by Nobilis Reed
The dance floor slowly became more and more crowded, until there simply wasn’t enough room for us anymore and I pulled Shirley away. We went back out to the promenade and found a bench that wasn’t too besieged by the swelling traffic.
I took her hand in mine. “There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“It was marvelous, Challers. Thank you.”
“Do you feel any different?”
“It’s a very intimate thing, looking into the eyes like that. It touches something very primal.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“You’re asking so much. I don’t know if I can give it to you.”
“You can. You are. You just have to let it happen. All those things you told me, about opening my heart, about loving more than one person? It’s not a lie, Shirley. You may not have been saying it sincerely, but I listened to what you said and I agree with it. Don’t you think we’ll be better off if we’re honest with each other, if we let ourselves feel the things that go with what we’re doing?”
She closed her eyes. Her voice grew tight and strained. “I’m scared, Challers. Vack! I’m not supposed to get like this with a cadet. I’m supposed to be the authority!” She choked back a sob and looked away, trying to hide her tears from me.
“I won’t lose my respect for you if you cry, Shirley. You brought me through the math section of Astronavigation when I thought it was going to wash me out. I owe everything here to you.”
She curled sideways, into my arms. I could hear, in her breathing, that she was using the meditation techniques she had taught me to keep control.
I pulled her to her feet. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go out to the oxygen deck. I know this quiet place down by the water.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
We sat by the water, my arm around her, for an hour or so before I thought of something worth saying.
“Valka and I used to sit in the communications center for hours at a time, looking out at the stars. It had a big window for some reason, and if the station was oriented right and we turned off all the lights, it seemed like the whole galaxy was laid out for us. We didn’t talk, at least not the whole time, and we didn’t spend the whole time kissing, either. We just sat together, enjoying just being together.”
“We’ve never done that,” she said.
“Until now. Shirley, I know I can love you. In perfect honesty, I still worry whether that’s going to make me love Valka less, but if anything is going to make our time together worthwhile, it’s going to be allowing ourselves to fall in love. And that means doing silly things like taking long walks by the river and gazing into each other’s eyes. There’s one thing I can’t do, though, and that’s love someone who doesn’t love me back. That would hurt even more.”
“Do you really think you can make love happen, just like that?”
“I think you know it’s possible. Whether it actually works for us is a question I can’t answer without your help.”
She kissed me. It wasn’t just a touch of the lips, either. She rolled her head up, nuzzled under my chin, and then pushed me onto my back and kissed me like I had never been kissed before. Her kiss was insistent, almost desperate. I submitted to it, rolling with it, then returned the passion and desperation. It didn’t have the same quality that kissing Valka had, there wasn’t the overwhelming sense of rightness, but it felt good that I had gotten through to her.
After what seemed like only seconds, she pulled her shirt up over her head, quickly followed by the rest of her clothes.
“What’s this, time for class all of a sudden?”
“No class, Challers. No questions. No answers.” She straddled me and pulled my shirt over my head. Her nipples dragged over my skin as she ran a trail of kisses down my chest and abdomen.
“Shirley?”
“Don’t talk.” Her legs made a small splash entering the water. She pulled down my shorts and engulfed my flaccid cock in her mouth. It seemed almost like hunger that drove her, using her lips and tongue to work it towards erection. The sudden passion confused me, but I had no intention of complaining. I lay back on the ground and enjoyed her attentions. Somewhere in the corner of my mind, I noticed that I was sliding down the slope into the water.
She pulled me in completely and wrapped her legs around me. “I can’t wait to have sex with you on the ship, in zero gravity. It’s incredibly liberating.”
She paddled with her hands and pulled me out into the deeper water.
I splashed, panicking a little at the way the water seemed to want to pull me under.
“Like this,” she said. “Watch my hands.”
I imitated her movements and found that I could keep my head above the water level by pumping at it the right way.
I was panting, half from fright and half from erotic tension. My cock bumped against her ass as we floated in the water and I knew that it would only be a slight motion to slip it inside her.
I wanted it. I wanted it so bad I could taste it. But even as we drifted there in the water, I didn’t want it enough to actually do it. The fact that Shirley wasn’t pushing herself down onto me told me she was holding back too.
I felt a shudder pass through her body. “I think we need to get out of the water. It’s colder than I thought.”
I had to agree. I could feel the cold seeping into my flesh.
“Uh, how?” I tried to alter my paddling to produce some sideways motion.
“Try and go that direction.”
“I am trying!”
We drifted further and further downstream. The current in the center of the river was faster than it was near the edge. The glowing rectangle of the entrance to the promenade had disappeared behind something. I couldn’t tell how far we had gone. The only light came from starlight filtering down through the transparent ceiling and the distant lights of the far side of the ring, not nearly enough to see by. I felt like I was floating in nothingness, floating in the void. My heart pounded in my ears and my breathing came faster. I fought down the urge to thrash against the water.
The only thing that kept my wits about me was the firm grip of Shirley’s legs around my waist. “Stay calm, Challers, let me use my legs. I think I can get us out of the water.”
