Straight away Tavos had the table unfolded and set up, with a sheet draped over it and a pillow in place, and a towel neatly folded on the sheet, ready for business. "Let us make ourselves comfortable," he said, "and I'll heat the oil."
The breath shuddering inside her, Stacey asked, almost bashfully, "Can I watch you get undressed first?"
With an accommodating grin, Tavos said, "Of course." And with exactly the right combination of efficiency and implied seduction—which would go no further than an implication—he stripped. First he lost his shirt, revealing the full splendor of his sculpted chest of hair. Then he dropped his leggings, exposing the impeccable musculature of his legs and the full and ample bulge in his thong. He kicked away his leggings and posed for her, flexing his arms and pecs and watching Stacey light up with a smile so wide that it could have cracked her cheeks. He turned around for her and showed her the firmly packed shapes of his buns, fully exposed by the thong, and tightened and released them for her inspection.
He could just make out the sound of Stacey softly intoning, "Mmmm..." behind his back. Tavos turned back around to find his client hugging herself appreciatively at his little display, wearing that same smile. He was pleased that she was pleased.
"I take it you approve?" he ventured, knowing full well the answer.
"Very much!" Stacey beamed at him.
"Good," Tavos said. "Then you may get out of that," he gestured at her body suit, "while I heat up the oil." And he stepped out of his slippers and over to the little terrace table on which he had put his supplies.
Stacey kept her eyes on Tavos as if they were magnetized to his flesh while she undid the seals on her body suit and began to shimmy her way out of it. That's not all you're heating up, she thought.
She held the body suit demurely over her bosom, dropped it onto the chaise lounge, went to take the towel from the table, and wrapped it around her middle. It just barely covered all of her. She noted in the back of her mind that, after her procedure, , there would be less of her to cover. At the forefront of her attention, the nearly nude Tavos placed a bottle of oil on the heating disk, which would have it ready for use in minutes. Stacey wondered why Tavos did not just stand there, look at the bottle, and flash a smile; it would have done the job just as well.
"Climb up onto the table," he suggested. "I'll be ready for you in a moment."
Stacey did as he said, knowing how ready she was for him right now. She sat on the edge of the table and swung her legs up onto it. Carefully keeping herself draped in the towel, she lay leaning on one elbow, not wanting to make herself fully prone yet because she did not want her eyes to leave the delectable sight of her masseur. Presently he looked up from the bottle on his disk and said, "All ready. Lie down on your stomach and relax." He took up his warmed bottle of oil, put a second bottle on the disk for later, and was now fully ready to work.
Again Stacey did Tavos's gentle bidding, wishing she did not feel—and look—quite so much like a beached whale in white cloth. Perhaps it would have been better to wait until after she went under the lasers to have a celebratory massage, but she was impatient for the touch of something young, male, and perfect. She moved the long fall of her hair to one side to give him full access to her. At once he was at her side, gently peeling away the towel and exposing her soon-to-be not-so-broad back. She gave out another "Mmmm..." at the feeling of warm golden oil drizzling onto her back, followed by strong male fingers beginning to rub it into her skin.
She slipped into a dreamy mood at the feeling of his hands doing their work up and down her spine, into the small of her back, and back up to her shoulders. Tavos's fingers and the warm oil combined to make her feel as if her muscles were turning to melted butter. "That is so nice," she softly said.
"Thank you," he said. "I like to feel the body of my client respond. You respond very well."
"You're nice to respond to," she purred.
"You are a bit young to be here alone, if you do not mind my saying. Are your parents here with you?"
"No, it's just me," Stacey said while his fingers made lazy circles on her shoulders.
"You alone, in a place like this? No family? No friends? Why did you come here alone? Could you not have had your laser surgery on Earth?"
"This trip was a gift from my parents. I just turned nineteen. I wanted an adventure," she replied as he dripped some oil onto her shoulders and resumed rubbing.
"Of course—young and adventurous. I understand."
"Well, of course you do. You're a long way from home yourself. And you can't be much older than I am."
