by Cecilia Tan
Illan moaned, his tangled hold in Xon’s hair tightening till it sent prickles of pain down Xon’s scalp, and Xon smiled. Now he didn’t even need words. The touch of Illan’s hand alone told him everything. He tugged Illan’s leg higher up on his hip, deepening the next thrust, and satisfaction washed over him as Illan gritted out a low, hungry moan.
Xon’s focus narrowed. The clamor of thoughts from those on the streets below dimmed; fear and uncertainty dissipated. His thrusts were deep and steady, reliably coaxing sharp, overwhelmed cries from Illan’s mouth, and when he reached for Illan’s cock, filled his hand with the thick shaft that jerked at his touch, the circuit closed, the stimulation too intense, and Xon managed barely a single stroke of Illan’s cock before orgasm slammed through him faster than any static and twice as encompassing, every nerve in his body singing, every muscle taut, every drop of blood pulsing, and his brain blissfully, blissfully silent.
Xon opened his eyes. The port above Illan’s left pec remained cool against Xon’s sweaty, flushed skin; he shifted lightly to free his hand from around Illan’s cock and found his fingers streaked with semen. He raised his head to look at Illan’s face, and Illan smiled, still panting for breath. He looks so beautiful like this.
Illan stroked back Xon’s damp hair, and Xon closed his eyes again, savoring the touch, its nuance, its ease. “Thank you,” he murmured, and frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
Illan’s words doubled, echoes of themselves, and Xon stiffened.
“Xon?”
“Don’t—”
“Xon, what’s going on?” Fear. Panic.
Xon slapped his hand over Illan’s mouth, frantic. Oh shit, he’s going to fucking kill me, and that was far worse than the doubling; Xon let go immediately. “Don’t say anything.”
Illan held perfectly still, perfectly silent, staring up into Xon’s eyes in the dark. What the fuck just happened? Anxiety, terror, no longer far-off smudges of emotion but inescapable waves drowning Xon in their intensity; he could perceive nothing beyond Illan’s emotions wrapped tightly around him, suffocatingly close. Xon shook his head, hard. “My static is wearing off.”
Static? What the fuck?
“Stop,” Xon pleaded, pushing himself off Illan, staggering uncertainly to his feet.
Stop what? What the hell?
Xon shook his head again, fumbling for the syringes in the dark. “Shit,” he hissed, palming the wall control. Bright, harsh light flooded the room, and after a moment of blinking he grabbed up the larger syringe, sitting down on the floor to steady himself.
Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Don’t say anything. He told you not to say anything. Oh, fuck.
Xon closed his eyes as he depressed the plunger. The static chased away the panic, the pain, the lingering pleasure of the orgasm, too, and Xon gritted his teeth as he felt it leave him, rushing out like blood from a wound. “You have to leave,” he told Illan, opening his eyes.
I have to ask, I have to uphold the integrity of the experiment, was he on static the whole time? “Were you on static the whole time?”
Xon’s breath left him. “What experiment?”
Oh shit oh shit how the hell can he Tagen’s going to shit this must be killing him he was never supposed to know about what will Tagen fuck fuck I don’t know how to
“Leave now,” Xon demanded, yelling to be heard above the clamor of Illan’s thoughts. He pushed against the wall to get to his feet, sweeping one hand toward the lift hard. “Now!”
Illan reached for his clothes. Sorry sorry so sorry it was never supposed to Tagen wanted but I never sorry sorry it wasn’t supposed to I got here and things were different sorry all I ever wanted Tagen just meant to I missed him so much I didn’t think this wasn’t supposed to happen sorry sorry “I’m sorry.”
“Out.” Xon leaned against the wall, struggling to retain consciousness, dimly aware of the lift’s doors grinding open, then shut. Soon. It would be over soon.
So sorry sorry was sure it would work Tagen looked over the reports I wanted it to yes it was an experiment but how could he read it stopped being an experiment I wanted him so much Tagen’s going to when I was there I changed my how the hell did he
but I can’t
Tagen’s going to
sorry
I wanted to be what would work for Xon so bad.
