24. Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Four
Let me clarify—Ursa often stared at me. I suppose it was one of his love languages. That and sniffing.
But all jokes aside, since we’d gotten to know each other better, and been freer with our emotions, he’d relaxed quite a bit.
He no longer watched me so intently, even though he was still hyperaware of me, wherever I was in a room.
Whoever I might be talking to. Whatever danger he imagined me to be in, etcetera.
The way Ursa was looking at me now was how he’d looked at me when we first met back on Earth. When he couldn’t keep his eyes off me. Like he’d seen something he wanted and was trying to figure out how he could get it.
Like he was imagining all the many ways he could make me his.
A thrill shot through me, low in my belly. Silently I watched him as he watched me, taking in the sweep of his eyes over the length of my body, his long, deliberate swallow, before his gaze found mine in the mirror. We stared at one another.
Then, faster than should have been possible, he was out of bed, stalking across the room toward me like some giant apex predator.
His hair was disheveled from sleep, his eyes darkened with want.
He was, as per his usual preference, shirtless, so I could see the muscles of his stomach and torso rippling as he closed in on me.
He wore a pair of thermal bottoms slung low over his hips.
Precariously low, really. The sharp V of his hip bones jutted out over the waistband, the fabric just barely covering his crescent moon bottom.
And jutting out the front of the thin material was his evident approval of the dress I was wearing.
“Ursa,” I warned him. What exactly I was warning him of, I wasn’t entirely sure; only, I did suddenly have the distinct impression that I was being hunted. It made me nervous as much as it thrilled me, a combination I didn’t wholly understand but which had me instinctively curling my toes.
To my surprise—or relief? disappointment?—he did not push me up against the wall and begin ravishing me. Instead, he stood behind me in the mirror for a long moment, staring at my reflection up close. Then he began to circle me, slowly, taking in the full panoramic vision of me in the dress.
The effect seemed to make Ursa aroused, reverent, and shy in equal measures. As he circled me, he reached out to graze the material of the dress. To tug on the edge of one sleeve. To run his fingers over my bare shoulder. To touch the ends of my loose hair.
These touches seemed motivated more out of curiosity than an intent to seduce me, though somehow in not trying to actively seduce me, he was making me even more aroused.
I shivered under the intensity of his awed inspection.
In the reflection, I saw my body responding to his evident desire, my face flushing, nipples pebbling under the thin material of the dress.
Ursa stopped, sniffing the air, then stepped in closer, sniffing harder. “Mina,” he growled. Now he was the one who sounded almost reprimanding.
Honestly, though, how was I supposed to react when he was circling me half naked, eying me like the last taco on Taco Tuesday, his cock straining to burst free from his pants?
“There’s no time,” I reminded him—and, I suppose, me—sternly. I wasn’t being coy today or running from my attraction to him. We were just on a tight schedule. “We’ve already docked. Breakfast is waiting. They’ll be coming for us any moment.”
I thought I did a pretty good job of keeping my voice even and my tone businesslike, all things considered, until Ursa stepped in close behind me.
Warmth emanated from his torso, seeping through the thin material of my dress and into my skin.
The hard ridge of his cock brushed against my lower back.
In the mirror, I watched him slowly, slowly lean down to put his nose to the skin of my bare shoulder and inhale deeply. He groaned, his hand fisting in the fabric at the back of my dress, his eyes snapping up to meet my gaze in the reflection. “When Ursa gets Mina alone . . .”
I clenched my legs, my entire body aware of his proximity, the low murmur of his voice. This would get out of control very quickly if I didn’t put a stop to it. “Pronouns,” I reminded him weakly. No time like the present to put his grammar lessons to the test.
Ursa shifted slightly so I could feel the full length of his hardened cock pressing up against me. “When I get you alone,” he amended.
I bit back a whimper.
There was still quite a bit more to that particular story, but to my surprise, the Brethren seemed quite stuck on the idea of me in a dress. At first, I thought it was their usual way of attempting to trick me into discussing nudity and whatnot.
But I soon realized this was something else entirely. The men wanted to know about the dress—not my body in it, not my quivering response to Ursa’s attention. They listened eagerly to each detail, some of them closing their eyes as if painting a mental picture.
