Perfect Gravity

by Vivien Jackson

  “I’m sorry. I do that sometimes. All the thoughts… Know what? Let’s start over. I can do this right.” She could. Had she not been trained in this exact thing? Not in sex performance, per se, but in making her body fit her thoughts and making both of those fit her emotions. Forcing the symmetry. Making others believe. She was good at it. Best of the best. Queen of the world.

  “Are you worried about the car still? ’Cause I have it on good authority that letting the control rig take us in is perfectly safe.”

  “No, I’m not worried about the car.” Of course she wasn’t. She had been in so many cars in so many parts of the world, she couldn’t list them, not even with her near-perfect memory. Would saying that sound terribly self-important?

  “What are you worried about?”

  I’m worried because I married a man who broke me. Because I’m no longer complete, definitely not the girl you remember. I can do so many things I couldn’t then, but not the right things. Not the things you would love.

  “This is a dumb thing for someone my age to admit, but I just don’t have a lot of experience here. With, you know, sex in a car. Or really sex anywhere.” There. Bald enough? God, honesty was some uncomfortable shit.

  “Second thoughts? Because this doesn’t have to happen. Or doesn’t have to happen tonight.”

  “Oh, please, Kellen. I want it. All of it. Swears. I’m just a goddamn freak of nature, okay?” Sudden anger zinged through her body, twining with the electric need he lit in her. Sparks frazzled her extremities; her heartbeat thudded. On the edge of that fury and still holding his gaze, she reached up and nudged her hairpiece off its hooks. She pulled it down into her lap, knowing what she looked like without it. Knowing that the metal psych-emitter net made her nearly bald head look mechanical. Look wrong.

  It was that scene in The Empire Strikes Back, the original sacred trilogy, where Darth Vader removes his helm and movie-watchers realize that he’s not a badass space villain, just a sad, scarred lieutenant whose magic might not be limitless after all. Had Kellen even seen that old movie, down in the piney woods of East Texas hickville? If she referenced it, would he have a clue what she was talking about?

  He inspected her head for a long time, finally raising a hand to stroke the fine fuzz at her temples, along her brow line. She resisted the urge to mewl and lean into his touch. Instead she ground her molars and hoped he couldn’t see how weird this made her feel.

  Even uncomfortable, this was touch. Connection. Kindness. And his. She needed it. And feared it.

  What if she couldn’t stand it? What if she got the emotions wrong?

  She had laughed when mech-Daniel had tried to kill her. That had been, uh, inappropriate. Wrong. Wrong reaction. Out of practice, out of bounds, out of chances. Bad.

  “You do know you’re still beautiful, right?” Kellen said, wresting her from the self-flagellation of memory.

  “What?”

  He warmed her all over with a smile, that smile. The one she remembered. “Well, I figure you were trying to shock me or somethin’, removing your hairdo like that. Just want to let you know that I’m still here. Ain’t running. In fact, can I…” He moved his hand back, stroking her head, metal and all.

  Holy shit. “Oh, yes, you can,” she breathed. “If I were a cat, I would so be purring right now.”

  He reached half behind his body and tapped something on the control screen. Nothing in the speed or direction of the car shifted, but Angela’s seat hummed low and reclined, elongating her body, laying it down for his perusal. His pleasure. “Go ahead, then. Let it all out. I got you.”

  Let what out, though? What was the right response? What was she…

  Oh wow. Just wow. He arced over her, dipped his chin in and kissed her again, long and sweet, working his tongue against hers until it felt like her insides were melting, curling toward him, lava going downhill, trailing clouds of fire. The volcano metaphor wasn’t too far off for the rest of it, either, because when his hand dropped to her knee, spread along the sensitive skin right at the back there, and then traveled upward—squirm-inducingly slow and warm and delicious—she could no longer contain the seismic ripples. Her body hummed, vibrated until it was superheated. Molten at the core.

  Patient hand beneath her ratty skirt now, persistent, steady. Merciless. If she told him to stop, she had a sense he would. But what a fucked-up thing that would be. She couldn’t even let herself think it. Mustn’t.

