by Amanda Milo
Slap—suck! slap—suck! slap—suuuck! Our bodies aren’t inhibited at all as he begins to pump his hips, my sex reluctant to let him withdraw just as much as it loves the feel of him gliding deep inside me on his return.
In my mind, I’m in a meadow surrounded by a wonder of butterflies. I haven’t seen butterflies since I left Earth.
“What are those?” C’vest chokes out, panting.
Suddenly, the image disappears, and a man other than my husband is pinning me to the side of the bed, his skin sweaty where he’s heavy over my hips, droplets of his perspiration sizzling as they hit my back, his merman-scale-covered ball sack striking me perfectly on that sensitized spot at the top of my cleft as he bangs into me at a pace lively enough to shake the whole bed.
His hips slap against mine with a loud smack (and his balls pop me smartly on my clit again, making my mouth drop open)—
And C’vest leans around me to meet one of my eyes. “Stella?” His finger picks at hairs sticking to the sides of my cheek. When I don’t answer, I feel a careful touch in my mind, just as careful as the hand he’s using to clear my hair away from my face. And immediately I’m reliving the memory of receiving a high score on a test I studied hard for. The elation I felt. The relief.
Swimming on that same high as if I was back in that classroom, none of the details sharp from that day except for the exultant feelings, the butterfly swarm comes back to me too, just as breathtaking.
“That one,” C’vest says, breaking into the image.
It doesn’t break the spell though. As if he’s petting me inside my head, I keep circling in that meadow, awed beyond reason at seeing all the colors on the fragilest of wings, hundreds of wings.
“Butterflies,” I gasp.
“Oh,” C’vest murmurs thoughtfully. And very politely, he begins to push inside me again, and a dollop of wetness squeezes out from my stretched lower lips as he forces his way in, the drop rolling down my leg, sticky and hot and rapidly cooling as it escapes our clutch. My wetness with his precum, I assume. And I don’t care.
Butterflies and I got an A, and Baron isn’t dead, this isn’t happening.
His other arm comes under me and bands between my breasts, clamping me flush to his heated and hardworking front, his muscles bunching, contracting as he rides me hard enough to jostle me under him.
Hope blooms in my mind; I’m in the memory of Baron getting down on one knee, having to clear his rough voice twice before he could manage, “Will you marry me?”
His voice had cracked, the terror evident in the strong, brave young man who I wanted for my husband in the worst way.
“Yes!” I’d cried, leaping on him.
That exact same elation is as alive in this moment as it was in the real one. I’m so happy. I shriek as an orgasm crashes against me like a tidal wave. But at the same time, I’m also aware of myself feeling very, very sad; that same memory that’s giving me pleasure is shredding me in the background. Bittersweetness edges in, followed by a cold sort of acceptance.
Baron is gone.
His beautiful proposal may as well have never happened. What we had is over, gone. Destroyed.
My new husband is inside me. Right now. And he just made me come.
He comes too, driven on the heels of my body’s pulsing reaction, it seems, clutching me tight enough my ribs creak and the breath whooshes out of me as his weight comes down hard enough to squish me into the duvet.
Cheerfulness overtakes me, and although I don’t have a memory to go along with the sensation this time, it’s sort of like the mindset I used to get around Christmas when I was growing up. When everything smelled crisp and warm with spices and the outdoors was cold enough to make your skin crackle and everything felt so clean and fresh.
C’vest drags me up on the bed with him, holding me tighter than a panther grips a jungle deer. His mouth goes to my throat like a panther too, his teeth closing against my skin. Rather than bite though, he messily tastes me, licking at my sweat and kissing me. Like he’s tired but appreciative and I’m a flavor that heats up his senses.
It’s a nice thought, and I like how snugly he’s got ahold of me. I feel less like I can break apart this way. But I still hurt. Inside, in a place so deep in my chest no one can reach—not unless his abilities extend to the heart—I ache like crazy.
