Page 19 of Healing the Leonid Doctor's Heart
He felt her thighs clamp around him, holding his cock in a slippery vise, and he burst, torrents of thick, shimmering, clear fluid arcing out against her bare skin as she panted out her pleasure.
She collapsed under him, covered in him. “Goodness.”
He laughed. Abigail’s gift for calm always made him feel... At peace. Somehow at peace, even when his soul was confused.
“Yes. Goodness. I’m sorry about the mess.”
“I like the mess. I mean, I’d better.” She rolled over, looking up at him. In the dark, he could see the shining trails on her skin. “Hadn’t I better get used to it? How many times per treatment cycle will you have to... You know? Inside of me?”
“Several a day, usually. But it won’t just be because I’ll want to. It’ll be because your body will have the equivalent of a Felid heat cycle. You’ll crave this.”
She smiled, eyes sleepy and serene. “I imagine I will. Already do.”
Chapter Five
“What did I just do?” Abigail looked at herself in the mirror. She looked... wasted.
Claw pinpricks, little bruises of soft bites, swollen pussy lips without their thicket of curls to cover them, tender, permanently erect nipples...
Smiling. Hair looking like one side had been caught in the sliding doors of her quarters.
“What did I just do three times?” she squealed and hugged herself before slowly sliding into the shower, unable to stop beaming.
Marcus had left last night with a gentle kiss on her temple while she was drifting off, leaving her with his marks all over her, messy sheets, and rosy dreams about being his lover.
His Queen. He’d called her ‘My Queen’ more than once. “Is that just how things go with Leonids? The human equivalent of saying ‘my man’ or ‘my woman’?” she mused aloud. Her puzzled frown turned into a wide smile when she recalled the roar he let out when she said it back. Not “My Queen. That would be silly. My King.”
As she dried and dressed, another day of boredom and recuperation stretched out ahead of her. Impatience prickled like a rash, steadily getting more itchy each day since she’d been able to sit up and move about on her own.
Eat food that I don’t pay for, play with the most adorable little cubs in the nursery, pop in to see how Nessa and Kamau are doing with their plans to convert one of the big bays into a garden, find Kaylie, play games, read a book, watch a show. Sleep in luxury I didn’t earn, that I’m not earning.
No one had asked her for a single credit, but if they had, she didn’t know if she would be in trouble or not. What was the cost of living in utter luxury with better food, entertainment, and amenities than she’d ever had in her life, not to mention the medical care and being rescued?
Being respected.
She thought of how Marcus touched her through the night, how they’d shared a bottle of wine and promptly returned to “practicing.” She felt utterly depraved, delighted, sated, and eager for more—and still respected.
Felids don’t need your paltry store of credits, such as they are. The exchange rate is in their favor eighteen times over. What they need is workers. And the job they most need filled is to make more workers. They need women who can be surrogates. One well-paying job would be the equivalent of eighteen well-paying jobs.
Life had taught her to be detail-oriented and practical. She pulled up the media viewer menu as she sat back down on the freshly made bed. “Show me everything on surrogacy in the Felid community,” she instructed, and sat down to do her homework.
“REMEMBER WHAT YOU ASKEDme last night?”
“How do you always win, even though you always pick goats and can’t steer?” Abigail sighed, closing the book she was reading on her personal computer.
Kaylie sat next to her in the lounge, curled up close, a kitten against a mother cat. “No! Not that.”
“About finding work?” Abigail’s stomach tightened. She would trust Kaylie with her life and her secrets. In reality, she would trust anyone aboard this ship with her life—they’d alreadysaved it once, after all. Still, she didn’t want everyone to know about her plans with Marcus—in case she failed.
“Sort of. Maybe. If you don’t find work on board the ship that you really like, do you think you’ll ever go back to our galaxy? For good?” Kaylie split a cocoa cream bar in silvery, biodegradable wrapping in half and offered it to her.
Abigail didn’t answer the question. She didn’t know the answer. What if she and Marcus were unsuccessful?
And then he moved on to someone else? Someone young and beautiful, who had his cubs for him, and he worshipped her, and she watched, lonelier than ever?
Don’t answer. Avoid.“Where’d you get this?” Abigail held up the confection, nostrils twitching at the decadent scent of cocoa and sugar.
“From Ardol and Jade. They have a huge case of them in one of the freight compartments. Some of it is stuff that they’ll use when they set up their store on Lynx-Nineteen, but they gave me one for free.”
