by H. E. Trent
“I—”
“I’d like for you to use them on me. Gently, of course. I won’t nod off this time.” She walked forward on her knees until she was nearly directly over his face. She wanted him to see what he was doing.
“I—”
“Trace along the slit. The lips part, but I’m sure you know that.”
He pushed some air through his teeth. “In theory.” He brushed the knuckle of his index finger tentatively along her folds. Somehow, she avoided bearing down on him as the digit grazed her entrance, and then again as he pulled his finger forward.
“Wet there,” he whispered.
“Am I?”
“Mmm.” He slid his hand from her waist down to an oblique. He stilled his palm on her belly, just over her mound as a probing finger from his other hand gently worked her lips apart.
She pushed his hand down so the heel of his palm pressed against her clit, and the electric prickles from the pressure took her breath away. When she’d been in the trade, no one had cared whether or not she found pleasure in what they were doing to her. She’d had to re-teach herself that. She’d had to give herself permission to explore her body and learn what it was capable of feeling beyond pain.
“Be gentle with that, please,” she whispered, and slowly rolled her hips, circling her aroused nub against his palm.
He swallowed again and worked his free hand down her slit once more. “What else?”
“Just touch me,” she whimpered.
“Inside?”
“There, too.”
He nodded and dragged his tongue across his lips. She wanted to lean down and take his plush bottom lip between her teeth until he gasped, but that was far too intimate an act. Jekhan women didn’t kiss. That sort of congress simply wasn’t done, but the act seemed so sexy.
She’d become something of a craven voyeur in the past few months. People on the farm seemed to always be sneaking kisses. Headron and Erin when he thought no one was looking—not that they cared if anyone were. Trigrian and Murki kissed nearly every time they passed each other in a corridor, and had ever since they were teenagers.
The act seemed to be a sort of warning of what would come soon—a promise from one lover to another, and a reminder that they were desired.
And Marco was. She wanted to show him that.
She put all her weight on her right arm and scooted back so her face was over his, and then bent, pressing her lips to his open mouth and sliding her tongue between his teeth.
“Mmm.” He slid his hand up her spine and tangled his fingers at the nape of her neck, and she let her body fall onto him, heedless of her weight. If any man could hold her, Marco could.
Tilting his head, he delved hungrily into her mouth, seeking, taming, flicking, as his fingers surged into her hair.
She sucked on his tongue, using strong suction. She wanted to keep him where she wanted him, and to show him how eager she was—how willing she was to give to him.
The heavy knot of her hair fell against her back, stunning her and making her rhythm falter.
He plucked pins and ties out of her hair and cast them aside.
“You…want to touch my hair?” she whispered.
“Mmm.”
“Why?”
“Because men like to touch things that are pretty?”
“No one on Jekh pays attention to women’s hair. There’s no custom.”
“This isn’t about custom. It’s about what looks nice. I’ve wanted to see your hair down for months.”
“Why?”
“Because you were untouchable, and that made me curious. Can I see you?”
She furrowed her brow, perplexed, but leaned her weight onto her hand anyway to let him see.
Her hair wasn’t anything special. Not like Courtney’s whose hair was long and curly, or even Ais’s. Owen sometimes teasingly called her “Rapunzel.” She tended to wear her hair in one long braid that reached nearly to the backs of her knees, but the length suited her. She was small and sweet and really was something of a princess.
Sera was just…Sera. Nothing special.
Smiling softly, Marco twirled his fingers around a lock of her hair. “I may think of a name for that color one day. Something that sounds better than cherry cola.”
“What is that?”
“A sweet drink that’ll rot your insides, according to my ma, but I always liked it, and so I took my chances. Why don’t you ever wear your hair down?” He let the hair fall only to pick up a length on the other side.
“You think I should?”
“I mean, if you want. My opinion doesn’t count for much.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t care.”
“Yeah?” There was wonderment in his voice, and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why. “All I can say is that I like the way you look when your hair is loose. You look softer. Less stern. More…approachable. But maybe that’s not such a good thing.” Shrugging, he let the hair unspool from his fingers then pushed it all over her shoulders.
“Maybe not,” she said. “Sometimes it’s easier to not be seen.”
“Not a luxury I can claim intimate knowledge of, being the size I am.”
“No. I suppose not.” She leaned back down again to pinch his lip between her teeth. The reddish tinge she’d put there had started to fade far too quickly.
He dragged his calloused hands up her spine, stimulating the sensitive flesh and making her core tighten with anticipation. “I like touching you,” he whispered against her lips.
She lowered her body onto him, unable to bear her weight on one arm any longer. Her left shoulder throbbed from the weak arm’s constant dangling.
On top of him was an exceedingly pleasant place to be. His warmth comforted, and his solid form beneath her was like a rock she needed to hold onto. For too long, she’d feared she’d blow away. Sometimes, a lack of permanence was desired. Men would get off of her, eventually. They’d sell her back to her pimp. She’d go back to her sisters and live to fear that they’d be separated on another day.