CHAPTER 5
C’VEST
Stella doesn’t speak, and her mood lowers so rapidly I can only watch in dismay as the activity in her mind shuts down like a city block that’s lost power.
I struggle to stay awake and I activate all the pleasure centers I have access to while I clutch her in my arms, enjoying the way she feels as I haul more of her against my chest, taking her weight, rolling to my back and bringing her on top of me. My sweat is cooling on her, and where she’s not stuck against my areas that have humanlike skin (or a close enough equivalent), she’s growing chilly. I rub her upper arm with my palm.
You’re lying on the covers, idiot, I realize. I fight to free them, wrenching myself sideways, struggling with the thick blanket as it wraps around my legs, trapping them—a feeling I hate, one that makes panic rise inside of me like some ancient instinct about nets, I suppose. But eventually I free the bedding and rip it back enough to slide us under the covers.
At no time during this process does Stella stir. She doesn’t react to me holding her and she doesn’t fight my ministrations in her mind. She lets me play her happiness centers with all the permission one gives to a renowned orchestra conductor, if only I had the skill. I can tell that I fumble the sectors and hit on other spots sometimes, but she doesn’t complain. Just lets herself feel whatever I can soften her reality with.
I don’t let myself fall asleep until she does, and only after she’s floating on a blissful cloud, and she’s projecting that same image of strange fluttering insects that make her feel delighted.
When I wake up, it’s dark in the room, the lamp switched off. There’s light emanating from around the partially open door though, and the scent of food and the loud spitting of meat in lava hot lard rouses me enough to get vertical.
I stumble out of the bedroom, and Stella glances up, a spatula in one hand, a strip of bacon sticking out of her mouth, and her eyes go wide.
I follow her gaze, landing below my navel to where I’m not wearing a stitch.
My penis is jutting out proudly as a sailor's marlinspike.
No wonder my pelvis feels tight and hot. Is this what I can expect of married life? Ever since I had Stella the first time, I’ve been distracted with thoughts of sex with her, and then last night I was consumed with hope that she’d give me a signal that she desired to mate with me too. For someone who didn’t understand the appeal of sex or the drive of mating, this is astounding. Staggering, really.
Is this normal?
I don’t realize that I’ve voiced the question aloud until Stella makes a noise similar to a choked snicker.
I take my focus off of myself in favor of eyeing her.
Her cheeks go bright, and she turns her attention to whatever is in the odd hinged skillet she’s using. She flips the thing closed, glances at the clock over the stove—and then she moves a pan of bacon strips to a cool burner, sets her spatula down and steps to the dining table, bracing her hands on the sturdy split-log planks that form the tabletop.
She glances at me over her shoulder, and her hips lift. “Come on.” She spits on her hand and pulls her nightdress up (a garment I’ve never had reason to notice or have an opinion about until I see how hers hugs her curves) until it sits bunched at the dip over her ample cheeks—and she smears her own saliva between her labia.
Did I think I was staggered before? “Am I dreaming?” My throat is scratchy and my words come out dry.
Stella laughs. “Hurry up, or what’s in the irons will burn.”
I don’t even ask if she wants pleasure. Probably with less finesse than if I were solidly conscious, I work her satisfaction centers until she’s bur
sting with high spirits, and for me, I replay how she touched herself to get wet as I shove into her—it was arousing—making us both grunt.
She hunkers down over the table and the silverware rattles on the plates, but the construction of the table is good. Solid and heavy as hell so that it barely moves even with the enthusiasm behind my thrusts. I have only a moment to think Stella knew of the table’s constitution firsthand—and another moment to shut the thought down that she probably gave herself to Baron this way, just this way, because I wholly believe that he woke up hungry for this affecting creature that was his wife, his vixen of a mate, this morning siren. I give in to the urge to ram into her body, plunging into her like I can breed her right to the other side of the room.
