Disconnected

She woke up warm and achy from sensual hunger, but didn't remember the details of the dream... until they floated up—unsummoned—in unwelcome patches throughout the next day, causing inconvenient stutters in her usual routine. She would be gathering papers from her desk, and the sensation of his face buried in her neck as his burning mouth devoured the skin along her collarbone would suddenly reveal itself, making her gasp and draw the eyes of her coworkers. Or, as she stepped up onto the stage to give guidance to a rehearsing student, the desire to grab Seth's ass to pull him deeper into her cunt would streak through her thighs, and she'd miss a step. Her breasts would ache for his tugging fingers as she reached to adjust a student's costume.

She felt like she was losing her mind. She had to figure out how to reconnect her mind to her body so she could regain control of both. And probably best to get Seth out of her head, while she was at it—if that was possible. She definitely needed to try a new strategy for satisfaction in her life. After so many years without a man in her life—besides the one she'd helped raise, and therefore didn't count, she told herself firmly—she needed to open herself to more possibilities.

***

A day later, she finally took the downtime offered to her at the evening festivities. Cassie indulged in a rare few drinks while she danced happily with other revelers, crammed into an expansive utility barn repurposed with a performance stage and dance floor. Moving her body to the music, surrounded by the heat and pulse of everyone around her; it was a physical and mental release she'd forgotten over the years of taking up adult responsibilities.

She was feeling tipsy but not quite drunk when she wandered out to catch a breath of cool night air, and felt drawn to wander the quiet paths at the edges of the buildings. After a few minutes meandering alone, she spied another quiet wanderer, just sitting down on a long crate and leaning back on splayed hands to gaze up at the stars. As she approached, he turned to look at her and grinned a drunk acknowledgment, so she joined him on the crate to admire the sparkling sky, feeling a kinship in this evening retreat from the partying crowd.

The big man—probably from another community, for she didn't know him by name or sight—slung his arm amiably around her shoulders and pointed out a constellation shining particularly bright. Despite the liquor on him, she could also smell the warm spice of his body, and it was nice. They swapped a couple awkward constellation legends, and laughed about the way people made up stories about inanimate objects to make themselves feel like conquerors.

Cassie finished off her cup of drink, and feeling mischievous, spontaneously suggested they go to the store rooms for a bottle of their own. He shook his head and gestured to the small bottle he'd already claimed for himself, saying, "I've probably drunk enough." Her chagrin—at bucking the good-girl routine for once, and getting immediately shut down—shifted to admiration of him, that he acknowledged his limitations, and she looked up at him consideringly. He was nice, smelled good, and clearly made good choices. Cassie couldn't think of a good reason why not to follow her impulse, so putting a hand on his face, she kissed him deliberately. She would have pulled back to judge his reaction, but he followed her mouth with his own, which she took as a positive sign the interest was mutual.

After a couple of long kisses, she sighed and shifted her legs so she was facing him more comfortably, the leg closer to him folded and tucked under her, and tugged on his shirt collar to pull his head back to her. His arm, which was still slung around her, pulled her torso to his, and now her change of position brushed her breasts against him as they locked lips. She extended her arm under his to explore his back, and ran her far hand through his hair, licking the corner of his mouth.

He breathed hot on her cheek and sucked her bottom lip between his, stroking it with his velvet tongue. She stroked his tongue back with her own, and explored the soft interior of his mouth in turn. The drink was making the world spin around her, and she reveled in the feeling of being at the center of gravity, as if even the dark of the night was silken water caressing and carrying her.

His outer hand had grasped her shoulder, then her hip, then pulled her leg across his knee so that she was nearly straddling him as they made out. She responded with a purr, mindlessly pressing the ridge of her pelvic bone against his hip, unconscious that he could actually feel the heat radiating through the cloth layers of both of their pants. Panting for air, she kissed her way down his cheek, nipping gently on the edges of his jawline, and nibbled up and down his ear so he could hear the wet stirrings of her mouth on his skin.