  He broke their kiss, pulled it into pieces, separated and sorted. Where before the kiss itself had been a bright point, a supernova in their connection, now there were a dozen or more star points. His mouth at her throat and trailing downward. His hand soothing up the inside of her trembling thigh, bunching her torn skirt up against her hip. The scruff of his jaw, desperately in need of a shave and chafing the delicate skin covering her pulse. His other arm, braced against the car door, holding the rest of his body steady in its exploration.

  His teeth trailing there, sharp and dangerous and just for an instant.

  She knew why the damsels screamed for a vampire’s bite.

  Do it, do it. Make it hurt. Make me shatter.

  She wasn’t aware that she was making sounds until his low “shhhhh” blew in against her clavicle. The slow, sweet stroke of his hand up her leg paused. “You say the word and I stop, sweetheart,” he said.

  She opened her mouth, only to find that she was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She struggled, got control of that, but it took a few seconds. Her mind screamed, Don’t you fucking dare stop.

  But out-loud words became an impossibility, because right at the same moment, his hand completed its journey, found her naked slit, and stroked the length of it, basting her with her own desire. His forefinger circled her clitoris, spiraling into a pleasure point so hot, so bright and pure and amazing, she had no control, slammed her eyes shut, and keened, writhing against the poly-skinned seat.

  And then, shit how did he do this they were in a goddamned car and no way there was room had he cut off his legs or what because because because his mouth was there. Where before his fingers had been. Surrounding her clitoris, forming a vacuum, pulling. Oh holyfuckgoddamn, it was good. So good. So…

  No words. Just feeling.

  A part of her struggled for a heartbeat, then two, trying to reconcile thought-emotion-transmission. Trying to instill a passive, pleasant mien and then alter her brain electrics and therefore emotions to match. Autosynchrony. Years of training.

  Devolved to blank pleasure in the space between one breath and the next.

  His long fingers within her, his mouth on her, he did break her. Apart and into a zillion pieces. And it was fucking glorious.

  Synchrony shattered, exploded, paused at apex, and slammed back together in one immolative point of sensation.

  She didn’t remember reaching, pulling his shirt till the buttons gave, shoving her hands into his hair, or holding on for dear life. She realized it only after the fury passed, only after she could breathe again.

  “Holy fuck,” she said, and even those spare words came out on a pant.

  He chuckled, a low rumble against her pelvis.

  “Kellen?”

  “Right here, princess.”

  “I haven’t come that hard in ten years.”

  “Well, don’t you know how to make somebody feel special.”

  “You do rather a good job yourself.” The intensity had changed, but all the tension was still there, spooling around them, broidering them into one fused, decorative pattern. “May I touch you now?”

  “Uh, yeah. Knock yourself out.”

  That’s when she noticed the shirt, missing buttons. His dark-gold hair mussed. God, he was gorgeous. “Tilt your seat back, like mine,” she said.

  He did. Climbing over wasn’t easy. Especially not when her whole body felt like electrified pudding. But her will
made it possible, found places for her knees to plant, to steady, for her arms, her mouth to settle. Found time to unfasten his jeans, bare his body. Every part fitted to its place, a regression from chaos into perfect order. She needed this, him. She needed, needed to fill herself with this man. Fusion, power, arcing up the nuclear binding energy curve. Meltdown imminent, but she was pegging full power anyhow.

  Tilting forward onto him, sliding him into her swollen, aching body. Welcome. Welcome home, my love. Every millimeter of invasion lit chain explosions, critical stability failures. Control slipping. Fail-safes shattered. Stars collided. She came again, completely without warning, convulsing around him, clenching him into her.

  His face buried in the lee of her neck, his hands spasming, one beneath her blouse, capping her spine, the other spread over her bare ass, stroking her onto him. Did he feel this too, the same bliss she felt? But no, she wasn’t transmitting. Was so completely out of control anyhow, any transmission would be a mess. From far, far away, a stern voice told her she was doing it wrong, had failed to identify key brain-emotion causalities.

