by Claire Kent
By any reasonable standard, that would be the best option. It would make her safest, more secure, most comfortable.
Desh winced slightly, as if she’d leveled him a blow. He lowered his hand to his lap and said slowly, “I want what’s best for you too.”
He meant it.
He really meant it.
“This is my life, Desh,” she said softly. “And it’s not a bad one. Right now, if I hadn’t come to work in the leisure suite, I would be married to a gross old man back on my home planet. I’ve told you that before. I didn’t know enough back then to recognize it, but he would have treated me terribly. I can see that now. I’d be married to that man, or I’d still be living with my family and trying to scrape by enough to live on. Those would have been my only two options for a future. You understand, we didn’t have enough money to even try starting a life somewhere else. So do you really think I made the wrong decision in coming here?”
“No! Of course you didn’t. I never meant to imply otherwise. You did the best you could with the options available. You’ve done… amazingly well for yourself. You’re… amazing.”
She swallowed hard, still feeling like she might cry at any moment. “So this is the best thing for me—to do the best I can in the life I have here. It has to be the best thing for me. There’s not… another option. Is there?”
She didn’t know why she asked the last wistful question. It was foolish and weak, and she knew better than to even hope.
There wasn’t another option.
Not for her life.
Not for most people’s lives.
Not living in a universe like this one.
“No,” Desh said hoarsely. He wasn’t looking at her now. “I wish I could… I can’t give you another option.”
She’d known that from the beginning.
Jenelle had told her from the first day she’d arrived. Romanticizing only led to heartache.
It hurt anyway, hearing that answer from Desh.
Talia had to breathe for a minute or two until she got herself under control again.
“All right,” she said at last, pleased that her voice sounded mostly natural. “So I have to do my job and build the best future I can for myself here. No one else is going to take care of me. I have to take care of myself. I can keep seeing you as long as you’re here, if you’re all right with me also seeing other men. If you’re not all right with it, then I can’t see you anymore. What do you… what do you want?”
Desh stared at her for a long time. Then he finally murmured, “I can’t stop seeing you, Talia. Not yet. I know we don’t have very much time, but I can’t give you up yet.”
Her hands were shaking again. “And you’re all right with me seeing other men?”
“Not really. Not… really. But I’ll make myself be.”
It wasn’t much of an answer, but she could see he was genuinely trying. She nodded, telling herself that things were settled so she could act like herself again.
She was still trying to convince herself of this when Desh kissed her.
Her attempts to think reasonably evaporated into nothing as she experienced a deep wave of longing. Her hands flew up to tangle in his hair, and she leaned into his lips, slipping her tongue out to meet his eagerly.
He sucked in a breath through his nose, holding her head with one hand and sliding the other one down her back. He eased her down until she was lying on the bench and he was pressed on top of her.
His warm body rubbed against hers, and his tongue slid even deeper into her mouth, teasing it in a way that made her entire body clench in pleasure.
It was a long time before he finally tore his mouth away and stared down at her in hot stupor.
“What?” she whispered, raising her hips to grind herself against his erection because her pussy was aching with arousal.
He groaned and winced slightly at her move, but his gaze remained fixed on her face.
“What?” she demanded again, aware of a new feeling twisting in her belly.
Not just lust.
Something else.
Something deeper.
Something absolutely terrifying.
“I want you to want me,” Desh murmured at last.
Her lips parted. “Of course I want you. Why do you think I’m rubbing against you this way?”
He shook his head. “I want you to want me for real. All the way. Not just your body.”
She panted, unable to look away from his blue eyes. She had no idea what to say.
She did want him.
More than her body wanted him.
But it was dangerous—so dangerous—in so many ways.
“I love your body,” Desh said with that same rasp in his throat. He reached down to untie her tunic and pull the fabric apart, baring her completely. He cupped one of her breasts gently, and she arched up into his palm. “But your body isn’t the only thing I want.”
“What…” She had to pause to gasp as he rubbed the heel of his hand over her nipple. “What else do you want?”
“I want all of you.” He moved his other hand so he was holding both her breasts. “And I want all of you to want me.”
She rolled her hips restlessly as desire clenched tightly between her legs.
Her heart was clenching too, making her throat ache, her eyes ache.
“This is all of me,” she said at last, her voice weak and uncertain.
He shook his head. “No, it’s not. I know it’s not. You’re holding back on me.”
“But I…” She whimpered as he slid his hands up to cup her cheeks.
“You think I’m like all the rest of them, that all I want is your body.”
“What else is… is there?” She was almost writhing now. Her body wanted him badly, but something stronger was coiling in her heart—something so new and so dangerous and so uncertain that she couldn’t allow it to exist.
No matter how much she wanted it.
No matter how much she wanted to give it to this man leaning above her, something she’d never seen before on his face.
