Page 18 of Reaper's Brat

And then the rite becomes the other thing, the way it was always meant to, and I take my time with her like a man who finally believes he has time to take.

I undress her slowly, learning her again as though I'd never once been allowed to before. The salvaged ceremonial cloth comes away from one shoulder, then the other; I draw it down the length of her and let it pool forgotten on the deck, and then there is only the marked skin and the low light and my hands taking the rest of it from her piece by piece, unhurried, until she is bare beneath me and the pigment vow gleams dark along her collarbone. She helps me out of mine with far less patience — she is always impatient — dragging the harness and everything beneath it away until there is nothing left between us but heat

"You taste so fucking good," I growl against her throat, my voice rough with desire. "I want to taste every part of you."

"Then do it," she gasps. "Stop talking about it."

I smirk against her skin. I take my time worshiping her, learning every sound she makes, the way she arches into my touch, the way her breath catches when I find a sensitive spot. I work my way down her body, pressing open-mouthed kisses to her collarbone, her breasts, the valley of her stomach. When I reach the apex of her thighs, I look up at her through my lashes.

"Tell me what you want," I say. "I want to hear you say it."

"I want you to eat my pussy," she says, flushed and shameless. "I want your tongue on me, I want you to make me come?—"

I obey. I put my mouth on her and she gasps, her hands fisting in my hair. I lap at her, broad strokes that make her hips buck, then focus on her clit with tight circles that have her crying out within minutes. I slide two fingers into her, feeling her clench, and I don’t let up.

"Fuck, Saren—" She's already close. "Don't stop, don't stop, I'm going to?—"

I feel her shatter against my mouth and I drink it down, every last tremor, until she's boneless and gasping.

Then I rise over her, and she guides me to her entrance. "I need you inside me," she says, urgent. "Please, Saren, I need to feel you?—"

I sink into her, slow and deep, and we both groan. I still for a moment, letting her adjust, and then I move. It is slow, and it is whole, and we move together in the marked dark with the vow still warm on both our mouths. The bond runs bright and even between us, no longer a chord struck and silenced but a note held, sustained, two instruments finally tuned to each other.

When the slow ache of holding still becomes too much for either of us, I gather her up without leaving her — one armbeneath her, lifting — until she is seated astride my lap, her knees against my hips and her marked chest flush to mine, as close as two people can be folded together. She winds her arms around my neck and we move like that for a while, face to face, her forehead against mine, the bond a steady current and her breath breaking warm against my mouth on every roll of her hips. I have never once in my life been held while I held someone. I did not know it was a thing a body could starve for until hers gave it to me.

Then, when she begins to shake with how close it is, I lay her back down into the bedding the way the rite's own tenderness asks — slow, reverent — and brace over her, and her hand finds mine.

"Look at me," I command softly. "I want to see your eyes when you come."

Her eyes meet mine, and I take her hand, pressing it above her head. I watch her face as I move inside her, the way her pupils dilate, the way her lips part on a moan. The bond is a steady current between us, and I can feel everything she's feeling — the pleasure building, the love, the trust. She's so open, so vulnerable, and she's giving it all to me.

"Harder," she begs. "Saren, please, harder?—"

I drive into her, deep and relentless, and she wraps her legs around my waist. I watch her come apart beneath me, her hands fisted in the bedding and my name breaking out of her. Her body arches and shudders, clenching around me, and that sends me over the edge too. I follow her with the old words still on my lips, spilling everything I am into the woman who taught a dying man the difference between surviving and being alive.

After, marked and spent and tangled, she lies with her head over my heart and traces the drying pigment on her own collarbone like she can't quite believe it's real.

"My whole life I was the thing people picked up and set down when they were done," she says, very quietly, into my chest. "You're the first one who ever picked me up like I was worth keeping. Not because I was useful. Just because I was me." Her voice catches. "I didn't know I was allowed to want that. I'm keeping it. I'm keeping you. Try and stop me."

"I have no intention of stopping you," I tell her, and I mean it down to the marrow. "When this is over, we build something. Not a ship that survives. A home that lives. Daughters, if the galaxy is ever kind enough. A wall full of living names beside the dead ones." I press my mouth to the mark on her collarbone, sealing the vow one last time. "I want all of it. With you. After three hundred years of my people wanting only to end well, I want, instead, to begin."

She smiles against my skin, and it's the realest thing in the universe, and I let myself have it completely.

The alarm shatters it.

Ship-wide, climbing, the tone that means contact — and on the bridge board, sliding out of the dark with all the patience finally gone out of her, comes Daxira's fleet, early, hungry, between us and the only future either of us has ever let ourselves want.

I rise, and reach for my armor, and Althea reaches for hers, and we dress in silence with the marks still fresh on our skin, two people who finally have something to lose walking out together to refuse to lose it.

CHAPTER 33

ALTHEA

Daxira doesn't fire. That's the first thing that tells me how badly she wants what we're carrying — a woman with a fleet at her back and a crippled ship in her sights, and she opens with conversation instead of guns.

Her face fills the bridge screen, elegant and unhurried, the cybernetic line of her jaw catching the light, the pale blue eye fixed on Saren like he's a column of numbers she's already finished adding. Behind her, on the tactical board, her ships fan out across the dead zone's mouth, between us and the only way home. Six of them, each one whole, against our one that's barely holding air.

"Captain." She says it like an endearment. "You've cost me a great deal of money and an irreplaceable hunter, and I find I'm not even angry, because you've also done my survey work for me. You found the archive. You powered the city. All that's left is the collection." Her mouth curves. "Here is my offer, and it's generous, because I'm tired and you're interesting. Give me the archive and the courier, and I'll let your dying little clan limp off into the dark to die on whatever schedule you prefer. Refuse, and I take all three — the data, the woman, the ship — and yourpeople die today instead of tomorrow. Survival, Captain. It's the only thing your kind has ever been good at. Be good at it now."