Page 8 of Taken to Nobu
She slips her arms free of the sleeves and jolts forwardout of her coverings. Is she mad? Is her fight truly so desperate she would endanger herself?Rage swims through me as I take in the sight of her beautiful ioni body surrounded by so much white. The wind is strong, the ice, unforgiving. In trying to stop me, she will kill herself.
Cold fury rips the plates clean off of me. I level my forearm across her chest and press her back. I grab the arms of her suit and force her into it, one wrist at a time, and when I have the front of her suit secured, I yank up on her hood, and use it to cover her thick, mud-sodden hair. The need to claim her quickly dawns on me. Imustremove her from the cold and take her back to my nest where I will warm her, clean her of the filth caking her skin and tend her wounds.And then mount her again and again, into the next solar.
I take her wrists and hold them to the center of her chest with one hand. I find the flap covering her core and untie the strings. My fingertips press forward to find damp fur and beyond that, a searing heat.
Shock.
I did not know what to expect but it was not this. Too curious not to continue my exploration, I delve one finger forward, careful not to cut her with my claws as I explore this mystical fur and this tantalizing heat. My spine stiffens as I finger something wet and so soft catacat silk traders would be jealous.
This cannot be the place where my xora will enter. It cannot be… Withdrawing my fingers, I bring them to my nose and breathe deeply.
Miaba is a winter flower with large, blood red petals and even more violent red thorns protruding from tough, black stems. Rare and highly valued, the flowers carry the most intoxicating scent. But they are deadly. The poison takes effect over days, slowly making it impossible for its victims to take in sustenance until eventually, they starve. A violent death, I never understood why anyone would risk so much for a scent.
But I understand now. My entire body shakes as the Xanaxana rages through me unchecked and unbridled. A scent is worth the risk. Worth coming too close to the thorns. Worth raking them over my flesh.
I inhale again, press the tips of my fingers to my tongue and shudder.This is what the universe smells like.
My Xiveri mate has been watching my vulnerable display, but there is little else I can do except hope that she understands the Xanaxana and that she feels it too. She continues to fight until the moment I bring my fingers to my lips, needing to taste that miaba nectar. Then she stills, watching me with enormous, rounded eyes. My fingers slide against my tongue and I suckhard, unwilling to let so much as a droplet of her miaba go to waste, for it is just as sweet and bitter as its scent promised. And even more deadly.
I moan. She whimpers.
“Shh,” I tell her, stroking her mud-soaked hair back from her face. “I will not leave you to this pain.”
She blinks rapidly and begins to fight again as I pull the strings to my own covering and release my xora. I guide my xora forward, finding first her fur before gliding lower to reach the exquisite softness I felt on my first exploration.
I glide the bloated head of my xora over the plump, fat mound of her sex and then delve inwards, through the first of her folds. They part exquisitely around my xora as I stroke up and down and up and in becoming softer and softer the closer to her core I come.Am I truly supposed to slide my xora into this softness?Even my xora, softer than the plates on my body, is no match for this. I will surely tear her. The thought makes me cold. One hand in her hair, the other on her hip, my body stills.
Her eyes blink and they are full of gloss. Like the surface of still water, subtly rippling. Seeing me, or sensing my hesitation, she surges up again as if to strike. But this time she speaks — snarls — and I am surprised by her.
“Just do it already! Don’t you dare stop! Don’t you dareletme win!”
There is some hidden weight in her words I fail to understand, though their meaning is clear. I am failing her as a warrior male, for I have not yet fulfilled my right of conquest. And yet…she is so soft…
I position myself fully over her and snarl brutally as my xora presses forward, diving past the first of her folds and reaching a fountain of fire and silk. The pleasure is inundating. She must feel it too because she turns her face to the side, ripping back and forth. Her breath forms in clouds. Her eyes, she shuts.
“Xiveri,” I whisper, hating the tint of a question coloring my tone. Okkari does not question. He commands. Yet, I have never been less sure.
The pounding in my chest is riotous but the honeyed thread of the Xanaxana beneath my breast sours and stills.Something is not right.
“Xiveri, I wish to look upon you for the ritual mating.”
She shakes her head and her bottom jaw sets fiercely. “No. Never.”
I frown. This is not the way. I have never completed the Mountain Run before this, but I have heard the tales. I have seen Xiveri mates in each other’s presences. The connection between them is visible to anyone within sight. Yet she turns from me as if she attempts to shut such a connection out.She is human. Perhaps she does not feel Xanaxana in the same way we do. If this is the case, then what I attempt to do to her here will not be a union. It will be a rape.
A hiss barrels out from between my teeth and my xora shrinks at the thought. Rape. A scandalous, treasonous thing only for those with no honor. I am Okkari. I am its very definition.
I lift my hips and quickly cover my xora, still straining for her. When I settle against her again, I move one hand to the side of her face, the other to her neck. We lay still for some moments while the wind gains in intensity and the cold of the night rises around us. But no matter how gently I stroke her clear, unblemished skin, or how calmly I inhale and exhale — showing her that I am a male in control of his inner beast — she does not release the tension that warps and rattles her frame. She does not stop shaking.
Something is very wrong.
I reach down for the panel still open at the front of her coverings and very carefully tie them back into place. As I work, the backs of my fingers brush against the outside of her mound, finding soft fur there, slick with wetness. I try to swallow my desire, but a haggard groan escapes me, one full of male desperation.
My xora bucks against her thigh and I can feel cream bead along its tip. I am tortured by it, yet it is she who releases a tortured sort of sound. She must sense her defeat is near. She does not know that I will not claim her. Not like this. Noteverlike this. I have waited all my rotations to claim the female the universe created for me, not even knowing if I would find her. I will not spoil this moment. Claiming her when this sensation ofwrongnesshangs so heavy between us I can scarcely breathe its cloying air, would ruin everything.
Pressing my weight down onto her, she tenses even more, but this cannot be helped. Ice crystals form on her skin. I need to warm her. I need to remove her from this.But the Run has not been completed. My Xiveri mate remains unclaimed. This is not the way things are done on Nobu. This is not tradition.A flash of irritation. A thimble of shame.Tradition is not worth keeping if it causes pain.
“My Xhea,” I say and she winces at the sound of my voice.Wrong. This is wrong. Against tradition. Against Voraxia.But she is not Voraxian. Perhaps this is not her culture.
