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How do you answer a question like that?
Had she realized this was an intergalactic civilization? No. On the other hand, during her first hours on Hazard, before she'd gotten out of what she now knew to be a temporary survival suit, when Esifwu was running through the standard orientation checklist (where are you from), Leia had wondered if the starfield locator display had even been showing the right galaxy. But entertaining an impossible question on the most impossible day of her life was far different from contemplating the fact that she not only did not know where Earth was, she wasn't sure if she was still in the Milky Way. In one way, it didn't matter. They could travel between star systems without lifetimes passing, and call people off-ship while doing so. Clearly, there was more out there than the physicists back home had imagined, but that wasn't hard; science fiction books and movies had assumed that all along because how else could you tell a story otherwise? Generation-ship novels notwithstanding.
She couldn't even stick with the question. She kept shying away from it. She looked around the rest of the table furtively. Some people had left. Most of the rest were chatting amongst themselves. Dulak's apparent focus was elsewhere, but she knew by now he was watching her out of the corner of his eye, and the corner of Dulak's eye was like a laser beam of attention from anyone else.
Radmer was obviously paying attention to her. His arm was massaging between her shoulder blades and his ankle had twined all the way around hers.
Finally, she cocked her head at Dulak. As expected, he politely disengaged from whatever he'd been discussing with Baylen and Ysbo, and turned towards her. "You live for moments like this, don't you?"
He laughed very briefly, a grunt rather than a peal. "Yes. In tens of thousands of years, four people got to have this kind of interaction."
"How am I doing?"
"This isn't a test, Leia; no grade, no ranking."
"How am I doing?"
He looked her over, shrugged, and said, "You're too passive, too calm. Somewhere inside you, you're screaming. You're going to have to find a way to let that out."
"Primal scream therapy," Leia laughed. Of course that didn't translate, and she dismissed the question. "I get that this number means intergalactic. I don't have the energy to think about that right now. I just want to go sleep. Although your comment about screaming makes me uneasy."
Dulak turned to Radmer, who said, "She won't be alone if she wakes up screaming." Dulak nodded his acceptance. Leia wondered if she got a vote in this, decided she did, and that she'd vote for the consensus decision without any qualms. She thought maybe she should say something, just to fight back against all these accusations of passivity, but she didn't have the energy for that, either. Which argued for their position.
Do not care, she told herself, getting up out of her chair and mechanically saying good night to everyone. She had expected hugs from Ysbo and Baylen. She was only slightly surprised that Wrinton and Dulak joined in as well.
If you were going to get really, really lost, these were good people hang out with when you couldn't go home.
Leia walked back to Radmer's room with him.
"At least I made it to dinner today."
Radmer looked at her blankly.
"Yesterday I barely made it past lunch."
He smiled, understanding she was mocking herself for falling asleep so early the day before. "Today you had Andal to distract you. By comparison, you must feel completely normal and well-adjusted," he contributed.
"All it takes is a colony world on the brink of collapse."
"Not JUST a colony world on the brink of collapse."
She looked over at him in question.
"A colony world on the brink of collapse AND a well-meaning bunch of would-be rescuers about to collapse with them."
Leia laughed out loud at that. "Surely not that bad."
Radmer shrugged. "Looked like it to me."
They both worked through their evening routine, then sat down on the bed.
"What is most frustrating," Leia said, veering off subject, "is that I can't ask questions fast enough. Either I don't understand the words and I have to learn them and teach ship-mind my words, or I understand the words, but I need to learn a whole new subject that we didn't learn in school back home, or at least I didn't learn in school back home. Or I understand the words and I understand the subject, but I'm missing some detail."
"Amable helped with that today."
"Yes. Amable helped a lot. But there are just an infinite number of questions left."
"About Andal?"