"In Earth years I am twenty-two, going on twenty-three."
"What made you leave Sarma?" she asked. "You wanted an adventure too?"
Keeping his hands on her, he looked up while he worked, bringing up in his mind his prepared answer to this very natural, practically inevitable question, which many other clients had asked him. Like his assumed name, it was a strategic lie.
"Everything happened at once on Sarma. Your world and ours discovered each other, the new king took the throne after his father passed, and the wars between the tribes ended. When new parts of space—human space—opened up for us, I wanted to see them. So here I am."
"Do you miss your family and your planet?"
"There is much on Mars that reminds me of home. The natural parts of it, as well as what humans have done with their terraforming. When the atmosphere is finished, it will be much like where I come from."
"What about your family?"
At this question, Tavos slowed the movements of his fingers over her skin, his mind drifting away across the light years. He could only imagine the words that his family and friends had used for him since they found him missing—angry words, words spoken with the heat of a stormy Sarmian desert. Betrayer. Deserter. Scoundrel. Runaway. Coward. Absconder. Outcast. Unfit. Unworthy. Find him, catch him, give him to the law, throw him to the desert, let him rot... To be sure, not every one of his flesh and blood and community spoke of him that way. The words of some must have come with sorrow and tears, with fear for what would become of him. Some of his family and tribe must even now remember him and despair of ever seeing him again, and think with pain of what would happen to him if they ever did. But the heaviness of his heart told him that the greater part of what they felt for him was shame, anger, bitterness. Home would never again be where Tavos came from. Home would have to be wherever he was.
He was suddenly aware that he had stopped massaging Stacey, and that she had propped herself up on one elbow and was looking up over her shoulder at him.
"Rovan," she asked, "are you all right?"
Tavos snapped back to attention, the sound of his alias refocusing him. He shook his head. "Oh yes... yes, of course. I am sorry, my mind does not usually wander. Please lie back down; let me do your legs."
Stacey lay back down while he pulled away the towel from over her legs, leaving her bare now except for her panties. "I asked about your family," she said. "They must miss you."
Tavos smoothed the warm oil onto her thighs and calves and imagined her nerves firing with pleasure as he worked his fingers into and along her legs. He sighed, thinking again of how he’d left people that he loved and a life that he knew was not for him. "We are Sarmians," he simply said. "We were bred to be strong. We are a proud people."
"I like the way you talk," she said with a sigh. "You don't sound like a warrior."
The corner of his mouth turned up at that. "How should a warrior sound?"
"I'm sorry if that was offensive. It's just, everyone says you sound more like poets than fighters."
"Much poetry has been written about battle and war. Is it not so on Earth?"
"Yes, I guess it is," she said.
"I was trained for battle like any Sarmian boy," said Tavos. "But I have never known war." Looking off as if to the horizon while kneading her thighs, he returned to his deception. "The wars were ending when I reached the age of combat. Everyone was going home
to rebuild. Instead of rebuilding, I wanted to see the galaxy. So I left."
"Did your family give you their blessing?"
"They said goodbye," Tavos lied, stung inside by the truth of how and why he left.
"That sounds a little sad," said Stacey.
"As a race, we are not good at farewells. So many of our goodbyes are said to the fallen and dead."
"Maybe things will be different now that you have a new king and you're not all fighting. You know, your King Dantar is supposed to be marrying an Earth woman. How about that? Your new queen will be from Earth!"
"If she is anything like you, Sarma will be well off with her," Tavos said, rubbing his thumbs into her heel.
Stacey came up on one elbow again and looked down her body at him, grinning broadly once more. "What a sweet thing to say! Thank you."
He smiled back at her. "You are welcome."
