The Journal Entries

"Hi!"

I was startled at the sudden intrusion. I hadn't anticipated being interrupted this quiet, lazy, hot afternoon, and so had set myself to tinkering with some minor tasks on Tylia's "to do" list. Since our return I had been reading through many of her accomplishments and had reconciled myself to the sad fact that I had been outclassed. Tylia was better at the black art of sentient design than I had ever been. Her work was exemplary.

Tylia had been quick to fire back that her work was exemplary because I had laid all of the groundwork and because all of the evolutionary models had finally been codified by the Alpha team. I supposed she was right. She was now an engineer, whereas much of my work had been research. What an engineer she had turned out to be! I was proud of her.

Right then, though, my interloper was of a different quality. I was looking at a small, lovely Asian face. There were mostly Japanese characteristics to it, but the ultra-clean lines about her eyes suggested a lineage from northern China as well. All of these designations are twentieth-century or so, early in the century, before the walls between nations and their peoples came tumbling down and all the precious and lovely characteristics we sometimes called race disappeared into a melting pot and we called it humanity. Sometimes people put them back surgically, just because they were different, because they were fashionable for a time. I missed all the natural differences, sometimes, but I was just as happy without them. We'd won more than we'd lost.

I said, "What brings you up here?" 'Here' was my office in the attic, a cramped space filled with ancient, creaking wooden chairs, a bare floor of inlaid strips of oak, and a great big desk on which sat nothing at all but a few pads of paper and the display screen I had been reading. Embedded in everything was a collection of the very latest in imaging and information transformation hardware; I could see and hear whatever I wished, at any resolution. It was the feel of the wood, the hardness of the chairs, and the smell of ancient resins that made me think of this room as a place of productivity.

"Looking for you," she said. "I haven't seen you recently."

"I, uh..." I looked around. She had come through the narrow doorway that led down some stairs to the second floor, the residential wing of the main house. I had left the door open. The open window let in the bright smell of spring and a breeze ruffled the trees out past the quadrangle. "I've been busy."

"It's been three weeks since you rescued us!" she insisted. Gods, but she was cheerful. "I wanted to thank you."

"Thank me?" I said. "I... I suppose. If you do, you'll be the first to do so." I looked at her closely. "By the way, what's your name now?"

"Wish," she said in that voice teenagers use when asked what color is the sky. "I didn't change it."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not giving up what I was," she said. "You took away the purpose I was gonna lose anyway but that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop being what I was or doing what I was doing." She smiled at me.

I touched a button on the desk that disappeared even as I pressed it. With it went the screen that blocked my view of the rest of her. Wish was dressed in an outfit she must have gotten from Tylia. Black shoes, white socks that came up to her knees, a dark-grey pleated skirt that dropped to just above those knees, a white blouse with winged collar, and a matching grey blazer. She had her hair in a bun at the back with a pair of wooden sticks holding it together.

Wish is fifty-four years of experience going on fifteen years of maturity. In the few times I've interacted with her, she's come across as confident, curious, and just a bit bouncy. She was designed and built to be a rich man's fucktoy, and the fact that she's made entirely out of organic components doesn't enter into the moral equation at all. The idiot who ordered her construction tossed her away one day, along with four others, in some apparent religious conversion that won't save him from the wrath of a civilized society. He failed to deprogram them even as he disowned them and he failed to appreciate the consequences of such actions. One of them died. The others are still alive only because I chose to intervene. I did it at great risk to my own reputation, a matter which is still undergoing debate in the Pendorian press and public fora.

In the meantime, I have four beautiful women living in Shardik Castle, each of whom is undergoing her own sort of soul-searching. Each one of them is asking for meaning in her life, the arbitrary kind of quest us "normal" folk always have and take for granted. Now that the meaning that was their life when they were Purposed had been unceremoniously ripped away, they were starting over. Each has taken a handle to it, but what handle, and how well, has remained a mystery to me. It might sound like fun but it has not been so.

"I thought you all agreed to change your names. You didn't want to be reminded of who and what you were."

"I thought about it," Wish said. "But I decided that it was a silly idea."

"Your friends didn't."

"I'm not sure they are my friends."

I leaned my elbows on the desk, resting my jaw in my palms. "Want to talk about it?" I said.

