by Claire Kent
“No! Not at all! Of course you made the right decision.”
His obvious sincerity made her feel better. “It was the right decision. I knew it then. It felt weird to have sex that first time. It was hot and uncomfortable and kind of embarrassing. But I still knew it was better than what I had left behind. I was fine with it that first time. And I was happy that the man had chosen me.”
“All right,” he murmured. He’d reached out again, and his fingers were trailing down her arm the way they had her back earlier. “All right.”
“It wasn’t bad.” She didn’t know why she was still talking about it since he’d accepted what she’d said. “It wasn’t. It’s just sex. Nothing but sex. It’s not like the first time would ever be special.”
Desh’s eyes rested on her face for a silent moment. Then he said very softly, “Mine was.”
Her heart and her stomach both twisted with emotion, and there was nothing she could do to calm them down.
She had to get the attention off her before she did something really stupid like burst into tears. So she smiled and said, “So tell me about you.”
He arched his eyebrows just slightly. “Uh, Talia, you know that you were with me for my first time, right?”
She giggled. “I didn’t mean tell me about your first time. I meant tell me about your work. What was it like for you the first time you fought?”
He opened his mouth, enlightenment washing over his face as he understood her question. “Ah. Well, the first real fight I got into was on that undeveloped planet I told you about. I was sixteen, and I was attacked by these… cavemen. Needless to say, I wouldn’t have survived if I hadn’t been rescued.”
“By who?”
“By other cavemen. Nicer ones.” He shook his head. “I was so weak. So helpless.”
“You were only sixteen.”
“Still, a sixteen-year-old should have been able to do better than I did.” He wasn’t meeting her eyes, and she could see that the memory still rankled.
“So what did you do?”
“I let other people take care of me since I was helpless to take care of myself. I eventually learned a few things. I got a little better. I even killed an animal with a spear.”
“Did you?” she asked, her eyes very wide. “Why?”
“To eat. Of course, it took three years to get to that point.”
“I can’t believe you were on that planet for so long. How did you get there to begin with?”
He cleared his throat. “I… I, uh, crashed there.”
“And no one came to rescue you?”
“There wasn’t anyone who would have wanted to rescue me.”
The words were matter-of-fact, not self-pitying, but they sounded so incredibly lonely. She reached out to put a hand on his chest. “What about your family?”
“I don’t have a family.” Something new had entered his eyes, an expression she’d never seen there before.
It was hard—harder than the Desh she’d known. It scared her a little.
“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say.
After a long pause, Desh finally continued, “I only ever had a father. He was…”
She wanted to prompt him to continue, but he felt so tense she didn’t dare. She just waited to see if he would go on.
He did. “He never wanted me. I was a status symbol mostly—a son who was so smart, who did so well in school. I loved him because he was my father, but he never loved me. He proved that very clearly.”
Her heart was aching for the pain she could hear in his voice. She’d never bonded very closely with her own family either, but she’d also never felt betrayed by them in the way she could hear in Desh’s voice. “What did he do?”
“He… he proved that his personal power was more important to him than I was. I was a fool to ever think it might be different.” He shook his head slightly, as if scattering his bitter thoughts. “Anyway, he didn’t come looking for me when I crashed on that planet. He… wanted to get rid of me when it was clear I couldn’t improve his status. So I was stuck on that planet for years.”
“Were those years miserable then?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not really. They were hard. And lonely. The last year someone else… someone else crashed there too, and I liked her. So I had someone to talk to at last.”
“She was your partner?” Talia asked, feeling a flicker of something that was unmistakably jealousy.
She didn’t like the idea of Desh having a partner on the planet.
She didn’t like it at all.
“No!” He gave an ironic laugh. “Not at all. She found herself a better, stronger man than me. But I liked her. We were friends.”
That tension in her chest relaxed, although she didn’t like how bitterly Desh remembered himself as weak.
“So it wasn’t all terrible there then?”
“No. It wasn’t terrible. It was… hard, but that doesn’t always mean bad. There was something untouched about that planet, like I was living in a different time, like the Coalition world I knew could never touch it.” His voice broke on the last couple of words, and he covered it with a cough.
Talia sat up. “Desh, what happened?”
He shook his head. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. His shoulders were visibly tense.
“Desh, what about your friend? Is she all right?”
“Yes. She’s all right. After we escaped, she went back because she loved her man there and life with him was better than what she had anywhere else. She thought it would be… She thought it would last. That world was innocent. Not the people there—they were like everyone else, some good and some bad—but the planet… the planet was innocent. And a lot was beautiful about it. It should have… lasted longer.”
“Tell me what happened,” Talia said hoarsely. She didn’t know why she was so upset by this conversation, but she was. She could sense how deep it went with Desh, and so it felt deep to her too. “Didn’t it last?”
