by Hana Starr
The feeling was very strange to her; on the one hand, she was still very aware of what was around her in then now; she could feel Momo's warmth curled around her feet, the soft blankets lying atop her, and Faer easing themselves beside her on the bed. She felt how warm she was growing under the bundle of blankets and could consciously move her foot out from under them. And yet, at the same time, she was also not there, in the comfort of her bed with Faer beside her and Momo at her feet. She was swimming freely in Faer's very essence, letting their affection seep into her soul and basking in the sensation of being...what was that? A quiet whisper of Faer's thoughts drifted into her thoughts as clearly as though they had spoken aloud, saying, 'You are different and that is both frightening and fascinating. I feel as though I could love you and that thought is strange to me.' The feeling was frightening, but welcome, and even reciprocated on her part.
To reassure Faer, she thought in a whisper, terrified that anything thought louder would spook them away, 'This is all new to me, too, but you're wonderful and I'm already falling for you and I'm alright with that because you make me feel safer than I've ever felt with someone before.' She sucked in a breath and held it, anxiety tearing her insides up at the admission. Present telepathic connection to another being notwithstanding, she had never before left herself so exposed with the admission that she just murmured in the corner of her mind that Faer had floated toward.
Somewhere, amidst them sharing their affections and floating in this new, shared space, something else begins to well up inside of her – in them both – that they had either not accounted for or conveniently pretended wasn't a possibility: arousal. Hot, thick, and heavy between them, it began as a niggling, mutual curiosity amidst their thoughts of feelings and love. That curiosity fed itself in a continuous loop between them until Anne Claire accidentally conjured an image of the both of them entwined together, connected as lovers.
She hadn't even realized that Faer had seen it, too until they let out a physical gasp. She didn't even have a whole second to feel mortification for her lewd thought before she felt it; a sudden, undeniable spike of heady arousal from somewhere in their link that most certainly didn't come from her. Her interest piqued, she allowed the thought to flourish, an entire scene of them coupled enacting itself like a video that didn't exist.
Faer panted beside her, and suddenly she felt everything that they were now fantasizing about together; suddenly, in their shared mental space, Faer was tracing the contours of her body until their long slender fingers were inquisitively mapping out her body, as if trying to find the places that felt the best for her without having to ask. They were doing their best to understand what pleased her the most through her thoughts guiding them, and that concept astounded her.
In the relative darkness of the shared space between their minds, the rest of her senses came alight with heightened stimulation; the could feel the soft blankets on her bed slipped away from her body by inches as she writhed against the long, cool fingertips mapping a path along her side toward her hip. Her back bowed rigidly with a gasp when those clever lips of theirs began to leave open mouthed kisses along her middle, from her hip up to the valley of her breasts.
Her wriggling in response to their touches allowed the fabric of the blankets to brush her body with feather light caresses as they inched down her body. When their hands had crept up the concave planes of her body and cupped her breasts, she felt them lean closer to her; their breath brushed against the valley of her bosom, her nipples pebbling from the attention, and she sucked in a breath in anticipation of what they might do to her next.
The conflicting sensations – the feelings of what the two of them were conjuring in their shared space versus what her body was physically feeling; she could feel Faer lying beside her on the bed with their hands lightly holding her head close, and yet, she could feel them all around her, fingers gently probing inside of her and making her shiver in pleasure. The conflicting sensations that were coursing through her left her feeling as though she were floating between worlds; infinitesimal possibilities of where this could go and what they could for one another, to one another ran through their linked connection, and all at once she somehow felt pleasure from every parallel version of their mental coupling. The overwhelming sense of mounting ecstasy send her reeling.
Chapter 10
'Tell me where to touch,' their voice was low and breathy in her mind, and a delicious press of their hips against hers in their shared mental space gave away their arousal, long and hot against her thigh. She felt their breath stutter against her when she moved her thigh to stroke against it. Flames lick her insides as her mind tried to sculpt what their organ would feel like working inside of her based off of what she could feel. 'Guide my hands, Anne Claire. Tell me with your mind what will make you feel euphoria.'
“Here,” she nearly fumbled for him with her physical body before remembering, through the haze of her arousal, that all of this was just in their minds. With a clumsy but cohesive thought, she reached for their hand, groping around awkwardly for a moment before finding their spindly arm and sliding her fingers down to their hand to guide it further down the planes of her body.
With her coaxing, they cupped her feminine folds, her outer labia fluttering from the teasing touch. 'Need to feel you more...' through the pleasant fuzziness clouding her mind, she hoped they understood what she was asking for. To try and aid them in their endeavor, she recalled times where she touched herself and the movements of her fingers against her clit that sent her toppling over the edge. She felt Faer's lips part against her neck in a shaky exhale, and it was only then that she realized that she forgot to breathe.
