Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 05

Until now.

Their lips parted and she looked down at herself as the little white top fell away from her body. When she saw him looking, too, she inhaled deeply, forcing her breasts to jut outward.

"Hello," he whispered, maybe to her, maybe to them.

"You do good work," she said, stifling a giggle.

"Whenever I can."

The left hand, the smoother one, slid around the front of her body, up over her ribs, to cup the nearest mound of flesh. A tingle rushed through her body, building up into a shock that forced her head back. She hadn't let any of the girls touch her since the upgrade, complaining that she was too sensitive. True, even now the skin was a little on the touchy side, but the real reason for her reticence was this moment. She had been saving herself for this, that he could be the first to touch her in this way.

His mouth was upon her nipple. When had he moved? She'd been so lost that she hadn't even noticed.

She was working on his shirt, pulling it off over his head and forcing him to detach from her breast. Their mouths met again, more insistently, more urgently. She pushed him on his back, allowing her to stretch out her legs. Their lips never unsealed. Not for a moment.

A spare part of Illya's mind noted that kissing him wasn't like it was with girls. She was sure he was being gentle -- for a man -- but girls were just softer, smaller somehow. His mouth, his muscles, his whole body, were all just larger than what she was used to.

That was okay.

Her thigh was between his legs, brushing up against something else that was larger than what she was used to. Arda would tease her sometimes, whispering about how many fingers she was slipping into Illya's vagina. Three was her limit. This beast that pushed out from inside Zhair'lo's beige work pants was wider than three of Arda's fingers.

And it was going inside her. She resolved that then and there, as if she hadn't made that decision when she chose him, when she started walking to this lodge, when she came into this bedroom and when she kissed him.

She pulled at the laces on his pants, loosening them. It meant coming unglued from his lips so she could slide off the bed and yank his pants down.

Nine gods!

Not counting the upgrades, it had been months since she'd seen a penis, and somehow the knowledge this one was going inside her made it seem a little more real than any of the others. There was a point, when you were failing upgrades so many times, that you just refused to get too caught up in the belief that you might make it through, might get to this point. A girl just learned to harden herself to the failures.

A breath rushed through her in the instant she saw that erection and realized it was really happening.

"You okay?" Zhair'lo asked.

She looked up to see a quirky smile on his lips. She exhaled a stuttering breath.

"Yeah," she said. "It's just -"

Illya trailed off as she took his erection in hand. It felt hard and unyielding. Well, it wasn't like she hadn't known what she was getting into when she'd picked him.

"Underwear," she said suddenly and stood up.

The skirt unlaced, the underwear slid off. Zhair'lo gave her another funny look as he saw the underwear laid aside. She knew what that look was for, but she didn't care right then.

Calling up her courage, she crawled on top of him and put her hands on his shoulders.

"Carefully, now," she said, somewhere between demanding and pleading.

Zhair'lo's expression went very calm as he took a long, deep breath.

"Take your time," he said with a coy grin. "I'm here all night."

It was natural for him, even easy. While she'd been waiting for him and Zo'kar to come back around to doing upgrades, he'd probably being have sex as often as he wanted. Plus he'd come all over her chest the night before. His thirst for such things was well slaked, wasn't it? She supposed that that was good. The more sex he'd had, the more patient he could be. Wasn't that how men were?

She and Arda had practised even this part. Arda would lie on her back and hold her fingers near her pussy, allowing Illya to slide down on them: imagining what it would be like when it was a man underneath her; making sure she could do the angle just right.

The head of his penis bumped up against, sliding against her lips. Was that her wetness, lubricating him? Yes, it was. She twisted her hips side to side, letting the swollen head part her lips a little at a time, letting the juices that flowed from her insides coat his manhood.

The very tip of him, as she brushed back and forth, touched something just far enough inside her.

She felt it then.

The mesh.

Illya had never been in a mesh before, and here it was. Her hips locked, the muscles frozen in place in a way that was almost painful. She'd known that meshes were unbreakable, but she had never realized how literally the mesh enforced its existence. Now that the two bodies, the two minds, were meshed, her body just refused to do anything to loosen that combination.

A sweat broke out on her brow, even as she felt all of Zhair'lo's emotions rushing into her body.

The only direction her muscles would let her go?

Down.

She relaxed herself as best she could and, with a slight whimper escaping, let her body go the only place it would.

