It surprises Rajesh how long it takes for them talk about claiming bites. To talk seriously, that is, and not just for Rajesh to voice his continuing amazement, each time they have sex, that any bites Shanu presses to his skin, anywhere, do not break the skin. At first, her apparent reluctance almost annoys him, or at least embarrasses him, until he realises that she is giving him time to figure out his thoughts on the matter, not those of the surface world or the ones of Atlantis with which he is now being faced.
He appreciates it in the end. Because when he asks her to claim him, even in the midst of heated kisses, he knows that he means it, and can see in her eyes that she knows the same.
“Yes,” she breathes, and if he wasn’t already panting he would have been from the way that the desire in her eyes made his head spin.
Rajesh stretches up his neck, automatically, and though Shanu bends to press a kiss to his throat there is no hint of her teeth there. Instead, her fingers brush aside the fabric already askew on his right shoulder, dusting lightly over his skin.
“Here, though,” she says. “Or somewhere else that is usually hidden. Such things are private, after all.”
Atlantis is so strange sometimes. He might be gently teased for his glasses or the occasional word he still struggles to pronounce, or the way that he still blushes whenever his wife walks in the room and catches his eye in just the right way, but there has never been a word against him for being an omega. And for such an enclosed place – quite literally, the whole city was within a giant dome – there never seemed to be the oppressive stink of pheromones.
“Oh, yeah.” The reply stumbles from his lips. “You said that, didn’t you? That – ohhh…”
No language he has ever spoken lives up to the feeling of Shanu’s lips against his skin, the faint graze of her teeth that gives it an edge of promise. She lies on top of him among their blankets and scattered cushions, but her weight does not feel as if it is pinning him. It never has. Instead he feels hyper-aware of every breath rocking them together, of her hips against his and the taut, strong planes of her muscles as they shift against him. Her hair brushes cool against his skin, and he would swear that he can feel some of the gold beads there, but it is hard to focus on anything else than the movements of her tongue, tracing shapes and alternating firm and teasing.
“It’s really hard to think when you do that,” he says.
Shanu laughs, the sound a burr against his skin that runs straight to his core, and he hitches his breath. “Here?” she says, breaking the contact of her mouth for just long enough for him to think.
He tries to think where else she could mean that would be reliably hidden by the clothes he wears. The thought of Shanu’s teeth against his ass or thighs makes his face positively burn, his cock twitch and slick quicken on his skin all at once, and he swallows. “There,” he says aloud.
For a moment, Shanu shifts her body up, pressure all along him as she reaches to kiss him on the mouth again. For all that he can feel the heat of the body, the shifts of her hips, and see the desire in her eyes, her lips are tender against his and her touch lingers.
“I love you,” he blurts out. It always comes out when he doesn’t mean it to, and whenever he plans to say it, he finds himself tongue-tied.
Of course, Shanu realised that long ago, and her smile is warm and affectionate. “Gim mohtem hipesemik,” she purrs.
Then her head bows to his shoulder, and Rajesh lets his own head fall back among the cushions, eyes falling closed before he even feels the touch of her teeth to his skin. A pause, and he wonders if Shanu feels as nervous as he does; he can smell fear, faintly, but is fairly sure that is his own. Being in Atlantis, where they have their own ways of dealing with heats and ruts, has certainly done wonders for his sense of smell. Shanu pushes back her hair, kisses his collarbone one last time – almost chastely – and runs one fingertip along his trapezius.
That was one word he never had thought to ask for in Atlantean.
He barely has time for the odd thought to strike him before her teeth are sinking into his skin. A hiss of pain escapes his lips, because he isn’t high on heat and climax, and even if the teeth of alphas have evolved to be sharper for this very purpose, there’s only so sharp they can get. A fast pinch, then a deep burning pain, and his body tenses against Shanu’s but now her weight put him under control, and his arms wrap around her broad back, fingers touching so tightly that he has the distant thought that he will leave bruises.
But the endorphins flood after it, the pleasure. He has always been dubious, wondered how it could feel good to have teeth slicing through skin and muscle, but it is Shanu, it is his wife, and it is like he is breathing her into him. Like her warmth is sliding under his skin, igniting into pleasure in his veins. He can feel the way that his erection is pressing against her, and it might have been embarrassing were it not for the way that she shifts, just her weight against his, and the slightest movement of her mouth makes fireworks go off behind his eyes.
Hot pleasure pulses through him, and he makes a choking sound. His hips buck, and it takes him a few seconds to realise, in astonishment, that he has climaxed still fully-clothed beneath her, from just the bite sinking into him. The knowledge that he is hers, and she is his, and the way that his body thrums with rightness at the feeling of being close to her.
By all rights, it should make it more embarrassing, not less, but his body knows that this is right. His mind just had to untangle a few things about the how and why.
Dazed and breathless, he can only really notice that his glasses are wonky and that his view of the ceiling was slightly blurred. His still-sensitive cock twitches against Shanu’s hip, and he considers adjusting himself but cannot even complete the thought before Shanu is carefully withdrawing her teeth and pulling away, looking at his shoulder with careful eyes and wiping her mouth clean. He cannot even see any blood there.
For a moment, he wonders if she will ask him some question or other about it, but then their eyes meet and he can see that she knows, that the love which must be glowing in his eyes speaks even more strongly than the reactions of his body. He sits up after her to kiss her again, yearning for her small hairs on her upper lips, and one of her hands slides into his hair as she kisses him back breathlessly. Her breasts press against him, and one thing which he had not really anticipated about Atlantis was how much skin there is, how even fully-clothed can mean expanses of bare skin to press together. Most of the time, he has become used to it, aware of its practicality in the heat and in a world where sunburn is impossible, but in moments like this it can still feel almost overwhelming.