The afternoon went on with Tavos turning his skilled attention to Stacey's neck and upper arms. Later, they sat together on the chaise lounge, Stacey wrapping herself in the sheet from the table like a toga. She ordered a bottle of alcohol-free wine from room service—he had to pilot his skimmer back to his room, after all—and they sat and drank and talked, and Stacey admired Tavos's face and body. She told him about her lawyer parents and how she was not sure what she wanted to do with her own life yet, except to see the galaxy as he was doing. She took out her linker and showed him the display of how she expected to look once her laser surgery was done. Stacey appreciated the way Tavos's eyes lit up at the sight of the way she would be, and noticed his further appreciation by the swelling of what was already barely contained in his thong. She could only imagine how many girls and women had known what lay coiled and straining in that silky pouch. It made her thirsty, and not for more wine.
At length, Stacey asked, "May I touch you now, Rovan?"
The corner of his mouth turned up again, Tavos set down his wine glass and replied, "Touch as you like, where you like. But my thong stays on."
He sat with legs apart, bulge rising prominently in its satiny package, and arms spread at his sides along the back of the chaise, ready to receive her touch. Her entire body feeling like one big tingle, Stacey set down her own glass and reached for him.
The delight of touching Tavos was for Stacey a thousand times sweeter than the pleasure of him touching her. Spread out willingly before her, here at her very fingertips, was everything she had ever wanted.
Tavos saw her features melt into a look like that of someone experiencing a divine revelation, and he imagined that for Stacey that was what his body was. She must have the curiosities, needs, and hungers of any young girl. He could only guess that her needs had gone unfulfilled since they first stirred awake in her, and, in spite of his assigned role as the provider of a service, he could not suppress a surge of pleasure of his own in the pouch of his thong at the thought of what he was doing for her.
He shut his eyes and submitted to her hands, and it felt as if they were everywhere at once. Her fingers roamed like grazing animals over the hairy fields of his pecs and stomach muscles and circled the hardening prominences of his nipples. They drifted up and down his strong and sinewy arms, savoring the subtle flex of his biceps and deltoids. They roamed up to his shoulders and softly squeezed as his oiled hands had done upon her own shoulders. "Oh, Rovan," Stacey said softly and breathlessly, "you feel so good. You feel wonderful."
He pried his eyes open a bit and fixed her with a look of appreciation. "It is wonderful that you think so," he said. He shut his eyes again and let his head roll back, and continued to bask in Stacey's attention.
Stacey looked down his body at what loomed up between Tavos's thighs. Enclosed in its shiny pouch of cloth, it was nonetheless the most tempting sight ever to meet her eyes. It was large, and it pulsated with every stroke of her fingers on his skin. She had dreamed for so long of seeing and feeling a boy like Rovan respond to her the way he was now. She licked her lips at the sight of it. She wanted to see it bare so much. She wanted so much more than just to see it. Tentatively, carefully, she sent the fingers of one hand down the chiseled territory of his stomach and let them rest on the pouch with the warm and massive thing straining inside it. Her pulse raced, her breath quickened, her eyes widened, at the feeling of it bulging there at her touch, so close, so close—separated from her only by a thin, shiny layer of fabric. She stroked it, carefully, so carefully, to see how her young Sarmian would react.
In a voice huskier than his years, Tavos reminded her, "It does not come out of the thong."
Stacey sighed, resigning herself to the limits of his services, but reveling in being at the very threshold of the promised land at last. Resting her head on his shoulder, feeling hypnotized, she began to pet his hidden beauty.
As loath as he was to show it to her or let her enjoy it any more, Stacey still felt tremors of excitement at the hardness, thickness, and stiffness under that cloth. It felt as if it wanted to tear itself free of its restraints and reveal itself to her in all its alien male glory. Stacey gave a silent sigh at the way it felt, and respected her masseur's boundaries.
Eyes still shut, Tavos said, "You are good with your hands. When you have a boyfriend he will appreciate the attention that you give him down there."
"Thank you," she said, feeling the temptation and cursing the limits. With every stroke of her hand on what he was keeping from her, she appreciated those limits less and less. There must be some way to get past them. And then she remembered... "Rovan, did you really like the sim of me, the post-op sim?"
He opened one eye and gazed over at her. "The holographic simulation of your body after your procedure?"
