Chapter 13 #2
After, she lay still, breathing hard, and I was still touching her, still learning the aftershocks, the way her body continued to respond to even the lightest pressure.
She opened her eyes and looked at me, and I saw something there that I had not expected.
Fear, perhaps. Or wonder. Or the same thing I felt, which had no name in any language I knew.
“I want to mate you,” I said. The translator was off. I had turned it off without deciding to, the way I did everything with her. “This is your chance to say no.”
She laughed, breathless. “That’s not, you can’t just—”
“I can. I am.” I sat back on my heels, and I let her see what I had hidden.
The arousal was visible now, the twin lengths that emerged from my body when the desire was sufficient, when the partner was right, when the Veyathi body recognized its match.
They were deep blue, darker than my skin, and they moved with my pulse, and I watched her face as she understood.
“Oh,” she said. Small. Wondering. “That’s… there are two.”
“Yes.”
“And they both…?”
“Yes.” I reached for her hand, brought it to touch, and her fingers closed around one length and I made a sound I had never made before, helpless, unguarded. “Tell me your anatomy. Tell me how we fit.”
She was silent, her hand still wrapped around me, and I felt the heat rise in her face even before I saw it.
“We can—” She stopped. Started again. “They can both go in my pussy. With stretching. It’s…
I’ve read about it, in the species files, the compatibility studies—” She was babbling, I realized, the way she did when she was nervous and professional at once.
“Or one there, and one…” She stopped entirely, and the heat in her face was visible now, even in the dim light.
“One where?”
“One in my ass.” The words came out rushed, mortified, and she tried to pull her hand away. I did not let her. “It’s just, I’ve never, I don’t know if I can.“
I was instantly obsessed with her ass. The thought of it, the image, the possibility of being inside her in both places at once, of filling her so completely she could not remember where she ended and I began. The blue surged, visible, undeniable, and she saw it and understood.
“You like that idea,” she said. Not quite accusation.
“I like every idea that involves being inside you.” I leaned down, kissed her forehead, her closed eyes, her mouth. “We do not have to. I can use one, just my hands.”
“I want to try.” She opened her eyes. “I want to try both. I just… I need you to be careful. And patient. And…”
“I have been patient for years,” I said. “I can be patient for this.”
I prepared her. I squeezed a gland at the base that released a lubrication oil, and I worked it into her with fingers that trembled only slightly, that found the resistance and eased past it, that listened to her breath and her sounds and the particular tension of her body.
She was tight and so perfect. She was pushing back against my hand, wanting more, and I gave her more, stretching her carefully, opening her for what would come.
When she was ready, when she was making sounds that were not words in any language, I positioned myself.
I had read the compatibility studies too, knew the angles, the depth, the way to enter so that both lengths could find their place.
I pressed against her, one at her entrance, one lower, and she gasped, and I stopped, and she said “no, don’t stop, please… ”
I pushed forward. The resistance was exquisite, the giving way better, and then I was inside her, both of us, fully seated, and she made a sound I would carry with the others, laid down in order, unforgettable.
She was full. I could feel it, the way her body surrounded me, the way we were joined in two places, the way there was no space between us anymore.
I moved. Slowly at first, learning the rhythm of it, the way she responded when I shifted my angle, the sounds she made when I went deeper.
She was clutching the sheets, her head thrown back, and I watched her face, the way she lost herself in the sensation, the way she found herself again and lost herself once more.
I found the rhythm. It was not different from charting a coastline, from learning the shape of a place by moving through it.
I learned her. I learned what made her cry out, what made her beg, what made her come apart around me in waves that I could feel, that triggered my own response, that built and built until she was saying my name like a prayer, like a curse, like the only word she knew.
She came first, and then again, and then a third time as I changed my angle, as I found the place inside her that made her scream, as I used both lengths to their full extent, moving in counterpoint, filling her completely.
I felt her pleasure as my own, the way her body gripped me, the way she shuddered and went still and shuddered again.
I followed. I could not have stopped if I had wanted to, and I did not want to.
The release was overwhelming, the spasm of it moving through both lengths at once, filling her in both places with the evidence of my desire, my belonging, my choice.
I collapsed over her, still inside her, and she wrapped her arms around me and held on.
We lay like that for a long time. The radiator gurgulated its morning clearing of the throat.
Light began to filter through the window, the particular grey of Portland dawn.
I was still inside her, softening now but not yet willing to separate, and she was stroking my back, her fingers finding the places where my skin blurred at the edges, where the watercolor effect was strongest.
“I can feel you,” she said. “Both of you. Still.”
“Yes.” I kissed her shoulder, the place where her neck met her collarbone. “I do not want to move.”
“Then don’t.” She shifted, and I felt the movement inside her, the way we were still joined, and she made a small sound that might have been pleasure or might have been soreness. “Not yet. Just stay.”
I stayed. I memorized the moment. The weight of her beneath me, the smell of us together, the particular angle of light through the window that turned her skin to gold. I had never unpacked my case. I had never stayed anywhere long enough to learn the morning light. I was learning it now.
And then my brain re-engaged.
It was not a choice. The pattern recognition that made me valuable to the Corps, that had mapped eleven systems and found the thin ice before I knew I was looking, began to fire. The departure logs we had been examining, missing waypoints, and the timing that did not match.
I went still. Astoria felt it, her hand pausing on my back.
“What?”
“I am.” I pulled out of her, gently, carefully, and she made a small sound of loss that I would have attended to if I could. “I need to see the logs again. The ones we were looking at.”
“Azyr, we just…”
“I know.” I was already moving, finding my clothes, pulling them on with hands that still smelled of her. “I know. But I have seen something. I need to confirm.”
She sat up, reaching for her own clothes, and I saw the moment she decided not to be offended, the moment she chose to trust whatever this was. She dressed quickly, less carefully than usual, and followed me down the stairs.
The terminal was still glowing. I pulled up the logs we had abandoned hours before, and I laid my mental map over them, and I saw it. The pattern. The thing that had been nagging at the edge of my attention while I touched her, while I was inside her, while I learned the shape of her pleasure.