‘I’m here. Not him.’ Kuja’s voice cut into her thoughts. ‘And you are absolutely gorgeous when you’re riding me.’
He offered her a smile, but it was a mask. Fei couldn’t explain how she knew this; she just did. He was worried that she was upset, worried that she needed him, worried that he’d be unable to leave. Because he felt too much for her. She could feel it too, in her heart — the love swelling between them, far more potent than the pleasure she had taken from him.
He loves me. He loves me.
‘I love you,’ he echoed. ‘Father help me, I love you.’
Fei laughed and wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘I love you too, Kuja. Now shut up and let me show you what you’re going to be missing out on for the rest of your life.’
When Fei licked his nipple, he begged her to do it again, the strain in his voice revealing just how close he was. He was growing inside her, so much so she was afraid he would hit her cervix. She squirmed on him, startled and anxious, but then she saw the adoration filling his half-lidded eyes.
He pulsed once more — and then exploded, releasing a hot burst that wrenched a startled groan from her. The sound that escaped his mouth was even more primitive and guttural. He shuddered for several seconds, eyes squeezed shut, his back arching off the bed. When at last he was limp beneath her, Fei reluctantly slid off him. He felt amazing.
And she felt wonderful and beautiful and loved and…
‘You are all of these things,’ Kuja said, stroking her back as she smiled giddily across the hair-dusted plane of his chest. ‘You always will be.’
‘I feel greedy for saying this, but I want more,’ she admitted.
He obliged her immediately. Two fingers glided down to her dripping core, swirling around her clitoris while his thumb dipped inside her. She wriggled, her body almost too sensitive beneath his touch, but then suddenly discomfort faded into interest. Soon she was gasping, pleading, begging. And he kept at it, driving her mad. When she felt the first twinges, she opened her mouth to warn him — but before she could say a word, a wave of intense relief hit her abdomen and she spurted against his hand, a small puddle forming beneath her buttocks.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said when she tried to apologise. ‘I loved sharing that with you.’
Kuja’s weight and warmth left the bed, causing her to subside into the soft sheets. Bereft, she made a soft, disgruntled sound — but within moments he was back, gently patting a towel over her thighs and across her still quivering mound, sending tiny shocks shooting through her. He lifted her hips and set the towel under her, then pulled her against his slick chest.
‘I didn’t think I would be able to finish,’ Kuja mused. ‘I wonder why it worked this time.’
‘Probably because you love me,’ Fei said with a smirk. ‘You can’t take that back. I’ve got it in my memories forever.’
Kuja combed his hand through her hair, winding some of the mauve strands around his fingers. ‘And I will feel it forever.’
‘I still don’t know why you have to leave.’ She didn’t care that she whined when she said this. ‘Is it something to do with why your brother couldn’t stay with his wife?’
‘You are exceptionally clever,’ he murmured. ‘And I should feel the appropriate amount of dismay that your guess is far too close for my liking.’
‘But?’
He chuckled. ‘It just makes me love you more.’
‘If you love me then you’ll tell me why I can’t have amazing sex for the rest of my life,’ Fei said, curving her palm over his chest. ‘Please, Kuja?’
Kuja’s face creased as he disappeared inside his thoughts. She knew the moment he relented; her heart sang before he even opened his mouth. ‘I will try to say as much as I can without endangering you. There are people who…would not be pleased to know that I have found someone who could distract me from my duties.’
Fei blinked. ‘Duties? Kuja, you live in a hut. And Lilliean and the other Bagathians don’t seem to mind us being together.’
‘I’m not talking about them,’ he said, his frown deepening. ‘I meant my family. The situation…I used to think it was because everyone obeyed my father in everything, but now I think they were jealous. My brother found love but the others couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand that he was brave enough to seek what they wanted. They threatened the lives of his family to bring him back into line. Callista left him because she could not handle it.’
‘And what if I decide I can handle it?’ Fei demanded.