"No. Yes, there are an infinite number of questions about Andal, but we're all together in not knowing those answers. And I know you said we'd find answers. Some of the questions are just dumb things I can't help wondering about like the fossil record for the evolution of humans on my home planet, and whether evolution happened in a lot of different places, or we were just wrong thinking we evolved on Earth, or what. It doesn't really matter. But how can I just ignore the massive improbability of finding so many humans not from Earth, and not just look-like and shaped-like humans, but human down through all the details."
Radmer started to say something and she cut him short.
"No, I don't want to talk about it. I'm exhausted, and I can't hardly keep straight what I've already learned today and believe me that's a set of questions that can wait, along with how can we travel faster than the speed of light and is there any way to use my height in centimeters, which I know, but which varies by time of day, and might vary if the gravity here is different from home, which I think might be true, to figure out a more accurate second so the time conversion ship-mind uses is more accurate and I can better understand how old you are and all the dates in your history. That's just two dumb questions I can barely articulate, and which I really want to know the answer to, and which are just going to have to wait, possibly a long time, before I understand the answers. And I've got a list about a mile long."
"I'm going to lay down and snuggle with you."
"Feeling anxious again?" Leia joked.
"No, just tired. Sleepy. And I want to."
"Not sex? Just snuggling?"
"Never suggest that snuggling is less important than sex."
Leia sighed as Radmer wrapped himself around her. He was warm. He was starting to feel familiar.
Changing the subject again, she started telling him about her first trip to Europe, and how she'd spent months learning languages, studying guide books, picking hostels to stay in and what she would do. "When I was there, all that preparation was incredibly helpful. But I kept getting surprised by the smallest differences. Like, at home, people ate lunch and dinner, and people talked about how eating breakfast was important, but a lot of people didn't. And everyone complained about how they were all getting fatter all the time. When I got to the first hostel, I went to a café for something to drink in the afternoon before dinner. I just wanted to sit someone where there were people and read. But when I got my drink, they acted like I was crazy for not wanting something to eat with my drink. I had extended family in one country that I visited a little later, and they did the same thing. Eventually I asked them, and I found out that there, people had breakfast, then a morning snack, then lunch, then an afternoon snack, then dinner, and then something to drink after dinner. So many more meals, a whole different routine, and the guidebooks had barely mentioned it. The language textbooks skipped right over it, and every day, this jarring, unexpected thing kept tripping me up. Now, here I am, and I can't figure out how clothing works: where to get it, what to get for when, how to clean it, whether to store it. Endless, stupid details that I know I will learn, and I know it will take time, and it's just crazy-making."
Their heads were so close together she could hear ship-mind whispering the translation in Radmer's ear. It went on a long time, even longer than she had. She wondered how accurately it had come through, but then realized that if it hadn't translated well, that kind of made her point even more effectively than her exhausted, overwhelmed attempt at explaining.
Getting it out, whether or not he or anyone else understood, made her feel better, made her feel less likely to just start crying.
"You know tomorrow will probably just be worse," Radmer said, with the same teasing tone he'd used a few minutes ago, that she was starting to hear has his cue that he was making a joke. She giggled, which was probably a mistake, because she couldn't stop giggling, and a few minutes later she was crying anyway. He used her tears as an excuse to start kissing her, which first felt humiliating, then felt really good, because as always with him, he put all his careful attention to detail into his kisses, but without any other goal. After she stopped crying she reached down and found his erection and explored its size and shape with her fingers through the thin fabric of his pants. She had noticed that his clothes were thinner today. Having Baylen point it out with a blunt explanation that Radmer didn't bother to deny eliminated any remaining question in her mind about Radmer's interest in her.
She felt his penis flex under her hands, and he stopped kissing her with a gasp, then slipped his hands below the waist of her new, much more familiar and comfortable pants. He slid them down over her ass and she wiggled to help them slide down her legs. He exploited the wiggle to roll over with her on top of him, then waited. She didn't realize at first that he had just completely stopped doing anything after she was sprawled over him; she was too busy trying to adjust herself over his cock. He groaned, and pulled her head back down to his to continue kissing her. It occurred to her that he had paused to see if she panicked again, as she had the day before. She briefly contemplated trying to explain that Amable had addressed her concerns about STDs and pregnancy, another day had gone by and she felt a lot less uncomfortable around him, and most of all, she wasn't worried any more that this might be a pity fuck, or that having sex with him risked losing one of two friends. At least if things went bad now, she had several more new acquaintances to go cry to, and at least some limited expectation of sympathy.
