Page 52 of Alliance
He captured her hand on his head and turned it over. This time when he nipped, he scraped his fangs against the pulse in her wrist.
And she did exactly as he’d hoped. She jolted, the breath of a laugh chasing his tongue as he soothed the prick.
Fásach headbutted Roz’s ribs, pushing her to the bedroll as he climbed over top of her with a growl. His heartbeat pounded against his skull and his rut roared to be sated. He’d already caught Roz, hadn’t he?
Now he’d make her pay for delaying his due.
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A molten ache flared between my legs as Fásach pressed his hips to mine and I pushed his coveralls off his shoulders. He fisted my silk, and I did the same, grabbing his hackles with an iron grip, keeping his mouth on my neck.
Dios mio, what a mouth.
As hard as my heart pounded though, I couldn’t let go of that one fist in his wiry racerback and surrender control. Because something deeply unsettling wouldn’t leave my mind. A question I couldn’t answer.
[Inquiry] Did it feel right for his weight to bear down on my pussy because I wanted him?
Or because that’s what I was built for?
Venandi, hjarna, and shilpakaari preferences were hardwired into me. Their instinctive favorites were ingrained into my system like Monarch butterflies migrating south for the winter. I knew that a venandi would want to see my neck if they dominated me because it made me more vulnerable. And a hjarna would want me to stick my tongue out if they came on my face because they pollinated their partners through absorption.
“Wait, I—”
Fás paused, his hot breath on my neck, waiting, his hips undulating as if he couldn’t help it. Just the tiniest rock back and forth, stoking the fire.
“Roz…” he urged, needing an answer I didn’t have.
I had no protocols for yiwreni pleasure. I’d learned a lot on theMummer,but none of it was programmed into me like my expected client species. It made me anxious that I didn’t know what Fás would expect from me or instinctively enjoy the most. Is this what learning was like for other humans? A guessing game without concrete paths to follow? I had no set list of tasks, and my coding wasn’t prepared—
[WARNI–] A thunderous static crashed through my LMem and my systems seizured.
The digital noise raced towards us like a freight train, a boom so big I couldseeit pressing against my sensors. They strained under the power, my optics warped, and each nerve node embedded in my skin overheated like I was being scorched by the sun.
A boom rattled the cave and Fásach’s demanding hands turned into a guard. He covered my body entirely with his, holding my head against his neck with a yell of surprise. But I could only feel him, his fur like hot needles against my skin, and me without a voice. Without control at all. My vision was white with a surge of electricity so powerful it triggered my emergency protective protocols, safeguarding my electrical boards, ports, and wiring by isolating every switch. I was as stiff as a board, and in agonizing sensory overload.
“Roz!” Fásach panted. He lifted his weight off me, and my spine bowed off the ground, eyes rolling back. Lightning coursed through my veins and wiring. Something trickled from my nose. Oil? Blood? I had no vitals feedback. My parumauxi were offline. My LMem unraveled until I was nothing—
And then suddenly the white light was a void of fizzling black. I wasn’t lying on the ground anymore, but wrapped up in tight, shaking arms. Fásach was crouched on his heels, his face buried in my neck, whimpering with panic. I stared up at theceiling of our cave with a dry mouth and teeth that tasted like aluminum.
“Fás…” I croaked without the soft purr of a human voice. This version of me was all machine, a digital monotone because my voice had gone offline with everything else. I clamped my mouth shut, trying to swallow the staticky wheeze of panic.
Fás gasped, framing my face with his thick palms. He looked relieved rather than disgusted and something oily thick in my gut dissipated. When he spoke, his voice shook.
“It’s okay, Roz. Take your time.”
[Restart] I slumped against his chest as my motor functions rebooted slowly. First my fingers and toes, then my eyelids and eyebrows. My face cycled through a variety of slow brow movements, nose scrunches, and eye rolls as it performed systems checks. My fingers opened and closed individually, my wrists rotated, my abdomen tightened and bulged…
“I’ll be right back. I need to check outside.”
Fás carefully set me on the bedroll so that my muscles could twitch and stretch, running his claws through the stray ringlets at the base of my neck where it felt best, before the loss of his body heat prickled in a chill gust of wind.
“Systems clear,” I said automatically, my voice returning though without any inflection. Non-essential functions were still calibrating. I remained laying down but turned my head towards the vital pods.
[Priority] Safia… Misila…
They were both still floating, buoyed against the cave wall like canoes adrift. They’d locked down their data hard in the surge–no echoes of any kind. Though their lights were still even, I couldn’t shake the overwhelming need to make sure.
“Dios te salve, Maria…”Words that weren’t my own and that I didn’t understand poured out of my mouth as Rosy took over some part of me, her hands clasped as a child in a roomwith clay walls and white curtains as the wind raged outside and debris battered the roof. She’d gone through those motions every time there was a storm—whether it was a tempest of the sea or the mind—and felt better for the compulsion of saying words her mother had taught her but she no longer believed.