But she was finally at home, and she was safe. She wanted more than bare minimum. She wanted pleasure, too. The pleasure could chase away the lingering darkness.
She eased down him, pressing her lips together tightly to hold in her moans. The rough hair on his chest and belly chafed her tender nipples as she wriggled downward. Pleasurable abrasions from coarse bristles over his cock made her clit tingle like never before.
The rise and fall of his chest sped as she bore down against his smooth and turgid tip, and his hands—on her back—stilled.
“Let me,” she whispered, even as she swung her hips in minute arcs to open herself around him.
He was large, but that was good. The sensations he sparked in her wouldn’t be so easy to ignore, and she’d gotten so used to ignoring the feelings.
“Maybe you’ll like this, too,” she said on a gasp as she pulled him slowly into her depths.
As slowly as she was moving, her speed was perhaps not cautious enough. Her sex burned somewhat unpleasantly with the stretch. She ought to have used her fingers to aid his entry, but she hadn’t wanted to signal to him what she was doing. She hadn’t wanted to be told to stop when she wanted to claim him so badly.
His fingers pressed painfully into the flesh of her ass and his eyes rolled back. “Sera…”
“Does that feel good?”
“God, yes.”
“Then take some more.” Taking a deep breath, she inched down his cock, spreading her knees farther as she took him in. She wasn’t entirely certain she was built to take him in, which was incomprehensible. Every man who’d taken her had been Terran. They were, supposedly, built smaller than their Jekhan counterparts. That was what the ladies in the crews had said.
“Perhaps they were wrong,” she said quietly and laid the side of her face against his shoulder. “Gods.”
The pain was beginning to taper off from burning to mere fullness. She could feel him breaching
her more, slowly easing into her. She could feel her clit straining and erect, needing some stimulating friction. Her belly ached from her clenching her core, from holding her breath.
“Who was wrong?” he asked. His thighs quivered beside her knees and he moved his hands down to cup the bottom of her ass, pulling her along him.
Reflexively, she clenched around his shaft, and his deep moan vibrated through her bones.
“The…women in the crews,” she said breathily, and rocked in small increments up and down. Already, her hips ached, but she thought she had him where she wanted him.
Thick and long and unmoving—exactly what she needed.
She arched her back and notched her teeth into her lip. Down as far as she could go, she pulled her clit through his rough hair and felt wetness surge. Up and down, slick but so full. And when she pushed onto her hand, the end of him tapped against some bundle of nerves that made her insides go tingly and her nipples ache.
“Oh!”
“What?” He smoothed his work-roughened hands up her sides, making her skin prickle and sex clamp with anticipation as he neared her breasts. “Am I hurting you?”
“Only in good ways.”
She swallowed down the tight lump in her throat and closed her eyes. “Marco?” she murmured.
“Mmm?” He palmed her breasts tenderly and circled his thumbs around her nipples. His thighs continued to quiver, but he kept his hips still. He left her to find her pleasure, and the pleasure had been right there all along.
She put her head and chest back down, squeezing his hands between their bodies as she rolled her hips and worked the end of him against her inner erogenous zone. “Right there,” she whispered. “Right…there. So lovely.”
“I want you to feel good,” he whispered.
“I do.” Stars, did she ever. “I never want to get off you.”
He chuckled softly, and kissed the top of her head and then her forehead when she turned her face toward him.
That apparently wasn’t enough for him, because he pulled her up him a bit and took her mouth fully, rhythmically thrusting his tongue against hers, and eating her sounds of pleasure.
The kiss was too much, or perhaps the subtle vibrations of his cock were, because suddenly her belly knotted tight and nerves seemed to spill open and let out huge vats of needles that pricked and needled at her clit, her nipples, her lungs. She couldn’t feel her sex anymore, only delicious pressure that overwhelmed and forced her air out of her in a rush.
“Asht. Merdo. Kisht… Fuck.” Her right hand was in his hair, somehow, and if he minded her pulling it, he didn’t say so.
There was pain or pleasure or perhaps some mix of both on his face, and he forced his hands down to her hips again, pushing her off him.
Liquid heat poured between their bodies and out of hers, and her head fell down, neck too tired to hold the weight any longer.
“I’m sorry, Sera. I didn’t—”
“No no no, no sorries.”
“But I—I did that. I may be inexperienced, but I know better.”
“Don’t fret. Let down my waist, please.”
“But—”
“Shh. My neck.”
“Sorry. Uh…” He eased her down onto her side next to him and stared down his flat belly at the beads of ejaculate painted there.
“I’m not fertile yet,” she said blandly, not really understanding the Terran preoccupation with potential “accidents.” There were no accidents on Jekh. Even if women weren’t particularly enamored of their lovers, they considered every child to be a blessing.
“Are you sure?” He sat up only enough to grab a discarded towel from a pile at the bedside, and then sponged his belly clean. “I worry about ruining things for you.”
“How could I be further ruined? I’m already a soiled woman.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He folded the towel over itself and handed it to her.
She cocked a brow, but took the wadded cloth anyway.
