Ravenna slowly bent forward to kiss his half attentive cock, then she slid back up into position over him, enjoying the hardening of the shaft as she wriggled herself down into place.
Bronse sat up suddenly, sending her sinking deep into his lap, the position spreading her legs wide open. He reached to rapidly unlace his boots, then shucked off his pants and socks. Suddenly he wanted more than anything to simply be there, naked with her. He drew her in tight to his chest and ran his hands up her long, lean back, bending his nose to her sweet, clean skin and the enchantingly spicy scent of her.
“I’m an idiot,” he confessed to her. “I’m not normally so dense or so boorish, but I think this situation strikes closer to me than anything else ever has.” He reached to kiss her mouth in a lingering clinging of lips. “I think I might be afraid to fail you because I don’t want to fail you. And I’m not certain I know how to avoid it.”
“Perhaps you should stop thinking so hard about it and start seeking more practical experiences to prove to yourself that you might succeed, that you will not fail.”
Bronse smiled beneath her lips as she nibbled kisses across his mouth.
“Perhaps I should,” he agreed with her, suddenly feeling the lightest he had felt in hours. He turned her and rolled her beneath him, settling himself comfortably up the center of her body and between her thighs. Feeling suddenly ravenous for the temptations of her bare skin, he began to kiss and lick a path of exploration down her throat, along her breastbone and breasts, and over the taut line of her tummy. He swirled his tongue over her as he went lower and lower. But just as he reached the damp curls protecting her sex, she seemed to balk. She reached to grab hold of him by both ears and pulled against his effort to touch his mouth to her most private places. He looked up in curiosity.
“What are you doing?” she wanted to know.
“I’m kissing you. Everywhere.” The way the quantification rumbled out of him was nothing short of sinful. But she was suddenly covered nearly head to toe in a body blush.
“Why would you want to do that?” she asked him as if he was out of his mind. “No. Please don’t. Let’s just make love.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” he countered. “I’m trying to give you such a healthy dose of pleasure that you’ll try to fly right out of my arms.” His smile was wicked and hot. “Now, let go of me.”
“No. This isn’t how it works,” she insisted breathlessly.
“Oh, it will work. Trust me.”
He pulled out of her staying grasp and lowered his head between her thighs. He could see the fine anticipatory tremors running through them, as well as the resistant tension. Her naïveté was showing itself again, and it made him chuckle softly to himself. With the lightest touch of his fingers, he spread her open, taking in the sight of her and breathing in the raw, uncensored smell of their earlier frantic sex. She smelled of excitement and of him, as if she were now deeply marked as his very own. Now he wanted to leave yet another mark, an indelible memory on her that she wouldn’t soon forget. What’s more, he wanted to know what their combined flavors would taste like on his working tongue.
He started by kissing her firmly at the far upper cleft of her pussy, his tongue flicking down only briefly to flirt against her untried clit. He absorbed her shocked gasp greedily, but ignored the unsure clutch of her fingers fisting into his hair. He knew she was in for a very big surprise, and he was of a mind to bring it to her with teasing slowness. Very carefully he began to kiss and lick at the richly damp folds before him, and his fingers painted her in teasing touches, but both they and his mouth stayed very clear of her fattening clit. He could tell by her breathing that she had gone from cautious and uncertain to curious and then craving. She relaxed back with a purring little moan, lifting her pelvis from the bed and seeking his mouth blindly. She might not know exactly what it was she was looking for, but she was beginning to want it very badly.
“Bronse,” she begged him softly as her nails scraped over his scalp.
But Bronse was already more than busy enough drawing her against his palate again and again with ever-broadening strokes of his tongue. He even tried to thrust his tongue inside of her, but she was too tightly tensed for it. Another time, he thought, as he drew a long, slow line up her pussy with his tongue until it led him straight to her clitoris. As he washed up flatly against her sensitive nerves, Ravenna cried out in a combination of shock, surprise, and need. But that was nothing compared to what she was going to feel very soon, he thought, when he began swirling his tongue against her in long, slow-turning strokes.
Ravenna gasped with every stroke, the pitch of it climbing just as her swaying pelvis tried to climb closer and deeper into his mouth. He wasn’t very gentle as he introduced the shocking thrust of two fingers deep into her hot center. Out of her mind with climbing pleasure, Ravenna felt herself detonate under his skilled manipulations. The orgasm was tremendous, blacking out her vision entirely as her head and neck arched back into the crest of it. She had never felt anything so shocking and so glorious all at once. She fell from the crest with a crash, sucking for breath, trying to get away from the overwhelming continuation of his attentions. But he held her down to the bed tightly and began all over again, determined to start anew and not taking no for an answer. He wasn’t going to trade away hearing her abandoned groans of pleasure or the erotic undulations of a body going wild for the things he was doing to her. The second crest she hit was of a keener pitch, almost more painful and infinitely more pleasurable because of it. She had never dreamed of such things. She had thought herself learned in the ways of sex, even though until now she had never taken part in them, but this was something she hadn’t ever been able to conceive of on her own, and none of her experiences had led to the explanation of the act.