In the moment that she eased herself onto him, she felt every centimetre sliding up inside her, filling her with width that fingers never had; to depths fingers could never reach. There were places in there that no one had touched until now.

Give him credit: Zhair'lo was a patient and thoughtful man. She hoped everyone she went to Serve would be like him. He merely waited, letting her adjust. He didn't thrust, twist or even twitch while she acclimated herself to the sensation of being fully penetrated. There was no sense in him, in body motion, facial expression or even emotion spilling through the mesh, that gave her any sense of insistence on his part.

Illya felt the muscles in her back complain from being arched at this odd angle for so long. She relaxed her hips just the slightest bit, to take the pressure off, and felt him moving inside her. Her eyes became slits as she revelled in that sensation, that swollen head pushing her insides around.

Delicious.

She arched her back and relaxed it, starting a very slow rocking motion.

A stifled cry escaped from her lips as he enlarged inside her. His fingers, resting lightly on her hips, became just a tiny bit tense.

"So soon?" she asked, frozen in place.

"One of us," he muttered, straining to hold them both back, "was really ready to go."

There was no avoiding it. Illya let herself rock back on his shaft, pushing it up against that perfect spot inside her, and she felt a surge of energy launch itself from the base of her spine, up her back and into her brain.

She felt, painfully, that erection twitching inside her, releasing its white load one voluminous shot at a time. Remembering the night before, Illya knew how much came out of him. She could only imagine what it had to be doing inside her as the pressure forced semen into every crevice available.

It was a relief when he began to shrink, releasing the feeling of tightness that had consumed her.

Gently, remembering at least that particular warning from months ago, she slid off him. Oh, how she felt empty. She fell on her stomach beside him, panting heavily. Laying her chin in the crook of his arm, she looked up into his eyes. He was watching her with a curious half grin.

She couldn't help it, at that point, she just started giggling uncontrollably.

"Sorry," she tried to stammer out.

"It's okay," Zhair'lo assured her with a wry grin. "Laughing is normal."

"I just -- I just," she stammered, unable to complete her thought.

Her head rested on his shoulder as she tried to get a hold of herself. After what seemed like several minutes, the giggling went away. She gulped in embarrassment and looked up into his eyes again.

"I was just so afraid," she said.

He jerked his chin towards his nightstand and she followed his gaze to the little white pair of underwear that lay there.

"I always wanted to come out to my first Service without wearing it," she said. "But after I talked to Talla -"

He jerked his head at this.

"Talla?"

"When she told me what you had done after whipping her," Illya said.

"Oh, that," Zhair'lo said, somewhat relieved.

Illya looked at him.

"What did you think I meant?"

Zhair'lo shook his head.

"Never mind. It's not important."

Illya shrugged, looking back at her underwear.

"I was going over it in my head when I was getting dressed and I just -- I just put them on," she explained. She pursed her lips and added, "Like some kind of shield, I guess."

"Against me?"

"Yeah. Weird, huh?"

"But you chose me anyway?"

"I hadn't had time to think through Talla's story," Illya said. "They have this set up, now, just for you and Zo'kar. There's like, one Officer sitting in the Offices, who asks us on our way out if we want you for our Virgin's Choice. We have to tell her right then, right after the upgrade, or we miss our chance."

Zhair'lo squinted, adding words to his vocabulary.

"I hadn't even thought through Talla's story," Illya went on. "But I said, 'Yeah. Of course I'll take him'. And then all night long I'm thinking and thinking if that was the right thing to do."

He inhaled. No girl, no woman, had ever come to his bed admitting that she was afraid he might intentionally hurt her.

"But it was the right call," Illya said suddenly. "I kept remembering the look I saw in your eyes last night. I kept telling myself that the person who gave me that look -- that he knew what pain was and that he wouldn't hurt anyone he didn't have to."

How odd that Illya and Talla hadn't seemed to hold the actual whipping part against Zhair'lo. The only controversy for either of them was the part where he went on immediately thereafter to have sex with someone else. Logical, sure, but Zhair'lo wasn't entirely confident that he would feel the same way in their positions.

"Talla's not upset that I got her into that mess?" he asked.

Illya looked at him oddly.

"Of course not," she said. "It was her choice to come to you the second time."

"Still -"

"We," she interrupted, lifting her chest off the bed in an unmistakeable gesture of pride, "take responsibility for our actions."

"No one punished me," Zhair'lo pointed out. "Does Talla think that's fair? Do you?"

