To Walk the Constellations Pt. 09

All my words were choked off. I cupped his head. My finger found his ear, and I rubbed where ear met skull, gentle. Just so. There. The way I had in our dreams. He started to purr – and then choked it off with a furious growl. He twisted his head away, grabbing my wrist. His hand clenched and pain flashed across his eyes. I could feel the tech built into his gloves – and as the schematic uncoiled in my head, I could see it. It was built with fake claws. Silver, sharp edged claws. But if his real claws, the claws he was born with, the claws that made him a mutant, tried to peek out...his gloves would tighten. They'd compress the joints and send pain shooting along his arm.

I went past red to seeing pure white. I grabbed his wrist with both hands, growling as I leaned forward. My eyes didn't leave his and he couldn't look away as I bit down on the tip of his glove. My power touched it – and I burned out every servo and bit of smart fabric with a vicious twist of mental effort. Then I dragged backwards. Thale's breath caught. His tail froze as I pulled the glove off, until it dangled from my teeth. I spat it aside. A single strand of hair had escaped my pony tail and hung across my eye, but I couldn't move. I couldn't look away. I couldn't let go of his hand – which was now bare and pale in the yellowish light of the industrial corridor.

Thale's claw slipped from his fingertip as he let out a little sigh of relief.

The razor sharp tip pressed to my tongue.

I closed my lips around his finger. My tongue rasped along his claw-tip, teasing myself with his sharp edges and wickedness. I moaned as my eyes slowly closed, focusing only on his hand – releasing his finger to kiss his palm. Thale growled. "V-Venn, I...you're...my enemy..." His voice was choked. "I-"

I bit his wrist. I wished I had fangs. Sharp fangs, the fangs that drew blood. I wished I could suck every bit of the Hegemony out of him and leave Thale empty and purified. I wish I could forget every lie he told me – the lie that he hated the Hegemony, that he stood against them. And tasting his skin, feeling the repressed rumble of his purring, the lies felt so far away. And his claw pressed to my forehead – it felt so close. My eyes closed and I wanted him to hurt me as much as I wanted him to love me.

"Venn..."

Just my name. Just my name.

And Thale lost his battle. He grabbed the back of my neck with his still gloved hand, turned my chin up with his bare hand, and kissed me into the deck plating.

RIP

Thale grabbed onto my shirt with both hands. His claws drew thin, stinging pink lines along my skin as my shirt simply came to pieces around me. My breasts heaved as I drew in a hissing gasp – and his lips pressed to those lines. He tongued them, gently, his voice a quiet croon. "Venn, Venn, Venn..." His tongue brought a wonderful coolness to the scratches. Then he paused, his mouth hanging above one of my nipples.

God I wanted him to keep ripping. But I wanted some ripping of my own. I put my hands on his shoulders, then reached, trying to find a buckle. A strap. This was easier when we were in dreams. When my hands weren't shaking, when part of me wasn't screaming the drumbeat: He's Lord Drak. He's the man who tried to butcher you. The man who was strangling Tiar Junker and jamming probes into his head. The man who serves Emperor Rehoboam and flies on a ship called a worldkiller. Idiot girl. Idiot.

I found a small buckle with my fingertips and Thale tensed as I popped it open. He put his palms underneath him and pushed himself up and up, allowing my hands to slide under the gambeson and his cloak, finding more buckles. They unlatched, and as they unlatched, his lips pressed to my neck. He bit me and I nearly came. My eyes fluttered shut and I opened my mouth.

Liar, my head thought.

Hammer-hammer, my heart went. Quiver-quiver my knees went. His gambeson became a loose, flappy thing between us, and Thale grabbed it with one hand and tossed it carelessly aside. It smacked into a wall and was in another cluster as far as it mattered to me. Then his chest pressed to mine and his hands cupped my back as he drew me in. In the coldness of the antiproton factory, his body was blazing heat. Star hot. And there were his scars. My fingers slipped from the small of his back, where his last latch had been, and to the tiny trio of scars that he always hid with his elbow. This shifted his arm – and made him draw back from my neck.

I wanted to ask him who had done this to him.

Instead, I kissed his lips and tasted my own sweat on his lips. His tongue thrust into my mouth and Thale's control slipped. He began to purr. The rumbling bass of it echoed through the corridor and made my entire body buzz. When the kiss broke and we both panted, I whispered his name. "Thale."

His eyes were filled with tears. I laughed.

Big bad. Lord Drak. Shocktroopers called him sire. He controlled the powers of the Machine and carried a threshold blade. He was a Liminal Knight – walking between our world and the greater universe of tech – and here he was. With tears sliding down his cheeks, his body trembling as he ripped off his glove. Leaving only his pants. And my heart started to go even faster.

Was I...

Were we...

Here?

Now?

NOW

We both sat there. Poised on a precipice. Him, with his legs tucked under him, his hand reaching up to wipe tears from his eyes, his purring becoming hitched and hesitant. Me, with my shirt in tatters, my whole body tingling with an almost electric energy.

