Page 40 of Ashes & Aether

She doesn’t stop. Instead, she speeds up, her hand stroking hard against the base, her mouth creating a suction that drags a roar straight out of my chest.

I shatter. The orgasm hits me with the force of a collapsing sun. My hips buck violently forward, and I empty into her mouth in heavy, thick pulses. The sheer volume of the release forces her to pull back slightly, and my cock slips out of her mouth, slick and glowing.

I slump back against the chair, my chest heaving, my hearts hammering an erratic rhythm. The pleasure continues to roll through my nervous system in aftershocks, completely scrambling my higher cognitive functions.

I open my eyes, looking down at her.

Maggie kneels between my thighs, her chest rising and falling rapidly. A thick drop of my pearlescent release rests on her lower lip, stark against the deep red of her lipstick. She looks wrecked. She looks stunning.

“You are incredible, Margaret Elmsleigh,” I breathe out, my brain misfiring completely. “My perfect match.”

The words are met with silence as Maggie freezes.

The satisfied haze in her eyes vanishes instantly, and the blood drains from her flushed cheeks, leaving her completely pale. She stares up at me, her expression locking into a mask that is equal parts fear and anger.

The word match echoes in my own ears, and the gravity of my catastrophic mistake crashes over me.

This is not a female who would want to be chained to a male merely because biology dictates it. She is a leader, a strategist. An island.

“Maggie,” I stammer and try to sit up, my hands reaching for her. “Wait, I didn’t—I shouldn’t have. It was just the release. I didn’t mean to⁠—”

She stands up so fast she nearly hits her head on the console.

She doesn’t look at my face, just scrubs the back of her hand across her mouth, wiping away the evidence of my climax. Then she smooths the front of her dark skirt, her fingers shaking so badly she can barely grasp the fabric.

“I will be in the back,” she states. Her voice is completely hollow again.

“Maggie, please. Look at me.”

“Maintain your course for London, Spymaster.”

She turns her back to me and leaves the cockpit, the door hissing closed behind her.

I sit alone in the pilot’s chair with my trousers bunched around my knees, still painfully hard. My biology, unlike my tongue, knows exactly what it wants.

I drop my face into my hands, dragging my fingers through my hair, cursing myself in three different languages.

I found the one woman in the universe perfectly designed for me. I experienced the most mind-altering, incredible release of my endless life. And because I couldn’t control my reckless, arrogant mouth, I just chased her away.

12

MAGGIE

The cot dips beneath my weight. I sit on the edge of the narrow mattress, staring at the gray bulkhead of the small cabin. I refuse to acknowledge the indentations in the blanket. I refuse to process the fact that Orien sleeps here during his endless patrols across the stars, his massive frame stretched across this tiny space.

And I absolutely reject the memory of what just happened in the cockpit.

My perfect match.

I press the heels of my hands against my closed eyes. He dropped hints before. Bringing up testing. Talking about the pull between matches. I categorized it as the overbearing flirtation of an alien spymaster who lacked boundaries. I treated him like a puzzle.

The chemistry between us is undeniable. I can’t analyze it away. I can’t logic myself out of the heat that consumed me when I dropped to my knees for him.

I groan, dragging a hand through my hair.

Then I drop my arm, my gaze snagging on the crisp white cuff of my sleeve. The jagged bite mark hides beneath the cotton, a silent, ticking time bomb. My stomach twists into a sharp knot. I felt every death in Manchester today. Every scream over the radio feed. Every time one of my soldiers turned, their veins going black before they were mowed down by the men they shared rations with yesterday, I felt the cut. A fresh tally mark on my conscience.

I stare at my covered forearm. If I had walked up to the Avaren prince on the lawn of Hampton Court and announced my immunity, would they have synthesized a cure by now? Would a single drop of my blood have saved the human garrison at the loading docks?