Chapter 9 Abby

Abby moaned when Grogen found her clit and started massaging it firmly, now with his tongue. He was holding her in place, his big, strong hands trapping her over his face. There was no escaping the pleasure that built and built.

A thick finger pressed into her, and she was grateful to have some part of him in her, though it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as his cock would be. Grogen had a magnificent one, too: big, like the rest of him, with a pronounced, flared head. It curved up toward his navel, and it got thicker near the base. Much thicker. Abby wasn’t sure she could even take it all, but she was willing to try.

In this position, though, she could only touch it. She pumped with both hands, in sync with the way he was thrusting his digit into her. Then he added another thick finger, and she hissed in pleasure at the added fullness.

“Come for me, little one,” he murmured against her pussy, before curving his fingers and hitting the spot inside of her that sent bolts of electricity zinging down to her fingers and toes.

He covered her clit and sucked, and she tightened her thighs around his head. It only took a few more pumps of his fingers for the tsunami of sensation to overwhelm her. She cried out, arching her back, her whole body shaking with her release.

She was only vaguely aware of where she was now, and the fact that she still held his cock in her hands. She pumped it lazily as the quaking subsided.

Then he was moving his huge body over her. She thought for an exciting moment that he was going to fuck her right now, but instead, he placed his hand over hers and moved it in several long, firm strokes.

“Fuck,” he snarled as he spilled his seed onto her belly. “Mine,” he bit out, his voice deeper than she’d ever heard it. He pressed his palm to her belly, rubbing his cum over her as if trying to mark her with it.

She swallowed hard at the possessive vibe he gave off. Did he really mean it? Did she want him to? What if she turned out to be Grogen’s mate? It would be a dream come true. Many Talleans were promiscuous when they were young, but once they found their one and only they settled down, and lost interest in anyone else.

That was the point of bedding so many in their youth; it was done in the hope of finding “the one”, since the mate bond often required time together to show and solidify. But she was getting ahead of herself. She wasn’t even sure if the word he had uttered had been “mine” or if it was just a noise that sounded similar.

Grogen reached for the storage area in the transport door. He brought out a new roll of clean, soft towels, the kind they used to buff the transport hulls to a brilliant shine. He cleaned her up with one and tucked the dirty towel back into the door.

Using his comm unit, he turned off the lights in the garage before gathering her into his arms and tucking her into the hollow of his body.

“Sleep, Abby. We have a big day tomorrow.”

***

Abby woke to the smell of roasting tepins. She stretched and found the spot next to her empty. What time was it? She usually relied on her comm’s alarm to wake her up in the morning, but her comm was still turned off and on the staff room table.

She fished around for her underwear and found it shoved in a corner. It was torn and unwearable. So what had happened last night hadn’t been a fever dream after all: she really had sixty-nined her boss in the back of a transport in the workplace garage. Or, at least, she tried to; their size difference had made it difficult. Well, for her part, anyway. He did phenomenally well.

And now they would spend the entire festival together because she’d drunkenly asked him to go to the colony-wide celebrations with her and he’d agreed! That meant showing up at the festival as a couple.

She found Grogen in the staff room, staring impatiently at a roasting tepin as it went around and around in the portable oven. He looked ready to yell at the spatchcocked bird for roasting itself too slowly. But she was used to his resting grump face; it was the reason he had thought it necessary to hire her in the first place.

Abby had a much more pleasant demeanor, especially when dealing with the more difficult customers. Who would’ve thought that a lifetime of dealing with annoying, entitled pricks would pay off after she was abducted from Earth?

“Good morning!” She tried to sound nonchalant, not sure if she should bring up last night or not. “I hope you slept well.”

His sour look softened. “After you helped me out, yes. I did.”

Heat rose to her cheeks. Clearly, he had no problem bringing it up.

As they ate more roasted tepin, Abby found her phone and turned it on. There were several dozen missed messages: mostly from her father, but also one from the housing office; they must be checking their messages despite being on vacation. According to the office, there was a waitlist for units in their apartment complex, and they were asking if she would be willing to leave early to help them out. They’d refund her a portion of the season's rent.

That would be ideal, except all her stuff was still there, and she technically didn’t have a new place yet.

