Page 24 of Shadows of Stardust

Zandrel

There are no thoughts in my brain.

Not a single one.

And after what feels like a lifetime of always thinking, planning, strategizing, trying to stay ten steps ahead of whatever worst thing might happen next, the emptiness feels like paradise.

The only thing left is sensation.

The wonderful warmth and weight of Roslyn sitting in my lap.

Her cries of pleasure still echoing in my ears.

The desire pounding through me with each beat of my heart.

I can still taste her.

If I thought Roslyn’s scent and warmth were distracting, then getting a taste of her straight from the source is another thing entirely.

Lush and earthy, sharp and sweet, her flavor still has my mind in a fevered tangle. I take a frankly embarrassing about of time to catch up and understand what she intends to do when she takes her hair fastener back, ties her hair up, and slides off my lap.

“Roslyn,” I choke out as she kneels on the rug and spreads my knees, making room for herself between them. “You don’t have to—”

My words cut off as she reaches for my cock, as she wraps her fingers around it and squeezes, as she lowers her mouth to me.

“Tell me to stop, Zan.”

Fuck, I deserve it. To have my own words thrown back at me. To be the one so cruelly, wonderfully teased as her tongue darts out and laps at me once, twice, just a taste.

“If this isn’t something you want, tell me to stop and I will.”

I could no sooner stop her than I could stop my own heart from beating or pull the stars down from the sky.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

My voice is husky, strained, strange even to my own ears, but the rasped confession seems to unleash something in Roslyn.

She shoots me one last satisfied smirk before she opens and takes me inside her.

Fates, that mouth.

I swear I can feel the curve of her smirk around my cock as my head hits the back of the sofa, the effort of keeping it upright suddenly beyond my capability.

A satisfied hum follows, warm and teasing and pleased with herself as she starts to take me apart.

I tangle a hand in her hair.

It only seems to spur her on as she hums again, a challenge this time, and relaxes her jaw around me. Roslyn lets me set the pace, palm spread across the back of her head, gently guiding her up and down my shaft.

She keeps one hand wrapped around me, stroking in time with her mouth. She flattens the other against my pelvis, teasing around the base of my cock and the edge of my slit.

Warm and wet and wonderful, I bury myself in the heat of her mouth. I arch against her, shamelessly chasing sensation. It coils deep in my belly, wraps itself around my spine. Far sooner than I’d like, it crescendos, and I’m powerless to stop it.

When I’m poised right on the peak of release, balanced on a knife-edge of control, I attempt to ease her off me.

“Ros. Fuck. I’m going to—you don’t have to—”

But again, any attempts I might make at maintaining some fatesdamned decorum, of not asking more from her than I should, are stymied immediately.

Roslyn quickens the pace, takes me deeper, and I’m lost. I spill into the back of her throat with a hoarse shout, pleasure sizzling along every nerve ending, bliss that makes me entirely unable to do anything by surrender.

Entirely spent, it takes me a few long moments, but I finally gather enough wits about me to reach for Ros. She comes to me willingly, letting me pull her up and sprawl her across my lap.

Minutes pass in a hazy, satisfied stupor, and I’d give anything to make them last for an hour. All night.

Because, as the height of pleasure fades, the reality of what we just did starts creeping back in. Stark and unavoidable, I stew in the rising tide of shame and discomfort, completely at a loss for how to comprehend or explain it.

My loss of control. The frenzy between us. The complete abandonment of better sense and caution.

What the fuck we’re supposed to do now.

I shift in that discomfort, jostling Roslyn enough to draw her attention. She tilts her head up to meet my gaze, and whatever she sees there has any remnants of her own pleasure fleeing in an instant.

I hate it.

I hate seeing my own turmoil reflected back to me, hate to see that look of pleasure—the look I put there—disappear.

“So, uh,” Roslyn says, shifting as well, moving like she’s about to lift herself off me. “That was…”

I tighten my arms and keep her right where she is.

She gasps in surprise, but letting her go feels impossible. Unthinkable. Sacrilegious, after everything we just shared.

“Yes, it was,” I say gruffly.

What it was, I can’t even begin to put into words, but maybe she feels it, too.

“And I’m sorry,” I continue, but rush to clarify when she stiffens against me. “Not that it… happened. That we didn’t… talk about it. Before it happened. That we didn’t…. I don’t know. Figure it out. Ahead of time.”

Again, I should not be allowed to speak.

