Havek

HAVEK

I stared out at the water surrounding us.

If Payton swallowed any on our escape to the surface, the burns would corrode her insides. Absent that, she'd have lifelong scarring and cellular deterioration, ending in eventual organ failure.

I looked over at my sweet human, knowing I'd trade places in an instant. But I wasn't ready to think about claiming her.

It can't be the only option, can it?

In my heart, though, I knew she was right. It was the only possible way out for her… And yet, I needed her to understand the full weight of what she asked me to sign her up for.

"Havek, do it!" Payton shouted.

The real question is, have I thought about anything else?

"I think about everything. You know that." I was deflecting, and she knew it. She beat my chest again, and I caught her hands, trying to hold back the pain in my chest.

Ever since I first kissed her, the certain knowledge that she was mine, that she was meant for me, slid under my skin.

My Payton. My mate.

I ached for her.

But I couldn't claim her if she didn't love me. She'd be bound to me forever, and while the darkness in my soul howled in delight at the thought, it wouldn't be fair to her.

Because she didn't love me.

She insisted she didn't. But then, why did she care if I survived?

Why did none of her actions make sense?

She used to want to know what would happen when we escaped. Why did she backtrack ever since we made love?

I thought that was fine, that once we were free, I'd be able to talk with her more, to understand.

But we were out of time.

"We might be safe for now, but eventually we're going to run out of air. As far as I can tell, we have three options, and only one is reasonable." She held a finger up. "One: stay here and run out of air. Quickly. Two: you swim to the surface…"

I frowned and shook my head.

"…Or, three: give me the claiming bite."

I couldn't argue with her reasoning. No other option would allow her to survive, which meant there was no other option. I still tried to shake my brain loose for any other plan, no matter how remote.

But for all my vaunted brilliance, she was the one with the answer now.

"Havek?" Her lips trembled. "What's wrong?"

"Everything," I snapped, then caught myself. "I'm sorry."

"What is there to think about?" Those sweet lips quirked to the side. "You don't want to lose your freedom by chaining yourself to a human. Is that it?"

My blood pressure rose. I had no hesitation about promising my life to the woman I loved—the only woman in my life, past or future. But I preferred almost anything to the thought of her handing her life over to someone she admitted she didn't love.

Even if that someone was me.

Almost anything was the operative phrase, however.

"I don't like inelegant solutions." I sighed. I knew even before I looked that she was staring at me like a crazy person. "I want to spare you any harm. Ever. And I hate the idea of having no pure, good solution."

"Why isn't this a good solution? For Tessi, it gave her some of Alkard's healing powers!"

I threw my arms in the air, scrambling to give voice to my chaotic thoughts.

"This is something you cannot reverse. You will literally change—physically, mentally, everything, even if it's a subtle change." I glanced at the screens. We still had enough air. For now. "And the really big thing, the thing that troubles me most…"

"Yes?" She looked at me expectantly.

"It's not as simple as slipping on and off some trinket. It makes an ownership contract look like a percomm bill. This is a contract that's signed with your blood, executed in your bones. It kills me to think of you suffering. It would destroy me to bear responsibility for it. I can't bite you if you don't love me."

"Look," she entreated. "If behind one door there's death, and behind the other, there's life, even with some risks, it's still not a real choice."

"I know," I whispered. "I know."

I didn't burden her with the other parts, instead thinking about the bleak possibilities for my own future.

A bite does more than lay claim to the one who's been bitten. It hooks its claws into the heart of the claimant, forbidding them from loving anyone else, causing physical pain to be apart from her.

If I were to claim her, I'd have heightened awareness of her mind, heart, and body for the rest of her life, from any distance —including the searing wound of the absence of her love for me. I'd constantly feel the abyss of her not loving me back.

It wasn't a real choice in those terms either. The pain of knowing I could have saved her life but didn't would swallow the pain of my own heartbreak whole.

But she was right. There was no other way. If this hurt me, tore my heart in two, I would bear it.

She was all that mattered.

"Come here, my little one," I whispered. "Come into my arms. Come where you're safe."

I wrapped her in my arms like an infant as she cried into my chest.

"Shh. Shh," I breathed softly. "I will protect you."

"So…" she implored, her eyes searching mine.

"Yes, Payton. I will. But under one condition." I tried to hold back the tension from my voice.

"What?"

"You have to live. No matter what. Do you hear me?"

"Yes," she sobbed.

Something flitted across her face, an expression I couldn't catch quickly enough.

It wasn't anger, pain, or fear. It almost looked like sorrow, like she was hiding something she wanted to say to me.

Then her passionate kiss breathed life into me, and she pressed her mouth to mine. Our lips locked like an impermeable seal protecting me. She was my water, my air, my surface.

She was a beautiful human woman coursing with life, her wild red hair and soft skin illuminating the gray and black surface of the man shaking in anticipation of claiming her.

The energy entered my body as a fully articulated equation, then coursed from my fingertips in the form of a complete solution: I was incidental to the bite. Immaterial.

Because she didn't love me.

Maybe that was for the best.

She would have asked the same from a stranger but only posed to me would it carry no fear or obligation. Any other sentient entity in the universe—at least with a functioning cock—would celebrate the opportunity to issue a debt to a beautiful creature conditioning her survival on obeying their every command.