“Shanu,” he breathes against her mouth, between and through their kisses. Her tongue brushes his lips, and his head rushes. Their bodies seem to fit together without thought, her thighs tightening on his hips, and she pulls him into her lap completely. Heat pools between their bodies, and they press together as if trying to reach beneath each other’s skin. Perhaps they are. He can barely think, but he knows that as his head whirls like this he would willingly subsume himself into Shanu.
She tips her weight, and with a yelp Rajesh is pulled over with her, both of them tumbling down. Spitting out her hair, Rajesh tries to look stern at her laughter, but it is utterly impossible and he gives up within a few seconds. Shanu squeezes her arms around him, then relaxes her hold, having successfully put him on bed oh his back completely.
“Wrestling is cheating,” he says. He reaches up to adjust his glasses, which are threatening to slide off his face.
Shanu just smirks, unrepentant. “I have tried to teach you to wrestle,” she says.
And it has never managed to turn into a lesson, always devolving into fondling or into sex. Not that Rajesh is complaining, but they both know why such lessons only take place in their private chambers. He settles for huffing, unimpressed, before his smile overwhelms him again at the warmth in her eyes.
“Here,” she says. Reaching down and between them, she undoes her skirt, and Rajesh stammers something that does not quite manage to be words. Shanu’s frankness never has ceased to take him by surprise, but this would be quite something even for her. She unwraps her skirt, lets it fall carelessly open, and hitches down one side of her briefs beneath. “It would be the best place.”
He can see the line of her hip beneath her skin, the faint taut V of muscle and the line of bone. He yearns to rub his cheek to her skin, anywhere, anywhere at all, and feels the stirring of his erection again.
“Rajesh?”
“Hmm?” it takes effort to drag his attention back to her eyes. “Here. Where? What?”
“I know it is not the shoulder, but my shoulders are usually visible,” Shanu says. He’s still not quite sure what she means, distracted by thoughts of how she tastes. “Here is… usually acceptable, for a bite. If you would not prefer elsewhere.”
“Bite?” he frowns. “Bite – bite you? Who would be biting you?”
She props herself up on her elbows, looking at him as if he is quite mad for a moment, and then smiles that same easy smile. “You, Rajesh,” she says. “The bond is equal, and not possession, remember?”
If he were not already flushed, he would have blushed even brighter when she offered him the words all over again. He has lost track of how many times she has said that, in Atlantis, alphas and omegas were considered to have equal influence over each other. Not as Rajesh had always been told, that one day he would need to find an alpha to take care – by which everyone meant control – of him. In Atlantis, they were complementary.
“I never thought…” he says softly.
Her smile softened. “You do not have to, if you do not want to.”
But god, he does want to, something primal stirring in him. Something older than Atlantis stirs in his chest, and he thinks of what it would be like to know that his mark is on Shanu’s skin, that everywhere she goes she carries part of him with her. He isn’t sure what to make of that desire, has not had the time to think it through as he has accepting a bite himself. Even after all this time, their communication might need some work.
There has not been a lot in Rajesh’s life that he has done impulsively. For so many years, he has been used to planning things in advance, thinking them through and probably over-thinking them along the way. For once, he makes a design.
“I do,” he says.
Shanu kisses him again, bright and joyful and with an edge of laughter on her lips as she straightens his glasses for him even when pulling away. She lies back, and it is only as Rajesh settles between her legs that he realises just how this would look, and certainly does blush brighter for it. He can feel the heat of his cheeks, so strong that Shanu is probably aware of it on her thigh as well, but concentrates on how it feels to press a kiss to her skin.
It is still strange, trying to pluck up the courage to bite. Shanu’s fingers trace through his hair, her other hand still in his view beside her hip, and he kisses the beautiful smooth line of her skin. She tastes so clean, no chemicals, no sooty air, no perfumes. And that is magical as well.
Closing his eyes, Rajesh kisses her skin again, slower this time and more lingering, letting his tongue trace over her body hairs. Her legs shift beneath him, as if she is trying to find somewhere comfortable, and he can feel the slight quickening of her breath as he tests with his teeth. It’s harder than he expected to even get the skin to give.
He almost asks her if she is sure, but he recognised the feeling when she kissed him that one more time. Gratitude. Sometimes he has wondered how it must feel, after that long alone, to finally have a mate. Thirty-three seemed old enough.
“Okay,” he breathes, largely to himself, and draws back the inches enough to take one more look at the skin of her hip. He knows where her clothes usually sit, where would be best to set his teeth, but even so feels another jolt of nervousness at the thought.
His own shoulder still throbs, tight and hot and uncomfortably pleasurable in a way that he isn’t wholly sure what to feel about. Shanu bit fast and sure, and he supposes that is the best way, after all. One fierce crash of pain, and the body rushing with pleasure in its wake.
With one final, nervous lick of his lips, he darts in, and bites down.
Definitely harder than he would have thought. For an instant, he can feel that his teeth are not even breaking the skin, and when they do Shanu grunts beneath him, her hand tightening in her hair. But then her grunt turns to gasps, ragged on the air, and he feels the heat of her body and the pounding of her pulse in her thigh.
He isn’t sure how long he’s supposed to keep hold, but it probably doesn’t matter really. He waits until Shanu’s breathing seems to have slowed again, her fingers relaxing, and then carefully draws away. There’s less of a taste of blood than he expected, as well. Perhaps that’s a pheromones thing, making them bleed less. He isn’t sure whether he’s read that somewhere. He is just wondered whether it would have been a good idea for them to bring water to swill out their mouths with when Shanu pulls him to her again, chest-to-chest, and kisses him crushingly hard.
She smells so good. He should probably have more evocative words, but he has never been able to come up with them, beyond perhaps perfect. Every breath that he takes of her makes his body feel more soothed, more whole, and when she kisses him agressively and runs her hands over his smooth skin it ignites something in the centre of his chest that he had never expected to feel.
