Chapter 26 Sem
“More,” she repeated, as if I hadn’t heard her, as if my brain and my heart and my cock hadn’t all heard her.
“What kind of”—I swallowed through a rapidly constricting throat—“‘more’ do you want?”
With the steady, unflinchingly honest eye contact only Elanie was capable of, she said, “I want to have sex with you.”
I could not fucking believe the words that were about to come out of my mouth, and yet…
“We probably shouldn’t. I got a little carried away there, but we’re messed up, drugged.
Gol was wrong, or he lied, but rola fruit is definitely mind-altering.
Your first time, our first time together, it shouldn’t be like this. ”
She didn’t even blink. “I’ve already cleared 83 percent of the active compounds in the rola fruit from my systems.”
“You have?” When I closed my eyes, bright, kaleidoscopic colors danced behind my lids. “I definitely haven’t.”
Her fingertip running across my lower lip felt like champagne bubbles fizzing and popping over my skin. “Does that bother you? Because we can wait if it does.”
I met her caramel brown eyes, their golden microcircuitry shifting as her pupils dilated. And I wondered if the precise pattern of neurofibers decorating her irises was unique to her, like a fingerprint. A design I’d see in my dreams for the rest of my life. And no. No, it didn’t bother me.
Dropping my grinning lips to hers, I gave her my answer with a kiss while hoisting her leg over my hip. Then I broke away. “There’s something else, though,” I said with some effort.
A furrow sank between her brows. “I want to have sex with you. You want to have sex with me. What else could there be?”
The insecurity thundering through me would have been devastating if I wasn’t so high. Thank you, rola fruit. “I’ve never slept with someone I couldn’t read before.”
“Oh.” Slowly, the fire in her eyes dimmed. “It probably won’t be as good with a bionic. I didn’t—”
A small, disbelieving laugh burst out of me.
“Elanie, that is not it. At all. I have absolutely no doubt that sex with you will be the best sex I’ve ever had, or probably ever will have.
But I’m used to feeling what my partner is feeling.
I’m used to knowing in real time what’s good for them and what isn’t.
I won’t be able to do that for you. I’m worried”—my head fell forward, and the room swayed—“that you won’t enjoy it. ”
Her fingertips grazing down my back pebbled my skin. “I could just tell you. I could tell you what I’m feeling.”
When I raised my head again, when I saw the trust in her eyes, something that wasn’t just desire rooted itself beneath my ribs, curling around them, growing like vines. A deep, sweet ache that no word invented in any known language had ever been able to adequately describe.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I’m sure.”
I rocked against her, growling when she bit that damn lower lip.
“I trust you, Sem. And I want this. I want you.”
Blood rushed like a shot into my already hard cock, making it throb and plead with me to bury it inside her. “I want you too. More than anything.”
She tilted her hips, dragging my erection through her center, still so wet and slippery. “Then take me.”
“It might hurt at first.”
“Stars, Sem. Don’t make me beg.”
I nearly lost it as an image of Elanie on her knees before me flooded my mind. Struggling to regain some semblance of focus, I took myself in hand, pumped once, then slid my head through her slickness. “Are you ready?”
She gave me a firm “yes.” And when I pushed into her, when her walls closed around me, the universe responded, contracting to the shape of this hut, this bed, our bodies. The inch of me inside the inch of her.
I trembled, needing to move, desperate to go deeper but holding myself still. “Okay so far?” I asked, praying she’d say yes.
“It’s…tight.”
I bit back a groan. Because she was tight, so sublimely tight. “Take your time. Let me know when I can push—” My words were cut short by the tilting of her hips, urging me deeper. Grasping my face, she led me into a searing kiss.
My body knew what to do even if my mind had fractured into a flurry of uselessly blissed-out pieces. My hand grasped her thigh. My lips found her neck. My hips rolled slowly in time with hers, working myself in thrust by shallow thrust, but sinking deeper each time.
“Oh. That… It feels better.” Her chin tipped, exposing her throat, long and lean and deliciously sweet as I licked a path from her collarbone to her jaw. “It feels good.”
“How about this?” I changed my angle and she gasped, her fingernails digging into my shoulders.