A conundrum that was rectified almost instantly when she sucked in a gasp of air at the sensation of their finger entering her. Her mouth hung open as they inserted a second finger after giving her a moment to adjust. They slipped it even deeper in while the first stayed occupied at her bundle of nerves, and she keened at the sensation of being filled with something hot and thick and real and definitely not hers as they replicated her memories of touching herself, lazily tracing slow circles around her swollen bud. She bit her lip in concentration at the colossal effort it took not to physically rock her hips as she lie next to him outside of their connection.
Sensing her need for friction in their fantasy, Faer began to slowly, steadily piston their finger back and forth inside of her at an agonizing pace. Their other hand trailed back up her torso to cup her breast, squeezing the supple flesh they found there and using their thumb to flick her pert nipple. Her molten core was tightening under Faer's careful attentions, and it wasn't long before she felt the evidence of her arousal begin to leak past her folds and slick their fingers even more.
“Ah,” she was struggling to keep her cries of pleasure quiet now; she was slipping closer to her climax, and she knew they could feel it from the way that they began to pump their fingers inside her more vigorously. “Close, close, I'm so close-!” The small of her back lifted off of the sheets from the pressure built up inside of her that desperately needed release.
It was shameful, really, how quickly she was being carried to this state; she has had lovers, even attentive ones, but no one had ever managed to so deeply stimulate her, had been able to reach down to far into her center and rock her entire being with barely a physical touch. Still, through her heightened pleasure, she remembered that Faer had still not been stimulated in any way, and felt a level of guilt welled up inside of her that staved off her orgasm long enough to at least attempt to rectify that.
'Teach me,' she pleaded. 'Show me what makes you feel this way,' and they did. The image of Faer in her mind guided her hands toward the junction of their thighs, where she found a hardened length not unlike a human erection to greet her fingers – so she hadn't just impressed her previous experiences upon them, she mused. 'My people can adapt to the mating styles of their partners,' came the explanation from Faer when she telegraphed her surprise. 'My people are a rather
malleable race.'
The answer was good enough for her, and she allowed the mental projection of her hands to move in the way that Faer fantasized them touching them. The two of them took their time to feel out one another in their minds, to see what made each other moan in pleasure, and Anne Claire found herself lost in the sensation of their mutual pleasure mounting on top of itself as her orgasm built inside of her once more. She wriggled her hips against his fingers working her insides in an attempt to help him find the stoke that will make the coil in her belly snap.
As it turned out, she didn't have to wait for long; Faer found it for her with one artful stroke of her insides that caught every sensitive nerve that she had inside of her in such a sinful way that she had to refrain from biting her hand to keep from wailing as her pleasure peaked. When the coil in her belly did snap, she swore that she saw stars from the intensity of it. The haze of her orgasm hit in waves, and Faer was clearly an experienced captain, sailing their fingers through every cresting tide. By the time the surf of the sensation had calmed, their fingers drifted out of her like a ghost ship, and in the high following her climax, she realized that what she had experienced hadn't been only her orgasm; Faer was panting heavily and shivering beside her, and she reveled in the way that they shared their pleasure along with their thoughts.
Chapter 11
Just as suddenly as it had begun to truly delve into their deepest desires, Faer suddenly ended their fantasy and began to ease them both back out of the link, no doubt to stop things before they went too far. In spite of the fact that Faer had done a phenomenal job gradually pulling them out of each other's heads, the loss still felt abrupt to her, and reality crashed in around her with the nuanced subtlety of being tossed into an ice bath.
“I am sorry, Anne Claire,” Faer murmured beside her. They must have seen how jarred she was, for they smiled uncertainly. “I would have wanted to go further and share more with you, had we kept things going much longer.”
“I wouldn't have minded,” she couldn't help but grumble as she nestled deeper into her covers. Her reaction earned her a genuine chuckle from Faer. “I wouldn't have cared how far we went, not with the way you made me feel, Faer.”
“Nor would I,” they admitted when their snickering had ceased. “But I also know that doing so would tire you out even more than you already currently are. The rest of that process, the art of love making is an activity best saved for when we are both revitalized and rejuvenated.” They reached up and smoothed back her hair, tousled from their activity. “Sleep, so that I may show you my world in the morning.” Anne Claire was sure she murmured something in the affirmative, but couldn't be certain of very much else beyond that as she fell into the deepest, most contented slumber she had ever experienced in her adult life, clinging to Faer's hand like it was her only connection to the one person in either of their universes that made her feel like she belonged somewhere. From the linked emotions that Faer was channeling in a hushed murmur through their touch, the sentiment wasn't one she felt alone.
With morning came the sun streaking through the fluttering curtains and rousing Anne Claire from her slumber. She begrudgingly sat up, blinking away the last hints of sleep from her eyes. In spite of the warmth of her blanket, she felt a strange chill under her skin once her senses had caught up with her, and it didn't take much to attribute it to the feeling of loss when she woke up to a room decidedly missing other occupants; Momo was nowhere to be seen, and had apparently led Faer out of the room along with him. Swiveling her legs over the edge of the bed to rise for the day, she hissed at the feeling of her feet hitting cold wood flooring.
