Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Killan
Ireturn us to shore, shaking to dislodge the water from my scales. Lydia is not nearly so waterproof, and when I put her down, she shivers with cold.
“Akh…” Is this the purpose of clothes? But what if the clothes are also wet?
I hold my arms open. “I will warm you.”
“The point of getting into the water was to cool off,” she says, but she steps closer, tucking herself against me and resting her icy fingers on my chest.
I sit, not-so-subtly arranging us so that Lydia is again seated on my lap.
“I never asked about your missing arm.” She tips her head back to look up at me. “Asking always felt too much like caring.”
“And now?”
“I don’t think I’d be fooling anyone if I said I didn’t care.” She smiles. “But only if you want to talk about it.”
I raise my fourth arm, cut short above the elbow. Scars mark the stump from a surgery I do not remember.
“I was born with a congenital disorder. My wrist did not form, and I did not have a hand. There was an attempt, when I was young, to attach a permanent prosthetic. It did not take.”
“If you were still a child, how would that have worked?” Lydia’s brow is wrinkled in thought. “The prosthetic would’ve had to grow with you. Is that possible?”
“It did not work.” I agree, darkly. “My medic had the idea of adapting the tech commonly used for translators, which makes automatic adjustments to suit its host’s body.
Good in theory, I suppose, but not in practice.
That was back before Roa got sick.” I want to explain, concerned Lydia will think poorly of my parents.
“Everyone was taught to trust medics, and my parents believed they were doing what was best for me by following professional advice. They were surprised when it did not work. The medic had neglected to mention that the procedure was highly experimental.”
I might not remember the surgery, but I do remember the pain of the resulting infection, and I remember how upset I had been when my arm had to be amputated above my elbow.
“Then,” I continue, “when Roa got sick with an Eoli deficiency and there was not an alternative source of the vitamin, we learned again that not all medics have the best interests of their patients at heart.”
I do not realize I am holding Lydia painfully tight until she wiggles to loosen my grasp. Quickly, I release her, leaning back against the cave wall. She does not climb off my lap, but she does sit back a fraction, all the better to see my face.
“Specialists suggested many cures—artificial light therapy, intravenous supplements, and even cybernetic implants. Nothing worked, and she died. She was just another one of their failed experiments.”
“I can’t imagine how horrible that would’ve been for your family. I’m so sorry, Killan.”
“It was horrible,” I admit. “Every day, we were promised they had finally thought of the solution, when we all knew that what she needed was an alternative source of Eoli.”
“So that’s why your family moved here, to start the farm?”
“We left because Ril’os focus all their attention on developing new tech to solve every small problem, but they could not build one scudding farm because manual labor is considered beneath their dignity.” I clear my throat. “I have strayed from your original question.”
She shrugs, her shoulder lightly bumping my chest. “I like hearing about your life, even the sad parts.”
“Careful,” I warn her, attempting a Human smile. “If anyone were to overhear us talking, they might think that you care about me.”
She fake-gasps and makes a show of looking around the flooded cave, searching for a possible audience.
“I would deny all allegations. You would never be able to prove such a claim in a court of law. Besides,” she grins, “they would be much too shocked at seeing you smile to remember anything I may have said.”
“Mayhaps,” I agree. Smiling is…strange. It feels as if I am faking a show of aggression, and I do not think I will ever become used to displaying my teeth to my Mate.
Mate? All it takes is an earnest conversation with Lydia sitting on my lap, and I am suddenly eager to call her my Mate.
“Do you mind?” I ask, filling the space in which I might have been tempted to confess something else entirely. I am not so delusional as to think now would be a good time to express my feelings, mere minutes after Lydia nearly agreed to stay.
“Mind what?” She blinks.
“My missing hand.”
“No, of course not. Why would I?”
I shrug. “One of my memories of being a youngling on Ril I is being stared at a lot.”
“You know,” she says, “the more you talk about your birth planet, the more I think it doesn’t sound like anything special.”
I chuckle. She has repeated my words back to me. “There is too much tech,” I agree. “Everything that can be automated is. And every time there is an advancement, thousands more workers lose their jobs and need to reskill. There were as many technological colleges as grocery stores.”
“Sounds…busy,” Lydia decides.
“Very.”
“I was thinking, on the first day of the harvest, how a lot of your process is manual. You have the robot arms and the drying tables, but you guys do almost everything else yourselves.”
“Farming tech can be expensive, as is the cost of freight. Besides, neither Sorin nor I are all that tech minded. That is Roan’s area of interest.”
“That’s how I feel about baking,” she says.
“We can have these big fancy kitchens, but the act of making bread is basically the same as it’s been for hundreds of years.
It’s all about working with the dough with your hands.
I used to say that I could make bread with my eyes closed because I was so good at knowing what the dough should feel like. ”
“I tried to find the ingredients for your bread,” I confess, “when I was ordering our latest delivery. But I could not find any recipe on InGal. I think bread must be exclusively a Human food. Or else it has another name that I do not know.”
