by Dani Dundee
She laughed, and the laugh went through him.
It was exactly the same laugh as he remembered.
Something about it reminded him of how she had nearly skipped up to him just now, how soft her light felt. Even here, at the tail end of a war, working for worms, likely selling herself on the street like a common ridvak, she could still exude joy, a kind of pure-heartedness he could not ever remember having felt.
Well, not since he’d last seen her anyway.
She smiled at him, almost as if she’d heard some part of that, her one arm still around his neck. The smile brought a flush of separation pain to his light, making it difficult to hold her gaze again. He found himself looking at her mouth. When he glanced up that time, she smiled wider, curling her fingers into the hair at the back of his head.
Tugging on it, massaging his neck even as her other hand slid inside his coat, she smiled again when he let her feel his pain...and the fact that he was already hard.
Seers called it separation pain, but that was the polite term. It was also called sex-pain or just tr’esrak or hunger, which had a cruder meaning in seer that the closest word in English, which humans generally used to talk about food.
Sex pain was just more thing that separated seers from humans, and one more thing he probably shouldn’t let get too out of hand right now, not while they were still was in public. Seers who couldn’t hide sex-pain from humans didn’t last long out here, not around humans familiar with seers, at any rate.
But he wanted her, yes. Badly. His mind knew that, even before the pain got severe enough that he was having trouble keeping it off his face.
The pain in his light was just a more tangible symptom.
“You’re still a pervert,” she said, quirking her lips.
“You’re still a tease,” he said, but smiled as he said it.
He fought with the part of him that wanted to remember the last time he’d seen her.
Before he could, she pulled his mouth down to hers.
He kissed her, with restraint at first, then harder when she wrapped her arms tighter around his neck, opening her light. He let out a low gasp against her mouth, pulling her roughly flush to his body as he parted his lips, responding to her mouth and tongue by opening his own light in return. He opened it...a lot. Maybe more than he had with anyone, at least in the past few decades. When they parted that time, she had her hand on his cock and was massaging him deliberately through the uniform pants, her face pressed to his neck.
“I missed you, Fig,” she said, soft. “I missed you a lot…”
His eyes closed, right before he glanced down at the jacket he still clutched in his other hand, his knuckles white where he gripped the fabric. He glanced at the closed eyes of the dark-haired seer who wore it, and realized he must be unconscious for real now.
He turned back to Nara.
“I have a room,” he said to her.
She laughed. “So do I.”
“I suspect mine is nicer,” he said.
She smiled, clicking at him in amusement before she wound her arms tighter around his waist.
“We’ll have to bring him,” Terian said, indicating towards Revik with a faint apology in his voice. “There is only one room…and I fear, given the number of humans occupying the place already, it might be impossible to procure another one at this hour, sister.”
She laughed again. That time, the sex-pain that rose in his light nearly blinded him.
He’d started to wonder if this was a dream...if this was some fantasy he was having. Perhaps he’d drunk more than he’d realized. He could be passed out with Revi’ somewhere, dreaming about having his cock massaged by the hand of his childhood lover.
“I think our privacy will be intact,” she said, glancing shrewdly down at the other seer. “If he wakes, we’ll send him out for food.”
“Agreed,” Terian said, pulling his mind back to her. “And drinks.” He added, “Although if we do that, we may have to wait awhile for his return…”
She laughed and he felt it in his fingers, his feet...other parts of his body.
He kissed her again.
He’d meant it to be a short kiss, particularly since she’d agreed to come back to their room, but she had her hands on him as soon as he started, pulling at his light with hers, massaging the muscles of his chest under the uniform shirt he wore with her bare palm and fingers. Pain followed her every touch, even as he felt her tugging at him harder with her light, her hands exploring the changes in his body since they’d last been together. She wanted him to open to her more...she was coaxing him gently to open his light already.
He knew his body had changed. He was bigger now. Working for the Rooks, he took better care of his physique than he ever had working dirt farms in that shithole of the Ukraine where the two of them had the misfortune of being born.
He felt her liking the changes in him. A coil of hotter pain plumed off her light as she continued to explore him with her hands. Her pain worsened again when her hand gripped his ass through the uniform pants. He felt her noticing the changes in his light, too, and liking those as well. More than liking them, maybe. He felt a whisper of awe off her as she continued to look at the structures in his light, along with a pulse of denser heat.
“Fuck, Fig,” she murmured. “What have you done to yourself...?”
He couldn’t answer. Instead, he kissed her again, putting light in his tongue, grabbing her rear end in his free hand and forcing her pelvis against his.
When they parted that time, his whole body hurt.
He was breathing harder, fighting to focus his eyes.
He also wanted to fuck more than he had in months…years, maybe.
Moreover, he’d already decided when he left the city, he would bring her with him.
*
She’d been his first love. His only one, maybe.
