Electra turned to Treasure and pulled open the front of her robe. It was what her body wanted her to do, not simply because Treasure demanded it but because her tits wanted in some primal way to be sucked on. Treasure took one nipple into her hot mouth, pulled at it with her lips and tongue, breathed hotly over it then moved on to give the other the same treatment—attention desperately given and urgently received.
“I’ve needed you,” Electra said. “My whole life I didn’t know what I wanted or needed until I started needing you.” The words poured out unchecked. She wasn’t typically a talker during sex, and she certainly hadn’t given that level of thought to how much she wanted or needed Treasure. The words sounded so good and so true, though, so she couldn’t imagine holding them back or regretting them.
“I need you too, and right now,” Treasure purred. “I need your mouth on me.”
Electra knew what she meant but also knew what she wanted and needed. She lunged across the distance and met Treasure in a deep, aggressive kiss. They pawed at one another, rubbing skin against skin while making love to each other’s mouths. When the kiss broke, Electra’s lips tingled from the intensity and her body buzzed with excitement. She plunged down onto Treasure’s strap-on, the sense memory of the peculiar shape fading immediately into the old, familiar act until she had Treasure writhing and moaning with every stroke of her hand and lips. Treasure climaxed once, twice then halted the act on her way to a third, pulling Electra back up for another long kiss.
“I want to fuck you,” Treasure said. “I’ve never wanted anything more than I want to fuck you right now.” She roamed her hands and eyes hungrily over Electra’s body, apparently building on her already overwhelming lust by devouring Electra through touch and sight.
“I want you to fuck me. I need you to.” Electra fell back on the couch, her legs spread, her body taut as a bowstring from her nipples to her cock. She waited to be taken, but her lover didn’t seem to know how to proceed. Electra popped a lubricating cap from its packet and slipped it over the head of the strap-on. “Go slow at first. I’ll let you know when you can do as you like.”
“Is there anything else I have to do?” Treasure asked nervously.
“Just stick it in me, beautiful,” Electra said.
“Hearing you say that just sent a tremble through me,” Treasure said.
“Imagine how it’ll feel.”
She didn’t need to imagine, not for long. Treasure guided the head of her strap-on to the top of the line of Electra’s ass until the lubricant cap settled against her rosebud. It slid in slowly at first, stretching until the head popped inside. Electra remembered the ache, the intense pain that subsided with every breath, then gave way to something else—a combined sensation, before turning into pure pleasure with more time, less friction and her body remembering what it was to be penetrated. Treasure held firm after the first push, letting her writhe onto the strap-on then grind until she felt ready.
“Fuck me,” Electra moaned. “I need you to fuck me.”
The unbridled desire was written clearly on Treasure’s face, obvious in the way she strained and writhed, and coming off her in waves of heat. The blue pill had obviously influenced Treasure in the same way it always did with Electra. Everything about Treasure visibly spoke to the barely contained desire to ravage her. Inexperienced in how best to move, Treasure started first by holding Electra’s legs and thrusting in long, slow motions, but that didn’t appear to facilitate enough urgency, so she leaned forward and placed one hand beside Electra’s head to support herself while she roughly kneaded Electra’s breast with her other. From that position she drove into her harder and faster, which Electra craved.
When Treasure seemed to wane in energy from the rough exchange after climaxing twice, she pulled free and lay back. It hurt for a moment when the strap-on slid from Electra and more so knowing it was no longer inside her where she wanted it to be. Treasure was on her back, the pink phallus shiny and wet still, sticking straight up. Electra needed more.
She climbed atop her panting, sweaty lover, reached between her legs and guided the strap-on back into her. Straddled across Treasure’s stomach, she began riding, hard and fast, grinding her hips down every few strokes to feel full and find every inch inside her that the strap-on hadn’t touched yet. It felt amazing. With each rise and fall, tingling coursed through her. Then she came in heavy drips, flowing out of her onto Treasure’s stomach each time she thrust herself down. It wasn’t forceful in appearance, but she felt it in an entirely new and intense way. When she could no longer stand the sensation, she sat fully onto the phallus and ground her hips until she found the right spot to finish. Treasure reached up and milked the last of what remained within Electra in a few pleasant strokes of her soft hand.