With a shudder, the lift reached the lobby. Illan’s thoughts faded into the background, just another mumbling mind on the streets.
Xon dragged his chemist’s box close on the floor once more, prying a sedative from the foam. The jab of the needle was the least of the pain. He watched himself slowly depress the plunger, the drug racing through his system so quickly that he had already achieved a certain lethargic detachment by the time he withdrew the needle from his vein.
Struggling to his feet, he brushed too-thick fingers across the face of his metronome, setting it to a slow, reliable rhythm. The bed still held Illan’s scent. Xon closed his eyes, burying his face in the soft, sweat-stained fabric, and waited for the ache in his chest to subside. In the morning, there would be pain. Now, as sleep took him, there was only the void.
Caretaker by Fauna Sara
Her parents had sold her to the monastery for the reason that all Praience villagers sold their girls—prestige. To be a peasant and say you had a daughter who was a Caretaker was the only way to raise yourself above the rest of the mud-grubbers. Devani remembered them as shouting mouths, tugs at her hair and clothing, a rough hand that gripped her small one as they waited for the monks to come. That had been eleven years ago. Since then, they had never bothered to visit or even send her gifts at Ascension Day as some girls’ parents did. At eighteen, Devani finally acknowledged that she was an orphan.
She had heard the whispers about Him since she could remember. She had never seen Him herself; until now, Devani had been only an apprentice to the Caretakers, those who actually had contact with Him. With others of her cohort, Devani worked the monastery fields, carried the water, arranged His food on golden dishes—He loved lavender best—and cleaned His dwelling place. Her Caretaker status, which would come at her majority, was determined by Him. If He rejected her, then she would return to her parents in disgrace, and her family would have to pay back with interest all that the monastery had spent on room, board, education, and security. The eunuchs who guarded her maidenhead at all times charged an expensive fee.
She had seen a few bruises on the Caretakers who worked with Him. She had seen one girl walk into their sleeping quarters, collapse on her pallet, sobbing, “He favored me.” She had seen how the other girls had crowded around her, sympathetic and envious, holding her, kissing her. The “favored one” had disappeared that night. Devani had been afraid then. She had hung back in the crowds of girls begging to care for Him. She had been content to scrub His serving dishes and work the land in silence.
Despite the fearsome rumors, He was eminently necessary. Where he walked in the fields, wheat and corn sprang from the ground. Where he laid in the forest, rare medicinal herbs grew from his bed. He could make water spring forth from the very stones, change poison to milk. Before He had come 100 years ago, Praience and the surrounding county had been little more than a village of goatherders making their living off scrub and thorn. Now, there was the rich monastery, green fields, the broad river curving beneath swaying willows.
Today was His bathing day, an easy day, so the gossip went, to introduce new potential Caretakers to Him. And though she had tried to remain unseen, one of the monks had caught her eye and said, “You will attend Him today.” Devani dressed in the white shift that was left for her, wound up her dark hair and pinned it securely at the back of her head. She slid her feet into her thin sandals, joining the others as the eunuchs escorted them to His bathing chamber.
She had never been here before, but she knew the room even before the eunuchs escorted the five girls down the hallway. His presence flowed like water through the corridor, lapping over her, almost sensing her. She sh
ivered, feeling her nipples rise despite the warmth of the day. When Devani entered last, she could see that two girls were already with Him, but they were shadows next to his soft radiance. His eyes were half-closed, but when Devani’s cohort entered, he turned his head and looked.
Devani was not directly in the line of that stare, but she felt the other girls alternately stiffen or shiver as he gazed at them. One girl fell to her knees, weeping, and was quietly led away. He swept his head regally away, and Devani felt sadness at having been ignored so easily. Her eyes followed the long, deadly horn that ascended from his brow. This was the only darkness on his body, a spiral coil with no color that she could track. One moment it seemed forged of glittering obsidian, the next the fluted browns of a snail shell, and yet again, the twisted ivory of bone. Something about such fatality, such holiness, made her avert her eyes.
