Tempted by Celestial Bodies

Chapter 3

chapter three

natalie

My fingers shook as I punched a few glowing buttons on the control panel. Thankfully the alarm didn’t require much brainpower to address, simply letting me know that it had been an hour since I had put the Gokstad on autopilot. I was honestly thankful for the interruption.

The weight of Eacus’s glowing red gaze had been so heavy that it raised a layer of sweat on my skin. His pupilless red eyes should have been unnerving and alien, but instead, they held more feeling than I could have imagined—feelings that reminded me I hadn’t been touched in a very long time. Even now, it made me want to strip out of my pilot’s jumpsuit just to relieve the heat building in my flesh.

That was another thing. Eacus’s touch had awoken something in me that had been dormant for months now. Even something as innocent as his palms cradling my cheeks made sparks dance over my skin. And when his tail—a lion-like appendage I somehow hadn’t noticed until I transferred him to the med-bay—trailed up my thigh, I thought I would combust on the spot.

His insistence that we were mates didn’t help the roiling inferno building within me either.

Even now, I could feel a foreign, though not unpleasant weight in the back of my mind. Even if I had wished his claims were untrue—which I wasn’t sure I did—I could tell he wasn’t lying.

The question was, what should I do about it?

Before the alarm had broken me out of my trance, I had been about to tilt my head back and ask him to feed from me again. To open my mind and body to this male I could somehow sense wouldn’t betray me or leave me alone ever again.

Thanks to the Gokstad’s interruption, I had a chance to think on the decision with a clear head. Or I would have, if my traitorous body wasn’t begging me to go back and press my lips to his.

Maybe I just needed to give my body what it wanted, and then I could assess the situation with a clear head. After all, it had been months since I last sought release, my desire, like my appetite for food, shriveling up and dying inside me after weeks on end of listlessly drifting between galaxies.

Now that a male—a gentle, muscular, alien male—had banked the fire within me once more, I needed to satisfy it before I could decide anything.

Slowly, I pulled down the zipper at the front of my utilitarian khaki jumpsuit. As I did, my other hand drifted up to cup my breast, large enough to overflow my hand.

But it would fit perfectly in Eacus’s large palm.

With that thought, I trailed my other fingers down my now bare stomach. They lingered at the elastic of my briefs, tracing back and forth for just a moment, before dipping underneath.

I had never been one to take my time with pleasure. Years in the military with minimal privacy made release something to be accomplished quickly and efficiently. Now, I didn’t waste a second in reaching for my pleasure point for a different reason: desperation.

My core tightened instantly, somehow already wet from the short moments of contact with Eacus—his velvety black and red wings creating a cocoon around me, or his tongue darting out to lap at the blood on my wrist. The thoughts alone made me groan, and I used one hand to brace myself on the control panel while my other fingers quickened their pace.

Somehow, it still wasn’t enough. The newfound presence in the back of my mind echoed my arousal back at me, amplifying it in the process.

Slowly, I worked a finger inside myself, and when I met little resistance, I added another. I found myself imagining it was Eacus’s fingers instead. His cock.

It would surely be as big as the rest of him.

I hoped it was.

Another desperate sound tore from me as I thrust my fingers deeper. My breath was so ragged, nearly drowning out the subtle hum of the engines, that it took me a long moment to register the sound of footsteps behind me.

I whirled around, finding Eacus standing in the doorway to the cockpit, and froze. Slowly, his gaze trailed down my body, taking in my exposed, heaving chest and the hand I still had shoved into my underwear.

I swallowed thickly.

He took one step further into the room, then stopped. He stayed there, although his tail flicked back and forth, the black tuft of hair at the end swishing across the durasteel floor. His wings flared slightly, showing off just how beautifully the glossy black feathers shifted to red at the tips.

Blood red.

“You think I couldn’t feel you touching yourself, my beautiful mate? Thinking about my cock as you did so?” His words should have made me blush, but they didn’t seem scolding. Instead he seemed curious, although the huskiness of arousal tinged his voice.

Carefully, I moved my fingers inside myself once more, and his muscles rippled as a wave of pleasure ran through me.

He could feel my actions.

“I…” I licked my dry lips and tried again. “I needed to be sure I didn’t just want you because I was starved for pleasure.”

The red glow of Eacus’s eyes flared for a moment before settling back into their normal brightness.

“Then bring yourself pleasure,” he said, his foreign voice practically a growl, although the meaning of his words was still clear in my mind. “Only you must touch yourself until you are sure… bring yourself to release as many times as you need to be certain you want me to feed from you again.”

Slowly, he crouched down where he stood, resting his elbows lightly on his knees. The posture was relaxed, but somehow predatory, yet I didn’t feel unsafe.

He intended to watch.