Kuja visibly gritted his teeth. ‘Even if you could, I’m afraid that if I stay with you I won’t be able to…to do my job.’
‘That’s stupid,’ Fei argued. ‘Plenty of people can work and have a family at the same time. Well, maybe not my father, but my mother managed it and she had two jobs! And I can do long distance; Bagaran isn’t that far from here. Ugh, you know what — your family is seriously messed up and I’m going to have a word to them about it.’
‘Fei…I can’t protect you from them. They would tear you apart.’
‘They’re tearing us apart and I’m not sure that’s any worse.’
‘I agree,’ Kuja muttered. His next words sounded like a warning. ‘If I could stay, I’d ask nothing less than eternity from you.’
‘And I’d give it,’ Fei said. ‘It’d make me extremely happy if I could die in your arms.’
‘I am talking about eternity, which outlasts death.’
‘Then I’d be just as happy to have you forever. So long as the sex remains this good.’
His laugh ended almost as soon as it began, his body shaking with the effort of suppressing sobs. Fei kissed his temple and made shhh-shhh sounds — until she remembered that she hated those and instead mumbled what she hoped were soothing phrases. Kuja eventually calmed down enough to speak. ‘I’d like to stay beside you. Forever. Loving you, raising a family with you — that is my fantasy. I wish…’ He sighed. ‘I wish I could protect you. But I can’t.’
Fei shivered. She believed him. But she didn’t want to waste what time they had left by dwelling on what couldn’t be. So she distracted them both from their dark thoughts by running her hands over his nude form. When he hardened again, both of them were surprised, but Fei was more than happy to take advantage of this. Before she could, however, Kuja took charge and rolled her beneath him, easing his way into her moist folds and claiming her, body and soul.
Later, when exhaustion weighed down on both of them, Fei entwined her limbs with his, trying to lock him into place. He didn’t fight her, just gazed at her sorrowfully. It should have been impossible to follow him into his mind, but she knew exactly what he was thinking. He was worried and upset, remembering the loss of another woman.
Fei could picture this woman exactly, could even hear her voice. This was his mother, the one who had given him kindness and love and had taught him to embrace the emotions that made him so vulnerable.
I’m just dreaming, hallucinating even, Fei told herself, blinking away the images. But they were so real, so tangible, she couldn’t have made them up.
Does love let you see into someone else’s thoughts? she wondered. Or is this something else?
• • •
When Kuja roused from his doze he was startled, because as a god he didn’t actually need to sleep. Gingerly, trying not to wake Fei, he used his powers to teleport out from beneath her steely grip and began looking for his clothes. He winced; there were spectacular aches running throughout his body, most notably in his arms which were unused to holding himself up over someone. His skin still tingled and he felt sticky but more sated than he had ever been in his entire life. He could not imagine why a god would want to stay in an insubstantial form when they could experience that.
He paused, his pants slack in his hand as he remembered that Fei had felt his mind as surely as he could feel hers. Strange — she didn’t have any mind-reading abilities that he was aware of. How then had she known what he was thinking before and during the t
hroes of ecstasy? If she did have powers of some sort, then that was another reason to avoid her, in case she was a trap cunningly designed by his father to teach him some sort of lesson.
Kuja held in the groan. He couldn’t think these things now, not when she had given him so much pleasure and love. She deserved better than his suspicion.
He slipped into his clothes, painfully aware that he needed to leave, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t spend half an hour sitting in a chair beside the bed, watching the woman he loved slumber without him. Even though she was unconscious, Kuja could still sense her inside his mind, like the ever-present whirr of an insect hiding in a thicket. Some people might have found that sensation irritating. He enjoyed it.
Kuja stood. He couldn’t pursue this connection between them, no matter how badly he wanted to. It would be safer for her if he left. So he did, walking from one world to the next, appearing on Bagaran in a vortex of greens and browns. Tormented, pursued by both her scent and her soul, Kuja ran to the top of their waterfall and stood there, arms held out either side of him.
