by Cara Bristol
She continued to stroke his hard-on.
Calling to order this meeting of the mutual masturbation society. He snorted.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, but she was the one with the secretive smile, pulling away, retreating out of reach.
And then she leaped. He caught her but staggered a bit, unprepared for the launch although her weight was inconsequential, her bones as fine and delicate as reeds. Her legs locked around his hips, her arms around his neck. Her wet sex lined up with the head of his cock. A perfect docking. She rubbed against him.
“Well, this is one way of doing it.” He hadn’t thought ahead to the mechanics or choreography, but if he had, he would have assumed they’d be horizontal. Stupid to assume. He’d never been intimate with a Faria before. Maybe they had sex in flight.
“I was afraid you’d want to do it in the traditional Terran manner, but that’s too much pressure on my spine,” she said.
“I’m guessing you’re referring to the missionary position, but I don’t know that I would call it traditional.”
“Is this okay?”
“Perfect,” he said, and kissed her. He had forgotten about her injury—might very well have flipped her onto her back on a bench.
She wigged and lowered herself onto his cock while he thrust upward. Homme for the assist. Engulfed in her tight, wet sheath, heat surrounded him, and he sucked in his breath. Yeah, standing up worked, too. Gripping her ass, he raised and lowered her while thrusting. She buried her face against his neck, licked and sucked his skin.
No hickeys.
What the hell. His nanocytes would clear up the bruising by morning before anyone saw them, maybe before they left the room. And it would be worth it. Her mouth against his throat sent tendrils of lust curling into his abdomen. Suck away, sweetheart. He plunged into her then retreated. She was so slick, so warm so…he shifted her body to adjust the angle of penetration to catch her clit on the forward roll and again on the backward slide. She uttered a satisfied noise against his throat.
All righty then. He made another pass and was rewarded with another breathy moan.
All he had to do was remain upright, hang onto her, thrust, and hit all the right spots. Good thing cyborgs were multitasking masters—unless circuits got fried by an overload of pleasure.
Gripping her buttocks with one hand, he dug the other into her hair and wound it around his fist. Her pussy fluttered. Could her hair be that sensitive? He combed through the length. She gasped and clenched around him. Contractions rippled over his dick like a massage, sending pleasure rolling in a wave. His legs shook. Oh fuck me.
“Don’t stop,” she cried. Her heels thudded against his ass, and he thrust into her, doing his best to hold her and stroke her hair. Cheating—but his legs were ready to give out.
Her head fell back, and her hair dusted his knees.
Deep in his cyberbrain, an alert blipped. Network breached. What the fuck? Distraction lasted for the nanosecond it took physical sensation to eradicate conscious thought. As she climaxed, her channel convulsed, milking his cock, pushing him beyond the point of no return. Orgasm loomed. Legs failed. He staggered to a bench and fell, twisting in the nick of time so that his ass hit the padded seat. A hard landing, but they maintained the connection.
He flopped onto his back. She straddled him, sitting high on his lap, her hair streaming around her. He cupped her breasts, rubbing his thumbs over the hard nipples, and then seized a handful of hair. Her face contorted with bliss.
Warning. Another ping. What the hell?
Pressure built; his cock contracted. Alerts evaporated like they’d never been. For sure, he didn’t care. Caught up in the searing ecstasy, he came. Illumina cried out as she climaxed a second time.
She collapsed atop his chest. They lay there, panting like they’d run a race. Her hair covered them in a featherlight blanket. He eased his hands underneath to settle on her shoulders. “If I touch your hair, is it going to…you know?” At the ripe old age of thirty-eight, he’d thought he’d figured out the mysteries of a woman’s body, but the hair thing was new.
“I don’t think so.” She lifted her head and smiled. “I’m good now.”
After coming twice? I’d hope so. He stroked her arm from shoulder to elbow and back up. “What happens when you get a haircut?”
“Faria don’t cut their hair. It grows to a natural length and stops.” She ran her hand over the bristles on his head. “You cut your hair, then?”
“Yes. I keep it short. Easier that way.”
She rubbed his scalp. “You don’t feel anything when I do this?”
“There’s a sensation,” he said. He welcomed any touch from her. “It won’t make me come, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Oh.” She looked disappointed.
“Hey, you can always rub my other head.”
“I’ll keep that in the mind.” She snuggled against his chest.
He smoothed his hands over her spine and encountered two bony protuberances covered by roughened skin. The vestiges of her wings.
She went rigid. He stilled his hands. Tactile receptors continued to relay information to his brain. She wasn’t fully healed. Perhaps would never be. She would always bear the damaged skin and hard nodules—and perhaps the scarred psyche that accompanied the maiming and attempted murder.
“The wound still pains you, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“It’s not so bad.” She dismissed the injury but tensed like a board.
He recalled her stiff walk, her avoidance of the missionary position, how she perched on a chair edge never leaning against it. Probably her back hurt all the time.
Cybermed had achieved great strides in pain management. Doctors there might be able to alleviate her discomfort. “There are pain treatments—”
“I don’t need anything. Drugs dull my senses.”