Bronse was surging up over the center of her body, and it was clear by the passionate violet of his eyes that he was nowhere near done with her. His mouth was wet with his sinful work. Suddenly and boldly she wanted to kiss him, so she grabbed hold of him and did so. Taking the alien taste of her own pleasure onto her tongue, at first she thought it so very strange. She tried to seek the appeal for him in this salty, musky flavor, and as he deepened his kiss and the play of his tongue against hers, she realized the erotic power of it. She instantly wondered what he tasted like. Her teasing kiss of earlier had allowed her only a sample of the rich musk of his scent, but not of anything resembling this exotic tang she was savoring.
She broke from his kiss and breathed, “I want to taste you too. Do you taste like this?”
“I’m not nearly as delicious as you are, but that’s from my perspective. You might feel very differently.” The idea of her mouth on him, exploring him as thoroughly as he had her, made his already heavy cock ache with fresh interest. He rolled aside, lying on his back and trying for all he was worth to adopt a note of control and calm. Waiting for her to approach him was sheer torture, and it pulsed through him over and over again as she reached out with tentative fingertips. The pads of her first two fingers slowly rode his length from tip to base, her breath buffeting against him over and over as her excitement climbed. He reached down to close his hand around himself, the thickness weighing heavy in his hand as he squeezed a little patience into himself. But he was also showing her that he could tolerate a very strong touch and she need not be afraid she’d do something wrong and hurt him.
“Just do what I did. Use all the soft parts of your mouth against me. You can take me into your mouth and suck on me.” He was amazed he got the instruction out coherently. Just the thought had his cock drooling for her attentions. The appearance of the wet liquid at the tip instantly caught her attention and her fascination. She bent over him and reached out to take it onto her tongue, giving him a tentative little tasting.
“But it’s so different,” she marveled in a whisper. “The same in some ways, but so very different from me. And you’re wrong; I think you taste much better than I do.”
Bronse
groaned as she pushed his hands away from her field of interest and took him in her hand as he had done. She squeezed him every so lightly, sending flames of white fire burning over him. She wasted no time in exploring him further, her tongue licking over him again and again until he had to shut his eyes and grit his teeth to keep from screaming. Then she pursed her lips around him and tried her hand at sucking him into her mouth. The unguarded scrape of her teeth nearly broke him, nearly had him shouting out with the pleasure of it.
“You’re holding back,” she noted with a pout. The plushness of her lips kissed against his straining cock.
“Bad enough to have a psychosexual and your brother the damn empath in my business,” he hissed. “I’ll not give any more food for ship gossip. This is private. Between you and me and—Great Being, you’re driving me mad!” The last was a clenched whisper as his hands dove deep into her hair. He made her pay full attention to the things her mouth was doing, and the more focused she was, the more unfocused he became.
He knew she had no idea what she was doing, but he also knew that when she got the hang of it, she’d be a natural killer. Right now, though, it seemed to be everything to him that each of her first steps, first explorations, were with him. They were taking place against his skin. Testing his sanity.
The roll of possessive emotion that followed every roll of pleasure that buffeted through him was breathtaking and intimidating. He had never felt anything so fierce and strong as he was feeling right then. Not for any woman. Not even close. It was like being introduced to a part of himself he’d never met before. A different and powerful part. A potentially dangerous part.
And just the knowledge of that made the next stroke of her tongue against him seem like she had poured acidic pleasure across him. As inexperienced as she was, as awkward and seeking as her discovery was, he was positive that all it would take was just one more sinful second inside of her mouth and he would come apart. His mind and his emotions had made him a hair trigger.
And, of course, with that uncanny instinct she always seemed to have, she did exactly that. She used her tongue to draw him into the hot haven of her mouth, and then she began to test him in increasingly strong sucking draws.
But not nearly strong enough.
“You won’t hurt me,” he choked out. “I’m so hard right now that nothing could hurt me. Suck me harder. Just a little—ah! Heaven help me, you’re going to—”
Oh yes. One day soon she’d be giving the most skilled head in the universe, but today was about firsts and about onlys. It was about him being her choice and her being his.
It was everything.
“Ravenna, I’m going to come,” he warned her, trying to draw her away because he knew how shocking it would be to her inexperienced tastes. “Ravenna!” he cried when she wouldn’t give way, “I’ll fill your mouth and then some and—and—”
He was in no space to properly explain or make even the remotest kind of sense. The urge to release was ripping out of him like a violent storm, and his whole being shook with the power of it. He began to ejaculate into her mouth, the hard spurts like spasms as they shot from his body. She drew back in surprise, releasing him about halfway through and letting herself get shot with pearly strings of the stuff against her cheek and lips and then down over the fingers that still had hold of him.
Bronse had all he could do to suck in breath after breath and keep himself from yelling out for the universe to hear.
