Taji From Beyond the Rings

by R. Cooper

  “Do you understand,” he began gently while Taji’s hands destroyed his hair, “what you do and what you are?”

  He was so careful. Taji pulled in gulping breaths for the press of one large finger, trying not to push for more while it felt like too much. But he knew how it would be, and that was enough to set his thoughts on fire. He twitched his hips and Trenne pushed them down with the same ease as before, as always. Taji’s cock jumped. Trenne placed a kiss to his chest, then stopped for more lubricant. He worked that into Taji, silent and diligent, slipping in another finger when Taji moaned impatiently.

  Two felt like his toy, and Taji clenched around them as though he was alone in his bed again and it was all he had. “Please,” he grunted, because he wasn’t alone this time. He bent his knees more to leave himself as open as he could and dropped his arms to stretch against the bedding. Those eyes never left him.

  “Come on,” Taji pleaded, trailing a hand back up to Trenne’s shoulder and digging in to leave bruises. He didn’t mean to, but every slide of Trenne’s fingers had him panting and shifting his hips up as much as he could. He was allowed to, and only then pushed down, as if Trenne liked Taji’s squirming as much as it tormented him.

  His future was more of this, Trenne filling him up again and again. Taji thought of that when Trenne removed his fingers and he couldn’t stop a shaky sob. But Trenne didn’t make him wait any longer. He settled a hand on Taji’s hip, holding him still for the long, slow push inside.

  Taji didn’t bite back his groans, rising and broken sounds because there was nothing left of him that wasn’t aware of Trenne’s cock. He was as full as he could be and wanted to cry for it. He’d never take all of Trenne’s cock. Taji was small and human, with an uncooperative prosthesis. That would always be true.

  Trenne ran his hands over Taji’s sides while Taji adjusted to the feel of him. He was whispering, calling Taji star, and shehzha, calling him his name in the same tone. He bundled the blanket under Taji’s hips.

  For that, Taji forced himself to relax his grip on Trenne’s hair and to give his ears light, tender strokes instead. “Good,” was all he could manage, but he got a kiss on the mouth for it, and then Trenne watching his face, his marked cheeks darkened with a flush.

  Taji turned his head, restless, scratching the itch of sweat at his neck. He shut his eyes as he turned back only while he placed a lingering, breathless kiss on Trenne’s lips. Trenne’s fluttery ears at that were delightful. Taji couldn’t stop smiling. “Your shehzha,” he whispered, rubbing his nose along Trenne’s chin because he had to touch him any way he could, “awaits your pleasure.”

  Trenne rocked his hips, moving in long, aching drags that set Taji alight from the inside out. Taji made loud noises of approval into Trenne’s ear, and Trenne dropped his head to kiss Taji’s neck, his collarbone, before coming back up to watch Taji try to catch his breath.

  Taji tangled his fingers in Trenne’s silky hair and curled his other hand against Trenne’s lower back. Trenne slid a hand to Taji’s thigh, hiked it up against him and held it there, so Taji gave in and closed his eyes.

  “You are pleased, peha?” Trenne was perfect for worrying, and mean to try to make Taji speak right now. Taji tightened his fingers in Trenne’s hair. The hint of strain in Trenne’s voice made him shiver. Trenne’s hand was firm and Taji was filled with his cock and he imagined that taste, the drops on his tongue that morning but soaking into him, and he was warm and flying.

  Trenne moved faster, though not fast, aching thrusts that brought Taji down and sent him up, made him whine against Trenne’s skin and then lick it as if that taste would be found there. Trenne’s skin was different, but still good. Taji chased the flavor in between panting breaths. His cock moved against Trenne’s stomach, the space tight and hot, but he didn’t come. He could feel it building but he wanted Trenne to fill him first.

  He pulled Trenne’s hair, whining, and Trenne pulled out and flipped him onto his stomach. Taji had a second of blank surprise and then he was moaning again as Trenne lifted his hips and repositioned the bundled blanket under him.