His hands found the bottom lip of her shirt and slid in, exploring the smooth expansion of skin up her belly, trailing around the curve, and rising up the sides of her torso. Rough fingertips that gently traced the muscles framing her spine made her shiver in delight. She gave a little gasp as one palm, pushing the base of her bra up out of the way to cup a breast, led a parade of rare sensations across her sensitive nipple. The roughness of his palm, the cool night air billowing up her lifted shirt, and the heat of the silken flesh between his fingers whipped up a storm inside her skin. She reached a hand of her own to brace around his, unsure if she meant to try to move it away or press it closer.

He brought his molten lips to suction to her neck and his other hand to her ass, pulling the hot core of her sex to grind tightly against a rising rock in his own lap. The shock of the hard contact on her neglected center felt like raw nerves being blasted, and it jolted through her whole body and mind. Maybe the drink had hit her harder than she'd realized; her head was spinning and clearly she wasn't thinking up to her regular speed, but she was not sure how far she was ready to go in this spontaneous mingling. Cassie pushed away from his arms and managed to slide back to her seat on the crate next to him; but he mistook her retreat for a repositioning and stood—or rather leaned—in front of her drunkenly.

He captured her hand in his own and, after fumbling at his belt buckle, plunged both of their hands into his opened pants to press her fingers into the fur around his rigid flesh. She started to protest and extricate herself, apologizing, but her movements were arrested by his stumbling on top of her. He crashed their bodies horizontally on the crate, one hand trying to brace by her shoulder and the other back on her exposed breast. Despite her cries of 'No, no!' his weight collapsed completely across her. She yowled with as much air as his chest was allowing her, trying to resist their physical proximity with her own hands trapped between them, one still awkwardly twisted against his sweaty member from where she hadn't yet been able to retreat.

After a few moments, she realized he wasn't moving, and then it dawned on her that she was effectively trapped under an unconscious man. His sleeping breaths expanded into her torso, and she shifted and twisted as much as she could so she could breathe as well.

Cassie tried to marshal her own thoughts to free herself, drunken as they were on alcohol and hormones. Her legs didn't offer her any leverage, at the angle they were pinned to and hanging from the edge of the crate. Pain was starting to talk to her from the crate's ridges—now digging into her back—and the angles of her joints protesting the man's weight on their positions. The sexual frustration, the helplessness of her physical position, embarrassment of actually coming on to a guy and not being able to control the course of events, and the idea of being found like this—of needing to be found in order to get out—all combined with the bodily pain, and made her burst into tears of rage with all of the mental power she couldn't use physically. She screamed, she bellowed, she howled.

***

"Get off me! Wake up, you sodden piece of dirt-sucking asteroid!" When others around him had heard cries from the darkened path, they'd grabbed up a couple lanterns to investigate. Seth caught the last few phrases as he tailed them, approaching with alarm to hear a foul stream of invectives flowing in patches between gasps of air: "Get him off me! Get this mother-kissing bastard son of a milk-goat off of me!!" He witnessed the handful of outraged people immediately jump on a big man who had pinned down the shrieking woman. They pulled his limp body off of her with difficulty.

Seth stepped in quickly to give a hand to the situation, and was appalled to realize the woman was Cassie—grimacing face mottled by tears and smeared with tangled hair—gasping for relief in her lungs and stretched joints. His reach to grab the man—he could have ripped him into pieces at that moment—was intercepted by Cassie's toppling off the crate. She was being jerked unwillingly forward with the stranger until she managed to extract her hand from his pants. "I should rip that off and feed it to you, you oversized troglodyte!" she raged. Seth saw her kick out at the guy's leg, close to the mound of flesh and curling hair now revealed, and he felt a deep spasm in his own gut.

He redirected his dash to catch her, mentally acknowledging that there were plenty of others to dress down the son of a bitch. As he pulled her up to her feet, his touch met the soft bare skin of her torso, and he nearly jerked his supporting hands away. "Cass! Are you alright? What happened?" Another well-meaning observer reached out to assist, but Seth shoved the arm away. "I've got it; I've got her."

She pushed her hair out of her overheated face to see him, and mumbled sarcastically to herself, "Of course it's you. Who else would itpossibly be? Of all the Minisurs...Min... Mish-un... all the people out tonight..." She tiredly tried to shove away from him, but her legs twinged again and her efforts failed, only tilting herself over unsteadily. Seth glimpsed a crimson breast and his eyes flew wider, his face nearly matching the color of her crushed flesh as he glared around to check who else might have seen.

