Esayr was in rare form when I woke up, specifically, he was still dead asleep bundled in the blankets as much as I was. As far as I could remember it was the first time I'd ever woken before him. He held me close to his body, one arm banded around my breasts and the other had brazenly found its way between my legs to cup my sex like some Neanderthal. I couldn't lie though, I found it endearing even though we were both probably still covered in a layer of...grime that needed washing off.

When I tried to pull myself free of him, he only held me tighter, squeezing the laughter out of me. It was the happiest I'd ever been first thing in the morning in ages.

Heated kisses started a trail down the back of my neck and his banding arms changed to the teasing exploration. As much as I would have loved to spend the morning in our bed —a fair few mornings actually— we did have plans today. "Esayr," I stilled his hands wrestling them away from me while he laughed, "we have places to be today."

The breathy laugh cause goosebumps to tickle my skin down my neck and across my chest, "We can be late."

"I can show up late, or I can show up smelling like we've fucked. I can't do both." I'd sooner die of embarrassment, but I also was willing to guess the sentiment was probably lost in translation with the Val' culture.

He huffed out a breath that blew hair into my face before pulling me closer with a muttered, "fine." The man was tawny glory in the dim morning light that the ship synthesized. He'd crawled over the top of me, more limber than me on a good day, and more so today now that I was sore in more ways than I could count. He made the action count to, rubbing along my side.

"That's not fair, Esayr," I couldn't stop the laughter as I pulled the sheets around myself in a tight bundle, content to watch him

The only response I got was a smile and a swagger that could be described as cheeky for a lot of reasons.

I was torn between enjoying the view of him walking to the adjoining bathroom and well...joining —seeing as I was downright nasty.

Though the look he shot over his shoulder and the suggestion that the shower could fit two, helped to influence my decision in the end.

We showered quickly enough and I discovered that one of the nice things about the heated tiling in the bathroom was that it meant there was no concern about the chill of tile biting into your bareback if you happened to be pinned to the wall. That and the additives the Aarond Form put into the water did help to moisturize everything making some things downright slick.

Esayr painted a heated trail on the column of my throat, licking away the water and the sweat. "You should've fucked me before we cleaned up now I'm messy again," my hands tangled in the sopping curls at the back of his neck cradling him against my throat and not allowing any space at all between us.

When he laughed he pulled my hips closer until we were plastered together smearing the lines that coated the lower planes of my stomach, "Call it a baser instinct." I could feel the tracing line of his nose just under the edge of my jaw. "I like it when you smell like me."

"I'll smell like you for days at this rate."

"Good." The answer was simple and quick, filled with a satisfaction that settled in my soul born from the depths of both of us somewhere I was only just now privy to and it dared me to say that we both weren't pleased with this outcome just as much as Esayr's eyes did.

I kissed him instead, a tangle of tongues.

By the time we pulled free of the bathroom, I knew we would be well and truly late. Esayr himself seemed unbothered by it, but I couldn't help worrying that Cece was somewhere in our quarters waiting on us impatiently, or even Lirin was out and about putting any plans that he had on hold.

"Lirin will expect our dawdling since we're newly in our ilharus whether we were mated or not," Esayr murmured in response to my aired concerns as he pulled on a pair of pants, "most anyone on the ship will." Esayr waggled his eyebrows at me when he caught me eyeing those last flashes of tawny skin as they disappeared behind the tabs he was closing on the pants, "and newly mated couples do have a habit of finding themselves otherwise...engaged."

"Don't give me that look."

"What look?" He knew what look I meant. I could tell by the way that he prowled closer to me.

"You know what look, Esayr. It's the same one that came right before you decided you wanted to come all over my stomach in the shower. It's the 'I want to eat you alive' look" It made me breathless when I caught his heated glance following the hem of my shirt as it fell over me, just like I'd been doing to him.

Lust flared so strongly down our bond that the pair of underwear I'd just put on was nearly shot, already sliding against my heated skin. When I told him to stop it came out as a hiss, though if this kept on any longer I knew it would be a whine. "Errands first you can fuck me again later."

His lips ticked up at the corner but he gave me one quick jerk of a nod before we left our rooms, gifting me with his back so I had the opportunity to gather some semblance of control before we gathered Cece and headed out onto the ship that I was certain would smell us coming miles before we were in sight.

Cece thankfully didn't have that same sense of smell. though she was already in the common room of our quarters, she seemed unruffled by our later appearance. She'd merely been hovering in the kitchen, the smooth light of the interface with the stove alight beneath her fingers.

It had been the most at peace that I'd seen her since she'd come up to the ship. Her shoulders were soft and she was smiling. Briefly, I wondered if we'd done her a disservice in bringing her into our home if she would have been happier exploring her own space, but she smiled as she noticed us and commented on how streamlined the tech was in our kitchen. She asked a few other questions, mostly centered around the surprise that the interface had responded to her since she was human, which Esayr explained simply in that with their being stationed over Earth and with my arrival, the ship had been coded to respond to both Val' and Human genetics easily enough.

"It's the only time we adjust a ship's coding for controls, outside of extreme circumstances, that is." Esayr was leading us down to the quarters of the ship that most of the males on board called home.

"I can imagine. It would be a fairly adept line of security to keep unwanted interference out of your systems depending on what you might come across, especially in the inhospitable frontier of space."