  “Trenne?” Taji whispered, hands splayed over the bedding, grasping at nothing as Trenne spread him open.

  “I like my shehzha like this also,” Trenne admitted, quiet and devastating. He slipped his fingers inside Taji to stroke his prostate.

  Taji jerked forward and rubbed his face against the bed. “Please.”

  “I think he has given me everything and then he gives me more,” Trenne went on relentlessly, fingering Taji as though Taji wasn’t grunting for his cock. “His words. His honor. His body.”

  “Trenne.” Taji could barely speak.

  “I imagine him waiting for me this way. Is it shameful?”

  He dared to ask that. Taji fiercely shook his head and pushed back onto Trenne’s fingers, but Trenne held him still and pulled them out. He took hold of Taji’s hips and then slowly sank back into Taji’s aching, sensitized body.

  Trenne stretched over him, one hand at his side, his mouth at Taji’s neck. Taji arched into him to feel the shape of the knife against his spine. He didn’t bother to protest that he couldn’t stay up this way for long. Trenne wrapped an arm beneath him to hold his hips and then resumed rocking into him, and Taji was left to pant to the bedding.

  Taji would wait for this, like this. No one should think otherwise. He wanted to get a hand around his dick, but clutching a blanket was all he managed. His thighs were hot, shaking, and Trenne didn’t pull out enough for Taji to feel anything but stuffed full. Taji wanted him to come so much he was drooling and gave up swallowing to bite at a pillow.

  Trenne was relentless, picking up the pace so slowly that Taji didn’t notice until his moans were no longer muffled by the bedding. Trenne’s grip tightened on his hip, pulling Taji back, and the black behind Taji’s shut eyes went warm and hazy. He splayed his fingers and let his head fall. He felt as if he was humming, but was distantly aware that the sounds from his throat were needier than that.

  His spine was liquid heat, his stomach coiled tight, but that was fuzzy and far away. Trenne finally, finally pounded into him, heat in his voice when Taji took it greedily. Taji shehzha, Taji heard, and went without a struggle when Trenne sat back on his knees and pulled Taji with him. He held Taji down while thrusting up, giving Taji nothing to do but arch against him, overwhelmed. Taji’s cock was untouched but he was groaning, coming, and then face down on the bed again, Trenne’s hands roaming feverishly over him before Trenne hauled him tight against him and went still.

  For a while, they just breathed. Then Trenne slipped a hand over Taji’s. Taji kissed it. He was made of sparks and light.

  “It is not real,” Trenne said in ‘Asha, nearly echoing Taji’s thoughts. He trailed his fingers over Taji’s slippery stomach, then up to feel where he was still buried in Taji.

  Taji twitched, then exhaled, long and happy. “That was not careful,” he murmured, almost smug.

  “No,” Trenne admitted, and offered his hand to Taji. He watched Taji clean his fingers with his tongue, and breathed in and out, hand flexing with the control he was reaching for. Then he made a regretful noise and took his hand away. Taji didn’t have time to object before Trenne slowly eased out of him and sat back.

  Taji had never been observed like this. He couldn’t help the thread of nervousness in his voice. “Am I what you wanted?”

  Trenne gently rolled Taji onto his back, then paused to look Taji over, his ears doing all sorts of interesting things. Taji left his limbs sprawled and Trenne took this as an invitation to resettle over him, heavy between his legs. His hair was a mess which Taji enjoyed feeling slip through his fingers. Trenne closed his eyes for it, and it made the silence between them sweet for the first few minutes.

  “Someday, will we have normal sex?” Taji focused on the taste in his mouth and the heat in his face and not on Trenne’s reaction. “When this fades, and we…someday, I want to know your body while both of us are in o
ur right minds. At least once, we should—”

  Trenne pressed their lips together, shared Taji’s breath, then pulled back.