She leaned against the desk in her own way, standing, hands on the polished surface. It let her blouse fall open, a gesture that probably would have had more effect if she'd had any breasts at all. Too bad she didn't. As flat as an archival data disk. She shrugged. "I don't know. They... they were my systers. My partners. I was with them because we had a common cause. But we don't have that any more. It bothers me. A little. I don't have anyone to... I don't know. I don't have anyone to talk to about what I want to do."

"What do you want to do?"

"What I used to do. Not with whatshisface. Just, with anyone." She smiled. "With you first."

I looked at her face and wondered if I should find her as exciting as she hoped. I'm ashamed to say that I did, which had nothing to do with her physical presentation and everything with the way she said it. But then she had had more than fifty-four years to practice being a seductress. A part of me wished she had time to be the young woman she appeared to be. "I'm grateful for the offer, Wish, but..."

"But you don't like me."

I let my shoulders sag. "I don't mean it like that, Wish. I guess it's just that... I don't know you. I'd like to get to know you first."

She grinned. "With some people you just hop into bed. I've seen it in your stories."

I laughed. "Caught! I guess it... it depends on the consequences. You're an unknown, Wish, and the consequences could be disastrous. I don't want you to get hurt."

It was her turn to laugh. She reached out with one hand and stroked my cheek. "Having a roll in bed isn't going to hurt me either way."

"Forgive me if I'm not quite as sure as you are."

She walked around the desk and looked down at me, then without asking sat down in my lap and looked up at me. "Is there anything I can do to make you sure?"

"Let me get to know you better." The feel of her body against mine was already almost convincing.

She grinned. "I don't know if there's anything to know. I'm just... I'm just me. A Wish, come true."

I laughed. "I didn't wish for anything like you." I took a deep breath, looked out the window. "It's such a lovely day outside. I've been cooped up in here for... hot suns, nine hours. There's barely two hours of daylight left. Let's go take a walk." I indicated she should get up, and she did.

She led me down the stairs. We walked all the way down to the ground floor and out the double-doors leading to the yard. "Where would you like to go?" she said.

"This way," I gestured. "Spinward." We walked along a manicured gravel pathway through the woods. To our left a small meadow opened up briefly but we were soon again under the cover of tall trees. The sun beat down from directly overhead and the hottest time of day made the sweat bead on my chest and under my arms.

Wish was such a little creature. The smallest of all the women physically, she barely came up to chest-high on me. We didn't say much as we walked, and I had the impression that both of us were trying to come up with something to say, nothing ever quite breaking through to the surface and finding a voice. She said, "I love Pendor."

"You were made on Ganymede, I thought."

"Yeah, but it's a cold, tiny place. When Malati moved here, we thought things would be better for a while. And then he started to ignore us, got in with that guy, Beropper." She frowned. "What a perv."

"Beropper?" I was somewhat surprised. Welden Beropper was one of those phenomena of whom even I had heard. A religious man who preached some mutated slamdance of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and a kind of rigid pre-Fall Scientism all processed together into a self- hating, self-denying mystery religion with himself as the central mystery. "Is that what happened to him?"

She nodded. "I thought you knew?"

"Promise--" I paused, wondering if she knew Promise's new name, gestured to give her a hint of what I wanted.

"Katrina."

"'Katrina?' Okay. Katrina told me something about it. How he had found God and wanted the terrible immoralities of his past thrown out. I didn't know he was with Beropper." I snorted. "There's a sick irony for you. Rich Terran finds his purpose in life, however arbitrary and bizarre, but manages to kill one and almost kills four more by denying them the purpose in their own." I sighed. "I'm sorry about Song."

"Me, too," she said. "I liked her."

A cloud passed overhead. It must have been the first one all day. The coolness was wonderful, but all too brief before the blaze of day came back. We walked past another meadow, this one bordered along the path side with a short, white fence, barely two slats of white-painted wood held up by pickets every two meters, assembled haphazardly. It was probably not made out of wood after all. I didn't see anything worth guarding in the field it so dutifully guarded. "So what was this about Beropper being a perv?"

"I guess Beropper picked up Malati fast or something. Soon after coming to Pendor, Malati invited Beropper into his home. This was over in the llerkindi section, where the rules are a little different." I nodded. One of the unfortunate side-effects of The Queen's Reach is that they could sell that land to whomever had the money to buy. I didn't understand the process myself, the economics of distress more or less being a dead subject among Pendorians. We have other forms of capital. "Anyway, pretty soon Beropper was telling Malati that he had to get rid of us. We were a hindrance to his ascension into purity or something like that. He wanted Malati to give us to him." She sighed.

