The Journal Entries

I was eating lunch alone when I heard Wish come in. I had my back to the door but it was easy to tell who had come in by the feel of the mind behind me, and that feel was one of the most important signs I had that Wish was a human being and not a robot. I can't empathically sense robots at all, just as cyberpaths can't sense organics very well.

"P'nyssa?"

I closed my eyes and tried to remember how that word had sounded in the air. It had been not too long ago that she, like everyone else, had called me "Dr. Traken." What is it that Ken and Aaden become "Ken" and "Aaden" quickly but everyone always feels the need to call me "Dr. Traken?" I turned around and said, "Come in, Wish, come in."

She nodded and took the chair next to mine. "Are you hungry?" I asked.

"A little," she said.

I offered her half the sandwich I was eating, and she accepted it. She's a beautiful woman with eyes shaped like wings and hair that flows in black, straight lines over her shoulders. A glass of water floated through the air and dropped down next to her. "That's a different outfit," I said, noticing her clothes. Instead of her usual demure apparel, skirts and blouses and vests and all that, today she wore a tight-fitting bright-green shirt with almost no sleeves that showed off her fine musculature-- and lack of any bosom whatsoever. Across the front in big sparkling letters was the word "SLUT." Then I remembered: "I saw Katrina this morning. She had on something just like it, only hers read 'Goddess.' Are any of the others wearing something similar?"

Wish nodded. "Wren's says 'Baby', and Freya is wearing one that says 'Ascendant.'" She sounded wistful.

"Do you think they're all appropriate?" I asked. Suddenly I felt as if I had a stethoscope about my neck, which is a very funny thing to feel as I've never actually used one. I should learn.

"All except mine, maybe." She looked down, a slight pout on her lips.

"You don't like the word?"

"I wish I were more like it," she said.

"I don't understand. In the six months that you've been here you've gone through Ken, Nance, Ken, Sune, Ken, Mitch, Ken, Nance, Ken..."

"All right, all right!" she giggled. "I hope you don't mind too much that I keep going back to him. He's good and I like him! You should know that!"

I smiled. "He's okay."

She gave me a funny look that seemed to ask me to explain myself. I decided not to. My relationship with Ken and Aaden isn't based on (but certainly does include!) the quality of the sex. "So," I said, picking up the conversation again. "With a record like that, the word seems to apply. What's wrong with it?"

She looked back at me, her eyes level, and said, "Do you think it's okay to hate him?"

"Whathisname?" She nodded. "I would think that it is. Why wouldn't it be?"

"I heard Ken talking to Dave. I think they were talking about Freya, but Ken said that there was no point in hating someone he was never going to meet."

"I think he was talking about spending emotional energy on it. It isn't worth it to Ken. Whathisname isn't going to come here, and Ken isn't going to try and change him. So Ken is saving up his feelings-- his time, his attention-- for those people he can touch. You. Me. The others from your group. Aaden. The household. Why? What's he done now to make you hate him?"

She put her hand on her shirt. "This word... is me. More than anyone else I've ever read about, this word is me. It's mine. It's what I am and I'm happy being what I am. I guess that makes me a little shallow, but--"

"Wish, I'm not impressed by 'deep' people," I interrupted her. "I live with two of them. Ken and Aaden can justify themselves all the way back to fundamental principles, but I'm not so impressed with that as that they can be happy when doing so. I like happy, unconfused people." I reached out and took her hand in my mittens. "You seem to be happy. A little confused, but no worse than some. I don't think you're shallow. I think you're you."

She tried to smile but couldn't quite make it happen. I could feel the confusion coming off her in waves. "Whathisname-- Malati-- when he ordered me he thought he was getting something fun. But he's... Terran. He doesn't like girls who are automatically slutty. He didn't like me." She looked up. "Within a few years of making me, he stopped using me. He would loan me out to his friends and business acquaintances. And I liked that. It was better than sitting around doing nothing, although I'm good at that too. I liked putting my body to good use. I've accepted myself as a sex object." She looked down. "I wish I was a better one. I could use bigger tits. I could use any tits at all. My vulva is so far back it's invisible when I stand up naked. My hair is boring, my eyes unfashionable, and I'm too skinny.