The two Caretakers who were with him had unbound his mane and tail and were combing them through with expert gentleness. The others assembled the buckets of scented water, the sponges and brushes required to make His coat shine. Devani did not know what to do, so she moved a little closer to see how the work was done. It was then that she smelled Him—a rich, ripe musk that nearly overpowered her. She tried to steady herself against the feeling that washed over her: a longing for a land she could scarcely imagine, so bright and pure were its colors and contours. She understood without knowing how that He was an exile, that he longed for that place where he could no longer go. She understood now why the girl had fallen to her knees, crying. His scent made you want to weep for every sin you had ever committed, every lie you had told, every little bit of bread you might have stolen. For these were the things that kept him forever trammeled in this state of yearning.
The sense-wave washed over her, like the feeling of his presence, and then departed. The other girls had begun dipping their sponges in the buckets, spreading the water over his luminous skin. The lavender and chamomile masked his scent, making it easier again to breathe, to see, to feel the hard stone beneath her sandals.
“Do not be undone by his sadness,” one of the Caretakers said. “Laugh, play, disport yourselves. He enjoys merriment.”
The eunuchs went to stand outside the door. The girls felt freer then, squeezing sponges of water both over His shoulders and one another. Their shifts soon stuck to them, and Devani could see pink or brown nipples rising like fingertips against the fabric, the columnar outline of thighs and the darkness between. Devani watched Him carefully. He gazed at the girls through half-lidded eyes, unnerving blue slits of sentience. She could also see, as she bent to sponge his flank, that he found this more than amusing. His penis unwound with the slow determination of a serpent. He reached toward the nearest girl and plucked her shift from her shoulder with a deftness that surprised Devani. His velvet lips closed around the girl’s nipple, and she gave a little start.
“Do not move,” one of the Caretakers said. The girl stood quietly, closing her eyes, trapped between fear and pleasure.
And then Devani realized His eyes were on her. No longer ignored, she felt that gaze beat straight through her young brain, beyond her belly, and into the seldom-explored valley between her legs. She blushed. Feeding that longing for an unimaginable land was a current so powerful, so explosive that she felt its sensations shake her from the inside out. She could only describe it as lust. The lust of His kind was insatiable, untrackable, as foreign and lovely as that strange place He craved. And now that He had touched her, however incompletely, He demanded His due.
“You must clean His sheath,” the Caretaker combing his tail said. “He wishes you to do it.”
“I know,” whispered Devani, unable to break free of His gaze as He explored the other girl’s skin with His lips. She dipped her hand in the bucket, cupping warm water in her palm. Leaning against His flank, she reached between His legs, grasping the shaft that was now extended to its full majesty and showering the giant mushroom head with water. Tentatively, she encircled it with her hand; it was almost too large for her fingers to close around. He tossed His head, whickering and dancing until she found it difficult to maintain her balance.
“Faster,” the Caretaker whispered.
Devani slid her hand up and down the phallus, her wrist feeling like it might break against the strain. She put her face against His flank, breathing in the wild scent of that lost land beneath the lavender. She put her other arm over His back to steady herself and dug her hand into His muscles, trying to ignore the growing throb between her thighs.
Everything seemed to cease but His plunging and snorting, His occasional squeals of pleasure as her hand moved lightning quick and hard. When at last He released, He plunged forward, dragging Devani with Him. She fell to the pavement beneath Him, and His hot liquid bathed her in showers of pearly light. Where it drenched the stones, fragrant white flowers sprang up around her. Dizzy under the wave of Him, the last thing she saw was the dark horn twisting upwards in a spiral of light.
She woke perhaps a day later to the concerned face of a younger girl bending over her.
“Caretaker, are you well?” the girl asked.
Caretaker? Devani sat upright. Too fast apparently. She clutched her aching, spinning head in her hands. She felt like she sometimes did the morning after Ascension Day, when the monks allowed the girls to imbibe the last year’s wine.