"Well, I'll give Malati that," I said. "He was honest enough to know better. Did Beropper ever get his hands on you?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "He tried a couple of times, I mean really putting his hands on me, things like that. But it wasn't my purpose and I didn't have orders. Something must have been going on in Malati's head 'cause normally he would have just handed us over. He did that a lot on Ganymede."

I nodded, wondering if I should feel at all guilty about what the AIs were about to do to Malati and Beropper. Probably not. Actually, I had no idea what they were planning. I just had an inkling that in the next seventy days or so we'd be hearing a lot of crashing noises coming from that corner of the universe.

We walked out into the forest break that leans up hard against Marbletop ridge. "Wow," Wish said gently. I led her up the path a short ways to the wooden gate that closed off the tunnel. We walked in even as the lights came on, and I led her through a segment that felt much shorter than it really was (thanks to creative lighting and a pair of hidden SDisks). I led her out into the lagoon. "I used to live here," I said.

"I read about that. I'm sorry about your old house."

I shrugged. "A thousand years is a long time to live in one place," I reflected. "Maybe it's for the best that I finally moved into a new house. We were always crowded in there." The sand was clean and rippled, sculpted as if by a wind that never really reached this far into the enclosed space of the lagoon. Dave made sure that it looked that way to hide the footprints that might have happened from the random interloper or two.

We walked around the lagoon and down towards the ocean. Wish gasped as we broke through the cover and out onto the beach. "It's so big!" she said.

"Most people who've never seen the ocean have that reaction to it," I laughed. "More water than you can imagine."

"More than... yeah!" she said, grinning up at me. Curiously, I did not think that she had a pretty smile. It made her eyes squint. She looked up and down the beach. "It looks like it goes on forever."

"It doesn't go on forever, but believe me it's further than you'd want to walk."

She walked over and took my hand. "Thank you," she said.

"You already did that," I said.

"No, I said that I wanted to do that. Now I've done it." She giggled, and that was a sweet sound. She took a deep breath. "What a great smell," she said. "I can understand why you wouldn't want to move away from a place like this."

A new voice interrupted. "Ken?"

"Yes, Dave?" I said to the empty air, the cloaked seccor drone somewhere nearby.

"Dinner will be in twenty minutes, according to Aaden, but it can keep for a while. Aaden has made a tomato basil soup and would like to know if you know or can come back and put together a balsamic vinaigrette. Will your companion be joining the family for dinner?"

I winced. Aaden has terrible tastes in some things. Balsamic vinegar is usually too sweet for a simple dressing. I'd have to put lemon in it to balance it out. Either that, or some sharp red. And red onion, diced. "Ask."

"Asked and answered," Dave said immediately. "They'd love to have Wish at the table."

"Then I must ask my companion. Wish, you are invited to dine with me and my beloveds. Do you accept?"

She giggled again. I suddenly realized that what I wanted most was to see her laugh, hard and uncontrollably. I wanted her to find something so joyfully fun that she would never want to let go of it. But the giggle would have to do. "I accept!" she said.

We walked back towards the house. She finally took that hot sport coat off and draped it over one shoulder. She skipped on the gravel road as if reluctant to admit that gravity had any grasp on her, then turned and peeked over her shoulder, waiting for me to catch up. I hurried my pace a little but tried to not let it look as if I were being hurried. I don't know if I succeeded.

We reached home to find Aaden running the last of the summer basil through a blender with just enough soup to keep it turning. "You're just in time," he said with a grin, leaning over just far enough to kiss me on the cheek without having to let go of the whirring appliance. "Dinner will be on the table in about two minutes. Think you can make the dressing in that time?"

"Just watch me," I said as I tossed open the cupboards and grabbing the bottles of cold-pressed olive oil and fifty-year vinegar. I used the lemon. "Wish, could you please set the table? Four, I think." Aaden nodded. With a knife I picked up the last of basil off the cutting board and tossed it into a mixing jar with a tiny amount of honey, pinches of salt and pepper. I reached for the preserver when Aaden put his hand on the door. "No, you don't," he said.

"Aww." I winked at Wish.

"With red wine, yes. Balsam, no." He grinned at me. "Your addiction to blue cheese has its limits." I covered the bottle and shook, ending up with a reasonably well-mixed concoction. I stuck my finger in the bottle and put a taste to my tongue, then put in a touch more honey and shook again. "Good enough," I said.

"Good," Aaden said. "Dinner is ready."