“In Coalition space? You really think something beautiful and innocent could endure for long?”
“Oh no!”
He was still shaking his head, still staring at a space in the air. “She had nine years there before they came. The Coalition. To develop the planet. They called it development. What they did was razed everything good about it to the ground.”
Talia was actually tearing up, although she didn’t know why. “Is she okay?”
“Yes. She got out with her family. They went… they went somewhere else. Somewhere the Coalition hasn’t yet reached. Some of the others got out too, but… their world was still destroyed.”
Talia could barely speak over the lump in her throat. “That is why you left Mel Tana at last?” She didn’t know how she knew this, but she did. “The bad news that wouldn’t let you… sit still?”
Desh nodded mutely.
“You went to make sure she was all right?”
“Yes. Her and her family. And then…” He cleared his throat. “Sometimes things happen that are so wrong—so utterly wrong—that you can’t just hide away any longer.”
Her hand clenched on his chest. “So what are you going to do?” she whispered.
He seemed to realize what he’d said, and he shook off the intensity of the moment before. He smiled at her. “Right now I’m going to win the Tournament. I’ll worry about the rest of it later.”
She had more questions—a lot more she needed to know—but it was clear that was all the confessionals Desh was giving tonight.
***
The following night, she went back to his room, and after she walked through the door, before she’d had a chance to say anything, her attention was distracted by a bowl on the table, sitting next to the medical device she’d kept from the med unit so she could treat any further of Desh’s injuries.
It was a large silver bowl.
Filled with lovely purple grapes.
She gasped as she processed them, her hand coming up to cover her mouth.
&
nbsp; Desh looked a little sheepish as he stood beside her.
When she was able to move, she turned to stare at him in wonder.
He gave a half shrug. “You said yesterday you… They’re pretty hard to get, even here, but I’ve earned enough so far in the Tournament that I could afford them. I thought you might… like them.”
“You got them for me?”
“Well, yes. Who else?”
Her eyes had filled with tears, blurring her vision. She was shaking with emotion. She couldn’t say anything.
“I had one. They’re really good. You said you… you used to dream about them. So I thought…” He gave another of those half shrugs, his eyes searching her face as if trying to figure out how she was feeling.
She gave a little sob and walked over to the table. She reached out to pluck one of the grapes from the bunch and stared at it in her hand.
“Go ahead,” Desh said, stepping over beside her. “Try it.”
She popped the grape into her mouth. As soon as she bit down, an explosion of crisp sweetness overwhelmed her taste buds, filled her senses.
It was exactly as she remembered from when she’d first tasted them at six years old.
A tear streamed down her face, and she brushed it away impatiently.
She turned to smile up at Desh, feeling like something had burst into light inside her. “Thank you,” she managed to say after she’d swallowed.
His expression softened. “You’re welcome.” He gestured toward the table. “You can have more than one, you know. We can maybe save some for tomorrow, but they don’t last very long without getting squishy.”
“You know a lot about grapes.”
“Not really. Although I did meet a couple once who owned a vineyard.”
“Really?”
“Yes. They taught me a little about grapes. They grew them to make wine. Have some more.”
She couldn’t resist, and together they ate about half the bowl. Talia enjoyed them so much she was almost limp afterward, and Desh was starting to get a little grumpy about the number of times she was thanking him.
“You don’t have to thank me again,” he grumbled after about her fifth attempt to express her gratitude. “It wasn’t that big a deal.”
“It was to me,” she said. “No one has ever done something so nice for me before.”
He looked at her for a long time. Then he finally shook his head. “Someone should have done nice things for you a long time ago.”
“Can I do something nice for you now?”
His forehead wrinkled. “Do what?”
She stood up and untied her tunic, letting it slip from her shoulders onto the floor.
Desh’s eyes raked over her body, and his cheeks flushed as his posture tightened. He always responded to her that way. He really liked how she looked.
He was still sitting in a straight chair by the table, and she stepped closer to him. “You don’t have to…” He cleared his throat. “You don’t have to do anything. I didn’t give you grapes because I expected…”
“I know you didn’t. But I want to do something nice for you now.”
He stared at her hotly as she leaned over to run her hands down his chest and abdomen.
Then she added, “I would have done it for you anyway, even without the grapes.” Her hands ended up on his cock, which had grown hard in his trousers.
He let out a soft moan as she squeezed him, and his hips bucked up eagerly into her grip. “If you… if you…”
“I like to please you,” she murmured hoarsely, lowering herself onto her knees on the floor. “I like that you seem to enjoy it.”
“Enjoy it?” he rasped, bucking up again as she reached into his trousers to get her hands around his erection. “Enjoy it? You… you intoxicate me.”
That sounded pretty good. She smiled as she lowered her mouth to his cock.
