The Afflicted Ch. 11

Moments later she was squatting above him, bouncing up and down on his shaft with surprising athleticism as she lowered and raised herself in direct vertical motions.

Claude gasped out.

"Please, this time?" he begged.

"Very well, my stallion," she agreed.

She descended down as far as her body would take and squeezed him with her inner muscles, urging his long-awaited eruption to begin.

Perhaps more sensuous than anything she had done so far, the look on her face as she took his cum into her was something Claude would never forget. It was as though she was willing every drop to find its way somewhere into her body -- into her very being. As Claude felt himself exploding, he was hypnotized at the rapture upon Seika's face. Even when he was done, she kept her eyes closed and continued rocking back and forth on his shaft -- milking him with tiny moans escaping from her lips.

After a while, she reluctantly lifted off him and sighed at the sound of his white magic dripping out of her and back onto him. Then she lowered herself down onto the length of his shaft and slid her soaked pussy up and down his length.

"You're still hard," she purred.

"It happens," said Claude. "Especially after seeing what I just saw."

She pondered the situation. "What am I going to do with all of this lovely slipperiness? Hmm."

She reached down and grabbed his shiny pole to maneuver it behind her. He groaned as she pushed it between her cheeks, rubbing his slickness everywhere.

"Brana says you are young," murmured Seika. "Are you so young that you've never done this?"

"No, I haven't," groaned Claude.

"Then we both shall win," said Seika. "You will have your first time there, and I will have you filling me in every place. You will help me with this, won't you?"

"Yes," whispered Claude.

Her tight brown bud seemed both anxious and reluctant to take him. Slowly at first, he pushed his way in, Seika gasping with each fraction of an inch he moved in. Claude felt he was almost past the tightest point and he unconsciously lifted them from the ground. That tiny burst of gravity was all it took and he suddenly felt her tight opening relax, sending him surging into her more sacrosanct passage.

Seika gave a cry and Claude couldn't tell if her subsequent hiss was of pleasure or pain, or a mix of both.

"Hurt?" he asked tenderly.

"Only in a good way," she moaned. "How amazing this feels. And you didn't tell me you were a flier. That will make this way ever-so-much more interesting.

Hours later, Brana arrived at Claude's temporary lodging and gave in inquiring glance to the guard who stood inside. He simply gave Brana an affirmative raise of the eyebrows as she peeked into the rooms beyond.

Claude was splayed out across a couch, lost in exhausted sleep. Seika had risen upon hearing Brana's arrival and was retrieving a less formal, more Western dress from the bag she had brought. Still naked, she turned to see Brana and gave a cry of delight, running to Brana to embrace her.

"Oh Brana, what a lovely night!" she said. "It was just what the doctor ordered, truly."

"I'm so glad," said Brana. "You look wonderful. So energetic, so happy, so..."

"Alive?" offered Seika. "My friend, I don't know if there was any truth to what you said, but I feel like there was. The milk of a young stallion was indeed good medicine for me."

Seika still had the dress hanging over her arm and was beginning to put it on when Brana noticed something.

"Umm, Seika, you might want to freshen up... bathe perhaps before you go?"

"But why?" asked the woman.

"You, uh..."

Brana indicated a white, flaky patch on Seika's cheek then her hand drifted down to illustrate further. There was scarcely a patch of skin on Seika's entire body that didn't bear some trace of Claude's voluminous offerings.

Seika gave a girlish giggle that Brana wouldn't have believed could have come out of her not twenty-four hours before.

"My goodness," she said. "I think I'll just keep it there, as a souvenir. I have a wonderful tub in my home, imported from Japan. It will be so much more enjoyable to wash it off there. Thank you again, Brana, this was a life-altering night.

* * * *

Jacob was weary. The sun-shock had taken more out of him than he had realized.

To be tired, truly tired, was unusual in itself for an Afflicted. To feel pain of the sort that he still felt in the darkened patch of his back -- it was unheard of. Two months prior, a blade had slipped in training and the gash had been to the bone of his upper arm. In less than a day there had been no pain, in two days it had been a seam, in four days, not a trace of a scar remained.