"But anyway, he would give me out as a way to close deals. His clients were impressed that he had organics and not machinery at his call. The funny thing was, I liked being used. Even when all I was doing was being a sex object, a tool for men to get off with, I was having fun. Not as much fun as it is now, with men who care, with people I care about, but still... It's hard to get fucked and not be involved." She smiled wide, and I could see the Wish that she liked being, and then it faded. "Only once did he ever give me to a woman. And she was cold, and distant. She told me to go down on her, and I did, and when she was done she sent me away. Just like that. I didn't get anything out of it." Her gaze wandered down to the floor, embarrassed at her sudden moment of confession.

I understood what she meant. I had had bed-mates like that, too. She sounded and felt so sad that I wanted to pull her to me and hold her. Instead I just squeezed her hand and said, "If you don't want to accept my offer, Wish, I understand."

"No, that's just it!" She jerked her head up to look at me. "I want to do it with you, P'nyssa. I want to enjoy it. I just... don't know how."

"Oh, well, that's easy. Ken isn't here right now, and it's not likely that he's going to be home, but Aaden and I will be home and he's making pizza. You're welcome to come and spend the evening with us, if you like."

"Do you feed everyone who comes into your home?"

"Everyone who shows up for dinner," I said with a smile. "And if they call ahead, we'll actually have enough food for them." I held her hand and said, "Wish? Are you afraid that you won't like it with a fem?"

She nodded her head slowly. "And then I... I won't know what to do with this." She touched herself, her word. "When I was with him, I could have sex with just about anyone. Some of the men Whathisname loaned me to were really gross. They had sick fantasies. But I could do it. I was proud of what I could do."

"Wish, you don't have to be willing to fuck just anything that moves to be a real slut!"

"I know. But... you're so nice. You're not gross or sick. If I can't do it with you, then..."

I leaned forward. "I don't have to be nice."

"I want you to be nice."

"What if I'm nice... to you?"

Emotions flowed out of her and across the room. "Okay," she said. "I'll be here."

A chime went off overhead. "Good. Because I have to get to work." I squeezed her hand briefly. "See you tonight?"

"I'll be here."

---

"Hello!" Aaden said with a wave as I walked into the kitchen. "Rough day?"

I put down my bag and sighed. "That depends on what part of it you mean. Yes, it was rough; I have a burn case, a bad one. We've done everything for her and she'll live, of course, and she's not in pain, but she's so ungrateful about it."

"Rhys giving you a hard time?"

"That, too." I sat down at the table and let my tentacles sag. I was about to continue when Wish entered. She was still wearing the same clothes she had on that morning. This time I got a good look at her pants. They were tight, stretchy things of shiny black material and up the sides stretched streams of flaming roses done in reddish gold. Not like her at all. But, I reflected, very much the things I wear when I'm feeling wild.

"What's the smell?" she said.

"That's just the dough," Aaden said, turning out the large wooden bowl in which he had left it to rise. "See?" He turned on the oven and tossed a large circle of sandstone into it. "Now, once I have this flattened out and set, we'll be ready to eat. Half an hour, tops." He pulled out a rolling pin.

Wish sat opposite me at the corner table. "You look tired."

I nodded. "Feeling a little depressed." I reached out for her hand. Aaden thumped and rolled the dough, making all sorts of noise from the wooden counter top. Wish looked puzzled. "I... I've been having a hard time at work. Because of you. And the others. There's an ancient paradigm called 'The Thank You Policy.' The idea is that if you have to use force or violate someone's autonomy to save someone when he's mentally ill or suicidal, he'll thank you for it later.

"We don't believe in the Thank You Policy on Pendor. It makes all kinds of assumptions about what we assume 'normal' is, what capacities normal people have, and we try so hard not to impose that kind of conformity on people. The only person who gets to decide what you will be like tomorrow is the you of today. Whoever you are."

