Moro fed the thin pipette of the enzyme pack into Val’s channel. When it was seated, Moro pressed a control on the pack and it deflated rapidly.
Val fidgeted. “Er, Moro? Is this like your Sting Burst?”
“Something like. Gentler.”
“Gentler! I feel like I have to—”
“You do,” said Moro, trying to be as careful as a medic as he lifted Val and eased the youth the few steps to the chemical toilet.
Val blushed and shivered but kept clenching. Moro noted Val’s cock still stood erect, in spite of its owner’s profound embarrassment. A good sign.
Moro seated the flexible cowling of the toilet around Val’s ass. “It’s all right, Val. I’m going to pull out the delivery tube and close the cowling. Just let your body do the rest.”
“In front of you?” Val sounded scandalized, panting with the effort to control his unruly body. “We don’t…don’t deal with wastes the way humans do. It just goes to ash and steam outside us. You’re too new to know it yet.”
Moro thought about it. “I guess it would, once the symbionts are active. Saves on diapers, I’ll bet.”
Val grunted, “What would you know about diapers?”
“Crèche raised,” Moro said. “I was one of the oldest of my group, so I was the default babysitter. By now, I’ve seen everything that can leak out of a human. And leaked most of it myself. You can let go now, Val. Cama’s symbionts are not awake to clean you. And where else can I be?” Moro coaxed. “I’ll look away. It won’t be as bad as you think.” Moro kept a teasing hand on Val’s cock and drew the youth’s head down against his shoulder.
A few minutes later, he used water and the towel to clean Val’s body of a discharge no worse than moist earth. “See?” Moro teased him a little. “Enzymes. Your lower intestine is clean now.”
“The fact you know these things—”
“Ssssh,” said Moro. “On your back. Spread your legs, and pull one up. Now keep pushing out, even though you’re empty.”
Gasping, Val complied as Moro slowly drove his index finger into the clenched channel. Even dripping with lube, Val was ridiculously tight. His flesh gripped Moro’s finger, holding, resisting. How could he ever accept Moro’s cock, many times wider?
“Relax,” said Moro. “Keep your eyes closed. Lean back over the cushions. I have to bring you off. You’re too tense.”
Moro swallowed Val’s cock to the root. This was not the hours-long mutual seduction he’d wanted. This was merely a mechanical goad to unstoppable release. After only a few passes, Val shuddered and cried out. Moro swallowed his seed. He had better lube, courtesy of Lyton. Val’s passage relaxed, pulsing in the aftershocks. Moro waited, timing the pulses. He slid a second finger in beside the first.
“Ah!” Val wailed at the new strain and pressure.
“Easy, easy, the pain will pass,” Moro soothed. “Just breathe.” As Val took deep, fast breaths, Moro felt the clenching muscles soften a little more. He crooked his fingers, searching. He found the swollen knot deep in Val’s passage. With both fingertips, Moro began again his light, fluttering taps.
Val’s whole body jerked. “Moro! Oh. Oh, don’t stop!” His raised left leg quivered with each tap. Moro held down Val’s hips with his other hand and arm. As he stroked and teased Val’s prostate, the muscles slowly relaxed.
Moro fought the urge to nibble and suck Val’s cock again.
They settled into a rhythm of flexing hips and thrusting fingers, first two, then three, as Val fucked himself on Moro’s hand. Val stiffened toward climax again, his gasps and spasms irregular.
“What do you want?” Moro whispered, alert to every expression on Val’s face.
Val watched only him. Lyton watched them, and it didn’t matter. Death waited at the end, and it didn’t matter. “You can come this way, now that you’re relaxed. On my fingers. Or on my cock. But it will still hurt you.”
Val smiled and spread his legs wider. “A good hurt,” he said. “Come home, Moro.”
Moro wrapped Val’s legs around his waist. The little wanton immediately locked his ankles together, heels digging at Moro’s spine.
“Fourth lesson. Always use more lubricant than you think you need,” Moro said, matching action to words and slathering his cockhead with more of Lyton’s extraordinary lube.
He poised at Val’s loosened entrance, adjusting his position so Lyton might see the moment better. “Now push out again, and keep pushing.” He drove forward an inch, no more.