His sun-scarred back still ached, so did the cuts that had come from the whip. As one of the Afflicted, having to deal with lingering wounds was a new sensation and one which he detested more by the day. The constant pain put him in a foul mood.

Worst of all were the women. Brana arranged them. She told Jacob that Galen insisted, but even the companions were different. For the first time since his awakening, he did not have a constant hunger for a woman. Of course, it didn't take much convincing when each woman arrived, but his energy wasn't as high and he was perhaps only good for one or two climaxes a day.

The climaxes were the most annoying part of all. He had been a stallion. Since his awakening, the volume of his ejaculations had only gone up and up. However, because of the sun shock his volume had been normal.

He might not have minded if it weren't for the looks on the women's faces. He was sure what they'd been told. 'Come sleep with a stallion.' The woman on Wednesday, particularly, had not been very good at hiding her disappointment when she had knelt before him and seen the few teaspoons-worth that landed on her chest.

The visits from women had turned into his least favorite part of the day.

Jacob practically cringed at hearing the knock on the outer door.

He knew the routine well by now. Due to his gift, his guards remained outside. When someone wished to enter, they knocked. Jacob was then to sit in the bench directly across from the door so he could be seen through the view hole. Little matter that made, he thought to himself. He hadn't been able to turn invisible since the sun. Rules were rules though, so Jacob dutifully rose up from the couch and crossed to the bench.

Once his presence was verified, the door opened and the inner door, an iron grate that slid from the floor, slid down.

"Hello Jacob," said Brana, stepping in and smiling warmly. As soon as she stepped in, the grate slid back up. Two guards watched ominously from beyond.

"Hello Brana."

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"About the same. Tired. Sore. Balls a bit empty."

"Galen assures me it will all come back," she assured him, patting his cheek. "Jacob, I have a special visitor, today."

"I can hardly wait."

"No Jacob," said Brana quite seriously. "This is a very special visitor. Unlike any you've had this week, or ever, for that matter. Glennis."

An ethereal beauty stepped in front of the grate. Jacob's mind searched for where he had seen her before. She gave him a smile that would have melted the hardest of hearts.

"Let her in," whispered Jacob. "By all means, let her in"

The grate slid down and remained down and the girl stepped in. Jacob still couldn't remember her, but he was captivated.

"Jacob, this is Glennis," said Brana. "She has wanted to meet you for some time."

Glennis walked to the bench to sit beside Jacob. She gazed at him adoringly so long it made him uncomfortable.

Without even turning her head, Glennis spoke.

"You may go now Brana."

It didn't sound like an order, but that was undoubtedly what it was.

Brana said a pleasant goodbye and left them to their own devices. Jacob found himself still struggling to remember the girl as the door clanked shut.

"I have wanted to see you again for so long, Jacob-who-hides-like-a-window."

The dawn of recognition crossed Jacob's face, and it was not a happy one.

"You!" he said, his face turning an angry shade of red.

"You are... displeased with me?"

"No," said Jacob angrily. "I'm ecstatic to meet the girl who almost got me killed."

The expression on the girl's face almost changed Jacob's mind right away, but he was determined to stay mad at her. He turned away so her hypnotic eyes couldn't work their effect on him any further.

Soon, he felt her hand on his shoulder.

Jacob, I... I am naïve. That's a word that Galen used. He said that 'naïve' didn't have to be an entirely bad word, but that being naïve is not such a good thing in the world sometimes. Always, my entire life, I have been lucky -- but you are the first person I have ever hurt because of how naïve I was. People... they don't harm me, I don't know why. But last week, I found out what happened to you because of what I did and I cried for the longest time."

"Oh," said Jacob.

He could hear that she was near crying now.

He turned back to her and it wrenched his heart to see the tears forming in her eyes.

"I thought it was a game," she said. "I love hide and seek, but I had never seen someone hide the way you did. I wanted to get to know you better. I don't understand why people would hurt each other."

"How did you see me?"

"I'm not sure. I just knew you were there... in here," she said, tapping her chest. "In here, I could see you as plain as anything. Though my eyes saw you were not there, it didn't matter. I knew. So, I went to you and caused a great deal of trouble, as I understand it. I'm sorry, once again."

"Who are you?" asked Jacob.

"They call me Glennis, but I think my name is...something else. I can never quite remember."