"You and Ken... didn't do that, did you?"

"No. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and I believe that Ken and I and Aaden and everyone involved made the right choice. We violated your autonomy, and I know you're grateful now, but would the Wish the day before we saved you have been grateful?"

"She'd be dead. I'd be dead."

Aaden turned and said, "And dead people don't have autonomy."

I nodded. "Which makes the choice I made a little ambiguous. My colleagues don't like living with this kind of ambiguity. They like to believe that if they were faced with the same choice they would choose according to policy. If I, who was one of the founding members of the Hospital system on Pendor, cannot follow the standards--"

"Take her with you," Aaden said. "To Cutters. Tell them that you're going to introduce her to your patient in the hopes that they'll get along. Make sure Rhys knows who she is. Rub his and Archer's face in it." His smile was cruel. "I want them to look Wish in the eye and say, 'I'd prefer it if you were dead.'" He slid the pizza into the oven. "I bet they can't do it."

"Aaden!"

"What, Nyss? Don't they deserve it? If they're going to be absolute in their values, make them. Tell me they aren't embarrassed to wish Wish dead." He pointed at her. "Nice shirt, by the way."

Wish grinned. "Thanks."

Aaden sat down at the table with us, a liter bottle of water in his hand. He reached out and tousled Wish's hair. "I like you."

She grabbed his hand and pressed her cheek against it. "Oh, that's so sweet of you to say that!"

"Well, I do." He stared off. "All except the bit about you keeping Ken too tired to fuck me. Just kidding."

"I haven't been with him that much!" she said. "Where is he, by the way? I haven't seen him since yesterday."

Aaden looked across at me, and I stared back. He nodded and said, "He took one of the vans. To Mars."

She was quiet for a moment. "Why?"

"To get Song's original programming and codes."

She stared at him. "I don't... I don't know what to say about that."

"Don't say anything. Just think about it," Aaden said. "It's a chance. If you four agree to it, he'll do it."

"She won't be the same."

I said, "No, she probably won't. But that's for you to decide."

Aaden said, "There's also the chance that he'll find out that the loyalty web is put in late. There's a chance for criminal prosecution if they install it after you're instantiated."

We were quiet for a few minutes. I could hear the wind blowing hard outside. Another storm was building. The space between the Marbletop and Rocchodain ridges collects every storm heading out to sea, which collides with the wet weather pushing over the shorter Marbletop ridge, and dumps on us. It's not very often-- maybe fifty days out of the year-- but it does mean that for some weeks in early Spring and now, late Autumn, there's nothing but torrential rain pummeling the Villa. One of the tall oaks in the front yard raked the glass on the second floor of the foyer, and I think I jumped a little. Aaden patted my mitten. Then the beeper went off.

He produced the pizza with a flourish, cutting it expertly, then tossing a slice for each of us onto simple ceramic plates. He finished with small, yellow bowls filled with a delicious salad, tiny tomatoes, crinkly fresh lettuce, chickpeas, shreds of ham. "Wine?" he asked.

"Plum," I said.

He pulled out three glasses, put them down in front of us. He had something red that he and Ken were drinking these days. I had the plum. Wish said, "I'll have what she's having."

I felt peculiar watching her. I wasn't turned on by her the way I was by some women. She was right about missing a lot of the sexual cues that I rely on, but when she stands I'll say that Ken is right about one thing: she has a very beautiful ass. And she's wrong about her eyes. I have no idea what she means by 'unfashionable,' but their up-swept appearance is very pretty. I just wanted to feel more for her than just intellectual curiosity.

She sipped at her glass and sputtered momentarily. "That's really sweet."

I smiled. "That's why I like it."

She kept eating, going through what Aaden had given her and another slice besides, and two glasses of wine. She sat back in her chair. "Wow. Do you guys eat like this every night?"

