Chapter 14 - Dorimisa Wrestling League round one
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dorimisa Wrestling League: round one
Shohari
HE MIGHT LEAVE this morning.
Queasiness churned in my gut at the sudden realisation, and I gritted my teeth. Maybe it was mere coincidence and yesterday’s bread had been off, because I shouldn’t have cared that Garrison might walk onto Lietan shipyard and out of my life.
I ripped open a pack of breakfast crackers with such force that crumbs sprayed all over the table. Fine, perhaps I was more irritable than usual.
He wasn’t.
He strolled into the canteen as though today was just another day, grabbing a mug and activating the drinks machine like he lived here.
“Morning, Captain,” he said, wearing his casual smile with its usual ease.
“Good morning.” I knew I sounded stiff. I wanted to scream at him not to leave, which was the most ridiculous skykking thought I’d ever had.
I could have asked him if he was looking forward to seeing Lietan, but I didn’t want to know the answer.
Maybe he was relaxed because he’d decided he was going, and that had brought him some peace.
Or maybe he was relaxed because he was Garrison, and nothing bothered him.
Why had I told him Vadias was wrong for him?
“Do you want a brew?”
He was only asking about drinks in his odd human phrasing, but it felt like more.
Which was also skykking ridiculous. How could chrya be anything else?
Skyk, Shohari, you are so awkward. It was not like me to have these ghosts in my head.
It was him. Making me want things I couldn’t even name, let alone actually have.
“That would be nice, thank you.”
I ignored the fact I’d used my good manners.
I ignored the fact neither of us clarified what drink I wanted.
And I certainly didn’t smile into the hot chrya once I’d taken it from his hands.
Fine, maybe I did. A little.
“What time do we get to the shipyard, Cap?” he asked.
My stomach plummeted, dragging my smile down with it.
“A bit over two hours.” Why did I sound like I was declaring a death sentence?
“Thanks. Look, I know you’ve got important captain shit going on, and I don’t need to know about that unless you want to tell me.”
He fiddled with the handle on his mug, and it didn’t seem like him to ramble this much, so I ignored the allusion to my comm from Mother and let him continue.
“I don’t know if this is going to make it better or worse—better, I hope—but I’m going on to Vadias. The shipyard’s not for me.”
It was all I could do not to exhale in a rush of relief, and I carried on drinking. “Two more days of an extra human eating my food and making me good chrya,” I deadpanned. “That’s a bit of both.”
When I glanced up at him, he was still grinning. I let my lips stretch in a small smile and held his gaze as I took another sip. It was a good ‘brew,’ after all.
THE SHIPYARD DROPOFF went as planned, and I’d finally reviewed the future shipment data, so I took the opportunity to have a break.
When I entered the canteen, Garrison was half naked and upside down.
I wasn’t sure why.
His hands were on the floor. His feet rested on the wall, and he was bending his arms before straightening them again. Even though he knew I was here, he was focused enough on his strange activity that I allowed myself a few moments to enjoy the view.
I thought I’d enjoyed the way his arms and shoulders strained against his shirt; without it, he seemed even larger.
I drank in the way the muscles flexed and bunched, how the inked designs on his skin rippled and shifted with them.
There was hair on his chest, I realised, a smattering of dark curls trailing up his stomach and into the waistband of his delightful trousers.
I shouldn’t have been leering at him with the self-control of a youth at a brothel, but as my face heated and my cunt flooded with wetness, my curl rippled in readiness. For a heartbeat, I forgot how to think.
Even as he flipped himself the right way up, I just stood there. He put his shirt back on without any self-consciousness or pride. Garrison didn’t try to be anything he wasn’t. He just was.
“What was that?” I pretended my voice wasn’t croaky, and he played along. I wished he wouldn’t. Wished he’d close the distance between us. Wished he’d cut through this tension between us because I wasn’t sure I knew how.
“Handstand pushups,” he said, and I broke the words down, as they had no direct translation.
Kheh, logical.
“Bodyweight exercises. I’m getting a bit restless. I normally try to work out at least once a day.”
This I understood.
“Do you want to spar?” I said before I could think about it. “There is a small training room.”
He stepped closer, the darkening of his eyes making his smile less easy, more hungry. “With you?”
I gave a slow tilt of my head. “If you’re willing to be slammed to the floor.”
“Willing and eager, Shohari.”