Just as the scent of something burning stings a little unpleasantly in my nose, I explode inside her, making my eyes cross, making our thighs wet when she wriggles until I lift off of her enough for her to free herself in a disconnecting fashion, spilling my fluid out of her as she spins and ducks out from under me and tries to save what’s on the stove from causing a housefire.
My body is very confused as she flits around me, filling plates and scraping and pouring things at the stove. I’m a jumble of euphoria and contentment and insensibility. And it’s too early for this sort of jumble.
A dry scoff sounds from the stove—it’s Stella again, making a sound not unlike amusement. “Sit down,” she orders.
Robotically, I do. “What time of the morning is it?”
“It’s still night.”
“Ah. Are we… is this breakfast or some sort of midnight snack?”
“I guess it’s an inbetweenie. I couldn’t sleep.”
I’m blinking down at my plate when she plops a stack of strange-celled confections onto an already burgeoning pile of strange-celled wedges.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, turning away from the stove to peer at me. “They aren’t poisoned.”
“I appreciate that,” I tell her with a nod. “And I’m simply a little flummoxed. About several things. This food is alien, and to add to my disorientation, my eyes are not feeling like they’re quite up to speed. It’s only slightly alarming me.”
“They’re black.”
I look up at her.
“Your eyes,” she says. She grows almost shy, glancing away from me. Fiddling with her hinged cooking tool. “They haven’t filled with the blue data lines except for right before we… woke you up.”
I give her a lopsided sleepy smile that seems to affect her. If my eyes were working, I might be able to see exactly what the effect is. “Thank you for the very welcome wake-up. It was a relief in many ways.”
She makes a lighthearted huff of sound and focuses on making more food.
“Are these some sort of baked honeycombs?” I ask.
She frowns over her shoulder and studies me. “They’re waffles. You’ve never seen waffles?”
I shake my head.
“Grab that dish there, that’s melted butter. Yep, that one. Pour that on your stack. Now take the berries. Syrup is in the jug to your left, and that’s the real maple kind from Earth so enjoy it like it’s precious because it is.”
“Thank you for sharing,” I tell her, touched.
She shrugs both shoulders, pressing her lips together before turning back to the stove. It seems to be a way to express that she’s not entirely comfortable.
I decide to try eating in the hopes that I’ll wake enough to more accurately read her.
The waffles are delicious. “If these are poisoned,” I groan, “it will have been worth it.”
Stella laughs. It’s short but her tiny burst of happiness is genuine—and with this sound, my abilities have powered up and I’m able to see right inside of her head.
When she sits down across from me, she finishes her first stack without looking at me once.
I don’t know what to say to her. I clear my throat and watch her tense—from her brain’s activity all the way to her arrested hands on her fork and knife.
“Thank you again for this,” I tell her. “Is it all right if we discuss business at the table?”
She relaxes, and her lips part as she inhales. Her eyes never rise to meet mine. “That’d be great. Go ahead.”
“Tell me what you want to do, operations-wise. I’d like to focus wherever you’d prefer. Did you want to try a cattle drive before the fall markets close?”
She chews her next bite quicker than her last and forces her mouthful down her throat with a swallow of milk. “Yes,” she replies, with a strip of white foam above her lip.
Distracted by it, I reach across the table almost without thinking—and brush it away with my thumb.
Stella goes very still, the glass clutched in her hand, her fork in the other. “Thank you,” she says.
I nod, and ruefully I glance down between the edge of the table and my lap. I’m still naked, and now I’m hard again.
“What?” Stella asks.
“I’m certain you don’t want to know.”
Her eyes bug. “Again? Seriously?”
“I can assure you this organ is very serious.”
Stella sets down her milk and her utensil and starts to push away from the table.
“No,” I tell her. “Finish your food. I’ll have to learn to control this.”