“There’s you. The whole you. I want to make love to all of it, not just your body.”
Her eyes were blurring over, and she couldn’t hold her hips still. No one said make love anymore. It was an archaic expression. People had sex, they fucked, they took what they wanted.
They took what they wanted from her.
“I’m… I’m just me. There’s nothing else I can give you,” she said at last when she could finally make her voice work.
He leaned down even farther to brush his lips against hers. So softly.
Too softly.
A couple of tears slid out of her eyes.
He murmured against her lips. “Then I’ll give all of me to you.”
She shook beneath him as he deepened the kiss, and she kept shaking as he kissed his way down her face and her neck. He trailed his mouth along her pulse line and then her collar bones, pausing to suck, to tease, to nibble until she was moaning helplessly.
When he reached her breasts, he took one nipple between his lips, and she started to dig her fingernails into his shoulders. The stimulation was erotic torture, but it didn’t come close to equaling the need she could feel in her heart.
She needed him to answer it.
She needed him to fill it.
She didn’t even understand the emptiness, but she knew he was strong enough, gentle enough, to meet it.
He kissed his way all the way down her shuddering belly until he was nuzzling between her legs. She gave a little sob as he parted her with his fingers and then darted his tongue out to her entrance.
She fisted her hands in his hair as he explored with his tongue, and she cried out loudly when he found her clit. “Right there,” she gasped, trying futilely to hold her hips still. “Oh, right there. Please.”
He focused his attention on that spot, flicking it with his tongue and then closing his lips down to suck at her clit, and it was only a minute until she lost contro
l completely, coming hard against his mouth. She thrashed as the sensations overwhelmed her, and she held his head in place until the spasms had all worked through her.
She was still moaning shamelessly between her panting as he moved back up her body. His eyes were still deep and possessive. They saw her. They knew her.
In a way no one ever had.
He kissed her mouth, and she could taste herself on him, but she didn’t even care. He slid two fingers inside her pussy as he kissed her, and she pumped her hips automatically against the penetration.
He kept kissing her as he fucked her with his fingers, and then his thumb pressed down on her clit.
She climaxed again, groaning into his mouth and clawing lines down his back.
“I can feel you coming around my fingers,” he murmured, finally breaking the kiss. “You’re so hot and wet and sweet and tight. I never knew anything could feel so good. I just never knew.”
“But you’re not even…” She was almost in tears, and she sniffed and licked her lips. She couldn’t possibly finish a complete sentence. Her body was still rocking, trying to ride his fingers. She couldn’t get enough. “Desh, Desh, oh please! I need… I need…”
He kept moving his fingers inside her and massaging her clit until she came again, and she knew he was watching her as she did.
Her body was limp and so hot it felt like her skin was burning. She hadn’t had time to catch her breath when she reached for him, trying to pull him into position between her legs. “Now you, Desh,” she gasped. “I want you. I want you.”
“You have me.” He reached into his trousers to pull out his cock, and then he positioned it at her entrance. “This is me. You have all of me.”
She stared up at him with wide eyes as he slowly eased himself inside her.
She cried out at the thick penetration and wrapped her legs around him, hooking her heels to keep them in place.
He gazed down at her. “This is all of me,” he murmured. “I’m yours.”
It was too much. Too good. Too deep.
She didn’t know how to handle it.
It would have been easier if he’d been demanding, if he’d kept wanting to take something from her, but he wasn’t, he didn’t.
He was generous.
He wasn’t trying to please himself.
He was trying to please her.
She whimpered and rocked her hips up into him, needing to move, to break the aching tension in her heart.
His features twisted as she rode him from below, and she saw the moment when his control snapped. He groaned low and lingering as he started to pump his hips.
Their motion was fast and urgent and raw, and she kept her legs wrapped around him tightly. Her hands had moved down to his ass, and she was clawing at the firm flesh the way she had his back earlier. Her pussy was fluttering again, and she bit her bottom lip as she felt the orgasm deepening.
“Talia,” Desh rasped. “You’re… you’re… everything.”
She came in a sudden rush, crying out loudly as she did. He kept thrusting into her clenching, and it felt so good for so long that she kept sobbing out her pleasure until he reached the peak himself.
He rode out his climax with clumsy eagerness, choking out her name and other words, other words that were so unfamiliar she couldn’t process them.
Then he moaned as his body finally grew still, his eyes opening to meet hers one more time.
He collapsed on top of her, the release of tension wiping him out. He panted against her neck, still mumbling out things she couldn’t let herself hear.
Her hands moved of their own accord, caressing his back, his head, his hair. Soothing over the scratches she’d made in her eagerness.
She liked how relaxed he felt now. How warm and soft and heavy. How sated. How needy, as if he wanted her still, even after he’d found his release.