Electra didn’t want to dismount, even though she was completely drained. They were connected in an entirely new way, and her view was amazing. Treasure’s dark skin, made shiny and beautiful from sweat, had a trail of perfectly white pearls from her sternum to her belly button, culminating in an almost iridescent puddle.
“You are so unbelievably beautiful right now,” Electra murmured.
“I feel like a sex goddess,” Treasure said, writhing a little and running her hands up her sides.
“You look like one.” Electra closed her eyes, feeling the strap-on shift within her when Treasure moved. She leaned forward to kiss her lover roughly while she slid off the phallus. “Keep the strap-on handy. I’m going to need more of you.”
“I love you, Electra,” Treasure whispered. “I need you to know that, and I’m sorry I didn’t say it before when you told me.”
“I love you too.”
“I’m never going to forget tonight,” Treasure said.
“Neither will I.”
“Care to join a sex goddess in the shower?”
Chapter Seventeen
Electra woke up deliciously sore and rock hard. She wanted to feel every inch of her against every inch of Treasure before she even opened her eyes. Once she found Treasure by feel alone, she would have another list of needs to fulfill. She crawled across the bed, found only cold sheets and blankets, crawled farther and found the edge. That bolted her awake and upright.
“Treasure?” Electra leaped from the bed. She checked the bathroom first. Empty. “Where is she, Ivy?”
“Miss Treasure is not currently on board, Miss Electra,” Ivy replied.
Electra ran from the ship, naked since that was how she’d slept, and wild from panic. Rain fell in sheets. Wind whipped the ferns in waves. The surf crashed against the shore in the distance with unusual violence. Electra ran for the facility, calling Treasure’s name.
From room to room, floor to floor, she ran and called out. There wasn’t anything to take her on the planet. If the Glott pirates had found them, they would have taken the ship too.
A datapad sat on the bed of Electra’s old room. She stared at the item from her ship, out of place on her bed from another lifetime, from another version of her. Swallowing hard would not remove the lump in her throat or the sting of tears at the corners of her eyes. With frightened, reverent hands, she picked up the datapad. The screen sprang to life on a video of Treasure at the desk in Electra’s old dormitory room.
“Letterman and I had a long talk. He told me why I was created and studied in the first place. It’s a bummer for Paul that I’m about to give him the dissertation supporting data I failed to provide for three centuries,” Treasure said. “Let’s be honest. I was never going to go along with your bullshit plan. You must have known that, right? I’m supposed to leave the woman I love alone on an empty planet for the rest of her life because she said so? Come on, Electra. You’re smarter than that.” Treasure tried to smile but couldn’t make it stick. “Letterman apologized for trying to kidnap and sell me. I’m not sure how much of it was genuine and how much was the realization that he was completely vulnerable—a new sensation for him, I’m sure. Regardless, he was very deferential. You’re
the captain, he’s the muscle but I’m in charge. I don’t believe he likes that arrangement, but I know you do.”
That made Electra smile and cry and tremble.
Treasure’s tears in the video matched Electra’s. “I know you lied to protect me, and I’m trying to remember your motivations were pure, even if your actions weren’t. Let me protect you instead and tell the truth while doing so. After you saved my life, let me use your Spatronic and gave me the best sex of my life, I think it’s a fair trade for fifty billion units, which Letterman assures me is as much money as it sounds like. I gave him access to the ship’s uplink. He summoned collection agents. He promised they wouldn’t even wake you, since your debt was handled by what you’d already collected. I double-checked his math because I do not trust either of you when it comes to money at this point. It’s close, but you should be out of debt. He even said he’s not holding a grudge about getting his ass kicked by you—my words, not his.” Treasure took a steadying breath and wiped tears from her cheeks before continuing. “I love you, Electra Rex. I love you too much to let you put yourself in danger for my sake. Get back out there, sweetness. The galaxy needs your spark.”