P'nyssa showed up out of nowhere, pleasantly surprised to find the table set already. "The men of the household have outdone themselves again," she said as I pulled her into a gentle embrace. "And it's good to see you here, Wish."

"Thank you, Dr. Traken."

Aaden came in and flourished the soup bowls onto the turquoise-colored cloth place mats, then dropped the wooden bowl filled with lettuce and other vegetables in the middle. He even used the floating tray-on-a-tail trick for the glasses, which impressed Wish until it was obvious even to her that he was getting help from Dave. "Dinner is served," he said.

We ate with immediate hunger. Aaden passed around some bread that had come right out of the oven as I passed around the salad bowl. I thought the dressing was still a little too tart, but everyone else said they loved it.

It grew dark as we ate. The dim shadows of night squares swept past in quick oscillations until night fell with complete and sudden intensity. We were momentarily plunged into darkness until the house lights came on, unsteadily at first, the one overhead flickering with the unmistakable quality of a candle. The fixture looked like a lantern box made of muslin cloth stretched over a wooden frame and held in place with leather straps, but the actual materials and quality were known only to the builders and the source of light something terribly modern and safe. I didn't worry about it. It looked great.

The kitchen was blazing with incandescent light as we rose to put the dishes away, everyone maneuvering silently even as Wish went to sit it out in the front room of the house. She watched the three of us move with familiar ease as we cleared the tables and put dishes away, dishes that were miraculously clean by the time they got to their cabinets.

Pretty soon the four of us were arrayed around the sitting room. P'nyssa was deep into a book (and it looked to be made of actual paper), while Aaden pulled up a PADD and consulted... something. "So, Wish, is there anything you want to do?"

She smiled and shrugged. "I'm just happy to sit here and watch. I'm good at that."

I could imagine. A heritable tendency towards patience would probably be very desirable in organic constructs that spent most of their time sitting around waiting for their master to call on them. I wondered if that tendency came with other traits for which she had to compensate. None of the women looked heavyset, although that could be taken care of with nanochine anyway.

I smiled at her and pulled up my own correspondence, and for a while went through it. Most of it was vetted by Dave so what I had left was very personable and usually a pleasure to read. Aaden excused himself for the night, saying he had an appointment elsewhere. He kissed both of us before leaving.

Wish just sat. She curled up in an over-sized chair upholstered in some dark, decorative, organic pattern, and just watched the two of us, her chin resting on the back of her hand, which in turn rested on the arm of the chair. She looked so small and delicate like that, but I knew that she was as robust as any of us. Her patience, however derived, must have been quite profound.

"Wish?" P'nyssa's voice broke my own attention on what I had been reading.

"Yes, Dr. Traken?"

"It's just P'nyssa. Is there something you'd like to do?"

"No, not at the moment." She sighed, her eyes cast about the room. The little smile that had been on her face all night stayed there reliably. It belonged there. "I'm just happy to watch you two."

"But we're not doing anything."

"That's okay," Wish said. "You're a family. I understand that you have things you want to do your way. I'm actually having fun."

P'nyssa shot me a look that I knew. I nodded to her, and she smiled back. "Wish?" I said. "Y'now, you said you weren't sure if the others were your friends anymore. You're not fighting with them, are you?"

"No," she said. "Nothing like that at all. I just don't really get along with them. They're not-- it's hard to explain. They're not like me. They all seem so sad."

"But you're not."

"No!" she insisted, and I agreed. "No, I'm not. I like being me. I just wish this Wish had someone to be me with."

P'nyssa smiled and said, "We're here."

"But--" She looked back and forth at the two of us. I have to admit that I wasn't quite prepared for P'nyssa to put it that way, but if Wish was going to throw herself at both of us, then both of us were apparently ready to handle it. "Both of you?"

"Is there something wrong?"

"No. It's just-- I never-- Aside from with Light-- but that was because he wanted it." She stammered, "I don't think I'd know what to do with a woman, or a fur, on my own."

P'nyssa stood up and walked over to where Wish lay, curled up in the large chair. "If you just want Ken to yourself, I don't object." She reached out with one mitten and placed it on Wish's arm. "I just think that you're a very pretty woman."

P'nyssa managed to do something I could never manage. She got Wish to blush. I would have never thought that possible, as the woman tried to pass herself off as jaded and experienced, if youthful and exuberant, at the same time. She had seen it all and she liked doing it, but somehow the compliment from another woman got to her in ways that anything I might have said could not. I envied P'nyssa that ability.

