by Rosette Lex
Vivienne turned her attention back to the sulking crawler, though Bai immediately stopped sulking the moment Vivienne began petting him again.
“This is not how I pictured my day going,” she informed him. “Even with all the ‘held hostage on an alien planet’ nonsense.”
Bai crooned at her sympathetically.
Chapter Eight
Vivienne never actually expected to find her pod. She looked for it, now and then, while she wandered Fort Mallimae, but she looked for it in the idle, listless way of one who didn’t actually expect to find it. Like children growing bored with leprechaun hunts as they grew older, each subsequent hunt for the pod had less energy.
So it came as a surprise when she found it. She hadn’t even been looking for it at that point.
It was blind curiosity that led her to shadow a maintenance worker through the halls. It was dumb luck that the worker didn’t see her when she snuck into the storage room behind him. It was a miracle that he didn’t notice her on his way out of the storage room, leaving her to explore it as she pleased, unobserved.
The pod was partially dismantled, with all of the grace of a twelve-year-old dismantling a microwave, but it was reparable. More importantly, being in pieces meant that it was entirely offline, rather than in sleep mode, which possibly meant that Vivienne could wake it back up. Stealing a serviceable space suit would be easy compared to smuggling the pod into a hiding spot where she would be able to work on fixing it.
The possibility of escaping was right in front of her, and yet she found herself feeling conflicted.
She backed away from the pod and sat down cross-legged on the floor, her hands resting in her lap and her gaze locked on the pod.
It would take work and a near psychotic amount of luck, but the means to go home was in front of her.
But did she really want to?
She knew what sort of organization she had been working for. If she just crashed back down on Earth after they had clearly and purposefully abandoned her, they weren’t going to just let her go about her business and live a quiet life.
They would never leave her alone. They would never let her live peacefully. They would make her life miserable in a trillion tiny ways until she agreed to just let them do whatever they wanted with her.
Que, as much of an asshole as he could be, was at least straightforward. And as things were going, he didn’t seem to want to make life unpleasant for her. Not anymore, at least. And it was that thought that left Vivienne feeling so conflicted.
She pushed herself back up to her feet and tore her gaze away from the pod. She needed to think. Or at least, she needed to distract herself. She bolted out of the storage room, and she composed herself as best she could so that when she found someone else, she didn’t look freaked out when she asked, “Where’s Que?”
He gave her a baffled look, and Vivienne had to refrain from slapping herself. Right, of course. Most of them were still strangers to her. They didn’t know she called him that.
“Quenorhaymaiatnei,” she pronounced carefully. Good grief, why couldn’t he have a short name?
The man still seemed bemused, but he answered readily enough, “He’s finishing up on the shooting grounds. He should be back in his room in forty-five minutes or so.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “What are you doing back here?”
Rather than answer, Vivienne said, “Thanks!” and bolted down the hall.
By the time Que stepped into his room, Vivienne was sitting on the bed and staring at the door expectantly.
“About time,” she said flatly as he stepped into the room.
She didn’t even give him a chance to ask her what she was doing there before she was on her feet. She stepped up to him, pressing close, and with one hand behind his head, she pulled him down to her height and kissed him.
Que saw no need to argue with her.
For minutes they simply kissed, lips sliding against each other and hands exploring. It was almost entrancing, so Vivienne hardly realized she was unlacing Que’s shirt until she was pushing it off of his shoulders, or that he was sliding her shirt off in turn.
The kiss finally broke so Vivienne could pull her sports bra off, and Que set about pulling his shoes off.
He hooked two fingers in the waistband of Vivienne’s pants and tugged, and they slid down her thighs and fell to puddle around her feet. She stepped out of them and toed her shoes off, and Que divested himself of his own pants.
Suitably naked, Que picked her up around the waist and tossed her onto the bed. Laughing, Vivienne landed on her back, and she pushed herself up onto her elbows.
Balancing her weight on one arm, she lifted her other hand and beckoned him closer, making a ‘come hither’ gesture with one finger as she scooted herself farther onto the bed.
Que climbed onto the bed and straddled her, his knees framing her hips. He rested his weight against her thighs and stroked his hands up her sides to cup her breasts.
With different plans in mind, Vivienne wrapped her legs around his waist and using her weight and the element of surprise, she flipped their positions, rolling Que onto his back so she was instead straddling him.
He blinked up at her in surprise before he arched one eyebrow good-naturedly, one side of his mouth quirking up.
“Something in mind?” he wondered.
“Possibly,” Vivienne replied, her tone playfully evasive.