The video ended. Electra clutched the datapad to her chest, curled up and lay on the bed. There wasn’t a spark in her anymore, not without Treasure. What is the point of any of it—the ship, the money, the freedom—if I have to live without love? It was Letterman. He’d betrayed her. She hadn’t trusted him, hadn’t believed him, hadn’t let him get close and he’d still figured out a way to fuck her over. Kicked his ass? I haven’t yet begun to kick his ass!
She ran back to the ship through the gathering storm, bent on extracting some sort of retribution from Letterman. He’d brought agents to her ship. He’d lied about her to Treasure. If he thought the globauncher balls had been damaging, he hadn’t seen anything yet. She’d rip out his CPU and show it to him. She’d put powerful magnets on whatever part of him equated to testicles. She’d blow rough silica crumbs into his cooling system. She’d get a club… That was what she’d do!
Electra stopped at the fabricator station directly off the gangplank and searched weapons for what would brutalize a bot most effectively—an electro-mace with a magnetic head to pull each swing harder into metal, the perfect tool to inflict pain on synthetic enemies. Armed with her newly printed electro-mace, naked, dripping wet from the rain and fuming mad, she felt like an ancient warrior woman from some forgotten Earthling fable, extracting retribution for her tribe, or country club, or clique, or whatever the name was for ancient warrior groups.
When she turned the corner to the cargo hold, her righteous fury turned into the most uniquely human of traits…impotent rage. The collection agents had gutted Letterman for his CPU and other valuable innards. All that remained were the damaged portions of his shell, the tracks he moved on, the flopping metal tentacles on top and a few bent collection chambers. She proceeded to beat the living daylights out of the shell all the same. The electro-mace made satisfying contact again and again without doing much damage to the hardened armor of the exterior. Electra pushed the door open farther to try to hit the collection chambers in the hope that they might be breakable. One good swing against them proved her wrong. The door rebounded and knocked her over. The mace bounced out of the door and down the hallway, making comical ba-do-ing noises whenever the electrified and magnetic head propelled the weapon away from the carpet. Repulsed by organic matter to avoid self-harm—she’d wondered what that description meant when she was printing the mace. The carpet must have natural fibers. Stupid mace.
She rolled into a sitting position to rub her shoulder where the door had struck her. Or maybe she was stupid for indulging in impotent rage against an inanimate object that no longer contained the essence of who she was mad at. Besides, she was a lover, not a fighter—a schemer, not a… Her train of thought derailed at seeing something out of place among the collection chambers. Her hit had managed to dislodge something…the data crystal containing Paul’s research on humans. She’d been ducking Dr. Baarqua ever since she’d rescued Treasure, so she’d never had a chance to give it to him. A tweak of the interior release mechanism exposed by her mace had opened the back of the collection chamber so she could retrieve the undamaged data crystal. The wires to the port were severed and Letterman had already logged the crystal as acquired. Neither Letterman nor the collection agents would have known it was still inside without breaking open the damaged chamber to look.
She could lure Dr. Baarqua almost anywhere with the disk—and she could get some answers.
“You currently have fifty-five million unchecked hits on search parameters, Miss Electra,” Ivy said.
“Later, Ivy, I’ve got an overgrown ape to extract information from.”
* * * *
Threatening the good Dr. Baarqua wasn’t Electra’s style, nor did she think it would be particularly effective. She’d displayed a lot of various traits while working for Bi-MARP, but ruthlessness and violence weren’t among them, the earlier mace incident notwithstanding. Meet for coffee… That was what she’d suggested, and he knew where.
When she arrived at Station 51’s Tim Hortons, Electra found the eccentric Appdurpin doctor already waiting. He was drinking a cup of steaming coffee in a booth, nibbling on a bagel and reading something on a datapad. It wasn’t necessarily a power move to make him wait while she got coffee. She was thirsty and wanted to say hi to Om. She knew she should be hungry, but the red pill was still in her system and nothing but more sex with Treasure sounded appetizing.
Order in hand, Electra made her way to the booth, set down her cup and sat across from the giant, shaggy blue ape in the crisp white lab coat. He put aside his datapad and attempted a weak smile.
“I had wondered why the data crystal was not among the eclectic gathering of valuables turned in by the collections agents on your behalf,” Dr. Baarqua said. “A simple matter of absentmindedness on your part or inattention to detail on theirs?”