“Thank you,” Shanu breathes against him, so soft that at first he thinks that he has imagined the words. But, to his astonishment, they are truly there. “Thank you.”
He doesn’t know what to say, and kisses her instead, keeping their mouths all but constantly together. Hands fumble at his clothes, and without hesitation he starts peeling them away, both of them plucking at their own and each other’s clothes and tossing them aside thoughtlessly. It is only them who are going to have to tidy them up again, after all. He cups Shanu’s breasts, feeling her hard nipples against his palms, and in return she divests him of his clothes in easy, elegant movements.
When her hands find his underwear, she laughs, bright and unrestrained against him. “You still wear them,” she says.
Rajesh mutters something to the tune that she manages to be surprised every time that he wears them, which is still more days than not. Sometimes he plucks up the courage to wear the considerably smaller Atlantean style of underwear, little more than a wrap around his crotch, but it still feels strange compared to the handful of pairs of underwear he had bought down from the surface with him. They have been worn and washed so often that they have grown soft and thin, but they are still his.
Shanu nips at his lip. “Maybe I should try them on someday.”
Another indignant sound leaves him, but he cannot even make words, not when she has slid one hand inside his underwear to stroke along the length of his cock. His hips rock into her hand without conscious thought, and he can feel the slick at the top of his thighs. He wants her, not just some animal need, and if he is honest then it has felt amazing every time he has chosen to give in to the rush of desire that Shanu draws from him.
“But for now, maybe we should try them off,” she breathes.
Nodding, and almost dislodging his glasses, Rajesh pushes his underwear down and almost crawls out of them, still trying to press kisses to Shanu’s lips. He isn’t sure whether kisses are supposed to feel so sweet as this, whether they are supposed to feel hotter than skin and make his head whirl and blood pound. Maybe it’s a mate thing. Maybe it’s a Shanu thing. “And yours,” he thinks to breathe as well, hooking his fingers into her briefs.
With a laugh, Shanu lies back, raising her hips and allowing Rajesh to more easily peel her clothes away. He presses a kiss to her knee in passing, running a hand over her other thigh, until Shanu’s firm hand comes to cup his jaw and turn him to face her.
“I want you,” he breathes, the words almost lost against her hand.
Her thumb traces his lips. “I want to see you,” she says in reply.
Rajesh knows immediately what she means, but still feels his cheeks grow hot. Their sex had not been adventurous; at least, he did not think it was, although it was not as if he had a great range of experience to refer to. They had experimented in having sex as betas did, and found it pleasurable, but not as much so as each other’s mouths or hands, and nothing compared to her big cock within him. For that, at least a part of him understands the way that people always spoke with such fascination about sex. But they stick to the same positions, and Shanu would kiss Rajesh’s shoulders and wrap her hands around his hips as she moulded her body to his.
Bending down, he kisses her again, knowing that he will lose his nerve if he has to look her in the eye as he does this. Again, it is the difference of Atlantis to be so frank; he knows that Shanu will even be less blunt around him, sometimes. But on the surface, he has only been used to either prim refusals to speak of sex, or the bawdy bantering of male alphas and betas. He had the impression that there was similar camaraderie, at least, among women, but omega males were not really part of that circle. Sometimes, he does not even know the words in English for what he wants to say, let alone Atlantean.
As their lips meet, Shanu moans softly, her hands coming up to trace his chest. As he gets used to the physical life of Atlantis, he is slowly developing his muscles there, something which has both surprised and amused him. Astride her hips, he slips one hand down beneath them, ignoring his own twitching erection and following the muscles of Shanu’s stomach down to her groin.
He had not quite known what to expect, the first time that they had made love with slow intent rather than that rushing, tumbling need for each other. Now, though, his fingers know their path, parting her to feel the wetness beneath. Shanu rolls her fingers over his nipple, tongue tracing his lips, as his fingers slip lower until his fingers almost brush at her entrance, and he can feel the nudging of her cock just starting to extend. He cups the head, and Shanu gasps; he learnt quickly how much more sensitive she is, her 12" of super thick cock usually protected inside her.
“Rajesh,” she breathes.
He loves the way that his name sounds on her tongue, always has, and kisses it from her lips as she rocks against him. Already he feels so wet, and his legs start to shake as the smell of her arousal overwhelms him, her cock coming to rest in his hand. His fingers are wet from her entrance, and he uses that to stroke along her length, making her moan and shudder beneath him. It’s still such a strange feeling to know that he has this control over her, this power almost, and when he feels it, he always understands a little what Shanu means when she talks about alphas and omegas being equally powerful over each other.
Shanu’s eyes flutter closed, and Rajesh draws back just far enough that he can see her, her lips flushed and shining, her breath heaving. He strokes gently along the length of her shaft, down to brush his fingers very lightly over her knot but not giving her the pressure that he knows she needs, and her gasp sends a shiver down him.
Guiding her, he brings them together, and almost lets out a sob when she first starts to enter him. It always feels so right, the pleasure sexual and more, and Shanu cries out his name as he starts to sink down onto big monster cock. Her hand goes to his hip, thumb pressing against his hipbone uncomfortably, but then her eyes open and she smiles. And oh, but that smile could melt away the world for him.
He sinks down onto her, slowly, for all that he is so slick that it makes it as easy as breathing. His thighs tremble as he feels her stretch him out, filling his body as her smile fills his heart. The pressure of her fingers lessens, until she is more cradling his hips, thighs tense as she resists sinking deep into him. He has come to know that tension well.
“You are so impossible,” she says, softly, her eyes not leaving his as sinks down almost to the point of her knot. “My impossible, beautiful feminine husband.”
Her hand drifts down his stomach, and before he can realise what she intends, her hand wraps around his comparable small 5" cock and he gasps at the contact. It always feels so much more sensitive when she is already inside him. He catches himself with his hands, legs feeling weak for a moment, and Shanu squeezes his hip with one hand as the fingers of the other trail along his cock.