Most of all, though, a half day of him constantly touching her had constituted enough foreplay that her worries about not being good enough in bed had retreated.
She wiggled to settle his cock more snugly in her cleft, with only his thin pants between them. At least she didn't have to worry about his pants getting wet, from her or from him; it sounded like these people had the ultimate in stain removal technology. After several more minutes of extremely pleasant kissing and snuggling, just as she was starting to find a rhythm that felt particularly good, he tipped her back over onto her side and shucked off those very thin pants that were indeed getting quite slippery.
"Still too many clothes," he muttered, and she agreed. Their shirts landed on the floor next to the pants and Leia took a moment to check out his body. He was about her height, but as one would expect, more of it was in his torso and less in his legs. He was broad-shouldered, barrel chested and whether through a genetic tendency to never let go of muscle once developed, or a lot of time spent lifting and pushing, muscular arms. They weren't the kind of bulked up arms that inevitably came with elaborate supplementation routines and questions about steroid use, rather sinewy. The veins weren't popped up in a way that meant lunch would involve cottage cheese, turkey breast with any remaining fat removed with tweezers and a slice of tomato for dessert, all of it unsalted, and followed up by a water pill and several trips to the loo. The second time she went on a date with one of those, she'd memorized the type and learned to avoid it. Best of all, he had nice legs; birdy legs on an otherwise strong man were always a shock and she'd learned to associate them with guys who had more serious eating disorders and sometimes did too many drugs.
Radmer was her physical ideal in a lover. She'd never particularly cared one way or another about hair, so the fact that he had thick shock of muddy brown hair on his head, while attractive in a rumpled, mad scientist sort of way, was largely irrelevant, nor did she mind the whorls of slightly darker hair on his chest. She traced the treasure trail of hair down from his navel and was back where they'd started when they still had all their clothes on. He hadn't yet shoved her down and fallen on top of her, so she wasn't surprised that once again he put her on top. This time, though, he propped himself up in a sitting position and puller her onto his lap facing him. She only had to bend her neck slightly to kiss him, and he made good use of the ready access to her pussy this position offered. It took him a very few minutes to bring her to a panting orgasm. By then, she was eager to slide herself onto his rigid length. She moved her legs from where she had wrapped them around him until she was kneeling over him, and they both scooted down the bed. She needed to move very little. His eyes had slitted and she thought he was still trying to hold back, increasingly unsuccessfully as his hips thrust and retreated with greater and greater urgency. She found a good angle and felt herself starting to build towards another orgasm. He smiled up, watching her close in, and reached a hand in between them to help her along, stilling his hips to give her another minute. When she toppled over into a second, stronger orgasm, he came with her.
For first time with a new partner, definitely the best sex she'd ever had. Who was she kidding? Definitely the best sex she'd ever had. Not the most orgasms in one session, but he wasn't asleep yet.
"Oh, that was good. That was really, really good," he said, as much to himself as to her. "Can we do that again."
She laughed, and lowered herself to nestle on top of him, enjoying the aftershocks that returned with the movement and careful not to dislodge him since he was still hard. She kissed him again, and he lengthened it, as leisurely after sex as he had been before.
After several minutes of that, she felt him start to move in her again. He hadn't at any point softened. Puzzled, she asked, "You did come, right?"
He nuzzled her mouth and said, "Yes, I did, and you did, too, twice, but that's no reason to stop now, is it?"
"Not when you put it that way," she replied, and laughed when the pun turned a simple translation into a paragraph of explanation.
