by K. C. Cross
“Now what?” Nyleena asks. “Where should we go?”
“Right here,” I say. “Right here is just fine.”
I lead her over to a dark brown tree trunk with leathery skin. It’s a fat, wide tree. Nothing as big as the ones on the perimeter, but on a planet this tree would be hundreds of years old.
Which, obviously, it’s not. Because I planted this tree. I planted all the ones down the middle of the forest. I spent years in here growing things.
I turn to face her. Smile. Then let go of her hand and take off my shirt.
Her eyes widen a little.
I toss my shirt on the ground and start toeing at my boots.
“Afternoon tryst?” she asks.
“Hell, I don’t know what time it is, but it’s almost a new spin by now.” I kick off one boot. Then the other. Watching her for a reaction as I untab my pants and slide them down my legs, kicking them aside too.
And then I’m standing naked in front of her.
She says nothing.
I take her hand again and place it on my lowest rib on my left side. “You see this scar?” I ask. She looks at it. Feels the length of it with her fingertips. “It’s white now,” I say. “But it took a long time for that one to heal.”
She raises her eyes to meet mine. “I know what you’re doing.”
I shake my head and whisper, “No, you don’t,” then give her a moment to let that sink in. “Because that’s not what this is about, Nyleena. If you never tell me about that scar on your stomach I’m gonna be OK with that. I just want you to know me. My scars all have a story too. And I’m gonna tell you about them now. One by one.” I sit down in the dirt and extend my hand. “You wanna hear my stories?”
She nods, then takes my hand and lowers herself to her knees in front of me.
“Good. This one,” I say, going back to the long scar of thick too-white skin on my ribs, “was, believe it or not, from Beauty.”
“What?” She laughs.
I nod. “She and I were fuckin’ around once and she accidentally pushed me into a heap of junk parts while we were on this old station. Blew a hole in my envirosuit and everything. It was a fucking mess.”
“Oh, my God,” Nyleena says. “What happened?”
“I lost air pretty fast. Went unconscious, I guess. Woke up in a medical pod a day later on some stupid Outer Highway ship stop. They didn’t have the best medical pod but the one on Lady wasn’t working right and they took me to that shithole and paid premium to use their crappy facility. Anyway, it left an ugly scar. But it really wasn’t an ugly experience. Just an accident.
“But this one…” I say, pointing to the one across my stomach. “This was an ugly experience. We were on a station with these creepy snake-like aliens and they attacked Valor. He got the worst of that one, for sure. I really thought he was gonna die that time.”
“That time?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Valor and I have come close to death more times than I can count. Once we got caught by this alien quadrupedal race.” I shudder. “They had four legs and two arms and they were definitely not human. In any way.”
“Not human?” she says. And then she shudders too. “Where the hell was that?”
“Some outer edge spur. We took almost a hundred gates to get there. We were gone almost a year to get that part.”
“Suns,” Nyleena says.
“You want to hear more?” I ask.
She nods and points to a patchy scar down the inside of my left leg. “What’s that from?”
“That’s from a burn I got when my salvage unit decided to blow up while I was in it.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Some kind of chemical reaction in the engine core. I had a lot of burns. And Lady’s medical pod was working just fine, but she had to make a decision on which ones she should give full attention to and which ones could be given lower priority. So this burn was low priority.”
She looks at it for a long time. Maybe a couple of minutes. And I let her think. I let her work this all out. Because while I’m not here to encourage her to tell me anything personal about her scar, I do want her to understand something.
“You have a lot of them,” she finally says, tracing a small one that cuts across my right knee.
“These are just the ones you can see,” I say.
Her eyes immediately dart up to meet mine.
“You get that?” I ask. “These are just the ones you can see. Because most of them were taken care of properly. No scar, right? Just the memory of the injury. I had one right here,” I say, pointing to my neck. “Not a scar, obviously. I had a top-notch medical pod that time. But even though there’s no mark, there’s the memory left behind.”
She nods.
“It was a woman,” I say. “Just an ordinary human. I met her in a bar on Fornax Station about eight years ago. Valor and I were sharing a room because they were booked up for some giant festival. That festival saved my life. Because she slit my throat while I was passed out drunk. And lucky for me Valor came home the same instant she was leaving. Saw me, killed her, got me into a pod and I woke up seven weeks later. All better. At home, here on Harem. In my own bed. No sign that anything happened. Not much memory either. The bad kind anyway. I remembered her. I remembered her being nice to me. I remember her lying to my face. Of course, I didn’t know she was just pretending to like me. But those memories of her and me laughing, and drinking, and having fun… they were worse than having no scar. Because I had no clue, Nyleena. No clue she was sent there to kill me. It really fucked with my head. I didn’t mess around with a girl for almost a year after that. Because every time I thought… well, you never know. You never can trust people. There are very few people I trust.”
She looks up at the trees. Then sighs. “But you trust me?”
I nod. “I do,” I whisper. “That’s why I brought you here. You have my two biggest secrets now. The spin node and the forest. What you do with them is up to you.”