Wish touched P'nyssa's mitten. "I-- I think I would like to get to know your coimelin all by himself, for a while. That's what he asked of me." Then she brightened, so suddenly it was as if she had set off a flashbang inside. "But you'll get your turn!"

P'nyssa laughed. "I don't just want a turn. I want you to know that I like you."

Wish's smile faltered for a moment. "Nobody ever said they liked me before."

"Well, then," P'nyssa said. "It's time you started hearing it. I guess I shouldn't keep you much longer." She stood and shook herself momentarily. "Maybe if Aaden comes home early enough I can get him to give me a back rub."

"Reconsider," the ever-present Dave said. "He will not be home early enough."

"I hate to impose, but is Nance around?"

"Nance hardly considers you an imposition," Dave replied. "And he would probably be most willing to get his hands all over you once more."

P'nyssa grinned. "Goodnight, both of you. Don't stay up too late."

After she had taken her leave, I looked over at Wish, then nodded my head as if to bring her over. She happily squirmed out of her own chair and onto the couch, surprising me with her willingness to cuddle up so close. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised; she had only been asking for this kind of touch for hours.

She sighed as I touched her calf and stroked along its length. Her socks were loose, too large for her, and given that she had outed them out of stock that was probably a conscious choice, a deliberate signal of some kind. I had no idea what it meant, but it was convenient as it let me push her socks down about her ankles and caress the length of her leg. She smiled at me. "What's it like being free?" she said.

"It's, um, well, it's... I don't really know how to answer that. It's like any other day. You just get up and do whatever it is that you do. Do your own thing."

"But my 'thing' is fucking," she said, grinning.

"Then I should introduce you to Chaz. That's her thing too." I looked off out the window. A tree brushed its lower branches against one of the windowpane as a fast wind blew by outside. It did that a lot through the valley. "It's funny, but I've never made use of her services."

"She has sex for a job?"

"As much as anyone has a job. Chaz is different. She doesn't really care much about the people she sleeps with, at least not about how they come to her. She just wants to make sure that when they're done, they're happy. She's quite the lover, according to all the people I know who've slept with her."

"I could do that?" I was surprised. I hadn't tried to make it seem exciting, but she was apparently pleased with the idea. "Wow. And people would like me for doing that?"

"Most of them, I should think. I can't imagine people doing it all the time. You might want to find a hobby." I laughed. "I remember a cruel joke that wondered if prostitutes took up knitting on their day off."

Wish laughed, even though I was not entirely sure that she got it. "Would you respect me?"

"Yes," I said. "Yes, I think I would. I certainly have love and respect for Chaz. She's helped a number of my friends through the years. When Nance had a terrible accident, she was very helpful in getting him back on his feet. Or at least back into bed."

Wish looked down to where my hands had slipped under her skirt and was caressing the delicate, don't-stop-now zone between her legs. I could feel the cotton of her panties under my fingers. She sighed. "Let's take this to a bedroom?"

"Yours?" I said.

"Or yours. I don't mind."

"Yours," I said.

She took my hand and led me up to her bedroom. It was in the West Wing, but we didn't have go outside in the late summer blow thanks to the SDisks at the ends of the hallways. I wasn't sure what I had expected of her bedroom, but the soft pink walls, the white queen-sized bed with the lace canopy, and the white desk with the filigreed backstop all looked like they belonged. There was nothing out of place about Wish's room. I had the odd sensation it was more of a set piece than a place where she lived. A warehouse for her body, not a place where she actually thrived. Even as I entered Dave lowered the lighting to something low and friendly.

Neither one of us felt a need to talk. We simply fell into bed, hands on shoulders, on arms. We pulled each other close into a kiss that felt awkward for about two seconds, then plunged into something sloppy and hungry. She was hot, so hot that I couldn't imagine trying to keep my hands off her slim, sexy form. She struggled out of her jacket as I tossed my tunic onto the chair in front of her desk. We both worked on the buttons of her blouse. She wore no bra and she needed none. She had managed to kick her socks off when I next looked, leaving the both of us in nothing but trousers or skirts.

We ignored that fact and went back to our heavy petting, she on top of me. She kissed my eyelids, then dropped her head down to pay close attention to my nipples. I gasped. "Do you like that?" she said.

"I've never been neutral about having my nipples played with. Some people can do it right and I love it. Everyone else does it wrong and I can't stand it."

