The Belter's Story (BRIGAND) (6 page)

"Yes. I —"

She silenced us with her mouth, something neither of us had dared before. Her tongue sought ours, rough and silky, probing, chasing. She placed her small hands at the back of our neck and pressed her open mouth hard against our lips, as if the force of her kiss might cause us to pass into each other. She leaned her compact frame against our chest and then broke contact, leaving us both gasping.

"Do it while I touch you. I want to feel everything." She untied her robe, letting it fall open and then slide from her shoulders. Her slender body was a poem of cream and gold punctuated by darker tones.

To say that Belters are reserved would be like calling the Trade Guilds frugal. We cover ourselves up and hold ourselves in. It's how we survive the pitiless void, but it makes us distant. At almost twenty, neither the Cromley, nor the Jase had ever seen a woman naked before.

We couldn't help ourselves. Our eyes ravaged the delicate landscape of her skin, gorging on the shape and texture of every hollow, every prominence. With her hair tied back, we could see the perfect geometry of her small ears and the faint pulse in her neck just beneath. We noticed how similar the soft skin at the base of her throat was to the span between hip and pubis.

The glow that enveloped her rang bright with colors of excitement touched by a hint of apprehension. For a moment we were perplexed. But then her odors and the sounds of her body told us. Laena was afraid we might not want her.

"Laena — We've never —"

"Neither have I. It doesn't matter. Crom, Jase, you want this too." Her violet eyes probed ours. "Don't you?"

"Yes but —"

"No. Don't talk. Not like that. Use your other voice." She tugged at our shirt, pulling it up, first over our torso and then our head. As she slid the soft garment off of our upraised arms, we could feel her breasts, pointed and heavy, pressing against our chest and the involuntary response in our groin nearly overwhelmed us.

"What's this?" Laena's small fingers brushed the circular implant that rested just below our sternum.

For a moment we weren't sure how to answer. Worried that she’d be disgusted, or worse, fearful, the Jase wanted to lie. But the Cromley overruled him. We'd never hidden anything from Laena before. We wouldn't start now. "It's part of Cromley's bot. The europine changed her. She's part of us now. She's the one who taught us to see."

"To see — yes. I've missed that so much. Please, Cromley. Show me."

And so we touched her and let our glow entwine with hers while we breathed the warm fragrance of her hair.

She gasped and then sighed. "That's it. Oh —"

Laena placed her lips in the center of our chest and then brushed them slowly to our left, grazing the skin of our pectoral, just touching. We could feel her mouth and at the same time, we shared her perception of our chest sliding past her lips. We inhaled the tang of each other's skin — and our own. Like mirrors facing mirrors, every touch, every taste reflected through us both, not dying like echoes, but growing in intensity as we fed one another's senses.

When she reached our nipple, her tongue emerged. Flicking at first, then probing. We could feel the nub go erect and taste the saltiness of our own skin. When she nipped at us with her teeth, we both felt the stab of pleasure that snapped us erect — which of course Laena instantly recognized.

She slid to her knees, dragging the rest of our clothes from us. Her sudden motion drew little eddies of cool air over our legs and buttocks, feathery touches that made our skin tingle. When her fingers closed around us, we bucked involuntarily and she laughed in delight.

"Oh God, Crom. It's like I'm you and me at the same time." Can you feel this? She reached down between her legs and we could indeed feel the sensual flood that surged through her belly as she dragged her fingertips over her most sensitive places. We knew she was showing us — teaching us how to please her. And then she lowered her head.

First her tongue, then her lips. Then the length of us was engulfed. It was too much. We were lost in an exquisite spiral of touch and smell, of taste and sound. In moments we would climax and we were powerless to stop it.

But then the cool air returned. Laena smiled up at us, her slender fingers still wrapped around us. "Not yet," she whispered. She'd known exactly when to stop.

As we scooped her into our arms, Laena leaned her mouth close to our ear. Her voice dark with passion, she whispered. "Don't hold back this time."