“Don’t let go of me!”
Panic flashed through my brain. I thrashed in the water and my head went under the surface for a moment. The river couldn’t have been very deep, but for that moment, it felt infinite. I got my head back to the surface and gasped for breath.
“Don’t worry! I’m not leaving you.” Her ankles unlocked from around my waist and we drifted apart a little. I splashed and sputtered, trying to keep my head out of the water. She turned her back to me. “Grab my shoulders, but don’t push down. Just put your hands there.”
Her skin was slick and I could feel goosebumps under my fingers. It took every scrap of will I had to keep from climbing on top of her to get that much further out of the water. She swept her arms and legs in wide arcs and, gradually, we moved through the water. I couldn’t see well enough to even tell where the bank was, so thick was the darkness.
Then, suddenly, I felt Shirley’s body lurch under me. It felt like something had grabbed her. She slid down, then forward, briefly going under the water, but then straightened up. She had found something to stand on, some solid ground under her feet.
We pulled ourselves out and lay there, shivering. I was coughing, panting, gasping.
I looked around, but all was blackness. Once I had caught my breath, I felt around. My groping hands found fibrous, dense vegetation in every direction. We lay on a thick, spongy mat that felt like miniature grass.
“I can’t find a way out,” I said, nearly frantic.
Shirley’s hand found my hips. “Cuddle close,” she said. “We’ll wait here until the end of the dark shift, then we’ll find a way when the lights come on.”
I settled down and found my place behind her, curled up around her back spoon-fashion. My arm, draped
over her side, found a natural place on her breast. Gradually, our body heat returned and the shivers faded away. The air wasn’t really very cold, and once the water on my skin had evaporated, I felt almost normal again.
I felt my erection return and, with it, the passion that had been driving me ever since we left the promenade. I turned Shirley on her back and ran my hand over her body, feeling her skin from neck to crotch, figuring out where she was in the pitch dark.
Shirley put her hand on my chest. It might have been a gesture of caution, but I was too turned on to stop. I wanted her, badly. I stroked her breast and felt the nipple harden against the palm of my hand.
“After all that, you’re still aroused?”
“I can’t help it.” My erection bumped against her leg. I leaned down and nuzzled her chest. When I located her nipple, I took it between my lips and sucked.
She let out a soft sigh and ran her fingers through my hair. “This is nice.”
I slid my hand down and found her pussy. My fingers slid between her warm, wet lips. Her nipple popped out of my mouth. “No fancy bed. No lessons. No rules. Just you and me and the darkness.”
I felt her body tense a little. “Challers, just because . . .”
“No, Shirley.” I probed her more deeply, touching her most sensitive places in the most effective ways I had learned.
She let out a long breath and arched her back. “Challers, what are you—what are you doing?”
“Shh.” I stopped any further protest with my mouth on hers, while I shifted my body between her legs. Guided only by touch, the head of my cock found her slick vulva and bumped against her lips.
She made a weak sound of protest into my mouth and I pulled back, giving her the chance to refuse me. I wasn’t going to rape her, but I wasn’t going to take anything less than a no to stop me.
Having worked so hard to engage her, to break down the shields around her heart, I found my own barriers failing, as well. I had pledged to myself that if there was any way to do it, Valka would be my first, but that promise was lost in the chaos of my thoughts and emotions. Right then, I wanted Shirley, and I wanted her badly enough to let all my other promises fall aside.
“I want this,” I said. “Not for the Scouts, not for training, but for us. For you. For me.”
I kissed her again and she returned it with passion. Her hands moved over my neck and through my hair. Nothing about her said she wanted me to hold back.
I thrust in.
Her breath came sharply in, as did mine. All the times she had pleasured me with her hands, with her mouth, even between her thighs or between her breasts—nothing was as sublime as the feeling of her soft warmth wrapped around my cock. I moved slowly, savoring every moment.
“Challers,” said Shirley, “you have to . . . oh . . . you have to stop.”
“It’s too late now.”
“No . . . Challers.” She whispered between sighs. “Listen . . . oh . . . you have to stop.”
I paused my slow thrusting with my cock buried to the hilt. I could feel her pussy squeezing me with pulsing spasms around my shaft. She wasn’t making any move to stop me. In fact, her hips were tilting up to admit me.
“We’re already doing it. Just let it happen. Let go.”
Then I felt her hand on my chest. “Challers.” She was mustering her will, calming her voice. “Stop. You have to stop.”
I rolled onto my side next to her. To keep going like that would have been rape. “I don’t understand. What good is it to stop now? We might as well finish.”
“No, Challers. There’s something transcendent about the first time, something special that can never be recaptured. We can’t squander it. We will have that time, I promise you. It just can’t be now. I’m sorry.”
I heard genuine regret in her voice, but whether it was regret at letting things go too far or that we had to stop, I couldn’t tell. Probably both. My hands drifted over her body. I could tell, just from touch, that she was still very aroused. Her nipples were taut and her body was almost hot to the touch.
