“Harder,” he urged her in a rough grasp, wrapping his bigger hand around hers and showing her how he liked to be touched. He claimed her lips as he used her hand, her touch, to bring himself to the edge.
“I’m gonna… I should…” He gasped, trying to pull away from her blissful touch.
“No! Stay with me!” she murmured, sliding a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck and holding him to her as she gripped tighter.
He gasped and his vision whited out as he came harder and faster than he’d ever come before, his seed erupting white hot over her delicate little fingers to spill onto the thin fabric of the dress she wore.
“Trall… oh draanth, I’ve never… Trall!” he cursed, his hips juddering and jerking, as her delicate touch squeezed the last of his release from him.
His eyes wide, he looked down at her.
She smiled back at him, biting her lip. “Yeah, pretty standard reaction…”
A sharp ringing sound filled the air and she stilled beneath him. Then in the next breath, she pushed him away, reaching for something on the small table near them. Her comms unit. The sound was coming from it.
“What’s going on?”
She shook her head, her expression focused as she flicked the screen to active.
“Shit… There’s been an alert. I’m being recalled before the base goes into lockdown.” She looked at him, her expression worried. “They're putting on an extra train for critical staff, but they'll have extra guards on at the station. I’m not going to be able to get you back in.”
He smiled as he levered himself off her, offering a hand to help her up. She was covered in his scent and every instinct he had urged him to take her back down to the soft surface and claim her. But he didn’t, shaking his head instead.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll get back in. You go…”
Cade didn’t bother with the front door of Elise’s apartment. Instead he simply took his boots off, tying the laces to loop them round his neck as he opened the big picture window in the living room. With a cursory glance outside to make sure no one was watching, he stepped out onto the narrow ledge that wrapped around the building and closed the window behind him.
For a moment, he stood in the darkness, aligning his senses to the urban jungle around him. For someone bought up on a backwater planet with a small population and very little technology, the lights, noises, and smells of a human city this size had been a little overwhelming. But now he was used to it, he could relegate it all to background noise, filtering out the mundane and concentrating on the things that were of interest to him.
Sliding his rear claws out, he easily kept balance as he walked around the exterior of the building. Other windows looked into other apartments, but all the blinds were closed so none of the occupants realized as he passed by. Thankfully. He didn’t want to have to explain to either the emperor or Risyn why he’d been off base.
First, because they’d be pissed that he’d revealed none of the Lathar were actually contained by the security measures the humans had put into place, and second because he didn’t want to tell anybody about Elise. Not just yet. The knowledge of his fated mate was something he wanted to hold close and savor all to himself for a while.
He reached a fire escape around the other side of the building and used it to cross the distance between Elise’s apartment block and the roof of the next, shorter building. The city's rooftops spread out around him like a playground similar to the treetops and rugged hills of his former home. At least up here he could move without being spotted by humans.
Tapping behind his ear, he activated his internal comms and switched to one of the two personal channels he had set up.
“What do you want now, kid?” Berrick’s rough growl filled his ear. Well, it wasn’t really in his ear because the comm didn’t work like that, but it sounded like the big B’Kaar was right next to him.
“Gonna need you to shield me from human surveillance out here,” he replied, jogging lightly across the roof top. “I’m staying up out of line of sight, but some automated surveillance might still catch me.”
“Draanth’s sake, do you know what time it is?” Berrick groused.
“Yeah, but you weren’t asleep,” Cade threw back. The time he’d spent on the B’Kaar vessel hadn’t been in vain. He’d spent it studying the cyber warriors as well as their habits and routines. Berrick B’Kaar was not only a workaholic but an insomniac as well. Many times he’d had found the big male in the training rooms or the galley at odd times of the day and night. “Were you?”
“No,” Berrick admitted grudgingly. “Okay, I’ll make sure to keep you of the systems. Just make my job a little easier, and don’t do anything dramatic. Would ya?”
Cade leaped across to the fire escape on the next building, swiftly making his way across the city back toward the club he’d found Elise in. “You know me. I wouldn’t dream of it!”
There was a snort over the comm. “Yeah right… This from the kid who ran with Risyn in his kasivar over his shoulder right through an electrical storm.”
There was no arguing with that, so Cade didn’t bother.
“Anyone would have done the same,” he said as he slid down a ladder to reach a lower-level roof. It smelled like a restaurant, and he followed the line of the building along the front until he reached another alley.
“Anyone else would have been crushed by the weight of Risyn’s suit, and you well know it. Now bugger off, and let me work.”
Cade chuckled, but the line was already dead. He had no idea why Berrick in particular had taken to him, helping him far more than the blood debt the B’Kaar owed him called for. Perhaps because they were both from provincial, backwater planets… Or some other reason in the crazy cyber warrior's head that he didn’t know about. Whatever it was, he wasn’t about to look a gift kervasi in the mouth.
As he made his way across the city to the club, he allowed his thoughts to drift back to Elise. She’d touched him… Wrapped those tiny, perfect hands around his dick. And lady… had she made him come. He was no innocent. He was more than aware of how his body worked and how to bring himself to pleasure. But he hadn’t considered the difference between his own hand and somebody else's doing it. It had been unbelievable. He’d never come like that before. Ever. But he would again, and soon. That much he promised himself.
He dropped down onto a fire escape at the side of the restaurant to navigate a darker back alley. His goal was an apartment block at the back of the alley. If he remembered correctly, it was one he’d seen from the club’s entrance.
Before he reached it, though, he noticed movement in the alley below him. He froze, melding into the shadows so he remained unseen. Someone up on a fire escape wasn’t necessarily a cause for concern. He just couldn’t be scaling walls in full view, proving that he wasn’t human. Staying in place, he watched as a couple entered the alleyway.
One was an older male, and even from here Cade could smell the warring scents of alcohol and sweat. He wrinkled his nose in distaste. Thankfully, the human sense of smell wasn’t as acute as his. It certainly didn’t seem to be for the young female, as she clung to the male’s side and giggled. He watched not for titillation, but out of interest. He had no experience with courtship himself, and he needed to know how to impress Elise.