I shouldn’t be allowed to emote like this, make a mess of things like this, try to make sense of this tangle when I can barely—

Roslyn lets out a disgruntled little grunt. “Do we have to figure it out? We’re here. We’re working together. We’re obviously… attracted to each other. Needed to blow off a little steam, you know?”

“Blow off some steam,” I say slowly, unfamiliar with the expression.

Apt, though, this human idiom, given that I feel entirely wrung through and depleted. All out of steam, as it were.

Roslyn stiffens unexpectedly in my arms. “Unless… shit. Do you have an actual girlfriend? Or a wife or something? We should have clarified this way before we—”

“No,” I cut in. “No wife. No partner. Active Aux soldiers are not allowed to maintain those sorts of relationships.”

It’s never been a problem for me, or something I’ve much lamented. Over the past decade, I’ve rarely stayed longer than a handful of nights on any given port or planet. Not exactly conductive to fostering romantic connection or commitment. Something Roslyn likely knows just as well with her own years of service.

A new, darker thought strikes me.

Roslyn spent the last six months out of service. Plenty of time to discover what she’d been missing during her years enlisted.

“What about you?” I can’t keep my tone entirely neutral, can’t stop the edge from creeping in. “Is there someone waiting for you back on Severin?”

She snorts, and that edge dulls. “If you’d ever actually been to Severin, you wouldn’t be asking me that question.”

“Is that a no?”

Ros looks me directly in the eye, something deep in her emerald gaze shifting. “That’s a no.”

“Alright.” I can’t account for the relief that washes over me, won’t let myself examine it.

“So… good,” she says. “Maybe we can just… have some fun while we’re here, then. Maybe it can be just that simple.”

A perfect solution.

An out for all of this complicated mess. Tidily explaining it away and absolving us both of responsibility for it, responsibility to each other.

“Just that simple,” I murmur, something about the idea not sitting entirely right with me, despite its convenience.

I’ve never been precious about sex.

It’s a natural part of life. A biologic function and a pleasurable way to pass the time. And even though it’s been—fates, how long has it been?—a while since I indulged in a night of passion with someone I picked up in a port tavern or a fellow member of the Aux, I needn’t be so uptight about it.

But there’s still something about all of this that doesn’t sit right.

Perhaps because we’re working together, because I’m trying to do the honorable thing and do right by her, make amends to her after how abominably I behaved during her first few days on the beach.

Yes, it’s likely that.

It’s all tangled up in our partnership and our goals here, a new element that has the undeniable potential to complicate things even further.

But if it didn’t have to? If we could dismiss it as nothing more than a slip, a natural inclination indulged for a single night.

Perhaps that would be better.

Still, as Roslyn slides off my lap and stands, I can’t make myself believe it entirely.

She slips the fastener out of her hair, dark tresses falling around her shoulders, and my fingertips ache to run through it again. Her dress is still undone, exposing the lush breasts I had my mouth all over just a few short minutes ago.

Fates, but she’s beautiful.

In her strange, soft-edged, alien way, she might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Silky pale skin just as touchable as it was in my imaginings. Pert, dusky-tipped nipples so sensitive to touch. Her cunt , fates , her cunt. All of her, so responsive, blooming into warm, vibrant life beneath my hands.

When she catches me staring, she tugs the edges of her dress together and crosses her arms over her chest, a bit of pink climbing her cheeks.

It takes everything I have to swallow back my protest.

Instead of reaching for her like I want to, tugging her back into my arms, finding out how many more soft, sensitive places she has and how many more gasps and moans and cries of pleasure I could wring from her when I discover them, I follow her lead.

I quickly tug my own discarded shorts on and sink back into the couch cushions, fully prepared to give her the time and all the distance she needs to pretend this never happened, to retreat into her room for another night of business as usual, me in my spot on the couch.

But, as she crosses the room, it seems Roslyn has other plans.

She pauses in the bedroom doorway. “You coming?”

“Coming where?”

“To bed,” she says, like it’s obvious.

“Your bed?”

“Unless you prefer the couch?”

“No. I just…”

“I mean, we’re not going to cuddle or anything. But after… all of that, I’d be a grade-A asshole to keep making you rough it out here.”

Blankly, I stare at her, mind whirring in sluggish circles, attempting to ascertain what her aim is here, how terrible an idea this is, how I should respond.

Apparently not in the mood to wait for me to comprehend her simple, straightforward offer, Ros disappears into the bedroom.

I sit, dumbstruck, for a few more moments before I stand—silently cursing myself and my inability to listen to reason for one single moment—and follow her.