He wished he could examine the scar, but she’d never go for it. “Not necessarily drugs. A computer chip might block the pain receptors—”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” She pushed off him, her hair tumbling forward to cover her breasts. “I’d better go. Early shift and all, you understand.” He did understand. He’d literally and figuratively probed a wound, and she had bolted. Illumina couldn’t have guessed how well he could see in the dark or she would have averted her backside. When she scrambled for her robe, he assessed the damage. Angry, red puckered skin stretched over hard ridges. It looked raw. He winced.
She yanked on her gown. “Um, thank you for uh…showing me the observatory.” She ran for the descender.
He would have liked to have taken her to his quarters to spend the night, but that wasn’t going to happen now. “I’ll come down with you.” He rolled to his feet.
“You don’t need to do that.” The vulnerable woman who’d cried in the transport, the sexy one who’d leaped into his arms and fucked like a bunny—both had disappeared. By morning, the guarded one in military dress would return. Dale didn’t want that to happen. He’d always been drawn to helping the misfortunate, the defenseless, and Illumina needed him. Whether she knew it or not, whether she wanted it or not. She did.
If for nothing else than to activate the descender. “You don’t have clearance to operate the transport.” He pulled on his pants.
She waited, her rigid posture shouting don’t touch me. His cybersenses picked up her fear in the pounding of her heart, her racing pulse. “Illumina…”
“Please. Let me be.” She stared at the sealed exit.
After he opened the door, she entered and executed a military-sharp pivot, facing forward. He did not board, but reached in and accessed the computer with a hand swipe. “Put your hand on the scanner,” he instructed her.
She glanced at him but then palmed the screen. A light blinked and then went solid. OPERATOR ADDED flashed.
“You can use the controls now and come to the observatory any time you wish.” He stepped back, and the doors closed. The transporter whirred
as it descended.
Chapter Six
“What’s up?” March asked.
“I came to speak to Illumina.” Her name in the gravelly tones set her heart to racing.
“Sure. She’s over there.”
Illumina hunched over, wishing she had a personal cloaking device. The remnants of her wings twitched as her broken body attempted to take flight. She’d spent two jumpy days peering over her shoulder expecting a confrontation. When it hadn’t occurred, she’d started to relax. She should have known better. You could never let your guard down.
“Illumina,” he growled. Near this time. Too near.
Gathering up the tatters of her courage, she spun around on the stool. In the observatory, it had been too dark to see, but her body had formed indelible impressions and taunted her with them now. Her hands remembered taut muscles and heated skin, her mouth recalled his heady taste, her hair tingled with memories, and her sex relived the fullness. With great willpower, she ensured none of that showed on her face. “Hello, Dale.”
Everyone in the section could hear their conversation, but she had nothing to say to him so it wouldn’t matter.
“We need to talk.”
She jerked her head at the computer. “I’m working.”
“The shift is almost over,” March called. “It won’t hurt if you quit a little early. You can finish up tomorrow.” Damn him. Of course he would accommodate the boss.
She’d certainly been accommodating to the boss. Had she lost her mind? Why had she complicated an already-problematic situation? What magic had this man conjured to get her to let down her guard? He’d shown her a few stars and a planet and then she’d humped him like a short-circuiting Darius 4 pleasure android.
She could have accepted the sex part, but he’d touched old wounds, physical and psychic, and every shield had teetered on the verge of crashing. She wasn’t prepared for the sheer naked defenselessness that flooded her. Panicked, she’d fled.
“Come to my office, please.” Politeness over steel.
The normal chitchat had stopped, and a hush fell over the room. Her fellow employees fixed on their computers, totally absorbed by their work. They were never that absorbed. What did she do? Is she in trouble? Of course, that’s what they were thinking.
Nothing to worry about. I just fucked the boss.
If only that was the problem.
“Of course. She closed out the program and secured her terminal.
“After you.” He gestured, and she had no choice but to weave through the work stations manned by exceptionally focused and quiet operators.
Once out of the section the aisle widened, and Dale assumed position alongside her.
“That was a little obvious, wasn’t it?” They were out of earshot, but she kept her voice low. “People will talk.” Her hair vibrated in awareness of his proximity. Memories of fusing to him like a negative ion to a positive swirled in her head. Trying not to be obvious, she edged away.
“They’ll wonder why I summoned you, but if it brings you any reassurance, I don’t think they’ll assume we’re involved. You’re the only employee I’ve done that with.”
I’m the only one? Warmth surged despite efforts to remain unmoved. “We’re not involved. One encounter does not constitute involvement. ” She had to disabuse him—and her stupid, yearning heart—of that notion. Another coupling could not occur. He’d gotten her to reveal too much. Worse, at the moment of climax…
“Why don’t you hold your protests and arguments until we’re alone?”
She tossed her head in dismissal, and a jolt of pain shot between her shoulder blades.
Her wince did not escape his sharp, cyborg eyes. “At least go to the infirmary.”
“There’s no need. I’m all right.”
“You’re stubborn.”
She flexed her shoulders in defiance and veered away from the uncomfortable realization they sounded like a couple experiencing their first spat. They weren’t lovers, and they had nothing to fight about. They’d had a one-night tryst. The end.
