Chapter 3

Blue eyes opened lazily. He heard his guard at the bedroom door, heard the dismissive reply given to the housekeeper who felt she should be able to enter the room and tend to the Queen-Elect. But Gavorn was quietly and dependably dismissing her.

"The Primarch's Second and the Queen-Elect wish to not be disturbed at this time."

Exasperated huff, stomping down the hall, slammed door. The housekeeper was gone. There was a reason Gavorn was chosen as a personal aide. He was calm. Smart. Reliable.

The Second, even though obviously not of the same station as the Primarch himself, was always guarded, especially while on alien ground, just as he was always well armed. When he was at his most vulnerable, during sleep, during sexual arrangements, few as those were for an individual of his status, an armed guard was posted at each point of entry to the room. This day, his first in his mate's quarters, was no different, except that her staff were completely oblivious to the regulations and procedures until they were confronted with the guards. Garrus was beginning to get a sense that those individuals who had sought to keep them separated would soon show themselves in their actions on this morning.

Grace St. Clair Chehada, fifteenth Queen-Elect of K'OrSachea, stirred quietly in her sleep. Stretched. Lovely. Garrus thought back to the vision of her on the ground beneath him the night before. Eyes wide in surprise, the look of fear almost immediately replaced with a wordless question, then desire. She'd started to say something, then stopped. He felt her relax beneath his hand. The rain had stopped, the warm evening was quiet. The wet grass smelled sweet. He knew that the ground was too hard for her to take his weight comfortably, and he wanted her to always recall thoughts of him and their consummation of this union with fondness, not difficulty. He rose, then carefully and effortlessly picked her up, and carried her to her bedchamber.

The memory was a blur until they were in bed, and then all was clear. The bed was large, the sheets soft, though frankly they would have been wasted on him. His skin, for the most part, was not as sensitive as hers. She lay in the bed on her back, fully naked, and watched with quiet intensity as this alien creature revealed himself to her.

She had no idea what to expect, and had imagined in varying degrees anything from slightly non-human to almost literally bug-like, but he was not as far from what she was programmed to relate to as identifiably male as she had tried to speculate. Tall, broad shoulders, narrow waist, strong legs. Those secondary male signals, his spurs, were now unsheathed, quite like polished bone, but not edged or sharp. Not dangerous if she bumped against them. But the major differences in his body and a human man's were their coverings, his had gleaming skin which she realized was actually very nearly reflective. Protective plates, thicker and broader at the base of his neck and the top of his back, went all the way down his spine. No nipples, turians weren't milk secretors. The doubled-muscles across his chest were broad, and his arms were strong, extra muscles accommodating the three powerful digits. He walked on his toes like a big cat. Graceful. Skin looked tough, but not scary. His upper body strength was obvious, and long hours holding and working with heavy guns and equipment must have added to that.

She tried hard not to look at his groin, tried not to be obvious or girlish, tried to prepare herself to not be afraid of what she saw…. In her fantasies he was an ideal, exotic and exciting. Reality was about to present itself, and she was mentally stopped in her tracks in indecision. What was there, what did he have to offer her as a lover? Something truly alien, something scary, something disappointing, pointed, sharp, snaky, scaly... ?

It was none of those things. If a cock could be beautiful, his was. It was so dark blue it was nearly black, thick, and already very hard. Large. It was streaked with the shiny skin he had elsewhere, almost tattooed-like in decoration. Grace wondered if the markings were an evolutionary answer to a display behavior that the turians had. Did the markings mean something to other males, or to females? She could literally see the pulse. Ridges ran down the shaft. He carried his testicles against his body, not free-hanging like a human male.

She looked back at his face. His neck was thick. His face, which would have been the most prominent feature exposed to the intense Palaven sun, was the roughest, and next was the skin on the tops of his shoulders. The roughness tapered down to nearly smoothness on areas that wouldn't have been damaged by UV rays or other solar radiation. The ice-blue eyes were direct, gentle and intelligent, but sharp and incisive as lasers.