Val’s flesh resisted, stretching slowly around Moro. Val bit his full lips, whimpering at the sudden pain, but he obeyed.
Two inches in and the tight heat fluttered around Moro. It reminded him too much of another onslaught. Without Cama, he might lose his arousal if he gave in to memory.
“Val,” Moro said roughly, trying to both coax and contain his need. “Do you want me to go slow or fast?”
Val tossed his head, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. “Get in me, damn you. Fast. I need—ah!” His hips flexed as Cama’s had in the dream, and he arched back over the pillows, his passage opened fully. Moro slammed deep in one thrust. Val shrieked, his whole body bucking. His hands clawed at the cushions.
“Oh, Val, I’m sorry,” Moro began, withdrawing as carefully as he could, hating himself for causing such pain.
“Don’t you dare stop! Do it again!” Val moaned, lifting his head to glare at Moro. His pale eyes were huge, wild, the gold only a ring around pupils widened to black pits. His legs tightened around Moro’s hips.
“But I’m hurting you!” Just the tip of Moro’s cock remained inside Val now. Moro was terrified if he slipped out now, they’d never have another chance.
Val writhed against him. “You are. And you aren’t. Ah, Moro. Why did Cama keep this from me? I’ll be fine.” Val flexed again, grinding his hips against Moro’s, forcing Moro deeper into him. “I’ll be better than fine if you will just fucking move!”
Moro finished the thrust, feeling Val’s body adjust around him. Then backed off, while he still had the sense to do it, and ground his cockhead over Val’s sensitive prostate. Val cried out again. This time Moro understood it as a command. He lifted Val’s legs higher, bent the youth almost double, and drove into him. It felt so good he had to do it again. Val laughed breathlessly and urged him on.
Hot skin. Sweat. Slickness between legs. Grasping bodies, mouths, hands. Flesh like oiled silk met flesh like velvet-padded steel. Minor pains faded against searing pleasure. Each man begged the other for release. Words failed, became gasps, groans, and long, low screams.
If Lyton said anything, neither of them heard it.
An eternity later, Moro struggled back toward coherent thought. “Val, Val,” he panted against his lover’s shoulder, his breath chained tandem to their thrusts and retreats. “I’m cl-close.”
“Hmmm?” Val purred. “Oh, good.” Val’s restless fingers wandered over his stiff cock and Moro’s taut balls, over the hot, wet place where their bodies fused. Moro felt Val’s touch drag across the smooth skin between his own balls and his anus. With just the pad of his forefinger, Val mimicked Moro’s earlier invasion, no longer tentative, but full of knowing promise. One fingernail nicked against Moro’s rim, a little moment of focusing pain.
“Look at me,” Val ordered, gasping along with Moro. “You’re perfect. And you’re mine. My Knife. I will never give you up. I will never stop fighting to keep you. Who are you?”
“Yours,” Moro sighed into Val’s mouth.
“Come with me!” Val commanded, even as his passage clamped tighter and he dragged Moro over the edge into glory.
It was golden this time and filled with Cama’s cry of welcome.
She couldn’t speak to them yet, but both men felt her pride and joy.
Still buried deep in Val, Moro waited until his roaring pulse settled. He held Val closer, so tight he wondered if Val could breathe. Moro didn’t know how long Lyton would give them. Val gave a ragged sigh, r
elaxing his legs and clenching his arms enough to make Moro’s ribs creak. It hurt a little, and it felt good. An unlikely, absurdly sweet afterglow for a man who’d rarely had partners he wanted to cuddle.
“Now I know why you begged for this,” Val whispered against Moro’s collared throat. “It will never be the same, with him. I won’t let it!”
“A challenge, Sero Antonin?” said Lyton over the speakers.
“A declaration of war,” said Val, turning his head to stare out of the chamber. Blue vapor hid Sardis, but Val didn’t look away from the divan’s general direction. “No matter what you do later, you’ll always remember that Moro loved me first. And all you could do was watch!” Moro bit back his laughter, feeling love and lust surge once again. Let Lyton suit up and barge inside to pry them apart if he wished!
Sixty-Six
THE KSALA DANIL leaned forward, interested in the screen set up just outside his reach. Three windows showed a dazzling white glacier, a barren and sunlit seacoast, and a range of pale cliffs in a somber, dark landscape. “Three worlds,” he hissed.