So why couldn’t she forget? Why did she keep reliving the encounter? Perhaps she should be grateful he had touched her scars and brought her back to her senses, because otherwise she might have lain with him, confided more, curled up next to him as if tomorrow would never come. With little coaxing, he might make her believe in the impossible—that she could fly again. Look at how much he’d gotten her to confess in a short transport ride. She’d never intended to tell him about Alonio.
They reached the stairs, and Dale charged upward. Unable to outrun him on his own turf, she trudged after him.
His office appeared as it had the day of her interview, utilitarian but messy. She moved to the wide windows. They were tinted, and, from the shop floor, they reflected back like mirrors. From inside his lair, a panorama of the shop sprawled out. In one corner, low walls demarcated Diagnostics and Repair. She’d been smart to ask to move her workstation behind two pillars.
May as well get this over with. She turned to face him.
Dale stood on the opposite side of the too-small room, his dark eyes unreadable. He gestured to a chair piled with debris. “Do you want to sit?”
“No.” She wouldn’t be staying long. She twisted her hands. This was so hard.
“I would have come to speak to you sooner, but I believed you needed a few days to process what happened. I’m thinking now that was a mistake.”
He shouldn’t have tracked her down at all. “The mistake was in what we did. Let’s not compound it. Let’s agree to go our separate ways.”
“Is that what you want?” His neutral expression slipped, and she could see pain underneath. Without intending to, she’d hurt him.
“It’s for the best.” For him. He already cared too much. During orgasm—both of them—as she’d feared she might, she’d drifted into his head and connected with his cyber network. She hadn’t intended to and she’d yanked away as soon as she could. In his headspace for the briefest of moments, it had been long enough to catch the drift of his emotions, expressed by his human side, but recorded by his microprocessor.
He cared more than he should.
She could hurt him more than she already had. She could use him for the comfort and safety he provided, mess with his emotions, and deliver the killing blow when she left. Alonio would kill him if he caught up with her and gathered so much as a hint they’d been intimate. From the way Dale stared at her now, it wouldn’t be hard to guess.
She had to break it off permanently. A sharp pang shot through her. This is for the best. “What happened shouldn’t have occurred, and I don’t want to repeat it.”
He stepped closer. Too close. She held herself rigid so she didn’t sway into his arms.
“Then, I won’t bother you anymore.” He ran a hand over his head, and she remembered how his cropped hair had bristled again her palm. Not quite as rough, but similar, to the shadow on his jaw. Raspy. So different from her, from Faria men. “Tell me one thing,” he said.
“What?”
“Your name.”
“M-my name? Illumina Smith.”
“Your real name.”
“T-that is my real name.” Alarm tumbled in her stomach. Her surname was false; her first name nearly so, although she tried to get it as authentic as she could. No direct translation from Faria to Terran existed. It was akin to translating scents into words. To describe a flower’s fragrance as sweet didn’t capture the smell at all. She averted her eyes from his piercing gaze.
“All right.” His expression shuttered, and he assumed his place behind his desk in an obvious dismissal.
She sucked back the tears and marched out. Behind the closed door, she sagged against the stairwell. Something thudded inside the office.
“Illumina,” she whispered in Faria. “My name is Illumina.” She shoved off from the wall and ran down the stairs as fast as her trembling legs could go.
* * * *
Dale slammed his fist on his d
esk. She’d walked out. Just like that. Without so much as a good-bye, see-you-around, it’s-been-real. If sleeping with him had been so awful, why had she done it at all? She’d been as active a participant as he. Touching her back had upset her, but he’d assumed once she had viewed it in the context of what had occurred, she would get over it. Giving her time to think had had the opposite effect of what he’d hoped. She’d grown more certain she didn’t want to see him.
She wouldn’t even tell him her real name.
He had only himself to blame. Within minutes of meeting her, he’d known she was using an alias and had falsified credentials. That she turned out to be a crackerjack programmer and troubleshooter didn’t count. She’d lied about everything—and he’d offered her a position anyway! What kind of an idiot hired a job applicant who lied?
Nor could he leave it there. Oh no. He had proceeded to have sex with her. “Don’t fuck the staff.” Wasn’t that rule number one in any business?
Had her ex really attacked her or had she fabricated the tale to garner sympathy? He knew little of Faria society. Maybe they had some archaic, fundamentalist form of justice. An eye for an eye. A wing for a wing. She could be a criminal.
Her distress in the transport seemed so genuine.
However, she’d lied with a straight face at the interview. The only tell had been those flashes of luminosity.
He had a known liar working on sensitive projects. An employee who guarded as many secrets as she had access to. He should fire her, but morale and respect would plummet if word got out that they’d slept together. Had her section noticed the way he mooned over her? This is why fucking the staff is a bad idea.
From the stairwell outside his office wafted a song so pure and lovely, every hair on his body stood on end. His toes curled. Nanocytes vibrated. He’d never held with religion, but he could only compare the musical notes to the hallowed sound of an angel’s voice.
Impossible for a Terran to vocalize.