"Well Glennis," he said, trying to reassure her. "We can look at this two ways. One, you accidently revealed me to Arnet and I was captured, and so on. Two, without you, we might have never known the truth about Arnet and his plans. He has captured many members of the Afflicted in the past, but none of them lived to tell the tale. I was only able to be rescued because of my sister and Aimée with their amazing talents."

"I like to think of it the second way," said Glennis, laughing through her tears.

"So do I," said Jacob.

"But I still don't know you," said Glennis. "That is why I am here, to get to know this boy who can hide like a window."

She reached out to take his hand. It was the first time her skin had touched his and it was electrifying. Jacob gasped at the touch as their two systems somehow exchanged a greeting. Glennis also felt it and her eyes flew open wide at the curious jolt of recognition.

They sat that way for some time, both of them uncertain of what was happening. The closest sensation Jacob could liken it to was the way it felt when Abby reached out to him in intimate times and established a rapport. This was like that, but without the sexual overtones. The possibility of intimate love seemed there, but this was just a 'hello'. This 'buzz' was just their systems getting to know each other. Regardless of what level of sexual attraction they felt, both of them could have let that moment go on forever. Eventually, Jacob's other hand reached out to take hers and they sat there for countless minutes, staring into each other's eyes.

"You're still hurt," said Glennis at last.

"Yes," said Jacob. "It is called sun-shock. Madame Villepreux-Power explained that it is the Affliction's survival mechanism. The Affliction cells retreat from the sun."

"I don't understand what cells might be," said Glennis.

"I'm not sure I full understand it either," said Jacob. "But for now, you wanted to get to know me. Why don't we concentrate on that?"

"I'd like that," said Glennis with a smile.

"But I want to get to know you, too" insisted Jacob. "You first. Where are you from?"

Glennis reiterated the same tale she'd told many others, how her early memories were cloudy and she remembered a boat and a storm, and arriving at the base of Manhattan in a small boat.

Jacob relived his times in Canada. They exchanged childhood memories, Jacob's revolved around his family, those of Glennis were more vague but she did remember the various families who had taken her in. She had favorite street vendors who could always spare her a few chestnuts or pastries.

She also told of him of her favorite sleeping places, which had obviously been more important in the winters.

"You slept in a bank?" asked Jacob, in wonder.

"I did," she said. "Three winters running. The first winter, the guard let me in. Then, the bank president found out and he let me sleep in his office every night where there was a fireplace."

"Didn't anyone ever try to adopt you?" asked Jacob.

"No," she said simply. "Some people asked, but I told them I didn't want to be adopted and they left me alone."

"How old are you?" asked Jacob after a while.

"I've never quite worked that out," said Glennis. "It never seemed important."

"We should figure it out," said Jacob. "You said you walked when you came off the boat after the storm, so I can only guess you were at least three or four when you came here. Let's say four. You remember winters fairly strongly, let's count from there."

They began to count over the winters and the places she had found shelter regularly each year. Soon, they had reached twenty, then twenty five.

"Now then, the thirtieth winter I remember, I remember that, it was four years ago. That was the year I had to get new clothes because I got these."

She grabbed her breasts through her blouse to illustrate.

"It didn't make me happy," she went on. "I had my very favorite dress and it didn't fit around my chest or my hips any more. "

"Fascinating," mused Jacob.

"What?" she asked.

"You are probably somewhere near forty years old, but I wouldn't put you anywhere past eighteen if someone asked me to guess," said Jacob. "You didn't start developing until after thirty years, and you've survived all that time in one of the roughest cities in the world -- not a scratch on you."

Glennis shrugged with a bemused smile on her face. It meant nothing to her. It was as though she was living among humans, but not with them. She found them amusing and fascinating, but had never truly connected with them.

Their conversation continued and she kept telling stories of her favorite places in Manhattan, and Jacob's tale soon reached the point in his life of the raid on his village and his confinement with his sister in the mountain bunker. He felt an uncanny sense of trust with Glennis and before he knew it, he was telling her of their awakening and of how they were eventually forced to appease their lusts with each other.

"We knew it was wrong," explained Jacob, "but we didn't have much choice."

"Why was it wrong?" asked Glennis. "Brothers and sisters love each other. That's part of what families do."