  In that moment, Angela gave precisely zero fucks.

  She pushed her rear into the cup of his hand then ground downward, sliding her mons against his pelvis until the ache bled sweet throughout her whole body.

  “If my pleasure is what does it for you,” she murmured against his hair, “then you ought to be enjoying the fuck out of this. I’ve already come twice.”

  A mumble against her throat, below her ear, the bass burr that clamped itself to her spine and sent shudders through her whole body: “Am fixin’ to meet you right there, sweetheart.”

  She felt it, when he came. Deep, deep. Jolt of tension in his body, hitch in his breath, and the steady thrust upward stilled. She settled atop him, let him work through the onslaught. Pressed a hot, sated kiss against his hair.

  In that moment, there was nothing in the whole universe she wouldn’t have given to make the last ten years disappear. To delete his hurts, and hers. To have lived this life differently, with him every step of the way. But the universe was not that kind. No take-backsies.

  I’m so sorry.

  • • •

  Well, that sure was something. A pure magic something. He hadn’t meant to seduce her. He had intended to take this reunion slow, let them get easy with each other. Make sure his heart was safe this time, not used up and tossed. But on the other hand, he wasn’t sorry for what had just happened. Not for a moment of it.

  Her face was tucked into the curve of his neck. Somehow they had pretzeled their bodies into just one reclined front seat. Probably something was going to go numb soon, but for right now, for this infinite pause, he wanted to hold her.

  Her mouth moved against his skin. “Hey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know when you said, back during that holoconference the night Daniel died, that I had never called you pretty?”

  Of course he remembered. He always remembered. “There are reasons why normal humans don’t recall every single word they utter.”

  “Be that as it may,” she plowed on, “I might not have called you pretty to your face, but I wanted you to know that I have always thought it. You are beautiful to me.”

  “Didja now? Well, that’s…wait, pretty?” He reared back and looked down at her dark head. “Pretty’s for spring frocks and lace bloomers and…flowers ’n’ shit.”

  Her laughed burbled, a sound made of pure joy. “Handsome, then?”

  “Dukes, caliphs, and corp lords.” He feigned offense. “You’re killin’ me.”

  “Hot?”

  “Tacos.”

  “Fuckable?”

  “I’ll own that one.”

  She steepled one elbow against the seatback, propped her chin on the heel of that hand, and turned those dark-star eyes on him. “You’re more than that, you know.”

  “What you mean?” Moments like these, sometimes it was easier to joke than tussle with embarrassment or confusion. “There’s more to life than just being really, really good-lookin’? Not to mention useful between the sheets?”

  “We are in a car,” she reminded him. “No sheets for miles. And I might know shit about life as a whole, but I am certain there’s definitely more to you than godlike looks. All that potential, Kellen. The world is metaphorically your oyster. That fucking idiom was made for people like you. You just have to reach out and grab it.”

  He raised his eyebrows and flexed long fingers against her silk-skinned rear. “Talk on some more about grabbing. I like where this part’s going.”

  “I’m being serious here.” This was where she’d sigh and roll her eyes. Or where he would have expected her to, once. Only she didn’t. She just kept staring. Then she went on. “When I met you, you were the smartest kid in the room. The finest scholar of what you have to realize was a very competitive class of small humans. That’s why they teased you at first, the other students. Because of all of us, you were the one who was most likely to run the world. To lead us. If you got rolling, nobody could resist you. Least of all me.”

  He closed his eyes and flattened back against the body-warm seat. He didn’t want to see her face with all that faith shining out of it. “You know what? Them dudes recruited me to the MIST filled my head with similar bullshit. Got me thinking I could make a difference, big’un, help all the folks back home and lots more besides. They had this research core group they were putting together, complete with a place for me. Said I was gonna do cross-species bioalteration work, maybe crack immortality. That was where my research was leading, and holy hell, it was exciting from, you know, a scientific standpoint. Other unspecified magic shit was s’posed to happen too, and poof, the whole world would be peace and glitter and, I dunno, unicorns fartin’ rainbows. All’s I had to do was drink their Kool-Aid, follow their orders, and jump off a cliff.”

