Page 20 of Azyr: Drifiting for Her

“I don’t want you to.” She sat up enough to pull her own shirt over her head, and I went still as the blue deepened further, as my body announced what I had never said in words. She was beautiful in the dim light from the window, the particular shape of her shoulders, the weight of her breasts in the cotton she wore beneath. I memorized it. I could not stop memorizing.

I touched her. I had wanted to since the first document, since the intake philosophy, since I had stood on Failing Street and counted gardens. My hands found her waist, the curve of her hip, the place where her ribs ended and something softer began. She arched into the touch, and I felt the response in my own body, the twin pulses of arousal that were not human, that I had learned to hide in dim rooms and survey vessels.

Not here. Not now.

I unfastened her trousers and she helped me, the fabric sliding away, and then she was bare before me, and I was still mostly clothed, and the imbalance felt correct, felt like worship. I touched her where she was warm and wet already, the evidence of wanting I had not dared to believe, and she made a sound that was my name broken in the middle.

“Yes,” she said, though I had not asked. “Please. I want…”

I gave her what I could with my hands. I had learned human anatomy from texts, from the species catalog, from imagining this moment in the dark of survey vessels forty light-years from any touch. She was more than the texts. She was heat and response and the particular rhythm of her breath as I found the place that made her cry out, as I worked her with fingers that knew pressure and angle and the exact moment to still, to move, to press deeper.

She came apart under my hands. I watched her face, the way she lost the careful control she maintained in every other moment, the way her mouth opened on sounds she did not shape into words. The blue in my hands went almost black with satisfaction, with possession, with the knowledge that I had done this, that I had unmade her and would spend the rest of my life learning to put her back together.

After, she lay still, breathing hard, and I was still touching her, still learning the aftershocks, the way her body continued to respond to even the lightest pressure. She opened her eyes and looked at me, and I saw something there that I had not expected. Fear, perhaps. Or wonder. Or the same thing I felt, which had no name in any language I knew.

“I want to mate you,” I said. The translator was off. I had turned it off without deciding to, the way I did everything with her. “This is your chance to say no.”

She laughed, breathless. “That’s not, you can’t just⁠—”

“I can. I am.” I sat back on my heels, and I let her see what I had hidden. The arousal was visible now, the twin lengths that emerged from my body when the desire was sufficient, when the partner was right, when the Veyathi body recognized its match. They were deep blue, darker than my skin, and they moved with my pulse, and I watched her face as she understood.

“Oh,” she said. Small. Wondering. “That’s… there are two.”

“Yes.”

“And they both…?”

“Yes.” I reached for her hand, brought it to touch, and her fingers closed around one length and I made a sound I had never made before, helpless, unguarded. “Tell me your anatomy. Tell me how we fit.”

She was silent, her hand still wrapped around me, and I felt the heat rise in her face even before I saw it. “We can—” She stopped. Started again. “They can both go in my pussy. With stretching. It’s… I’ve read about it, in the species files, the compatibility studies—” She was babbling, I realized, the way she did when she was nervous and professional at once. “Or one there, and one…” She stopped entirely, and the heat in her face was visible now, even in the dim light.

“One where?”

“One in my ass.” The words came out rushed, mortified, and she tried to pull her hand away. I did not let her. “It’s just, I’ve never, I don’t know if I can.“

I was instantly obsessed with her ass. The thought of it, the image, the possibility of being inside her in both places at once, of filling her so completely she could not remember where she ended and I began. The blue surged, visible, undeniable, and she saw it and understood.

“You like that idea,” she said. Not quite accusation.

“I like every idea that involves being inside you.” I leaned down, kissed her forehead, her closed eyes, her mouth. “We do not have to. I can use one, just my hands.”

“I want to try.” She opened her eyes. “I want to try both. I just… I need you to be careful. And patient. And…”

“I have been patient for years,” I said. “I can be patient for this.”

I prepared her. I squeezed a gland at the base that released a lubrication oil, and I worked it into her with fingers that trembled only slightly, that found the resistance and eased past it, that listened to her breath and her sounds and the particular tension of her body. She was tight and so perfect. She was pushing back against my hand, wanting more, and I gave her more, stretching her carefully, opening her for what would come.

When she was ready, when she was making sounds that were not words in any language, I positioned myself. I had read the compatibility studies too, knew the angles, the depth, the way to enter so that both lengths could find their place. I pressed against her, one at her entrance, one lower, and she gasped, and I stopped, and she said “no, don’t stop, please…”

I pushed forward. The resistance was exquisite, the giving way better, and then I was inside her, both of us, fully seated, and she made a sound I would carry with the others, laid down in order, unforgettable. She was full. I could feel it, the way her body surrounded me, the way we were joined in two places, the way there was no space between us anymore.

I moved. Slowly at first, learning the rhythm of it, the way she responded when I shifted my angle, the sounds she made when I went deeper. She was clutching the sheets, her head thrown back, and I watched her face, the way she lost herself in the sensation, the way she found herself again and lost herself once more.

I found the rhythm. It was not different from charting a coastline, from learning the shape of a place by moving through it. I learned her. I learned what made her cry out, what made her beg, what made her come apart around me in waves that I could feel, that triggered my own response, that built and built until she was saying my name like a prayer, like a curse, like the only word she knew.

She came first, and then again, and then a third time as I changed my angle, as I found the place inside her that made her scream, as I used both lengths to their full extent, moving in counterpoint, filling her completely. I felt her pleasure as my own, the way her body gripped me, the way she shuddered and went still and shuddered again.

I followed. I could not have stopped if I had wanted to, and I did not want to. The release was overwhelming, the spasm of it moving through both lengths at once, filling her in both places with the evidence of my desire, my belonging, my choice. I collapsed over her, still inside her, and she wrapped her arms around me and held on.