“You’re… impossible, always like to feel how small is my cock compare to you” he says, unable to manage anything more as she rubs her thumb over the head of his cock and his ability to think is shattered. Shanu laughs, low and rumbling and beautiful, and Rajesh would probably laugh along were it not for the way that it made her cock shift in him, like juddering bolts of pleasure.
Instead he lower himself and kisses her again, moving in slow and shallow thrusts against her, breathing in the scent of their mingled arousal. Shanu’s teeth scrape his lips, and he shivers, even as her touch grows firmer on his cock. Her hips lift to thrust deeper into him, until he feels the beginning of her knot against his entrance. But no, he decides, not yet; though knotting like this might theoretically make for a better way to talk, in practice neither of them is particularly coherent.
Her hand pumps at his cock still, and he shudders, already feeling the building rush of climax again. “Shanu,” he breathes against her. “You’ll make – ah! – more mess–”
She keeps her hand on his head and runs her tongue along the line of his jaw, until her nose nudges his hairline and her lips meet his ear. Waves of her scent roll over him, rich and strong as the earth and as clear as the light of the crystal. She is Atlantis, and he should only ever have expected that. Nuzzling into her hair, he feels his mind fill with fuzz, and his hips twitch awkwardly as he attempts to thrust into her hand.
“We always make a mess,” she says, right against his ear, voice warm with amusement. She grinds against him, tilting her hips to deepen the angle, and as pleasure makes him tremble and stars fill his eyes she pumps more insistently at his cock.
He tries to respond, but it comes out a gasp, and before he knows it he comes across her hand, her stomach, hot white bursts behind his eyes. His hands clench in the sheets, and he moans Shanu’s name as the climax crashes through him.
Shanu all but purrs in his ear, a sound that should not be so arousing and primal both at once. She nuzzles the sensitive spot just below his ear, then as the clouds in his head are still clearing draws back, and uses her hands on his hips to guide them apart.
He can feel the twitching of her cock against his thighs, understands the unspoken desperation in her touch. The loss of her within him is an ache, but he knows what she intends. He tries to linger in a kiss for as long as possible, craning his neck even if it makes the bite to his shoulder sting. Perhaps especially as it makes it sting, the reminder of her touch running all down him.
Their bodies seem to slide over each other, trying to cling together, to make contact for as long as possible. When Shanu breaks the kiss, she mouths at his neck and shoulders instead, and Rajesh gives a choked cry as her lips run over the tender mark of her bite. Her cock brushes against the back of his thigh; he has not been less than half hard, and as they tumble to the sheets again Shanu falls behind him, both of them on their sides on spooning position in which the wife is spooning her smaller husband, and guides her giant dick in his ass again.
“Shanu,” he cry . This time, she enters him in one thrust, all the way until he can feel the pressure of her knot against him. She had explained – with the same frankness that she approached all sexual matters – that her own inexperience made her fast to tie her knot; he has never cared. Now, all that he wants is to feel her inside him, and he catches one of her hands with his and draws it round to kiss her knuckles. “Please. Please.”
Already inside him, she does not need her hand to guide her, and he sucks kisses against her skin as she thrusts, slow and grinding movements that make him hard again. Sweat, slick and semen are already mixed together on his skin; afterwards, he knows, they will bathe, languid, and laugh. But each shallow thrust stretches him out further around her knot, and she pants in his ear as her fingers tighten around his, until finally he feels her slip wholly into him.
There is always a moment when it feels like it is almost too much, the first moment as Shanu fills him completely and even before her knot begins to swell. Then she shifts, settles her hips, and the fullness ignites to pleasure in his bones. Shanu growls against the base of his neck, for a moment wholly manly voice, and Rajesh presses his lips to her hand and whispers her name over and over as he feels her knot swelling inside him. Her thighs shift against his as she rocks her hips, settling into place, and then with a moan he feels her climax.
Heat washes within him, a dull awareness of her seed that had felt so strange the first time he had experienced it, her cock throbbing and hot inside him and her knot tightening. She kisses the back of his neck, formless and wet, and rocks her hips just slightly. Every movement makes him gasp, feeling flushed and sensitive and overwhelmingly content as she wraps her body around him again.
Her fingers relax in his, and slide up to stroke the pendant at his neck, the only thing beside his glasses that he is still wearing. It always remains cool, no matter how long it rests against his skin, and more than once before they have managed to tangle their pendants together and interrupt a passionate embrace with knocked heads and laughter.
“Rajesh,” Shanu murmurs, against his shoulder. He makes a vague sound for a reply, already feeling himself grow heavy with relief and satiation. “You know, you could practice your Ivrit, as we are here.”
“That’s,” he starts laughing, tries to nudge her with his elbow, but only succeeds in squirming against her and gasping at the way it sends late shivers through him. “Don’t be mean.”
Mouth pressed against his neck, she laughs again, and Rajesh tries to frown over his shoulder at her but ends up sniggering as well, until the jostling becomes too much, too tender, and he swats at her hand. She complies, murmuring wordlessly and tugging down a cushion to better support their heads. He can feel her fingers toying with his hair.
“Tell me about Atlantis,” she says, more softly.
“You know it better than I.”
“Perhaps.” Her fingertips brush his scalp, soothing, and her free hand moves to the centre of his chest, right over his heart. “But you see it through new eyes. You see a wonder, where I see streets that I have walked for so long the almost…” she trails off, and for a moment her fingers still, then she sighs against his skin. “Not now,” she adds, quietly, and he reaches back to gently rub her hip. Her thoughts on her own Kingdom are conflicted; that is the one thing that he still struggles to imagine. “You see it in new ways. As beautiful.”