"If we can," Aaden said. "Ken... " He smiled. "Each of us does something very complicated and intellectual. We need a balance to make that work. And we find that balance in being here, doing ordinary things. Cooking, gardening. There's so much to do here that's about bodies because we want to stay grounded in them." He looked out to where raindrops had begun to spatter the windows. "We don't want to become disembodied brains living in alternate realities and artificial settings. We do that too much within our own skulls."

Wish reached out and touched his arm. "I think I understand."

"I think you do, too," I said. I smiled at her and caressed her hand where it rested on Aaden's arm.

He carefully extricated himself from our clasp. "This night was supposed to be for you two." He grinned. "Besides, neither of you are my type." He stood up and began clearing off the table.

I stopped him. "You cooked. Let me clean up."

"Are you sure? You and Wish were..."

"We have all night, Aaden. It's okay."

"Okay. Ken's out for the night, and so am I." He still took his own dishes and put them into the sink, where they immediately disappeared. "Cleaning up" consisted mostly of putting the dishes away and putting the chairs back into place. Dave would take care of the rest. The Villa was not roughing it my any measure.

Wish helped by getting out of the way, her hand still on her wineglass, still holding her third fill of the evening. I pointed to it and said, "Don't get drunk on me."

"I won't," she said. "Not like Freya was. But I like the taste and feel of this."

I walked up to her and for the first time I appreciated just how short she was. I'm 165 centimeters tall, and she must have been fifteen centimeters shorter. Ken and Aaden are both twenty centimeters taller than I am. She must have felt dwarfed by them. "Freya stopped once we found what she was really looking for. Besides, I want you to be able to like the taste and feel of me."

She looked up, those delicate eyes searching my face. "I want to, too." A sudden crack of nearby thunder made me jump. Her, too. She smiled, then reached out and put her arms around me, nestling her head between my breasts. There was a reluctance in her arms that I recognized in the embrace I returned. "I hope I do."

"Me too," I said, brushing her hair gently. "I think Aaden was giving us a hint." I led her out to the hallway, then up the stairs to the corner residence where Aaden, Ken and I shared a bed and a life together. The lights were on low throughout, and as we entered the bedroom she looked around. "I've never been in here," she said.

"That's because it's usually in use by more than one of us, and we're... We don't do threesomes with others. Well, not often." I smiled, recalling an unplanned one that had happened a few years back. "But the bed's big enough for four or five."

"I see that," she said, looking at the bed. She jumped onto it, her tight pants glittering in the low light. She stretched out, a tiny woman in a huge sea of cloth, and I felt something. A little stirring in my belly, inside my cunt, a dripping feeling that wasn't quite yet arousal. I wasn't wet yet. But seeing her like that, willing to do and be done, was enough. For moments I debated taking off my clothes. Better that she do it. But no slippers in bed.

I crawled over the bed to her until I was over her face. "You're very lovely, Wish."

Gentle embarrassment wafted over me. "Everyone says that, but I don't believe it."

"You are," I said, lowering my head until my lips just barely touched hers. I could feel the shape of her mouth on the fur of my face as our mouths brushed past, and just as readily felt the desire in her heart. She was joining me, going to the same place I wanted to go. We both wanted to be turned on by the other. It was only a matter of making it happen.

Her hands were on my tunic, undoing the buttons on the seam that ran from my left shoulder down to my waist. She untied each one with a skill and rapidity that betrayed her decades of experience. Her slim fingers slipped inside, finding the fur underneath. Her touch aroused that something deep and desirous within my heart.

I lay down beside her and let her roll us over until she was on top. She looked down at me and said, "I think I know what to do next."

"Do you?" I asked.

She pushed the tunic open, exposing my chest from my neck down to my navel. Mischief was in the air and in her eyes as her fingers trailed down along my belly, but for me the touch was sweet and wanted. I don't think she understood that I am simply not ticklish. Every stroke of her hand on my fur swept into me. I sighed with contentment. I had had fierce plans for her, but a gentle night might not be bad either.

