Authors: Marla Therron
“It’s not our way,” he said flatly. “It’s blasphemy. A male is made for his purpose. His hands are large to care for his mate.” He showed his hands.
“His body is lean and strong to hunt, to make war. A woman is small with clever fingers because she paints and engineers.” She could tell this had been drilled into him from a young age by the way he talked about it more eloquently than he spoke on anything.
It was nearly a scripture for him. “Even our minds—a male’s desire is to protect and maintain order; but a female strives to improve her homestead.”
Oof.
Unless Ythirian brain morphology seriously differed from human, it sounded wrong. Any statement that began with “all men think this” or “all women want that” tended to be quackery.
She grinned at him, deciding to poke at his bubble some. “You’re cooking. Is your banana bread some kind of special, war-like banana bread?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I’m not. My Aunt Margaret’s banana bread could be used to bludgeon a man. Maybe you have her recipe.”
He glared—warning her to stop poking.
Kicking her feet happily at having him cornered, she leaned in. “Cooking is creative. How do you know what you’re cooking won’t blow up and kill us all?
You could be baking missiles, the product of your masculine brain’s evil, destructive impulses.” She winked.
His glare intensified.
The nervous flutter in her belly should have stopped her; after last night’s agreement, though, she felt bolder. Besides, she reasoned: how would she figure out his boundaries unless she pushed them?
“Uh oh. This blasphemous human female is reaching for your mixing bowl! Better stop her!” Rae lunged for it.
With lightning reflexes, Garr snatched the bowl, craning it out of her reach. She stretched for it, but he stopped her with his hand to her shoulder.
Rae stuck her tongue out at him. For an instant, his stoic face broke into the briefest of grins. “Vex me again, tiny mate, and I will make you pay.”
“It’s called being playful.” The idea of what “paying” would mean filled her with the most wonderful, nervous curiosity of her life. “Don’t Ythirians play?” She managed to dip her fingers into his flour mixture, and dabbed a stripe of it on his nose.
His expression made her snort with laughter. She’d seen it on angry cats before. It was a silent, scolding stare from a terribly self-important being. That look dared her:
One more. Just one more and see what I do.
She couldn’t help it. Picking up the flour bowl, she playfully flicked a puff of gold dust onto his shirt.
Glancing slowly down at the smudge, rubbing it with his fingers, Garr looked back at her and shrugged either shoulder from his jacket. Holding the garment at arm’s length, he dropped it to the floor.
Bare-chested now, the sight of him made Rae’s smile falter, her eyes tracking down his long torso now that she was so close to it. The confidence in his gesture had implications that twisted her stomach into a pleasant knot.
***
Garr took the bowl of flour from his mate and slid it away, stepping closer. It forced her knees to part, since he was at the counter’s edge, and at stepping between them, he saw her body straighten and her eyes dilate. She realized precisely what position they were in.
“You want me to punish you,” he realized.
“Of course not.” But her cheeks were pink and there was no outrage in her voice. If anything, she sounded like she’d been caught with her hand in the
bracvlat
jar.
Garr took hold of her top’s hem and, with his status as prime, assumed control of her garment without her quite realizing it.
“What are you—”
He stretched the fabric over her head, loosening it so that it came off with ease. He left her sarong and bra in place, but effortlessly stripped the rest over her head.
The motion pulled her arms up, and when the fabric was around her elbows, he turned the otoya liquid—then into a ribbon of silky fabric that caught her wrists, tying it rapidly to the branches that held pots and pans.
“Hey!” she cried.
“Now I can keep track of your hands.” But he was also gazing down at her. Ythirian females tended to be svelte, their bodies smaller than a male’s, but more subtly defined.
This creature was round in all the right places. Her breasts were concealed only by that bra, though he could see enough of them that he had to restrain the desire to cup, to hold, to possess them.
With willpower honed from three cycles as prime, he forced himself to turn from appraising her and to quietly mix his dry ingredients right beside her instead.
***
“This is so unfair,” Rae muttered. She couldn’t free her wrists and he’d turned back to cooking, as though their bodies hadn’t just been so close to touching that her skin had gone electric.
The tease of his hands stripping her, the vulnerable thrill of being tied up and half naked in his presence seemed to add fuel to her arousal from earlier in the day, stoking it higher.
There was no way she was getting this otoya to make her panties now. And the sight of him cooking wasn’t helping at all.
Maybe it was how turned on she was, but the sight of him mixing and stirring drew her gaze to his forearms, biceps, shoulders—the brisk and measured motions in his upper body pleasant to watch.
The repetitive whisking, especially, made her think of what he could do to her body with those brisk, circular strokes. A shudder worked up her spine.
The physicality didn’t end there. He broke open a nut with a gooey center, which he drizzled into the batter. He squeezed a fruit, pulping it, his fingers getting messy.
Sometimes dust from the dry mix would powder lightly on his forearm or, once, his shoulder, and she wanted to brush it off him—if only to feel the smooth strength of him under her fingertips.
She imagined a petition to Food Network back on Earth:
Dear executives. Please consider my idea for a new program featuring shirtless, handsome men cooking me dinner.
He transferred his batter to a pan and now worked on a complementary icing that involved a lot of honey.
While stirring the honey in by drizzling it from the end of a long spoon, he paused to lift the spoon and hovered it near her mouth. “For you. For being so quiet.”
God, how his smirk ticked her off. She’d been quiet because she’d been drooling over him the whole time. If he was going to provide a show, though, perhaps she could return the favor.