The action was so mundane, her surroundings so familiar to her that for a moment, she wasn't entirely sure that she hadn't just had a long, vivid dream. For a few moments, she stood in the center of her room, letting her mind settle and decide whether or not it was all real. As she dressed, her mind cleared, and the undeniable traces of her connection with Faer confirmed for her all over again that what had happened was real. Still, it struck her as oddly convenient that all of her clothes were in the exact places she had left them in her room back home, but chose to not complain; better that she have clean clothes than have to make do without. Clothing situation successfully dealt with, she padded out of her bedroom to try and find the other occupants of the space.
Her search was short lived, as she rounded the corner and spotted Faer, still as ethereal as the moment she saw them step out of their ship, perched on one of her comfy armchairs and flipping through one of her older journals absentmindedly. Faer's eyes had taken on a warm golden hue as they took in the words scratched into the paper and the odd sketch here or there, and Anne Claire pondered whether or not it was because they were trying to divine more of who she was and how she worked from her entries.
“Your poetry fascinates me, Anne Claire,” she jumped a bit at Faer's voice ringing in the quiet of the space. When they lifted their gaze, their eyes glittered in amusement. “My apologies, I did not mean to startle you,” their gaze flitted back to the pages in the book. “These were all written when you were stargazing, correct? I seem to recall you having an affinity for writing your thoughts when you look at the stars.”
“Um, yeah,” Anne Claire said sheepishly as she went to her kettle to start the water for tea. “I probably already said this, but it's a comfort to me. I like getting to go somewhere that I can get my thoughts out without anyone else being there.” She stood in the kitchen uncertainly, waiting for the telltale whistle of the kettle to let her know when it was ready. “Sometimes when I don't have very many thoughts to write down, I like to make up tales of how some of the constellations might have gotten their names, or how they came to be stars.” She picked her favorite green mug up from the shelf and set it on her counter before fetching the wet food for Momo from the next cupboard.
“I enjoy reading them,” Faer replied, closing the book delicately and setting it back on the table where it was left with a sort of reverence that Anne Claire was confident she could never be worthy of no matter what she achieved in her life.
“Would you like something to eat or drink? Or...” she tilted her head in contemplation at a thought that occurred to her. “Is there anything in my house that would be safe for you to even consume?” Faer smiled, eyes shimmering an emerald green.
“I am able to eat human food, but I am not hungry. Thank you for the offer. Although,” their smile grew almost sheepish, like they were about to ask her for a horrifically inconvenient favor. “I do enjoy hot tea. It has always been enjoyable, no matter what planet I get it from. May I have a cup with you?”
“Of course.” She nodded, pulling a second mug out of the cabinet. “Other planets have tea?” She asked as she set the mug next to hers. “Though now that I think about it, I guess that's not really all that surprising. Brewing leaves in water is probably a thing every self aware species has tried at least once.” Plopping one tea bag of simple black tea in each mug, she leaned against the counter as she continued to wait for the kettle to finish boiling. When she strained her hearing, she could hear the faint simmering of the water at the bottom of the kettle – shouldn't be too much longer now for it to be done.
“That is not far from the truth,” Faer said as they rose from the armchair and joined her in the kitchen. They stopped in front of the sink counter opposite from where Anne Claire was leaning against, giving her a respectable distance. “There are many things in life that are very similar in many civilizations that have never even met each other before,” they smiled almost wistfully. “Life has its own unbreakable patterns.” The silence between them was a comfortable one, broken only by the shrill whistle of the kettle demanding their attention after a few more moments. Anne Claire clicked off the stove top and poured the steaming water into the mugs to allow the tea to steep.
“Just need to wait on it to steep and cool a little. Don't want to start working today with burned tongues. That would just drive me to distraction,” they
shared a laugh at the thought, but Faer seemed to trail off in thought soon after. Anne Claire picked up on the tonal shift in the room and tilted her head with an inquisitive stare, waiting for Faer to speak what was on their mind in their own time. It didn't take long for them to realize that she was asking for clarification, and a sad smile graced their face.
“I am simply worried about how our work will progress, and whether or not we would be able to discover a cure. Or at the very least, a treatment for the illness.” Anne Claire nodded.
“You never did tell me about this illness,” she commented, wanting to tread carefully with such a sensitive topic. “What are the symptoms? What-?” Faer placed a long finger against her lips, gently silencing her.
“I can show you everything to do with the illness, my people, and every pertinent piece of information about our anatomy and physiology that would help you understand everything that you need to,” they beamed proudly down at her. “I am one of the leading experts in the field. You will be receiving the highest level of education in the subject.”