He stepped closer, almost chest to chest with her to block as much view as possible, and after a flustered moment of indecision he reached his own hands up to fumble her rolled-up clothes back down over her breasts and ribs and belly. Focusing on her face, he tried to discipline his mind to ignore the scorchingly silky feel and intimate shape of the body he was covering. Once her tender torso was shrouded, he quickly scanned the rest of her body for problems. "Are you hurt?" He saw blood where the crate had scraped raw her unprotected skin, and the love bite on her neck. "I'll kill him."

"Iss was ...just kissing..."

"My ass, that was—You've been drinking!" He interrupted himself in perturbation. He couldn't think of a time he'd seen her after anything more than one glass of something mild.

She scowled at him. "Oh, go away." The last thing she needed now was to get his lecture the one time she self-indulged in (what was supposed to have been) a good time. Finally getting her legs working under her, she turned to limp off.

"I'm taking you home," he insisted, "I'll let the rest of them deal with that rapist—I'll find him later." To avoid her further struggles, and to escape the crowding scene more quickly, he swept her up in his arms.

"Rapist? Oh!" She peered over his shoulder to see the small mob manhandling her would-be lover. "Stop. Stop! Seriously, Seth, put me down!" Cassie pounded and flailed like a child on his shoulder, then resorted to shouting over it to her rescuers, "Leave him alone! You don't understand. It wasn't rape! He just couldn't keep it up." She snickered at her own tongue slip as Seth reluctantly turned them back towards the throng. "I mean, he couldn't stand up. He's not—we were kissing and he just.. passed out, right on top of me. He wasn't trying anything I couldn't handle. Besides being so big." She snorted and smirked, "Maybe he wastoo big for me to handle."

She put a hand to her face in disgusted realization, "Oh man, I'mdrunk. People always sound so ridiculous when they're drunk, and now I'm that person!" Seth looked down with consternation at her whining face now burrowing into his shoulder.

The security head finally arrived and stepped in to settle her muddled clarifications. As soon as it was determined that the situation needing rescue was more from inept lovemaking and less from assault, the guard escorted the big man to a more established location where he could sleep off his overindulgence in drink.

Seth continued his escort of Cassie to her own sanctuary. On the way home, though, their communication did not improve.

"You're sure you're ok?"

"Leave me alone."

"Don't push me away, Cassiopeia. You werecrying; younever cry."

"I'mfine! It was just... overwhelming."

"What was? What happened back there?"

"I already said," Cassie insisted, muzzily resentful. "Kissing... Making out. Swapping—"

"I got that part," Seth growled low. "But generally both parties are supposed to enjoy making out, equally, not end up in pain and tears." After pacing in expectant silence without further response from her, he added impatiently, "What made you cry? Why were you kissing him? Did he take you back there?" The inflection he gave to the word 'take' made it sound insidious.

"Oh why not? Don't worry,'It could have been anyone'," she quoted back. Then feeling childish for the petty reference to their discomfiting encounter during the Scavenger Hunt, she continued disjointedly, "Really, I don't even remember his name." Dreamy, she sighed, "It sure was nice while it lasted."

His protective anger and confusion turned into jealous anger and confusion. His head swirled with turmoil, but she wasn't saying anything else. He walked her to her door, where she stumbled inside and promptly shut him out.

***

The next morning, as the men gathered around a late breakfast, Seth overheard some of the guys talking about the night's incident, laughing about the invectives that had been overheard coming out of Mentor Sparkes' mouth. They'd never heard her talk like that before. Others were dubious of the story's validity. Seth was hoping to finish eating before the uncertain memories made him lose his appetite. But then he heard a taunting voice sally out, "Too bad you missed it, being unconscious and all."

Seth wheeled around and scanned the group, found the speaker, and followed his gaze to a burly man sitting a little hung-over and shamefaced. He tried to compare the man's features to the confusing scene he'd witnessed the previous night. Seth stood and took a couple steps closer to break into the discussion. "That was you? That was you with Cassie last night?"

"Uh, you mean..." The guy looked around him uncertainly, as if to ask if Seth were referencing the same person as the rest of the crowd. "Yeah, that sounds familiar. Cassiopeia, right?"

