“I don’t apologize very often,” I said, coming to stop barely an arm’s length from him. “So please... accept it, and let me acknowledge that I’m not even thirty-one years old. I’m a jealous, bitter adult virgin who has no idea what he’s doing, and that you did what you did because it was the best course of action available to you.”
Angkor ducked his head and shrugged. He was smoking again, fidgeting unhappily with his cigarette. I’d watched Vassily smoke so much that I could read a man’s moods from his hands better than I could his face. “Alright. I said some things I should regret, too. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I replied. “If I couldn’t deal with being pissed off, I’d have left Brooklyn years ago.”
Angkor’s whole face flushed with a brief smile. I looked him over, noticing for the first time how tired he really seemed.
“You know, Angkor, I want to trust you,” I said. “Zarya does. She cares about you.”
“She’s a Gift Horse. To a point, she can’t help it,” he replied, still gazing at the corrun. “And I’m a mercenary.”
“ANSWER isn’t a mercenary organization, as I understand it.”
“I’m a mercenary Hound.” He shook his head. “The problem with a lot of what you said to me is that it’s true.”
“So come clean with me,” I said. “Because I want to get to know you. But I can’t trust someone whose motives and identity are completely opaque.”
Angkor kept his gaze averted, his eyes little more than a dark crescent sweep of lashes against his golden-brown skin.
“Start with your real age,” I suggested. “Nothing too serious.”
“You really want to know?” He smiled and chuffed, amused. “Two hundred and twenty-six. Linear years, that is. I was born in 1987 on my own Cell.”
That seemed impossible. “Biomancy?”
“Gift Horses,” he said. “I met my first one when I accidentally found a Shard of Eden near the border of the DMZ. A Stallion. He was... dying. A relic of the Second War. I found him impaled on a spear, kept alive by his Mother’s roots. They were locked in this weird co-dependent desperation...”
“And?” I folded my arms, realized it looked defensive, unfolded them.
“And everything before that isn’t worth talking about,” he said.
“I don’t believe that, either.” I came around, and sat on the wall beside him. “You’ve rescued MahTrees. They’re ancient, fragile beings. That is not an unexceptional achievement.”
“It was selfish, at first,” he admitted. “I wanted to experiment on them. But then… I changed. A lot. I was a very selfish person when I was young.”
I inhaled deeply, battling the disapproving voices of the dead, and lay a gloved hand on his thigh. Angkor jumped, and I pulled back uncertainly, only to relax when he covered it with his and pressed my fingers back down. The suit he wore was firm, about a quarter-inch thick in the reinforced areas. It made the lean muscles of his legs feel like smooth, matte satin.
“I can tell you something else,” Angkor continued. “You probably don’t want me as much as you think you do.”
GOD help me, but I was shaking like a leaf. My anger had evaporated into the high-strung anxiety of a virgin. My awkward experiences with Tina, and whatever I’d done with Christopher and almost done with Troy apparently hadn’t counted, when it came to my confidence. “I have no idea where you’d pull that assumption from, given that I’ve been ogling you the better part of two months.”
He drew a deep breath and turned toward me, still seated on the wall, so that our knees touched. He kept his eyes down. “I’m intersex.”
For several seconds, I processed the words. “Intersex?”
“Oh… right. It’s 1991.” He snorted, gaze still averted. “‘Hermaphroditism’ is probably the word you know, but it’s… ehnn. Have you ever heard of adrenal hyperplasia?”
“No.” I stopped trying to fumble for the language then, listening.
“It’s a genetic condition. People born with it have what they like to call ‘ambiguous physiology’.” Angkor arched an eyebrow. “XX chromosomes, internal testes, and a perfectly functional body that was mutilated without my consent or knowledge. They didn’t care that I’d be in pain for the rest of my life. I was put on female hormones, raised female, and wasn’t able to set things right until I was nearly thirty years old and a Hound.”
