My mind scrolled back years, my mother lamenting how she regretted being stuck where she was. How my desire to be barefoot and pregnant was the worst thing for womankind in centuries, how I owed it to my family to do something more with myself. It wasn’t that I disliked being a diplomat, because I didn’t. It was an interesting puzzle, a challenge. It just wasn’t what I wanted to do with all of my being.
“I wish to mouth-press you,” N’Ashtar murmured, leaning forward into my space.
I blinked at him, but smiled despite myself. “You mean kiss?”
He blinked owlishly at me in return. “The mouth-pressing has a name?”
“It’s called kissing someone.” I nudged him until he was sitting up, then crawled on top of him, ignoring my state of undress. The heat rushing through me told me it was right, that I needed this moment with him. I didn’t want to think of the future, of what was to come. I wanted to live in the now.
Even perched on his lap, he was still significantly taller than I was, but we were at least closer to the same stratosphere that way. His golden eyes were full of heat and focused intently on me, like I was the most interesting thing he had ever seen. “May we mouth-press?” N’Ashtar asked, cupping the side of my face with one of his hands.
“Let me lead?” I wasn’t sure I trusted him not to take it super literally, and kissing was about a lot more than smashing faces together.
“Of course.” Then he just looked at me expectantly, his arms wrapping around my body so they could hold me close. His gaze was possessive, but it was fond, too, like I was the culmination of everything he had ever wanted.
This time I was the one who held his face in my hands, fighting a shiver at the texture of his scales. He was oddly smooth, and part of me itched to lean in closer, to taste him with my tongue instead of my hands, but I didn’t. Not yet. Instead, I leaned forward and pressed my lips against his in a ghost of a kiss, holding my position for a second before pulling back. His eyes flickered open, latched on mine, like he was waiting to find out what I would do next.
When I didn’t move, his brow ridges furrowed. “That is it?” He didn’t sound convinced. “I have seen Hetta and O’Rrin do more than that.”
“You really do move zero to sixty, don’t you?” Humor laced my words, but I didn’t let him kiss me again. We were going to do this at my pace, or not at all.
“I am not moving anywhere.” N’Ashtar was frowning at me, clearly puzzled. It was more adorable than it had any right to be.
“Not yet, you aren’t,” I murmured. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and pressed my lips to his again, starting with soft, butterfly kisses then longer presses, delighting in his broader body, how I felt safe and secure in his arms. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
N’Ashtar was about to say something else, but then I traced the seam of his lips with my tongue and anything that he had been about to say disappeared into the ether. Instead he groaned low in his throat, clutching me tighter. His tongue was tentative at first, carefully venturing into my mouth before quickly finding a rhythm.
For someone who didn’t kiss until about five seconds ago, he was hella good at it. His clawed hand was in my hair, holding me in place gently while he plundered my mouth. My eyes were closed, my body sagging in his hold, because all I could do was feel. Feel the heat of his body against mine, the slick wetness of his tongue, the dry, smooth rasp of his scales. It was intoxicating, my head spinning while I clutched onto sanity with a broken grip.
By the time we parted, N’Ashtar was breathing harder, and I was panting, wet between the thighs, and more than grateful my period was over, because I wanted him in me, like, now. Now I just had to get him on the same page.
“Dana,” N’Ashtar said, his hands moving to my hips like he was about to push me back.
Instead, I moved my hands on top of his, prying his fingers off one by one. The look he gave me was bemused, which I knew was because if he had really tried, there was no way I would have been moving any of him anywhere. I was only moving his hands because he let me. I was just human, after all.
“I wish to kiss you,” N’Ashtar told me softly.
“I want you inside me,” I said bluntly.
His slitted eyes widened a fraction before the gold seemed to deepen in a way that made me lava-melty at my core. “Here? Now?”
“Yes.” I arched an eyebrow at him. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to.”
His golden gaze smoldered like eyes only seemed to do in romance novels. “I want to take you to pieces with pleasure.”
I shuddered, managing to not let out a quiet ‘yes, please’, even though I did think it. “I wonder if we’re biologically compatible,” I mused, hormones making my thoughts swim. I would have to ask Jackie, and maybe Hetta. Between the two of them, they would probably know.
The look N’Ashtar gave me was of a confused puppy, as if he was trying to translate what I’d said, and then it dawned on him. “Hetta is with young,” he told me as casually as if he had just said we would fly upside down to Mars.
“What?” I put a hand out on his chest, flabbergasted. When had that happened? I hadn’t been gone that long, had I?
He frowned. “You did not witness her kidnap by Yrrix, did you?”
My heart broke for him. “Your brother kidnapped Hetta?” Don’t get me wrong, I