He approached her and carefully placed a hand on the bed near her head, and leaned on a powerful arm, his face hovering above her. He looked at her gently, intensely, for a long moment. "Don't be afraid of me. I know how to do this. I won't hurt you." The long black hair had fallen in a halo around her head, the pale skin of her heart-shaped face accentuated with the Mirrorian markings at the edges and forming a small peak at the top of her hairline. They flowed down the edges of her face, then were sprinkled on her shoulders and down between her perfect, firm breasts. A combination of small stripes and spots, in some places the distinctive Mirrorian markings looked almost like tattoos of flowers with their designs, feminine and exotic. Her dark eyes were flecked with green and gold, small fangs peeked from under her upper lip. Otherwise she appeared completely human with long, strong limbs, firm and athletic body… strangely painted fingernails, though those were pretty, too. Some female ritual to advertise her beauty to her male, no doubt. He tried to appreciate them for a moment, realizing she had probably done this at least partly for his benefit, though he was not programmed to respond to most of the signals that a human woman gave out. But those things that he was programmed to home in on were unmistakable. Those spoke to him insistently, loudly and with great intensity, like his appreciation for that small patch of fur at the apex of her strong legs, which was at the gates of that place that was calling him and turning him into an animal, panting with anticipation. Asari and turians did not possess that little patch of decoration that humans did, but right here, right now it only added to the spicy exotic taboo of her.

He stopped for a moment, a thought invading his mind that he could not turn away. It took his breath in its incredible implication. He was about to thrust himself deeply into a creature not of his own kind, had in fact plunged headlong into this odyssey as though very nearly starved for it. An act that only a few centuries earlier on Palaven would have gotten him a sentence very like what the human's called drawing and quartering. This was bestial. Shameful. An abomination.

But hard as he tried, he could not find the thing about her that was supposed to repel him. She was honorable, intelligent, kind, beautiful. She was actually able to make him laugh with more regularity than anyone he'd met since John Shepard had died. She was a delightful person, and he respected her immensely. She had worked tirelessly to help his people overcome the crippling damage the Reapers had left behind, sending mining equipment, industrial nutrition replicators, medical synthesizers, engineers and specialists, and whatever else she could spare. The K'OrSachean technology, inherited from an extinct race called the Zeeni, was impressive, and had so far been adaptable in some pretty amazing ways to turian needs and physiology. Already she had helped save thousands, hundreds of thousands if the future generations were taken into account. Her people respected and loved her, too; the Commoners, that is, the ones that the Elitists despised in spite of their careful speeches to the contrary.

What gripped him most about her was that Garrus could feel the painful loneliness in her, watched her all the long nights she worked hour after hour as she tried to pull away the suffocating layers of rhetoric and antiquated law that had been kept in place for centuries. The Elitists were trying to keep their feet planted firmly on the necks of the Commoners, and she was trying to pry them off. Garrus knew loneliness. It had been his constant companion for most of his tumultuous life.

The dark room was cool, the sheets soft beneath her skin. He rose slightly, hovering over her carefully on strong arms, and moved his face slowly, purposefully down her body, tongue gently stopping at a nipple, a curve, the crook of an arm, always softly purring to her in a deep rumble. Finally he arrived at the tiny spot of fur, and she felt him lift her leg to get at her. The warmth of his tongue separated her soft lips and explored her, first gently, then deeply with long, slow strokes into her, and suddenly she realized that she was coming. She couldn't have stopped it if her life had depended on it. She came quickly and breathlessly into his mouth, and he purred a bit louder for a moment in approval. He was now intimately familiar with her anatomical roadmap, and yes, indeed, they were compatible…. no question about it, this was going to be enormously satisfying. He lifted himself above her again, and took an arm and turned her back to him. Deep penetration for the first time would be easier for her from behind. Taking her from the front as many humans liked, at least according to what the research had told him, would come later, once she had gotten used to him. He smelled her wetness, the taste of her still on his tongue, salty delicious, heavy and saturated with hormones and need. He'd needed to make sure she was wet and ready before he consummated this union. He knew he wouldn't … couldn't… stop until he had all he wanted.

