Page 82 of Taken to Heimo
My ridges explode with color. I can see it in the low light of the room, whose darkness is only dispersed by the sole window. It overlooks the emptiness of this red and brown world, a quiet desolation exploding with life. Such a contradiction. Just like my Svera, spread wide on the mat in front of me, infecting everything with her scent, her salty, sweet arousal, her ruthlessness.
I growl, “And here I was thinking your god was not a believer in these kinds of filthy things.”
Svera swallows. She doesn’t break my gaze. “My god believes in doing the most good and the least harm. That everything is alright so long as you don’t hurt anyone. And that you should treat others as you wish to be treated.”
“And this is how you wish others would treat you?”
She hesitates, sensing the threat in my words. She must, because I do mean them as a threat. “Hexa.” She spreads her legs just a little wider and says, “I do.”
“Take off your shift.”
She doesn’t hesitate, whipping it over her head to reveal a body I have fantasized about these past lunars sleeping here alone, wishing…just wishing…
I drop to my knees between her legs as a savage desire grips the back of my legs and shoots up my spine. I line myself up with her entrance as I reach up and wrap my fist around her slender neck.
I meet her gaze and just before I punch into her brutally, shoving past her too-tight barrier, slick now with her arousal and my need, I rasp, “No one treats you like this but me. No one worships you like I do. You are mine, Svera. Mine to protect, mine to mate. And I vow to you that I will spend every solar for the rest of my existence showing you how wrong I was denying you in the first place.” I swallow, stilling for just a breath. “I lawv you.”
She smiles up at me and scores her nails down my chest, but just as she opens her mouth to say whatever it was she was going to say, I slide home, rutting deep.
“Xok me,” she curses to the ceiling.
I bark out a laugh as she clenches around me, making me dizzy. I lave my tongue up the column of her neck, squeeze her breast, twist her nipple, wait for her small body to adjust to my xora’s girth.
“I plan to.”
As I start to move, thrusting in and out of her, my white hair spills onto the dark colors below her, a fabric that’s the same dusty brown-red hue as everything else on this moon — a moon that needs a name because this moon will be my home — I think about colors and contradictions. Red, brown, peach, purple, blue. Useless, all of it. All that matters is this.
I touch my hand to her chest where her one heart beats and I know everything I need to know about her. What I saw in that first glance, right at the very beginning.
An imperfection that matches my own.
She fills in all my raw and broken bits.
And I fill in hers.
Like this we are whole.
“Svera,” I choke as a debilitating rush of thislawvcracks over my head like an egg. Like I’m the egg and everything inside tumbles out in a sudden rush. My ridges illuminate her face. Her eyes dance with their light.
“Harder!” She gasps, holding onto my neck.
She is close, spiraling, spiraling… I change the angle again, dropping further forward onto her body and rotating my hips against hers in a wavelike motion so that my abdomen presses against her sensitiveclitevery time I thrust. I run my hands up and down her body and she does the same to mine.
“I can’t hold out much longer, Svera,” I grit. “You ruin me.”
She meets my gaze with a bloodthirsty grin and whispers, “There is no such thing. There is only the garden.”
We come apart together again and again. The entire lunar is spent sating Xana’s final act of total ruination. It’s only as the light of another of Cxrian’s moons filters in through the solitary window and illuminates the prayer rug hanging on the wall, still covered in gunk and goop and blood, that Svera finally exhales contentedly. Dreamily.
I lean down and kiss the top of her head, hugging her close. “You must still be hurting,” I say quietly.
“Nox,” she exhales against my chest. “Everything is perfect in the garden.”
“Xhivey.” Then she flicks me.
“What was that for?”
“For keeping me out of the garden these past two solars. Why did you leave?”
