I block the second attack with my forearm, but she uses her legs. She kicks up — or tries to, but she is limited in her mobility by the thick padding that covers her, weighted by water and filth. I had feared it was not enough when I allowed the elder females to clothe her for the Mountain Run and I worry still.
She comes from a planet equally harsh but entirely opposite, plagued by suns that whither their fauna to sand and dust, whereas we on Nobu almost never see Voraxia’s suns for our world has been claimed by ice that covers everything. Even the sky. My warrior queen is likely cold down to her bones.
Her eyes are slits and I see the way her lower jaw trembles, teeth chattering against the upper in a way that resembles the younglings in their first encounters with weather like this.
She grunts when she kicks and I can tell it is work for her. She is too slow to make contact with my groin and as her left leg lifts, I sweep her standing leg and lurch forward, catching the back of her head and her waist before she hits the ground.
She does not attempt to dislodge my hold on her body — my Xhea is too smart for that. Rather, she punches up, striking me squarely in the face. Immediately after her first strike, she repeats her attack until I feel the skin around my mouth break open on her fist and I taste my own viscous blood. White and then black, green and then yellow are the colors of my ridges once more. This combination of my emotions will know her well. She pleases me to no end. Even as she strikes.
I do not dare drop her, but let her punch me twice more — once against my right eye and I feel the skin above my ridges tingle at her punch, but when she hits my left cheek, I hear a slight crack and watch her expression twist into one of pain. Furious that she would bring injury to herself, I growl out my displeasure and the delicate hairs on her eyelids flutter in a way that sends pulses fluttering through me.
I hiss so loudly she flinches, and in her hesitation, I lower her all the way to the icy ground below and plant my palms on either side of her head. Her momentary calm lasts only until I position my lower body on top of hers and she registers my weight.
She resumes her fight in earnest now, body ripping from side-to-side, fingers forming claws even though I know they are not tipped by them. Her hands attempt to score my skin, but she is injured. I snarl. Her bottom mouth pillow shakes.
A momentary grapple ensues, in which time she is able to lift up one knee and spear it into my thigh. She makes contact with sensitive flesh and the pain is palpable, but fleeting. I feel green again, and then orange. And on my tongue, I do not taste the blood of the other males on my skin or the mud from the mire on hers, I taste zxhoa, that delicate, flowering herb. A desert canyon bathed in sunshine. The dizzying dazzle of a faraway star. I hallucinate the Great Ocean of the After and for a moment, bask on the tide. What is she doing to me? What has already been done?
Her grunt of frustration drags me into the present as I settle my weight onto her once more. My xora presses against her stomach and I feel my eyes roll back into my skull. The pressure is not something I instinctively know how to fight through. Rather, every instinct in my body is screaming its demands. Demands for release. The Xanaxana in my chest is pitching. It wants to find unity with its pair. And I am the male. The one responsible for guiding the mating. I need to move quickly or rutting fever may grip me and I need to remain in control if I am to satisfy us both for our first time together. I want to satisfy her. I want nothing more.
I reach down the length of her body, finding a small panel taught to us males that will allow my xora entry, but before I can unlace the binds, she slips her hand from beneath mine and swipes for me. I release her covering to snatch her wrist mid-air. Taking precious seconds, I fasten both of her arms over her head and hold them down at the wrist with one of my hands, careful with her injured fingers.
She continues to struggle, to seethe between her teeth. She bites at me and I have to lurch back out of the path of the strike. When I do, she wriggles more fiercely and that’s when I see and feel what she’s done.
She slips her arms free of the sleeves and jolts forward out 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. I must remove 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 suck hard, 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.