And then I shrug. Because I’m done. That’s all there is to say.
She looks at me and holds my gaze for a long while. Probably seconds, but they feel like an eternity.
And then she sighs and lifts her shirt up over her head.
I do not look at the scar. I look at her. Because it’s my turn to hold her gaze.
“I was nine,” she says. She looks down at her bare stomach. At the long white scar down her middle that cuts her in half. “And every day I went into medical. Every day, Luck. And the first thing they said to me was always the same. ‘You are not a person, Nyleena. You are a weapon.’ And I would say, ‘Sure. OK.’ Or something along those lines. I would agree. And that agreement was permission to treat me like a thing and not a person. I was a weapon.”
I want to pull her into my chest, wrap my arms around her, and hold her forever.
But I don’t. I make myself wait.
“So this day I was there in medical. But this time when the woman said, ‘You are not a person, Nyleena. You are a weapon,’ I said…”
She stops. Take a deep breath.
“I said… ‘I am not a weapon. I am a person.’ And I didn’t even mean it, ya know? I was nine. I was joking. I was playing around. And she grabbed me by the arm, dragged me over to the medical pod, and said, ‘I am not a person, Nyleena. I am a teacher. Now get in.’
“And this wasn’t unusual. Yet. Because that’s what I did. Every fucking day. I got in. But this time when she closed it up, the sleep didn’t come.”
“Oh, shit,” I say.
“They cut me open with a yellow laser. And the only thing I really remember is the light that came out of me. I don’t know if it’s really just locked up inside my body or not. I have no idea. But it came pouring out of me and then I think I must’ve passed out. Because I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up. Kinda like you did. In my own room in the harem. In my own bed. Alone.”
I prop my elbows on my knees so I can hold my head in my hands. But I
never stop looking at her.
“They showed me the footage later. I saw it. I saw her put me in that pod. I saw her shut the lid. I saw my face as the panic set in. And I saw the laser slice me open. And then…” She stops to swallow hard. “Then I saw what that light did.”
She looks down, but immediately looks back up at me. “I killed that woman. I blew that whole section of the medical bay up. She let me kill her, Luck. To teach me a lesson. No hesitation. No thoughts of her own personal safety. That’s who we are.”
And then she leans forward and places her hands over mine on either side of my face, and says, “You get that?”
I know what she’s asking. Do I accept that?
Do I accept that she is a terrible thing?
Do I believe she’s a monster?
And I nod and say, “I get that.”
Because she’s not the only monster in this forest.
She lets out a long breath of air and frowns. Her eyes are glistening with silver light. “I don’t want to be me. But if I have to be me, then I’m gonna be all of me.”
I can’t wait any longer. Not one more moment. I reach out and pull her into my lap.
I hold her face in my hands, just the way she did with me. And I can see my eyes reflected in hers. They glow with a light I really don’t understand at all.
And I say… “You can be all of you with me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - NYLEENA
Luck. Who knew? Who knew this handsome, two-dicked muscle-man could make me feel so many things? I’m not a feel-y kind of girl. I don’t make attachments and before this day—this moment right now, maybe—I can’t say I’d have used the word ‘love’ to describe those feelings for anyone other than, maybe, Lyra.
“But I love you,” I say.
He smiles, chuckling. “But? You love me?”
“I mean… I was having this whole internal conversation with myself about feelings and how I’m kinda stingy with them. But I love you.”
“Ah,” he says, grinning. Charm spilling out of him the way light spills out of me. “I see.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“You know. Taking time out of your day to bring me here and have a real conversation. I know when we get back out there things are gonna start. You’re right. There’s no way to stop it. But…” I pause to look at him. Just enjoy him like this for one more moment. Stare into his eyes and appreciate them. Appreciate the fact that here, right now, everything is perfect. “But… we could turn time back a little if you want.”
“Turn it back as in…”
I reach around my back and unclasp my bra. Let it slide down my arms and then toss it into his heap of clothes.
“I have something to show you too,” I say. “I didn’t realize it was a secret but I see now that it is.”
“What kind of secret?”
I place a finger on his lips and say, “Shhhhhhhhh,” then stand up and ease my pants down my legs. Kicking then aside before climbing back into his lap.
“Naked sex,” Luck says, ignoring my request for him to hush. “I have a feeling that’s pretty much the highest honor you could bestow on a guy.” He grins. And oh, God. That charm. How did I ever live without this man? “You know what I feel right now, Nyleena?”
“Hmm?” I hum as I slide my fingers into his hair and press myself forward so my breasts are touching his scarred-up chest. I rest my forehead on his and let out a long, long breath. A breath I feel like I’ve been holding in my whole life.
“Lucky.”
“No,” I say, lifting my hips up just enough to grab his cocks and slide them up to my entrance. And ohhhhhhhh, for the love of all the bright suns in the universe. He feels sooooo good. “I’m the lucky one,” I say.
And I am. Because today—in here, in this most secret of all secret places—I will show him the real me.