"Oh Glennis, I wish I could give you a clear answer on that. Biologically, there are many reasons why incest should be avoided in any species. Our science instructors talk about recessives and dominants, and all of these other things. With the Afflicted, it is more complicated. There have been numerous examples of brothers and sisters and half-siblings becoming bloodmates over the years, but offspring are mostly forbidden. For first bloodmate, the council strongly discourages sibling pairings... and blah, blah, blah. Long story short, Abby and I did what we had to, just like Claude and Aimée. Now, we're trying to find a way past it. I just hope Galen can find a way to work it all out with matching gifts and cells and all of the complications we seem to have created."

"And who are Claude and Aimée?" asked Glennis, patiently.

Jacob explained the complicated relationship with Claude and Aimée, eventually, they had each other's stories caught up to the present day.

"Jacob, can I ask you something?" asked Glennis.

He was surprised to see her blushing.

"I want to know what it feels like, in your heart, when you lie with someone you care for. I know about the sex parts. I have seen the girls who sell themselves in the Bowery. I have watched them raise their skirts for men in alleys. I have sometimes seen husbands and wives through windows. Just a little while ago, I began to have stirrings. What is it like... to want someone in that way?"

"Oh," said Jacob.

He thought about it for a long while and searched for the right words.

"I suppose, it really is like a hunger," said Jacob. "When you are hungry, your body yearns for food and once you've eaten, that longing doesn't just go away. It is more than that. Your body is satisfied. It is better than it was before you ate. When you kiss someone, or you lay with them it is like that. This Affliction, it has terrible hungers. What I would say is, we will often kiss or take someone to our bed... and perhaps we will leave that encounter and it will be like we had a snack. A plain piece of bread or some soup. After those encounters, we're no longer hungry, but there also isn't more. When I lie with Aimée or Abby, it's like a feast. With them, I have that 'more', like I've just had a steak and mashed potatoes and dessert, too."

Glennis pondered his words, and then blushed again. She couldn't even look him in the eyes, which was odd, because she had been staring deeply at him the entire time they had spoken. Now, she was looking away.

"Jacob," she whispered. "I have had this stirring, of late. I have wished to kiss someone, but every time I see a boy it doesn't feel right. I have seen no boys who I want to try this kissing and more with. Then, I saw you hiding like a window. I decided I should try it with you. I know your heart is confused and given to other girls, but I am here now. I was wondering if you would teach me how to kiss. I was wondering, if you could help this hunger that has been growing. Will you?"

Jacob contemplated her request seriously.

He finally spoke in a soft tone. "I think that being the first man to kiss you would be an honor higher than few men have ever known."

Jacob took her hand and led her to comfortable couch. He had contemplated the bed, but wanted to be sure there was no intimation that there would be something beyond kissing. In truth, his suppressed system allowed him to keep his lust quite in check.

They turned to face each other and she looked trustingly into his eyes.

"How is it done?" she asked quietly.

"Like this," he whispered.

He placed his hand softly on her cheek and she did the same with her own hand. Very slowly, he pulled the trembling girl toward him and was surprised to find that he was trembling as well. Instinctively and with his gently guiding hand, she turned her head and their lips met. For a lifetime in a minute, they stayed like that, their lips touching. When they pulled back, both of them had tears in their eyes.

"I was lost in the snow once," Glennis finally said. "I was walking for hours and it had been a day since I had eaten. I was so hungry. I came upon a house where a great glow was pouring out the front window. Inside, a family and their friends were gathered for a Christmas dinner. I walked up to the door and found that it was open. I walked in and sat in an empty chair, they didn't even ask who I was -- they just set me a plate. The turkey, the ham, the sweet potatoes; they were perfect."

"I did not know I was hungry, Jacob," Glennis said as she brushed the tears from her eyes. "But this kiss, I know now that I was starving, like you say. Please, feed me some more."

Jacob obliged and the two of them sat on the couch and kissed intensely for the longest time. Eventually, their hands sought out each other -- but it wasn't in a sexual way. Jacob's hands brushed innocently past Glennis's breasts to reach for her waist and pull her closer to him. Her hands played with his face and his hair before eventually finding their way to his back.