I lower myself between her legs, and her thighs tremble in anticipation on the edges of my vision. She looks down at me, across the length of her beautiful body. “Are you sure you want to—?”
“Yes. Lie back.”
I run one finger lightly over her clit and down to her opening, re-familiarizing her with such intimate contact. Yet at the first touch of my tongue, her entire body jolts.
“Sorry!” she whispers.
“Don’t be.” I drape her legs over my shoulders, then I slide my hands under her ass, pulling her toward me and tilting her hips up into a better position. “Relax. I promise this’ll be fun.” I close my lips around her clit and suck gently, waiting for the tension in her legs to ease. When it does, I flick my tongue lightly over the little bundle of nerves she’s clearly been neglecting, and again she jumps. But this time she relaxes more quickly, and the next time I flick my tongue over her, she moans.
“This time you can close your eyes. Just concentrate on what you’re feeling and forget about everything else.”
She nods, and when she closes her eyes, I lick one long line from her opening to her clit, then back down. I dip inside briefly before repeating the entire stroke, and soon, I can feel her tense in the moments between having my tongue inside her and having its friction against her clit. She’s holding her breath. Straining toward me.
I move faster, adding more pressure. Quicker strokes. When she throws her hands out to grip the edges of the mattress, I focus on her clit with my tongue and slide two fingers inside her.
Rayla’s still tight—so tight—and she clenches around my fingers the moment she feels them. I stroke into her, matching the rhythm of my tongue, and when she starts arching into my touch, trying to grind against my face, I realize that I’ve been repeatedly pressing my own groin into the mattress, trying to ease the pressure on my poor, hard cock.
I need to be inside her. But not until she’s ready. Not until she comes.
I stroke into her a little harder, feeling for that little rough patch inside, and I’m thrilled to find it already swollen. My princess is eager. And wet. And—
“Jai!” she gasps, and my hips ram into the mattress again. I want to hear her say it again, just like that, when I’m balls deep inside her. “Please!”
I lick her faster, stroking into her over and over, applying pressure to that rough spot as I circle her clit with my tongue. In seconds she’s groaning, her thighs clamped around my head. Her hips twitch toward me, demanding more from my fingers, and I give it to her.
Rayla comes on my tongue, clenching around my fingers, with a deep, hot moan. I keep licking, prolonging her pleasure until she gives me one final shudder, and her legs relax.
“Oh my god, that was hot.” I wipe my mouth as I stand on my knees and shove my pants down. Then I push her legs open wider and crawl up her body, nibbling and kissing my way over the points of her hips, the dip of her navel, and the arch of her rib cage. I linger for a minute on her breasts, trying to give the needy little peaks equal attention. Then I lick a path up her neck until I can give her earlobe a gentle bite. “Will you come again for me, princess?”
She groans, but it’s a happy sound. “I don’t know if I can.”
“You can,” I assure her. She spreads her legs wider, and I position myself between them.
“Is it going to hurt this time?”
“Maybe. But maybe not. You’re pretty…prepared.”
“Okay. Yes.” She nods, then pulls me down for a kiss. “Yes, I want you, Jai.”
I know she means now. Tonight. This one time, right before she leaves. But as I slide into her, just for a moment, I pretend she means something more. That she wants not just my cock and my tongue, but me. Lying thief that I am.
Tomorrow, I’ll confront the reality that the warden’s gorgeous, sheltered daughter has no future with a convict sentenced to life on a prison planet.
Tonight…
She groans as I slide home, and I enjoy being wrapped in her tight warmth for a second before I pull most of the way out, so I can sink into her again. I find a rhythm that won’t bring me to the edge too fast, so she has time to catch up, but I’ve underestimated my lustful little princess. In minutes, she’s moaning again. Thrusting up to meet me and digging her bare heels into my back.
“Jai.” She tightens around me with every stroke, her hands playing over my chest, as if she’s looking for something to grip. As if she wants to touch all of me. “Jai, I’m close.”
“I know, princess. Me too.”
“Oh, god,” she moans, and she grabs my lower back, wordlessly demanding more speed, more friction.
