Page 27 of Prima (After the End #8)

Now she looks indignant. “I’ve been taking supplements and boosters for a month, in anticipation of a few minutes of pain.

And I already have a neurologist standing by who’ll examine me as soon as I’ve been officially debriefed.

Not to mention, last time I suffered neural pain, on that atoll, it was to a far greater extent—and in its aftermath I exerted myself greatly.

And emerged with no deleterious effects. ”

“You were a lot younger then.”

If she threw something at him in response, he would understand.

But she doesn’t. She only bats her eyelashes, the way she did when she didn’t know what to do about her scallion flatbread.

“You are still very young, and abstinence didn’t make your memories come back, so presumably a little sex will not make them go away either. Right?”

This is the Lanzhou he remembers. “A little sex, and then we’ll rest and write shit down and be very good.”

Her eyes burn so bright, he can’t help but recall how she looked at him ten years ago. It’s as if both a century has passed since then and no time at all—his newly recovered memories are so fresh and sharp.

“This is wish fulfillment for you, isn’t it?” he murmurs. “You always wanted to have your way with me on this raft.”

“My wishes have always been completely transparent before you,” she answers.

Their lips lock together. She makes tiny sounds at the back of her throat and his blood ignites. He picks her up and sets her on the folding table—sturdy contraption, that—and stands between her legs.

She runs her hands down his arms, then kisses him along his shoulder. The moist insides of her lips on his skin—he grunts and opens the top button of her dress.

She kisses him on his jaw. “Maybe I should work the buttons if you’re just going to rip them off again.”

He opens another two buttons. “I think I’ve finally found the silver lining in all this. For ten years I never had to think about the fact that I damaged your museum piece of a dress.”

He did not know about his mother’s early-life training in sericulture, but she had told him, more than once, that ever since the production of silk ceased worldwide, any new garment made of the material would have been produced from an ever-dwindling supply of archival bolts.

“Well, silk is less expensive now, thanks to your mother. And you didn’t destroy the structural integrity of that dress; you only ripped off a few buttons.”

He undoes yet another button—there are too many. “Is this a test? To see whether I can handle buttons without resorting to violence?”

She slides her fingertips across his abdomen.

He sucks in a breath at the electricity of that caress.

“Notice I changed into a far less valuable frock,” she teases.

“My mother was highly displeased with the damage done to the vintage dress last time and I don’t think she believed for a moment that all the buttons popped off because it snagged on a door in Lion City. ”

Her mother, who now thinks he’s skilled and patient—or at least more skilled and patient with a needle than Lanzhou was ten years ago. “Were you too ashamed to admit you’d picked up a gauche seventeen-year-old to sleep with?”

“Ashamed? No, not ashamed. Not in the least. I wanted desperately to talk about you, but your identity was too sensitive and I couldn’t go around telling people about your concurrent ability.

It wasn’t until your mom and Nin reached New Ryukyu that I could break down and cry about you with someone. ”

She rubs the inside of her wrist against his stubbles. “And your original manuscripts of The Long Safari became all tear-stained. Thank goodness pencil drawings don’t run when they are splattered with tears.”

My wishes have always been completely transparent before you, she said earlier. She has no idea—or maybe every idea—what a gift her frankness is to him after a lifetime of subterfuge.

“You’ll make me cry again,” he tells her.

Perhaps the true gift here is that it’s so easy for him to be simple and straightforward before her, when decades of training went into making him opaque and unreadable in front of others.

She touches his abdomen again, splays her fingers fully against it. The sensations go straight to his arousal. He was already hard; now he hurts.

“I don’t mind if you cry,” she says, giving him a sidelong look, “as long as you can sustain an erection.”

She brushes him with the back of her hand. He leaps against her touch.

“I see no problem,” she whispers against his lips.

He trails his fingers along the front of her dress and finds the next button, hoping to complete his task before his concentration crumbles like a sandcastle at high tide. But then he makes the mistake of looking down.

Her dress is open almost to the navel, a long, narrow V that exposes the rise of her breasts, a sight so erotic he instantly understands his younger self’s desperate desire to see more. Feel more.

He opens another button, his fingers abruptly unwieldy.

“Do you know what I sometimes think about?” she murmurs against his ear, her lips on the sensitive skin of the helix driving pulses of unbearable pleasure down his spine.

“I never had a chance to take you in my mouth, to run my tongue around the head of your cock and then feel it jammed against the back of my throat.”

He feels as if he’s been set on fire. “Do you swallow?”

She nibbles his earlobe. “For you, of course. And afterwards I’ll lick you clean.”

He burns—and struggles with the next buttons, he who’s usually far more dexterous.

But at last he manages to unfasten enough of them to push the bodice off her shoulders, revealing breasts so perfect that he feels he has disrespected them by not having ripped the buttons off this dress to see them sooner.

They are high and firm, with mouth-watering nipples that already stand up. He lifts one breast and licks the nipple, so engorged yet so heart-poundingly soft. She whimpers, the prettiest little sound. He worships at her other breast; she repeats the moan, louder this time.

All at once, he can’t wait any longer. He pulls the dress over her head, carries her down to the sleeping mat, and holds her so tight he worries that he might asphyxiate her. But she holds him even tighter and he doesn’t care about breathing at all, as long as he can kiss her.