I ran my mittens down the length of her dry, olive-colored arms, bringing them to rest on top of her hands. She looked at them, the thick thumb and delicate, slim pad of the hand, and I could see it going through her mind, what goes through everyone's mind when they first meet a Tindal. "I do pretty well with them, actually," I said, looking at her face.

She darkened for a moment. "I thought you couldn't read minds."

"Everyone asks that question," I said. "I could feel the signature of it."

"Oh." She grinned. Her fingers wandered onto my breasts, already feeling heavy and warm with wanting Wish. "They feel nice. Funny, though. Like the pad is, dunno, sticky."

I turned my mitten over to show her the black pad that ran all inside the palm up to the tip and a little past the curl. "Touch."

She did, letting her fingers caress the skin there. I cooed softly at her light tough. She knew how to make a body feel good. That was what she had been built and trained to do. Her fingers eased up the length of my tens and part of me could tell that she was examining every inch, probing every length of the coiled muscle that gave me the expressive range with which my species is justifiably pleased.

I reached up for her shoulders and without warning pulled her down onto my chest. "Wish," I whispered. "Kiss me."

The timorous first moments of her kiss gave way to bolder experiments as her tongue met my lips, teeth, and then we were kissing the way people were meant to kiss, passionately, without hesitation, without fear. Her hips were on my belly, her feet near my knees. She held herself up enough to control the kiss, to direct it, to take it where she wanted it to go.

But it was my night to be nice to her, so again we turned over in my bed, my bed so large that there was no fear of us falling out. Now I kissed her, hard, presumptuous. She moaned underneath me. Then I understood Wish. She is, mostly, a passive creature, surrendering to the wants and needs of her partner. That satisfies her. If she doesn't get what she wants, she doesn't complain about it. I doubt she even notices whether or not she got what she wanted until it's over.

That was fine with me. I was ready to give her what she wanted. If had an orgasm tonight, it would be a side-effect. But as Ken is fond of saying, there are preliminaries. "Lets get you out of these clothes," I said.

She peeled off the shirt and tossed it aside. Her bright skin shone as if she had been buffed smooth. It made me remember keenly her origins and her nature. Underneath that skin, I knew, beat an ordinary heart and lived a sweet, ordinary soul in a body of flesh and bone, built and treated like machinery for far, far too long.

Then the pants came off. As she knelt to toss them aside, I had a glimpse, just a glimpse, of her rear end, and then I knew what Ken saw in her above and beyond her sexy passivity. Wish, quite possibly, has the most perfectly geometric butt in the entire galaxy. Ken tells me mine is beautiful, and he has in his head (although he'd never admit it) a ranking of all the fems he's known in his life based solely on the fine quality of their rear ends, but Wish, I knew right then, had rocketed to the top in one similar simple glance. And it did not hurt her ranking one bit that she loved anal sex, giving him all manner of opportunities to see and enjoy that beautiful butt.

I pounced on her, getting her onto her back, pushing her down to the plush quilt. I looked down into those willing eyes and said, "I am going to give you..."

"Yes?" she breathed.

"You'll see." I kissed her again, but before she could even try and use her lips to arouse me further I was down at her chin, her sensuous neck. That hunger in my belly had grown, and I could note wetness slicking my own cunt. I hoped it was working for her, too. I hoped she was going to be as turned on as I was.

I found her nipples, little hard things sticking up out of two barely perceptible mounds, and I kissed them, licked at them. I sucked one into my mouth and she moaned. "Yes," she gasped. I had found something Ken hadn't.

I played with each one, teasing the other with a rolled-up mitten. There are tiny papillae on the bare pad of my mitt that will flex together, giving that 'sticky' impression she had mentioned. I pulled at her nipples, using the increased friction in suggestive and creative ways. She moaned all the harder as I played with her. My tens are longer than most species's arms, and as I played with her nipples I kissed and licked my way down her belly to her mound. A trimmed thatch of black, fine pubic hair covered the triangle above her vulva which, she was right, seemed to start far between her legs, out of sight of the casual observer. From the front there wasn't much to see but that tenuous triangle of fur. I was anything but a casual observer.