"How or where would you like me to put it, Leia?" he asked playfully, his hands reaching around to separate her cheeks. "We're all nicely wet. What do you think?" She hadn't had that in mind, and while she wasn't necessarily opposed to the idea, and had enjoyed that in the past, she wasn't sure she felt that comfortable with him yet.
"I'm quite happy with where you are, now."
"So am I, but please know that I'm ready to comply with any request you might have now or in the future."
"That's a very generous offer."
"I'm feeling very generous."
Better think carefully before taking him up on that offer then, but it was tempting to consider for later tonight or tomorrow morning. "I know I just said I was quite happy with where you are now, and I am, but I'm also wondering why I keep winding up on top. It's not because you want me to do the work because you're still the one, er, doing the heavy lifting. Does this mean anything?"
He slowed down and wrapped his arms all the way around her and squeezed. "I don't know you well, don't know your history. I know you've been nervous, and I've been trying to make sure I don't contribute to that nervousness in any way. I also know you've been slow to say no to anything people ask of you, and slow to ask for what you need and want. Letting you set the pace, and putting you on top seemed the safest way to do what I wanted to do, without pushing you into something you might regret. I didn't just want you tonight."
Well, that was heartbreakingly sweet. Try not to cry too hard, she told herself, somewhat unsuccessfully. But just as he'd picked up on her nerves and panicky reactions, he acted as if he understood that these weren't the kind of tears to worry about, talk about, or halt a nice slow love-making over. When she stopped crying, he followed her in rolling over. He didn't interfere when she pushed his hand away to touch herself as he thrust into her. And he delivered a fast, hard fuck when she made it clear that was what she wanted right now.
That tied her up for the most orgasms in one night. This time, he was breathless as his cock, flaccid at last, slid out of her.
As she was contemplating the universal unpleasantness of the wet spot, he sleepily reached over her and fiddled with something on the wall. She heard something in his ear-piece, too quiet to make out what, but he pushed her away from the wet spot and fiddled with the controls a second time. There was a slight breeze and then he readjusted her back where she'd been. No more wet spot.
Oh, boy. Futuristic space technology is cool. Unprotected sex and you don't have to get up to clean yourself up or the sheets. And on that thought, she drifted off to sleep, completely relaxed and utterly content.
She dreamed again of that starfield and the horrifying sense of falling into a bright starfield. This time, though, she remembered more of what she had seen: explosions that she couldn't hear or feel, two lights moving at incredible speeds, twisting impossibly, leaving more explosions behind them. Worst of all, the ship they had just exited was continuing to break up behind them, large sections grinding against each other, twisting horribly.
Unable to look any more, she woke herself up, as she had from nightmares since she was a small child.
She woke up, not screaming, but sweating and shivering. Radmer had a hand on her, and was propped up on his other elbow, watching her. When he saw she was awake, he smiled at her reassuringly. She scooted closer to him and he wrapped his arms around her and twined his legs in hers.
"Same dream?"
"Yes."
"Can you talk about it?"
No one had asked, yet. She wondered if that was out of politeness or fear.
"I'm falling, into a starfield. I think it's from when you took me off that ship. Did you really take me in that suit across, outside," she fumbled for the right term. "Extra vehicular activity is what they call it at home. Spacewalk isn't right, because we weren't walking. Were we tethered?"
"Not with material, at first, but yes, with a tractor, to each other, and to the shuttle we were transferring to. When you panicked, I added a physical tether, and I held onto your suit. That kind of panic is unusual, but not unheard of; I followed the standard protocol from that point. I had no idea you'd never been in space before." He paused, then asked, "Is there more, or is the falling all of it?"
"There's more, now. There wasn't the other times I had that dream. This time I saw a couple of lights moving around really fast and everywhere they went there were bright flashes and explosions and." She stopped, thinking about it. "Was the ship you were taking me off of already coming apart in pieces?"