He lifted her hips to him, supporting her with one powerful arm, supporting himself above her back with the other, aching to plunge. His natural lubrication, along with hers, would ensure that there would be no tearing, but nonetheless, he had to be careful this first time. He bent over her, and she felt hot breath on her back, on her neck, near her face. He smelled delicious, strange, spicy warm. He was panting with his need by now, sounding as though he were almost actually in pain. He feared he might lose consciousness; sometimes a literal side-effect to a turian male's first bond-climax. He didn't want to fall on her, crush her, but he could not hold back. He thought he would die if he didn't get his cock into her now, begin the hungry, urgent thrusting. He found her, and pushed in one steady thrust into her. The pleasure seized him, and now it was his turn to feel dizzy, literally almost weak with the sensation. Spirits, if I die right here and now, I have found heaven…. The heat of her, the impossible tight softness, grasping him, was absolutely overwhelming. He was astonished that something could feel like this. He came the first time then. He couldn't help it.

The first time she came was in his mouth, and she thought she'd died from ecstasy right then and there. But when he came inside her the first time, his hot seed spilling into her and down her legs, she could not get her head around the pleasure. She was swimming in sensations. His cock was big and, if she hadn't been wet and ready, it would have been painful. She had only ever imagined taking on that kind of ridged, hard thickness, but it slipped into her, on and on until she thought there could not possibly be room for more of him. His cock pushed out thoughts of anything else… until he came. The hot, tingling juices, more of that sweet spicy scent, and his hot breath as he panted with his ejaculation, all congealed into sensations that were threatening to completely overwhelm her. She thought she heard herself literally scream with this pleasure. And then she realized that the cum itself was generating feelings, warmth spreading through her and causing her to come again, ferociously. Holy shit… She couldn't catch her breath it was so good.

Then he started to thrust, first slowly, then gaining momentum. Stopping a moment to readjust her, he resumed, holding her in place so that she was where he wanted her. He was utterly animal now, and she was nothing but an object to provide him with pleasure. He ground into her, hard, growling low each time he came, more of his cum causing her to orgasm wildly around him. He relished that sensation, the soft needing grasp around him, and pursued it on and on. He had utterly lost the capacity to communicate in anything but the growls, and he did not care. The slender body beneath him was warmth, tightness, wetness, delightful in its helplessness around him. He heard her cry out, whimper, scream once, but it was as though from a distance that he heard it. It was not cruelty that drove him, but the ache in his body, his back, his loins, demanding him to push his seed into her hard. That she was human and would never have a child from him quicken within her was of no relevance. His body did not register that, only that the hungry need be satisfied.

At some point he needed to see her, and turned her over onto her back. She was light as a leaf, wet with sweat and his juices, delicious and open and sweet. He moved over her gently. As strong as he was, and as much as his strength translated his need, Garrus was by his very nature gentle. In war, he was fearless and deadly, never reckless, always quick, strong, cunning. Away from the things of war, he was gentle. He did not need violence for its own sake; it was simply that he was strong enough to do what was necessary when it was needed. He propped himself over her, opening her legs wide and moving a hand under that hard curve of her butt bone, and slipped himself into her in one steady thrust to the hilt.

Grace threw her head back, arching her body up to him. She was as animal as he, nothing but a hot throbbing cunt around him, wide open for him, letting all of him in. He stopped a moment, took his hand from her back, and captured both of her hands above her head and pinned her to the bed, holding her down. It was a purely turian act, because a turian female had talons that would have ripped his back, or face, or chest to shreds in her ecstasy. Somewhere in his head, he knew this female was harmless, but turian instinct guided this, and he needed to do it. And she loved it. She couldn't have said why, but to be captured, held down, and pleasured to the very limits of her capacity by this strong, proud, remarkable creature who she completely trusted was pure, unadulterated ecstasy, and she felt quite literally that she could not get enough of him.