The strength of Laena's glow seemed infinite and, with every passing second, the melding of our senses became more profound. Almost as if we were a single being, we knew in the same moment what each of us wanted, what would excite us, when to press forward and when to hold back. Together, we could ride the edge of sensation to a place far beyond simple intimacy and release.

We lowered Laena gently to the edge of the bed and knelt in front of her. She pulled us to her, cradling our head in the space between her breasts.

Where desire ended and need began, we didn't know. We didn't care. We clutched Laena's perfect breasts, squeezing hard as we focused on the glow that surrounded the dark buds at their peaks. Like a man denied water to the brink of death, we clamped our mouth over her offered nipple, pulling hard with lips and tongue and teeth. We pulled from her so deeply that we could feel her energy coursing down our throat.

Laena threw her head back and shared the anguish of her ecstasy. "That's it," she moaned as she leaned into us.

We could feel Laena's perception of our mouth on her skin, the little jolts of ecstasy that rocketed through her as our tongue probed her nipple. We could feel her heat flowing into us. We knew she wanted more — or to give more. There no longer seemed to be a difference. She wanted everything. So did we. We raised our head, noting absently the faint pink ring left by our teeth. Her glow rose up around the marks and we heard it in our head,
Hunger… Need…

"What if we can't —" But we knew the answer before we asked. We could smell the pungent musk rising from her. She felt the unstoppable craving that welled inside of us.

Laena put her hands on either side of our face and lifted us to stare directly at her. Her violet eyes afire with anticipation. "Don't stop. Never stop." She pulled our mouth to hers and our tongues stabbed hungrily in their shared space. Then she pushed and rolled on top of us in one smooth motion, our mouths still pressed together.

She reached down and gripped us, pulling hard, sliding skin over muscle, driving an impossibly sweet ache into our groin. She speared herself down on us and it would have been impossible to identify the source of the animal sigh that escaped into Laena's tiny room. She could feel herself gripping the length of us with tightly bunched muscles. We felt her thrill of pleasure, mixed with pain, as we pushed deep, as if we could push so far that we would physically become one. Everything we did, we did for both of us.

Slowly at first, then more urgently, we moved, sensing and then fulfilling each other's deepest, unspoken wants. There were no secrets. No questions. We knew with perfect instinct when to touch, to stroke, to pause.

Elbows braced on the bed for leverage, we thrust up inside her. She stretched her arms above her head, and our bodies pressed seamlessly into one another. We kissed her again and she pressed her open mouth to ours, sucking hard at our tongue, an urgent moan resonating deep in her chest.

Our glows were so intermingled now, we could no longer tell one from the other. They enshrouded us both, twisting and writhing like the tendrils we'd seen in that cave so long ago. We touched in every possible way we could manage and every new square centimeter brought thousands more filaments into play. Millions. Sensation poured into us, growing more powerful with every touch.

Energy flooded through billions of connections, swelling us with what felt like limitless strength. And, in that moment we knew Laena's every thought, every feeling, every cell that formed her, every emotion that defined her.

Mere affection could never have been so honest or so complete. We folded into one another over and over, recursing so far that there could no longer be any concept of where one ended and the other began.

When it came, our climax was a white hot singularity that burned away everything with savage release.

Leaving nothing behind.

The moment it happened we knew. We felt it. Of course we did. Even if we'd wanted to, we couldn't have stopped it. But we hadn't want to. Not for a millisecond.

At the instant of our transcendence, the connection broke and rapture turned to horror.

Just like that, she was gone. Memory spun back through us, fueling heartbreak with every captured moment. Her eyes. Her fingers. Her breath on our cheek. Her humor. Her acceptance.

Gone.

Laena was dead. Killed by the ones she had trusted most. The ones who loved her. The ones who sucked her dry.

The Jase raged and wept in the dark spaces of our shared psyche. The Cromley withdrew into crippled silence. Perhaps because they had no way to comprehend what we felt, the Su and the other were mute. With nothing holding us together, we shattered into helpless inaction.