He cupped her head with both hands as she started to work him over, and soon he was groaning helplessly and rocking his pelvis up into her sucking.
He still didn’t have much control. He was always urgent and excited with her, not able to hold himself back for very long, and tonight he was more so than usual.
As she hollowed out her cheeks, he moved against her clumsily, tightening his hands and thighs as his groaning turned to breathless grunts.
He wasn’t forceful like so many men she knew—who tried to fuck her throat because they could. Desh always tried to be careful, even when he was on the verge of losing it.
Soon his whole body was tensing up and his cock was shuddering in her mouth. Then he choked on a loud roar as he let go, and she sucked him through a long series of spasms.
He fell back into the chair when she finally let his cock slip from her lips, and he was smiling tiredly when she moved her eyes to his face.
“It looks like you enjoyed that,” she said, straightening her back and rubbing his thighs soothingly. His whole body was starting to relax now.
“Enjoy doesn’t even come close.” He reached down for her and pulled her into his lap, cradling her against him.
She snuggled against him, loving the feel of his arms as much as the rest of his body.
She’d never been held like this before.
It made her feel… special, precious.
He was quiet for a long time as he recovered from his climax and just held her. Then he finally murmured into the silence, “If you could be anywhere in the universe, where would you be? What would you do?”
She blinked and raised her head from where she’d been resting it against his shoulder. “I… I don’t know.”
“You don’t have daydreams?”
“Of course I do. But I usually dream about the books I read. All those old stories of courage and adventure and heroes saving their people. About uprisings, throwing off oppression. Sometimes…” She paused, lowering her voice as she continued, “Sometimes I imagine how it would happen here.”
He tightened his arms around her. “You really daydream about that?”
“Yes. I do. I like to… I know it sounds ridiculous, but I make all these plans and plots. There are little rebellions all over, so I plan out ways to somehow bring them all together…” She giggled. “I know, it’s crazy, but you asked. It… it makes me feel better.”
He stroked her hair as she cuddled against him again. “You don’t daydream about being happy?”
“I think… that is me dreaming of being happy. I don’t know how else I ever could be. I guess I do sometimes daydream about having a room of my own, having privacy, being able to get real fruit occasionally. That’s as happy as I can imagine being in this world. In this world as it is now.”
“It doesn’t sound like much.”
“It’s better than I had before.” She listened to him breathe for a minute. Then she asked, “What about you? What do you daydream about? If you could be anywhere in the universe where would you be?”
He let out a sigh. “That planet with the vineyard I mentioned. That’s the same one where my friend and her family ended up going. If I have… if I have any friends in the universe, they’re on that planet.”
“So why don’t you live there too?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think I could be happy with so much… so much wrong. It would always feel like it was lurking on the outskirts of my mind. And the truth is I don’t know how long that planet can remain a safe haven. How long will it be before they come and destroy that world too?”
“So you don’t know of anywhere you could be happy?”
“I don’t think I’m… called to be happy.”
She sucked in a breath and straightened up again. “What does that mean? What are you called to do, if not to be happy?”
“What are any of us called to do? Do the best we can with what we have.” He leaned forward to kiss her gently. “I have this time with you at least. I never believed I could feel this way.”
“What way?”
“Good. I feel good.”
&n
bsp; She stared at him for a long time before she was able to admit, “I didn’t believe I could ever feel this good either.”
***
Eight days later, after another round of the Tournament, she showed up at Desh’s door.
She’d been to his room almost every night for the past two weeks. If she had another appointment in the evening, she went to his room afterward.
Jenelle said it was too much. She said it was dangerous to spend that much time with a man who couldn’t afford to pay for exclusivity. But Talia didn’t care.
The Tournament would be over next week, and then Desh would be leaving the Residence.
She wanted to spend as much time as she could with him before he did.
His doors slid open, and she stepped into his room, and he was on her before she knew what was happening. He pushed her against the wall, kissing her deep and hard.
She responded immediately, her heart leaping in excitement.
She’d never in her life known that kissing could feel so good, like he was so deep inside her she’d never be alone again.
They kissed until they were rocking together, and then he took her right there against the wall, lifting her hips and holding her steady as he fucked her with fast, short thrusts.
Then he carried her over to the bed and moved on top of her, holding on to her bottom as he took her with primal urgency. She came and came again and was biting her lip to keep from screaming as he finally fell out of rhythm.
Both of them were urgent and sweating and grunting loudly as they worked up to a final peak. Talia felt her body fly apart again as Desh finally fell over the edge too.
It took them a long time to catch their breaths and come to their senses afterward, but both of them were smiling when they did.
“I guess you had a lot of pent-up energy tonight,” she said. His head was against her shoulder, and she stroked his hair gently. “It really wasn’t much of a fight.”