I blinked several times. “By ‘set things right’, you mean-”
“I had to regrow the organs that were cut off and out of me. Repair nerve damage, restore seminal ducts and break up the internal scarring,” he said, glancing up at me with fierce, sudden pride. He made a slicing gesture under each pectoral with his fingers. “I had to remove these, because the hormones made them grow out. And two hundred years later, I know, without a doubt, that out of a thousand HuMans who’ve hit on me, I can only be who and what I am with one out of that thousand. Straight, gay, it doesn’t matter. Because I didn’t turn myself ‘male’ or ‘female’. I restored myself to what I am.”
He finished, breathing hard, and averted his eyes again.
“But you look male,” I said. “So-”
“Above the waist,” he replied. He was already a little distant again, removed from the anticipation of rejection. “And that’s a deal breaker for a lot of people, especially men. Gift Horses... Gift Horses were the first to tell me that I wasn’t just normal, but that I was essential. Before the Morphorde, everything was intersex or female. My body is Edenic, and I carry that distinction with honor. But if you’re looking for dick, you won’t find it.”
I thought about it for a moment, trying to picture what he hadn’t described as he waited in wary expectation. What I saw was the way the bodysuit hugged and lifted the right things in the right places, the length of his neck, and the elegance of his hands. They were opening and closing on his knees as he waited.
After a couple of minutes of observant silence, he cleared his throat. “So, if you’ve been wondering why I’ve been so cagey…”
Angkor trailed off as I leaned in and breathed in deeply against his hair. He was freshly fed on Gift Horse, and he had a luscious, intoxicating smell. Honeycomb and male musk, which—now he’d mentioned it—was milder than the body odor of many other men whose scent I’d noticed. When I slid my hand up over his leg to his hip, his lips parted and he turned to face me, dropping his foot down to the ground to half-stand.
“If that’s the worst you were holding back, then whatever else you’ve been hiding will be distinctly anticlimactic,” I murmured, struggling to keep some semblance of composure.
Angkor flushed, and then smiled: the smile that was peculiar to him and only him, where he pinched the tip of his tongue between his teeth as his expression flooded all the way to his eyes. “I guess I… I made assumptions about you because of who you are and where you’re from. Not just about this. I’m sorry.”
“Some of those assumptions are true,” I replied. I had to adjust the way I was sitting now, and as I did, I realized that the usual tearing pain was absent. It gave me pause. “And I think you’re sensible to be cautious. But the first thing you should know about me is that I don’t care who or what someone thinks they are, how they look, or what they have between their legs. Anyone can talk. It’s what they do that counts.”
Angkor’s eyes hooded, and he slid completely off the wall to the ground, pressing himself up between my legs. With me sitting and him standing, we were of equal height. My breath sped as he ran his hands over my shoulders, kneading them gently. They might as well have been carved out of stone.
“Second thing you should know is that I never relax,” I said. My voice was a little choked.
“I’m sure I can do something about that.” He leaned toward me, and brushed his open mouth over my cheek.
I felt something contract in my belly, deep down, a sensation not unlike the feeling that preceded ejaculation. Nothing came up, thank GOD, but I jumped and tensed anyway as Angkor ghosted hi
s lips over my skin, angling his head to find my mouth with his. The blood beat against the inside of my skull as I hesitantly kissed him. It was chaste, at first, a dry press of lips that caused my chest to tremble and my hands to grip the edge of the wall. As I gained confidence, second by second, it deepened. I’d always thought kissing was odd, even gross… but as Angkor pressed the length of his body to mine, opening my mouth with his, I finally realized what I’d been missing out on all this time.
“We should go somewhere warmer,” he murmured beside my ear.
“I… I don’t think we have time.” I was stammering like a teenage boy. So much for being the big bad ‘don’t you touch me’ guy at the gay bar. “We have to go-”
“We’ve got twenty minutes. Zarya’s starting up the plan for the extraction,” Angkor said. “You need this.”
He took me by the hand, and I let him gently pull me to my feet and lead me off to the nearest of the ruined buildings. The energy barrier protecting the encampment from the rain ended just beyond the limits of this building. The sound of running water filled my ears as Angkor pinned me against the wall nearest to the doorway. He kissed me urgently, all hot, open mouth and roaming hands until I bit the side of his throat, gripping him with my jaws. With a small sound, he relaxed his weight into my teeth and let me take him to the ground. I fought visions of Christopher’s guilt, seedy bars, Vassily, and my father as I palmed Angkor’s belly and chest.