After a few minutes, he was able to move, but he didn’t pull off her. He just moved a hand down to stroke her thigh, which was still lifted as her legs were wrapped around him.
“Talia,” he murmured at last, raising his head so he could gaze down at her. His hand was squeezing the flesh between her bottom and thigh possessively.
As if it were his.
As if she were his.
He’d told her he was hers.
“I’ve never been with another woman,” he said.
She swallowed hard. “I know.”
“I might not be as good at this as other men.”
She shook her head urgently. “You are, Desh. You are. You’re… better.”
She wasn’t trying to flatter him. She was telling the naked truth.
He seemed to understand that she meant it. “I wish I knew more so I could give you more, but this is all I have. This is… all I am.”
She raised a hand to his face. She couldn’t help it. Tears were slipping out of her eyes again. “You’re the best man I’ve ever known.”
His features twisted briefly, as if her words meant something to him. He leaned down to kiss her again gently, briefly. “I wish I could give you more, everything, but…”
Of course there was a but.
There was always a but.
He couldn’t offer her another option for her life.
She’d known it before they’d had sex, and nothing had changed since then.
It felt like something had changed—like she had changed, like everything had changed—but she was still an escort in the High Director’s Residence, and Desh couldn’t take her away from that.
No one could.
Which meant wanting something different—something more—was the worst thing she could possibly do to herself.
She made a little whine in her throat as a wave of terror overwhelmed her. She wriggled beneath him until he heaved himself up to a sitting position.
She scrambled to sit up, tying her robe as she did.
“What’s the matter, Talia?” he asked.
She shook her head, not meeting his eyes.
“What’s the matter?” he asked in a different tone. He sounded almost scared. “Sweetheart?”
“Don’t call me that!” she snapped, so scared she sounded harsher than she’d intended.
He blinked. “I’m sorry. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
She shook her head and stared at the floor. “It’s not fair for you to want everything from me. It’s not fair. Not when you can’t give me everything.”
He was silent for a long time as he processed her words. Then he said very slowly, softly, “You’re right. It’s not fair. But I do. I still do.”
She shot him a quick look. “You’re… you’re going to leave when the Tournament is over. Aren’t you?”
He opened his mouth as if he was going to object, but then he shut it again. He didn’t answer.
“And I’m going to stay here and keep doing my job. It’s not fair for you to demand something from me that you’re not willing to give.”
“You have everything from me,” Desh said, reaching out for her before she pulled away from his grip. “Everything I’m able to give, you have.”
There was a qualification in his words. She heard it. And she’d known it before he’d spoken them out loud.
He cared about her. That seemed real. And he might want things to be different.
But they weren’t different.
She was an escort.
And she wasn’t his priority. Something else was first in his heart.
She didn’t know what it was, but she’d felt it from the very beginning.
He was running into something—racing toward it with all his might—and that something wasn’t her.
Jenelle had been right all along.
Talia had been foolish. Young and so foolish.
She’d allowed herself to get hurt—with nothing in the world to show for it.
She contorted her face to keep from crying as she stood up.
“Don’t leave, sweetheart,” Desh said, standing up too. “At least
let me—”
“Don’t call me that!” She gave him an icy glare—one that didn’t match the wailing in her heart—and then she took a deep breath. “I can’t see you again.”
“But—”
“No. That’s it. This isn’t good for me. This is over.”
He was still arguing, still reaching for her, but she couldn’t let him touch her. She backed away from him, giving him one last fleeting look before she turned around and ran.
She managed to make it to the suite and then slip into her sleeping pod without anyone stopping her.
Then she was finally alone, finally had privacy to cry.
It was worse—so much worse—to have a taste of something better, deeper, than what her life could offer.
It was better when she hadn’t known what she was missing.
It was better when she’d believed she was really just a body and that being with someone else could never really touch her soul.
It was better when her only fantasies were fighting for a dream of freedom she hadn’t really believed existed.
She knew differently now.
And it made everything worse.
***
She didn’t go to the last round of the Tournament that night. She should have gone, but she pretended to be sick.
She couldn’t stand to see Desh again, even from a distance.
He won though.
He won the entire Tournament.
She heard all about it afterward.
The fight had taken about twenty minutes, and it had been raw and vicious and bloody. Desh had been injured with bones broken and ribs cracked, but the other fighter had finally submitted.
Desh had stood by himself in the center ring of the arena as the crowds had roared with his victory.
He hadn’t raised his hands. He hadn’t smiled. He hadn’t done anything but stand there and eventually limped out of the ring.
She lay in bed for hours that night, wanting desperately to go to him.
He was injured and would need to be taken care of. The med device was still in his room, but it might be hard to operate himself.
He might not even do it.
He might just sit there and suffer.
He’d told her he was here to answer what was wrong in the world, and that meant something more than winning the Tournament.