“A little of both,” Electra said. “Is Dr. Paul super angry with me?”
“Quite the contrary, actually. And he is ‘All But Dissertation’, so it would be more correct to specify ABD rather than calling him a doctor…but I digress,” Dr. Baarqua said. “You provided him with the only useful point of human data when you betrayed him to rescue Trish Miller from dissection. I believe you call her ‘Treasure’. I find it somewhat vexing that you then essentially sold her to Bi-MARP, and I’m hoping you might shed some much-desired light upon the reason before I inform Paul that his data point might be corrupt.”
“I didn’t sell her,” Electra said through clenched teeth. “Letterman betrayed me and she tried to save me…but it doesn’t matter now. None of this went down how I wanted. I need you and everyone else to know that I was never going to give her to Bi-MARP.”
“You’re famous now, Captain Rex, and once you hand over the data crystal, your debts should be cleared with a little room to spare,” Dr. Baarqua said. “Doesn’t that please you?”
“No.”
“Providing so many crucial pieces to the Bi-MARP effort to restore Earth does not please you?”
“No.”
“Your name is synonymous with skilled treasure hunting and piloting. It wouldn’t be inappropriate or inaccurate to describe you as a legend. Even this does not please you?”
“No, none of this shit pleases me. I am pretty fucking well unpleased!”
Dr. Baarqua pursed his lips and nodded. A pair of smaller hands emerged from his lab coat and began typing things on the datapad he’d set down.
“What the hell?” Electra demanded. “You have four arms? Since when do you have four arms?”
“Since always,” Dr. Baarqua said. “There are a great many things my people did not disclose to your people when we sponsored you and granted access to the galaxy and beyond. We concealed our secondary arms and tails, a minor lie to appear more like the apes from your planet. Since I have already shared this secret with
Bort and Treasure, I thought it only appropriate that I reveal the true Appdurpin form to you as well.”
“What-the-fuck-ever… Have four arms, two heads, three tails for all I care,” Electra said. “There are three tails, right? You’re sitting down so I can’t see, but I assume it’s a weird cluster of three.”
“Indeed, there are three. Quite astute of you,” Dr. Baarqua said with a smile. His lower hands turned the datapad so Electra could see the historical images moving slowly across the screen. “For several millennia, my people studied Earthlings from afar, largely observational science until we decided whether or not to make a proper introduction. Over the millennia, a few humans hypothesized that we assisted in construction of the pyramids, but I assure you we did not. Indeed, we were quite taken aback when your ancient peoples commenced building marvels for no other reason than they evidently felt the urge to. Ultimately, after nearly ten thousand years of observational study, the consensus among the top scientists who oversaw our government was that your species was unfit for spacefaring society. Two centuries later, all life on planet Earth collapsed and the vast majority of humanity went extinct. Still we watched, vindicated to a degree at our initial decision but concerned more lives might have been spared had we intervened.” The images on the screen showed the swift decay of Earth—the wars, the famines, the melting of the polar ice caps, the fires, the powerful storms that wiped cities from existence, and at long last a crack in the world so large the atmosphere filled with toxic gases and life ended.
“What changed your minds about us?” After seeing the pictures of what the planet had been like before humans destroyed it, then the ways in which they’d fought one another while the world had burned down around them, she completely understood why the Appdurpins hadn’t thought humans were worth saving. The brief slideshow made her species look like a bunch of shortsighted shitheads.
“It took the death of your planet to change humanity’s outlook,” Dr. Baarqua said. “The Martians, Europans and Venutians all displayed admirable qualities not present in Earthlings—at least, not in significant rates. We resumed our study of your species with new fervor and your kind did not disappoint. Hardiness, kindness, cleverness… These were all traits present before Earth died, but now there was a marked increase in cooperation, emotional insight and self-awareness well beyond projections of typical societal evolution.” The pictures shifted to the stations orbiting Venus, the large colonies on Mars and the people who’d banded together to strive to build a future for humanity. “Only after your species lost everything were they worthy of walking among the stars.”
Electra Rex Page 18