When I’d finished describing, for the third time, exactly what seams and hemline and fabric and sleeves were on the dress, Rumbeard surprised me by lifting his tankard of ale and holding it up into the air. “A lady in a dress,” he intoned solemnly.
“A lady in a dress,” the other men echoed with just as much gravity.
In the moment, it confused me, I admit, but I’ve since had time to ponder over it. The conclusion I’ve drawn since then is that for these men, living on the outskirts of society, the sight of a woman in a dress must be a very rare thing.
For starters, the crew are true to their name—all brothers, no sisters—and travel between ports is long and drawn out.
Then, once a new settlement is finally reached, men of this ilk likely aren’t making it past the port town.
They aren’t being invited into the rich inner sanctums, the quiet and cozy suburbs.
Port towns tend to be rather rough and tumble; you might see women working in stalls, but they’re hefting crates and shouting down pickpockets and marketing their wares.
Fancy dresses are not practical for such work.
Then there is the other type of work women often do in port towns, but though they might wear dresses, those garments were designed to be taken off, not admired on.
No, the sight of a lady in a beautiful dress must have been something rare, indeed, to those men. The idea touched me so much that, when some of the men approached me the next evening, shortly before story time, and offered me a gown they’d found in storage, I felt I had no choice but to wear it.
Again, it wasn’t until much later that I pieced together “in storage” likely meant it was a dress that had been taken from a woman they’d killed.
That rather deflated the romance of the notion.
But since this realization didn’t strike me until afterward, I gamely put on the gown and went out to meet the men for story time.
This garment didn’t much resemble Zenny’s blue dress.
The beauty of that dress was in its simplicity.
This garment was far more ornate, with dozens of zippers and buttons and fasteners that I was only half convinced I’d put together properly.
Further, I’m sorry to say, this dress didn’t fit me nearly as nicely as Zenny’s had, and it hung somewhat baggily around my frame in a way I assumed was not intended.
But still, the men fell silent as I entered the room, a weighted hush charging the atmosphere as I cut through the crowd to my rocking chair.
To my surprise, a few of them rose to their feet as I passed, and then all of them were doing so, some of them even taking off their hats to hold to their hearts.
That intense, silent focus was sweet in its own way, but also intimidating. I was like a cod swimming through a shiver of sharks, all eyes on me.
Not, I should clarify, that I worried the men wanted to eat me.
1 Nor, at this point, did I feel any sort of sexual threat from them.
In becoming their regular companion, I seemed to have transcended the category of woman, for most of them, and become Mina.
An important distinction, I think you’ll agree.
But still, it was uncomfortable having so many eyes watching me, so much reverence wafting toward me. I was used to the men belching and shouting and bickering in my presence. They looked at me now like I was . . . well, like I was a lady.
Big Red was the one to break the silence. “Just imagine if she were beautiful.”
I stared at him, too stunned to do much more by way of a reaction.
Rumbeard swatted at him with his hat. “You idiot. She is beautiful.”
“I’d say more cute than beautiful,” Big Red argued staunchly. Seeming to have caught up to his gaff now, he glanced over at me. “And cute is very nice! There’s some as prefer it.”
“The kind of looks that grow on you after a while,” someone chimed in from further back—I didn’t quite catch who it was. “Even if at first you didn’t find the person attractive at all. At all. Is there a name for that?”
“Space goggles,” someone else supplied.
Then the conversation got a bit away from me, as the men began debating which category of attractiveness I was in and/or what the difference was between cute and beautiful and pretty and striking and various other synonyms. It was almost like I wasn’t even in the room anymore.
Helplessly, I lifted my eyes to Orion. Despite everything, he was still my port in a storm on this ship. To my surprise, he’d pressed his lips together, his eyes shining. He was trying not to laugh, the brute.
I shook my head at him but found myself pressing back my own smile.
Then neither one of us was able to contain our mirth any longer, and we were both laughing—a real, proper gut laugh, holding our sides, tears and all—as the oblivious men around us continued to vehemently debate the merits of my attractiveness.
1. Not now that the rainbow-eyed man was dead, anyway.