We begin to move together. Like we were born in this joined configuration. Like two lost souls that finally get their chance to merge. It’s slow. And easy. And the light I hide inside me—always afraid of what it can do and who it can hurt—builds.
And I let it.
Because if ever there was a time to show him the bright side of the darkness I hold within, it’s now.
“It’s now,” I whisper.
He kisses me. His mouth soft and tender on my lips. No rushing. No lusty madness today. Just our lips, and our tongues, and this new love we’re building together.
It is the perfect kiss.
One hand rests on my breast. Gently squeezing in a moment of possessiveness. A claim, maybe. On my body.
And I don’t care that I have to share myself with Luck.
He can have all of me. Any time he wants.
But the slowness becomes not enough. And we find ourselves moving faster. Things become more urgent and heated. The fire within me begins to leak out and when we break away from the kiss and stare into each other’s eyes, his light is trying to escape as well.
His eyes sparkle and I see my own reflection in them. I see everything in them. I see us, standing in front of the spin-node galaxy, holding hands and lit up by the brightness of a billion suns.
There is no darkness in me. Not now. Not with him. We are nothing but light.
I feel his cocks swelling inside me. Growing within my stretching muscles. And my luminous flux jumps up several levels.
It scares me for a moment. And my heart skips. Doubts creep in and I want to pull back and say, Wait. Just wait.
But Luck must sense this hesitation because he wraps his arms all the way around my middle and hugs me tight. Reminding me that I’m not alone anymore.
That I’m not a weapon, I am a person.
“You are my person,” Luck says. “And there is nothing inside you that scares me.”
I want to argue. I want to tell him he doesn’t know what he’s saying. I want to explain that I’m dangerous. That we’re all dangerous.
But he kisses me before I can get the words out. And then, in the middle of that kiss, he whispers, “Trust me.”
“I do,” I whisper back. And I don’t think I’ve ever said that to anyone. So I say it again. Just so we’re both clear. “I do.”
My body responds to this deceleration. My hips moving back and forth across his lap with more urgency now. There’s no dirty talk. There’s no faking it. There’s nothing but commitment.
His muscles go tight and I respond by tightening mine too. Squeezing his cocks until he begins to growl like an Akeelian male asserting dominance.
But he doesn’t dominate me. Nor I him.
And the light inside me likes that. I can tell. The light switches from the nothingness of silver-white to a full spectrum of colors.
All the colors of my princess sisters swirl around inside me. All of them. Yellow, and red, and green. Orange, and blue, and indigo.
And then… then I am violet.
We are violet.
“Come,” he says.
And his command is my wish.
So I do.
There is a flash. An explosion of ultra-super-violet light. It’s black at first. Black because it has to be. Because I am all the colors of the universe and they are muddy, and thick, and mixed up.
But then… then they separate out. They find their own wavelengths and mix with his as he comes inside me.
My eyes are closed and when I realize this I open them and see…
“Holy fucking shit,” Luck says.
My whole body is still buzzing with the climax. Waves of pleasure shoot through every cell and flow out of every pore of my skin. Thin strands of light in every color bathe the forest around me and the flowers, that were so tiny before we started, grow.
Bigger, and bigger and bigger. And the trees grow too. The trees shoot up around us. And all the millions and millions of flowers expand and take over the forest until every bit of light from above is blocked out because there is nothing around us but soft purple-pink petals.
A
nd they glow.
Like that dream world I know is out there somewhere, but I can’t find. They make a glow. And the light is like a fog. It has weight, and heft, and mass. And it wraps around our naked bodies like a blanket of warm, golden goodness.
“Holy fucking shit,” I say. Breathless and amazed. Stunned and excited.
Luck says nothing.
We just look at the glowing flowers around us. Cuddled up against our skin. Fluttering lightly in some invisible current of wind that maybe we create.
For years, we just look at it.
And become part of it.
We see what we can do together.
We see what we can create.
And then Luck repeats his earlier pledge. He says, “You can be all of you with me, my princess.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - LUCK
There was no darkness inside her this time. No hint of that hidden secret she’s been carrying around with her like a burden. She sits in my lap and laughs. Not some crazy maniacal laugh, either. Just a soft, happy one.
“What the hell?” she finally says. “What happened?”
“Light, princess,” I say. “The flowers needed your light.”
“Are they supposed to be this big?”
“No,” I chuckle. “Well, maybe. I dunno. I’ve never seen them grow like this.” But then I pause because something about this place that didn’t make much sense when we first arrived suddenly does. “I bet we did this,” I say.
“The flowers?”
“No, the trees. These trees down the middle of the tube. I planted these. None of them are older than thirteen or fourteen years. But they’re huge now. I think we did this the last time we had sex. When you let loose.”
“I make things grow,” she whispers.
“You make things grow, princess.”
“Oh, shit,” she says. “What if… what if the fertility properties of these flowers don’t work unless there’s a silver princess to activate them into this... second-stage growth?”
I tap her head. “You so smart.”
She laughs. And it’s big one this time. A guffaw that reverberates through the canopy of flowers above us. “I’m serious.”