  “You learned human kisses fast,” Taji complained without heat. His voice was different, tentative. Young, somehow, and that made him think of Larin, which he didn’t want. He swallowed. “Is it bad that you weren’t careful this time?” He was warm and content now but could not keep the ache out of his voice. He would want this again, and more.

  “I am sorry, peha.” Trenne’s words were soft against Taji’s stinging skin. “If this progresses—when this progresses—it should be when you are safer. If I die,” he hesitated when Taji frowned but he did not take those words back, “you will suffer. The longing will be cruel.”

  “I don’t like to think of you dying,” Taji told him, pulling Trenne’s hand to his cheek. “And that’s not because of any longing.”

  “Ah.” Trenne’s ears gave several complicated, adorable flutters. “You start to feel better, and say happy nonsense.”

  Taji wrinkled his nose, because, all things considered, he was feeling good but he couldn’t summon the energy to explain himself.

  Trenne moved, which Taji did not like at all, tugging on Trenne’s hand to keep him there, and Trenne startled him with a soft, open expression.

  “You’re so pretty.” Taji breathed it, and shivered at the pleasure on Trenne’s face.

  “My shehzha,” Trenne lingered on the word this time, “flatters me.”

  “Your shehzha does not.” Taji kissed each of Trenne’s fingertips.

  “And tries to distract me from what needs to be done.” Trenne did not seem unhappy about that. “Will you eat now?”

  The last thing Taji wanted was to go downstairs, or to bother with food when he was in bed with Trenne. He’d be ready for Trenne’s cock again in no time, and whether Taji came again or not wouldn’t matter, in the end. He’d like to, but he’d feel amazing either way.

  Trenne had said that, hadn’t he? Something like that, when he had initially explained shehzha. But he made Taji come anyway. It was awful that Trenne wouldn’t get to feel this because Taji was human. Though maybe he didn’t want it.

  “Taji?” Trenne prompted, peering down at Taji in concern before his ears sprang up and his expression went soft again. “Taji shehzha,” he tried again, coaxing, “will you eat now?”

  “If you feed me.” Taji meant to bargain, but he had never bargained while naked under Trenne. He was teasing. Flirting.

  “This is not real,” Trenne said again. “But if it was, I would feed you, shehzha. I have before.”

  Taji squirmed. “Yes, you have.” The others had seen it. A significant portion of Shavian nobility had seen it. “In front of people. I never…I never thought about it.” He’d just been happy to be around Trenne.

  “Do you not like them to see?” Trenne stilled. “Because I am a soldier? Or hurat?”

  “Trenne.” Taji shoved at Trenne’s shoulder until Trenne finally moved for real, sliding off Taji to kneel next to him. Taji sat up, shivering slightly. “I was already silly over you. Now they’ll just make more jokes.”

  “They make jokes about Markita, for chasing after his newest interest, and Nadir, for enjoying flirtation most of all, despite how he acts—how he was.” Trenne hesitated. “I thought it human to have fun in this way with the people they care for.”

  “Lin—”

  “Does not lie to joke. She uses the truth.” Trenne regarded Taji intently. “Silly over me?”

  Taji gaped, then shook his head. He leaned in and narrowed his eyes so Trenne would know he was serious—flushed and listing slowly forward, but serious. “Do you think I would be this for anyone but you?”

  Shehzha honesty was inescapable, even for the shehzha.

  “’Silly’ means foolish.” Trenne gently kept Taji from falling over with one hand. “I have never seen that from you.”

  Taji’s lips parted and he stared at Trenne for so long his eyes went dry. “Everyone else has,” he said first, distantly dreading his future mortification. “You don’t need to tread lightly around the subject. You don’t need to speak of it at all. We’ll just…let it be understood and then we can never mention it again.” Except for farther along in the shehzha process when Taji would no longer be even a little in control of his mouth.

  His mouth. Taji’s distracted mind went utterly still for one moment. No wonder that was another term for shehzha. That was pretty good wordplay. He had noticed it before, but he’d thought it was a purely sexual connotation.