“It is,” he said, making the words sound like a promise. He twisted as far as he could, and she propped herself up on one elbow to brush a kiss across his lips. “It always has been.”
And he suspects Shanu knows that, for that moment, it is not just the city about which he speaks.
He appreciates it in the end. Because when he asks her to claim him, even in the midst of heated kisses, he knows that he means it, and can see in her eyes that she knows the same.
“Yes,” she breathes, and if he wasn’t already panting he would have been from the way that the desire in her eyes made his head spin.
Rajesh stretches up his neck, automatically, and though Shanu bends to press a kiss to his throat there is no hint of her teeth there. Instead, her fingers brush aside the fabric already askew on his right shoulder, dusting lightly over his skin.
“Here, though,” she says. “Or somewhere else that is usually hidden. Such things are private, after all.”
Atlantis is so strange sometimes. He might be gently teased for his glasses or the occasional word he still struggles to pronounce, or the way that he still blushes whenever his wife walks in the room and catches his eye in just the right way, but there has never been a word against him for being an omega. And for such an enclosed place – quite literally, the whole city was within a giant dome – there never seemed to be the oppressive stink of pheromones.
“Oh, yeah.” The reply stumbles from his lips. “You said that, didn’t you? That – ohhh…”
No language he has ever spoken lives up to the feeling of Shanu’s lips against his skin, the faint graze of her teeth that gives it an edge of promise. She lies on top of him among their blankets and scattered cushions, but her weight does not feel as if it is pinning him. It never has. Instead he feels hyper-aware of every breath rocking them together, of her hips against his and the taut, strong planes of her muscles as they shift against him. Her hair brushes cool against his skin, and he would swear that he can feel some of the gold beads there, but it is hard to focus on anything else than the movements of her tongue, tracing shapes and alternating firm and teasing.
“It’s really hard to think when you do that,” he says.
Shanu laughs, the sound a burr against his skin that runs straight to his core, and he hitches his breath. “Here?” she says, breaking the contact of her mouth for just long enough for him to think.
He tries to think where else she could mean that would be reliably hidden by the clothes he wears. The thought of Shanu’s teeth against his ass or thighs makes his face positively burn, his cock twitch and slick quicken on his skin all at once, and he swallows. “There,” he says aloud.
For a moment, Shanu shifts her body up, pressure all along him as she reaches to kiss him on the mouth again. For all that he can feel the heat of the body, the shifts of her hips, and see the desire in her eyes, her lips are tender against his and her touch lingers.
“I love you,” he blurts out. It always comes out when he doesn’t mean it to, and whenever he plans to say it, he finds himself tongue-tied.
Of course, Shanu realised that long ago, and her smile is warm and affectionate. “Gim mohtem hipesemik,” she purrs.
Then her head bows to his shoulder, and Rajesh lets his own head fall back among the cushions, eyes falling closed before he even feels the touch of her teeth to his skin. A pause, and he wonders if Shanu feels as nervous as he does; he can smell fear, faintly, but is fairly sure that is his own. Being in Atlantis, where they have their own ways of dealing with heats and ruts, has certainly done wonders for his sense of smell. Shanu pushes back her hair, kisses his collarbone one last time – almost chastely – and runs one fingertip along his trapezius.
That was one word he never had thought to ask for in Atlantean.
He barely has time for the odd thought to strike him before her teeth are sinking into his skin. A hiss of pain escapes his lips, because he isn’t high on heat and climax, and even if the teeth of alphas have evolved to be sharper for this very purpose, there’s only so sharp they can get. A fast pinch, then a deep burning pain, and his body tenses against Shanu’s but now her weight put him under control, and his arms wrap around her broad back, fingers touching so tightly that he has the distant thought that he will leave bruises.
But the endorphins flood after it, the pleasure. He has always been dubious, wondered how it could feel good to have teeth slicing through skin and muscle, but it is Shanu, it is his wife, and it is like he is breathing her into him. Like her warmth is sliding under his skin, igniting into pleasure in his veins. He can feel the way that his erection is pressing against her, and it might have been embarrassing were it not for the way that she shifts, just her weight against his, and the slightest movement of her mouth makes fireworks go off behind his eyes.
Hot pleasure pulses through him, and he makes a choking sound. His hips buck, and it takes him a few seconds to realise, in astonishment, that he has climaxed still fully-clothed beneath her, from just the bite sinking into him. The knowledge that he is hers, and she is his, and the way that his body thrums with rightness at the feeling of being close to her.
By all rights, it should make it more embarrassing, not less, but his body knows that this is right. His mind just had to untangle a few things about the how and why.
Dazed and breathless, he can only really notice that his glasses are wonky and that his view of the ceiling was slightly blurred. His still-sensitive cock twitches against Shanu’s hip, and he considers adjusting himself but cannot even complete the thought before Shanu is carefully withdrawing her teeth and pulling away, looking at his shoulder with careful eyes and wiping her mouth clean. He cannot even see any blood there.
For a moment, he wonders if she will ask him some question or other about it, but then their eyes meet and he can see that she knows, that the love which must be glowing in his eyes speaks even more strongly than the reactions of his body. He sits up after her to kiss her again, yearning for her small hairs on her upper lips, and one of her hands slides into his hair as she kisses him back breathlessly. Her breasts press against him, and one thing which he had not really anticipated about Atlantis was how much skin there is, how even fully-clothed can mean expanses of bare skin to press together. Most of the time, he has become used to it, aware of its practicality in the heat and in a world where sunburn is impossible, but in moments like this it can still feel almost overwhelming.
“Shanu,” he breathes against her mouth, between and through their kisses. Her tongue brushes his lips, and his head rushes. Their bodies seem to fit together without thought, her thighs tightening on his hips, and she pulls him into her lap completely. Heat pools between their bodies, and they press together as if trying to reach beneath each other’s skin. Perhaps they are. He can barely think, but he knows that as his head whirls like this he would willingly subsume himself into Shanu.