The proximity alarm went off, jolting Bronse out of the deepest sleep he’d had in years. He felt Ravenna startle awake where she lay in the crook of his arm. He should have bolted out of bed and started gearing up, but he knew that Justice wouldn’t park them until he gave her the go-ahead to dock. It gave him just enough of an excuse to spend time breathing in the smell of his shampoo in her hair. It wasn’t Ayalya spice, but it was yet another stamp of himself on her that gave him a deeply grounding sense of rightness and satisfaction. By then he had stopped trying to understand it and was simply embracing it. It was right for him. It felt right on every level. That was all that mattered to a man like him who lived by his gut instincts.
“What is it?” she asked sleepily, her beautiful eyes confused in the dim light of the panel that was flashing the alert just to the left of the bed.
“We’ve reached the IM station. We’re home.”
“Oh.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “I guess I better go wake up the others.”
But she wasn’t moving any faster than he was to get to her feet. And it was no wonder. They were extremely comfortable as they lay there snuggled together beneath the warmth of their blanket. It would be hard for anyone to want to leave such a safe haven and leap forward into unknown dangers ahead. It was a moment of reckoning for both of them. Things were about to get really crazy, and it could all go very smoothly or it could get shot to hell.
They simply didn’t know which.
But they both realized, in that moment, that they would find comfort in each other over the next few days and weeks. No matter what the days threw at them, there could be nights of respite, just like last night, waiting for them.
“I’m going to be right with you,” he promised her softly, gently brushing her mussed hair from her cheek. “I’ll fight like hell for it. I won’t let anyone hurt you or your Chosen Ones.”
“I’ve always believed that,” she told him. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
He gave her a kiss, something warm and passionate to remember him by as they worked their way through the next hours, and then he broke away from her, finally sitting up and climbing over her to get out of the bed. She was very quiet as she watched him dress in his entire uniform, absently re-dressing herself in the shirt she had borrowed from his belongings. Bronse got the distinct feeling she was gearing up just as he was, but hers was a mental process instead of the actual strapping on of a knife and the cinching of a belt.
They left the room together but immediately went their separate ways. Bronse headed straight for the bridge and his weary pilot.
“Hey, Commander,” Justice greeted him. “We’re approaching base and it’s right in the middle of night cycle as planned. Most of them are snoozing away.”
“Hopefully not Chaser. He said he’d greet us at landing. I’m counting on that.”
“I’m with you on that one, sir.” Justice kept her eyes glued to the space station looming large on the front screens. She passed chatter with the landing dock for a brief minute, then guided the ship smoothly into port.
By the time the docking was finished, the deck was swarming with Bronse’s crew and Rave’s Chosen Ones. Bronse walked up to her, his mouth grimly set and keeping his hands and everything else firmly to himself. He was nervous for her, and he knew it showed to his crew, who knew him well. He only hoped he wasn’t showing it to her and that it wouldn’t be apparent to anyone else.
“Stay on board until I call for you. Okay?”
“I want to come with you. I should make a strong approach to these leaders of yours who will want to use us. I want them to know I am not afraid and I am not hiding behind anyone.”
“In this case,” he said quietly, “I think it’s best you appear to be hiding behind me. I want them to know you have a protector. I want them to know that everything they want out of you has to go through me first.” He cut her off before she could voice a protest. “At least at first. It’s the best way to keep us from getting separated right off the bat. If you have no guide into this place, you will end up lost and floundering. That will ruin your image of strength very quickly.”
She thought about it for a long minute, then finally nodded. “All right. I see your logic. For now,” she stipulated.
“Just for now,” he assured her.
The ramp and hatch opened when Bronse touched the button, and he felt the Chosen Ones move back out of sight almost as a single entity. His crew did the opposite, the lot of them strong at his back as he stood at the top of the ramp. He waited until h
e saw the group of highranking men moving toward their ship.
Bronse had never been so glad to see Chaser in his whole life. They’d been part of a crack team back in the days before he’d gotten his own command. He’d worked his way from a position similar to Ender’s all the way up to Lasher’s. He’d been Chaser’s second a good two years before Bronse had been promoted. He knew there was no better man in the militia and no one he could trust more, other than his own crew.
Bronse strode down the ramp and offered a ready hand to his superior. Chaser smiled with just one corner of his mouth, as always, and turned to introduce the men at his side.
“Commander Chapel, this is Admiral Hural, commander of Spec Ops, and this is Admiral Greays, from tactical.”
“I’ve met you before, Admiral,” he said to Greays as he shook his hand. Then he turned to the man who deserved his more focused attention. He had all of sixty seconds to get a feel for the Special Operations admiral before he would have to introduce his passengers to him. He needed to know what he was dealing with.
“Commander. I hear you’ve had an unusual mission.”
“More than you’ll realize,” Bronse assured him. “I need to know, sir, if I have a guarantee that nothing about what you’re going to see will go beyond you and the highest levels of Spec Ops. I have reason to believe that there’s a viper in our nest, sir, and believe me when I tell you that this is the last thing you want a viper to know about.”
“I’m intrigued, Commander,” the admiral said. “But why don’t you let me decide what’s worthy of a lockdown in Spec Ops.”
That made Bronse want to smile. These people had no idea what they were about to get into. It was inconceivable really. No one had ever seen anything like the Chosen Ones before.