“You would have to explain yourself. I know how hard reintegration already is for you ladies.”
“Would you be so ashamed if I were to tell people you were the father?”
“No!” he said indignantly, pushing himself up so his spine touched the wall. “Do I worry a little that people would chew me out for touching you? Yeah. Even I feel like you’re supposed to be off-limits, and that I shoulda kept some space between us, but—”
“But what?” She cleaned the stickiness from between her legs and handed the towel back to him. “But you felt like you couldn’t tell me no?”
“Not at all. I didn’t want to tell you no. I like you, but I feel like you weren’t supposed to be mine. It’s not fair that I got you.”
“Then who should have gotten me?”
His mouth opened, then closed suspiciously as if he’d had an answer in mind but didn’t want to speak the words.
“Speak,” she said, sitting up. “You were going to say someone’s name, weren’t you?”
“No, I just—”
“You make an awful liar, Marco Cipriani, so don’t even try. I’ve been intimate with countless liars and I know the looks of them. You’ve been truthful with me up until now, so don’t start changing your habits. Who?”
He grimaced and looked down at the hands he was wringing. “I shouldn’t have touched you, knowing that…someone was interested.”
“In me?”
“You gotta know men want you, Sera.”
“Because women are rare here.”
“Yeah, they are, but that doesn’t mean men don’t have tastes and that they wouldn’t have picked you even if the population had been more balanced. You’re beautiful.”
“I’m a cripple with a young child.”
“So?”
“Anyone who’d take me has to be desperate.”
“Oh.” He stopped mashing his hands together and looked at her through the corners of his eyes. “So I guess I’m desperate.”
“I didn’t mean you.”
“But you said anyone.”
“You’re trying to shift the discussion, and that’s not fair. Who were you stepping aside for? I think I have the right to know.”
“Doesn’t matter, but he’d probably be better for you.”
“Why? Is he someone you think you can’t compete with? And if so, why would you think that?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he cleared his throat. The sequence was a trademark of the nervous and cowardly.
Which is he?
“I like you, Sera. I wish I could have you, and I wish I were cocky enough to believe that I wouldn’t be the loser if the choice came down between me and someone else. History hasn’t been so good to me. You need someone who knows how to throw his weight around, and who’s fully networked here. Someone like that could do a lot of good for you.”
“And you can’t?”
“I’m afraid I’ll continuously fall short of your expectations, and Sera…” He turned his head toward her then, and nudged her chin up. “You deserve to have the highest of expectations. You Merridons are an institution around here. People trust you and care about you, and expect that you’ll always do the right thing. Your history is long here, and I’ll understand better than anyone if you need to take steps to protect your future.”
He eased off the bedside, picked up her dress, and then turned to her, holding the garment over his arm. “I feel so fucking stupid stepping back from this.”
“You should.”
He shook his head. “I have to. That’s the right thing to do. I have to get out of the way, and if that doesn’t work, then—”
“You think I’ll come back?” She snatched the dress from him. “You’ll watch and wait to see if whomever fails, and if so, then maybe I’ll circle back to you when he has?”
The way he hung his head and stared at his feet hinted that he thought exactly that.
“Kisht,” she spat, and crawled off the bed with her dress. “Be alone, then. Suffer.
Don’t even look my way. If you do, I will make you regret doing so.”
She stepped into her dress, shoved her weak arm into the hole and then put her strong arm into the other. “Thank you for the dick. I enjoyed myself.”
“Please don’t be like that.”
She tutted and shoved her shoes onto her feet, not caring that her bodice wasn’t fastened. “You imbeciles think you can make deals with each other about who gets what woman as if we have no say? You’re really no better than the slavers.”
“That is not fair!” he shouted indignantly, and scowled at her.
“Isn’t it? If you really think about things, the circumstances really aren’t much different. Before the Terrans came, we endured whatever men we were put into trios with for the good of society. After you came, whichever men wanted to have sex with us could have us. We had no say, unless we wanted to be beaten or worse. And now…” She scoffed, and shrugged her good shoulder. “Now you think you can decide for us who we should belong to. Same thing.”
She pulled his door aside, cringing at the aches in her muscles from the hasty action, and gasping at the appearance of Edgar in the corridor who stood with one hand raised as if to knock.
Her heart nearly pounded out of her chest.
“Everything all right?” he asked hoarsely, and then cleared his throat. His face was creased with sleep and his T-shirt was wrinkled. “I heard yelling.”
“Fine,” she spat, and pulled the plackets of her dress together.
“Sera…” Marco called after her.
She squeezed past Edgar and, spotting the hatch, jogged toward it.
“Sera!”
She pounded the release until the door began to crank downward. She didn’t wait until it had descended enough for her to gracefully walk down the ramp. When there was a sliver large enough for her to squeeze her body through, she did, and jumped down to the ground.
Once her feet hit the soil, she ran and didn’t look back.
“Sera!”
Stupid. Stupid.
She should have known better.
Happiness wasn’t for her. Happiness was for people who weren’t already too used up. What she wanted had never mattered, and never would.