“Noted,” I choked out, trying and failing to ignore the trembling tingles working their way up my inner thigh from the gentle scrape of his thumb.
Unfortunately, ignoring the sensations turned out to be impossible. Because I discovered very quickly into the ride that the steering column did not just twist in a rotation, but it also moved backwards towards the seat and forwards to either decrease or increase speed.
Every time Skalla shifted the pole between my legs to slow down, it bumped against my clit. And then, when in that position and swivelled to turn the vehicle, it ground hard against me. Skalla kept his hand half on my knee, half draping onto my inner thigh, the other curled possessively around my ribcage in the perfect position for my heavy breasts to rest on him, my sensitive nipples rubbing against his scales through the robe. I was entirely frozen, jammed between the ferocious bulk of Skalla’s body and the rod of the steering apparatus, unable to wiggle away from the mounting, involuntary pleasure.
I barely registered most of the ride. Callabarra with its alleys and buildings and chatter swam past me in a watery blur as I tried extremely fucking hard not to come. I was successful – barely. As soon as we stopped outside the temple, I leaped out of the seat as if it had burned me. Skalla gave me an odd look as I crossed my arms over my chest, stiff and flushed.
“Are you alright?” he asked, swinging his leg back over the seat and coming towards me, concern bending his brow.
I bit down on my tongue, focusing on the pain. As pathetic as it felt to admit, watching Skalla dismount the two-wheel and stalk shirtless towards me had me clenching in a dangerous way. Paska, one swipe of is tongue against me, no, a single whisper of breath on my throbbing flesh, and I would be coming. Instantly.
“I’m fine,” I squeaked out.
He looked like he was about to say something, or maybe even touch me. With rubbery limbs, I hustled out of his reach, following Jolakaia into the courtyard and then the temple beyond.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Skallagrim
Even with the one-sided language barrier, Suvi and Jolakaia were becoming fast friends. They walked ahead of me together, leaving me to feel rather like some useless barnacle stuck to the back of their boat. I felt, as they smiled and chatted over various flowers and fungus, that I was intruding on some secret female social interaction. I was not only unneeded for their tasks, but also probably not wanted, and more than once Jolakaia, or Suvi, or both of them in tandem, scolded me for casting a shadow on whatever it was that they were examining. But I persevered, because being with Suvi, even if it meant following her in silence and staring at the sway of her back with a longing that practically turned me inside out, was worth it.
As Jolakaia gave Suvi a longer, much more detailed tour of the temple gardens than last time, I let my gaze track over the sun-drenched plants. Since our arrival, three Mother’s Claws had positioned themselves in the gardens, and my mood soured further.
I should probably consider myself lucky that Koltar didn’t insist on guards stationed at Jolakaia’s home to watch us.
Then I snorted at myself. Because if anyone was lucky, it was the guards themselves. If they had tried to follow us from the temple to take up permanent stations at the door to the apartment, then they would have quickly found themselves with that very same door ripped from its hinges and shoved right up their –
“Are you coming?”
Suvi’s voice distracted me from the amusing violence of my thoughts.
Her little arms were filled with flowers, soft colour pressed to her chest, her hair like liquid in the sun, her cheeks pink and eyes aglow. For a breathless moment I could not speak, could not even attempt to recall what she’d just said to me, so sharply had her loveliness seized upon me, like talons beneath my scales.
“We’re going in now,” she said. “Are you coming?”
“Coming... with you?”
Blast. I never knew a brain as half-decent as the one I’d always imagined I’d had in my head could be so thoroughly bludgeoned by nothing more than the sight of my pretty mate with flowers in her arms and sunshine on her hair.
“Of course,” I said gruffly, trying to regain my footing among this sudden attack of stupidity. I’d never seen Suvi go stupid when she looked at me, and I wondered if this was solely a male phenomenon, or something unfortunately specific to me. I wasn’t sure which option was less comforting.
What was comforting, though, was her little smile upon my answer. She was actually glad I was going with her, thank the cursed stars, because I was not entirely sure how I would have recovered if she’d looked unhappy instead.
I reached my hands for the load in her arms.
“Let me carry that for-”
My question was cut off by Jolakaia immediately depositing a massive, unwieldy bundle of flowers, leaves, and stalks into my upward-facing palms.
“Since you were obliging enough to offer,” my cousin-niece said brightly.
“I was making the offer to my mate,” I said archly. But both females were already walking back into the temple with their own bundles of collected plants, thoroughly ignoring me. Fighting to keep the many bits and bobs of plant-matter together in my hands (skies above, why are so many of these blasted petals falling off!) I followed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Suvi
The room where Jolakaia and the other Mother’s Hands mixed their medications was probably the nicest lab I’d ever seen. It was advanced, with alien machinery and glass beakers lined up along the walls, but it was also beautiful. Huge windows let in flowing sunlight, illuminating the wooden benches and copper-coloured metal worktops.
There was only one other Mother’s Hand in the room when we arrived – an old Bohnebregg woman with dull, pond-green scales and short black hair that was interspersed with rust-red. It seemed that, when Bohnebregg people aged, instead of their hair going grey or white, it faded to something more reddish. Nutmeg and pepper instead of salt and pepper. Jolakaia introduced her as the oldest Mother’s Hand in the temple. Her name was Koraba, and she gave us a gummy smile, several of her largest fangs missing, before returning to her work bent over what looked very much like the Bohnebregg version of a microscope.
Jolakaia led us to a clean, bare metal table, and we dumped down the cuttings taken from the garden. Skalla followed suit, his pile largest of all.
“I will give you a short tour before we begin,” Jolakaia said. She took us around the room, demonstrating the various machines used for things like purification, distillation, heating, or cooling. As we went along, one question grew and grew until I finally had to turn to Skalla to ask him to translate it.
“What’s the power source?”
It was something that had already been niggling at me. For example, the two-wheel vehicles seemed to have a small, tubular battery on them rather than a combustion engine, but I’d never seen any evidence of such things being charged. Likewise, I’d never noticed any wiring in the apartment, nor attached to any of these machines here.