They’d first met as true children, so young he wondered if he’d dreamed that meeting, even with his seer’s photographic memory. Due to his rigorous light-training under the Rooks, he’d lost memories, of course…more than any ordinary seer did, at any point in their lives. He’d lost things, people, events, so he had some reason to believe that he could have invented memories to take the place of those gaps in his mind.
He’d never lost her though, not even in the particulars.
So he believed that meeting to be real, too.
He’d met her under a tree.
She’d startled him, wandering up and sitting next to him without a pause, staring fixedly at the fat-bellied puppy that lay in his lap. He’d thought she’d barely noticed him for the puppy, but he couldn’t tear his eyes off of her, even then. He’d never seen eyes of such a light, bright blue, and that ring of even lighter blue around her iris, an almost white...it only made the darker color seem all the brighter. Her eyes were bluer than the sky, bluer than a robin’s egg...bluer even than the dye his parents used for religious rituals he didn’t understand.
The eyes in his own family were all amber or dark brown.
His were nearly orange, but he got teased by the other seer children, who called him feik-re or “cat,” in the seer tongue. That turned into “Feigran” at some point, which got shortened to “Fig,” probably by his older brother.
Somehow it spread to all of the other children by the time he’d started school.
That was before the humans came, of course.
Terian pushed all of that out of his mind even as he loosened the dark uniform tie, feeling the pain in his chest worsen when he saw Nara staring at him from where she lay sprawled on the bed, her upper body supported on her palms. She was naked now but for the high-heeled shoes, a lace garter and bra and sheer black stockings he’d barely noticed in the dim streetlights.
He couldn’t tear his eyes off them now, or the bra she wore, which had to be French.
“Gaos,” he muttered. “I’m not the only one who’s changed, Nara...”
She grinned at him, and his cock hardened more.<
br />
They’d already thrown a blanket over Revik on the couch.
Terian spent a few minutes cleaning his friend up after Revi’ threw up outside the building’s entrance before they brought him outside. Thankfully, he’d woken up long enough for that and not much more. Despite the smell, Terian had been relieved Revi’ had thrown up when he did. Now at least he didn’t have to worry about his friend suffocating in his sleep.
Terian managed to get some water in him before he closed his eyes the second time. Now Revi’ lay on his side, passed out shoeless and shirtless, but more or less clean.
Terian had been jealous when he’d seen Nara looking at Revi’s body while he slept.
She’d felt it, enough to laugh at him, then to start taking off her clothes…which distracted him from the irrational bout of possessiveness that gripped him in those few seconds. Well, eventually it did. The feeling lingered in Terian’s light at first, making him frown.
Women liked Revi’...they always had. He’d have to get used to it, if he brought Nara with them. That being said, he would give his friend a serious talking-to when he woke up, because Revi’ could be a flirt. Strangely, he could be more of one when he was depressed, like now...so Terian intended to make it crystal-clear to the other seer that Nara was strictly off limits.
Once she’d gotten the dress off, he forgot his friend entirely.
She’d filled out, as seers did past their eightieth year. She’d had almost boyish hips when he knew her before, but now, even underfed from the war and likely her human masters keeping her “motivated” for work, her body had significantly more curves than he remembered. Her chest had to be twice if not three times what he remembered, too.
“Gaos,” he muttered again, letting his eyes drift down her stocking-clad legs.
Her light was the same though.
He’d forgotten just how much he liked her light. It pulled at him, worsening his sex-pain into a drug, making his breath come short, even before he’d gotten himself halfway undressed. He was still unbuckling his belt when he approached her on the bed, and then he was trying to decide what to ask her for, feeling strange suddenly about where he stood with her.
This wasn’t how seers did it, not usually.
But then, since they’d moved into human civilization, everything had changed.
In traditional seer culture, the males generally waited for the females to be the aggressors. But both he and Nara lived around humans now. Would she expect him to act like a human male? Would it offend her if he did? She worked in the trade now, too; he didn’t want to disrespect her, even apart from how they knew one another. Many seers were forced into such work these days. It was an unspoken rule that they weren’t to be harassed or disrespected for any sex work they did…ever, for any reason…not by other seers.
Seer law was firm about where the karmic harm lay regarding such exchanges. Beyond that, most didn’t enter the work willingly, so it was cruel to mock them for it.
It struck him as ludicrous suddenly that he was feeling angst over this.
He wasn’t an adolescent anymore. Nor was she.
He could just ask her.
It occurred to him in the same set of seconds that he was nervous.
When he glanced at her next, she was smiling at him, in a way that told him she’d heard at least some of his thoughts. Her pain flickered out at him, and he realized he’d also turned her on with his shyness.
He wondered if she knew...or could guess...just how uncharacteristic it was of him.
“Come here, brother,” she said.
Her voice was coaxing, nearly cajoling.
Feeling his pain worsen, he walked to her directly. She reached for his belt as soon as he was close enough and finished unhooking it. Sliding it out from around him, she let it drop to the floor without following it with her eyes. Then she was unhooking the front of his pants and his pain grew excruciating, enough that he was having trouble staying silent.
