Chapter Nineteen

Graven

My finger hits something on the back of the chaise, and everything beneath us disappears.

I shout and swear, expecting us to fall to the floor, but we don’t.

She pats my head and stomps her foot, which makes a pounding sound on the chaise that is apparently still beneath her. “You just hit the invisibility button.”

I look down at her seemingly floating on air. At least her smile is back, sort of. Her eyes have that disappointed look I’ve been dreading more than anything. She still couldn’t heal me the rest of the way. She hasn’t accepted that she never will and it’s impossible.

I pat my hands on the back of the chaise that I can no longer see. “Is this some Fellamana kink, too?”

“It’s like the floating on water thing. Want to fuck on air? Got it. It gives the brain a different sensation.”

I roll off her to the floor, sitting down with my back to the invisible chaise. “I think my brain is already overstimulated.” I’m trying to emphasize that she’s already giving me everything she can, everything I want, even though she still thinks it’s not enough.

She sits up behind me, hugs me, her breasts on either side of my head and her fingers in my hair. “I know. We can rest for a minute.” She wraps her legs around my chest, and I run my hands up and down her calves, never wanting to stop touching her.

“Only a minute. Then you’re going to teach me something else.”

She leans over to glance at my cock that’s lying half hard against my thigh. I don’t think I could go flaccid with her anywhere in the room anymore, now I know what it feels like to come inside her, or on her, or whatever.

“What’s human stamina like?” she asks. “I thought it was more difficult for you to go as many times or as long as a Fellamana.”

I kiss up the length of her calf. “I’m not a normal human. My stamina in all things is superior.”

She moans with pleasure and kisses my ear. “Then let’s test how long you can go.”

“Or test how long you can go.”

“You’re on,” she says and slides off the chaise, her mouth heading straight for my cock.

She teaches me a dozen different ways to fuck, until I’m so addicted to being inside her, I don’t know how not to be. Or tasting her, or at least touching her. Every minute.

She teaches me the uses of all the other furniture—the gliding, the bouncing, the swinging. And they’re all good. The more different ways, the more times I get to come in her or on her. She tries her power to heal me again and again, each time it fails, each time I tell her to give up, but still she tries again.

She hooks me up to this chaise in a back room that has a stimulator. It’s supposed to make orgasms more exciting, but her power is so much better than a machine stimulator.

I throw the hookups off and end up fucking her across the floor instead.

But honestly, the wall is my favorite. That and when she lowers the mirrors so she can watch my ass while I nail her against the wall. I like what she likes most of all.

Although that side pose on the chaise where she promised I could watch her tits and her ass at the same time is pretty good. After that, she rolls onto her stomach and teaches me how to fuck her in the ass like she promised.

I don’t know how I survived that. It blows my mind, though I have to confess to her that her pussy is still my favorite. She kisses me so hard after, then she cleans me off in the shower, sucks my cock, and rides me on the shower floor like a fucking madwoman, water pouring over her skin, dripping from her nipples onto my chest.

Damn, I love watching her face when she comes. I know her favorite is watching my cock fuck her, but I love watching her mouth fall open and listening to her scream when she gives up her pleasure to me. That’s my real favorite.

She tries to force me to eat, convinced I need to replenish my strength, even though she doesn’t need to eat, something about her gaining all her energy from the orgasms I give her. But the food is a fail. I end up fucking her on the kitchen table, her knees folded up by her chest, then she tells me to come on her tits and lets me lick my come off her nipples.

I’m not sure if my stamina wears out or if I just want to hear her talk, want to hear what she has to say beyond just screaming my name.

She climbs off the kitchen table after I wipe her down with a wet towel. “We should go for a swim in the lake. I bet you’ll like water sex,” she says excitedly.

“Sure.”

She tilts her head at my lack of enthusiasm. “Unless you’re ready for a real rest.” A gloating smile starts at the corners of her mouth. I’m so grateful to see it after all the looks of failure from her attempts to heal me. She thinks she’s about to declare herself victor of our sexual stamina contest.

I shake my head and have this strange urge. I reach for her hand. I trace her palm then lock my fingers with hers. “Can I hold your hand while we walk down there?”

She squints. “Hold my hand?”

“If you don’t want to—”

“No, it’s fine.” She squeezes my hand, refusing to let me let go. “I just haven’t held anyone’s hand since my father’s when I was a little girl.”

“Never mind.” I drop her hand. The last person I want her to compare me to is her father.

“Wait.” She grasps my hand again. “It’s nice.” She looks at our hands clasped, and her light blue complexion starts to swirl with that purple color like it did this morning. I wonder what it means, but I don’t have the courage to ask.

