Chapter 6 Sem
I’d had a plan before she whirled into my office.
I swear I did. I was going to remain calm.
I was going to stay in control. I was going to be a consummate professional and have her leaving her visit feeling more confident and empowered than she felt when she arrived.
And now, somehow, I was about to teach a bionic how to masturbate while having feelings I was not supposed to be feeling and thinking thoughts I was not supposed to be thinking.
I was at war, internally. And I was pretty sure I was losing.
Elanie, oblivious to the conflict brewing inside me, blurted out, “You want me to touch myself between my legs?” She stared at me like I’d suggested she walk through the ship completely naked.
A mental image that immediately added itself to the opposing forces trying to make me lose my medical license.
“That is correct,” I said, struggling to keep my voice level. “I’m assuming you’ve touched Blake between his legs?”
Her brow furrowed above her rich brown eyes, and I felt an overwhelming urge to press my thumb over the crease and smooth it out—Sem! Focus!
“Once,” she said. “But mostly by accident because it’s just there all the time, like an annoyingly persistent crater eel.”
That was fair. “Has Blake ever touched you between your legs?”
“No.” Her spine snapped straight. “Why? Is he supposed to?”
Saints, I wanted to sigh or groan or at the very least squeeze the bridge of my nose in frustration, but nothing got by her.
She saw it all. And I didn’t want her to think that my irritation with her very inexperienced, or very selfish, boyfriend was irritation with her. Because it wasn’t. Far from it.
“Yes,” I said. “Touch in certain places prior to intercourse can help you get ready. It’s called foreplay. It takes a little extra time and attention, but foreplay is sometimes essential when it comes to pleasure.”
“Pleasure?” She said this softly, hesitantly. Like she didn’t trust herself with the word, let alone the sensation. And while her teeth sank into her lower lip, I wasn’t sure I trusted myself with it either.
“Yes, pleasure,” I replied, also softly.
“Sex can be very pleasurable. With some experimentation and communication and practice—probably a lot of practice,” I added under my breath, “Blake can make you feel good. He can make you feel ready. And one of the ways he can do this is by touching between your legs with his fingers.” I swiped a hand over my brow, which she could surely sense was sweating. “Or his mouth.”
“He can put his mouth”—she glanced at her pants—“down there?”
I scratched industriously at my chin, wishing I had a beard so I could pull on it until it hurt. “Yes. In general, females find intense pleasure when their partner, uh, licks—”
“How?” Her eyes were enormous, vibrating with intensity. And then, to my abject horror, she jumped down from the examination table and lunged for me, fisting my collar as she demanded, “Show me.”
“Show you?” I yelped. This couldn’t be real. This was a dream. A test. I was being tested. Saints help me!
“Yes. I need to see it. How does it work? The touching. The licking?”
I groaned, unable to keep the sound from coming out. “Are you sure you don’t want to try searching the Vnet again? I’m sure there are some very tasteful tutorials out there that—”
“No.” Slowly, as if realizing that her reaction might have been extreme, she let go of my shirt, smoothing out the fist-shaped wrinkles she’d left behind.
Which meant she smoothed her delicate fingers over my chest. Which meant she was touching me, silently, while we stared into each other’s eyes.
And when that happened, my heart lurched, my throat bobbed, and despite my best efforts to keep it from happening, something twitched.
I was going to hell. A bad hell. Probably the one where I’d be slowly digested in the belly of a leviathex for all eternity. And I’d deserve it.
Stepping away from me to climb back onto the table, she crossed her arms over her chest and said, “You must have a diagram or something, right? A picture in a medical text? Something safe?”
“No, I don’t have a diagram in the office. But I could…” Spinning around, I reached for my pen and paper again, fumbling the pen so hard it flipped off the counter and clattered onto the floor.
“You dropped your pen,” she said unnecessarily.
“I know.” Bending down to pick up the pen, using the moment to take a deep, steadying breath, I said, “I just… I need a second.”
I kept my back to her. I didn’t think I could draw what I intended to draw if she was watching me.
If I could draw it at all. Because the second I touched the pen to the paper, I forgot what it looked like.
Completely. Collecting myself, I yanked the image back into my mind, but my hand was shaking, my lines jagged and wobbly, my perspective all wrong.
Ripping my first attempt off the pad, I crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the flash incinerator.
“Do you need help?” Elanie asked.
Yes, loads of it.
