“I’ll go first,” he said, his voice a soft rumble, and I nodded, my mouth still wet from our kisses. My heart raced and curious sensations rippled across my skin under my armor; I assumed the shel recognized a certain chemical cocktail inspired by my arousal.
Clasping each separate piece in his big hand, he pressed an inconspicuous button and jostled it slightly, then lifted it away. I’d seen him without his armor before, but the context was different. With the soft light casting gentle shadows and the growing tenderness between us, this was foreplay.
Muscled shoulders and arms, pectorals and defined abdominals, the long lines of his back muscles, and then his legs. Powerful and etched from rigorous use, his entire body was a work of art. I caught myself licking my lips and flexing my fingers.
Underneath his pelvis armor he wore a pair of mesh shorts. I frowned when he left them on, but he chuckled. Raxthezana, my stern and stoic hunter, chuckled. “Not yet,” he whispered.
Moving behind me where I sat, he spread his bare legs on either side of me. “The back panels can be fractious; allow me to do it for you this first time.”
“Please,” I whispered and closed my eyes, fighting the anxiety threatening to take me under. Was it going to hurt? Probably. But how much?
“Sh,” he soothed me with his voice. “I have learned the humans have a ritual.”
Frowning, I let my head tip forward as he massaged my tight neck with strong fingers.
“I believe it is called “Kiss it to make it better” if my research is correct.”
Chuckling, I nodded. “Yes, that’s it.”
“I like this ritual,” he said, and then freezing fire washed over the entire left side of my back, and I gasped. He removed the right panel before the pain in the left receded, and then I was panting and grimacing. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Give it but another rotik.”
A soothing balm caressed from my shoulder to my waist and along my spine.
“What is that?” I said, breathing out and relaxing. The pain was gone.
“I brought it from my ship when we first arrived,” he said, showing me a circular flat canister filled with something odorless and waxy. “It eases pain.”
“Eases it?” I said with a short laugh. “It fucking erases it. Keep that handy and finish before I change my mind.”
Placing a kiss on my shoulder blade and the top of my spine, he sighed onto my skin. “If at any moment you decide you cannot endure another jotik, tell me, and I will stop.”
“Okay, thank you,” I said. “I want you too bad to stop. But it’s good to know I could.”
“Remove your forearm panels,” he said. “And I will be ready with the balm.”
Pleased at his idea that would lessen the amount of time I spent hurting, I found the release button for my left forearm panel and pressed it. Wiggling it, I pulled it free. I hissed, but I’d expected the freezing burn, and then Raxthezana was smearing the ointment, and it was gone. Adapting a steady breathing pattern I used for free diving, I managed to get all the panels off until my dark scarred skin gleamed in the low light with a sheen from the ointment.
With our armor panels stacked to the side, we sat like that for a few minutes, Raxthezana’s warmth soothing my back, his legs stretched out beside mine and his arms enfolding me, so his hands rested on my belly.
I felt his breath on my neck before he kissed it and then he whispered in my ear. “Can you forgive me?”
Pulling away, I turned to look at him. “What do you mean? For what?”
His black and red eyes dimmed, but his brows furrowed, and he frowned. “For binding you to the shel armor. For condemning you to a life filled with pain.” He avoided my gaze.
Scooting so I faced him while on my knees, I knelt up and grasped his handsome cheeks between my palms, forcing him to meet my eyes.
“I have news for you, Mate.” His eyes flashed at my words, but he listened. “Life is pain with or without shel armor. Without you, without this armor, I wouldn’t have a life. If you want my forgiveness, you have it, but there’s nothing to forgive.”
He closed his eyes, and I noticed his nostrils flare.
Then pinning me with his heated stare, he covered my hands with his own.
“My huntress. You smell of determination and the fierce, irrevocable love of a woman,” he said. “Thank you for this gift of forgiveness.”
He leaned forward and gave me a chaste kiss, then encouraged me to straddle his waist.
I felt his rigid length through the mesh underwear and looked down between us.
“Hey, how come I didn’t get the fancy underwear?” I said with a playful pout. He nipped my lower lip, sparking a zing in my core, and I moaned.
“It appears you have no need of material to prevent you from wagging about under your armor,” he said with candor.
I laughed. “No, thank God. But that means you and I will fit together. IF—you take these off.” I tugged at his waistband. He growled in his throat.
“Mayhap I am using the barrier to prevent me from going too fast,” he said and nuzzled my neck before making his way to the swell of my breasts. Having watched the recording of my rescue, I could see that my body’s fat stores had resupplied, and I was back to my fulsome self. I gasped when he took a pebbled peak between his lips and pulled.
“Jesus, God,” I gasped and moaned. It had been an eternity, and my simmering arousal spiked into an eruption of need. Clamping his head tight against me, I encouraged more of the same with pleading noises and panting breaths. He delivered with enthusiasm.
“I see I have done you a disservice,” he murmured, laying me back on the pallet then removing his shorts in full view. His broad and long length sprung forward in blatant display, and I’m fairly certain my eyes bugged out of my head.
“Disservice?” I repeated, dazed.
“I intended to move slowly, but your teeth and claws demand otherwise,” he growled and climbed over me, nestling between my spread legs, and I shuddered and moaned at his immensity, his heat, his power.
I guessed I had been biting and clawing him unthinkingly, and his nearness instigated more. Digging my fingers into his back, I bit his neck and inhaled the spicy male scent of him. I wanted to devour him, and startlingly, I felt like a bona fide predator. Which on a place called Predator Planet made perfect sense.
“Your heat calls to me,” he whispered and slid his hand between us, rocking to the side so he could slip fingers between my crease and glide them back and forth before fisting himself and sliding his own hand up and down his length.
“Hey, my turn,” I growled back at him, and he chuckled. When I grasped him, I noticed the hard bumps and felt myself slicken just at the thought of what we would do next. “Oh God, I can’t wait another second,” I said and positioned him at my entrance.
He didn’t torture me; he drove in at my insistence and I accepted him with a pleased gasp and clenched arms around his torso, holding him to me with my legs wrapped around him and squeezing tight.
Burying his mouth between my shoulder and jaw, his hot breath sunk into my skin when he spoke.
“I have died and now I glide among the flowers in the Fields of Shegoshel,” he said.
My low chuckle rippled between us. “Oh stop. You’re the alivest living hunter who ever lived.”
Rumbling in pleasure he began to move. “I am still learning your language, but I think that is not a word …”
“Mm,” I said, words impossible. He was taking me at an irresistible rocking pace, and the bumps were catching on a special place inside me, driving me to the brink before I was ready.
“God,” I panted and joined his fervor, searching his face and grabbing his waist and ass, my hands frantically touching him everywhere. I wanted all of him, his outside, his inside; I wanted him in me, around me, through me, and when he dove for my mouth again, our kiss clashed with fiery wonder.
Our skin glided together, and our breaths mingled, and our muscles spasmed, and I never wanted this to end.
“Your fevered passion ….” He stopped talking, and I think both of our brains went offline.
He grunted; I groaned. Nothing existed outside our creation, the love that pulsed and flourished between us, and when he bent to suckle at my breasts, I exploded all over and around him until I was limp and lax, blissed out and giddy.
He slowed his pace and kissed up my neck, searching out my mouth for more deep kisses, and he lingered for several—rotiks—until speeding up once more and seizing his own ecstasy at my encouragement. When he stilled and arched up, trembling at his peak, I admired the tendons in his neck, the strained muscles of his arms and chest, the tantalizing vee pointing to where we joined, and I knew I wasn’t finished with him tonight.