Free Fragile Bond by Rhi Etzweiler

ground. It had been much too long since he’d had a well-muscled, horny male crouched over him. The furr palmed Marc’s cock through his trousers, fingers tangling with his as Marc tried to focus on undoing the buttons. He growled his desperation and impatience. He sounded nothing like a furr, but he didn’t care. It made Hamm’s own growl shift into a purr and drop an octave, touch growing more insistent. Marc squeezed his eyes shut, tried to take a deep breath and focus, but his skin tingled everywhere. The tension building to the point of pain in his groin kept interrupting his efforts. How many thousands of years of military refinement, and nobody had devised anything better than buttons?

Hamm listened to Marc growl softly, watched him squirm and writhe as he fought with his clothing. When Hamm tried to slide his palm greedily up the searing heat of Marc’s hard shaft again, the soldier hissed and pushed his hand away.
    That wouldn’t do. The ’nip scent of his pheromones wasn’t enough anymore. He wanted to taste skin and sweat and musk and cum. He growled his impatience and Marc echoed the same sound and tone, right back at him. It cut through his arousal—which felt so intense he doubted he could escape this encounter without demanding a measure of gratification.
    Reccin had sensed it and stayed back in the tree line. His second was far from stupid. He’d scented what Hamm had, too, though he’d questioned the soldier longer than Hamm had needed to be certain of the truth.
    This soldier wasn’t their enemy.
    He wasn’t so lost or mindless that he would take what wasn’t freely offered. It wasn’t about dominance—not this. Not right here. When Marc continued his ragged breathing and fumbling, Hamm’s patience expired. He wanted to taste. It didn’t matter where he tasted him, just needed skin. He dipped his head, desperation coloring his growl as he licked along Marc’s neck, then closed his eyes against the zing of pleasure that shot through him. Marc’s scent had nothing on the way he tasted. It was as though the male had rubbed ’nip leaves all over his skin. Twice a day. For a year. The vibration of sound as he purred resonated through his entire body, easing the painful edge of relentless need into something softer. Offering a small measure of relief.
    He opened his eyes when he realized Marc had left off fumbling with his uniform and gone completely still. All the details were getting lost in the blurry hues of thermal sight, Marc’s body a sea of orange and red bleeding into white.
    Eyes half shut, mouth hanging open, he had his head turned to the side, his chin angled up. Exposing as much of his neck as possible. “Do that again.”
    The whisper was a low rasp. It sounded strange, almost pleading. Part of that had to be Hamm’s painfully heightened senses. He could hear the ragged quality of each breath sawing in and out, even the drumbeat rhythm of Marc’s heartbeat. Desperate to calm down and regain a semblance of control, he curled claws into the ground, flexing hard. Some of the details filtered back through the shades of thermal, hovering just in between like teetering at the edge of a cliff.
    A slow exhale of his breath wafted over the swath of skin he’d wet with his tongue. Marc trembled against him in response, and he couldn’t resist the urge to taste again. Hamm dragged his tongue up the bared column of Marc’s neck, hesitating with his lips at the front to feel the soft vibrations as he moaned.
    And then he journeyed south over Marc’s body, burying his face in warm, musk-heavy spots as he found them. The soldier roused enough coherency to finish freeing himself, and Hamm’s nostrils flared at the scent that slammed into him.
    Hamm pushed the cloth out of his way with rough, impatient hands and buried his face against Marc’s bared stomach. He ran his lips, the tip of his tongue up the length of the man’s shaft. Curling his tongue around the head and sliding him into