“I will help you retrieve your items,” Grogen said. “You shouldn’t go alone.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

His next words shocked her. “There are few units available right now. You can stay with me.”

A huge part of her wanted to say yes, but the logical part of her brain screamed that things were moving way too fast. What if things didn’t work out between them? She would be out a home and a job. It wasn’t taboo in Tallean culture to sleep with coworkers—or in this case, bosses—but cohabitating was different.

When there was no mate bond, living together was the first step to a partnership of convenience. Despite the extremely non-romantic name, it meant that two people loved each other enough that they’d decided to live as mates despite not having an actual mate bond. It didn’t always end well, though, especially if one of them found their true mate after.

Maybe Grogen meant she should stay as a temporary roommate, but after yesterday, she doubted they’d be able to keep their hands off each other. A boss with benefits she could handle, and if a mate bond naturally developed, then she’d happily accept. But moving in so soon was scary. Things felt like they were already going too fast, and her sense of self-preservation insisted she kept things in control.

“Thank you, but I’ll keep looking. Never know what might—”

The comm in her hand started blaring out a colony-wide warning.

“What now?” Gorgan grumbled.

“Probably just a warning about fences going down and dragus in parts of the colony. It happens every year.”

“It does?”

“Yeah. But I guess you don’t get any alerts when you’re out in your cabin.”

“I do not.”

Sure enough, the alerts listed all the sectors with fence breaches, as well as the ones that already had confirmed dragus sightings. Their sector had a breach, but no one had detected any of the pack-hunting native animals yet.

Perimeter fence outages had always been a common occurrence, but with the colony growing the way it was, it was happening more and more frequently. There were plenty of dangerous animals out in the wilds, and the dragus was just one of them, but they did the most damage because of their intelligence and the fact that they hunted in packs.

However, because of their pack structure, some people were in the process of domesticating them and having great success. Physically, the best way to think of the dragus was a wolf crossed with a Komodo dragon. They were the size of a large dog, and while one was easy to deter, a half dozen, not so much.

Dragus attacks had been so common back when the colony was new that everyone went out in groups to stay safe; even a Tallean male as big as Grogen was fair game. But then the dragus started to attack groups as well. It wasn’t their fault: they needed to eat. But to prevent more tragedies, Reka 5 set up fences around the different sections of the colony, with opaque, will-lit aboveground tunnels joining each section.

Abby had to travel through three of these tunnels to get between home and work. That meant if there was a fence breach in any of the four sections, it took hours to get home, because the section would be locked down while the guards cleared out the dragus. That was one of the criteria she was looking for in a new home: one tunnel or less.

“I guess the storm’s over, then.” The wind was no longer howling outside.

“It is. I will start digging us out.”

Grogen opened the back door, and Abby gasped. She’d expected a lot of snow, but all she saw was white. The snow had piled up against the door, and they did indeed need to be dug out. Grogen had already started on the corner where he’d stored the tepins. The snow was so thick that she didn’t even feel cold despite still being mostly naked; it kept the heat in and the cold out.

But she would be once they started digging in earnest, so she went to check on her clothes, which were finally dry. When she returned with Grogen’s as well, he was shoveling snow completely naked. With nowhere to put the snow, he was piling it inside the garage until he made a big enough dent to get out.

He was frowning when he grabbed his clothes and put them on. Abby momentarily mourned the loss of the magnificent view.

“There has to be a better way,” he muttered, looking at the snow inside the garage. Then he put the shovel down and closed the door.

He disappeared into the back corner where he stored all the large pieces of equipment that couldn’t be placed on shelves and heaved a large V-shaped piece up over his head. No matter how many times she saw it, Abby still marveled at how ridiculously strong Tallean males were. It would’ve taken two or maybe even three human men to lift something that heavy off the ground, never mind overhead.

As Grogen worked, Abby canceled her single booking at the baths and rebooked another for the two of them, though she couldn’t snag a spot in the six-person tub Jenny and Ckarus were already in. Then she continued her hunt for a new place to stay, occasionally looking up to admire the way Grogen dove into his work. His confidence around the machinery was a total turn-on.

When he was done, the plow attachment was firmly on the transport, but she still hadn’t found a place to live.