by C. V. Walter
"I-" she said and let her breath out in a gasp as he continued his slow, gently torture of her nipples. "Please don't make me wait. Not every time. Our time together is short enough as it is, if you leave me craving more of you, I couldn't stand it."
"You have to sleep sometimes," he chuckled. "Do I not satisfy you before you drift off? Should I make you cum more before I let you rest?"
Her response was a low moan that seemed to satisfy him. He pulled her up and met her mouth with his, entwining their tongues as her fingers went up the back of his head to bury in his hair. He pushed the shirt off of her and she could feel the one he was still wearing against her naked back, her hair brushing against her skin just above her hips. It was unbearably erotic and she wanted to turn so she could straddle him.
When she went to move, he held her in place and trailed his hand down her skin to her hip, where his finger ran between the fabric of her pajama bottoms and her heated skin. She bit gently at his lip and he chuckled. "Patience, ahura," he told her. "I want to savor you tonight. You'll get every need fulfilled, I promise."
"But I need you," she whined. "I need you so much, I'm burning inside."
"Are you?" he asked, nipping at her lip just before sending his hand inside her pajama bottoms, his fingers gently caressing the soft skin of her belly and thighs.
"Yes," she gasped.
"Do you want me to touch you, then? Touch you there? Would that help?" His finger slipped between her thighs and brushed over the top of her mound.
"Please," she begged. "I need you."
His fingers brushed across her pussy lips and her fingers dug into his shoulders. One finger slipped between them and she shook, her teeth biting her bottom lip.
"Oh, you like that. You're so slick and wet, you can't wait for me to make you feel good, can you?" He can his finger across her clit and she whimpered. Drawing lazy circles around the aroused bud, he held her still when she started to squirm against his hand. The first spasms of orgasm started and he moved his fingers away, sliding them down to slip inside her and feel her start to clamp around them.
"Mintonar, please, no more. Let me cum or let me ride you so we both cum but I need this."
"Kiss me," he demanded and she turned her face to his. He took her lips and plunged two fingers inside her, curling just inside and rubbing while he kissed her. Her screams of pleasure were captured by his mouth and he held her close while she shattered in his arms.
When her spasms started slowing, he pulled his fingers out and stroked her hip, calming her over-wrought nerves while he nipped and sucked at her lips and tongue. Her arms curled around his neck, and she turned into him, pressing her breasts against his chest while her hip rubbed against the evidence he was enjoying himself.
She was making herself more comfortable in his arms, surrendering control of the rest of the evening to him, when the screen on the table lit up and flickered on. Mintonar looked up and was leaning forward to turn it off when a voice rang out just before a face popped up.
"Mom?"
Molly turned to look at the screen and gaped. "Aidan!"
"Oh, god, Mom, clothes! What are you doing? No, don't answer that. Shirt, please."
Pushing his arm away, Molly slid off Mintonar's lap to land hard on the floor, where she looked around frantically for her shirt. His foot was on it and she pushed against his leg to get him to move it only to have him stiffen and put it down harder.
She looked up to see him sitting with his arms folded across his chest and a scowl on his face.
"Mintonar," she hissed.
"Who are you?" Aidan demanded. "And why was my mother shirtless on your lap."
"I am Mintonar Ahvila, eldest son of House Tarro, Ships Doctor of the Forward Hope. I assume you are Aidan, son of Maw-lee?"
"Aidan Summers," her son said with a frown. "What are you doing with my mother?"
"Mintonar," Molly hissed. "Let me have my shirt."
He frowned down at her and she glared at him.
"It should be quite obvious I was embracing my wife," Mintonar said. "How did you interrupt?"
"Your what?" Molly shrieked.
"Since when?" Aidan demanded. "No, wait, scratch that. How? What? Why? What the fuck?"
"Mintonar, I swear by all that's holy, if you do not give me back my shirt, I will remove the foot that's standing on it so help me. And what the fuck do you mean by calling me your wife?"
"It's a poor translation," he told her, moving his foot with the shirt on it away from her. "But the closest thing that's accurate in your language."
"Mom, what happened?" Aidan asked. "The reports say that an asteroid hit the space station and you were in the section it hit. You're still officially missing but I think that's just so they can try and recover parts of your suit. Were you attacked? What the fuck happened?"
As he talked, anger and panic forced his words faster until he sounded like they were all one word. Molly glared at Mintonar then directed her voice to the screen.
"I'm fine, Aidan. Or, at least, I am now. The collision with the space station was an accident, I think, though nobody's actually said anything about it and I've been a little busy to pry."
"Yeah, I can see how you were busy. This why you couldn't call me back, too? You were busy?"
"Don't be like that, monkey. I couldn't even get to your voicemail until a little bit ago. I wasn't even sure I could call you back but I was trying to find a way to contact you."
Hurt flashed in Mintonar's eyes and if she hadn't been watching his face, she never would have seen it. "That is why you wanted to keep the helmet," he said, his voice angry.