“Have you… not had to control it before?” she asks carefully, finally looking at me more naturally—as in, not avoiding looking at me. She’s eyeing me like I’m an alien or a cyborg (or both, imagine that, ha) as she goes back to cutting up her syrup-covered meal.
“I have not. I’ve never been interested in copulation before.”
Stella chokes on her bite of waffle a little, but recovers. “Ever?”
I shake my head in the negative, watching her mouth, struggling to keep my focus off of her chest. I never noticed the way her breasts swayed before. She’s always kept them bound around me before this, but they are free behind her nightdress now and it’s distracting.
Stella manages two more bites like it’s uncomfortable for her, and then she stands from the table. “That’s it. Let’s do this and then it’s time for you to get out of the house.”
“But, you said it’s the middle of the night--”
“If you’re still awake after this, then you’ve got more than enough energy to find something productive to do somewhere else.” She walks into the bedroom and I think I should tell her that it’s fine, but then she puts a knee up on the bed and crawls to the middle of it.
I’m on top of her before she can raise her dress.
I kiss the back of her neck, not caring that her hair is in the way. I’m using my nose to shove strands aside, my hands full of one of her breasts and one of the cheeks of her posterior.
Seeing inside her mind, I’m relieved that she doesn’t appear low in mood—she’s more surprised than anything. And one of her sections is heating up the harder I nuzzle at her nape.
So I continue to lick her neck until I’m driven to nip it. I stop when she cries out, managing to mutter, “Sorry,” before sitting up.
Body slow with seeming reluctance, Stella twists in my grip as much as she’s able, one eye meeting mine. “It’s fine. It felt… good.”
Inside of her head, I see that her pleasure center is shimmering.
“Oh! Well, then…”
I go back to licking and nipping her.
“Suck on the skin,” she directs, her breaths shallow and fast.
I do as she says, dazed when her brain’s reaction intensifies even more. Delightful; she’s absolutely delightful. “Stella,” I groan, humping at her affectionately as I move to lave my tongue over her shoulder.
She stiffens a little, and sadness creeps into her brain.
My voice, not Baron’s, I realize. Without her needing to ask, I begin to manipulate her brain’s centers.
I enter her greedily, gripping her hips and riding her like she’s here to teach me bronc busting. But soon the tempo of my body inside of
hers slows, because I find myself addicted to rolling my hips in a way that makes Stella moan.
When she first makes the sound, I stop moving, watching her mind’s activity for pain.
But it’s pleasure she’s feeling.
I repeat the motion, again and again, until it’s both of us moaning and our vocalizations mingle.
Later, after I hold her until her brainwaves settle, after I rise off of her and cover her with the blanket, I move to my pile of clothes in front of the closet, getting dressed in them even though they scent a little ripely of the day before.
“You can wear Baron’s,” Stella says, her voice strained. “You’re… only a little bigger.”
She sounds so sad.
I glance at her, concerned. “No, that’s all right. I’ll go back to my house today to get my things if you don’t mind me moving some here.”
“That’s fine.”
And with that, I retrieve my pistol from high up in the closet. I take hers down too; I stored them together. I turn and cross to the bed, watching her watch me as I approach her. “I’m going to give this to you now.”
“Afraid I’ll retaliate?”
“A little,” I admit.
She doesn’t verbally reassure me. But one corner of her mouth quirks—and my heart experiences the oddest, tightest constriction.
“Stella?” I whisper, staring into her eyes as I hand over the pistol I gave to her late husband, my best friend. My best friend who, I’m starting to see for myself, had every reason to care as deeply as he did for this woman. “I think I could fall in love with you.”
CHAPTER 6
STELLA
I didn’t know what to say to C’vest’s statement.
He probably reads the cocktail of stunned guilt that hits me along with that early loop of new-relationship flutters.
And boy does it feel wrong that I have any flutters at all. But what’s an appropriate length of time for me to accept them? They’re bound to happen, despite the sheer speed with which my life has fallen apart and C’vest tore into it.
