Chapter Six #2
“Do you mean fuck me?” she asked, voice slightly thick and scratchy with sleep.
“No! No, I do not mean that, because you’ve already said you don’t like sexual encounters. But you are soft and warm, and you feel like satin and smell like honey and wine. So, yes, I would curl myself around you and be soft for a few more hours.”
“Come to bed.” She gripped his wrist and held on tight.
A second’s pause. “All right. For a little while.”
SHE SNUGGLED BACK INTO him, so unaware of the impact she was having on him. He cursed the ever-carnal urge that was making him hard, that was making him restless. Sleep wouldn’t come.
Sasha moaned in her sleep, shuffled herself around against him, and then muttered into her pillow. “I don’t think I’d mind with you.”
He waited, unsure if she was speaking in her sleep. At last, he risked it. “I’d like that very much. If you wanted to be intimate, when it was time. I’d like you to enjoy it.”
“Maybe I would. Are you... Are you good at those things?”
All the cursed euphemisms, trying to treat what should be a sacred act as a business...
He tightened his arms around her waist and let his tail creep across one of her bare calves.
“I am excellent at serving others. Putting them before myself. Your pleasure would be my first goal. And your comfort.”
Sasha’s voice was slowly becoming alert. “Has anyone ever served you? Pleasured you like you please them?”
He could point out that he was a virgin right about now, and that would clear things up.
And maybe Sasha would feel that he’d be too clumsy, too rough. He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t want to divulge his inexperience, either. He had time. He could learn about human Queens on the database computer in his room.
“No. No one has tried to provide such a service,” he answered.
“We could work on making each other feel good?”
“If you’d like. I know it’s not something that needs to happen until Dr. Marcus gives us the go-ahead.”
“Yeah, but,” Sasha let out a high, trailing yawn, “it’s probably good to practice.”
“Oh, Sasha. I would love to practice, but I— Sasha? Are you awake?”
She gave a sleepy nod against him and threw her arm over his chest.
His heart was going to give out. It wasn’t meant to beat like this. A telltale purr, a noise he so rarely made that it startled him, started its low, quiet rumble.
Happiness.
Her touch, her warmth, her nearness... It’s wonderful. Oh, I will study. I will learn all about the human pleasure zones, and I will serve her so that she begins to look forward to our required coupling. She’ll enjoy it, perhaps crave it. One day, she might even crave me.
His paw came to rest on her tiny hand, covering it completely. Sasha sighed in her last second of wakefulness, and then she slept.
SASHA WOKE UP WARMER and more comfortable than she had ever been in her life. Whatever this blanket is, I’m taking it home with me.
Wait. Home is... Well, I’m not paying the rent. I guess I’m homeless.
No, I have credits in my account. I’ll buy a home. Not on Sapien-Three. Not going back.
Staying here. With...
Her eyes peeled open, and she immediately smiled. Gideon was holding her hand across his chest. His tail was wrapped around her ankle as if making sure he didn’t float off in his sleep.
And he wasn’t snoring, but he was— Purring!
That’s genuinely the most adorable thing. Big, savage cat-dude alien purrs and holds my ankle in his sleep.
Holds all of me, Sasha realized, surveying their closeness, her shoulder pressed against his chest.
The cozy contentedness abruptly gave way to a stab of fear.
I told him I wanted to practice—then I fell asleep. Did he... She bit her lip and did a physical check without moving, assessing herself for aches and pains, for the raw, sore feeling she usually associated with sex.
Nothing.
Gideon didn’t. Gideon wouldn’t. You know that, or you would never have fallen asleep near him.
With him curled around you. He was so kind and attentive to you, and he’s just a pawn in all of this, with even less choice than you had.
If he does this for Farhet, he gets a new life.
If he refused, he’d probably have been fired.
I wouldn’t have been fired; I’d just have kept working at stupid, crappy jobs on Sapien-Three.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, ashamed for assuming the worst when he’d been so gentlemanly. Gentle-felidly?
Gideon suddenly snorted in his sleep, golden eyes flying open. “My Sasha?”
“Shh, I’m fine. Go back to sleep,” she soothed, patting his chest as best she could while his big, heavy paw weighed down her much smaller hand.
Speaking of large, heavy things... Sasha’s eyes widened as Gideon’s fluttered shut.
Her gaze had drifted down and landed on the space between his thighs.
His relaxed, loose cream-colored trousers were stretched taut in the front, and the light-colored fabric over the dark fur beneath made it clear that Gideon was huge.
