Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
His eyes narrow and he hauls me up against him. In the next moment, I’m down on the bed and he’s pulling my pants down my thighs. I should protest harder, but I’m breathless with arousal at his quick, certain movements. When he pushes my hand aside, I whimper.
Then, he replaces it with his hand.
I moan, arching off the blankets as he sinks a finger inside my body.
“I meant it,” he tells me, his gaze fixed between my spread thighs. “I want to feel you come around my fingers. I want to feel that release with you.”
It doesn’t even cross my mind to push him away. I dig my heels into the furs, writhing as he pushes a second finger into me, and when I touch my clit again, he bats my hand aside and uses one of his to work my clit as another hand pumps inside me.
I come so hard and so fast that I shock even myself. Hot ripples of my climax rush through me and I can feel my body locking around the fingers he has deep inside me, squeezing them tight. The sounds I make are embarrassingly unsexy, but Rem’eb murmurs my name the entire time, and it just makes me come harder.
By the time I’m done climaxing, I’m utterly spent and he’s still got two fingers deep inside me, his face looming close to mine as he props himself up over me, a smug look of triumph on his face. “Now we are even.”
I snort and push at his face. I should be mad over this, but I can’t find the energy. Plus, I feel too good. My khui is humming mercilessly in my chest and his fingers are still deep inside me, and I know I could come again. And probably again. Is this how he feels? This sated-but-not-really feeling? “I guess I deserved that.”
He leans in and tenderly kisses the tip of my nose, even as his fingers slip out of my body and leave me bereft. “My Tia. I do not want to fight with you, but we must come to an agreement of some kind. No one can outwit resonance.”
“Just let me try,” I tell him, tired. “A girl always has to try.”
Rem’eb studies me and gives me another kiss, this one on the mouth, and then lies down in the furs next to me. “I hate that we cannot have a real conversation without Noj’me the Attendant at hand.”
“Me, too.” Mardok could implant a translation chip in him—if we have any left, that is— but he’s back in Croatoan. After their baby was born, his mate Farli wanted to be around her mother for advice and reassurance, and who can blame her? But that doesn’t help me or the other newcomers on the beach who need to speak the language. “We’ll figure something out. Somehow.”
“What is that?” he says, startling me.
I look over at him. “Hm?”
He points at the smoke hole at the top of the ceiling. “It is black up there. Black but with specks of light. What is that? Is the frozen water stuck in the air?”
“You mean…the stars?” I look over at him in surprise. How do I explain, in our limited vocabulary, what the stars are and that they’re not “stuck” in the air? That they’re a million suns a jillion miles away from us, just like the planet I came from? I can’t, of course. I need a whole lot of vocabulary for that to make sense for him, and even then, I’m not sure his beliefs will be ready for it. It’s a lot to take in. I sit up and touch my chin and give him a thumbs up to reassure him that it’s fine, it’s normal. “They’re stars. Stars.”
“Stars,” he echoes. “And they will not fall on us?”
“No falling, I promise.” Another thumbs up.
His gaze moves to me. He pulls me against him, cuddling me against his chest and wrapping his two right arms around my body. It feels good, but more than that, I sense he needs to anchor himself against something. Against me.
“Your world is so different than mine,” Rem’eb confesses, his gaze locked on the glimpse of the stars above. “So open and strange.”
“Joke’s on you. This isn’t even my world.” But I pat his chest because I understand. I’ve had to become the queen of adapting, haven’t I? I know how it feels to be tossed about in one strange place after another. “It just takes time. I’ll be with you, I promise.”
And then I snap my jaw shut, because I’ll only be with him if he’ll let me.
“I feel powerless here on the surface,” he admits, holding me tighter. “The world feels very big tonight and I am but a small, insignificant part of it.”
I understand that feeling more than he probably realizes. Sliding my arms around him, I rest my head on his chest and listen to the purr of his khui to mine.