I laughed at Cece's reference to old media, "Can't believe that our entrance to that "Final Frontier" wasn't even by our own merit."

Cece's answering smile was blank. She stared at me for a moment too long before she shrugged, "I get the impression I've missed something, though I've been told I lived under a rock."

That at least made me laugh, "It was your use of the word 'frontier' for space. Figured it was a subtle nod to StarTrek," I caught Esayr's interested glance as we continued our walk down the hallway. I filed away the option of seeing if we could dig into old media files and unearth the original series. It had been campy, outdated, and outrageously fun years ago before we had any notion of aliens or long-distance space travel. It made me desperate to see the laughter that I was certain it would cause up here on the ship.

"I can see then where I might have picked it up," Cece gave another breezy shrug, unconcerned.

I almost wished that Cece engaged a little more, to distract me from the occasional pass of others as we drew closer and closer to Lirin's quarters. Though, that wasn't a responsibility I should have placed on her. It just would have been nice to have somewhere else reasonable for my attention to be other than the shock of surprise and the smiles from whoever we passed.

Esayr at least pulsed a faint prickling sensation of warning. It flowed over me and settled into my periphery. I was grateful for it at the moment, though I also knew I'd have to get used to the interest in the future --at least until there were others here and they became mated as well. I pushed a sense of connection down the bond, one that I interpreted as feeling like a glancing touch down his spine --a thank you.

It returned two-fold, magnified before we settled back into the walk to Lirin's quarters.

Lirin was in his doorway, speaking to another male. If I had to guess I would have said another member of his Riniere. The male was similarly boyish, though he was coming into sharper features that Lirin was lacking, that and the faint dusting of darkened hair along his jawline was what helped to dissuade me from giving him the label of having a babyface.

When he caught our approach, Lirin's friend excused himself with a smile, though the way his eyes cut to Lirin who had staggered into the doorway and blasted us with a hope that was so overwhelming when his attention bounced between my mate and I told me we'd be the talk of the ship before long if we weren't already.

"I have your device. I-I mean it's fixed, o-or not necessarily fixed, but it should-should work now." His words were a stuttered mess as his attention flicked between us.

It wasn't until Cece spoke up, asking us if he'd managed to fix the issue, that he seemed to shake himself free of his surprise enough to invite us in.

His quarters were smaller than Kados and Addric's, which I halfway expected since I was fairly sure he was the only occupant. The fact that it was nearly filled to the brim with electronics and things that looked like disassembled servers made it look even smaller, however.

I found the room claustrophobic. Cece visibly brightened, though, and I realized Esayr was right. While I could feel the play of emotions rolling off of Lirin like ripples in a pond, brushing up against me --more noticeable the larger the disturbance-- Cece was nearly unreadable and muted.

She followed Lirin deeper into the maze of circuits and cabling, while I lingered at the entrance to Lirin's home with Esayr, who pulled me fitting me against his side easily enough.

"Thank you for trying to mute the interest of the people we passed," I felt him place a soft kiss on my hair and I valued the tenderness as much as I did the wickedness from the night before.

"Always, though they will be unbearable for a while."

"I know," My words were an exasperated laugh, "I can only imagine how insufferable Kados will be once news gets back to him."

My laughter was echoed in the beginnings of a rumble that turned into full-fledged laughter from him, shaking me where he held me against his side. "They'll all be awful for a while if they hear about it from gossips in the Neseve Salle before we have a chance to tell them."

The wall next to us glowed faintly, and Lirin's voice sounded in the air around us --pure and lilting Vallan. "You're welcome to call Kayle on the system, it should be online now that I finished the update." The muted glow disappeared quicker than we could thank him.

Esayr turned to me, looking for my permission and I loved him for it, for all manner of other things as well.

"We should tell them."

"Kados will still be awful." The tilt of his mouth was rueful, but his eyes were laughing.

"Then we'll bring him a gift."

"What gift?"

I smiled at my sweet mate as he stared down at me like I was a present worth unwrapping, "Me, of course."

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

Hello again. It's me, Layla, here with the weird book recommendations. In all seriousness, I get a lot of my recommendations --or like adjacent novel recommendations from the same author-- from lillianlarkauthor on TikTok. So, I really recommend following her if you want to keep up with her books as well as her recommendations!

The book I'm recommending is actually out of my normal tastes but MY GOD I had a great time reading it. It's called Manix by Grace McGinty. It's a Reverse Harem, Omegaverse-like novel (I'm saying omegaverse-like because I've only read a few Omegaverse stories and I'm not entirely certain if the author intended the book to be distinctly Omegaverse or if they just wanted to use aspects of some of the core systems). It does feature a male pregnancy and there is sexual/romantic content that happens between the guys so if that isn't your thing then I'd recommend not reading it. But if you are interested/into that, it was just really fun, honestly. I got the sample of the first chapter of the ebook because I've mostly steered clear of mpreg stuff, but then ended up buying the book on page three because I liked it so much and it did not disappoint. Highly recommend.

It's still 90 degrees or above here in Florida, but I have been drinking pumpkin spice lattes and wearing sweaters at least since September began because I am a basic bitch at heart despite having grown up in what amounts to a sweltering butt crack for 80% of the year. Florida is beautiful with its swamps and its heat, but sometimes a girl craves a crunchy orange leaf and the smell of a cinnamon broom on a cold day.

Bring me spooky season. I'm ready,

~Layla