She hesitated. “No, but I’d never imagined that’s what your tails were for.”
“That is not the primary purpose for them, but they are the most sensitive part of our bodies, aside from our cocks, so it is pleasurable for us to tail-fuck.”
“Tail-fuck?” She almost choked on the word.
I let my hand drift down her back and squeeze her plump ass. “The phrase startles you? Is it too…cocky?”
She giggled. “No, but you should probably stick to the universal tongue and Vandar. Twenty-first century Earth slang sounds a bit funny coming from you.”
“Why does your sister like it so much?” I asked. I’d only laid eyes on her older sister once and never spoken to her, but the human that Corvak took as a mate had struck me as a very different creature than Juliette. Where Juliette was all delicious curves and golden curls, her sister had been lanky and athletic with her hair pulled back tightly, a fitting match for the former battle chief who’d been exiled.
If I thought about it, my attraction to such a soft, feminine human made no sense. As a fierce Raas of the Vandar, I should want a mate like Juliette’s sister—a female equally tough and battle-ready. But I didn’t. I craved the sensual curves and shy smiles of Juliette. She felt like the right match for me—the light to my dark and the soft to my hard.
“I don’t exactly know,” Juliette said. “Maybe she wanted to preserve something of the planet we came from, even though we never saw it. Maybe it was her way of being rebellious, since the natives on our planet didn’t understand her retro phrases.”
“Your sister liked being rebellious?”
“Sienna?” She let out a throaty laugh that was nothing like her usual giggles. “It was like oxygen to her. If she wasn’t pushing back against something, I doubt she’d have been happy. Not that she was ever happy on Kimithion III.”
“Were you?”
Her hand twitched under my own. “I thought I was, but now I realize that I was going through the motions and trying to make everyone else happy. The only thing I had that was truly mine and that brought me joy was baking.”
I growled and gave her ass cheek another squeeze. “Your baking has also brought me joy.” I was glad to change the subject from her sister. Guilt gnawed at me, since I could have told the bounty hunters that Juliette was on my ship, but I had not. And now that they’d gone dark because of their mission, I could not.
Juliette wiggled as if trying to escape my grasp, but her attempts were not genuine. “Me baking for you wasn’t supposed to end up like this.”
“No? But I enjoyed your thank you very much.” I pulled her closer. “I might have to give you a hundred Gerwyns.”
“Don’t do that! Furb is cute, but one is plenty, thank you.”
“Just one? Does that mean you don’t wish to repeat this?” Even though my voice was teasing, my question was sincere. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, if Juliette regretted what we’d done.
She pushed herself up to sitting. “I didn’t say that, but is it okay if we don’t do it right away?”
“You’re sore?”
She glanced down, her expression stricken. “That, and I’m making a mess of your mattresses.” Her eyes grew wide. “Is it normal for me to be leaking?”
“It is when I fill you with my seed.”
Her face didn’t change. “Seed?”
Just how innocent was she? I sat up and stole a quick glance at her sticky thighs, tinged with a faint hint of blood. “The blood is because it was your first time, but the rest is from me. Did no one tell you that when males fuck, they fill you with seed?”
Her gaze dropped, and she shook her head. “No one ever mentioned anything wet and sticky.”
An urge to shelter and protect Juliette surged through me. It was as if my seed had indeed marked her as mine and mine alone. I fought back the compulsion to bury my cock inside her and fill her again, my hot pulses branding her as mine.
Instead, I scooped her up and headed for the bathing pools. “It is nothing that can’t be washed off. And you don’t need to fear becoming with child. That can only happen if we were mates, and you carried my mating marks.”
She reflexively touched a hand to the mound of her belly. “Child?”
“Like I said, it is nothing to worry about. A Vandar can only impregnate his true mate, and that can only happen with mating marks.” My heart squeezed with the sudden desire to see my marks swirling across her pristine skin. “For now, you are safe.”
What I told her was true, but I suspected very strongly that I was no longer safe. I stepped into the tepid green water, walking deep enough that we were both enveloped by the murky water.
She unwound her arms from my neck. “So I won’t get mating marks just because we…?”
“If marks appeared on every female we fucked, the entire galaxy might be covered in Vandar marks,” I said, then instantly regretted my words.
Before I could say more, there was a pounding on the outside door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Vassim
“Report!” I stomped onto the command deck, the ends of my hair still damp against my bare back. I’d leapt out of the bathing pool when the pounding had not ceased, answering the door in nothing but the crumpled fabric I’d snatched from the sleeping pallets and thrown around my waist. The warrior who’d told me I was needed urgently on the command deck hadn’t seemed startled by my lack of clothing, or the water dripping around my feet. My only regret was that I hadn’t had time to explain much to Juliette before I was tugging on my boots and battle kilt and bolting out the door.
“A priority distress call, Raas.” Taan twisted from where he stood at a sleek black