She licked and then took one in her mouth and bit down, gently at first, then harder, slowly torturing it. "You-- You do it right!"

She looked up briefly then went back to torturing my nipples the way she had earlier. She made me squirm and curse and I loved every second of her attention. Finally, she raised her head, a predatory animal look in her eyes, the kind of look even Uncia can't achieve without some effort. Her hand stroked my cock through the fabric of my jeans. "Is that doing it right?"

"You-- Come here!" I said. I reached for her. She giggled as I pulled her down and held her close, demanded another kiss from her which she readily gave, tongues slick and slippery against each other.

I had easy access to the hem of her skirt, and I slipped my hands up under it to find her butt. Each cheek felt solid in my grasp, and each was perfectly sized to fit in my palm like a ripe cantaloupe. They were perfectly formed hemispheres, so firm and tight I felt that if I flicked a finger against them they would ring with beautiful music.

I pulled at her panties and tugged them down over those beautiful orbs, then let her take the initiative to kick them off the rest of the way. She was left with just her skirt.

She pushed herself off of me and took her time unzipping my fly. The pants I wore parted easily and she nearly tore them away from me to toss them onto the same chair with the rest of our clothes. My cock, already painfully hard, flew free and flopped against my belly. "Wow," she said as she slid her hand along the length of it. "I heard that you hadn't had it modified."

"I didn't."

"You're big, then. And you're pre-gengineer? Are you sure?"

"Are you trying to inflate my ego?" I said. She gave me than crinkly smile again and shook her head. "Good. Then you won't mind if I give you something to really compliment me on." I tossed her over onto her back easily, then dropped between her thighs without much foreplay. "Now, then, what have we here?" I pushed up her skirt and kissed her mound gently through her pubic hair, which was surprisingly dense but very fine. "Delicious."

"Oh, god, are you really gonna eat me?"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she said. "It's just... he never did. Light did the few times he ordered us to and it was so..."

"I'll be gentle," I said. I could not believe I'd really said such a trite thing.

She could not, either, and laughed. "I don't want you to be gentle," she said. "I want you to be good."

I kissed her mound again. I reached out with my tongue to part her pubic hair, and after I had run the length of her slit it parted open to reveal her beautiful inner workings. She was one of those odd women whose inner lips are not pink at all but a delightful sort of brown color, earthy and gorgeous. I worked my tongue delicately about those sweet lips. I tasted every nook of her gorgeous, tiny cunt. I let my tongue play at her hole, then dipped down, making broad swaths back and forth as I made my way to her asshole.

Wish immediately lifted her knees into the air to give me better access. "Oh, god, you're gonna..."

"Mm, hmm..."

"Nobody ever... not really... oh, god... "

In the half-light of the bedroom I could tell that her asshole was tiny and pink, a perfectly formed star of skin the same color as the lips of her mouth rather than the lips of her cunt, and when I licked at it she shivered all over and let go of a moan. "Yesss...." She hissed. "Oh, god..."

I smiled and licked at her nether hole a few times, enjoying her reaction and the clean taste of her skin before sliding back up to my main task. "Save the rest of that for later," I said.

"Yesyes!"

It was hard to lick her sweet cunt when the smile on my face just wouldn't go away! Licking pussy is like kissing-- It's done right with the whole mouth and you get messy while doing it. I got messy doing it, pressing my lips between her labia, probing deep into her hole, slurping up her juices. Her hands clenched in my hair but I wasn't about to lose control. She writhed. She tore at me. She held me in place, and when she came she let out a yell that probably woke the rest of the house.

I raised my spit-and-sex soaked chin to look up the length of her heaving body. She picked up her head and then let it drop again. "Oh, god, yes yes yes..."

I laughed and reached out for her hand, clenching it briefly in my own. "You okay?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I'm-- I'm better than okay. I'm wonderful. You're wonderful!" She reached for me and grabbed me and pulled me down onto her, between her thighs. "You're gonna fuck me, right?"

My hard cock was already nosing about in her pubic hair. It took just a tiny shift in our positions and then I was deep inside her slick pussy. She was hot inside, hot and intensely tight and incredibly wonderful.

"Fuck me," she whispered, tilting her head back just enough that she could whisper in my ear. I clasped my arms about her, our bodies pressed against one another, bellies flat and tight. Slick with sweat we acted out the mystery of sex, fucking, each lost in our own world and yet somehow I was part of her, I felt like she was part of me, our bodies fused together, my cock pounding her full, swollen lips. Wish held onto me about my neck, grunting and sighing with each impact of our bodies, one against the other. The bed creaked.

