Page 48 of Eat My Moon Dust
“No!” Hunar’s eyes shot open. He held out a hand to stop me, tendrils swarming. “Don’t hand it to me. Just put it with my stuff.”
I paused, hand clutching the sealed panties hidden in my bag. “Are you sure? I won’t judge.”
“If you hand them to me, I’ll rip the bag open and frenzy right here, so yeah, I’m fucking sure, Tinsley!”
Hunar’s desperate tone made me jump. I opened the lockers until I found his, made sure the door was blocking his sight, and pushed the package into the depths of his bag. Heart in my throat, I latched it shut and shoved his wet weather hood and waders in front of it so that even if he opened his locker, he’d have to dig to find it.
“Okay, done!” I panted, closing all the doors with aclang.Hunar was still bent over the table, his tendrils fighting desperately to escape confinement. “Can I do anything else?”
“Not unless you let me touch you,” he rumbled with hopeless sarcasm.
I licked my bottom lip, which was a bit raw from worrying itso often, and nodded breathlessly.
“Sure, okay. Let’s do this.”
Hunar’s head snapped to attention so fast, I hardly tracked it. The desperation in his expression was the most empowering thing I’d ever experienced as the frantic back and forth simmered down into a predatory silence.
“Don’t tease me,” he warned, resonant clicking snapping up the air between us. His colors flashed again,sentimoving across his collarbones and over the shoulder nearest me.
“I’m not,” I assured him, taking a step towards the table. “Look, if I tell you to stop, you can stop, right?”
Hunar nodded wordlessly, throat bobbing.
“Then okay. I’ll stand still and you can touch me. Just, if I say stop…”
“I stop,” Hunar agreed, unfurling to his full height.
We faced each other and moved closer, like dance partners meeting for the first time. Hunar’s gaze roamed over the bare skin of my neck and arms, and slowly, gently, he raised all four hands.
His palms suctioned lightly to my sweat-dried skin like silicone trivets, tickling my peach fuzz as they coasted up my forearms. His thumbs pressed the insides of my elbows, sparking goosebumps over my flesh, then clamped my biceps with his lower hands, large and thick enough to almost completely encircle them. His uppers continued their journey north, skimming my collar bones over my tank top, cupping my throat, squeezing it gently as his fingers probed the nape of my neck and prickled my hairline where no one had touched me in years.
I focused on staying still and calm, but really, I was hypnotized by the divine sensation of slowing down and being in the moment. I’d forced my mind to run a mile ahead of the ghosts I’d left behind on Earth through gossip, rum, movies, personal projects, and forced exuberance for so long that standing still gave me vertigo. I gripped Hunar’s wrist for stability, and he froze stiff.
“Keep going,” I whispered.
One by one, the tendrils in his mane slithered out of that thick band and reached for me. When he bent over my head to get them close enough to touch, I lifted my face, so close that his strained breath tickled my ear. Distantly, the band thunked to the steel floor, drowned out by the murmur of his mane as it cradled my cheeks and ran through my hair.
Hissenti,though, tugged at the latches on my pants. Hunar hissed, trying to draw it back, but it refused, the tip curling into one of my pockets. It filled the little space, pressing into the heat of the crease of my thigh, and strained towards my pussy.
Towards the heat building there.
“Chudthi,”Hunar croaked, grabbing hissentiwith one lower hand to make sure it didn’t stray any further.
“It’s–”
“No,”he snarled. “If I frenzy, I won’t be able to stop if you tell me to.”
My throat went dry, but I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t going to screw this up for Hunar. He coiled with me because he didn’t have any other choice, not because he wanted to. If I tried to chase the growing urge to run my hands over his stripes and rub my face into his mane, I’d be taking advantage of him.
“Okay, nosenti,then.”
He breathed a sigh of relief at my command, then committed to dabbing the tips of his tendrils against my tear ducts, earlobes, and the corners of my mouth. He brushed my eyebrows the wrong way and whispered over my eyelashes. A few spiraled over my cheekbone and temple where I’d gotten lashed in the crossfire of Reha’s first coil fight, and I realized distantly that they were worrying over it, looking for remnants of the bruises.
I pressed my palm against the worrying tendrils, and they curled around my fingers instead, exploring my palm and nail beds.
“I’m okay, Hunar. You gave me a mediplasma, remember?”
“Your prealbumin levels are too low,” he rumbled, the hand wrapped around my forearm gliding towards my spine while the other held hissentiaway from me in a taut grip. “I can taste it in the vessels here.” He tapped a tendril against my temple. His tone was calmer now, but intimate, sending my heart racing. I squeezed my thighs together and ignored it as best I could.
