nerves in the tip of its tail; it was almost like she was sucking on my dick.

There was a reason we wore a protective blade over it.

As if she’d heard my thoughts, I saw something flash in her eyes, and then I felt her blunt little teeth scrape over the tip.

My hips stuttered and my elbows nearly collapsed, if not for her little hands curled around the bases of my horns, I might have hit her in the head with them.

“Careful, Arianna,” I growled near her ear.

She paid me back for teasing her by doing it again, sucking hard before scraping an edge with her teeth, her passage clutching at my cock at the same time.

A few hard thrusts were all I could manage as my seed boiled out of me with such violent force that my spine bowed and my legs seized up.

I withdrew my tail from her mouth as I shouted her name.

Pressure on my horns told me she was squeezing them hard.

“Da’vi…” she moaned, her muscles fluttering around my cock as I lodged it deep and stayed.

“Arianna,” I whispered back, locking my arms so I wouldn’t collapse on top of her.

I had never come together with a female; it was glorious, the way she milked the seed from me, each convulsion, each kick of my cock inside her, matching the twitching of her muscles.

I couldn’t move, for the life of me, I couldn’t bring myself to move at all. I just wanted to stay.

Eventually, her breathing evened out, and I felt her hands release my horns, sliding them through my hair and dislodging the cloth I’d tied it with. She was petting me, calming me down. I felt those little touches down to the bone. She was making me feel like I was cared for, loved—like I mattered.

When my skin started to cool down, I worried that she was getting cold.

I was mostly covering her, but with sweat drying on our skin…

the shuttle wasn’t nearly as warm as before.

Soon, it wouldn’t be a joke, a sexy joke, she really would need my help to stay warm.

With an effort of willpower, I started to pull away, withdrawing from her body.

She made a groaning sound, as if that hurt a little, and I froze. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine, maybe a tad sore. You are a pretty big guy,” she said, her voice colored with amusement.

I laughed as I continued, carefully getting up to retrieve a wet cloth from the tiny lavatory tucked away behind a panel.

When I returned to clean her gently, she started shaking a little, her soft skin breaking out in little bumps.

“Pretty big?” I joked, trying to distract her.

“Only pretty big?” I hurried to locate her clothing and help her put it on.

Her small hands were clumsy in the dark, unable to discern which was the arm or the leg of her jumpsuit.

She laughed but didn’t respond, her teeth clacking together from the cold.

As soon as she was back in her shoes and clothes, I wrapped her up in my jacket and left to locate the emergency blankets.

That’s when I spotted the solar, battery-operated lantern in the cubbyhole next to it.

I didn’t need the light, but Arianna had far more trouble in the dark.

This lamp wouldn’t give off too much of a power signature, it was safe to use.

Flicking it on, I carefully set it down on the floor and resumed pulling as many of the blankets as I could locate into my arms.

“Whoa,” I heard from behind me, and that was followed by a contented sigh when I tossed the entire collection of blankets on top of her.

I should have located those before we had sex; it would have been far more comfortable for her to lie on.

I hadn’t checked her for marks, had I bruised her skin?

I’d heard Sunder complain that his rough skin scratched his mate, Aggy, sometimes.

I ran my metal-clad palm over my arm, worrying if the surfaces of my prosthetics were too rough for her skin.

“Not that I’m complaining about the view, but aren’t you getting cold?” Arianna asked me while she snuggled beneath the blankets. She’d put some on the floor beneath her and draped the rest around herself. It looked like a cozy little nest.

“Not yet. Kertinal run hot,” I said, trying to put my mind on important things.

I stepped to the pilot chair to check what readings I could.

The sensors were down, just like the rest of the ship’s systems, so all I had was the single image on the viewscreen.

There was nothing to see there, and I’d made sure to angle the shuttle so we’d at least catch any approaching vessel on it. Good news, for now.

Returning to Arianna, I crawled beneath the blankets with her, a little shocked to notice just how cold she already was without me there to keep her warm.

Her shivering subsided as soon as I put my arms around her, and she was only too happy to burrow against my chest. I hoped it wasn’t going to take too long for that damn Kertinal ship to leave the Vagabond alone, but at the same time…

a little quality time like this with my female? It was nice.