When he could bear it no longer, he threw himself over the edge, wishing the rocks below would crush the fear and misery that were laying deposits in his bones, turning him into some brittle creature that would shatter the instant anyone dared to touch him.
He fell.
And then the vines that he cherished, the vines that loved him in return, soared across the space beneath him and caught his body. Lying there, stunned, furious, relieved, Kuja could only cry, his tears lost in the downpour that cascaded over him.
We are here for you always, the vines promised.
‘But I’m not there for her,’ he said.
You could be.
‘My brothers and sisters would come after us both and I would lose!’ Kuja cried, struggling to sit up in the rigid nest that the vines had formed for him. He lashed out, but they refused to give, instead absorbing his fury. ‘I am nothing compared to Fayay! Nothing!’
But the water god has nothing to fight for, a nearby Bagaran Strangler told him, its tone rich in superiority. You do.
Kuja covered his face. ‘That won’t stop him destroying me. And I can’t ask Sandsa for help. He might be able to defeat Fayay, but he’ll probably say there’s no point, that Fei will leave just like Callista did. And he’d be right! Even Mum left the Ine in the end. Who in their right mind stays with a god? What mortal would willingly choose eternity? I don’t even want it!’
Did you give Feiscina that choice? the Strangler demanded.
‘No! Because I’m afraid of what she’d say, you know that!’
You still should have let her choose.
Kuja closed his eyes and thought of Sandsa. After their mother had left, more than half a century ago, Sandsa had retreated to the deserts and let them absorb him, so that his pain would not become too overwhelming. It had been the Desine’s only way to cope then and it was still his only solace now. He had lost almost everything he’d ever cared about, including his wife and son.
Kuja understood now. He wanted to disappear into the rainforests forever. He wanted to stop feeling, to forget entirely. Death would have brought that.
But his people needed him. And he could still be there for Fei, as Bagara.
Even if he’d much rather be there for her as the man who loved her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The horizon was smudged with a sandstorm when Fei woke alone for the sixth Old Earth week in a row. Sitting in the bathroom with her blue hair cascading over her face, sucking her finger while a machine decided her happiness based on a single drop of blood, she allowed herself to feel hope. And then the pregnancy test read negative. Again.
Hope faded into disappointment, then melted into guilt. She’d been so desperate that night that she hadn’t stopped to consider how selfish she was being. The implant…she should have asked him.
At least now he would never know what she had done. What she had tried to do.
Hugging herself, Fei went to the expansive window in the bedroom and took in the view. Down in the streets below, Atsa City was stirring into life. Artisan stalls, violently colourful and completely uncoordinated, were springing up as usual on Market Street. Those who were visiting them this early, before work and before the rush, looked like a handful of tiny nashba bugs. The hovercars slowly filling the streets weren’t much bigger or any more impressive from this height.
Fei roved her eyes (emerald green, as they had been for weeks) around the hemisphere-shaped shield that kept the city safe from storms and weapons alike. It was hard to see during the day, but just at dawn the shield’s faint orange hue was visible.
‘Our shield can take an orbital bombardment,’ Ala had said some days ago, creases running rampant over her face. ‘Bock’s not worried about GLEA showin’ up and blockading us, but I sure as stark am. We need them starships to keep coming in if we want any food. Our hydroponics aren’t that great so give it long enough and we’ll starve. Can’t fight the starkin’ Chippers if we’re dead.’
Unease gnawed low in Fei’s stomach as she remembered those words.
‘Bagara,’ she whispered, her breath steaming the window. ‘I’m scared. Is something going to happen today? I know there are no rainforests here yet, but maybe…maybe you can see…’
Fei drew a gasp of air, then rushed it back out, startled. She could now taste freshwater and the previously cool room was thick with humidity.
If something does happen, I will be here for you, Bagara promised in a voice that reminded her so much of Kuja that it caused her chest to ache.
‘No offence but that doesn’t help me,’ Fei said, then bowed her head. ‘I’m sorry. I know I should be better at this faith thing.’