"Yes. Did you really like the way the sim said I'll look after it's done?"
"I liked it very much. You are already very pretty. But when the surgeon is done you will be happier in your body. Happiness makes what is beautiful more so."
"Do you think you could ever... I mean, do you ever, with your clients, when it's not work, when it's social... I mean...," she exhaled, frustrated with herself. Sexually inexperienced because she had never liked her own body, she had never developed the knack for hitting on a boy, and she was now only too keenly aware of how clumsy she was.
Stacey's entire body froze, her hand paralyzed in place on his pouch, when he opened both eyes and drilled them right into her the way she wanted him to do with what she was almost touching, and he said, "You're asking me if I would like to shadaal you in your new body."
Her eyes bulged. Her mouth went as dry as another, lower part of her was wet. She had never heard the Sarmian word shadaal until now, but from the context it was clear that it meant what no human boy had ever wanted to do to her. She half-whispered, half-stammered, "Am I stepping over the boundaries?"
Tavos made her feel ready to faint when he put a hand on the hand that rested on his one covered part. Was he insulted now? Would he take her hand from him and end the session? Stacey wanted to keel over, dreading his reaction. He calmly replied, "You are offering me the first experience of your new body and the first shadaal of your life. You are asking me to end your virginity."
Any second now, Stacey thought, he would have to catch her before she hit the floor. "W-w-would you?" she tremulously asked.
He smiled softly and squeezed her hand. "I have not been anyone's first since my own first time. And I have never been the first to know a woman's reformed body. I am honored that you would ask. As long as we are not provider and client when I take you, it would be my honor."
Stacey suddenly felt lit up inside. She wished it were not today but the day after tomorrow. She smiled her broadest smile, her breath quickening and her skin flushing with excitement. She wanted to throw her arms around him here and now and give him a kiss as big as the girth that she was about to lose. "Oh, Rovan!" she cried. "Thank you! You're the handsomest, sweetest—"
Tavos patted her hand. "Thank you," he said. "Sarmian men are very passionate, as you will find. Your first
time, I promise, will be the beginning of a very long night that will go on into morning. I will have you many times." He grinned mischievously. "I may spoil you for human males."
She laughed, "Spoil me, Rovan. Please spoil my brains out!"
And in a moment of sweet anticipation, Tavos reached over to her and brushed his fingers through the dark waterfall of her hair. Thinking of the simulation of the way Stacey would soon be, he wanted to take her to the surgeon for an emergency procedure now, the better to hasten taking her to bed and giving her what she wanted all night long.
And that was when the humming came in from above them.
Startled, Stacey and Tavos looked up at the very official-looking skimmer dropping down from overhead. Stacey held her breath, recognizing its markings as those of Martian Colony Law Enforcement. The skimmer hovered down to a position alongside Rovan's parked craft. Two uniformed, helmeted, and armed officers sat in the compartment, looking directly at Rovan. What could the police possibly want?
Stacey, confused and frightened, looked from the officers to Rovan as first the masseur beside her and then the men in the skimmer stood up. The air around her was abruptly filled with dread—all of it coming directly from the young Sarmian.
The cop who had piloted the craft called, "Stay where you are. Tavos of Sarma, you're under arrest for charges of wartime desertion filed on the planet Sarma and transmitted to the interstellar court system. You're to be taken into custody and extradited to Sarma to face charges and trial on your home planet. Do not resist."
Horrified, Stacey stood up and took Tavos by the arm, her eyes darting nervously from him to the police and back again. "Rovan, what are they talking about?" she demanded. "Who's Tavos?"
With a gulp, Tavos replied, "I am."
"No, your name is Rovan. They're confusing you with someone else."
"No—Rovan is the name I have used since coming to Mars. I am Tavos."
"And you ran out on... on...?"
"On my family and my tribe—and a war that I did not wish to fight. And I have run ever since then. I am a deserter and a fugitive."
Highlander's Pride: Winter Solstice (Against All Odds Series 1) Page 53