Page 70 of Taken to Heimo

“Are you sure?” Her wet, weeping slit hovers directly over my mouth.

“Lower.”

She lowers herself until I’m able to latch onto her lower lips, spearing her with my tongue before I give her another chance to back out.

She gasps my name — Anand — and it’s a beautiful sound. I laugh, “Do you enjoy the duties of ahuzzaband?”

“Husband,” she whispers, lost as she is in the garden.

“That’s what I said.” I spear my tongue deep inside of her and she jerks forward, catching herself on a metal crate. Its contents rattle, just like the desire in my gut and thelawvin my heart. “Do you?”

“Hexa,” she breathes as her body begins to tremble. “I do. And I cannot wait to marry you.”

20

Krisxox

I look at the cramped, rusted inside of the shooter and then at hybrid, Ashmara, then back at the shooter again.

“This will work,” I say, and it isn’t a question.

She just rolls her eyes and shrugs. “It’ll work.”

“If this doesn’t work andanythinghappens to Svera, I will hunt the cosmos until I find you and dismember you.”

“Krisxox,” Svera says disapprovingly at my back.

Ashmara just grins lopsidedly and crosses her arms over her chest. “If this doesn’t work, then you’ll have a hard time resurrecting yourself to enact your revenge.”

“Don’t underestimate me. I’mextremelyhard to kill.”

She cocks a brow in that way that humans often do. I wonder if she even realizes how many mannerisms of theirs she has, despite having been raised entirely Eshmiri.

“It’ll work,” she says, a little more stonily this time, and I edge clumsily inside.

The space is cramped. The two seats that occupy eighty percent of the space are bolted to every side of the square shooter, leaving only a small path to get to them.

Everything here is built for Eshmiri proportions, so Svera has no trouble buckling herself — and her stupid rug — into one of the seats, while I struggle painfully into the narrow chair.

It’s metal, covered in thick padding, but it does little to cushion the ragged wounds in my torso. More importantly, will it be enough to break our fall?

I open my mouth and glance at Ashmara, but she only rolls her eyes. “It’ll work,” she says again and then the door hisses shut between us.

I glance at Svera. “I don’t think I like your hybrid friend.”

Svera just smiles and kicks her feet. “Friend,” she answers.

“Vrent,” I repeat.

“Furr-end,” she says.

“Vur.” I try the first part, then when Svera nods encouragingly, I continue, “End.”

“Xhivey,” she says, kicking her feet even harder.

“Vur-end.”

She’s smiling now, a little too widely. I can see the slight gap between her two front teeth. Xok, she’s beautiful. It’s not fair. I never stood a chance, did I?