"Yes. You were one of the last ones we pulled off and we almost missed you. We were hooked into ships' systems enough to detect all survival suits that had been activated, but of course you had not. The last life-signs check turned you up, and someone else who'd been knocked out before they could get into their suit. The fighters were destroying the parts of the ship that were already known to have been evacuated." He waited again, to let her continue.
After a moment, she said, "That's all. But I think there might be more. I woke up later this time, and I chose to wake up, because it was so awful and I didn't want to wake up screaming again." She pushed back from him enough to look at his face in the dim light that had come up as soon as she woke up. "Was I screaming?"
"No. You were twitching and sweating, but you weren't screaming. How do you feel now?"
"Extremely glad to be here with you."
"I'm glad to be here with you, too." He kissed her briefly. "I wish I could have done something at the time."
"I can't imagine what it could have been. I could not have understood you. You had to hurry, right? If you found me unexpectedly when you thought you were done."
"Yes. That's why I got sent in. I know a lot about the way that kind of ship works. I have a lot of innate ability, and a lot of experience improvising with technology of all kinds. The consensus had been that there was no way to safely get in, get you into a suit, and get you back out without compromising your air. You weren't responding to any message we sent you on any frequency, because the emergency radio was turned on in your cell. I thought I could get you out, and in this particular case, I was allowed to try. Sometimes I'm not allowed to try, if everyone else is really sure it's impossible."
Leia took a deep breath. "Wow. As bad as I thought things were for me, they were a whole lot worse."
Radmer nodded. "I'm glad you're here."
"So am I."
"Want some help getting back to sleep?"
"I do not want any more of Esifwu's medication, thank you very much."
He laughed. "I had something less pharmaceutical and more physical in mind. Want to find out what it is?" he asked with a leer.
"You have to ask?"
"It's polite," he retorted, and flipped her over and spooned against her. He pulled her back over with him, so she was lying partly on top of him, sliding an arm under her and around to find her pussy.
"I'm supposed to just lie here and accept this?" she asked.
"You've got hands. I'm sure you can think of something."
She laughed, and reached back around to find his cock. He let her massage him for a few minutes, then detached her hand. Rolling them both over so he was on top of her and they were both facing down, he pushed her shoulders down towards the bed and lifted her hips up without stopping what his fingers were doing in her cleft. He had clearly decided he didn't need to worry about coercing her into something she didn't want to do. She wondered briefly whether he was going to follow through on his earlier suggestion of anal sex, but she started coming so hard she decided that actually might be kind of fun. He was a little large, but he was good at keeping her excited, and even better about going slow and being gentle; she trusted him enough not to hurt her.
But that wasn't what he intended this time. She felt him slide home into her pussy without ever stopping stroking her clitoris. She started to push up off the bed, forgetting that closer in this position was lower down. She felt his hand starting to push between her shoulders as she dropped down and pressed her cheek into the bed, scooting backwards to seat him deeper. As his thrusts got harder, she braced her arms against the wall, pushing herself back against him, urging him deeper, and still his hand did not leave her clitoris. As she neared each peak, he'd pause, pressed hard into her, and tease her over the top, then cup her pussy with gentle pressure while he returned to his own rhythm. She'd been intellectually pleased the first time he did that. The second time, she'd been incoherent in her pleasure. The third time she started screaming, not in pain or terror, but from the wildness and totality of her release. And the third time, he didn't stop and cup her gently, he kept pushing her higher, whispering something in the ear that didn't have the ear-piece in it. Too far gone to make any sense of what he was saying, the long peak of her final orgasm went on and on and on, her pussy relentlessly gripping him, until he jerked in his own release, and they both slumped down on the bed.
Eventually, he realized he had the wrong ear and moved them so he could comfortably murmur in the one with the ear-piece. "Should I apologize?" he asked in a roughened low voice. Had he been yelling, too? What was the soundproofing like on this ship? Were his neighbors going to be looking her over tomorrow morning? High-fiving him? Oh, the problems with multi-family housing.