Wish... Wish was incredible. Her body was alive underneath me. She kept pushing back at every thrust to let me know that she wanted more, to let me know that anything I did she would want. She moaned hot, whispered my name, whispered for "more," whispered that she loved me. I held onto her through the whole thing, crushing her to the bed, not giving her an inch of breathing room as we made love, my cock a slow, strong piston inside the tightening barrel of her cunt. She clamped down on my cock just enough to prevent me from getting loose. We went mad for one another, crazed in our lovemaking as we satisfied our own needs, each other's needs. She gave everything... she smelled good, she tasted good, sight, sound, and the incredible grip of her cunt, the heat of our bodies, the touch of her hair. There's something to be said for flat-chested women.

When I came, it was so powerful I didn't even have time to make a sound. It was a silent wave so strong it made my hair tingle and the bones in my toes pop as it shook through me from one end to the other. I looked down at her, my mind dizzy as if I hadn't been getting enough air for the past ten minutes.

"Ohhh... Ken! God, you were... amazing."

"I was amazing? You were incredible! I, I think I would be honored to sleep with you again."

She giggled. "'Honored'?"

"Yeah," I said. "Honored. You are one of the best fucks I've had in many years."

"Wow," she purred as she stretched out along the bed. I lay down beside her, on my back.

"I need more heatsinks," I said.

"What?"

"I need more heatsinks. Some heavy mecha have heatsinks to dissipate the heat that friction and engines build up. I think my engine and the last ten minutes of friction have overwhelmed my heatsinks."

She giggled. "You're not a mecha." Then she sobered. "Are you?"

"No," I said, smiling. "Not even close. This is your ordinary meat machine person here." I flopped an arm onto my chest, then back onto the bed, spread wide. "Sorry if I'm taking up too much room."

"'Sokay," she sighed. "I don't mind."

I panted heavily for a few minutes, recovering as best I could. "Wish?" I said.

"Ken?"

"You can stay at Shardik Villa as long as you want, you know."

She touched my arm. "I know. I will, too. But... I still need to figure out what I want to do with my life."

"I suggest talking to Chaz."

"I plan on it." She rolled over and propped her head up on her hands, elbows sinking into the bed. "You said you would play with my ass more."

"Now?" I said.

"I can wait until morning," she said. "But you are going to give it to me."

"Then I guess I'm going to be here until morning?" I said.

"I want you to."

"Then I will."

---

In the morning, I awoke to find her sitting at her desk, naked, writing something. From the back she was just a slim woman with clearly visible shoulderblades, slightly hunched over the table, pen in hand. "Whatcha doing?"

"Just making a note in my journal," she said. "I keep one too, just like you. In five hundred years, maybe I'll let other people know what I thought of you in bed."

"That I was a nasty old troll with bad breath who came too fast, screamed painfully loud in your ear when I did, didn't bother helping you clean up and left you unsatisfied?"

She leaped into bed next to me. "No, silly. That you were charming and mature and distinguished--"

"Ouch!"

"And that you were probably the best fuck I've ever had." She grabbed my hand and kissed it, then stuck out her tongue and licked her way along the length of my arm to my shoulder before I pulled her into my embrace and held her close. Her hands stroked between my legs and found my already hard cock waiting for her. "Do you have to pee first?"

"Probably a good idea."

She let me get up and I went into the bath. By the time I returned, she was lying in bed with her hands between her thighs, stroking herself in a way that could not be described as idle. "Having fun?" I asked.

"Just remembering last night."

"Like I said." I lay beside her and stroked the length of her body from her knees to the collar of her neck. "You're so beautiful."

She sat up and pressed me down to the bed. "You're going to do something for me." I looked up at her and watched as she straddled my head, facing away from me. "You're going to eat me." She lowered her cunt to my face. I was not inclined to reject her request, so when those beautiful inner labia brushed against my lips I willingly dove between them and began having my happy way with her.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, that's it. Oh, yes. God, you are so good at that! I-- I wonder if P'nyssa's any better?"

"Mm-hmm!" is all I was able to get out.

"Oh, god, what I have to look forward to! Oh, god!" She gasped, and then with a shudder she came again. "Now then..." She straightened up. The tilt of her hips brought her tiny asshole to within reach of my lips. "I wanted more of that too."