"First of all," Illya admonished. "Yes, it is fair. You're a man. Men aren't responsible for -"

"Why in nine hells not?" he interrupted.

Illya was flabbergasted, blinking her eyes in confusion.

"Because you're not," she said, unable to find anything else to say. "Men just aren't. That's our problem, not yours."

Zhair'lo opened his mouth to argue, but couldn't come up with anything to say, so Illya went on.

"Second, Talla told me that you did feel her pain."

Another deep breath from him.

"Yeah," he said. "But I haven't felt a thing from her since."

"Neither has she," Illya said. "That's why she had to send me here."

"To find out why."

Illya nodded.

"And, knowing why, to find out what you're doing now."

Zhair'lo's mouth twisted as he let out a breath of air.

"Learning how to fire an arrow," he said, narrowing his eyes suggestively. "And trying to find people who feel like I do."

Illya's eyes widened in alarm.

"Don't worry," he assured her. "I'm not about to do anything stupid. I wouldn't last a second assaulting the Temple."

"Then what are you planning?"

He thought about that. What was he really planning?

"I'm assigned here, for now," he said. "I can't leave this assignment for a while, but I want to join the Fighters as soon as I can figure out how. Then I can try to find whoever it is they're fighting. There must be somebody out there who can help us, even if it's just to escape for a while."

"That's what Talla was hoping," Illya said. "She's making friends, too. The girls who were Sealed Virgins are a good start. We, of all people, have got a good idea of how unfair this place is."

"We agree on that," Zhair'lo stated firmly. "But how do we change it?"

"Temples can fall," Illya said, looking directly into his eyes. "I've had time to read a lot of history. When the Goddess dies, a new one must be chosen quickly. Failing that, without a single woman holding all nine Perfections, the whole thing falls apart in short order."

Zhair'lo remembered his dream of offering Sonja's head to Talla. He remembered wondering then, as he did now, if Talla had changed so much that she would accept such a gift. Would his feelings for her change if she had become that sort of person?

"We're contemplating murder?" he asked worriedly.

"No," Illya said firmly. "But Goddesses don't live very long. The trick would be to prevent any of the Queens from ascending."

"Ascending?"

"That's what they call it."

Indeed, this was a lot for Zhair'lo to take on. He vaguely recalled that the Temple would have a little party or something whenever a new Goddess was named, but pre-adult Zhair'lo had never really cared except as the festivities included a few days in which there was some fairly fantastic cake available.

If Illya was right, the thick walled, well guarded Temple was a fragile thing after all, but only for a short period of time. The whole enterprise, it turned out, was a machine pivoting on a single point.

"And then what do we do?" Zhair'lo asked.

"I don't know," Illya said and her voice went bitter as she continued. "The Temple historians promise all kinds of horrible chaos and misery, but I don't trust them. The authority of the Temple is what they care about, so they're willing to tell all kinds of lies about what would happen without a Goddess in control of everyone."

"So that's our goal?" Zhair'lo asked, his voice coated with disbelief at the enormity of the task. "To somehow orchestrate the fall of the Temple?"

Illya nodded.

Zhair'lo's eyes widened and wandered the room.

"Tall order."

"Yeah."

There was a long silence as various thoughts went through their heads. Zhair'lo was trying to imagine how he could do anything -- from outside the Temple - to prevent any of the three Queens from becoming a Goddess. Illya was wondering if any of the stories about the plight of women in the pre-Temple days were true, or just fabrications to keep women in line.

Illya's eyes fell on her underwear again.

"What did you think I was going to say?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"About my underwear. And Talla."

"Oh, that," he said, covering himself with an embarrassed laugh. "When Talla came to me on her first night. Her, uh, Virgin's Choice, I guess. She left her underwear with me, more or less by accident. I still have it."

"Weren't you assigned somewhere else?"

"Yeah. Harzen's Farm."

Illya laughed.

"And you brought it here with you?"

Zhair'lo shrugged.

"Yeah. I thought maybe she sent you to get it back."

"She sent me to talk about the downfall of the Temple," Illya said drily. "Underwear didn't come up."

"I suppose it wouldn't," Zhair'lo had to laugh, too.

Illya cocked her head.

"You can keep mine, too," she offered impishly. "Since you're collecting."

"What?"

"I don't need a shield," she said, turning her eyes upon him. "Not from you."