I change the angle, dragging my pubic bone over her clit with every stroke and she gasps. “Jai! Oh!”
I come as she clenches around me, squeezing me with abandon while she grinds into me, and—
“No!” Rayla suddenly shoves me off and rolls off the mattress. “No you can’t— You have to pull out!”
I land on the concrete, on my ass, with my pants tangled around my ankles and my cock miserably wet and cold. And still shooting the last of my—
Oh.
Oh, fuck. “We did it again.”
“Why can’t I remember that until it’s too late?” she groans, sinking onto the edge of the mattress on her knees. “Was it too late? Did you…?”
“Yes. Definitely too late. Though for the record, if you ever want to shock a guy into not-coming, throwing him onto the cold, hard, filthy concrete floor will do the trick. If that had happened a second earlier, I’d be messier than you are.”
“I’m pretty messy,” she says. “Damn it.”
“Just what every man wants to hear, during that post-coital glow.”
Rayla laughs and pushes herself to her feet. “Sorry. That was great. That was too great.” She reaches down, and I let her help me off the floor. She gives me a lingering kiss. “Maybe if that had been less great, I would have remembered to push you off earlier.”
“That is the weirdest compliment I’ve ever gotten.” I dig in my bag for a clean rag, but I can’t seem to find—
“Here.” Rayla tosses me a cloth, and I realize the moment the soft bit of material hits my hand that it’s a brand new rag.
“How many of these did you bring?”
“I don’t know. Half a dozen? I wasn’t sure how often I’d be sponge bathing.”
“Infinity. That’s the answer out here, unless you find a building with a functioning shower or tub. We have those in Settlement A, but it’s not worth what else we have in Settlement A.”
I follow her into the bathroom, where we clean up, then rinse our rags and lay them over the faucets to dry. “We have to get better about that,” Rayla says as she sinks onto the mattress and reaches for her shirt.
“Really? I thought that was pretty damn good.”
“I mean, better at taking precautions. Not that it matters. I’ll probably be gone tomorrow.”
“But not tomorrow morning, right?” I pull my pants on, then curl up behind her on the mattress. “Because I’m sure I’ll be ready again by dawn.”
She laughs. “Is it normal to have sex that often? Twice in a few hours?”
“Well, it’s not abnormal. But truth be told, there is nothing normal about you being here at all. And I would wish you could stay forever, if that wouldn’t be damning you to a life sentence on this hellhole.”
“Is that it?” Rayla asks as we round a corner in the cracked pavement. The day is just starting to heat up, though we actually got a head-start on hot this morning, with some break-of-day sex. At the end of which I did remember to pull out. Even though that makes me feel like a stupid fucking teenager in the back of my dad’s car.
My kingdom for a fucking condom. Or a prophylactic shot. Not that my kingdom’s worth much, considering that everything I own fits into the bag on my back.
“Yes. That’s Settlement B.” I tug her to a stop. I’m not sure whether or not we’ll find her mother in that cluster of
buildings. But what I am sure of is that I’m going to lose her today. Guards have been flying shuttles overhead for more than a full day now, and I know in my gut that they’re watching the settlement. I know that if I lead her there, they’ll take her from me.
But I can’t keep her here. She doesn’t deserve this life. This was only ever supposed to be a trip for her. So I’m going to keep my promise. I’m going to try to keep this whole thing in perspective.
Five days. Nine orgasms (three of them mine). One rotisserie turkey. And more good memories than I’ve made in my entire four years on Devil’s Eye. More than I’ll likely make in the rest of my life.
That’s what we get to keep from this.
And as we head down the cracked road into the settlement, I try to memorize every detail. Her hair, long and brown, and somehow still sweet-smelling, even after several stream-baths. Her hips, a modest swell from a narrow waist—just enough to hold onto. Her breasts, full and round, with small pinkish nipples that get hard at just the thought of my tongue. Her—
“Jai! There are people. I think they’re all women.” She sounds so excited. So relieved. “I… I don’t know what to say. I don’t know who to ask for. I don’t even have a name.”