“You’re hungry, Fig,” she observed.
“Yes,” he managed.
“How long has it been?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
He really didn’t. The problem for him wasn’t time; it was quality, he realized. He’d been fucking humans for so long he’d almost forgotten the difference. Even the few seers he’d been with…but he didn’t want to think about that, either. Not many female seers made it out of Asia except under the collar of a human these days.
The Rooks would change that, he told himself. They would change it for Nara, too. He would make sure of it. She would never be owned again…
His mind phased out when she put her mouth on him.
Her light pulled on him, along with her tongue and lips. He let out a groan a few seconds into her ministrations, curling his fingers into her hair, gripping her head with his other hand even as he fought with his pain for real, with the part of him that wanted to fuck her hard against the mouth. Her light slid into his like water, hot and pulling and he groaned again as she opened to him, nearly blinding him with her light.
He lost control somewhere in that.
When he could see her again, he hung over her, panting, his whole body tense, his muscles hard as rock as he pinned her to the bed. His hand was still wrapped in her hair, forcing her head back and pressed to the white duvet as he ground his body against hers. A near violence rose in him as he saw her chest heaving under him, and he let out another groan, not caring suddenly if Revi’ woke, if he managed to impress her or not with the changes in him, if she thought him immature for how badly it turned him on, or how it regressed him back into the person he scarcely remembered from his youth.
He found himself begging her. Both hands wrapped into her hair and he pressed his weight into her as he begged her, like he had as a kid.
His pain worsened as soon as she opened her light to him.
She let out a cry when he leaned his mouth to her ear, begging her again.
Then her hands were on him, her fingers kneading and massaging and exploring his back and chest and stomach, then wrapping around his cock, pulling on him with her light and fingers before guiding him into her. He let out a heavier groan when she wrapped her legs around his waist, easing him the rest of the way inside.
He lost control again.
He was fucking her, hard, when he could see again. Her eyes glazed as he aimed his cock, fully extended into her as he made his thrusts heavier, slower, nearly violent at the end of each arc. He felt her light and body react to each jerk of his hips and back, felt her pain worsen enough that he slowed down more, building her even as he eased her down, trying to prolong things, for her as much as him. When she started begging him, he lost it again, wrapping his arms around her thighs and pressing her into the bed as he started driving into her harder again, making her cry out with each thrust.
When she came he let out a heavier gasp, feeling it all the way down to his feet.
She shared it with him, and he stopped to keep from coming himself, hanging over her and panting as she spasmed around his cock, making him let out low sounds when she dug her hands into his back, pulling him deeper.
She was talking to him then, the way she had when they were kids and he lost it again, fucking her harder into the mattress until she came again…and then he did, crying out louder.
He might have been shouting by then.
Some part of him felt Revi’ stir on the couch even as he thought it, enough to cut off his volume when he cried out a second time, still letting go.
He didn’t want Revi’ to wake. Not drunk. Not with Nara in his bed.
Revi’ would want her. He’d ask her for it, and Terian didn’t want to hear her answer.
He fought not to react to the thought, but couldn’t help himself, letting out a low groan. Pain filled it that time, not all of it separation pain.
He bit his lip, fighting back the part of him that wanted to ask her not to do this with his friend. He knew the desire to a
sk was irrational, as was the desire to keep her from Revi’, but seconds after he thought it she was caressing his face with her hands, stroking his throat, touching his jaw and mouth with soft fingers.
“I won’t,” she murmured, her voice reassuring as she kissed him. “I won’t, Fig…I promise. I promise I won’t touch him…”
He found himself saying her name, opening his light.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d opened like that...with anyone.
He might not have thought himself capable of it anymore, truthfully.
At the thought, he came a second time, his hand wrapped around the taut muscles of her ass. He shared it with her through his light until she was flushed again, gripping his arms, digging her nails into his skin. He felt the violence behind her hands, a heated pull mixed with wanting and...possessiveness. He fought back a wave in his own light that wanted to match hers…then to oblige her in that harder want.
He wasn’t adverse to going there.
He wasn’t adverse to going there with anyone, but especially not with her.
He wanted it. Badly enough that he hung there for a few seconds, indecisive.
…But he wanted to wait, he decided in the end.
Some part of him was ready to savor this, now that he’d decided to keep her with him. He wanted to draw it out for some time before he went full-on seer with her…before they started exploring one another’s boundaries and predilections for real. The thought of it turned him on though, enough that he struggled with connecting the two images of her in his mind. He’d wanted the old Nara, too...but this one. This one he wanted more. He wanted her soft and hard at once, open but more experienced.
Realizing he already completely intended to have her with him when he left Paris the following day, it occurred to him that he hadn’t yet asked her if she wanted that. Or perhaps he had, in his own way, but he hadn’t yet gotten an answer from her.