I made it clear that I would only give the bite under one strict condition: that she maintain her iron grip on the reins of her own life. She already held mine in her hands.

She peeled off her clothes, and I helped her finish removing them, steadying her in the small space as she slipped out of the skirt.

We shouldn't do this here. She deserved better. She deserved softness and beauty, soft armath petals and the stars.

Someday I would give them to her. We just had to survive this first.

I pulled her impossibly close to me, pulling her up to rest in the cavern of my midsection that molded to her perfectly. Her warm supple skin heated my blood and stirred me, her scent bewitching.

She buried her mouth in my neck and sucked gently, nipping me, using her adorable tiny teeth. A low groan burst from my chest. Barely holding myself back, I placed her in the chair before me.

And then, her scent changed.

"What is it, Payton?" The characteristic scent—acrid and hollow—wafted from her body to my nose as soon I said the words.

"I'm…"

"You're frightened. Of course, you are."

She nodded, eyes lowered, shy.

"I promise, now and forever, I will never hurt you. You have no reason to be afraid." I sighed. "We're in this together."

A ghost of a smile lifted her lips. "Huh. I never thought of it that way."

"There's so much I never thought about before meeting you," I admitted, leaning over her where she sat.

Her mouth fell open a tiny bit.

I might have been just as shocked to hear myself say that to anyone.

But not anymore. Not when I had her.

"If anything doesn't feel right to you, my love, stop me," I said while pushing her hair behind her ear. It was a terrible feeling to be so madly and unrequitedly in love, but that didn't mean I could stop myself from feeling it. "You are my charge. It's not my role to possess you. It's to care for you. To love you. I am responsible for your well-being, but you are responsible for nothing but your very self."

"That's not a whole lot for me to give back."

"Payton," I murmured. "You alone—just you, nothing else—are everything."

Reaching for my waist, she gingerly undid my belt, then slid off my trousers, her eyes wide at the erection underneath it all, hiding in plain sight.

"You must have felt it against you," I whispered in her ear. "You must have known I would already be this hard with a goddess like you wrapped against my skin."

She thinned her eyes and drifted her hand against its length, pressing her fingertip down on the soft flanges, sending bursts of pleasure down my spine.

"Sweet Payton. You can't know what emanates out of you, the vitality, the pure sex that surges onto me from every pore of you. And this…"

Trailing my hands down her front, I kneaded her breast, then reached lower, cupping the bursting mound of her full pussy, swollen with desire, wet with anticipation. It brimmed over with a scent like honeyed whiskey, slathered thickly on rich, ripe, juicy summer fruit, weeping moisture in the punishing sun.

I knelt before her, kissing and nipping up her inner thighs, my hands wrapped around her hips, bringing her pussy to my hungry mouth with my fingers like a retinue transporting a queen.

My tongue was coated in her even before I stuck it fully inside. I felt like I could come just from her taste.

If I had been uncertain before, there was no doubt then: I am head-over-heels, ass-over-tits, pussy-over-everything, in love with this sensual, feisty, depraved, innocent, filthy, unbelievably beautiful human woman.

"Havek!"

She gripped my horns for something to hold onto as she writhed her legs uncontrollably over my shoulders from my lapping up the exquisite nectar funneling into my lips.

I groaned gutturally as my cock pulsed and twitched, just from her hands on my sensitive horns and her taste.

I hummed into her pussy, and her juices cascaded onto me once more.

"That feel good?"

"There's no word for how it feels," she gasped.

"You ready for me, baby?"

Sadness hit my chest.

I tried everything to not think about how she wasn't in love with me. I had to focus in order for her to live. The most loving thing I could do for her was not think about how she didn't love me.

But that was impossible.

She tensed up, fear clearly returning.

Sliding my hands under her thighs, I lifted her to my waist, then turned, taking the chair for myself while she straddled my legs.

Her eyes were dark, cheeks flushed, soft open mouth almost as tempting as the slick folds that pressed against the side of my straining cock.

She doesn't love you.

"You're going to look so beautiful wearing my marks. I'm going to be so proud to see them on you, honey. The most stunning being I've ever laid eyes on. The one who lights my fucking body on fire. And my mind. Like no one else ever has."

She gasped at those words, knowing their significance.

"Will it hurt, Havek?"

She doesn't love you.

I cleared my throat and pushed the thought aside. "I won't let it," I promised. "One tiny moment, then a euphoric intoxicant delivered straight to your bloodstream. It'll make every pleasure a thousand times more intense."

Rocking against her, she shivered again, her breath beginning to be shallow.

While she was distracted, I lifted her again, this time seating her on the broad head of my cock, slowly, steadily pulling her onto my hard length, until I finally snapped.

I thrust forward ferociously, the physical feelings of her tight pussy pushing all the thoughts back into my mind. I almost felt possessed, on the brink of death if I didn't fill her completely with my throbbing cock, still reaching higher to get access to her like a leaf bending to the sun.

Payton clung to me, her moans and cries of pleasure a delicious babble. There was no trace of fear to her scent anymore, only heat and desire.

It was almost time.