***
His mate seemed unsure at first, but then something changed. She went from looking nervously at the honey-glazed spoon to glancing up at him with confident, hungry eyes.
The pose stole his breath, because while it was that classic expression of submission—nose pointed down, but eyes lifted up to meekly look at him—she subverted it with a burning look of sexual desire.
She parted her lips and opened them wide enough to brush the spoon’s tip with her lower lip. He could imagine how her warm breath spilled over the spoon and, with a satisfied purr, she took it in her mouth.
The gentle seal of her mouth over it, the soft “mmm,” and the both dirty and wanton look she shot him as she glanced up from the spoon brought him to full and instant arousal.
It was a near blasphemous act—a simulation of a type of sex some Ythirian males whispered about, but which was forbidden since it was a female giving pleasure to a male.
Those things were simply not done, since sex was about a male giving pleasure to a woman, or taking it from her—but always with the male in control.
Yet there was Rae, with her mouth that spouted all manner of blasphemy, simulating a type of sex Garr had always spurned as sacrilege—yet now, quite suddenly, he wondered what it would have felt like.
***
The honey was sweet, but sweeter still was the slack-jawed look on Garr’s face. He shook himself out of a stupor, and Rae knew she’d done her job well.
Tracking her gaze down his body, seeing his erection tenting his pants, she knew she’d done it
very
well. This pleased her.
His hand stroked her cheek. It was coated in flour and had a grainy feel. When he dragged it down her shoulder and over the top of her bust exposed by her bra, the novel texture made her shudder. It was from that touch that she knew what was coming.
And she wanted it.
Suddenly, he was kissing her. His mouth fastened to hers, a hungry growl rippling from his throat.
Her eyes shut. She opened her mouth, letting him in. The long tease of today had been too much and, hell, it was just this once, right? It wasn’t as though she’d agreed to be his lifelong mate.
She could satisfy her body with him, quiet its constant yearnings. Maybe that would make it easier to leave at week’s end.
Garr’s kiss was all heat. He took possession of her lower lip, sucking on it, claiming her mouth and letting out animal sounds of satisfaction.
Those sounds turned her on like nothing else, as though they had a direct line to her body. Each time he growled, a surge of sweet pleasure zinged down her spine.
When he seized her head with his fingers splayed through her hair, deepening his kiss, she let out her own sound, one that surprised her—a moan of wanton bliss that she’d never made before.
He gripped her otoya bra and ripped. The fabric tore and he cast it aside, setting both palms to her breasts. For a moment, he paused and panted against her, ribcage rising and falling.
His arms were all tension, and she knew he was straining not to squeeze and knead, wanting to be gentle with her even as his every masculine instinct demanded he be rough.
Rae, wrists bound overhead, arched her back and pushed her chest into his waiting palms. She’d been patient and teased too long already. She wanted him
now
.
***
Ythirian females were coy, and subtle, and submissive in bed. This human brazenly arched and pushed her gorgeous chest into his cupped palms. Garr’s blood was on fire and his mind a fog of arousal.
He squeezed and kneaded, the sublime softness of her making him want more. He didn’t even know what that more was—except that he needed it.
***
His hands dropped to her thighs long enough to drag the sarong up, and Rae was suddenly thankful the otoya wasn’t getting in her way. His own pants transformed into liquid and, rather than falling off him, the liquid traveled up her thighs.
It felt glorious, like trickling warm oil along those intimate, sensitive locations of her legs during the heat of passion. They ensnared her hips and waist, and the fibers contracted, dragging her body into his.
Her sarong shortened in places, opening for him—and his otoya reacted by knotting her body close to his, the garments taking part in the act of mating in ways that made it effortless and sudden, going from both being half clothed to his erection gliding between her wet folds in anticipation a heartbeat later.
The feel of him was exquisite—all silky skin and hardness beneath, and a glance down solidified what she’d seen in the shower earlier. He was large, and she also saw his dark markings traveled down his abdomen and up the underside of his shaft.
There was even a dark ring just underneath his phallus’s head. She had the absurd urge to lick and kiss him over all the markings of his body.
But not now. Now, she needed him. Arms bound, she tilted in and begged: “Stop teasing. Put it in me right now, Garr.”
She had him in a state of near frenzy. Without words, but an animal sound of rapture, he pushed into her ready body to the hilt in one long, glorious stroke.
She had to adjust to his size, eyes widening at the sensation of being so thoroughly filled. His groan and hers mixed, and she wished her hands were free to rake her approval down his back.
His pelvis was pushed into her just right, and the otoya snugged her into him, so that their hips were locked together intimately. The faint tightening felt good in its way, securing him to her, but still angled in such a way that he could smoothly draw about halfway out of her before thrusting in.
His body, now sleeked in sweat, worked against her with relentless strokes, each one grinding his pelvic bone against her stiffened clitoris and each one allowing the tip of his shaft to stroke against her tight inner walls. Their otoya bindings forced him to come in at an ideal angle—so ideal it wasn’t long before Rae panted and felt her bound, teased, and sensitized body rapidly approaching an orgasm larger than any she could remember.
With no signs of slowing, he thrust into her over and over, the sensation coiling inside her like a spring. Yet his pace only quickened, so that instead of releasing, the spring bunched tighter still, building her orgasm far past the usual point where she’d explode.
Every stroke made her potential orgasm larger, which also became its own kind of bliss—so that she was radiating with unspent release, pushed into a state where she wasn’t sure if she was yet coming or not.
Somewhere through it all, she had enough of not touching him and leaned forward with her mouth, which was all that she had to use, and kissed that nova marking over his heart—raking her teeth against it needfully.