“Confirmed by your agent,” said the old female general. “Two with struggling human colonies, Desmeel and Vittori. The humans are melting Desmeel’s ice to warm it. Vittori needs land life to match its flourishing seas, and oxygen adjustments. Brightcliff is too far from its sun to be useful without dozens of expensive solar arrays in orbit. It has never been settled.”
“But the Camali found the White Storm’s marks on all three?”
“Yes, Ksala Danil.”
Danil took a deep breath, keeping his Vessel’s face impassive, glad the man’s mind and personality were submerged in coma. “Which world most closely matches the original climate and geography of the moon called Ventana?”
“Vittori, Ksala Danil.”
Danil sat back, grinning. “Then the Sardis ship will break for Vittori. Sardis dug deep into Ventana and found nothing. What he seeks must sleep within Vittori. Make ready our ships!”
He kept his gaze off dim, useless Brightcliff.
Sixty-Seven
THE TWO WOMEN were a single motionless statue and had been for nearly an hour. Hegen tried not to look at them directly for long, though they did nothing more than kiss. The very air bent oddly around them, lensing in regularly pulsed distortions.
A very strange, silent kiss. White skin against warm, dark skin. Sliding like animated tattoos, matte-black tendrils slowly met golden shimmers.
Well, Hegen thought, they’re both lovely, but the rest of it hurts my brain. Hegen looked away and caught the roguish Savinilan’s wink. The two Sonta males had found an ordinary deck of plastic playing cards and applied the rules of a Sonta game.
Savinilan gestured to an empty chair. “When Vessels raise their power, it’s best if we stay out of it,” he murmured. “Join us. We won’t bother them if we’re quiet. But we need to remain near.”
“Heh, we’re lucky,” said veiled Odasu, inclining his head at Hegen as the doctor sat down. “If they were female Vessels of my clan, they might flash their killing-claws at us and drive us males away. Three hundred years wed to Aksenna, and I still sometimes can’t think of these delicate little creatures as proper women.”
Aksenna’s current tiny Vessel, perhaps. Broad-shouldered, lean Alys Antonin was anything but delicate. Hegen remembered Alys talking of the Sonta tribes and their physical range. “Surely they can’t be so different?”
“The pure-blooded Singers are. I won’t describe them to you, Doctor, because your human mind might not understand. But to me the women of my birth clan remain lovely in my memory.”
“Why are you here with Aksenna?”
“Because she has need of my strength,” said the huge Sonta. “The game is simple, Doctor. Draw three, lowest cards win. Savi, deal?”
Hegen had lost one round, won another, when a dual gasp made all three men look up.
“I found them!” growled Alys. “Gone again, but—”
“Not for long. Clever, clever boys.” Her lips two inches from Alys’s, Aksenna grinned. “Cama? Your consorts felt it too?”
“Oh yes,” said another person in Alys’s voice. “Again, you black witch—” she hissed and pulled Aksenna closer.
Sixty-Eight
“AGAIN,” MORO GROANED, his cock softening. “I need you again. It’s not enough.”
“Ssh, I know.” Val hadn’t been hallucinating. Once more at the moment of completion, Cama’s presence burst through the shielding, strong and dazzling. She’d almost tracked them. She just needed one more moment. “Moro,” said Val. “Again.”
“I can’t,” sighed Val’s splendid Knife. “You’ve worn me out, love.”
“Then let me,” Val said, disengaging from Moro’s body. Val hurt more than he’d expected. He enjoyed every twinge. “Roll over.”
Moro flopped on his side, facing away from Lyton. He gave Val a tiny wink. Clever Moro, for sensing Cama’s search. For using sex against Sardis, right in front of the man. If Val hadn’t already been smitten, he’d have fallen for Moro just on this gambit alone.
And the sex had surpassed every daydream and fantasy. Val knew the difference now. Fantasy had been mindless lust enacted with a faceless doll, in dreams without experience to deepen them. Reality was startling, shameful, gloriously pleasurable—and oddly funny, as if he and Moro shared a grim joke against Lyton Sardis’s proposed future.
“You’re healed enough and certainly relaxed,” Val said. Kneeling beside Moro, Val glanced down at his own slender, half-limp cock. “Though with my lamentable equipment, you probably don’t need much stretching.”