Slowly, I began moving my fingers again, pumping them gently in and out. I squirmed against them, but Eacus’s eyes didn’t leave my face. The heat within me grew, and I stroked faster.

It didn’t take me long to work myself up to a fever pitch again, especially with the hunger growing in the back of my consciousness—Eacus’s hunger, I realized. It was an all-consuming thing, but he didn’t move a muscle. He just crouched there, watching me lose myself in the heat of his gaze with rapt attention.

I was so close, but I needed more. I shut off the control panel and used it as a seat so I could open my legs to give myself better access.

At this, the whirling tattoos on his chest—swirling black before they turned red when he drank from my wrist—pulsed with light.

My breath came from me in hard pants, each one punctuated by a breathless whine. Pleasure climbed up my spine, but I wobbled on the edge, not quite tipping over into my release.

I whimpered, and Eacus’s facade broke infinitesimally as he smiled, showing off his glimmering fangs.

“Come for me, Natalie.”

And I did.

I cried out and threw my head back as all my limbs shook, glad I had sat down on the control panel, for otherwise I surely would have fallen to the ground. Even as pleasure wracked my body, I felt a thrill of satisfaction that wasn’t mine purring in my mind.

Eacus liked watching me come.

When I opened my eyes and came back to myself, I found Eacus standing now, although he hadn’t moved any closer.

My ragged breath was the only sound in the room for a long moment.

“Well,” he murmured, “Was that enough to satisfy you, or are you still thinking about what it would be like to be my mate?”

I stared at him, and licked my lips, searching for my voice after such intense pleasure. A layer of tension had been stripped from my body with my orgasm, but the simmering heat of desire remained. It had only been bolstered by the feelings of his eyes on me as I touched myself.

Slowly, without breaking eye contact, I tilted my head to the side. Carefully, I drew my hair out of the way. The deep purple dip-dye I had attempted in a fit of boredom had faded terribly, but Eacus still watched my actions with feral attention.

He walked toward me, his long legs carrying him across the cramped cockpit in three slow, purposeful strides.

He stopped between my still-spread legs. Carefully, he placed his hands on my thighs, pulling me to the very edge of the control panel. His fingers dug into the ample softness there and I shivered. His tail wound around one of my calves, holding me in place—not that I wanted to move away. Still approaching at a painfully controlled pace, he leaned forward, his breath tickling the exposed column of my neck.

I nearly squeaked, and sparks danced up my spine as his tongue darted out to taste my pulse point. The sensation was followed by the gentle rake of his fangs, making my eyelids flutter, but he didn’t break skin.

He pulled back a few inches to meet my eyes, and I felt his question in my mind, his thoughts already coming to me more clearly, despite the fact that he hadn’t spoken.

“Yes, please. Bite me,” I said, still feeling the need to speak out loud, as if it was imperative for him to know I chose this completely after falling into matehood accidentally.

He didn’t have to be told twice, and I gasped as his teeth pierced my skin.

Instantly my eyes rolled back in my head and a foreign sort of pleasure wracked through me as I choked on a broken moan. I could feel what Eacus felt when he fed from me— taste my essence on his tongue, how right it was, and how sure there could never be anybody else who felt like this.

A few long drags from my neck and I was lost in the ocean of his mind. What’s more, I was welcomed there, drawn in by curling darkness and desire. I would be held and kept and cherished in this mind.

The vibration against my neck as Eacus groaned brought me back into my own body, although a tendril remained seated in his consciousness. My arousal blossomed anew, and I squirmed against him. I needed more than just his teeth inside me.

I needed everything .

Seemingly feeling my desperation, Eacus withdrew his fangs and pulled back from my throat with a moan that revealed how much effort that movement required. I rewarded his action by pulling my arms fully out of my jumpsuit to wiggle it the rest of the way off, removing my briefs with it.

The red glow of Eacus’s eyes flared as the rest of my skin became bare to him. My curves were soft and generous these days, but the flare of lust in the back of my mind told me he appreciated every inch.

Eacus’s hands trailed up from my thighs, his torso crowding me as he closed the small space he had given me to finish undressing. My skin burned in the wake of his hands, one coming up to cup my breast. It filled his palm perfectly, just as I had imagined.

The other hand traced over my collarbone, up to my neck. The heat of his touch mixed with the warmth of the blood slowly dribbling from his bite, and he dragged his fingers through the crimson liquid.

His gaze bored into me as he smudged his blood-coated fingers across my sternum, and a flare of satisfaction that was not my own rushed through me. I looked down to find that he had painted a symbol onto my skin in my own blood, stark against the pale skin of my heaving chest. The round swirls were reminiscent of the markings on his own skin.

“What is that?” I asked.

“My name.”

His answer pulled a whimper from me. This mark was a claim, literally signed in blood. It was a claim I wanted more by the second.

My hands drifted to the ties of his pants, hovering there as I leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

“Make me yours.”