“Just ask for prisoner 2648397.” I’ve said the number so often to myself now that I have it memorized. “If she’s not there…” I shrug. “At least you’ll know. At least you’ll have done everything you could to find her.”
Rayla nods. Then she looks overhead, as a patrol shuttle flies by. “They’re going to see me.”
“Can’t be helped, at this point. Let’s get going before they land and cut this party short.” I take her hand as we walk into the settlement. Though there are only a few women outside, most of them sipping what smells like instant coffee, seated on several rickety chairs dragged into the dirt in front of various buildings, they all turn to look at us as we approach.
“Who the hell are you?” One lady stands and sets her plastic mug on the ground. She must be talking to Rayla, because though she may not remember my name, she knows who I am. She did several months in Settlement A, giving herself to several men before the next shift came to relieve her, and though she was young and soft then, she’s older and wiser now. Harder.
She is not happy to see me and the men I clearly represent, for her.
“I’m Jai, and this is Rayla,” I say. “We don’t want any trouble. We don’t want anything, actually, except some information.” I nudge Rayla forward.
“We’re looking for prisoner 2648397,” she says, her voice soft and timid.
“I know 2648397,” a voice calls from behind us, and I turn as Wendy, the matriarch and madam of Settlement B, steps out of the doorway of the largest building. The dormitory. “Who’s looking for her?”
“I am.” Rayla’s hand tightens around mine.
“And you would be?” Wendy heads toward us, studying Rayla as she draws closer. Then, abruptly, she stops. Her hands fly up to cover her face, except for her eyes. “Oh my god.”
And suddenly I understand why Rayla looked so familiar, the first time I saw her.
I’ve only seen Wendy up close a few times, and my memory of her isn’t detailed. But now, seeing her next to Rayla, the resemblance is obvious. My princess is a younger, much less weathered version of her mother.
Rayla is speechless, staring at her. And for a second, Wendy’s expression matches hers. Then she glances warily at the sky and waves Rayla forward with one arm. “Let’s talk inside. The patrols have been crazy for the past few days, and now I know why.”
She reaches for me before she follows her mother toward one of the buildings, clearly intending to include me in their discussion, and I take her hand.
Inside the dormitory, the difference between the women’s community and the men’s becomes crystal clear. Things are still run-down out here. Still grimy. But they’re much more…intact.
The women’s dormitory has a large central lobby, and though the floor tiles are cracked and the sheet-metal walls are dented in places, the room clearly sees a lot of communal use. Old couches line the walls, their vinyl upholstery patched with strips of thick adhesive tape. Scuffed coffee and end tables hold empty metal drink mugs, as well as stacks of clean towels and rags, which are evidently for communal use.
Hallways branching from either end of the lobby lead to a series of rooms. Presumably bedrooms. The doors seem mostly intact. Their automatic slide function may even still work.
The men’s settlement has a similar building, with a nearly identical lobby, but most of the men have chosen to live in the dorm across the street, which has nothing but two floors of individual bedrooms.
Where the women have clearly scavenged abandoned buildings across zone four for furniture and dishes left behind by the original colonists, the men have disassembled their furniture and likely long ago used it as fuel for the grills in the park on one end of our settlement. The men are loners living in proximity to one another, but the women, I’ve heard, are assigned jobs and are expected to contribute to the group.
Where the men have chosen to isolate themselves, the woman have built a community. I know for a fact that their community can be cruel and self-serving, but it is a community. It has rules beyond the men’s long-standing possession policy, “You keep what you can take and defend on your own.” And those rules are enforced by Wendy. Who, I now suspect, mothers the convicts in her charge in lieu of the daughter she lost twenty years ago.
Hers isn’t a soft maternity. She isn’t cuddly. In fact, she now sells ten of her new daughters at a time to the men, in order to protect the others.
But maybe Rayla doesn’t need to know that. She’s only going to have hours with her mother. Maybe only minutes. What harm could it do to let her see only the good in her mom?