“You tried to buy me ingredients?”
“You did not make a list of things you wished for me to buy you, so I tried to think of a list myself. I was not successful.”
“Wow, Killan. Thank you.”
“You do not need to thank—” But she is kissing me before I can finish, and I abandon all considerations that are not Lydia as the sweet scent of her desire floods my senses. I move my mouth over hers, licking at her lips, and moaning as she opens to me, granting my tongue entry.
Then, she shifts her weight on my lap, and that small movement causes her stomach to rub against my cock through its covering.
“Fek.” I barely recognize my voice, filled with desperate need. Until Lydia moves to unclip her bra, and suddenly everything else is forgotten.
Her breasts are larger than those of a Ril’os female and considerably softer. As she tosses her clothing away, my upper hands take its place—holding her, massaging her, worshipping her.
She presses a finger to my shoulder, and I immediately lie down, using her damp clothing as a mattress of sorts.
I can still feel the sharpness of the rock floor digging into my back, but my discomfort is easily ignored when Lydia is straddling my thighs.
She runs a hand down my chest, watching her fingers as she does so, as if mesmerized by the sight of her skin against my scales.
I am mesmerized.
“Are you sure?” I ask, hating the question but knowing I will hate it even more if, tomorrow, she regrets today.
“I’m sure that I’ve been wanting to touch you for weeks,” she says, running her gaze up and down my chest. “I’m sure that I’ve been having sex dreams about you. I can’t close my eyes without imagining what this would feel like.” She falters. “Are you sure?”
I am sure that I love you, I think. I am sure that you are my Mate. But that is not what she is asking. “You are not declaring yourself to me,” I say, instead. “We are enjoying each other’s company. That is all.” And I would never ask her for anything more while she is in mourning.
“Good.” She smiles, trailing her hand lower.
Automatically, I buck my hips, my cock demanding its release.
“Easy there,” she mutters, and I grit my teeth in an attempt to keep still. “How do I open it?” She traces my bulging slit with a single finger, her touch so light I might ordinarily not have felt it, except that my cock is hard enough to erupt at the briefest of provocations.
“Like this,” I say through clenched teeth, and I apply pressure to one edge of my slit. It pops open, and my cock everts, arching toward my stomach, flushed and leaking.
Lydia’s eyes widen, and she leans forward for a closer view.
The sight of her studying me is nearly enough to undo me, and I grab the base of my cock, squeezing to hold off my orgasm. She laughs, and then it’s her hand on me, swiping away the bead of pre-cum, tracing a vein down my length, wrapping her hand around me.
“Harder,” I grit out. Never have I experienced such sweet torture. My eyes threaten to roll back into my head, but I force myself to keep them open. I do not want to miss a second of Lydia touching me.
She firms her handhold, stroking up and down my length, experimentally slow at first, and then harder and with more confidence.
I am bucking against her despite my best attempts to keep still, and when one of my thrusts is powerful enough to nearly unseat her from my thighs, I hurriedly pry her hand away from my cock, sucking in deep lungfuls of air.
“But I was enjoying myself,” she complains.
“Cannot wait—” I pant. “About to come.”
“That’s the whole point.”
“Want you”—pant—"first.” I wish I sounded more eloquent, but I suppose I should be pleased that her translator can understand me at all.
“In that case—” She lifts herself off my thighs long enough to slide her smallest breeches off.
“Hairs!” I exclaim, reaching for her.
“Oh.” Her face flushes. “You didn’t know? You don’t like them?”
“What is not to like?” I am confused by her sudden nervousness, as I card my fingers through her hairs. They are darker and coarser than her other hairs but just as intriguing. And when I slip my fingers lower, I find her hot center.
I cannot control my moan of longing. She is so wet that I can hear my fingers stroking her. Her nervousness disappears as fast as it arrived, and she leans back, arching her spine and grabbing onto my knees to steady herself.
“Higher,” Lydia demands, and now it is she who is panting.
I obey, exploring the shape of her, wanting to commit this moment to my memory. I will never again take myself in hand and not think of Lydia like this—wanton, decadent, glorying in her pleasure.
“Fuck!” She swears when my fingers find a bud between her folds, and I am immediately fascinated by such a small bump that can create such a large response. I refocus my efforts, Lydia the epicenter of my world. Here, nobody and nothing exists but my Lydia.
The timbre of her voice pitches high as she pants my name, and then her legs are squeezing my thighs as her orgasm devours her.
She is magnificent. I want to see her like this a thousand more times. A million more. I want her pleasure to be my life’s new purpose.
My cock pulses as it erupts, untouched and ignored, the sight of Lydia enough to push me over the edge into madness. Milt splatters my stomach in thick ropes, and my muscles tense with the force of my release.
She slumps forward, resting her forehead against my chest. Blindly, I stretch out an arm until my hand finds the water, which I use to hastily clean myself. Then I rub circles across the soft skin of her back, marveling at every drop of her sweat.
Because of me, I think, and I want to shout about my greatest achievement so that the entire universe hears.