She tips her weight, and with a yelp Rajesh is pulled over with her, both of them tumbling down. Spitting out her hair, Rajesh tries to look stern at her laughter, but it is utterly impossible and he gives up within a few seconds. Shanu squeezes her arms around him, then relaxes her hold, having successfully put him on bed oh his back completely.
“Wrestling is cheating,” he says. He reaches up to adjust his glasses, which are threatening to slide off his face.
Shanu just smirks, unrepentant. “I have tried to teach you to wrestle,” she says.
And it has never managed to turn into a lesson, always devolving into fondling or into sex. Not that Rajesh is complaining, but they both know why such lessons only take place in their private chambers. He settles for huffing, unimpressed, before his smile overwhelms him again at the warmth in her eyes.
“Here,” she says. Reaching down and between them, she undoes her skirt, and Rajesh stammers something that does not quite manage to be words. Shanu’s frankness never has ceased to take him by surprise, but this would be quite something even for her. She unwraps her skirt, lets it fall carelessly open, and hitches down one side of her briefs beneath. “It would be the best place.”
He can see the line of her hip beneath her skin, the faint taut V of muscle and the line of bone. He yearns to rub his cheek to her skin, anywhere, anywhere at all, and feels the stirring of his erection again.
“Rajesh?”
“Hmm?” it takes effort to drag his attention back to her eyes. “Here. Where? What?”
“I know it is not the shoulder, but my shoulders are usually visible,” Shanu says. He’s still not quite sure what she means, distracted by thoughts of how she tastes. “Here is… usually acceptable, for a bite. If you would not prefer elsewhere.”
“Bite?” he frowns. “Bite – bite you? Who would be biting you?”
She props herself up on her elbows, looking at him as if he is quite mad for a moment, and then smiles that same easy smile. “You, Rajesh,” she says. “The bond is equal, and not possession, remember?”
If he were not already flushed, he would have blushed even brighter when she offered him the words all over again. He has lost track of how many times she has said that, in Atlantis, alphas and omegas were considered to have equal influence over each other. Not as Rajesh had always been told, that one day he would need to find an alpha to take care – by which everyone meant control – of him. In Atlantis, they were complementary.
“I never thought…” he says softly.
Her smile softened. “You do not have to, if you do not want to.”
But god, he does want to, something primal stirring in him. Something older than Atlantis stirs in his chest, and he thinks of what it would be like to know that his mark is on Shanu’s skin, that everywhere she goes she carries part of him with her. He isn’t sure what to make of that desire, has not had the time to think it through as he has accepting a bite himself. Even after all this time, their communication might need some work.
There has not been a lot in Rajesh’s life that he has done impulsively. For so many years, he has been used to planning things in advance, thinking them through and probably over-thinking them along the way. For once, he makes a design.
“I do,” he says.
Shanu kisses him again, bright and joyful and with an edge of laughter on her lips as she straightens his glasses for him even when pulling away. She lies back, and it is only as Rajesh settles between her legs that he realises just how this would look, and certainly does blush brighter for it. He can feel the heat of his cheeks, so strong that Shanu is probably aware of it on her thigh as well, but concentrates on how it feels to press a kiss to her skin.
It is still strange, trying to pluck up the courage to bite. Shanu’s fingers trace through his hair, her other hand still in his view beside her hip, and he kisses the beautiful smooth line of her skin. She tastes so clean, no chemicals, no sooty air, no perfumes. And that is magical as well.
Closing his eyes, Rajesh kisses her skin again, slower this time and more lingering, letting his tongue trace over her body hairs. Her legs shift beneath him, as if she is trying to find somewhere comfortable, and he can feel the slight quickening of her breath as he tests with his teeth. It’s harder than he expected to even get the skin to give.
He almost asks her if she is sure, but he recognised the feeling when she kissed him that one more time. Gratitude. Sometimes he has wondered how it must feel, after that long alone, to finally have a mate. Thirty-three seemed old enough.
“Okay,” he breathes, largely to himself, and draws back the inches enough to take one more look at the skin of her hip. He knows where her clothes usually sit, where would be best to set his teeth, but even so feels another jolt of nervousness at the thought.
His own shoulder still throbs, tight and hot and uncomfortably pleasurable in a way that he isn’t wholly sure what to feel about. Shanu bit fast and sure, and he supposes that is the best way, after all. One fierce crash of pain, and the body rushing with pleasure in its wake.
With one final, nervous lick of his lips, he darts in, and bites down.
Definitely harder than he would have thought. For an instant, he can feel that his teeth are not even breaking the skin, and when they do Shanu grunts beneath him, her hand tightening in her hair. But then her grunt turns to gasps, ragged on the air, and he feels the heat of her body and the pounding of her pulse in her thigh.
He isn’t sure how long he’s supposed to keep hold, but it probably doesn’t matter really. He waits until Shanu’s breathing seems to have slowed again, her fingers relaxing, and then carefully draws away. There’s less of a taste of blood than he expected, as well. Perhaps that’s a pheromones thing, making them bleed less. He isn’t sure whether he’s read that somewhere. He is just wondered whether it would have been a good idea for them to bring water to swill out their mouths with when Shanu pulls him to her again, chest-to-chest, and kisses him crushingly hard.
She smells so good. He should probably have more evocative words, but he has never been able to come up with them, beyond perhaps perfect. Every breath that he takes of her makes his body feel more soothed, more whole, and when she kisses him agressively and runs her hands over his smooth skin it ignites something in the centre of his chest that he had never expected to feel.
“Thank you,” Shanu breathes against him, so soft that at first he thinks that he has imagined the words. But, to his astonishment, they are truly there. “Thank you.”
