We slept on the floor atop couch cushions and blankets that we'd pulled from the bed because neither of us was willing to yield to the game we'd created. So we met in the neutral territory on the damn floor. And, even though I'd spent the whole night pressed up against his chest skin to skin with his hand splayed on top of the curve of my hip, I still couldn't have pinpointed when it was that he'd escaped from the impromptu bed at what amounted to the butt-crack of dawn on this ship.

What I could remember of the morning was the smell of food coming from the kitchen and after whatever amount of time it was that he deemed acceptable, the gentled coaxing murmurs he used to try and lure me from the blankets and sheets that smelled like warmth, comfort, and most of all home.

"Addy," when he was met only with my back after I'd rolled over in response to the morning wake-up call, he brandished the very same tactic I'd used against him.

His seeking hands found my sides unerringly beneath the covers. His cool fingers were a shock to my skin, and like a flash, they were fluttering over my skin. The reaction was immediate. I was squirming and fighting with the sheets to get away from him tickling me. Disgustingly, like everything else about him, he was perfect at it. Though I knew reasonably that turnabout was fair play, I couldn't stop the sleep-thick snarled words that rushed out, "Stop, or I'll fucking kick you."

That got the reaction that I needed, solely for the opportunity to breathe through my laughter. We were chest to chest again and I caught the surprised, "Oh," just before he pulled his hands up into the air in a gesture of surrender. "I take it that's not the best way to wake you?"

"No," I grumbled, "You're lucky I didn't pee myself." That got a rise out of him and he eased off of me from where he had me pinned against the cushions. Under any other circumstance, I likely would have kept him there, but as it stood I genuinely was about to burst. It was the downside of staying in bed until the last possible second.

He was laughing even after I'd shut myself into the bathroom.

When I left the bathroom, I was expecting the odd chuckle to still be rumbling out of him, but the room was entirely silent. Esayr was conspicuously missing. I stepped into the kitchen, expecting to see him there, but all there was, was a quietly simmering pot. "Esayr?"

I was met with silence. I peeked back towards the bedroom. The door was closed just like it had been last night. "Esayr?" I called a little louder. He might be changing.

I started towards the bedroom.

When I passed by the doorway that led into the study, a band of steel wound around my waist tugging me backward into a hard chest. I yelped quick enough before I recognized the hand that had settled against my waist and that little scar that you could only notice when the muscles flexed and it turned into a pale crescent along his knuckle. "God, Esayr. What the absolute hell do you think you're doing?"

He didn't let me go like I expected he would, instead he pulled me tighter against his chest. His other hand snuck up my side until it was bracketed against my rib cage, just below my breast, "My turn."

My imagination ran wild. My eyes immediately went to the dining room table. He'd had me sitting on it, bent backward until I was nearly on my back arched over it. I barely managed to suppress the whimper as I thought about what it would be like to be bent over it again, this time on my stomach, his hand around my wrists keeping me still as he slowly eased his cock inside me for the first time. I arched my back just a little bit for a taste of the feel of the warmth of his hips pressing into my ass. It's a maximum of 8 steps away. Probably 6 for him. He could have me in 15 seconds....less if he just ripped the clothes.

"The first to touch the opposite wall wins the couch tonight," His whisper caressed my neck and despite the fact that the words should have doused the flames this male caused beneath my skin, I just burned brighter.

He swung me around as soon as I started to struggle. The hand that had so recently been starring in a fantasy that left a phantom sting along my haunches instead grabbed at the leg I'd swung up trying to free myself from his grip. "This is cheating and you know it!" He had me tucked up against his chest, hefted me as if I weighed nothing at all.

He'd hauled me across the room bracketed in his arms to ensure I wouldn't make it to the wall before him. The jolt when he landed against the wall would have made my teeth chatter if his body hadn't softened the blow first.

"I win."

He got me. Beat me at my own game. "You do." I bit the words out, salty that I hadn't known he'd stack the odds in his favor just like I'd done yesterday.

When he spoke, his lips were soft along the shell of my ear, "You should congratulate me."

I'd pulled on another large shirt from one of the drawers the ship spit out. While the ship had chosen to give it to me, I was half certain it was one of the shirts Esayr usually wore. Aside from it, I was bare —and easy to access considering he held me flush against his body and it had the hard bar of his cock pressing against the curve of my ass.

My hands had been buried in the fabric of his shirt along his sides, trying to wiggle my way free of him, but now they slid down behind me, navigating by feeling a body that I'd scarcely known I was fluent in, "I could think of a few ways to congratulate you."

He widened his stance just enough that I could tug him free of his pants. I had half a mind to lift my shirt up just enough that he could take me if he pleased, but he muttered out a gravelly "Don't stop" and I figured I could tease him a little more before we went there today.

The idea of it struck me like a snake, startling and entirely unanticipated. He'd be mine from now until we both died. I'd have a place with a male that loved me in a society that had under all circumstances treated more than just the bits that circumstances of genetics had placed in my pants or for what my body was capable of doing that others could not.

