Adee’ra tastes like sweet food and I resist the urge to thrum. I could lick her skin for eons.

For a moment, I slip my nictitating membrane across my eyes so I can relish in her flavor without scaring her.

Without making her withdraw from me.

For I know my eyes have bled completely, my pupils invisible.

I want to thrum loudly at the taste of her skin on my tongue, but I doubt she will understand that I am not being aggressive.

For what’s suddenly coursing through my being is not aggression.

It is the exact opposite.

I want to engulf her…

But I am not her mate.

I thrum a little at that thought.

There is just one problem.

I am not her mate…but I do not care.

I want to taste her still.

Each time my tongue flicks over her skin, I hear Adee’ra’s breath shudder in her chest but I focus on what I’m doing.

The number of small cuts and scratches run all the way up her leg and there are so many, I might as well suck on her skin.

So I do.

Her breath makes her belly shudder and she suddenly falls back, staring at me down her body.

It takes everything in me not to bury my face into her skin and I am happy I recalled my ba’clan.

There is no way I’d have been able to control them now.

They would have been crawling all over her.

Scaring her.

I do not want her to run away from me like she did on that first day.

I move higher, licking wounds on both of her legs and when I reach her knees, I pause.

Right before me is that strange triangle of fur.

I shouldn’t…but I open my nostrils.

Adee’ra’s sweet scent hits me like a star storm and I growl a little.

Her scent is even stronger here but she is holding herself so rigidly, I wonder if I have harmed her.

I remember she was alarmed when she’d first seen my tongue.

It is a bit coarse compared to the smooth perfection that is Adee’ra.

But her absolute lack of movement is concerning.

I slip my nictitating membrane away so I can see her better.

“Adee’ra? Do you live?”

A sing-song sound escapes her lips that makes my ears twitch. It takes a moment for me to realize what it is.

She is trilling.

She is happy?

Happiness makes her trill.

This is the first time she has trilled in my presence and it makes something heavy and big grow and swell within my chest.

“I, uh, I’m alive all right. Thanks to you. You saved me. Saved us. But um…”

She covers her face with her hands and casts her gaze up at the roof of my quarters. Try as I might, I cannot pull my eyes away from her to look at what must have her attention.

I know there is nothing up there except dead space.

“Humans don’t usually do… Our saliva doesn’t do what yours does.”

As I thought.

Maybe this is making her uncomfortable.

“I am almost finished.”

Her throat moves and she jerks her chin downward a few times.

Still, her gaze is fastened to the roof.

She refuses to look at me.

But I cannot resist the meal that is in front of—

I have to shake the thought from my head.

Adee’ra is not a meal. She is not something for me to consume…

My sazi throbs in disagreement as if it knows exactly how it wants to consume this soft being before me.

It feels even more erect than usual.

“Fer’ro?”

I have paused for too long, staring at her, and Adee’ra pulls her gaze from the roof to look at me.

“Just…just be careful ok. I trust you but…”

And that sweet scent, the one I am drawn to. Sweet with hints of spice.

It grows as I stare at her triangle of fur.

Ignoring my urges, I foolishly bend toward that sweet scent and run my tongue over a scratch that goes up her inner thigh.

By the Gods…

A thrum builds within me so hard I’m unable to hold it back and I thrum against her leg, so close, so so close to the fur that this scent seems to be emanating from.

Her core.

Adee’ra gasps and jerks a little beneath me.

“Fe—Fer’ro?” My name shudders on the breath that comes from her lips.

But I can’t stop myself now. I want more.

I know what this intoxicating scent is now.

It’s her mating scent.

Adee’ra is fertile and it is calling me to hunt her, to catch her, to claim her, to fill her with my seed.

Another growl escapes me and my sazi throbs almost painfully as I lick Adee’ra’s inner thigh again. This time she squirms.

I wonder if she will let me…

I wonder if she is hurting there too…

There’s a wound even closer to the source of that sweet, sweet scent.

“Okay, maybe we should sto—”

Before she can finish speaking, I lick the wound and the tip of my tongue brushes against that triangle of fur.

“Fuck!” Her body arches off the feathers but she doesn’t get to thrash around because my arms are over her legs.

I do not remember climbing up between them.

But her taste…

Ecstasy bursts across my tongue and I thrum again.

“That’s my—! Fer’ro, that’s not a wound!” She wriggles and pants but that spice I now taste on my tongue has intensified.

I inhale deeply again and bury my nose into the fur.

I can feel the gods calling me home, back to Edooria.

“Fer’ro, that’s my—Your face is buried in my—”

Her skin is warm now and a whimper escapes her lips as I thrum again.

“Your suu’ci,” I say.

“My soosie?” Her throat moves and when I look up at her, her gaze darts away from me as if she is scared to face me.

But I do not smell fear.

What I smell is sweet, spicy, and inviting.

“I guess you mean that’s my cunt. I mean, you don’t seem to have a cock in the same sense as humans do but I assume you realize where your face is currently so close to right now and that you licked it by accident? That’s fine. We can pretend it never happened and we can—”

“Do you want me to stop?”

I do not want her to say no.

I’m an idiot for asking that question because if she says no now, I will be forever haunted by what could happen if I continue.

But she hasn’t answered my question.

Instead, that sweet scent emanating from beneath her fur increases and her small pink tongue flicks out of her mouth to wet her lips.

“I mean…this isn’t appropriate,” she whispers, her gaze locked with mine and her cheeks turn such a warm rosy color, it’s like her paleness is gone.

I ease back a little.

A Vullan woman is always the one to initiate if she wants a male’s attention.

She offers him food as invitation to visit her nest or she thrums to him if she is more direct.

But Adee’ra has done none of this.

She is not Vullan. I do not expect the same behavior from her.

But, in her hyu’man way, I think she is telling me she does not want this.

“Is that a no?”

Her throat moves again and her cheeks heat.

“No,” she whispers. “It’s not a no…”

Thank the gods.

Her gaze darts away from me for a second and I swear her skin gets warmer.

The room darkens as I close my eyes and a thrum vibrates from my chest.

“Good.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

ADIRA

My entire body shivers as I watch Fer’ro lean down between my legs.

I’m already aching there and when his tongue flicks over my center, my entire body jerks.

This wasn’t what I expected to be doing right now…

The morally upright person within me wants to tell him to stop, but the person right here, right now, doesn’t want him to.

His hands slide up my legs to rest at the junction of my thighs as he opens my legs, spreading them as he stares at me.

At that moment, I want to pull my legs together.

No man has ever looked at me the way Fer’ro is looking at me right now…

No man has ever observed me with such focus.