Her hand found my erection and caressed it. “I’m sorry to jerk you around like that. Can I make it up to you?”
“Does that mean what I think it means?”
“Yes. How would you like it?”
“Your breasts,” I said, my voice stolen by a fresh wave of heat.
She pushed me onto my back and I felt her warm, soft breasts enfold my cock. I was too aroused to care what she used, as long as she did something to ease my ache. After only a minute or two, I gasped and jerked, and splashed her chest with cum.
When I was done, she pulled away.
“Wait, where are you going?”
“Just getting some water to rinse this off.” I heard a few splashes of water, and then she snuggled up next to me, still a bit wet.
“You don’t need to, ah, have an orgasm yourself?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m happy right here.” She squeezed me, and as sleep crept up, it occurred to me that I was, too.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I awoke to find light filling our mossy bower, the rays filtering down between the leaves of the shrubs that surrounded us. The foliage was still too dense to just push through, but it was a simple matter to crawl out into the shallows of the river and stand up.
I bent down and tugged Shirley’s ankle. “Come on, wake up. Dark shift is over.”
She emerged, bleary-eyed and hair tangled, with leaves and bits of moss stuck to her here and there. We looked around. Now that the lights were on, we could see that we were only a few feet away from a road.
Shirley looked around and pointed off in the distance. “I’m pretty sure that’s where the entrance to the academy is.”
“We should get walking, I guess.” My stomach growled.
Shirley chuckled. “Or maybe find something to eat.”
I looked in the direction of the closest wall of the ring. “What else might be nearby?”
“Most of the folks who live here at headquarters work in support jobs. There are factories manufacturing spare parts, food processing facilities, that kind of thing. We should get back to the academy, though. If we find a console somewhere, I’ll call to have someone come out and pick us up.”
We started walking back in the direction of the academy. The ring shape of the oxygen deck allowed us to see the route to take, so there was no chance of getting lost. Several large robots came by as we walked, but when we tried to wave them down, they just kept on going.
We held hands.
Walking with Shirley was totally different from walking with Valka. She didn’t have just one way of staying close. We walked hand in hand, or elbow to elbow, or sometimes with an arm around her shoulders. It felt wonderful, free, like she and I were the only people in the universe.
A voice suddenly called out from behind us. “Ey, out da way!”
Something large and orange flashed past us, careening wildly down the narrow path. It skidded to a stop, throwing up a cloud of dust and nearly tipping off of its three wheels. It settled back down and a bald head poked up over the top of the machine.
“Hey, you folks in trouble?”
“Yah,” said Shirley. “We need a ride. Can you call the academy for us?”
“Nope. Radio’s broke. Climb in the back; I’ll give ya a ride. Where ya goin’?”
“The academy.”
We clambered into the little cargo area behind his one-seat control couch. It was half full of greasy boxes of tools and barrels of lubricant. As dirty as I was, I didn’t want to sit on any of it. Instead, I stood up and gripped the framework overhead that held a ladder and some poles. Shirley took a place next to me.
He screwed up his face and clucked his tongue. “It’s a little outside my duty zone, but I suppose I can give you a ride. Name’s Joco Gata. You?”
We lurched into motion and sped off between the fields and orchards.
“I’m Captain Shirley Smith, and this is Cadet Challers Dizen.”
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br /> “Ohah, you’re Scouts?” The man handled his little vehicle like a maniac. We held on tight as he bounced along the track and made idle conversation. “So why you folks naked?”
Whenever he looked over his shoulder to get a look at Shirley’s boobs, he swerved precariously to the right.
“We went for a swim and got carried downstream. By the time we got back onshore, it was too dark to see, so we just waited for the lights to come back on.”
“Heh. Must have been some swim.” He gave me a wink and went back to leering at Shirley.
The fact that he was right made his leer even more embarrassing. For the first time in a long time, I felt ashamed, not just for myself, but for Shirley, as well.
“Ya know, I used to be a Scout, years ago.”
“What happened?”
“Turns out I wasn’t really good Scout material. But I’m good with robots, so they let me stay on as a tech.”
“Do you miss going out in space?”
“Sometimes, but I’m happy here. I got a comfortable place, got lots of robots to mess with, and I get to meet interesting people.” He winked at me and gave Shirley another lurching leer.
My stomach growled.
“Ya hungry? My lunch is in the red box back there; you can have it if you want.”
I ignored another gurgle from my midsection. To eat, I would have to let go, and no food was worth the risk that would entail. “No, I’m fine.”
The road dipped down near the river, where our clothes were still scattered on the grass.
Shirley pointed over his shoulder. “You can let us off right over there.”
The little truck skidded to a stop, nearly throwing us back in the water. I leapt out, more than a little glad to have my feet back on the nice, stable deck. Shirley waved to Joco as he spun his little machine around and sped down the road.
We pulled our clothes back on.
I shook my head, watching him disappear in the distance. “What a creep.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Shirley. “I think he had his own kind of charm. He certainly seems to be enjoying life.”