He doesn’t know what to say, and kisses her instead, keeping their mouths all but constantly together. Hands fumble at his clothes, and without hesitation he starts peeling them away, both of them plucking at their own and each other’s clothes and tossing them aside thoughtlessly. It is only them who are going to have to tidy them up again, after all. He cups Shanu’s breasts, feeling her hard nipples against his palms, and in return she divests him of his clothes in easy, elegant movements.
When her hands find his underwear, she laughs, bright and unrestrained against him. “You still wear them,” she says.
Rajesh mutters something to the tune that she manages to be surprised every time that he wears them, which is still more days than not. Sometimes he plucks up the courage to wear the considerably smaller Atlantean style of underwear, little more than a wrap around his crotch, but it still feels strange compared to the handful of pairs of underwear he had bought down from the surface with him. They have been worn and washed so often that they have grown soft and thin, but they are still his.
Shanu nips at his lip. “Maybe I should try them on someday.”
Another indignant sound leaves him, but he cannot even make words, not when she has slid one hand inside his underwear to stroke along the length of his cock. His hips rock into her hand without conscious thought, and he can feel the slick at the top of his thighs. He wants her, not just some animal need, and if he is honest then it has felt amazing every time he has chosen to give in to the rush of desire that Shanu draws from him.
“But for now, maybe we should try them off,” she breathes.
Nodding, and almost dislodging his glasses, Rajesh pushes his underwear down and almost crawls out of them, still trying to press kisses to Shanu’s lips. He isn’t sure whether kisses are supposed to feel so sweet as this, whether they are supposed to feel hotter than skin and make his head whirl and blood pound. Maybe it’s a mate thing. Maybe it’s a Shanu thing. “And yours,” he thinks to breathe as well, hooking his fingers into her briefs.
With a laugh, Shanu lies back, raising her hips and allowing Rajesh to more easily peel her clothes away. He presses a kiss to her knee in passing, running a hand over her other thigh, until Shanu’s firm hand comes to cup his jaw and turn him to face her.
“I want you,” he breathes, the words almost lost against her hand.
Her thumb traces his lips. “I want to see you,” she says in reply.
Rajesh knows immediately what she means, but still feels his cheeks grow hot. Their sex had not been adventurous; at least, he did not think it was, although it was not as if he had a great range of experience to refer to. They had experimented in having sex as betas did, and found it pleasurable, but not as much so as each other’s mouths or hands, and nothing compared to her big cock within him. For that, at least a part of him understands the way that people always spoke with such fascination about sex. But they stick to the same positions, and Shanu would kiss Rajesh’s shoulders and wrap her hands around his hips as she moulded her body to his.
Bending down, he kisses her again, knowing that he will lose his nerve if he has to look her in the eye as he does this. Again, it is the difference of Atlantis to be so frank; he knows that Shanu will even be less blunt around him, sometimes. But on the surface, he has only been used to either prim refusals to speak of sex, or the bawdy bantering of male alphas and betas. He had the impression that there was similar camaraderie, at least, among women, but omega males were not really part of that circle. Sometimes, he does not even know the words in English for what he wants to say, let alone Atlantean.
As their lips meet, Shanu moans softly, her hands coming up to trace his chest. As he gets used to the physical life of Atlantis, he is slowly developing his muscles there, something which has both surprised and amused him. Astride her hips, he slips one hand down beneath them, ignoring his own twitching erection and following the muscles of Shanu’s stomach down to her groin.
He had not quite known what to expect, the first time that they had made love with slow intent rather than that rushing, tumbling need for each other. Now, though, his fingers know their path, parting her to feel the wetness beneath. Shanu rolls her fingers over his nipple, tongue tracing his lips, as his fingers slip lower until his fingers almost brush at her entrance, and he can feel the nudging of her cock just starting to extend. He cups the head, and Shanu gasps; he learnt quickly how much more sensitive she is, her 12" of super thick cock usually protected inside her.
“Rajesh,” she breathes.
He loves the way that his name sounds on her tongue, always has, and kisses it from her lips as she rocks against him. Already he feels so wet, and his legs start to shake as the smell of her arousal overwhelms him, her cock coming to rest in his hand. His fingers are wet from her entrance, and he uses that to stroke along her length, making her moan and shudder beneath him. It’s still such a strange feeling to know that he has this control over her, this power almost, and when he feels it, he always understands a little what Shanu means when she talks about alphas and omegas being equally powerful over each other.
Shanu’s eyes flutter closed, and Rajesh draws back just far enough that he can see her, her lips flushed and shining, her breath heaving. He strokes gently along the length of her shaft, down to brush his fingers very lightly over her knot but not giving her the pressure that he knows she needs, and her gasp sends a shiver down him.
Guiding her, he brings them together, and almost lets out a sob when she first starts to enter him. It always feels so right, the pleasure sexual and more, and Shanu cries out his name as he starts to sink down onto big monster cock. Her hand goes to his hip, thumb pressing against his hipbone uncomfortably, but then her eyes open and she smiles. And oh, but that smile could melt away the world for him.
He sinks down onto her, slowly, for all that he is so slick that it makes it as easy as breathing. His thighs tremble as he feels her stretch him out, filling his body as her smile fills his heart. The pressure of her fingers lessens, until she is more cradling his hips, thighs tense as she resists sinking deep into him. He has come to know that tension well.
“You are so impossible,” she says, softly, her eyes not leaving his as sinks down almost to the point of her knot. “My impossible, beautiful feminine husband.”
Her hand drifts down his stomach, and before he can realise what she intends, her hand wraps around his comparable small 5" cock and he gasps at the contact. It always feels so much more sensitive when she is already inside him. He catches himself with his hands, legs feeling weak for a moment, and Shanu squeezes his hip with one hand as the fingers of the other trail along his cock.