I licked around the rim of her butthole, licking each tiny wrinkle individually, swiping across the crease of her butt with my tongue, and then stabbing into her body with little presses of my tongue. She pressed down further and it became a contest, both of us going in the same direction, questioning how much of my tongue we could get into her ass. She moaned. The brush of her fingers against my chest told me she was playing her clit as my tongue probed her butt, loosened up her hole. She was as clean as humanly possible down there, and I appreciated her sense of propriety.

I had my mouth tight about her asshole, my tongue plunged deep into her, when she lifted off, turned around, and began kissing me, hard. I gasped for breath once before we were again swapping spit, caressing and touching. She clambered over my body, her legs spread about my waist, as my cock touched her between her thighs. She straddled me again. "Touch me," she gasped. "Touch my clit."

I reached between her legs and found the object of my attentions, caressing it lightly as she rose up and grabbed a small pearl of lube, breaking it in one hand and then smearing it all over her backside, pressing some in. She settled down over my cock. The lubricant was more than enough as she glided me into her. She barely hesitated as she sat down on my cock. I felt her asshole open at the touch of my cockhead, then flower about the head as she took the length up into herself in one fluid motion. "Oh, god! I missed this so much!"

I was shocked at how easy it seemed to be. But soon her asscheeks were pressed down to my hips and my cock was buried all the way inside her. She moaned, softly, her hands caressing the nipples on her barely-there breasts. "Oh, fuck," she sighed. She had the look of a kid in a candy factory, her eyes shining. "God, I love the way you feel inside me." Her body rose and fell, and my cock became part of her once more, hers to play with as she pleased. Her thighs trembled with every stroke, her hands rested on my chest to give her leverage. My fingers diddled with her clit, but I wasn't sure what she wanted and didn't know how to give it to her. It didn't seem to matter. Wish fucked herself willfully on my cock, letting it go deep into her asshole, then withdrawing, then plunging down again.

"I'm gonna come..." she breathed. "Yes, like that. In my ass. God, yes, in my ass." Her whole body shook, her asshole squeezing down on the base of my cock as she came, and then, with a deep sigh, she relaxed. "Oh, fuck," she moaned. "Are you gonna come too?"

"Can you take more of that?"

"Much more," she said, her voice husky. "I was made for that."

"Good." I pulled out of her for a moment, then turned her over onto her belly. I looked down at her breathtakingly beautiful ass, probably one of the most magnificent pair of buns in the whole galaxy, before I covered her body with my own once more, positioning my cock right at her asshole. "Because you're about to get more." I pressed my cock to her willing backdoor, and she let me in.

She gasped a sweet "Yes!" I pressed down until my hips were grinding against her cheeks, my chest pressed to her back. I kissed her ear gently, then began to fuck her the way I wanted to, to meet my needs, and as long as she was willing, so was I. I fucked her glorious butthole until we were both trembling, hard, and then I came, this time both screaming and muffling it in the pillow by her head.

I slid out of her. "You are a wish come true," I gasped. She grinned and threw her arms around me, holding me, kissing me. Our tongues tangled and we made a mess of each other, and I didn't care, and neither did she. "Oh, Wish..." I whispered. "Wish."

We were silent for a long time, just holding one another. "I'm glad you weren't upset because I kept my name," she finally said.

"Wha?" I held her in my arms and stared out the window into the bright and sunny morning. "No, no, I would never be upset with you for a decision like that. It's yours to make, Wish. I'm not going to tell you you can't call yourself whatever you like. It's not in my power to make that call."

She wrapped her arms around mine and hugged me. "I don't know if any of the others will every say this, but... thank you, Kennet. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my glowing insides. Thank you for rescuing me, for loving me, and for fucking me the way I wanted."

"Do I say 'You're welcome,' or 'Thank you' in reply?" I said. She shrugged, smiling. So did I.

"How about, 'I love you'?"

"You know--"

She put her fingers to my lips. "Shh... I know. I do. But if you feel it now, say it. You felt it when you rescued me."

"That was just the right thing to do."

"And it was an act of love. It was expensive for you to do."

She was so small that sitting in my lap her head rested comfortably against my shoulder. I couldn't see her face. The sweet smell of her shampoo drifted over me. I thought about P'nyssa and Aaden, and what they knew, and understood, about me, often better than I did myself. Their love, and the love of others, had made me whole enough that I knew I could entrust it with another and survive. "Oh, Wish," I said. "I love you."

"See?" she said. "I love you too."