Moro laughed suddenly and heaved a small cushion up at Val’s head. Val dodged. The cushion whomped off the clear wall to Val’s left. Somewhere out there, Lyton Sardis watched. Val didn’t look at him.
“And who’s to say you might not be the perfect fit for me?” Moro asked. He caressed Val’s sticky belly, drawing designs through Val’s semen. Down, across Val’s twitching cock and balls. Underneath, where he fingered Val’s still pulsing hole. “Remember your fourth lesson,” said Moro, scooping the slickness he found there. “Hand me another tube of lubricant. I want you in me, Val, even if it takes an hour to get you hard again.”
Moro applied the mix of lube and semen to his own entrance, pressing his index finger deep and swirling it around. His beautiful face was calm, abstract, engaged in nothing more than a necessary task.
Val wanted much, much more.
“Last night was a travesty and this morning was just to get your back up,” he agreed. “We can do better.” Val paused, a dark thought clawing down his spine to his cock: Moro fucked off his feet, drowned in forced pleasure, his reserve turned to fiery, mindless response. The sickening, half-formed fantasy fired Val’s lust all over again, but now he examined it rationally. He saw a way to use it. “Ah, Moro? It won’t take an hour if you let me guide you. I won’t hurt you.”
Moro’s gaze tracked warily from Val’s cock to his face. “You’re almost hard again. What do you want?”
“Trust me. You need this as much as I do.” Val rearranged the cushions and coaxed Moro to roll facedown, at a certain height for easy reach of Val’s kneeling body. He tugged Moro’s legs into a wanton splay, urged his torso to a certain tilted angle. Val gathered the rest of the clean cushions and heaped them higher in front of Moro. The other man began to shiver.
“Val? What are you doing?”
“It’s like the worktable. I’m building a scenario for you. For us,” said Val, pulling Moro’s arms straight out in front of him. Supported by a ramp of gray cushions, Moro’s long, pale body stretched upward as if poised for flight. His loose hair was a ripple of black silk down his back. Standing by Moro’s hands, Val gently wrapped one gray towel around Moro’s wrists, binding them together. He clasped Moro’s clammy fingers in his.
“Yield to me,” he said.
Moro drew in a ragged breath. “Tell me what this is first. Are you doing this for Lyton?”
>
Val smiled at Moro’s face, now turned toward him on the cushions. When Moro’s gaze slid past him, looking out, Val moved his body to block it. “The old man gets nothing but the crumbs he steals. This is for you. Close your eyes, Moro. Must I blindfold you?”
“No,” Moro said, closing his eyes. His wrists flexed inside the wrapped towel. But he didn’t break free.
“You need this,” Val repeated, sliding his hands down Moro’s quivering sides, buttocks, and thighs. He dragged his thumbs along Moro’s calves, then over the upturned, callused soles. Working deep. Rubbing out muscle strains. Moro’s moans revealed another erogenous zone, and a neglected one.
Showing Moro’s feet some mercy, Val turned his attention to the splayed, strong thighs, the tight asscheeks. They had matching dimples, on either side of the dark rose cleft. In the strong light Moro’s crinkled balls were pale purple in their nest of black curls. Val suckled the sweat-damp skin of Moro’s left buttock, considering an assault on those balls.
Moro was too silent beyond his fast, shallow breaths. Too limp.
When Val lifted his mouth, Moro’s milky skin had blushed to pale-pinkish tan, shadowed by faint blue, green, and lavender tones. An opal, bruised by kisses. Val let his breath fan Moro’s skin. He whispered, “Yield.” And then he bit the blush.
Moro jumped, and Val barely spared himself a bloody nose. “Oh, damn you, Val,” Moro hissed, not looking around. “I get it. You and your fucking arena fantasies! Kott almost killed me, and you want to bring it all back? Now? You demented little shit.”
“Yes,” said Val. “Your demented little shit.” He spread Moro’s cheeks and grinned at Moro’s hole. It pulsed back at him, begging for some of the touches Moro had just taught him. Val owed it for his horrid performance the night before.
“I should clean myself,” Moro muttered, shying from his touch. “There will be another enzyme stem in the box.”
Moro's Price Page 28