"For the best sex of my entire life? More orgasms than I've ever had at any one time? The hands-on, expert demonstration that I can come way longer than I thought I could? Yeah, I'm upset. Definitely apologize and do it again. Soon, but not right now because I think I'm about ready to fall asleep." Was she babbling? It sounded to her like she was babbling. Did he understand any of that? Did any of it make sense to understand? He chuckled after a moment, so she let herself slide back asleep, feeling even more like a boneless rag doll than she had earlier.
She slept without incident until she woke up to feel his hand between her legs, again, and morning wood nestled between her cheeks. As fun as that would be, a trip to the facilities was in order first. She asked him where the closest one was, and he opened a sliding door she had not realized was there. A decent sized shower and facilities were wedged in there. She went in, shut the door, did her business and then offered it back to him. "Already been there and done that and hoping to do you next. We have thirty minutes before breakfast."
"There's a schedule?"
"There's a meeting at breakfast; all your favorite people will be there."
"Any chance of a shower?" she asked, eying it longingly, torn between still-more sex, which should not be that much of a draw considering how much she'd had last night, and Radmer's crystal-clear continuing interest in having as much sex with her as she could fit around important things like sleep, and the prospect of showing up at a meeting not smelling like what they'd been doing all night. People had been so blunt before she and Radmer had done the deed, she was already mortified just thinking about what kind of color commentary she'd be hearing today.
"Shower with sex?" suggested Radmer.
"It looks small."
He nudged her into the facilities and then the shower, crowding in behind her. He made quick work of cleaning her, then angled her in the corner and nuzzled her neck while the water rinsed his back. "Do you need to do anything to your hair?" he asked while reaching between her legs. She was so tender at this point it took only a moment for her to start panting in arousal, angling her hips back to improve access.
"No. I'm good. Want to get out?"
"No," he said, and bent his knees slightly so his cock could slide into her. It was a good angle, causing him to rub against her clitoris with each stroke. His hands slid easily over her body with the warm water.
"Are we going to run out of water?"
He slowed down briefly while trying to understand what she was asking. When he got it, he distractedly said, "No. Virtually perfect recycling system. We can scrub particles in flight if we need to make more."
"Really?"
"Find something else to do with your mouth, Leia," he said roughly, increasing his pace and reaching down to press her labia more tightly against her clitoris and his penis. She started coming almost immediately and he stopped pumping to enjoy the sensation for a moment, before resuming. Only a moment later, her knees buckled and she started sliding, light-headed, to the shower floor. There wasn't exactly space for that, so he pulled her back up and held her against the wall while he shut off the water and activated the drying cycle. Then he pulled out of her, and pulled her out and eased her down onto the bed.
"How are you?" he asked, covering her with his body but not reentering her.
"I'm great. You did not get yours."
"I can stop any time. What do you want to do?"
"How are we on time?"
"That was very fast. We have about fifteen minutes."
"Before we're late?"
"Before we have to leave." He knelt between her legs and lifted them up to his shoulders, taking a good look down at her swollen and glistening vulva. Bending down over her, he let the head of his penis push against her. She automatically arched her back to help him back in, and he took that as permission to continue. Gripping her hips and angling her up higher, he slid into her and thumbed her clitoris, pressing her closed around his dick.
He was really doing a lot of this, thought Leia, through a haze of arousal. She ought to be helping. She'd hate for him to think she was a lazy lover, unwilling to do anything to help out. But it was really hard to maintain a line of thought when she just kept coming and coming and coming. Nothing about what he was doing suggested he actually wanted her doing anything but lie there panting out her orgasm. And once again, he'd stopped pumping to let her orgasm massage him right over the edge, but hadn't stopped what he was doing to her with his fingers. Once again, she watched him though slitted eyes as he stiffened during his release, and found her arms in time to wrap them around him when he collapsed on top of her. She put her legs around him, too.
They probably needed another shower. They definitely did not have time for one.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2012.
Created: July 9, 2012 Updated: July 9, 2012