My heart beat wildly in my chest and I marveled at the feel of anticipation and how the feeling could lend itself both to fear as well as excitement. "I love you," I blurted the words out, those same words he'd deserved to hear from me a thousand times over. They were arguably the most terrifying words I'd ever said, more so than those speeches in high school or when I'd asked my boss for a raise. These were the words that made my mouth turn to cotton and my heart shoot up into my throat. More followed after, "Esayr, from the first second I saw you in that booth down on Earth to this moment right here and now, I've known you. In that terrifyingly instinctual way, I have known you from the moment you looked at me. I know I haven't made this easy, and sometimes when I think about the time I've wasted, however quick it was, the ache makes my chest feel like it's been carved out with a spoon. But starting now I'm telling you --in whatever way you need to hear it-- that I love you. Whether it's fate, our bond, gravity, or some other unquestionably real and yet indescribable connection; our souls are anchored together, ourselves tethered at the ends, and I don't want that connection to ever stretch again."

I had wanted the words to be prettier.; to sound like all those declarations he'd made to me in all the spaces on this ship, but they didn't sound the same when I stumbled over words and concepts that were mostly unfamiliar. So I said the final simple thing that I could, "I'm yours."

He spun me gently, but with an urgency that was conveyed in the way his hands shook slightly as they anxiously roamed the nearby space of my arms before they rose up to my neck where he could tilt my face up to look at him.

Each and every one of us handled our emotions differently, for some there were feelings that were easy to quantify, easy to resolve, and easy to work through. Then there were others that bowled us over no matter the preparation we'd put into them. I'd seen it once on his face, the one emotion that leveled him that could threaten to bring him to tears if it were so inclined. When there was something he desperately wanted and he was given even an inkling of hope that he might get it, it turned the angles of his face heartbreakingly beautiful, his eyes were brighter and the tense pull around his lips made them stand out even more. He sucked in a quiet gasp, "Say it again."

"I'm yours, Esayr, in whatever way you'll have me."

"I can call you mine?" His fingers were as reverent as his words, tracing the curve of my jaw and my neck as if I were made of porcelain, gold, or some other fragile and priceless material.

The way he asked it made me think there was some other kind of significance to it that had been lost on me. "You've always called me yours, Esayr."

He shook his head. The brush of his nose tickled my own, we were coiled so tightly together, "A mating is a bonding of equals. It's never taken, only gifted. I've declared myself as yours time and time again because you've had my heart from the beginning; knowingly, freely, and unequivocally. And, now you will have gifted me the same. May I call you mine?" He was pushing us backward with each little step, maneuvering me somewhere —hopefully the table, but I wasn't certain.

I thought back to each of his declarations and he was right. He had never pushed this mating on me. He'd never said the words "You are my mate." Instead, he'd told me he was mine at every chance that he'd gotten. At some point during this time we'd been together, I'd adopted it in my thoughts, calling him mine; my husband, my mate, my male, whatever other ways I'd considered him as being singularly my own in this specific way. The idea he'd not had that pleasure took my breath away. "Tell me I'm yours, Esayr."

The back of my thighs hit the edge of the table, stopping us, "Addison Rose Kane, you're mine and you'll never be rid of me."

*****A/N*****

When I first started this story I had a lot of grand plans, as I'd imagine most do. And this part reveals one of them, specifically that it was my intention that Esayr would never say the words "You're my mate" to Addy before she gave him permission (though for ease of narration he could think them). Instead, he would always only use variations of "I'm yours" "I'm your mate".

Addy's narrative, on the other hand, wouldn't have made this distinction as the perceived singularity of the mate bond would have made the "I'm yours" just as claiming. To Addy, and humans in general I'd imagine, the "He's/She's mine" would come easily because they haven't been raised in Val' culture where there's importance put on those words. It's been so long since I started writing this, and it's in a format that it makes it hard for me to go back and verify this is correct or even to correct it if it weren't the case. I'm sure there's probably a moment or two where he has said it in this story and it will be something I'll go back and fix when I get to editing. All in all, if you happen to do a reread and catch Esayr declaring to Addy (or others): "You're/She's mine," or some derivative (excluding phrases like 'you're my heart/soul' because those are just endearments as well as inner monologue thoughts) then, by all means, point them out! It tended to be a little disorienting switching from two different perspectives on this type of language and if I wasn't paying the closest attention I would catch myself slipping up in Esayr's parts, especially ones that come right after Addy's.

I'm actually crazy proud of how much I've been writing of late, especially considering the rickety old laptop I would pull into bed with me when I was too tired to be at my desktop finally stopped working. Or more accurately put, I suppose, some of the keys stopped typing. I could have dealt with it if it were like a lesser-used letter, but in a first-person story not being able to type the letter "I" was actually quite a problem. Now I'm sitting here trying to exercise self-control to keep myself from buying a MacBook.