She spread her legs in anticipation of my mouth. I decided there was no point in frustrating her-- she wasn't that kind of woman. Instead, I pressed my mouth to the lips of her cunt, licking at her lips. Her vulva was one of the flat kind, not puffy at all, but she had brown inner lips that dangled outward, looking ragged, tasting sweet. "You're wet," I mentioned. "Excited?"

"Yes," she moaned. "God, yes, I am."

"Mmm..." I sighed as I lowered my head. The hair about her lips took no effort at all to get through, and underneath was just that sweet cunt of hers. I could hear the noise of my licking and kissing in my ears, undergirded with the deep and satisfied humming of Wish. Her body tensed with each lick, my lips playing at the folds under the folds, at the creases and the nubbins, finding her clitoris, finding her orifice. I slid a thumb into the opening and found her soaking. I tasted my thumb and murmured my approval. Wish's hands on my head communicated hers.

I eased my thumb into her again. I have a strong thumb and a slim mitten, not unusual for a Tindal, and with that thumb I pressed down on the strip of flesh that separated her vagina from her ass, pushing, stretching, while my tongue and lips nibbled at her moist, sticky clitoris and hood. "Oh, Nyss..." I heard her moan from time to time. I could feel her rolling her head from side to side, and I could feel the river of pleasure flowing within her. It flowed through me as well.

I slowed my attention on her clitoris. I didn't want her to come from that, not yet, not right here. Instead, I raised my head, getting a small whimper from Wish. "Close your eyes," I whispered. "Trust me."

She did as I asked, giving me time to reach over to the bed stand where the requisite materials waited. I pulled on a glove over my right mitten, then daubed it with the right amount of oil. "Now," I said. I slid that thumb up against her cunt and pressed inward, making room, making space within her body for me. I knelt between her legs and smiled at her. With the other thumb, I played with her clit.

"What are you... Oh, god..."

"After tonight, Wish, you will probably never think all women are boring compared to men."

"I can't... no... "

"Of course you can," I said. I curled up my mitten and pressed it at her opening. "Of course you can. Take a deep breath." I stopped playing with her clit, and she relaxed further, and with one gentle push the oil and my patience and her hunger let my mitten sink into her up to the thumb. I left the curled up mitten within her cunt. The heat of her body penetrated the glove readily, filling my hand with a sensation that's as close to holding life as I can imagine. "And there's just a little more."

"More..." she groaned her approval, her voice guttural. Her hips lifted off the bed, trying to approach me, get more of me into her. I could feel my own breath quickening. We were so close to being able to actually fuck, to get sweet and get rough. Her body glowed with sweat and desire. She was on fire inside. I could feel it.

"Slowly, Wish."

"No!" She moaned. "Want... more..."

I slid my mitten in and out of her, and she humped back at it, wanting more. I folded my thumb into my mitten and began to press. She kept trying to force it. "Let me do it, Wish!" I said.

"No! More! Wish want... want your fist... go all the way... to bottom!" She pressed down hard on my mitten and it slid into her. "Ohh.... " Her eyes were closed, her body frozen in this moment as she closed about all of me, up to the wrist. I could feel her cervix against my thumb, the curve of my mitten nestled up against her fornix. She was beautiful like that, on the end of my hand. "Oh, Wish wish..." she moaned.

I pulled my hand out just a little, then let it slide back in. She moaned hard. "Fuck! You! Fuck! Wish! Now!" she screamed. But I didn't. Not yet. I wanted to know that she was okay, and since she had switched to suddenly talking about herself in the third person I was not at all assured of that.

But there was no going back. She could either have it all or she was too far gone to care. I pumped my fist inside the tight, tiny cranny of her cunny, fucking her. The smell coming from her was delicious, the sight making me nearly as delirious as she was. Here was this tiny woman on the end of my fist, her legs about my waist, refusing to let me go until she had everything she wanted. It was more than I could have imagined from her.