“How… how does this thing come off?” I swallowed, trying to find a zipper or snaps or something else, but coming up blank.
“It’s enchanted, and alive. You have to ask it nicely.” He flashed a crooked, charming smirk, and reached up to the high fitted collar of the suit. He hooked a finger under the firm, leather-like edge, and it split seamlessly as he drew down, as easily as if he’d pulled it through butter. I watched with astonishment as he pulled it off. The material turned soft, hanging from his limbs when it was deactivated, and he shrugged the top half of it off like a second skin. My mouth was dry as he lay back and shucked the rest off, slowly. He was nude underneath. By the dull orange light of the barrier, his skin was a beautiful rosy tan. I noticed the way the muscles of his belly tapered down to his hips, and my mouth began to water. He stopped just before baring his groin, looking up at me with eyes full of heat – and maybe a little suspicion.
“I’m sorry, I… really have no idea what I’m doing.” I swallowed again, hands hovering. “I’ve kissed two people before you, and the first time she did all the work. The second time, I was very drunk…”
“I get it. I was a virgin until my mid-thirties,” he said. “Try to relax.”
My mouth itched with need as he leaned up, caught my lips with his, and rolled us over. The suit fell away from his body with a sigh, and when I stripped the rest down his legs, he didn’t stop me. He kissed me deeply, deliriously sweet, tearing at my shirt as I reached down and fumbled with my belt. My hands were shaking too hard to get it, and when he pushed them away and down, I let him.
“Relax.” He pulled my shirt up and lay it aside, kissing his way down my chest. It was like a trail of lights, nerves jumping under the press of lips hotter than fresh blood. While he worked my belt loose, I reached down and slid my fingers through his hair—and immediately realized that I needed the gloves off. It was a simple task made difficult—he was busy unbuttoning my fly—but when I freed them and ran them over his scalp, I gasped. His hair was fine, incredibly soft and glossy, laying over my fingers like fur.
Angkor murmured wordless encouragement as I pushed his head down. My face was burning hot, and I couldn’t bear to look down at what he was doing. He wasn’t the only one who was body-shy.
He paused, and lifted his head up under my hands before I’d so much as felt his breath on me. “Sorry to interrupt this, but I have to ask... do you feel tight at all?”
“Tight?” The question threw me, until I realized what he was talking about. My cock wasn’t hurting for once. “Oh, that’s-”
“Bound to be uncomfortable once the Mare’s flesh wears off,” Angkor finished. “Phimosis and frenulum breve. It’s going to strangle you again once the Phi leaves your system. I can make it so it won’t hurt, if you want.”
“Yes. Please.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but if it meant I never had another painful erection, I was there. “Will it-?”
“You won’t even notice. Believe me.” He dipped his face, lapping at the skin of my hips and then over the head of my cock. And suddenly, I realized why the guys I’d known had all made such a big deal out of this particular act... because the brush of Angkor’s mouth made my spine arch and my hips buck.
He groaned as I pushed his head down, a sound that made my face burn even more. I pressed one hand to my mouth, the other twisted in his silky hair. The world focused in on that one point: the swirl of his tongue, the soft sound of his swallowing, his breathlessness. I looked down and was rewarded by the gleam of his eyes in the dark, watching me.
“Stop.” My throat was tight. “I can’t last.”
“So cum.” He lifted up just enough to whisper, lips gliding slickly over the head with every word. “Don’t worry about it.”
I nodded, entranced but anxious as Angkor groaned in the affirmative and began to suckle and stroke, tongue soft. I reached down with my other hand, fighting the need to buck, unable to stop it as the pleasure built to a peak and then overran.
For a moment, everything was perfectly still inside—gasping, wide-eyed, transfixed with blank pleasure—and then I sunk back down, hips jerking fitfully as the last throbs of release pushed out from my body into his.
“Good GOD.” I looked down at him, panting with shock. “GOD, Angkor.”
He licked his lips, and in the gloom, I could see his wicked smile as he crawled over me and bent down to lick my chest. It felt… incredible. There was no tearing, no constriction no pain. And I was still raring to go.
