by Iris Astres
“What happened? Did you faint, or did you fall asleep?”
She didn’t know. She’d just shut off somehow. “Asleep, I think.” Carefully, Jane resettled her weight on both her feet and drew a few slow breaths. She’d barely slept all week, churning with adrenaline that apparently was crashing now, leaving her unsteady. “I should get out and go to bed.” She stepped back, and an odd sensation pierced her consciousness.
“No,” she said, staring at the man’s erection pressed against her belly.
“No, what?”
She frowned ferociously at his hard penis. Her eyes rose to the damaged beauty of his face. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what? Is this what worries you?” He ran one hand over the thick length of his cock. “You want it to go down again?” She blinked and watched. The big rod shuddered, twitched, and then deflated, slowly but visibly, like time-lapse photography. Perversely, when it was completely gone, she missed it.
“When I’m aroused, I’m still myself and in control,” he said. “There’s no reason to worry. Here.” He gave her the soap. She turned back under the water and made quick work of soaping up her front and rinsing off. When she turned back around, she looked at him again, remembering how she’d found him—half-unconscious and strung up in Rick’s garage.
“Come on,” she said. “Get under here. I’ll wash your back.” He complied with no complaint. Jane studied his nude body from behind. Gorgeous. He must have had them flocking to the brothel. If she were into sex, she’d definitely hand over a paycheck or two for the right to maul him for a while. His shoulders were extremely broad. It made him look a bit triangular, which was odd because she’d previously thought of him as one smooth, solid line. But he was very broad, then narrow, then rounded with a thick, appealing curve of ass cheek underneath his tapered waist. She washed him with meticulous attention, pausing at the angry abrasions down his right side. “Does this soap sting?”
“I don’t mind sting.” He chuckled, but Jane didn’t really get those little jokes of his. She took great care examining him for dirt or other foreign bodies. It seemed that he’d been lucky, protected by his clothes and all that muscle. He flexed under her hands, and she thought again how nice such a strong body was. Broad and thick, the line and shape like ancient sculpture with the color of expensive wood. His head tilted back as she stroked his shoulders. He moaned with pleasure in the water’s warm cascade.
With some regret, Jane handed him the soap and stepped away. He washed quickly, expertly, without seeming to favor any part over the other. It was becoming clear he was the stoic type where pain was concerned.
“I can’t believe macho posturing is interplanetary.”
“What?” He turned to her. She saw only the good side of his face—the dark-rimmed eye above the chiseled cheekbone.
“Some of that must hurt.”
“Part of training as a lover is learning to absorb physical pain.”
“Why?” she asked. “You don’t let women beat you, do you?”
“Of course.” He turned the water off and leaned out of the tub to grab her towel and hand it to her. She motioned to another on a rack beside the door.
The rest she managed in a sort of stupor, trying not to think too much of whips and chains and sex dungeons. Or Rick, and what she’d once called home. Jane dried off, blotted excess water from her hair, pulled on a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, and crawled into her bed.
There wasn’t any other bed. Her alien companion soon got in beside her. He was naked now. She stiffened slightly at the touch of his smooth chest against her arm.
“I’m in control of myself.”
He’d said that before in the same sultry whisper.
“What exactly does that mean?”
“It means the state of my cock should never worry you.”
“Can you just make that thing go up and down at will?”
“Yes.”
“Huh,” said Jane. Could Earth men do that too? She didn’t know. Didn’t know much of anything about sex, actually. Before Rick there’d been little opportunity to learn, and after Rick there’d been a strong desire not to know more than she had to. “What counts as sex for you?”
He paused. She thought she felt his body shift a tiny bit beside her. “Any honest, unreserved exchange or pleasure counts as sex to me.”
“Like food sex? Vampire sex? The kind that keeps you guys alive?”
Another meditative shifting of his body beside hers. “It isn’t actually like food,” he said. “Perhaps a little like vampire blood, assuming anyone has any idea what that’s like. To me, the closest parallel is temperature.”