Her hips were reacting to every thrust, every shove of my mitten, but suddenly they stopped. We were still for seconds, and then I said, "Wish?"

She put her hands on my wrist, holding it. "Wait," she whispered. Still holding my wrist with both hands, she pulled her legs up and slowly, agonizingly slowly, turned over, rotating about my mitten. "Ohhh..."

She lay back down on the bed, her legs bent just slightly to elevate her beautiful butt into the air, giving my ten easy access to her cunt. "Fuck Wish more?" she said.

"Oh, yes," I whispered. I gave her butt a kiss and then began again, gently at first, slowly working her cunt up. She was producing more than enough of her own moisture to keep us both lubricated, and in a minute I was soon pounding on her insides with my mitten. She was beyond beautiful. I was beyond concern.

"Yes! Fuck Wish! Fuck Wish hard!" She shouted the words, gasped each one of them as if it took all her strength to get them out. "Fuck Wish forever!" On her belly like that she was free to push back on my fist as much as she could, and she did, hard. I was shocked by how forceful she was. "Ass!" she shouted. "Anything! In Wish's ass!"

I didn't have time to grab another glove. I slid my bare thumb into the cleft formed by my other mitten's thumb and palm to get it slick and then pressed it at that pink rosebud between her butt cheeks. I knew I was hyperventilating as my thumb sank into her hole, sank deep up to the web between thumb and mitten. She was so full of me, and I was so...

Her climax surged through her so hard it shocked me. Fireflies went off before my eyes, waves of pleasure soaked through the room, through my flesh, through my soul. I heard a scream. It might have been her. It might not have been. Her body clamped down on my wrist so hard it hurt, her legs rigid, her body frozen in ecstasy.

And then it all cleared away, like dandelions in the breeze. She collapsed to the quilt. I breathed through my mouth, trying to get air, wondering why I needed it. Had I done anything? Had Wish really been all that passive? I was stunned, surprised, and then I felt my lips smile without me. Delighted!

My thumb was still in her butt, my hand still in her cunt. I eased the thumb out first, then tested the give on my mitten. Her plentiful juices were everywhere, a puddle on the quilt underneath her crotch. It wasn't sticky at all, but gave freely. I rolled my mitten inside her as tightly as I could and slowly slid it out. She was relaxed-- so much so that I was worried. When I looked up, I realized that one arm and her head were dangling off the edge of the bed. If I didn't pull her back up, she might have slipped off.

I reached for her and turned her over, pulling her head into my lap. "Wish?" I asked. "Wish?"

Her unfocused eyes stared up at the ceiling. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps filled with saliva. I knew well how in sex the body loses all will to do anything but fuck, and sometimes all of the glands in the body go a little haywire, but I had never seen anything like what Wish had just gone through. "Wish?" I asked. For a moment I thought What if I broke her?, and was immediately angry with myself for thinking in those terms. She was not a robot. And even robots these days get hurt, not broken!

I shook my head. "Wish?" What I heard back was a gurgle, a long, low bubbling sound in her throat, and then she began to thrash, her legs and arms twitching, her head lolling back and forth. A seizure? I stroked her head with my ungloved mitten. Yes, a mild one. But in that touch I learned that she was also conscious and that, curiously, this seizure felt good to her. She was coming back, her body unwinding, using up the last of the pleasure she had felt, as if I had poured it into her and her coming had used up only so much of it, she needed another way to consume the last precious drops.

"Oh... P'nyssa..." she groaned. Her hands came up to my face, and she pulled me down into a kiss. My back doesn't bend that way, so I slid her off my lap and onto the bed, then leaned over to kiss her. "I have never, never felt anything like that before."

"I didn't..." I was still trying to find words. "I didn't know if you were okay. Do you remember anything after you came?"

She nodded. "You turned me over. I couldn't move. And then... my body just went a little crazy." She smiled, reaching up to touch my cheek with her fingers. "Oh, P'nyssa, can we do that again?"