I’d rather you have faith in your own abilities instead of mine.
‘That’s a lot harder and you know it,’ she muttered.
The air became neutral and bland once more. Bagara was gone.
Fei strode over to the hoverlift, pausing only to grab a jacket. Despite Yalsa 5 being a desert world, the interiors of its buildings were often on the verge of freezing, thanks to the locals’ insistence on overcompensating with their climate control systems. Fei wanted to avoid the arid heat just as much as anyone, but having seen the amount of power the city used on any given day, she had decided that she wasn’t going to add to the strain on the grid until the ancient system was replaced.
On the way down in the hoverlift, Fei ran through the tasks that she needed to do. Bock had asked her to come up with the simulation he had originally paid for (TerraCorp had recently refunded his money, a move which Ala thought meant that hostilities were forthcoming), saying he’d buy some terraforming equipment and do the starking job himself. Fei had tried to explain that she would need to make a whole new program from scratch, but he still expected it to be finished in the same amount of time that Fei usually spent testing and finalising code on a single simulation.
Fei’s colleague, Jalen, greeted her when she entered the techroom in Governor Bock Atsason’s headquarters. Jalen was a Jezlo, like Gerns, and Fei couldn’t help but feel comforted by the sight of the woman’s six tentacles. Jalen was pale grey in colouring, which was typical of her species, and wore the seaweed sarong native to her world, but for whatever reason she also donned a bright pink cap that sealed over the top of her large head.
Fei bit a crevice into her bottom lip. ‘I hope you had a good night’s sleep. I definitely didn’t. Has the shield been taken off the Web and put onto an isolated system like I requested?’
Jalen dropped the bowl she was eating out of — the metallic object clunked onto the desk, worryingly close to where the unlit keyboard was waiting — and slapped the side of her vidscreen with one of her tentacles, bringing it back to life. Jalen’s head wobbled into a passable nod. ‘Yep. No one’s going to be able to hack the shield through the Web anymore. Good idea, that. Now Bock, Bock’s not happy. He’s been whinin’ to Ala about how he has to go all the way to the shield
generators to monitor them now that he can’t do it on the Web.’
‘But couldn’t he just call someone stationed there and get them to check?’
‘Nah, the governor said he don’t trust anyone else to do it,’ Jalen answered. ‘Ala had a good go at him until he said he don’t trust anyone else but her.’
A smile tweaked Fei’s lips but she kept her tone professional. ‘Alright, let’s get started. It’s not like we can’t talk and work at the same time.’
‘Might as well do something for the coin-chips we’re gettin’,’ Jalen agreed. ‘Another boring day of waiting for our code to compile then?’
‘Once we get this simulation program completed, we won’t ever have to wait again,’ Fei said, seating herself at her desk. ‘This one will have real-time interpreting. So as soon as we write a line of code, it’s translated immediately into the console’s language.’
It was a feature she’d always wanted to introduce to TerraCorp’s systems but she hadn’t wanted Moz to steal her idea or, worse, reject it completely. Bock and Ala had put Fei in charge of the techroom (and her only other colleague) and Fei still wasn’t sure if she was ecstatic about this or absolutely terrified. Possibly both.
Jalen’s body quaked violently; the Jezlo could have been shaking with mirth or shuddering. It was hard to tell. ‘No more long hours of compiling? You mean, we’ll never get to sit around and do nothing?’
‘Well, it’s not like we’ll have much to do when the program is finally working.’ Fei grimaced and rubbed her forehead. ‘We can’t run any simulations until we have actual data to put into them. Bock and Ala will need to hire reputable scientists to start looking into plants and soils for us. And who knows how long that will take.’
Jalen noticeably cheered up after that.
They spent several hours running through the test suite the program needed to be subjected to. Jalen’s skills weren’t inconsiderable and she was quick to mention if she found an error in Fei’s code — and just as quick to fix it. Fei found that she was making fewer mistakes now that someone was paying closer attention to her work. It was a welcome change.
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