Was this another human-ism, or was he being suggestive? I wasn’t sure, but I liked to think it was the latter.
As I walked away, I looked back at him over my shoulder. “This way, human.”
The training room was smaller than I liked but plenty big enough, large mats padding the floor and an adequate amount of equipment in racks along one side, including a pair of kri’ith staves.
“The staves are traditional,” I said. “But I prefer wrestling. Kri’ith culture places much pride on physical strength and ability. Even intellectuals are expected to be able to fight.”
A slow, lazy smile lit up his handsome face. “I used to wrestle. Some martial arts. What sort of wrestling do you do?”
I liked that he’d asked me even though he wouldn’t understand my answers. “I am trained in a number of styles, but traditional kimaj style and northern atamka are my favourites.”
He nodded. “The moves I favour are from something called Judo, though it’s hard to find pure disciplines any more, what with humans being so spread out now. Most of us just train with what we have, so each colony ends up with its own multidisciplinary style.”
“That makes sense.” Emboldened by opening up to my crew yesterday, it couldn’t hurt to tell him a little of my homeworld, could it?
“On my planet, things have changed also. People travel less, and old traditions are strong. I was fortunate to have someone teach me the northern form of atamka, as my family live in the south.” I rubbed my chest, expecting a familiar tightness, but it was strangely calm.
“Let me guess. Your family think the southern traditions are better.”
“Yes.” Amongst many other things. Before my thoughts could take a sour turn, I dropped into a ready stance. “Try to drop me.”
He gave a grin, his body language transforming him from conversation partner to combatant.
I tensed, not knowing what move he might try to make—if indeed the translator had matched both of our words for wrestling correctly. That might have been an amusing or painful mistake if not.
Before I could react, he slumped, running a hand over the spikes of his short mane.
I wanted to touch them, and we had an opportunity, so why did he delay? Perhaps he was not as good a fighter as he said. But no, Garrison was no braggart. “What is it?”
I could not read human facial expressions so well, but I wanted to guess wry or bashful. “I— None of us have a clean change of clothes left, and I don’t want to get these sweaty. And I can’t move well in these trousers. I don’t suppose you have any training clothes I can borrow?”
I stared at him just long enough to make him uncomfortable, then flicked my gaze down his body. I wasn’t sure why being in the training room made me bold, but as the temperatures between us were so often shifting, I did nothing but embrace it.
“I like your tight trousers,” I told him, letting my eyes rove over his shapely thighs and the bulge of his cock, but I didn’t linger. “But fine. There are spare training shorts on that shelf. The blue ones are mine and should fit you well enough.”
I faced the wall to give him privacy, tying my headspines up into a tail while I waited.
I wished I could watch, but I was not a lecher. If he was mine, I could look all I wanted, but—
“You sure you don’t mind me in just shorts?” Garrison said. “They’re quite… short.”
“Of course they’re short. What are shorts supposed to be? Long?” Strange human. “What clothes do your humans wear for wrestling?”
He made a strangled kind of squawk. “Just shorts.”
I swore he sounded a little sulky about it.
“Well, we can do authentic human wrestling, then,” I said, enjoying myself more than I had in a long time. “Can I turn around yet? My muscles are withering, and I want to win.”
“Harsh.” His voice was about as far from his word as could be, and I imagined his face lit up with amusement, wanted to drink it in. “Yes, if you promise not to laugh.”
“I cannot promise because I haven’t seen you.”
As I turned, the teasing words died in my throat. I was certainly not laughing as I took in Garrison wearing nothing but my shorts.
I was never washing them again, which was objectively disgusting, but I didn’t care.
They weren’t as tight as his delightful trousers, which was just as well—the swell of my cunt was all I could feel, his solid, strong body was all I could see, and if any more of him had been on display, I might have lost control.
He was delicious. And we had delayed touching each other long enough.
Garrison’s husky voice held an edge of steel. “Drop you, I think you said?”
I’d barely readied myself before he rushed me. He took advantage of my upraised arms to grab the sleeves of my tunic, then reversed, pulling me backwards.
Kheh. I was heavier, and he sought to use my momentum against me.
I knew better than to try to outsmart an unknown move in training, so when he lowered his body and twisted round, I let him throw me onto my back, quickly following the movement flow and coming to my feet in a ready stance.
The rush of adrenaline took over, and I pressed forward, kicking out against his thigh, gauging his responses.