Seth's heart froze for a second. "She said—She introduced herself as Cassiopeia?!"

"Eh, we were talking about the constellations. I thought she was giving me a sobriquet. You mean that's really her name?" He squinted up with a delighted smirk.

"No. It's not." Seth snarled. "You fucker, what do you think you were doing with her?"

"We-ell, Iwas pretty drunk, but I'm pretty sure I was trying to fuck'er," the big man answered saucily, playing on words. Seth lunged and the startled conversants halted him with hands on his chest before he could arrive at his target. The guy finally noticed his anger and turned his face to the side in a denying gesture. "Woah man! Honestly, I was just enjoying what she was giving me. I swear." The two eyed each other. "Who are you? She didn't say anything about a husband."

"He's just being protective, Taz; he's basically her little brother," someone inserted.

"Stay away from her," Seth hurled at him, ignoring the quelling comment from his friends.

"Don't be cliche. You've grown up, now let her."

Seth jerked away from the hands barring him and turned his back to return to his own table, but he couldn't stop listening, or seething. The others returned to the part of the discussion that interested them. "You're telling us that Cassie Sparkes—"

"Drunk Mentor Sparkes!"

"—came on to you while you were innocently minding your own business?"

"I, for one, find that hard to believe. She's never done that with any of our own, to my knowledge... She's kind of a prude."

"Yup, she seemed pretty mad when we found you passed out on top of her, and that's a lot more consistent with the Cassie Sparkes I know."

Seth could almost hear Taz's dismissive shrug. "Dunno... Maybe she was just mad because we didn't get to the good stuff, ever think of that? Which is bad luck on my part, I'll admit. I should have been able to show her a good time. But... She was happy enough when she was sitting on my lap beforehand. Nice and hot, if you know what I mean. Nearly scalded my leg." Seth burned at the deep rumble of suggestion in the guy's voice.

"Well I heard what she said she wanted to do with your dick, and itwasn't toride it," someone returned with scathing dubiousness. The raucous laughter spurred Seth to his feet and he stalked out before he had to listen to any more.

***

As he ducked in and out of the staging arena soon after, to drop off a load of requested lunches, one of the women working close to the door looked up and called after Seth, "Hey I saw Cassie this morning; she had her wrist wrapped up today. What happened?"

He froze in his step, already out in the hall. Another girl, not having seen Seth and therefore thinking the first was addressing the room at large, responded with a snicker. "Oh it probably has to do with her jerking some guy off behind the party last night. Strained her wrist, eh?"

"What!?"

"You didn't hear?" A third voice pitched in gleefully.

"No way, she waspinned down by a guy, I heard," someone else protested. "He had her pinned on her back and smothered so she couldn't even breathe."

"Listen, I'd appreciate it if you didn't spread rumors about it." The conversation now included several feminine voices, all batting the topic around, totally unaware of Seth listening from the hallway. "Taz is a good guy. I've worked with this schmuck for years, and I'd be the first to cut his balls off if he ever did force himself on a girl unwilling, but he's never been that type before, and I don't think he's changed that drastically."

"Yeah, she told the security headshe came up tohim. They were both into it until he stood up too fast and blacked out... apparently on top of her."

"Hey, sure, whatever you say. No judgment, people are into weird stuff these days. Maybe she likes it rough, and he's just being a sweetheart to hide her kink.I'm not going to tell her she can't get pinned down by a great hulk of a man if that's how she likes it. All I'm saying is she got caughtthis time, but who knows how many times she snuck back in the dark without anyone else knowing about it."

"Well it's not likeCassie'd be one to announce it. I've never noticed her in a relationship at all. Anyway, who gets frisky in front of everyone else? I certainly keep my bedroom frolics in the bedroom."

"Maybe. But she didn't keep it in the bedroom, now did she? Just saying. Sometimes it's the quiet ones who like it dirty."

"Oh hush! I'm starting to wonder if it'syou who likes it dirty."

"No, I remember there was one guy she was with for a little while, what was his name?" A rational voice gave Seth reprieve for a moment. "But she's always been more focused on being a Mentor. Maybe the kids fulfill her 'baby urges'."