"So I could listen to my voicemail, yes, like I told you. And you agreed, so don't give me that. Monkey, I'm going to go get a shirt so I can see you. I will be right back."
"Yeah, well, don't take too long. I'm not entirely certain how much time I've got on this line. I activated some satellites that aren't supposed to still be out there to get this call through and if I get a ping on my tracking software, I'm going to have to ditch it."
"Dammit, Aidan, what did I tell you about getting arrested."
"Don't do it," he said. "And the longer you take to get dressed, the more likely I'm going to so hurry the fuck up."
Chapter 28
Mintonar watched Maw-lee crawl to the side then stand up to run to the bedroom. He wouldn't apologize for keeping her from putting on her shirt. He also wasn't going to stand up and chase after her.
"How did you manage to create this connection," he asked. His irritation at being interrupted was tempered by his curiosity at something Alvola had assured him would take weeks to accomplish. They simply didn't have the time to figure it out.
"It wasn't hard," Aidan said with a sneer. "Why did you abduct my mother and why doesn't she think she's your wife? Seems like that's something she should know about."
"I did not abduct your mother, I saved her from the effects of being hurled into space in a suit that was not designed for vacuum," Mintonar said. "What happened after that was as much by her will as by mine. And if it wasn't difficult to accomplish, you can explain it to me."
"Why should I?" Aidan demanded. "Your security sucks and if I can make this call and you all can't figure out how I did it, you suck, too."
"Part of why your mother hasn't been able to contact you was we could not figure out how to get our communications array to interface with the multiple varieties on your planet without destroying them or letting or presence be known," he explained.
"Sure, you're telling me you came all this way without some way of talking to the people on the planet you're going to raid for resources?" Aidan looked thoughtful. "I mean, unless you were planning on just destroying everything capable of launching an attack and then taking what you wanted, but that would be awfully destructive of you and, uh, looks like you don't really have that capability. I mean, with the compliment I'm seeing, you could definitely hurt us but once you're out of missiles, you'd have to get close enough to us
e the energy weapons and, yeah, the range on that would put you close enough to get pretty hurt by what we've got. Unless you've got an armada coming behind you, which I doubt, we'd destroy you through fire power and starvation while we rebuilt."
Mintonar was taken aback. The ship was equipped to defend itself but it wasn't a planet destroyer. In fact, the last planet destroyer his planet had built had been launched several millennia earlier, by the same people who had built the bridges they used to cross the galaxy. They weren't even sure who had built it, just that it had gone to prepare a way for their people to grow and flourish.
"We are not here to wage war on your planet," Mintonar said.
"Great, then why did you attack the space station and abduct my mother?"
"I'd like to know that, too," Molly said from behind him.
"We did not attack the space station," Mintonar told them, turning to look at Maw-lee. "It was an accident. There wasn't supposed to be anything there."
"Then how did you get there without us seeing you coming?"
The screen flickered and Aidan's question was broken up. "Mom, range, call."
Maw-lee ran to the screen and tried to pull his picture back up. "What happened? How can I get him back?"
"Since I can't tell you how he did it in the first place, I have no idea how to get him back," Mintonar said.
She turned on him, eyes flashing. "And you. I want an explanation right fucking now. What happened and where do you get off calling me your wife?"
"Because you are, technically. Though, it's a poor translation, it's the closest description that would fit culturally." He reached out to pull her back into his embrace and she slapped at his hands. Though the tingle of recognition swept through him, he bit back his response and understood the rebuke.
"Wife," she ground out. "Typically implies some kind of consent on the part of the woman, some kind of acknowledgement of the arrangement, and the legal implications of it."
"An ajoia is someone who is bound by recognition, desire and a legal authority. In this case the captain, the legal authority, acknowledged our bond of recognition and asked if you desired to be with me. When you answered in the affirmative, he sealed the bond and made it legal."
Her mouth fell open. "When he-" she swallowed and tried again. "I thought he was asking if I wanted to stay with you here rather than being assigned my own rooms. I didn't realize it was a marriage ceremony!"
"It wasn't," he said. "Not by what you mean by it. There is a lot of tradition around a Joining, and a lot of carefully danced negotiations between families, but the actual act itself is far simpler and can take place months or even years before or after all the formalities."
She leaned against the table, her face covered with shock and despair. "And since there's no families here for all the formalities, the only thing left was the informal seal of approval, right?"
"I did not think you would object," he said. "And the captain learned how to ask you the question in your language so you could understand him and answer accordingly. You agreed and he gave his blessing along with his acknowledgement."
Maw-lee closed her eyes and sank into herself. "I did, didn't I? You're never going to let me go home now, are you?"
"Do you dislike it here so much? It's different, to be sure, but is my home and company so objectionable to you that you would mourn staying with me?"
"I-" she started and a tear slid down her cheek. "I need to sit down for a moment." She pushed herself off the table and walked to the chair he'd found her in the first night he'd returned.
Mintonar followed her and knelt next to the chair. "Maw-lee," he said gently. "I did not-"
"Stop," she said. "Just stop. Whatever you're going to say, even if it's the truth, is just going to make me mad. Mostly at you, to be honest, because I'm already mad at myself."