“In here.” Wendy leads us through a door at the back of the lobby into the remains of a kitchen and dining area, where a small table is surrounded by four mismatched chairs. The kitchen appliances are long gone, but through a window in the rear wall, I see a series of stone-lined fire pits dug into the ground out back, each rigged with semi-permanent homemade grill grates or spits. The women don’t have a park full of grills, so they’ve made their own. And I’d bet anything that they cook communal meals there, if not often, then at least sometimes.
Wendy pulls out a chair at the table and gestures for Rayla to sit, while she takes a chair of her own across from it, leaving me standing awkwardly in the middle of the room.
“May I sit?” I ask, and she gives me another cold once-over. Then a curt nod. I pull one of the chairs onto Rayla’s side of the table and sink into it.
“Do you know who I am?” Wendy’s gaze is intently focused on Rayla, and I’m oddly relieved to have been dismissed from her notice. The matriarch is small, but she seems to be made entirely of hard planes and sharp edges. And I can’t really blame her resentment of me, after men from Settlement A started raiding her community.
“Yes.” Rayla leans forward with her hands folded on the table, and she looks both eager and nervous. “I think you’re…my mother.”
“Well, I don’t have any proof of that, but I gave birth to a daughter just over twenty years ago, if my count is correct. And you look so much like I did at your age.” Wendy exhales, as if she’s steeling herself for a difficult conversation. Then she gives Rayla a puzzled look. “How did you get onto the planet? Are you…a convict?” She looks distressed by that thought.
Rayla gives her a reassuring smile. “No, though I’m sure I broke several laws getting here. I paid a guard to bring me here and protect me. But our shuttle crashed, and he died.”
“Well, that would explain all the patrols. If they know they lost a shuttle and a guard, they probably know he wasn’t alone.”
“They definitely do,” Rayla says. “So, what’s your name?”
Wendy frowns. “My name is Wendy Galliga. How did you find me, if you don’t know my name?”
“I snooped through
my dad’s personal things. He doesn’t keep hard copies of much, but there was this file full of baby pictures I’ve never seen. They were all captioned with my name and the date, but the first one… Hidden in the metadata, I found a seven-digit number, and the words ‘zone four.’ It wasn’t hard to figure out what that meant, considering I’d already discovered that my citizen ID number is fraudulent. I assume he made note of the information in case I ever needed an organ donation, or some family medical history, or something.”
“Wait, what?” Wendy’s expression has darkened like a storm cloud. “Why would your parents know I’m a prisoner at all, much less have my prisoner number? The agency wasn’t supposed to tell them that.”
Rayla frowns. “Agency?”
“Um…” I take her hand. “Your…Wendy seems to think you were adopted through an agency. Presumably on another planet.”
“I…” Rayla’s brows draw down even tighter. “I never left Rhodon. Well, I never left orbit, anyway.”
“You what?” Wendy’s fist clenches on the table. “Oh my god. He kept you. Wait, he kept you here? On the guard station?”
“Station Alpha,” Rayla confirms. “I’ve lived there my whole life. Never even stepped foot off the station until I came here to find you.”
“All this time, you were right up there.” Her gaze trails toward the ceiling. Then it hardens. “Why? He promised he would give you a good life. He was supposed to find you a family. He wasn’t supposed to keep you cooped up in a metal box! He wasn’t supposed to keep you at all!”
“Wendy?” a soft voice says, and I look up to see a petite woman standing in the lobby doorway. She’s only a few years older than Rayla, and she bears a passing resemblance, with her dark hair and light eyes.
“I’m fine, Katherine. Will you tell everyone to find something to do elsewhere today? I’m going to need some privacy.”
“Sure.” Katherine disappears into the lobby, and a second later, I hear the front door of the dormitory open as she goes outside.
“Well.” Wendy leans back in her chair and crosses her legs, as if she’s trying to get comfortable. As if she’s hosting a guest in any normal kitchen, rather than in a long-abandoned dormitory on an isolated prison planet. “I would offer you something to drink, but I suspect that whatever you have in there will be better than the tap water I have to offer.”
Dirty Lies Page 13