“One moment,” I said over my shoulder. Bowing to my task, I drew two curving lines that intersected the top and bottom, an opening in the middle, and that magical little bud at the tip, that anatomical bundle of sensation, that perfect, swollen, needy little—fuck me, I was losing it.
Trying everything short of slapping my own face to pull myself together, I stood back and stared at my diagram. It was nothing to hang in the galleries on deck twenty-five, but it would do.
Holding the drawing up to my chest, I turned around and presented it to her.
Squinting at my masterpiece, she frowned as her head tilted to the side. “What is that?”
“It’s a vagina,” I stated. “Well, a vulva, technically.”
“That’s what it looks like down there?”
Some truly unfortunate whimper came out of me. If my drawing had been a white flag, I would have waved it. “You don’t know? Have you never looked?”
She shook her head with vigor.
“But you must have some basic understanding, right? Don’t you have hyper-speed access to every single gigabyte of data that has ever existed on the Shared Bionic Network?”
“You think the SBN contains information about sex?” She actually laughed.
“Bionics are programmed for efficiency, Dr. Semson. We use and analyze data that is relevant to our professional duties. We prioritize tasks by importance. Curiosity about my anatomy and how it worked, until recently, ranked slightly below how to braid an oorthorse’s mane.
” A corner of her mouth pinched while she looked at her pants again.
“Besides, I don’t even know how that would work as a female. I’m flexible, but not that flexible.”
“You could use a mirror,” I suggested tightly. “It’s a simple way to see everything. To learn more about that part of your body. Since it seems”—I met her stare—“important to you now.”
She was silent for a moment, thinking, processing maybe? Then she pointed at the drawing still clutched against my chest and said, “Show me.”
As a sharp lump formed in my throat, I turned my attention back to my diagram.
“These here”—I traced a surprisingly steady finger over the outer curving lines—“are your labia. Your outer labium is here, and an inner labium is here.” Pointing to the oval I’d drawn, I said, “This is your vaginal opening. This is where Blake’s penis will fit more comfortably once you have enough lubrication. ”
“Go on,” she said, nodding, not blinking, barely breathing. Was I breathing? Not deeply enough, I realized as my vision went a little hazy around the edges.
Moving my finger up, I stopped at my target, then tapped the paper once. “And this is your clitoris.”
“Clitoris,” she repeated slowly, poetically. At least it sounded poetic to me. “What’s that for?”
“The clitoris is where most females find sexual pleasure,” I said, tapping the paper again.
She gripped the edge of my table and leaned forward. “But it’s so small.”
Small but mighty, I thought. Small but everything.
“The clitoris is incredibly sensitive. When it’s stimulated”—this time I didn’t tap the paper, but I moved my finger in a circle, right over that little bud I’d drawn, the slightly rough texture beneath my fingertip creating a bit of drag—“it can start to feel warm and swollen. It might also feel like a muscle twitching or pulsing, like—”
“A heartbeat,” she whispered, crossing her legs, squeezing her thighs together.
“Yes,” I whispered back, dying a thousand deaths thinking about her little heartbeat.
“I’ve felt that.” She met my stare, one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows rising just enough to make the implication clear. “Before. When you—”
“Right.” My voice cracked. “That’s what can happen when a female gets aroused.
Blood flow increases to her clitoris, which causes the warmth and the…
pulsing. And if you or your partner stimulates your clitoris, like this.
” When I started to move my finger in small, repetitive, caressing circles over the paper, Elanie’s eyes went wide, her pupils dilating, her lower lip snagged between her teeth again.
“It can make you feel good, often resulting in increased lubrication. And if you do this long enough and with the right amount of speed and pressure—”
“Yes?” Her chest heaved while my heart battered my ribs so hard I thought one might have cracked.
“You can reach orgasm.”
And just when I thought I couldn’t withstand another second of the thick, sweltering tension swirling around us, she asked, “What does an orgasm feel like, Dr. Semson?”
My brain broke. Melted out of my ears. Unlike Elanie, I was not half robot. I was all man. And I’d hit my limit.
“It’s different for everyone,” I said so quickly the words ran together. “But in general, it feels very good. I’m sorry, Elanie, but I have another patient.”
Her shoulders fell, disappointment clear in the gesture.
Saints save me, but I did not want to disappoint her. From the sounds of it, Blake was doing enough of that already.
“We can talk about orgasms at your next visit,” I said, knowing full well that we should definitely not have a next visit. I was not calm. I was not in control. And I was really, really—I tugged at my collar—hot.
Especially when she sighed and said, “Fine. But in the meantime, do you have a mirror I could borrow?”