She lay out on top of him to kiss him again, slowly and leisurely. She broke the kiss with a nip to his lower lip and then she started to slide down his body, shimmying downwards until she was kneeling over his knees.
She eyed his half-hard cock for a moment—she had never done this before—and licked her lips.
“What are you doing?” he asked warily, leaning up on his elbows to look down at her.
“You’ll see,” she answered pleasantly, and with that she wrapped her hands around his hips to keep them from moving and leaned down to slide her mouth over his cock.
Just the tip, at first. She closed her lips around it and sucked, and with a stuttering gasp, Que’s elbows buckled and sent him right back down onto the mattress. His member grew harder as she suckled at the head, until he was standing at full mast and panting for breath, and finally Vivienne began to sink slowly downwards, her lips sliding down farther and farther until she took as much of his cock into her mouth as she could.
Que reached down to curl the fingers of one hand around the back of Vivienne’s head, pressing downwards insistently until she shot him a glare from beneath her lashes, and he settled for simply letting his hand rest against her hair.
Vivienne sucked slowly, pressing her tongue flat along the underside of his cock each time she dragged her mouth upwards again. Above her, Que was reduced to gasping and groaning, only managing the occasional unintelligible syllable.
Evidently, this was the first time someone had sucked Que off, and it was a bit of a confidence boost. After all, he had nothing to compare Vivienne to.
When he came, it was without warning. His breathing hitched upwards a notch and he came, leaving Vivienne swallowing quickly as his cum coated her tongue.
She drew back slowly, letting his softening cock slip from between her lips. She licked her lips again and swallowed a final time, before she crawled back up the bed to look down at his face.
“Well?” she teased.
Que blinked up at her. After a moment, he managed, “That was…different.”
Vivienne rolled her eyes.
“Good different, I assume. Going to pay me back?” she asked, settling down on her knees, resting her weight against him.
Que’s eyebrows rose, as if in a silent ‘do you even need to ask?’ Much as Vivienne had done before, he abruptly rolled them, so he was once more pinning Vivienne to the mattress.
She meant to say ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ but she had no time to before Que was kissing her, his tongue probing into her mouth.
One of his hands kneaded at
her chest, first one breast and then the other, as the other hand slowly trailed down her body. He curled his hand over her vulva for a moment, fingers teasing at the lips of her sex, before he dipped two fingers between them, pressing them into her.
As he began to thrust his fingers into her in earnest, he shifted the angle of his hand, and Vivienne gasped sharply and managed to get out, “There, yes, right there!”
With a crooked grin, Que held the angle of his hand to aim each thrust towards that spot, and with his thumb he began stroking her clit.
Vivienne gasped and moaned, thrashing and writhing on the bed. Her fingers curled into fists in the blankets and her hips rose and fell in small jerks of motion in time with each thrust of Que’s fingers.
Heat built in her belly, delicious and intense, and without even realizing it, “Yes, more, more,” was pouring past her lips.
Que shifted downwards on the bed and leaned down, replacing his thumb with his tongue. He lapped at her clit and thrust his fingers faster, every moan and gasp and broken syllable encouraging him onwards. It was obvious when Vivienne was nearing her climax, as her voice got breathier and louder.
He leaned his face away just in time as she came, his fingers continued to work her through her orgasm, until she was shivering with over stimulation and clenching her legs against his hand.
Que pulled his hand away at last and scrubbed it off on the blanket. He flopped down beside her, lying on his side with one arm folded, his head resting on it.
“What brought that on?” he asked.
“Not that I blame you, of course, since this is me we’re dealing with here, but I figure you have some sort of reason beyond that.”
Vivienne was quiet for a moment. She thought about telling him. She thought about saying ‘I found my pod in storage,’ though she knew that would most likely just end up with the pod being moved. That would certainly make her choice easier, though.
She couldn’t decide to leave if she had to track the pod down again. But she didn’t say that. Self-defeat had never been part of her playbook, and she wanted to at least come to a proper decision before she completely took one option off the table.
Instead, she shrugged as best she could while lying on her back.
“I felt an itch,” she answered playfully, “and I needed to scratch it.”
Que rolled his eyes. “Good to know I’m an acceptable sex toy,” he drawled in response.
Vivienne reached over to pat his arm sympathetically.
“Don’t worry,” she replied soothingly. “You’re more than just acceptable as a sex toy.” That got a snort of laughter in response.
She rolled onto her side to face him.
“You mind if I stay here tonight?” The words were out before she could even process that she was saying them.
Que blinked at her in surprise, struck silent for a moment. “Sure,” he eventually answered.
“Feel free.”