We had been cradling Laena on the bed for so long. Her body had gone a little blue at first, drifting toward gray as silent hours passed. No hint of her magnificent glow remained. She was as pale and lifeless as the surface of Europa a hundred meters above us. We sat and we held her, never noticing the ping of the comm or, later, the pounding.

The jerking squeal of the door being pried open finally roused us and we looked up at Kittar, Laena's sire, the man who fathered her. He held a pry bar in one hand and we thought for a moment he intended to use it on us. His glow projected anger, but at what wasn't clear.

"What happened?" His square jaw was clamped tight, forcing the words between his teeth.

"We killed her. It was our fault. Please tell someone. They need to arrest — They should do something."

Neeshta, Laena's mother, slipped into the room behind her husband. She was beautiful, like her daughter, but more delicate. Same hair though. Same eyes. A fresh wave of grief broke over us and an involuntary sob ravaged the back of our throat.

Neeshta moved to kneel by the bed. She touched her daughter's lifeless gray hair and then looked at us intently. "Cromley, it's important that you tell us what happened. Every detail. Don't leave anything out."

And so we told them. All of it. While we clung to the withered husk of the woman who had loved us.

Neeshta listened silently, prompting only now and again when we lost momentum and, as we told her our story, we saw, as if from a long way off, how deeply tragedy had cut — until Laena. She had been the fleeting spark in a lifetime of darkness.

"Tell me again about the glow. Do you see it now? Around me? Kittar?" Neeshta's gaze was focused, like she was looking into the glare of the sun.

"Yes. We can see it, but it's more than that. We can feel it too. You're curious and tense. You're a little afraid of us."

Neeshta's pheromones spiked suddenly.
Danger…
And, in that moment, we realized there were things here that we weren't seeing, things we were failing to comprehend. She had lost her only child. Where was
Grief…
  or
Rage…
or
Retribution…
?

We glanced up at Kittar who still stood impassively in the broken doorway. His glow seemed muddy and we could smell his tension. From meters away, he was radiating
Combat…

Without knowing why, we knew something was wrong. Deeply. Terribly. These weren't the grieving parents of an innocent girl killed by her lover. They felt clinical.

We rolled poor Laena's corpse from our lap and leaped, naked, toward the door. Focused as we were on the tool in Kittar's right hand, we never even saw the crippler in his left until it hit us in the ribs.

All the skeletal nerves in our body fired at once, sending every muscle into a spasm that tore fibers and strained ligaments to their breaking point. Clenched in incomprehensible agony, we toppled to the metal floor, hitting hard and tasting blood. No doubt a facial bone or two had succumbed to the impact. But we did nothing except lie immobile and drool red.

Kittar's booted feet appeared in front of our eyes and his grainy rumble filled our ears. "What do you want to do with him?"

"Take him of course. You know how important this is." Neeshta's voice was flat and businesslike.

We felt the sting of an injector and darkness began to close from the periphery of our vision. As we faded toward unconsciousness, we heard another voice. One that only we could perceive.

"Jase, Cromley, this is very important. You must not tell. Don't let them know I'm here."

Laena.

She soothed our horror and stilled our anguish. The Jase and the Cromley were overcome at first. To lose and then regain something so precious… There wasn't any need for words. All that we were, each part of us, was laid bare to every other. We knew, with infinite trust, the simple purity of our motivations. Each of us cared for the other without pretense or reservation. Our atonement was automatic and complete.

Love does indeed forgive everything.

Once she was joined with us we understood it all. The Laena's parents had, of course, engineered our meeting. In the beginning, it had been an innocuous enough deception. Cromley had become famous for his ability to sniff out the nexi. Someone powerful wanted to know why. Because Laena had known him when they were young, because she was beautiful and bright, she was the perfect foil. She would uncover Cromley's secrets. Nothing more.

But after that first time, when we had fed from her, when we had shown her what we could see, everything changed. What neither of us knew was that they had been watching — all of it and that Laena became expendable, bait in the trap. She'd had no idea at the time of course, but she had been sacrificed by her own parents long before she was the agent of our betrayal.