“I am well,” she said. She looked down at herself, expecting to see her body drowned again in pearlescence. She was clean and dressed in dry clothes, but she still felt as though she wanted washing. And perhaps, more. “I need to bathe,” she said. The girl looked as though she wanted to ask more, but she nodded and left.
Though it wasn’t cold, Devani threw a cloak around her shoulders and hurried out of the Caretakers’ chambers before anyone else could learn that she was awake. She needed solitude. She went to the river barefoot, following the trail to a green, secluded pool she had discovered some years ago when she had tired of threshing wheat in the fields. She had never seen anyone else here, so it had become her place for quiet reflection, as well as a place to tentatively explore herself when the hunger struck her.
That, she knew, was one of the main reasons her parents had felt she was prime candidate for the temple. She remembered seeing a man and a woman together in a grove of trees while she had been out gathering berries for her mother. The woman was half-naked, her skirt untied at the waist and rumpled beneath her in the grass. The man had his hand between her legs, moving his fingers under the fur there. The woman’s reaction had been so surprising, so interesting to Devani that she had longed to try the finger trick for herself. Her mother had caught her later that afternoon with her small hand between her legs, enjoying the surprising wetness there. She had given her a severe spanking, and a few days later, had sent her to the monastery. She had only touched herself rarely since then, and only here. She knew that other girls in the monastery often crept into one another’s cots at night, smothering their sighs and giggles together beneath the blankets. But she had also heard the monks say sternly that He would know if such transgressions were committed, and would dismiss or punish the sinners. She could not afford the chance of that.
She spread her cloak on her favorite boulder, and sat listening and watching for a long time in the afternoon light. When she was certain no one was nearby, she untied her skirt and shimmied out of her blouse, arranging them near the cloak. Then with a firm push of toes and heels, she dove into the water. She swam and floated for a long while, staring at the trees leaning above her, the sun making shadows in their leaves. Her breasts rose out of the water like warm, brown hills, and she thought again of His lips on the girl’s nipple, the exquisite expression on her face. Devani circled her nipples in succession with one hand, making them as hard as the girl’s had been. Then she submerged one more time before hauling herself out on the rock.
The sun was warm on her cloak, and she laid back on it, fitting herself into the hard grooves of the boulder beneath. A light b
reeze blew across her like tiny hands, drying the river from her body. She opened her legs to feel the light caress, and when she could bear its teasing no more, let her fingers creep towards her warming clit. She caught herself thinking again of His incredible phallus, the smooth, reptilian skin sliding back and forth through her fist. She worked herself softly and slowly, trying to imagine how a female of his race might take all of that into her, how her sex would be a great, red cavern, how he would mount her, plunging like a wave into shore, spilling the great wave of himself within her.... She imagined them together like that, wild, white lightning, a whirlwind of squealing pleasure and pain. She felt His terrible loneliness, how His Caretakers could only be poor substitutes, little solace for His tremendous need. How gracious He was to remain in exile and give of His bounty. How holy that He would take His pleasure only so lightly, suffering such inexpert touches and incomplete bodies. She thought of His lips on the other girl’s flesh again, this time moving beneath the waist of her shift. Her fingers reaching and speeding on her hardening button, she imagined His lips on her, the long tongue reaching into infinite spaces her fingers could not find.
She was nearly to her climax, the tip of her finger circling, her hips lifting, when she felt the breeze grow harder, almost like a breath exhaled onto her throbbing labia. And then she felt something long and pliable slip into her. She opened her eyes, and lifted her head. He was watching her from between her legs, His head perfectly framed between her uplifted knees. His tongue, delicate and probing as a butterfly’s, pressed against her slippery fingers. She snatched her hand from her clit and scooted back, folding her legs under her, grabbing the wet cloak and trying to cover herself.
He just laid there on folded legs, watching. He was the size of a dog, the horn small and unthreatening. She had not known he could change size and shape so easily. But she found something menacing in His supplication. She shuddered, remembering how his favored ones had all disappeared, remembering that the monks had said He would punish the sin of self-pleasure.