Neither of us made the next step. I didn't know what could have stopped Thale. Was it because I wasn't his Venn? Because I was a part of the Alliance set hell bent on toppling the neutronium throne of Emperor Daniel Rehoboam?

Why wasn't I moving?

Fuck the lies. Fuck the Hegemony.

Right here. Right now. I needed Thale more than I needed oxygen.

That decision made the next step so...so very easy. I pushed him onto his back. Thale sprawled, his hair fanning around his head, his cat ears flicking back. His clawed palm pressed to my shoulder, as if he was pushing me away, but there was no strength in his arm. Instead, his hand slipped along my shoulder, to my back, as I leaned forward and began to kiss my way along his neck. I tasted his sweat and felt his pulse. I kissed to his sternum.

I had been trying my fucking hardest to stick a monomolecular sword through this place. My face pressed against the sleekness of his muscle. I wanted to say I was sorry. But...I wasn't. But I was. But...god. God, god, god, I was like one of those people who sat around all day thinking about the ecosystem Stumble used to have. Greensickers, looking off at a plastic choked horizon, thinking of green, wanting to smell fresh air.

But I had smelled fresh air.

I'd been away from the endless rubber fires.

You could have green. If you had the right chances, the right moments dealt to you. My palms slid slowly from his shoulders to his sides as I kissed down to his belly button. I didn't dare look up at his face. Whatever expression was in those sad, sad purple eyes...it'd break me. Instead, I kissed down to the silvery plug of Thale's acceleration implant. I nuzzled it with my nose and felt the smooth connections with my talent. I could feel the quiet twitch of every organ in his body through that fibrous network of pipes and tubes. My eyes fluttered shut and I simply drank in the rythms of him...

And...then I felt him.

CLOSE

Thale's talent started at the fingertips of my cybernetic arm. The feeling of his presence was so familiar and yet so breathtakingly new that...I...I couldn't do anything. I simply laid against him, my cheek pressed to his plug, and felt the tingling sensation crawling along my arm. He touched every component in my arm. He gently tweaked the laser finger. He caressed the agrav impeller. He touched a servo here, a joint there, and my toes curled as I felt the deep massage as his superior training and longer expertise with the talents of a Liminal Knight soothed out calibration bugs I hadn't even known were there.

My arm felt more like me as his talent slipped to the ZPE power plant Dr. Seasong had put in my shoulder blade. Then he was touching the same network of tiny tubes and pipes I had for my acceleration implant. And...my heart changed its rate. My breathing shifted. And I felt a deep unity.

We were breathing at the same pace. Our hearts beat in rhythm.

I swore I could taste the crackle-heat of his testosterone on my tongue. The fierce, jagged need to do something. I lifted my head and our eyes met once more. My tongue darted out and I licked around his acceleration plug. Teased where metal met skin met flesh met bone.

We were closer than we'd ever been before.

He'd been inside me in our dreams.

But this was something else.

And suddenly, we didn't need words.

EXPOSED

Thale and I moved in concert. My hands grabbed onto my leggings and I shimmied out of them. He yanked the zipper down on his pants. Before I could blink, we were both naked. The cold, hard floor felt like an afterthought. I cupped him with my cyberhand – and I felt a desire in him. He pressed his palms to my false-flesh palm and looked at me over the rim of my thumb as I cupped his face. His purple eyes, and the closeness we shared, made it clear.

I gulped and reached into my own interface. There, buried under a dozen sub-menus by people who stupidly thought that this would be a maintenance issue and not something of desperate need, was a button. I pressed it mentally and both of us watched as my skin shimmered and receded. The smart material that mimicked human flesh flowed into caches and receptacles like water, and it left the baroque beauty that was my cybernetic arm. It was all matte black finish and golden trim, with small serves that you could see between the smooth panes and interlocking joints. My fingers were the most delicate pieces of machinery I'd ever seen – deceptively so.

I could crush steel with this arm.

Thale cupped it with his hands. He drew me in close and kissed the join of shoulder to synth and I slipped onto his lap. His cock pressed between the folds of my sex and I was so wet, so eager, so desperately horny that I nearly came from the contact alone. His lips slid from the join to my neck to my lips and I lowered my cybernetic arm, wrapping it around the back of his neck. I held him close as my back undulated, grinding myself against him. My legs locked around his back and there was no way for him to...get in...

He was trapped, his cock pressing to his belly muscles, my sex slipping along it. But for the moment, moving so that he could fuck me would mean we'd have to stop kissing. We'd have to stop pressing together. We'd have to slide back and break this contact. So, instead, he gripped my ass and purred into me as his tongue and mine met and dueled nearly as fiercely as our swords had earlier. My fingers tightened against his neck and my flesh hand found his. I squeezed him and Thale drew back just enough to speak, his words burning against my cheek and lips.

"You're so beautiful it...fucking hurts..."

I nodded.

WORTHY

I didn't deserve this.

I...

I should have gotten up. I should have run. I should have taken off the arm and given it back.

Look at me – some pissant little scrapper who couldn't even tell that the man she loved and the man she hated was the same fucking person. My eyes closed and I leaned into Thale, feeling his heat, his hardness.

