My loins produce more seed as my orgasm slowly fades, never fully allowing the pressure in my bulge to end.
I turn my face and nuzzle the hair plastered against her neck. I lick her throat.
She shudders, pushes her chin down, and slides her hand between her throat and my tongue. “Tickles,” she breathes.
I lick her fingers instead.
“Stooop,” she wails weakly. I rise over her.
Her brows are wrinkled, and she’s hiding her neck with her hands. I snap forward to try and taste her neck again, but she squirms away. “Nooo!”
I slip out from between her legs as she tries to flee, and I grab her, dragging her back under me. “Stay.”
“No more licking my neck!”
I tug out the pelt from under us, pulling it around her, curling her up in my tail and against my chest. The tension in her limbs eases as she settles into me. I reach up and streak my fingers through her hair.
She nuzzles my chest the same way I nuzzled her sex. A smile twitches my lips. She knows what I can give her. She knows that my world isn’t just dangerous but pleasurable too. We can make a life here, she and I, and it will be good.
No, there’s no other male for her, not here on Earth or above in the stars.
When she falls asleep, I carry her back to my nest, where I finally allow myself the honor of sleeping next to her.
Twenty-One
Questioning the Past
Vruksha
Over the next several days, I leave, hunt for fresh meat, and bring back fresh water for Gemma’s baths. I won’t let her topside, and she knows not to fight me about it. At least, for now.
She spends her time making clothes out of pelts, first by ripping the old ones into strips. Then she uses those strips to tie other, thinner pelts into place. I help when I can, but my knowledge is limited, never needing clothes to cover me.
We fall into a pleasant routine.
Since our rutting, she looks at me differently, and I don’t know why. Her expression seems distant sometimes yet always focused, and I can only imagine the thoughts running through her head. I try not to worry about it.
When the silence lingers a little too long between us for my liking, I pull her close with my tail and make her moan.
So when she stops trying to make clothes and starts wobbling her way around the bunker, examining my treasures and trying to figure them out, I can’t help but stop cleaning my gutting knife and follow her, catching her every time her legs give out, curious as to what she’s doing.
What she is learning.
“What’s in this?” she asks, moving to yet another large crate pushed up against the wall of my den. They’ve been here forever, filled with supplies from when I first discovered this place. Half the crates had been open and looted when I first arrived, and there were bones of humans who died down here, preserved after the destruction, but I don’t tell her that.
It was long ago that I cleaned this place out. A long, long time ago. Those ghosts are gone.
“Medical supplies,” I tell her. “This one has syringes, radios, and flashlights.”
She cocks her head, and a strange expression crosses her face at my response. I wait for her to say more, but she glances around the bunker like she’s trying to figure something out. It’s the same expression that eludes me.
“Vruksha, how do you know the common tongue? It’s been bothering me, all of this.” She waves her hand at the bunker. “We were told there were animals, ruins, and a broken world awaiting us... We were never told of you. How are you here? Where did you come from? Are you… a Lurker?”
Her questions surprise me. “I’ve always been here. I’m a naga, not a Lurker.”
Doesn’t she know what a Lurker looks like?
“But what’s a naga? That doesn’t make any sense to me. A thousand years ago, trees and vegetation were just returning to Earth, and you, well, you’re half-human, half-serpent, and sentient. You say all your females are gone… How is that possible?”
“They left, together, those that remained.”
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did they leave? Should I… should I be worried?” She looks at me.
“No, female, you shouldn’t be worried,” I say, going to her. “They left because they were dying when they mated. All of them. My sisters… All the nagas of my generation came of age around the same time.” Now that I say it, the timing is a little strange. “Our mothers died giving birth to their litters, but we were not communicating much then, and so this travesty wasn’t known until after they were all gone. To lose a mate… to outlive your female… It shamed my father, and so I assume it shamed the other older males as well, so they never spoke of it. It wasn’t until my generation came of age that we realized what was going on. Our females were dying during birth, all of them.”
“Oh,” Gemma whispers.
“After it was known, we couldn’t save those who were already gestating, and tensions rose. Females stopped taking mates, and we had to fight every day to keep those that remained alive. There were males who… did not care. And mates who tempted death just to lay with a female. And it was those males who valued rutting over the lives of females who destroyed us. The clans tore apart and those, like me and Azsote, who forsook females, embraced the strife it caused because we knew that death would inevitably follow. The remaining female nagas decided to leave. They left their mates, their families, and have not