Sasha’s thighs gave a sudden clench, body jumping. Some women would dream of such a thing.
She wouldn’t. Guys with miserable little dicks made sex so unpleasant, see-sawing in and out of her while grunting and cursing, five minutes of slamming into her, barely alerting her body to pleasure before they were done, and she was left frustrated and sore.
Something Gideon’s size? Probably so much more than sore.
Maybe I’m bad at it?
Gideon’s going to think so, the way that I’m going to just hold still and wait for it to be over.
“My Sasha?” he asked again.
My Sasha. That’s... Wow. I haven’t been anyone’s anything in so long. “Hi.”
“You are scared of something?”
“What makes you say that?” she demanded.
“Your scent. It was so warm and sweet, so peaceful. But twice, I have smelled a sudden wave of fear, and I felt your leg jump. Do you want my tail off of you?”
“No! No, no. Wait, you can smell fear?”
“Well, there are chemical scents your body releases, like arousal, fear, and happiness. It’s the chemical release we smell.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t scared, I was just startled. In my neighborhood, if you sleep next to a guy, that guy might think he can do what he likes to you.”
Gideon’s tail yanked itself away as he sat up and scooted over. “You feared I would not wake you to ask you if you wanted to—to practice?”
“Something like that.”
“I would not do that. That is a sin and a crime. Queens must want a Knight’s affections. He should not thrust them upon her. Not that there aren’t bad men in every species, men who do what you are afraid of.” Gideon looked at her, then looked pointedly away. “Did someone do such a thing, my Sasha?”
“Not to me. The guys I dated were losers, but not outright scum.”
“But you thought I was scum?”
“Oh, God!” Sasha put her head in her hands, then pushed herself up.
“I did not think that. I was so ashamed of myself for even being scared when I feel so safe with you. I was scared of the situation for a second, just waking up in an unfamiliar place, with a person beside me. Just the situation,” she repeated.
She let her hand reach for his shoulder. “You’re wonderful, Gideon.”
He remained still for a moment, then nodded. “But the second time that you were afraid? Was it the same thing?”
It was very tempting to just say yes. It would make things less awkward and embarrassing.
But Gideon seemed to give off this sweet, noble quality that made lies shrivel in her mouth.
“I saw how big you were. Down there.” She waved a hand vaguely towards his waist. “I got scared that it would hurt, because all the other guys I’ve been with haven’t made me feel good, even with their tiny little pricks.
” She held her thumb and forefinger apart as far as they would go, about four inches.
Gideon looked at her, and she gave him a rueful smile and spread her hands about a foot apart.
“Not to mention, unless that’s all furry fluff, you look wide, too.
Okay? And I’m sorry I saw. I feel like a peeping tom for even mentioning it. ”
Gideon shifted, looked down at his crotch, and grimaced. “It happens to males in the morning at times. It is not because I intended to demand we ‘practice.’”
“Oh, I know!”
“I’m going to study, Sasha. Everything they have written about making human Queens feel good, I will study. It won’t hurt, my Queen.” His paw tentatively reached out and stroked her hair. “I will quit before I let anything hurt you.”
He was going to melt her. Turn her into a puddle. Her thighs clenched again, this time in pure want.
Gideon sniffed, and his brows arched as he turned his head to look at her more fully. “I am confused.”
“Me, too,” she confessed. “But I’m not confused about you.
” Sasha felt like her knees were on autonavigation as she crouched on them, pushing herself up higher, lips aimed at Gideon’s cheek.
She connected with his warm, furry face, and his purr began again, a louder, deeper rumble that sent vibrations through her where they were touching.
It wasn’t just adorable. It was pleasurable.
“You’re purring?”
“I know. It is very rare for me to do so. I don’t think I have done it in years.”
“Oh. That’s so sad.”
“Well, I have not been very happy, I suppose. But when I’m with you, Sasha, I’m so happy. I don’t expect anything more than what’s scientifically required for the program, but your presence brings me joy. I can’t help that.”
“I’m happy around you, too. I don’t purr, but according to you, I’ll smell different,” she giggled. “Do I smell happy?”
“You do.”
Sasha had a feeling he wanted to add something, but he didn’t. “Um. I’m going to freshen up and go see Dr. Marcus. M-maybe we could spend the day together?”
“I would love that. You see Dr. Marcus, and I’ll return to my quarters. To study.”
Maybe he didn’t mean to do it, but he licked his lips and looked right at her as he explained his plans.