  “What cliff?” Her face was so solemn, and he couldn’t lie.

  “They offered me a deal, princess. No baggage. Come alone, or go on my merry way and wave the daydream goodbye.”

  Her mouth opened, closed, then opened again, threading faint words. “No baggage, huh? I thought you wanted to go to your mom after the hurricane.”

  He did the head-tilt lip-purse abbreviated version of a shrug. “I didn’t, not particularly. Nobody wants to go back to the person who hurt ’em. Nobody wants to stay with the person who can cut them loose without a second thought.”

  What amounted to abandonment by his mama had hurt for a long time, but a long time ago. There were other parts of his childhood that he’d never get over, but having Mama sign over guardianship wasn’t gonna cause him any more sleepless nights. He hadn’t been the slightest bit tempted to leave the MIST, not even when Angela had told him about the storm.

  “I was worried about my mother and Sissy, sure enough, but Lufkin is pretty far inland and wasn’t threatened by that storm. I could have settled my worry without leaving Abu Dhabi permanently. No, sweetheart, when they offered me that deal to drop baggage, they weren’t talking about Mama.”

  Her mouth made a silent O. “What did you…?”

  He did shrug this time, beneath the sweet weight of her body. “I told them to fuck themselves in places that would especially hurt. I wasn’t going to let you go.”

  “But then you did.”

  “Only ’cause you told me to.”

  Realization washed over her face, painting it pale. “Oh shit, Kellen. Oh holy shit. And that’s why you didn’t come back, because you were done with them. Out. I was so oblivious. People have told me all my life how brilliant I am, but now…oh fucking hell, was I stupid.”

  He squeezed her a bit. Would have squeezed tighter, would have squeezed till all her pain went away, but she was a little thing, and dear. “You know what they say, ain’t no cure for nineteen. You were just a kid. So was I.”

  It w
asn’t like his anger or his sense of betrayal had dissipated. He hated what they’d done to him, and she had been squarely a part of “they.” If she hadn’t told him to leave, he would have fought those consortium goons. He would have gotten the both of them out of there. Not sure how, but he would have made it happen. Was her goodbye that had sucked the fight right out of him. He hadn’t wanted to stay if she didn’t want him.

  No, he hadn’t forgiven her. But he was willing to look past her missteps, to live in the right now. Because right now felt so goddamn sweet in his arms.

  “So I’m working out the timeline in my mind,” she murmured. Talking him through her processes, as if they were on a project together. Damn, he’d missed that, the easy back-and-forth. It was less easy now, of course. Patching up emotional wounds wasn’t like analyzing modern bit-funk lyrics using the Aarne-Thompson tale type index. Angela, though, she lit up when she was working through an academic process, and it was a beautiful thing to behold. “When we went out into the desert that morning to…”

  “Fuck like rabbits.”

  “Yes, that. Had they already approached you and given you their ultimatum?”

  “Yup,” he said. “And I’d already told them. Not no, but hell no.”

  “Zeke sent for me at reveille that same morning,” she said. Her voice was soft, small. “They offered me a deal, too.”

  He pulled a breath in, held it just a beat too long, and then released it into the space between their bodies. He stroked her back, beneath her blouse. There weren’t words in him to convince her she didn’t need to hair-shirt herself. That both their sins were so long ago.

  “The first part of my deal was breaking up with you,” she said after a long time. “And the second part…was I had to marry Daniel.”

  “I figured.”

  “I worried about you, what you would think. If you’d imagine that I loved him, if you thought about me being with him.”

  “Thinking ’bout you fucking a fan-favorite vid star night after night? Yeah, that twinged a bit, but I got over it.” He hadn’t, never had, but telling her that would serve no purpose. She was bent on beating herself up, and he was just a terrible enough person to find some salve in that. So he let her.