Chapter 27 #2
“But then there were people there. They saw me covered in blood. They saw me with my pistol in hand. They were demanding to know what happened. They were asking about my aunt and mother. They wanted to know what I had done to them. They were accusing me and I just… I couldn’t talk.
I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t defend myself.
I didn’t know what to do. So, I ran. I escaped as people were trying to put out the fire, to rescue my aunt and mother. I left in the confusion.
“They were right. I was weak. But I wasn’t useless.
I was good at one thing. And I found a female ship captain who was willing to trade sex for a ride.
I hopped my way across the universe, staying away from the authorities.
Hiding from inspections. The pirate crew that brought me to Rik-Vane were killed there and left me stranded on that place.
So, I just adapted to living there. I found another powerful female to trade sex for safety.
I built more weapons. I betrayed and killed her.
I kept myself alive, and even now, I still sometimes wonder why I bothered.
“And then Tanin came to me one day. And he wanted my skills. But not my sexual ones. He didn’t care about that.
He wanted my weapon skills. My ability to make pistols out of nothing.
My ability to fight. Skills I taught myself so I wouldn’t be weak and useless.
It was the first time anyone saw something worthwhile in me that wasn’t sex.
I think that’s why I wanted to follow him.
I didn’t believe in his plan, not initially, but I felt useful for the first time in my life.
He gave me a purpose that wasn’t someone else’s pleasure, and that meant more to me than logic or reason. But then…”
He had to gather himself again. Laughing again. This time with derision at himself.
“But then I found out I can’t not have sex.
I hear their screams, my aunt and mother’s, at night.
I hear them during the day. I smell them.
I feel them. They haunt me to this day. I have this urge, this itch, to pleasure females even now.
It’s like a compulsion. An addiction. I was trained to do this and now I have to or those screams get too loud.
“At the same time though, I can’t stand a female’s touch.
I hate when a female touches me. It makes my skin crawl.
I have to please females, but I also can’t bear them.
It’s a terrible contradiction. One that a lover couldn’t handle.
How do you tell a female that you need to please her but she absolutely cannot touch you?
Especially when you can’t talk. When your tongue is locked.
“Prostitutes were the only way out I could see. Females that would demand nothing from me. Ones who would do exactly as I said if I ordered them to keep their hands away. Ones who wouldn’t ask for emotional connection, who wouldn’t ask about my claws.
Ones who wouldn’t wonder why my cock could not harden. ”
And there it was. The last confession. The one that made him feel the most useless, the weakest, the most ridiculous.
His cock could harden. He woke with it that way sometimes. But it always went soft. It never hardened from desire. It was a useless lump of flesh between his legs.
“The prostitutes love me because I never fuck them,” he admitted.
“I give them pleasure, and I pay them for it. I melt them. I use my tongue and fingers to bring them to heights that I learned to save my own life. I give them many marks of ecstasy and demand nothing in return except that they don’t put their hands on me.
That’s why they call my name. I’m a vacation for them.
A treat. A sex toy that they get paid to enjoy.
“But my cock doesn’t harden for them. It doesn’t react to the most beautiful females on the street, on the vids, in porn. It doesn’t react to you.”
This, somehow, was where he gained the power to look at her. This last, shameful confession, he could finally look at Chee. And he expected horror or pity or even understanding.
But no. She was just looking. Listening. Waiting. Open and unjudging.
“I want you,” he said. “Every cell in my body longs for you. I want to be around you. I want to hear you talk. I want to see your joy. I want to banish your pain. I want to drown you in pleasure. If nothing else, I know I can give you that. But my cock refuses to rise. It can’t harden.
And I can’t have you touch me. Even you.
Because I’m broken. Because I was forged into a toy and now you must suffer for it.
And that is why we cannot work. I cannot be a mate to you. ”
There.
That was all of it.
She knew his entire shameful history. He didn’t feel shame about murdering his aunt and mother.
He would do it again, gleefully, if they appeared before him now.
He was no longer a gangly adolescent, made weak and gaunt by years trapped in a small basement.
He was strong, lethal, and untouchable, and it would be fun to show them agony equal to the ecstasy they demanded before.
But he hated that his mate must be the one to pay the price for his past. He hated that he couldn’t be a full male for her. He hated that he craved and hated sex in equal measure. He hated his body for betraying the one female it should give everything to.
Weak and useless and purposeless.
“Would it help if I don’t touch you?” Chee asked.