The Journal Entries

Polly stood in line and held Fanette's curious invitation in her hand. She gave the invitation to the mel Felinzi playing doorman and he handed her an envelope. She opened it and pulled out a blue card. The Felinzi pointed. The room was divided in half, one side with tables covered in a blue cloth, the other green. She went over to the tables on the blue side. "Polly! Polly, girl, over here!"

Polly followed the voice and sat down next to Saul, a mel Human who had taken to hanging around the Black Cat Cafe'. He was a square-built man the same height as she with a trimmed thick golden beard that hugged his jawline like a picture frame for his rugged face. She was getting used to that pronoun, "him," so long in disuse among the Free Worlds. "Where's Fanette?" she asked.

"Fanette drew a green card. Over there." He indicated the other side of the room. Polly scanned the table and spotted her. "You'll have to put up with me instead."

Polly had met him for all of three minutes this afternoon when Fanette had introduced them and invited them both to this cooking competition. "This gives me a chance to get to know you," he said. "Without someone from your Intelligence services cataloguing every word."

Polly glanced over at the green tables. Intelligence? Fanette was in Engineering Services. Was Saul telling her that most of the women under San Txema's command were actually Intel? "How do you know I'm not from Intel, Mr. Saul?"

"We all know," he said with a grin. "Oh, not in the way one might say 'The Deep knows' or 'Titan knows,' but Thia does, which means that everyone on this ship who asks can have a good idea of which ones of you are Intel and which are not. You aren't. And it's just Saul."

Polly wasn't sure how to act around a masc. Saul made it easy. By the third course she had long filed away Saul's implication that many members of the Free Worlders staff weren't what they appeared to be. Her training had included a smattering of psychology so she recognized the process of accommodation and she embraced it until she felt better.

Although she rarely sought them out, Polly enjoyed crowds and the one here, alien shapes, most furred, some green-skinned, gave her the right kind of energy. Her latest romantic illusions had faded away without too much pain. She was grateful to Rhiane and Ilonca for making it that way. She liked them both and felt no pressure to repeat her experience with Rhiane, despite Rhiane's insistence that it was repeatable. Polly had convinced herself that trying to maintain a relationship with Rhiane would be more complicated than pleasurable.

Saul said he had been born a farmer. His parents had been farmers. He had been grown in a tube but they had raised him themselves from the day of his birth. He spent most of his youth outdoors, tending to horses and watching wheat and apples grow. After a century or so of that he had left the farm to his parents and decided to wander the galaxy. He had succeeded in getting to a small starsystem that had only a catalogue number when he had heard that the Einstein's Canvas was heading out beyond the explored borders to look for Reservationists. He had signed on mostly out of ennui.

Polly told of her more ordinary life. She had been raised by both of her mothers in a semi-urbanized community attached to a major transportation hub city on Sparta, gone to church regularly in her youth, attended school with her peers, and like many of them signed for the military when the Dark came. She had never seen action. "I think my life has been more boring than yours," she said.

Saul said, "My life has become much more exciting since the Canvas stopped at Sparta. So many new and beautiful women."

She tried to return his smile. "You probably wouldn't be interested in me, then."

"Why not? Are you a Y?" Polly was momentarily shocked at his forwardness. Not even a Minervan would have asked that question outright in public. Her comment should have been enough of a hint, but he was Pendorian and not Spartan or Sterling. She nodded finally. He said, "Why would that be a problem?"

"Because I'm... I'm probably not what you would expect, under my clothes."

"Would you expect to be surprised by what you find under someone else's clothes?" he asked as he sipped at beer in a tall, heavy glass.

"No," she said.

"Neither will I."

"But..." She stopped for a moment.

"There is only one way to find out if I'm telling the truth, you understand." She stared at him. He lowered his voice so that those sharing the table couldn't hear. "Aren't I a terrible rake asking a beautiful woman to go to bed with me on a first date?"

He knew she was a Y, was as male as he in some ways, and yet he still called her a beautiful woman, still respected the woman she appeared to be, sometimes wanted to be. She looked over his unfamiliar form, his square and bearded face, his blocky body with its strong shoulders. Ghosts of desire twinged down somewhere in her belly. Curiosity about mascs had always been there, but Saul was giving her a reason to feel lust as well. "Will it be just once?" she asks.

"Maybe," he said. "We might find a reason to make it otherwise. Never know, you know. You put a man and a woman in the same space together and things happen. Right?"

"I don't know. I've never been with a man."