She breaks free to push his trousers down his hips and capture his jutting erection with her mouth. Lightning lurches through him. So much pleasure. Too much pleasure.

He emits a guttural sound and grips her head. “Stop. No exertion for you.”

"This is not exertion. It’s fun.”

“Then stop because I’m going to be done this second.”

She glances up, her eyes full of a lascivious mischief. “Good. Do it. I want to practice my swallowing.”

He nearly loses it on those words alone. Her lips, her tongue, the suction she creates inside her mouth—

“Does it—does it feel the same when I do it to you?”

She releases him and ponders for a moment. “I don’t know if it feels the same but I used to lie awake all night thinking about it—thinking about you.”

To think, that over the years some of their sleepless nights might have been shared, thousands of kilometers apart.

He swivels her around. He might be barely not a virgin, but he’s heard of a certain mutually beneficial position.

Which might indeed be one of the most benevolent discoveries humanity has ever made on its own behalf. To trust and be trusted by the lover to this extent, to give and receive unspeakable pleasure at the same time, to create an all-encompassing intimacy without a single word.

But the best part is when she forgets what she’s supposed to do, because she is trembling and crying aloud.

When they finally join together, she on top of him and he deep inside her, he feels as if he’s holding not only the woman of his dreams, but every single hope he’s ever nurtured deep in his heart.

“Have I ever told you that I love you?” he asks.

“Yes,” she tells him, “in every way that counts.”

* * *

They make love three times, which they agree, averaged over how long they’ve gone without, comes to a lot less than a little sex. It’s practically verging on zero.

She falls asleep as the sun climbs high overhead.

He scribbles things down in his notebook, moves the canopy once in a while to keep her out of direct sunlight, and makes a simple meal from ingredients she already has aboard, feeling as light as a dandelion puff, traveling the entire world on a single springtime breeze.

When she wakes up, he sleeps for a while. And when he gets up, they have a leisurely late lunch together.

Refugees approved for sanctuary in New Ryukyu are required to perform their reclamation services first, eighteen months, same as that demanded of citizens. Occasionally, the requirement is waived, as in his mother’s case, if the applicant can make a significant contribution to New Ryukyu.

“Not because she knew the secrets of sericulture—that she could not prove for years,” says Lanzhou, “but because of the naval architectural blueprints you sent along.”

He remembers those, which included a surface vessel designed to be even faster than The Arrow of Time, and a conceptual vehicle meant to “sail” over large expanses of Plant Cover, neither of which he ever showed anyone in Dawan.

“When you finish your eighteen months of service, there will be people who are very eager for you to start working.”

“But I’ll be doing two years alongside you, won’t I, because you have those six months added by your mother for losing that solar yacht in the war zone?”

She looks at him significantly.

“Ah, I understand now, my lady. I am to produce something brilliant in those eighteen months, something half-finished but so genius that people would not want me to waste another six months removing Plant Cover. But since I’ll refuse to leave your side, they’ll strike down those extra six months for you and now you’ll need to serve no more than the eighteen months required by law. ”

She grins. “What did I say years ago? I knew you were more than a pretty face.”

“Huh,” he says. “I’m not sure you’ve bothered to look at my pretty face today. I don’t think your gaze strayed north of my navel very often.”

“Huh,” she retorts. “As if you’ve paid attention to anything other than my nipples.”

“So…we keep looking where we shouldn’t?”

She laughs, the most beautiful sight and sound in the world. “Sure, why not? Two wrongs don’t make a right, but two negatives can result in a positive.”

At sunset he pours them each a thimbleful of rice liquor—he swiped the other tiny shot glass the last time he passed through The Blue Sampan’s lounging area. “Ever since I first saw you smile, all those years ago, I’ve—I’ve wanted you to take me home with you.”

To be reminded that there is such a thing as inherent joy in the world, in spite of everything. Inherent joy, inherent beauty, inherent reasons to be alive to the wonder and numinosity of the universe.

“Once my status has been processed and I’m allowed to move about in New Ryukyu—will you?”

She frowns slightly. He becomes unaccountably nervous.

“My place is small—New Ryukyu doesn’t pay its Sea Witches very much. But for as long as I’ve had it, I’ve had a pair of house slippers waiting for you. So you’re welcome anytime.”

His tension drains away, replaced by that lightness of being he hopes to know very well in the coming years.

"On the other hand,” she continues, “I personally have been looking forward to spending a lot of time at your place.”

“My place?”

Truly, will wonders never cease?

“Your mother has bought and kitted out a house for you, bigger and newer than mine, and with much, much better views.” She grins. “And I already put a pair of my house slippers there, right next to yours.”

She lifts her glass, still grinning. “To us. I don’t know how easy I’ll be to live with, but I promise to always save a smile for you.”

He lifts his glass and clinks it with hers. “To us. You never need to smile for me. But when you smile for yourself, I would like to be there. Always.”

They drain their glasses and show the empty vessels to each other. He thinks back to that night ten years ago, the wishes they sealed in that moment of great innocence and audacity.

She gazes at him a long time, then leans in and kisses him. “Have I ever told you that I love you?”

He basks in grace—so much grace—and kisses her right back. “In every way that counts.”