He plunged on, driving her deep into the soft bed as he pushed inside her. He watched her as he slid in, pulled out, slipped back harder this time, slower next, feeling the soft flesh part around him. He sighed in pleasure with each push. Beautiful. Delicious. His…

When finally he pulled carefully out of her, ultimately giving in to fatigue, he slowly laid down beside her on the bed. She was covered in sweat and trembling. Her entire lower body ached with his use of her. The throbbing was on the verge of painful. She moved a hand down there, and found a bit of blood, though not a lot. She was, after all, out of practice where sex was concerned, having been worried of the possibility of a secretly chosen lover selling the story to the media for a quick buck. So the last time she'd been with a man, it had been with a body guard back in the academy, when no one was looking. He was tall, handsome, and utterly terrified of being with her, terrified he'd fail, terrified that he'd get in trouble for doing this, though obviously not enough to not attempt it. It was a pretty uncomfortable, clumsy affair. Any sex she got after that was purely through her own hands.

Later…. She had no idea when she had fallen asleep or for how long, but she was awakened by lightening. The rain storm had returned. She looked over at Garrus in the low light of the room, and saw nothing but an outline. Then in another flash of lightening, she saw his eyes were open, watching her steadily, almost unblinking. She was suddenly uncomfortable under that gaze.

"How long have I been asleep?" She tried to sound conversational, but it was difficult. He'd just been inside her body and abused her with pleasure that was still causing her to twitch and ache at the thought. She felt vulnerable, exposed, weak, but also deeply satisfied, gratified by him and his attention. Possibly that was what love was about. Letting herself be herself, without feeling the constant aching shame that had been her constant companion for most of her life.

"Forty-three minutes, sweetness." Always exacting. Attention to every detail. That was Garrus.

She smiled. He wasn't entirely sure why, but it was welcome. Humans did that all the time, made gestures and tried to initiate conversations for no apparent reason at all. He did not mind, but he was keenly aware that humans sometimes thought he was cool, impolite, and even blunt when he did not respond in kind. He tried to think of a bit of conversation, but each thing he thought of bringing up, from an item in their surroundings to the weather, seemed embarrassingly trite at the moment. He had just bonded his life to hers, shared pleasures with her, body and soul, and what he was really thinking was… Thank the Spirits for this one night. For letting it come to me in my life before it was over…. For letting me know this woman and the sweetness that came with her...

Human sex had turned out to be a blissfully heady and fantastic experience. The difference between this female and a turian was the difference between slaughtering your own meat, dressing it, cooking it, and eating it rather than having it simply delivered warm and delicious on a plate. Aside from the minor and insignificant blow to his face and the short, symbolic chase, there was no blood, no endurance test. No proving his strength, his worthiness, his prowess. Simply having it offered, and taking it. He suddenly felt a gush of guilt for that vulgar thought that had risen, unbidden. He pushed it away, silently ashamed for disrespecting both species and both kinds of females, although guilt was frankly an alien concept to him for the most part. Guilt was reserved for those piercing, agonizing memories of losing his squad on Omega, for not being fast enough to avoid being too wounded to follow Commander Shepard onto the Reaper ship and dying beside him as duty demanded. But he didn't let those memories invade this holy place now. She had invited him into her bed, her body, her world, he had accepted the call. And he would do so respectfully.

They had showered, and then she had called the kitchen to have food delivered. Although he did require liquids in some quantity, and especially tonight, Garrus didn't want anything else, having eaten just three days ago, and wouldn't need nourishment for another two. That humans needed to eat almost constantly was a subject of several turian jokes, not all of them kind. Grace ate when it arrived, and then went back to the bed and laid down, not knowing if he would join her. Again, she fell into a deep, nearly trance-like sleep, and didn't stir until morning.

Garrus did not immediately return to their bed. He tapped a monitor in the room, ensured that his guard and aides knew where he was, though he really had no doubt they had been discreet witnesses to the entire sequence of events leading up to his carrying his mate to her room and shutting the door behind him. They had specific orders in advance not to interfere with him while he was with her. Whatever the outcome, none of them doubted the Second's ability to handle this situation, and would do so as he saw fit.

When he returned to her as she lay naked and soft in the sheets, she grumbled softly in her sleep. Garrus lay beside his new mate, his new heartbeat, as a turian would call a mate, watched the lightening through the window and listened to her breathing for the rest of the night, remembering, letting his mind wander across the years.