Page 25 of Taken to Voraxia
I want to correct her here and now, and I want to ask her a plethora of questions about all of the words she uttered in her conversation with the human that I do not understand — mooslum? mer’rree? popawt? huzb and? lawv? — but I will have to do these things after.
Because for now my Rakukanna has asked me a question and stares determinedly up at me. And there is only one answer.
“Hexa.”
7
Raku
She stands on the sleeping pallet. Even slightly raised as it is, she still does not come up to my chin, though it evens the gap between our respective heights. Her eyes are round again, but she does not cower and she does not run. She does not try to fight me. Instead, she places her hands on my bare shoulders.
Her fingers are so soft they feel wet. Beautiful. Perfect. I want them around my xora, as per our pact, but she is hesitant, moving with a slowness I can barely stand but that I want to. The anticipation makes me wild.
I yearn for her, yet the restraint I show pushes me even further into pleasure in ways I couldn’t have fathomed. I will not rush this moment. The most important I have ever had. The moment I make this female mine. The moment the Xanaxana claims us respectively, and then unites us as one.
My robe issues a feathery whisper as it hits the paneled floor and my chest swells as I look into her eyes, the scent of melted sugar strong in my inhaled breaths. I hold the air in my lungs, hoping to savor it, and her blunted fingertips dig into my muscles as she looks at my mouth.
Suddenly she tips forward and presses her mouth pillows to my own. I start and jerk away from her. She freezes. “Was that wrong?” She says, voice only half audible. “I’ve never done it before…”
Donewhatbefore? I do not understand and rub my mouth, then use that same hand to rub hers.Xok, her sweet mouth pillows are even softer than the rest of her skin, though I hadn’t thought it possible. Mine are of the same texture as the rest of my hide. Hard enough to make me wonder if my skin on hers causes her abrasions. Shamefully, the only thought that I have in response is that it doesn’t matter.She will have to mate with me somehow.
“You will tell me the name of this act, Rakukanna.”
She looks away. I pull her back with my knuckle beneath her chin. “A kiss,” she huffs, doing an eye roll that I dislike immediately. With no variant to our eye shade, no Voraxian can master this look, so I have never seen it before this.
“It’s what we traded for. You…you didn’t know what you were getting when we made the deal?” Her brow crease returns and one of the feathery strips of hair where her ridges should be lifts up towards the top of her head. What are these new expressions?Stop being so distracted.Only distracted isn’t the right word, is it? I aminterested.
I shake my head. “Nox. But I was curious. This act of mouth joining is kiss?” She nods her assent and I gesture her forward. “Proceed.”
“You…you want me to try again?”
“I do not know the reaction you seek, but I am curious enough to accept this offering.”
More than curious. Eager. The thought of coupling my mouth with hers sends strange and alien thrills through me. This is not done on Voraxia — or any other constellation I have thus visited — why would it be? It serves no purpose for the act of breeding and is not even possible given the construction of the breeding harness. Mouths exist for taking in sustenance. Does she intend to try to eat me?
The thought makes my mouth turn up in the pleasure expression I do not often experience. I have already determined that her little blunted teeth could do no damage to my hide. Thus, in this kiss act, there is no risk. Only the promise of that renewed rush, that piqued exhilaration.
For the second time, she tilts her weight forward and presses her soft mouth to mine. Her slightly cooler skin warms quickly and I can feel blood heating her mouth pillows from below their too-thin dermis as she repeats this act again and again.
My skin prickles, rough plates along my chest and arms and thighs lifting up, as they often do when I overheat and need to cool, but after only a few attempts, she pulls away.
I try to hold her in place, but she stops me. “You…would you…I think you’re supposed to relax your lips.” She licks her mouth cushion and understanding dawns on me.
Lips. Those are her lips.
“Could you maybe part them…a little…” She exhales and her warm breath fans over my face. I lean in towards it, my lips slightly ajar as she requested, and when she presses her lips to mine again there is a burst of spice mixed in with the clean, windswept perfume of jujji berries that she wears like a cloud.
A most intoxicating combination, I find that the smell is bothcoupledby the exquisite sweetness of her mouth, andcompoundedby it.
She nips at my lower lip with her blunt teeth and lathes the bites with her tongue, sending sensations sparking through me. My own ridged tongue darts forth without instruction to taste more of that sweetness and she jolts when our wet tongues collide.
She attempts to distance us, but my hands quickly snatch the back of her head and mold against her spine and when she whimpers, pleased, I grow lightheaded.
I surge against her, crushing her mouth, but my Rakukanna surprises me because she does not flinch or remove herself from this act. From this kiss. Instead, she surges forward, meeting me tongue to tongue, lip to lip, breath to breath.
I’m breathing hard now and when I open my eyes, I see hers are closed. I am pleased by the train of lashes that drip from the edges of her eyes. The high, arrogant Dra’Kesh tilt of her cheekbones. The flat, ridgelessness of her brow. The utter lack of sharpness to her features.
Her head fits so neatly into my palm and as the kiss deepens I feel my Xanaxana come undone. I cannot wait for her to fist my xora or for me to explore her as I had intended to moments ago. This mating of mouths is too intoxicating.