“Yes,” she said. Then she made me the happiest Portisan this side of the wormhole by adding, “Can you go faster?”
She didn’t have to ask me twice.
“Sem,” she said between short, sharp breaths as I picked up my pace, “can a female have an orgasm during sex?”
“Some do, many don’t,” I said, barely able to keep my eyes open as the sensation of her body surrounding my cock rippled through me. “Both are normal. Males almost always do, though, which I know is unfair and—”
“I feel something.” Her inner muscles flickered, squeezing and releasing and Saints save me. “I feel close.”
Close was good. I could work with close.
Thrusting a little harder, a little deeper, I said, “Did you know that Portisans evolved from amphibian-like creatures?”
She shook her head, her eyes closing, both legs wrapping around my hips as her lips parted on a soft gasp.
“Portis is mostly ocean, and that’s where we used to live. In the water. It’s why we still have webbed fingers and toes. Some of us still have gills. Some of us still have other interesting features of our lives in the sea.”
“Like…what?” she asked between thrusts, her voice strained in a way that threatened my grip on sanity.
“In the water, we used to”—I bowed to kiss her neck—“communicate with each other”—I kissed her lips—“using rhythmic undulations.”
“Sem, why are you telling me this? Why—” Slowly, she opened her eyes, her gaze catching on mine as I answered her in my own way. “What is that?” She moaned as my cock pulsed slowly inside her, then a little faster. “Is that you? Are you—Oh. Oh, gods.”
“Do you like it?” Having a vibrating cock, although absolute torture in middle school, before I figured out how to control it, did have its advantages. “Only 6 percent of Portisan males can do this. Just so you know how lucky—”
She kissed me, shutting me up as the low hum of my cock inside her filled the silence. A low hum that did come with one minor drawback. It made my own orgasm barrel toward me too.
“Whoa, wait. Slow down,” I grunted when she grasped my neck, rocking beneath me. “When you move like that…”
She didn’t slow, didn’t give me a second to catch my breath. She only moaned, “I’m so close. I can feel it coming. Please, Sem. I need it.”
I should have known she’d get the upper hand.
She’d always had it anyway. I was lost, completely gone for her the second she’d squared off against me in the hallway outside my office, crossing her arms and staring me down.
I had no defenses against her, no protection she couldn’t blow through with a single glance.
I was exposed and bare and completely and totally hers.
I’d tell her. I’d tell her exactly how I felt and not regret a single word. But tonight wasn’t about that. Tonight was about her pleasure, and maybe a little about mine. So I angled my hips again, ran a hand down her body to cup her breast, and let myself vibrate low and slow, heavy and deep.
“So fucking good,” I praised, rolling my hips, barely conscious with the way her walls closed around me, so warm and tight. “Everything I’ve ever wanted. Everything.”
I vibrated faster, and she writhed and moaned and cried out my name. And while I thrust into her deeper, harder, losing my rhythm, about to lose myself, her orgasm hit. Her back arched, fingers dug, hips bucked, body clamped down on all sides of me until I was gone.
I came so hard my vision blurred. I came for so long my soul wondered if it was time to leave my body.
And somehow, as I spilled into her with every primal, mindless thrust, I heard myself muttering things in her ear.
Things I wouldn’t remember saying. Things she probably wouldn’t remember hearing.
Things I wanted to say to her over and over again for the rest of our lives.
Because that’s what I wanted with her. I didn’t just want now, or tomorrow, or the next day. I wanted forever.
The sensation of her fingers tracing over the webbing between my toes stirred me back to our hut, our bed, our bodies. How she’d ended up with her head at my feet? No clue.
“Did I fall asleep?” I slurred, my eyelids still heavy, limbs still liquid, heart still raw.
“We both did.” There was a dreamy, contented tone to her voice that made my cock give a lazy twitch. “Grover woke me up.”
When I looked up, beady black bird eyes met mine. Grover, perched above me on the headboard, stared at me with a deep suspicion while he flicked his tail.
Pinching a bit of my webbing gently between her fingers, she asked, “Do you miss it? Portis? The oceans?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted as starlight filtered in through the skydome. “I miss my brothers and sister. They still live there.”
“What are their names?”