"Why?" he asked. "You did nothing wrong."
She gave a rueful laugh. "Doing nothing wrong does not end up with me stuck on a space ship married to an alien. Somewhere along the line, I made a decision that got me here and is going to keep me from my son."
"Maw-lee-" Mintonar started.
"Jokes on you though," she said with an angry laugh. Because I can't have more kids and you guys seem to be all about maximizing your chances of reproduction. Probably because it's harder for you to do."
"What do you mean you can't have any more kids? You had one and you should still be-"
"I got fixed," she said with a twist to her lips. "To keep me from being broken again."
"I don't understand," he said. "How were you broken? What do you mean by fixed? And why does that mean you can't have any more children?"
She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. When she answered him, she wasn't looking at him but some middle distance that only she could see. "I don't know if you guys have the concept of pets but they're basically companion animals that we take care of. One of the ways we do so is, if we don't want them reproducing because it's dangerous or just too much work or money or there's too many of them around, we take them to someone to adjust their reproductive parts so they can't do it anymore. We call it getting them fixed."
With a deep breath, she continued. "When I got pregnant with my son, I was just finishing up high school. My mom was super controlling so I wasn't really allowed to date but Mark and I had known each other since we were children. Our families had known each other forever and he was considered an acceptable match. I was just itching to get out from under my mother's control and Mark, well, he was sweet and cared about me and was willing to help me rebel. Because being with me was rebelling against his family, he said. So, we fooled around like idiots and I got pregnant. I thought my mom was going to kill me. She had plans, you see, I was going to go to college and become a lawyer and join my grandfather's law firm like she and my dad had."
"Mark saved me. He proposed and his family said they were so happy there was a baby on the way, they would be happy to make sure we could still go to college. I thought they might help pay for childcare, maybe some rent, and they did in a way. They had the wedding in the orchard on the estate and set us up in the guest house. There was a nursery in the main house because that's where Aidan would be while we were at school. It was all so wonderful and happy families and then my key to the main house stopped working. They'd changed the locks and 'forgotten' to give me a key. New security systems were put in place around the grounds that couldn't be turned off after a certain time. The only time I could be gone without being locked out was while I was in class."
"I finished my degrees in record time and started working at my grandfather's law firm. It was the easy path, mostly, and I took all the stupid, boring, awful scut work because it's what was expected of the junior lawyers. And when the other juniors added their stuff to my workload, I couldn't complain because I didn't want anybody to think I was getting ahead because I was the boss’s daughter and granddaughter. Turns out my mom had told them to give it all to me because she wanted me to work off the debt I owed them for being raised in so much luxury."
"So, I'd work, and come home and try and beg for time with my son. My husband said I was upset for no reason because he had no problem spending time with him and if I just tried a little harder, I might actually be a decent mother. Not as decent as his aunt and his grandmother, of course, but someone worth being around. Not like his mom who'd left when he was a teenager and never called or tried to talk to him.
Maw-lee shivered as the tears flowed down her cheeks. "When Aidan was about five, and I had just passed the bar, they started asking me when we were planning on having more kids. Mark and I hadn't slept together in a couple years at that point and the thought of having more children made me actively ill. It's not that I didn't want more kids, I would have liked to have a little girl, but I could count on one hand the number of times I'd been allowed to take care of Aidan. The thought of having another little piece of my heart running around where I couldn't hold it and love it and care for it
hurt more than anything else. They kept up the pressure over the years, up to encouraging me to sleep with one of the staff if my husband wasn't actually interested in me anymore because I'd gotten old and unattractive, and I eventually stopped feeling like a person."
"Every now and then, I'd think we could actually be a family if we moved out on our own. And I would save everything I could just to come home and find that Mark had spent it all. Because he was comfortable there. He had everything he could ever want, no responsibilities, and the adoration of his family because he had created another generation.
"When Aidan was twelve, I went and got a tubal ligation. That's where they seal the fallopian tubes in some way so an egg that's released won't make it to the womb where it could be fertilized. The doctors wouldn't do it earlier than that and I understand why. They didn't want to take away a woman's ability to bear children when she was in her safest, most fertile years."
"A year later, I quit my job and filed for a divorce. I went back to school to learn how to make things with my hands and I loved it. By the time the divorce was over, I had five dollars to my name, and a handful of friends who would let me sleep on their couches because I couldn't make the rent and pay everything it took to get me away from that prison. And I got an offer to work on the space station and court-ordered time with my son where I could hold him and love him and try and make up for being a coward for most of his life."
"And now," she said with a bitter laugh. "They're trying to do the same thing to him as they did to my ex and I'm here. The only part of me you're truly interested in was broken on purpose and I promised to stay with you. Not that I could leave if I wanted to. I should probably learn a skill so I can be useful once you're no longer interested in exotic exercise. Maybe you can think of me as a very needy pet."
She put her forehead against her knees and her shoulders shook with her sobs.
Chapter 29