“Temperature?” His skin felt very warm to her.
“My sexual balance is the same as your internal thermostat. A lack of contact is more like exposure to the elements than starvation. If you’ve ever been very, very cold, you know that there’s a strong drive to get warm again. A drive so powerful and all-consuming it can overcome the will to reason. From what I’ve heard, sexual deprivation is much like that: an alarming kind of pain that triggers a will to survive, precluding any other thoughts. After which, there’s a gradual lessening of awareness, followed by a deep and final sleep.”
“Huh,” Jane said again. That actually made sense. She hated to be cold. For a moment she imagined dying huddled somewhere in the icy mountains. Was he really suffering that way? He didn’t seem to be. “What about Backusian women? Do they suffer from sexual cold as well?”
“They do,” he said. “But men are more susceptible.”
“So how does that work out? Are women just expected to be cock-warmers when they don’t feel like it?”
“Not likely,” he said with a chuckle. “Backusian women wouldn’t stand for that. Long centuries have taught us how to make sex worth their while.”
Jane was skeptical. Maybe even cynical. But she was also ready to help him balance out his sex-o-stat if she could. He’d helped her with that spider, which was something huge for her. The fact he’d taken care of everything without making her feel bad for needing it was worth a less than pleasant favor in return.
Within reason.
“So what really counts as sex?” she said. “Spell it out this time. No poetry.”
“Anything is sex,” Raj said. “So long as it’s real and hot and satisfying.”
Jane took a second to consider that.
“Anything,” she repeated. “Including handjobs.”
“Delightful,” Raj said easily.
Jane let out a sigh. She’d been through the list of sexual contacts she could maybe stand, and handjob was the only thing she’d ended up with. Assuming the hard-on in the shower had been an invitation. Maybe not.
“Does it matter who you have sex with? Don’t you have to be attracted to them?”
“I don’t know if I have to be attracted. I only know I always am.”
“Always?” This seemed crazy to her.
“Have you ever seen an ugly fire?”
“You mean the kind that burns down houses full of sleeping children?”
“No.” Of course not. But he answered her with so much patience. Patience, as it happened, was a quality she liked in men. “I mean the kind that warm you on a chilly night.”
“So you’re saying women are like fire in the cold.” It was the nicest version of a hole’s a hole she’d ever heard. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay?”
“Okay means I can do a handjob,” she explained. “Not very well, of course. But I can stand it. I’m sure that doesn’t sound particularly sexy, but you did say you liked honest exchanges.”
“I did.” He nodded. “I do. And I accept your offer, provided that it’s freely given.”
Jane thought it over one last time. The complete darkness inside the tiny bedroom made it easier.
“Just hands,” she said.
“Just hands,” he agreed.
She reached for him and he was hard already, slightly bowed and straining up into
her palm. The hard-on was impressive. The skin that covered it was baby soft. She stroked it like a kitten, and it seemed to arch and purr for her—soft and warm and eager. Jane shifted closer to him, got up on one elbow.
His hard cock mesmerized her, which was strange. Rick’s had been a little like a pointed finger, but this one was as tactile as a living sculpture, pulsing in her hand. Raj held still for her, letting her explore the texture and the give. After which, Jane still had no particular idea how to get him off. “Feel free to offer some suggestions,” she said, stroking up and down his length.
“All right.” Raj folded his hand over hers; his body lifted upward. “My suggestion is that you lie back and spread your legs.”
RAJ LISTENED TO the skidding heartbeat and the shallow breaths of the woman lying still beside him. Again he felt the bravery beneath the fear, and that was moving. Very moving. She’d saved his life already once today. And now another sacrifice. For that he swore he’d serve her well.