Both unfamiliar with sleeping with other people, it took them a couple minutes to get settled comfortably. Soon enough, though, Que was pressed to Vivienne’s back, leaving her feeling tiny and sheltered.
Sleep came surprisingly quickly that night.
Chapter Nine
That night, Vivienne dreamed of…dancing. Not like a ballerina or a ballroom dancer, not like anything so graceful or purposeful, but like a puppet, with her limbs jerking out at erratic angles, flailing this way and that. She dreamed of a massive, bodiless hand above her, yanking her strings in all directions, like a show dog being dragged through its paces.
She dreamed of darkness. Of being thrown into a trashcan and left, but always with a little spider dangling above her, watching everything she did, even as the trashcan rattled and shook.
She dreamed of light, as the trashcan trembled and clamored until it fell over, as if the ground had been shaking beneath it, and the lid fell away, letting sunlight as bright as a supernova pour in.
She dreamed of the ground, as she dragged herself forward inch by inch towards the rim of the trashcan, the spider following her every painstaking inch of the way.
She dreamed of hooks and edges, of her puppet strings getting caught and sawed away, and as each string vanished, dragging herself along became that much easier, until the final string snapped with a musical twang and she hauled herself out into daylight.
She dreamed of…reluctance. Lingering by the trashcan, as if it was home, as if it was safe, as if she didn’t want to leave it. The spider stared at her and glared at her and watched her every move, no matter how she shooed it away, and it was always just a bit too far out of reach for her to smash it.
She dreamed of darkness, as shadows crept closer and closer to the trashcan that was familiar, until they reared up and surrounded her.
Like wolves upon a wounded elk, they threw her to the ground and savaged her, tying her puppet strings to her again, whirling her through the air, and letting her crash to the ground again in a pile of splinters and tattered threads. The spider laughed at her as she lay immobile, as the shadows began to stalk closer.
When Vivienne woke with a jolt, looking around quickly to be sure that the shadows of the room were all where they were supposed to be and they weren’t moving in ways they shouldn’t have been, she realized that it was early enough to be considered late, and she sighed in exasperation.
How was she supposed to get back to sleep?
Behind her, Que grunted at her sudden shifting.
With some muttered word salad, he slid one arm around her and pulled her back against him to still her once more, bare skin pressing to bare skin.
‘I’m being silly,’ Vivienne thought to herself. ‘He won’t let anything hurt me.’
She had to pause and contemplate that thought. That it was the thought that occurred her—not ‘nightmares aren’t real’ or ‘that was a ridiculous dream’—was rather telling.
She didn’t want to go back. It was a startling realization and it left Vivienne feeling cold, but it felt truer the more she thought about it. She didn’t want to go back.
She didn’t want to be anyone’s puppet, to be used and abused and discarded. Even if she couldn’t get rid of the camera—even if she couldn’t be entirely free of them—she still didn’t want to go back.
She felt safer in Que’s bed than she did even thinking about the organization she had worked for.
“I can hear you thinking too hard,” Que grumbled against the back of her head.
He sat up slowly and she could just see him glowering down at her groggily out of her peripheral vision.
“It is a stupid hour and you’re awake and thinking and tense. Why?”
Before she could talk herself out of it, Vivienne rolled over in his grip to face him, and then pushed him onto his back and climbed on top of him.
“Let’s make a baby,” she said, just like that.
Que stared up at her, looking perplexed.
“Alright,” he agreed after a moment.
“I’m not going to argue with that. But what brought on this change of heart?”
Vivienne debated with herself for a moment, and then she quietly admitted, “I found my pod, and I didn’t want to use it.” She offered a crooked, sheepish smile that felt out of place on her face.
“It took me a little while to be willing to admit that I don’t want to go home—I mean, it doesn’t even feel like home anymore when I mention it—but…well, here we are.” She sighed out the breath she had held while speaking.
“So…let’s make a baby.”
Que didn’t seem to need much more convincing. He asked, quickly and somewhat perfunctorily, “You’re sure?” and he waited just long enough for Vivienne to nod her head once before he flipped their positions on the bed.
He rolled them over, his knees and fists on the bed as he knelt over her, and he kissed her, capturing her lips in a kiss that could only be called searing, as if he wanted to devour her and absorb whatever was left.
As their tongues
darted and clashed and their lips slid together like it was what they were meant to do, Vivienne reached up to pull Que down on top of her, and he went readily, flattening out on her after only a small tug. They were already naked, so it was instantly warm, bare skin against bare skin, rubbing together deliciously.
Vivienne could feel Que’s cock pressed against her leg, growing harder the longer they kissed. She could feel herself growing wetter as well, until she was sure the insides of her thighs were damp.