“You’re… impossible, always like to feel how small is my cock compare to you” he says, unable to manage anything more as she rubs her thumb over the head of his cock and his ability to think is shattered. Shanu laughs, low and rumbling and beautiful, and Rajesh would probably laugh along were it not for the way that it made her cock shift in him, like juddering bolts of pleasure.
Instead he lower himself and kisses her again, moving in slow and shallow thrusts against her, breathing in the scent of their mingled arousal. Shanu’s teeth scrape his lips, and he shivers, even as her touch grows firmer on his cock. Her hips lift to thrust deeper into him, until he feels the beginning of her knot against his entrance. But no, he decides, not yet; though knotting like this might theoretically make for a better way to talk, in practice neither of them is particularly coherent.
Her hand pumps at his cock still, and he shudders, already feeling the building rush of climax again. “Shanu,” he breathes against her. “You’ll make – ah! – more mess–”
She keeps her hand on his head and runs her tongue along the line of his jaw, until her nose nudges his hairline and her lips meet his ear. Waves of her scent roll over him, rich and strong as the earth and as clear as the light of the crystal. She is Atlantis, and he should only ever have expected that. Nuzzling into her hair, he feels his mind fill with fuzz, and his hips twitch awkwardly as he attempts to thrust into her hand.
“We always make a mess,” she says, right against his ear, voice warm with amusement. She grinds against him, tilting her hips to deepen the angle, and as pleasure makes him tremble and stars fill his eyes she pumps more insistently at his cock.
He tries to respond, but it comes out a gasp, and before he knows it he comes across her hand, her stomach, hot white bursts behind his eyes. His hands clench in the sheets, and he moans Shanu’s name as the climax crashes through him.
Shanu all but purrs in his ear, a sound that should not be so arousing and primal both at once. She nuzzles the sensitive spot just below his ear, then as the clouds in his head are still clearing draws back, and uses her hands on his hips to guide them apart.
He can feel the twitching of her cock against his thighs, understands the unspoken desperation in her touch. The loss of her within him is an ache, but he knows what she intends. He tries to linger in a kiss for as long as possible, craning his neck even if it makes the bite to his shoulder sting. Perhaps especially as it makes it sting, the reminder of her touch running all down him.
Their bodies seem to slide over each other, trying to cling together, to make contact for as long as possible. When Shanu breaks the kiss, she mouths at his neck and shoulders instead, and Rajesh gives a choked cry as her lips run over the tender mark of her bite. Her cock brushes against the back of his thigh; he has not been less than half hard, and as they tumble to the sheets again Shanu falls behind him, both of them on their sides on spooning position in which the wife is spooning her smaller husband, and guides her giant dick in his ass again.
“Shanu,” he cry . This time, she enters him in one thrust, all the way until he can feel the pressure of her knot against him. She had explained – with the same frankness that she approached all sexual matters – that her own inexperience made her fast to tie her knot; he has never cared. Now, all that he wants is to feel her inside him, and he catches one of her hands with his and draws it round to kiss her knuckles. “Please. Please.”
Already inside him, she does not need her hand to guide her, and he sucks kisses against her skin as she thrusts, slow and grinding movements that make him hard again. Sweat, slick and semen are already mixed together on his skin; afterwards, he knows, they will bathe, languid, and laugh. But each shallow thrust stretches him out further around her knot, and she pants in his ear as her fingers tighten around his, until finally he feels her slip wholly into him.
There is always a moment when it feels like it is almost too much, the first moment as Shanu fills him completely and even before her knot begins to swell. Then she shifts, settles her hips, and the fullness ignites to pleasure in his bones. Shanu growls against the base of his neck, for a moment wholly manly voice, and Rajesh presses his lips to her hand and whispers her name over and over as he feels her knot swelling inside him. Her thighs shift against his as she rocks her hips, settling into place, and then with a moan he feels her climax.
Heat washes within him, a dull awareness of her seed that had felt so strange the first time he had experienced it, her cock throbbing and hot inside him and her knot tightening. She kisses the back of his neck, formless and wet, and rocks her hips just slightly. Every movement makes him gasp, feeling flushed and sensitive and overwhelmingly content as she wraps her body around him again.
Her fingers relax in his, and slide up to stroke the pendant at his neck, the only thing beside his glasses that he is still wearing. It always remains cool, no matter how long it rests against his skin, and more than once before they have managed to tangle their pendants together and interrupt a passionate embrace with knocked heads and laughter.
“Rajesh,” Shanu murmurs, against his shoulder. He makes a vague sound for a reply, already feeling himself grow heavy with relief and satiation. “You know, you could practice your Ivrit, as we are here.”
“That’s,” he starts laughing, tries to nudge her with his elbow, but only succeeds in squirming against her and gasping at the way it sends late shivers through him. “Don’t be mean.”
Mouth pressed against his neck, she laughs again, and Rajesh tries to frown over his shoulder at her but ends up sniggering as well, until the jostling becomes too much, too tender, and he swats at her hand. She complies, murmuring wordlessly and tugging down a cushion to better support their heads. He can feel her fingers toying with his hair.
“Tell me about Atlantis,” she says, more softly.
“You know it better than I.”
“Perhaps.” Her fingertips brush his scalp, soothing, and her free hand moves to the centre of his chest, right over his heart. “But you see it through new eyes. You see a wonder, where I see streets that I have walked for so long the almost…” she trails off, and for a moment her fingers still, then she sighs against his skin. “Not now,” she adds, quietly, and he reaches back to gently rub her hip. Her thoughts on her own Kingdom are conflicted; that is the one thing that he still struggles to imagine. “You see it in new ways. As beautiful.”
“It is,” he said, making the words sound like a promise. He twisted as far as he could, and she propped herself up on one elbow to brush a kiss across his lips. “It always has been.”
And he suspects Shanu knows that, for that moment, it is not just the city about which he speaks.