It struck him again how different she was from the women he’d known. At the Body House, his partners all, by definition, wanted sex. Jane was his first taste of uncertainty. Reluctance. And it was quite a nuanced delicacy. Thousands of women. And her. A different breed. Amazing, in his years of experience, to come upon this sudden novelty: a new note, a new shade, a new blush of arousal in a man who’d spent his life immersed in it.
But as for hating sex, he didn’t think so. What she hated was frustration, as any normal being would. At least he could be certain he would spare her that. Raj was quite good with his hands.
He rolled onto his side and pushed up at her T-shirt.
Jane tugged it down again. “If you have to take my bottoms off, okay, but I don’t like the way my body flops around when I lay down without my clothes on, so let’s keep this top part on.”
Raj smoothed the T-shirt back in place. As to her “flopping around,” nothing could be more appealing. He was going to enjoy watching her body move and shake and spasm from all angles. This, however, was no time for argument.
“That means your T-shirt might have cum on it when you wake up tomorrow. Will that be all right?”
Jane shrugged, eyes on the ceiling. “There’s a washer-dryer in the pantry. Come away.”
“All right, then.” He pressed his cock into her thigh and touched the cotton covering her sex. “These can come off?”
She wriggled out of the soft, boxy garment, kicking at it when it reached her ankles. “Okay?” she asked.
“Oh yes.” Raj cupped the silky hair between her legs and waited while she settled back.
When he’d joined the Lover’s Temple as a very young and ardent man, Raj had spent the first year learning how to stroke a woman into orgasm. Lottha, Mai, and Pan had all been warm and patient tutors, but when they’d left him, he still practiced on the skin above his knee, so obsessively that even now he sometimes felt his fingers moving through the old, familiar patterns—swirling, pulling, tapping—the movements were all second nature now.
For some reason he never teased a woman into orgasm with just his fingers at the Body House. That would make this night a rare and memorable delight. Raj began to pulse his hand between Jane’s thighs. He bent his head into her neck to nibble at her ear. The wariness hadn’t left her. She was stiff and still but trying to relax, he’d give her that.
He dipped two fingers into her warm slit.
She was wet. A gratifying fact. To both of them, it seemed. She gasped and wriggled on his fingers, surprised by her own body. Maybe that was why he had such trouble reading her. She didn’t know herself.
He moved his fingertips up and down her pussy. One side. The other side. Just shy of her hardening clit.
She liked it. Even through her tension, every out breath brought her slightly closer to him. He lifted his hand away, set it down again, and then he tapped, one finger just a fraction of an inch below her swollen nub. Tap, tap, tap. For some reason, that simple gesture always had his lovers writhing up into his hand. Jane included.
Methodically and with great care, Raj moved into the circling strokes. He brushed her lightly with one fingertip, deeply with the better part of his whole hand, lower to build up arousal, higher to sweeten the pleasure. Reading her breath, her movements, the rush of heat that rose into her neck and cheeks, he gathered, circled, tapped, and circled back again. He made the wetness wetter, slicker, wetter still. In time the moist flesh became plump and full, her clitoris a hard and straining place inside the growing dampness. He used both hands now, pinching the flesh of her mound to raise her hood a little higher while he caressed her.
Jane’s thighs rotated outward, hips circling, hands rising in abandonment and passion. He stroked her with more purpose now, up and down from cunt to clit. She tightened and began to quake. From time to time he heard a small, ecstatic cry.
When he slid his fingers into her, she gasped, stiffened, the breath locked in her chest. He waited, looking down at her, his fingers flexing against the soft, fleshy underside of her distended peak. “That should feel good. You don’t enjoy that?”
He swept his thumb upward into her dripping slit.
“Oh God.” She moaned. Her body arched. He slipped his fingers in a little deeper. He could make her come now, a deep, shaking orgasm she’d remember until the next time her legs spread for him. It would be good, but he could make it so much better.
“Pull this up.” He nodded toward her T-shirt.
She sighed, not wanting to.
“Pull it up.” This time he nibbled on her neck and let the words rumble along his breath next to her ear. “Let me see your tits.”
