Starfish

32.2

"Do I smell good?"

"Very." He rubbed his nose at her hairline, opened his large blue eyes and looked closely at her. "Do all human women smell so good?"

"Can't say for sure, my nose isn't as sensitive. You smell good too, like wood and spices." Those eyes are killing me. "Ardus?"

"Mmm?"

"Do you want me on top this time?"

His lips pulled back from enormous teeth as he laughed. "Perhaps I should be less concerned with how you smell and more with your ravenous appetite for sex."

"You want it as much as I do." Wriggling closer Nina pressed a kiss to his smiling mouth and Ardus sighed, his eyes drifting half-closed. His powerful arms tightened around her and his rumbling increased in volume. "Lucky for you, now that I'm in my thirties I'm just entering my prime."

"As am I, in a sense." Ardus's hands curled around her body, fingers pressing deep into her waist and thighs, the tips of his claws lightly dimpling her skin. "With my pores re-lit, I am experiencing a kind of second adolescence. The hormones that abated when I reached full manhood are surging again."

"So you're going to be hornier than ever."

He nodded. "And stronger. What muscle mass I lost as I grew older may very well return in full force. Even now I feel younger, more energetic, full of life again." A flicker of mischief darted across his eyes and his pores flared green as he gripped Nina against his body and flipped her on top of him. 

Nina shrieked in mock terror, squirming and struggling against arms like ironwood, as thick as her own thighs. "Let me go, you big brute!"

"Never," Ardus growled, baring his dirks in a ferocious snarl, and Nina felt warmth surge through her in a rush of desire. 

"Oh, honey, do that again!" she begged, her eyes huge. Ardus obliged with a low roar, his voice thundering in the sleeping niche, and Nina's wriggling turned to writhing. "Sea gods, that is so sexy!" She buried her fingers in his barbels and smothered his big face with kisses, Ardus growling and thrumming all the while. Soon she was pink all over, flushed and excited, and Ardus's skin flickered and flashed with light. It was like floating in the warm sea, among starlight reflected off of the water or a swarm of tiny bioluminescent jellyfish. Nina loved the water, and Ardus's arms felt very much like the sea cradling her, all the wildness of the ocean surrounding her with its power. It's like I'm making love to the waves, to the ocean itself. 

The thought turned into action, and Nina tugged on Ardus's hands and pleaded for him. "Yes, starfish," he rumbled in his low voice like tidal waves, "of course."

Under his hands, his mouth, his tongue, Nina trembled and cried out. She lost herself, adrift in the soft blue-purple light emanating from the Dreen's pores, the stars coming down from the vaulted sky to kiss her skin. All that existed was the sea, the towering blue-black waves that covered her and swept her away into the deep. Weightless, suspended in that close embrace that could have crushed her but absolutely would not, the pulsing roar of the ocean beat in time with her own breaths. She tasted salt, wet and heavy on her tongue, and breathed in the scent of driftwood, rich earth and alien spices and let it seep into her marrow, warm and alive. Ardus lifted and rocked her, cresting the waves with her, taking her deeper and farther between gasping breaths of air tinted with spice and musk. All her life she had loved the sea, loved the water and the creatures in it, and now it loved her back. 

Ardus dragged his teeth over her skin, the smooth surface of his dirks running light over her shoulders and throat, and Nina's eyes rolled back as she arched towards his mouth again. "Yes, Ardus, yes!" In her delirium she scored his shoulders and arms with her nails, but his tough hide resisted and his pores glowed all the brighter. Their cries grew into a storm, a rising tide that buffeted them both about before throwing them back up on the shore, exhausted and reeling. "Sea gods," Nina panted, sweat and tears streaking her cheeks, "that was..."