“My two brothers are Colin and Cain. And my sister is Corryn.”
“Colin, Cain, Corryn, and…Sem? Did your parents not like you as much, or…?”
“Casper,” I said with a laugh. “My first name is Casper. And my parents are Carling and Calliope. It’s a whole thing.”
“Casper. I like that name. But you prefer Sem?”
“More or less. There was apparently some Old Earth cartoon ghost named Casper. I got made fun of a lot in school, so I went by Sem instead.” With an ache that was finally old enough to feel dull instead of sharp, I said, “I guess it’s fitting that I’m not really one of the family C’s, since I’m not really part of the family anymore. ”
She sighed as her hand slid up my calf. “Bionics aren’t allowed to have families. No parents, no brothers or sisters. No governing body in the entire Known Universe will acknowledge our marriages. We can’t have children.”
I sat up, flipping my position so I could see her face. So I could kiss away the wrinkle forming between her brows. “I’m sorry, Elanie. It’s not fair.”
Brushing her fingertips along my cheekbone, she said, “These worlds I live in, the beings all around me, even my own programming have always wanted me to be alone. And I’ve been okay with it.
I’ve been fine. But now, here, with you…
” Her eyes glistened, silver pooling along her lids. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
I cupped her cheek, brushing the worst tear I’d ever seen away with my thumb.
“You aren’t alone, sweetheart. You have so many friends who love you back on the ship.
You have Sunny and Tig and the twins.” I paused, because it felt like a risk.
But if there was ever a risk worth taking, this was it. “You have me.”
“I do?” Her gaze searched my face for something I hoped I was showing her. “Do I really have you?”
How did she not know? How could she not see it when it felt written over every inch of my skin? Maybe I needed to show her. Maybe then she’d believe me.
I reached back for our sheet and held it open for her. “Come here.”
She rolled to her side to slide in against me, and I wrapped the sheet over our shoulders.
Holding her close, I nestled my nose into her hair, just like I’d done in the cave when it was only us fighting to survive.
So different from this place, where everything was easy and nothing seemed to matter.
“Did you want to kiss me?” she asked, interlacing our fingers and tucking my hand beneath her chin. “In the cave, did you ever think about kissing me?”
“Does every waking nanosecond count?”
“Then why didn’t you? I wanted to kiss you. We could have been doing this already. It would have made the cave much more enjoyable.”
I laughed, but then I said, “It felt inappropriate. I’d been your physician, and it seemed wrong.”
Rolling over, she met my stare. “Why would that be wrong?”
“It’s a thing. Doctors shouldn’t fraternize with their patients.”
She only blinked.
“It’s unethical.”
Another blink.
“Because patients are vulnerable. There can be a power imbalance.”
“Sem,” she said with calm amusement, “I am a bionic. If I wanted to, I could break your nose with a finger flick. What possible imbalance of power between us would ever have you on the dominant side?”
“That is”—I frowned—“a good point. But it’s not necessarily a physical thing. I know you could take me out more efficiently than even Rax could on his best day. It’s more like an emotional power. An influence. A patient needs to be able to trust their doctor.”
“I trust you,” she said simply. “I think I trust you more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
When I kissed her knuckles, my heart giving a little pang, she asked, “So what changed? You were still my physician. I was still your patient. What made you decide it was okay to kiss me here?”
Sweeping my hand behind her knee to hook her leg over my thigh, I said, “I didn’t. I was just weak, and you are too beautiful.”
Her lips pulled tight at one corner. “Do you regret it?”
“Never,” I stated, firm as stone. “For the rest of my life, for as long as my lungs take in oxygen, I will never regret any moment I’ve been lucky enough to spend with you. And that includes kissing. It especially includes kissing.”
She smiled, but it was hesitant. So to prove my point, I kissed those hesitant lips. Long and slow and deep.
After a length of time I couldn’t measure, she rolled onto her side again, and I curled around her. Her breathing settled as she surrendered to sleep, peaceful and warm and safe in my arms.
Before sleep took me down again too, I breathed in her cinnamon and vanilla scent, pressed a kiss to her neck, and finally answered her question.
“You have me, Elanie. All of me. I’m yours, forever.”