“Come here.” I reached up to tug him forward. He’d avoided letting me see him from the waist down so far. “Show me how this works.”
Angkor was suddenly shy in my hands, a shift in confidence I felt by the way he moved.
“Are you sure you-?” He half-whispered to me, leaning away a little even as he found his seat over my hips.
“I told you. I don’t care.” I reached down between his thighs, and pulled him against my shoulder by the back of his head. Angkor whimpered sweetly against my ear as I explored with a careful hand, curious and oddly excited. He was soaking wet and hard at the same time, and my fingers glided over and around what felt to me like the contours of an arum lily. His cock was a slender stamen just a little smaller than my thumb, hooded with skin and exquisitely sensitive. He writhed as I stroked it, clutching at my arms, and gasped as I roamed a little further down and accidently slid my fingers inside him to the knuckle.
“Please, please, oh GOD yes-!” Angkor clawed at my shoulders as I cupped my hand, thrusting with fingers and rubbing against his cock with the heel of my palm. My hands were very soft and very smooth from years of keeping them covered, and he came from that alone, crying out into my ear. The same dizzying sense of power I’d felt with Christopher swept over me again, but twice as good. When Angkor squeezed down around my fingers, my brain immediately transposed the sensation onto my cock—and the thin veneer of shame holding me back evaporated as instinct took over. I guided him over my hips, but he didn’t let me rush. Acceptance had transformed him, and he teased and rubbed over me with the confident sensuality of a snake, the arch of his body a darker silhouette against the ceiling.
“GOD, you’re beautiful.” I couldn’t quite believe I was doing this.
Angkor caught his lip in his teeth as he slowly angled the tip into himself, and carefully, deliberately slid down along it.
There was no way to describe that sensation, the feeling of being taken into someone else’s body that way. I felt it through my hands—through my nails, clawing bloody crescents into his skin; t
hrough my teeth as I bit his shoulder and neck. I heard it in his passionate cursing, and his cries of anguished pleasure as he rode me with long, rolling strokes. There was no way to describe the breathless everything-ness, or the dark, savage thing behind my eyes that found a sadistic release of its own every time he whimpered under my teeth and nails, every time he moaned when I held him down and fucked up into him.
“AH-Yes! Oh GOD, GOD, Alexi!” Angkor dropped his head and wept against my shoulder, sobbing and pushing, hair hanging over his cheeks. His body was sucking at me, pulsing rhythmically in the buildup to a second, more powerful release. He angled to rub himself against my belly, and I couldn’t hold back as he orgasmed: a shuddering, wracking, clawing climax that made him heave and buck. There was a burst of wet heat around my glans—him, then me—and then he bowed over my chest with his hands dug into the ground on either side of my head.
“Ahh-hhhaah...” He had his lip in his teeth, face flushed a deep rose gold. I’d never seen anyone in that state of abandonment before, and regarded him with something like wonder as he slowly, carefully rode out the very last of my orgasm and then pulled free with a soft laugh.
“How do you feel after that?” His voice was syrupy and thick as he rolled down beside me and flung an arm over my chest.
We were both soaked in sweat. I lay stunned, trying to adjust to the foreign sensation of physical relaxation. The muscular tension that usually held me together had lapsed. In its place was a floaty golden afterglow.
“I think I finally have an idea of what everyone was always going on about,” I replied after a few minutes.
“Not bad, is it?” Angkor quietly asked, resting his head on my chest.
“No. Not at all.” For as long as it had taken, I hadn’t been worried about anything. Pain, tension, worry... it had all receded. “What did you mean when you said I’d be in pain once the Mare’s flesh wears off?”
“A Gift Horse’s blood can unlock almost anything.” He drowsily toyed with one of the faint scars on my chest, rubbing his fingers up and down the keloid. It was usually numb, but I could feel the texture of his skin in my mouth. “Doors, physical and not. Cars. Avalanches. Tight foreskins. When you ate her, you took a Phitonic charge into your body. I drew on that to coax your skin to grow a bit.”
Zero Sum: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 3) Page 40