She arched a little off the bed, excited by the words or the idea or both. Her outer thigh rocked back and forth against his straining cock.
“Can you feel how hard I am?” Perhaps it was his voice she liked. Her hips lifted a little higher off the bed. He swept his thumb in a wide circle through her pussy, the stroke that added torment and delay.
“Are you warm?” she asked.
She put so much into that question that at first he didn’t dare to answer.
“My love,” he finally said, “you could set snow alight. I’m scorched and ready to go up in flames, once I’ve had my fill of what’s under that shirt.”
Jane yanked her T-shirt to her armpits and turned her head away from him. Raj took his time examining the offering. Her breasts were absolute perfection. Full and sexy like the rest of her. Temptation sent a tingling rush of blood into his cock.
He bent his head and licked the soft skin with a slow, flat tongue. She moaned. Her head changed sides, and she let out a shaking breath. Ah yes, of course she’d wanted all along to be admired, as she should be. It was a sacred duty Raj had been born to uphold.
With tongue and lips and teeth he gave her nipples the attention they deserved. Between her legs his strokes were shortened, stopping shy of that hard, swollen bud. He rubbed his cock against the soft skin of her thigh and kept pace with her, standing ready to explode into a brilliant pulse of pleasure when she wanted that last testament of his appreciation.
Her legs spread wider. Her hips moved with his hand to bring him higher, lower, there where it felt best of all. In her passion Jane merged utterly with his ideal of sex, the perfect woman on the edge.
It was time to push her over.
He stroked his thumb over her clit until she moaned and lifted into him. He stroked again. Again. And there she was. Soaring, shaking, sighing in descent. Her body shuddered with a prolonged climax that was the most gratifying thing he’d ever seen. Raj drank it in. He warmed himself against the flame and waited for the moment when she almost fell to earth again to give her his echoing pleasure.
“Say it and I’ll come.”
“Yes, come,” she sighed, and he thrust hard against her. The pain that lingered in his body glowed red hot and ratcheted the pleasure higher. And Raj did come. With his face cradled by her luscious tits, he rocked himself against her heated flesh and le
t the pleasure shoot from him. Desire boiled up and overflowed onto the hot, sweet give of her exquisite body.
Chapter Five
Rick Bard was a fucking moron. Any doubt Bill Dancer might have had on that count had been wiped out in the last twenty-four hours. Dancer tapped his chin and glared up sideways, going through his growing list of grievances against the man.
To start with, Rick’s fat wife had freed the alien in his garage. That was hard to believe and even harder to forgive. They’d spent all night kidnapping that sex monkey. Bill had personally sat freezing his nuts off through the whole thing. He’d arranged the fake hookup, the ambush. And even with his expert planning and his supervision, not to mention a few bats and nine irons, that space motherfucker had almost killed Seth with one lucky punch upside the head. It had been a real pain, wrangling that freak, and he’d been kind of hoping it would all be worth it.
The first alien they’d got hold of had been too young and scrawny to put up any real fight. Publicity-wise the whole thing had been damned near pointless. The kid hadn’t regained consciousness long enough for them to even get their cameras out. But this big, dark one might have been good fun. If Rick hadn’t let that stupid cunt he’d married walk off with him.
Bill scowled. He spread his bad mood in a slow pan from Rick’s house to his garage. Five fucking men eight feet away and all of them had sat around while she just cut the creature loose and hauled him off somewhere. Those dopey grease monkeys probably waved good-bye between bites of their goddamned turkey sandwiches.
So now those months of planning were all down the tubes. No mutilated body to deliver. No torture to send out to infocasts. Not now and not for a long time to come. He wasn’t fool enough not to see that.
Those Backus fuckers were disgusting, but they weren’t exactly dumb. After this kidnapping, they’d circle their wagons. Step up their security. It would take more than a horny phone call to get one out alone again. So that was good and fucked too, thanks to Rick.