Who was I, to be worth this?

PROOF

Thale didn't leave me to wonder. He laid himself back, taking the hardness of the floor on himself. My hips lifted in the natural patterns of our species across more time than some stars and I felt the tip of his member pressing to me – teasing me. We had done this before – but as I sank down on my knees, I felt the textures of reality pressing in. It was slippier and slicker and tighter and hotter and more intense than the dreaming connection. I opened my mouth and cried out – a single wordless exclimation as my hips and his met and his hands gripped my thighs, then slid to my back, drawing me down close. I sobbed against him – not out of pain. Simply because...I...

I was with him.

And even with an empire and an emperor poised against us, even with an Alliance that would never understand, even with crew who'd hate me for this, who'd spit on me for this, I still felt right. I still felt worthy.

I clung to Thale – and I needed to. Thale didn't wait. He didn't need to. He knew me, and he felt me, and he knew what I could take, when I could take it, how I could take it. He slammed up into me and my whole body rocked forward, rasping my nipples against his. My mouth opened again and this time, there was a word. "Thale!

He was purring. My Thale was purring as he thrust into me. His body rocked up and my breasts bounced in what little space there was between us as I looked down into his eyes. He was smiling at me, a cocky little smile. Like all the nerves, all the worries, all the fears, all the recmination was gone and that left what was behind under all the masks. The Thale I'd seen sometimes during a duel, during training. When he'd let it be known there was more than just mope.

I treasured that confidence.

I leaned forward, my forehead pressing to his. With his cock slamming into me and my own pleasure mounting...why was it easier to speak now?

"I love you, Thale!" I moaned out the words between soft slaps – the sounds of his body slapping mine. The feeling of his cock pushing into me, sliding out again. I felt fluttering pleasure, starting from my shoulder and working inwards – his talent, stroking the nerve ending inductions. My eyes fluttered half shut and I opened my mouth as I felt my pleasure crest, peak, go higher. Higher. I threw my head back and moaned wordlessly. As my sex clenched, his hands grabbed my ass. His claws bit into me – not enough to draw blood.

Enough, though.

Enough to add edge.

"I...ahhh!" He groaned.

And he came.

He came into me. The feeling was filling and shocking and he cemented it by locking his lips to mine – his hand cupping the back of my neck. He held me to his body, and he trembled. His cock pulsed inside of me and I felt another spurt. Another. Another. I felt him slipping out of me – not his cock. His seed. His cum, dripping along his cock. Dripping along his balls. Then his mouth broke the contact and I sprawled atop him, gasping heavily.

We both floated there for what felt like an eternity – trembling. Twitching. Our own pleasures mingled and the afterglow radiated through us like the glow of a nuclear war. His finger caught my pony tail and undid my hair tie with a flick of his claw. Then, slowly, he started to brush his fingers through my hair. He petted me, while my cybernetic finger traced the join of ear and skull. I felt his purring buzzing through me.

TALKING

"So..." I mumbled.

"Mm..." Thale sounded dazed.

"I..."

Silence, save for the purring and the distant whirring of repair bots, doing their best to fix upt eh parts of the station we'd, um, fucked up a little bit during our duel.

"Thale, I..." I kissed his neck.

Silence again.

Thale's hand cupped the back of my head and he looked into my eyes. He opened his mouth, then closed it.

"Thale..." I tried again. "Why...what are...how are..." I trailed off again.

His tongue darted along his lips. "L-Let's get dressed first..." He said. "Then talk."

And, like a total fucking coward, I nodded my head as quick as I could. Thale started to tug his leggings on first, then his gambeson. As he buckled it with a touch of his fingers, I called my threshold blade to me with a thought and a hiss of cold gas thrusters. Then I started to use it to thread the scraps of my shirt together again. Soon, I had a shirt to pull back on – a fact that made Thale give me a wicked little grin. Like he was already thinking of ripping the next one off and...god I wanted round two. Round two would mean we wouldn't have to say things.

Instead, I tugged on my leggings and felt the warmth of his cum sliding along my thighs. I shuddered – a delighted, squirmy shudder. Like when I laid on warm sheets fresh from the Tiamat's laundry systems. When I looked at Thale, I couldn't keep the goofy smile off my lips. I tapped my palm against my threshold blade's projector, slapping it against my skin.

"So, that's your sword?" he asked, his voice stilted like he was twelve feet tall.

I nodded.

"It looks really familiar," he said, rubbing his chin. "I mean..."

"W-Well, we did fight before," I said.

Awkward silence.

"The mask had cameras," he said, quietly. "Your talent, it..."

"Y-Yeah, I am pretty good at obscuring. You said so yourself. When you trained me. In our...dreams."

Awkward silence mark II, even more awkward this time.

"The Hegemony," I said. "Why are-"

Something stung my neck. My hand went to my neck and my brow furrowed as blackness edged around my vision. My knees went weak. I looked up at Thale – who was gaping past me. His eyes were wide. And confused. And...I...

Hmm...

Round two would have been...

Thump.