I giggled. "Of course we can, Wish."

"I'd return the favor, but, I don't know, I might not have the strength, you know..."

"What I like is different from what you like," I said. "I like things a little more gentle. Ken told me about you, and I guessed more, so I figured I would try that, and--"

"It was wonderful," she sighed, rolling her head to glance about the room. "Are all women as good as you?"

"Some are better, some are worse, like in all things." I stroked her hair gently. "Oh, I'm sorry, Wish. I think I've got lube in your hair."

She reached up and touched her head. "It washes out."

"Yeah, it does."

Her hand pushed down on my belly, suggesting that I lay down on my back, and so I did, letting her turn over in my lap until her head rested between my thighs. "Wow," she said.

"Huh?"

"You smell good!" I felt the moisture of her firm tongue slide along the moisture of my wet cunt, and lay back for more. "Wow," she said again, and then her lips closed about my vulva. She tried to imitate what I had done to her. Her lips pressed about my cunt, touching me in places where I like to be touched. The warmth of her mouth poured into me like slow honey, the inexperienced touch of her tongue making little electrical sparks in my belly. I had come already, feeling her climax, but my body didn't know that, and my cunt was warming to her affectionate touches.

She was trying so hard to do it right, but soon I put my mittens down between my thighs and pulled the lips apart. With my thumb I pointed. "There," I gasped. "Lick there." She did as she was told, but not without being mischievous about it, stopping and starting and sometimes dipping down to play with my opening. I don't lubricate that much, but she seemed to like what she was getting. "Don't go," I groaned the third time.

"Mmm.." She moaned, protesting my protestation. But she finally pushed me over the brink, turning that almost unbearable tightness in my cunt into an explosion, a release, a moment of bliss that I wished, just once, I could share with others.

She giggled. "You're a lot quieter than I am when you come."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I've never been very expressive that way. I just like the sensations. It frustrates some people, who can't tell if what they're doing is really making me feel good. You, on the other hand... everyone knows when you're having a good time."

"Mmm," she said, easing up alongside my body. She nuzzled her head against my shoulder. "You're wonderful. My body is still all tingly from the things you did to it."

"Tell me that in the morning, when your body is all sore and achy from the things I did inside it." I stroked her with the back of my mitten, letting my fur tickle the tiny hairs all on her back. She sighed voicelessly.

"It's too bad Aaden's not into girls," she said after a while.

"It is. But that's him. You'll just have to live with it that way."

"I guess I will. Can I stay here?"

"Tonight? I don't think I'd want to let you go."

"No, I mean, at the Villa. When Freya and Katrina and Wren go... I think I want to stay here. I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be."

"You haven't been anywhere else since you were freed."

"I know," she said. "But I think I'm a homebody. I want a place to call home. And you and Ken and everybody have shown me what a good home this can be." She stretched up gently. "I love you."

I smiled. Ken had told me about her saying that to him. But Nance, Sune, and Mitch had not said anything like that about her, and Nance, at least, would have mentioned it to me. There was no hesitation in her voice, no deception in her emotions. She meant it. She meant something deep and personal by it. "Wish, have you ever said that to anyone before? Malati? Your systers?"

"Katrina," she said gently, and I heard a pain in there that was deep and profound.

I hugged her, then, and wanted to protect this physically hardy, robust creature from the unfairness of the universe. "I'm sorry."

"Me too. I'm sorry I said that. It's not fair. It's asking too much."

I sighed. "Oh, Wish. There is no shame in asking." I kissed her hair softly. We sat silently together. How would I explain this to Ken and Aaden? I probably didn't have to. It wasn't like it was with them. They understood. Wish needed someone to love her, to come home to. She had chosen this household. She didn't need to know anything else in the universe to know that here was good for her, better than anything she had ever known. It was my turn to decide if her staying here would be good for us. Because I have a responsibility to Ken and Aaden. I made that decision centuries ago. It is what dignity and honor and love are all about-- respecting those responsibilities.