  The others on the team might have known. They had been stationed here long enough to hear about it, long enough to decide Taji was natural shehzha, like the Shavians had, because he couldn’t shut up, and he wasn’t great at lying, and his pining for Trenne had been visible from orbit.

  “Never mention it again?” Trenne’s hesitant question called Taji back from each stab of humiliation. “You believe you behaved wrong around me?” He was so quiet.

  Taji reached up to stroke one of Trenne’s ears until it was less flat. “Not wrong, just obvious. I tried not to be, but you never seemed to mind.”

  Trenne took hold of his hand. “After we brought you here, I thought many things.” Taji snorted without meeting Trenne’s eye. Trenne continued anyway. “I thought you must be frightened and were in pain, that you were alone, that IPTC should take more care with you. You were educated, a person of value, and you also showed every feeling, every thought on your face. That is bravery. But you made remarks, in whispers but also boldly, telling me that you believed no one saw you. You expected no one to see you or to care. This, I recognized.”

  “Trenne, you don’t have to—”

  He was firmly cut off. “I said I would protect you and I did not lie. But, to myself, I thought of the stories of shehzha, the few I had seen. And I saw you, Taji Ameyo. Others also saw, but you did not choose them.” Trenne did not stop even though Taji stared at him in blank astonishment. “You would not choose an IPTC soldier—you resent that you serve them and resent your presence here. And, once you learned more, you would not choose a hurat.” Trenne did not stop at Taji’s new objections either. “All this I knew within days of meeting you. But I also knew I would never get a similar chance again, and there was only a little risk to present myself. It gave you pleasure, and I do not like to see you unhappy. It gave me pleasure also.”

  “What the fuck,” Taji said, not asking. “What? Present yourself? Did you…did you officially present yourself as a potential eshe to me? Why? Just because I’m the Mouth? Because I can’t shut up and I have googly eyes for you?”

  The backward pull of those ears spelled great confusion.

  A fire burned in Taji’s chest, then sputtered and died. “Never mind,” he said, fond of Trenne’s earnestness, even when it hurt. He petted each ear in turn. “You could have told me what a shehzha was, first.” Taji would still have agreed to be this for Trenne—he couldn’t imagine not agreeing—but it might have saved him some anguish if he had known from the start that Trenne viewed it all as his chance to have a fantasy.

  “The others learned quickly in their time here. But you did not leave the house for anything but work.” Trenne paused. “It did not seem harmful to dream of it without your knowledge. It made you speak with me. I did not anticipate that.”

  Taji shut his eyes and let his hand fall. “I was the ideal shehzha from your youth, and you were trying to make me fall in love with you, but you didn’t expect me to talk to you?” Love was a human concept, but he didn’t change his words. Love had been the result if not the intent.

  “You are clever and kind and meant for other worlds. My efforts were to please you, but I did not expect you to take notice of me.” Trenne brushed his fingers over Taji’s cheek. “Lin made comments about how much you enjoyed my attention. I knew you could have better.”

  “Lin doesn’t joke,” Taji reminded him, voice unsteady.

  “I enjoyed your attention also,
” Trenne said quickly, as though telling a secret.

  “So we became friends,” Taji finished. That was more than he’d expected, too. The rest was nothing Taji hadn’t guessed. He and Trenne were close, and he could give Trenne this, and that was a dream, too, in a way. A luxury, really. More than enough for one IPTC xeno-geek who had no right to expect more.

  “Taji?” Trenne touched him again. “You are unhappy? Did I hurt you?”

  Taji grasped Trenne’s hand in both of his and shook his head. “I thought you were going to clean me up.” He opened his eyes to stare at the whorls in Trenne’s palm. He placed a kiss there, too lingering to be playful, but he would blame it on being human if Trenne asked. “And force me to eat,” he added.

  As a distraction, it was perfect. Taji was almost pleased with himself.

  Trenne took a deep breath. “I did not think Taji Ameyo would ever not want to eat,” he pronounced carefully, watchful, so Taji kissed him again.