I put on pants because it’s still too weird for me to go outside naked. Niva teases me and puts on nothing. Her nakedness is a dream, so I’d be an idiot to complain.

We walk side by side on the path to the lake.

“I’m thinking,” she insists. “The reason why you’re not healing might be because you don’t believe I can. Maybe if you just opened yourself up to the idea then—”

“Stop it, Niva.” I squeeze her hand. “Please. Just give up.”

“I can’t,” she whispers and grips my hand tight, tighter than I imagined her little hand could. “You still don’t know what a hug feels like. I can’t live with myself if—”

“I’m fine. You’re magical. The end.” I kiss her hand to distract her and ask, “You’ve been coming to this place for a long time, haven’t you? Did you come as a kid?”

It works. She launches into stories about her childhood memories playing in the jungles here. She also points out the spot where she had sex for the first time.

“Were you always good at it?” I ask.

She laughs. “Good at teaching people what feels good. I don’t put up with anything else. If it’s not good for them, it’s not good for me. We talk. Communication is the sexiest part of sex.”

“With as much time as you spend telling me what to do, I agree.”

“You like it.” She winks at me.

I kiss her hand. “You have no idea how much.”

We stop at the lake’s shore, the sun setting in rings of blue and gold on the horizon.

“Do you want to sit and watch the sun go down?” she asks, her voice sort of uncertain and almost surprised. I suppose she’s surprised at herself, suggesting we do something nonsexual, but I do. I want to sit with her.

“I’d like that.” We sit, and I can’t not be touching her, so I wrap my arm around her and urge her toward my chest.

She stiffens at first. “Do you want to cuddle? Even though you can’t feel it?”

“Cuddle?” I don’t really know what that is.

“It’s like…” She nuzzles her shoulder against my chest and presses her thigh along mine. “Getting close together, but not sexually.”

I urge her closer and bend my head down to hers. “Yes,” I whisper, afraid to say more, afraid to admit how nice this is, just seeing her head on my shoulder.

“It’s usually a family thing among the Fellamana. We mostly only cuddle at home with our families. Not with lovers.”

“Oh.” I start to sit back. “We don’t—”

“No, stay.” She pulls on my neck and presses her head to my chest. “It’s nice.”

“But is this weird for you?”

“Just because I’ve never done it before doesn’t mean it’s weird.” She wraps her arms around me and sighs. “It must be another human thing.”

“It might be. I have no idea.”

She glances up at me. “You truly have no one? No friends? No family?”

“None worth mentioning, Niva,” I say heavily. She seems to understand I don’t want to talk about it and looks at the sunset.

I see her tracing my pectorals with her fingers, circling my nipple lazily. I don’t know if she even knows she’s doing it.

“You can’t feel this…” she says.

“No.”

She clenches her hand in a fist. “Damn it. I was hoping with enough of my power today, with enough sex—”

I kiss her hair and rest my cheek on the top of her head. “I’m very broken, Niva. There are some parts of me that will never fix. You’ve already done so much. All you can.”

She sits up and reaches for my toes. “Can you feel anything in your feet?” She runs her finger under the arch, and looks at me with a humorous face, like she expected something.

“No.”

Her expression sags but abruptly shifts. “Foot sex is fun.”

“What?”

“You can—”

“I’m not fucking your magic pussy with my foot, Niva,” I laugh. “That’s got to be sacrilegious in the sex goddess handbook.”

She laughs, too. “It’s not! Come on. We could fix your feet!”

“Fuck my feet! Or…well…”

She laughs so hard her shoulders shake.

“I mean, don’t fuck my feet,” I sputter.

“Oh Graven…” She can’t stop laughing. “We should try it!”

“No! I’ve gone along with everything else you wanted today, but that I won’t do.”

Her laughter dries suddenly, and her mouth twists. I have no idea what she’s thinking, but I know I said something wrong.

“What did I say?” I whisper. “I’m sorry—I didn’t—”

“You’ve ‘gone along with’?” she quotes me with a note of sadness. “Is that what it’s been?”

“No!” I scramble for words. “I didn’t mean…I meant…” Gah! I hate language. “Niva, I’ve more than gone along! Honestly. I…I…suck at words.” I can’t think when she’s looking at me like that, with those huge green eyes, so questioning and uncertain.

If only I could show her all these emotions she makes me feel, she’d know it was so much more than “going along.” Except, she’s Fellamana. She can see how I feel.

“Maybe I can show you.” I close my eyes and do the thing she taught me, letting my emotions go, to see if they’ll tell her what she needs to know, what I’m too terrible at words to say.

“Graven!” she gasps.

I flash my eyes open to a shocked expression on her face. “What?”

“You’re…you’re…oh gods, your emotions!” She scans me with wide, wondering eyes. “They’re working again. They’re flowing around you freely like a healthy person. You’re healthy!” She kneels and kisses me.

I give a huge sigh of relief. She understands.

I seal my mouth to hers and kiss her in gratitude, and a well of emotions floods me. I feel a lot, so many things. But mostly all I know is how much I want her, not just for sex but her, Niva.

“My Niva…” I breathe against her mouth before I can stop myself.

She freezes, and so do I.

She’s not mine. At all. And never will be. After tomorrow, she’ll never be able to see me again.

“Sorry,” I whisper, not looking at her.

“No, it’s okay.” She clasps my face and lays kisses across my nose. “I want you to be mine, too.”

My heart stutters against my ribs. “You do?”

She nods. “I don’t want to leave you tomorrow.” A strange expression comes over her face, something so vulnerable and tender. It’s a sensitive part of her, a fearful part, that I would do anything to protect. “I want to keep you with me. But I can’t. If I break my promise to my people, set a human above being their goddess, they’ll never trust me. Something in our society will be broken.”

I want to protest, but she’s right. She has to let me go. Or they’ll imprison her. Maybe even execute her.

I have to let her go.

She wraps her arms around my neck and presses her body to me. I enfold her, wishing I could better experience what hugging her is like. Wishing I could feel with all my skin what it’s like to be touching all of her at once, to be pressed to her, heart to heart.

“We still have tomorrow at least,” I say.

“It won’t be enough,” she says weakly and rests her forehead against mine.

“No, it won’t.”

“Perhaps my father’s made some progress with the council. They might let me at least see you.”

“See me?”

“Yeah.”

“But that’s all.” No more sex…I don’t say.

She avoids my eyes. “I’ve already been with you, and I’m not allowed to favor anyone as a sex goddess. I have to spread my love equally. Plus, there’s the whole humans brainwashing us thing.”

I don’t know how I’d survive it without being able to at least touch her, but only seeing her would be better than losing her completely. “I’ll be waiting, if the council will allow me to be near you.” I don’t want to get my hopes up, or hers.

She clears her throat and says what I haven’t thought of. “…watching me have sex with other people every day.”

I clench my eyes shut, and the breath in my lungs freezes. I had forgotten. Well, I hadn’t forgotten, but I hadn’t thought it through till now. I have this ridiculous feeling—like I’ll explode or I’ll die if I have to watch her fuck anyone else.

But it’s primal. It’s not real. It can’t be real. I’m not made that way.

“I know you said,” I choke out tightly, “that Fellamana think humans brainwash them into falling in love with them.”

She puts her hands on my chest. “I’m delirious over you.”

“I’m not like other humans, Niva. I can’t love people. I’ve never loved anyone. No one’s ever loved me. I wonder if I’m broken that way like I am with experiencing sensations, if I’m incapable of love.”

She shakes her head. “Just because you’ve never felt love doesn’t mean you never will.”

“But it does. I’m broken.” I run my fingers over her breastbone. “I can’t brainwash you, because it’s impossible to fall in love with me. You’re safe.”

“No.” She traces the skin over my heart again. “I don’t believe it. You’re very loveable.”

I gulp, and any thought of words catches hard in my throat.

She digs her nails into my chest, and her voice comes hoarse and jagged, “I don’t want to leave you. I wish I could take you back and keep you with me.” She meets my eyes with a heavy-lidded desire.

“You don’t mean that. Your people mean more to you than I do. Once you start work again, you’ll—”

“Graven, tell me you feel the same way. Tell me you’d stay with me if I found a way for them to accept you. I need you to say it’s possible.” The desperation plain in her eyes catches in my chest and pulls my stomach into my throat.

It isn’t. We both know it. Thinking they will is just a dream. And if she knew the truth, she wouldn’t say that. She wouldn’t even think of it. This is where I confess to her I’m a traitor. If she knew, it would kill all of this for her.

“Graven!” she says with more urgency. “Tell me you feel the same way.” Fear widens her eyes as though she doesn’t already know the answer, that I’m dying for her, and will be dying only for her till my last breath. But I have to stop her from feeling this way. It’s bad for her. She can’t disobey her council’s laws and see me. Her life depends on it.

I push back from her and stare out over the water. “There are things you don’t know about me…reasons why you shouldn’t want me and why I’m the last person in the galaxy you should want…”

“It doesn’t matter. I know you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Fine, then tell me.”

“I’m not a part of the rebellion. I’m—”

But I don’t get to finish. A loud speeder engine sounds from up the hill, by the main buildings. It’s unmistakable and impossible to ignore. Someone’s here.

Niva’s face goes pale, for once almost devoid of color. “My father’s here.”