Saul smiled. He whispered "I have. I can show you how it's done."

He did know what to say.

The first course of the second meal came around the table. A waiter dropped a small cylindrical thing of meat and sauce decorated with a green bow. The master of ceremonies, blue, was describing it and warning her table that this was the 'boys' portion of the ritual so the sauce could be expected to be spicy.

Polly scoffed but after a few chews she swallowed it hurriedly and looked around, wide-eyed for water. Saul thrust another glass of beer into her hand. "Drink this. The fat in beer absorbs the spice." Polly gratefully downed about half the cold glass before she came up for air. "Take it easy, girl," Saul said. "I want you to finish your meal, not get drunk. Brewer's droop looks bad on either sex."

Polly wanted to kiss him.

---

They had run back to his cabin. She took a glance around a space done in animal tones of brown and orange, tiger colors, complimenting his dirty blond hair and beard. She had been dealing with an erection most of the second half of the dinner and when they got to his room it was her turn to grab him in her arms and finally get that kiss she craved. Saul's kisses were as wet and sloppy as hers, one hand around her waist, the other on her breast. His beard, that new experience for her, was a scratchy, itchy, wonderful addition. If she was going to have sex with a masc by the Goddess it should be a real masc, one with a beard and body hair and everything. Saul met her requirements. He should have been taller, maybe, but she could stand to stand eye-to-eye with him. Spartan women never wore heels.

"Goddess, Saul," she breathed. Her cock ached for this man's attention. That had probably been the strangest thought she had ever had in her entire life. She didn't mind it. She wanted Saul with a sensation that she had last felt for Rhiane, but that feeling hadn't lasted-- and before that? She couldn't remember. Sometime in the academy, she thought. A memory of Diedra swept through her and she smiled.

Saul didn't say anything, just backed her up to the bed without hesitation. The two of them had been committed to this ten minutes ago. Polly wanted to taste Saul. She wanted to lick and kiss him and make herself full of him.

They anxiously tore off their shirts, boots, socks, tossed aside skirts. Saul's weight was on top of her, relentlessly masc in a way that she thought might have frightened her. It didn't. She liked the way it felt, liked they way his body and the bed enveloped her. Their mouths locked together in an ancient tumble of kisses. She reached above him and felt his back, felt the structure and outlay of muscles that were broader and stronger than anything she had felt on any woman: X or Y they were all the same up there. His body was hairy, but not in a way that could be described as furred. He was not one of those human-animal splices of whom the Pendorians were so fond. He was a human being and any engineering he had was sufficiently hidden to give the illusion that he was an evolved, natural creature: a Man in his natural state.

But Polly's own cock was rock hard, and Saul seemed to like it for what it was and where it was. His hands stroked over its length briefly, the skin of his palms rough. Their bodies meshed on the bed, Saul's pleasure radiating into her as they necked. She found his cock readily, as hard and ready as her own, although not nearly so large. She thought briefly that they hadn't talked at first, hadn't set limits, hadn't done this the way Ys were taught.

Saul paused and pushed himself up. "Are you okay?"

Polly nodded, smiling up at him, trying to reassure him. She had too many wild thoughts running through herself to be absolutely sure she was "okay," but she knew she wanted him, wanted this man in this room. Wanted to watch his face as he came. It was a blessing she looked forward to.

He rolled off of her momentarily to lie on the bed, propped up on one elbow. An ebb in their frenzy, a moment to reconsider. Polly understood such moments. She didn't say anything. Saul ran his hand along her thigh, up to where her cock lay against her belly. His hand touched the exposed underside of her cock and she felt it tickle, felt her muscles twitch in response. "I like the way you look," he said. "You look right."

She couldn't help herself and laughed at him. "I should probably get some surgery done? I don't look like the kind of boys you usually like." Her expression wavered. "That's probably not a bad idea."

"You're joking, right?" he said.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Being a Y is such a bad deal. I don't look like anything real." She looked down at his hand on her erection, grabbed it away from him, stroked it gently a few times. "Nothing that belongs in this universe. Such an ugly thing. It's too bad I like it too much."

A look between concern and anger crossed Saul's features. He rolled off the bed and held out his hand. "Come with me." Polly held out a shaking hand, he pulled her off the bed, took her by the shoulders and marched her toward the cabin bathroom. Between the door to the bathroom and the closet a full-length mirror was mounted to the wall. She hadn't noticed it before. She hadn't had time. "Polly, look at yourself," he said.

Polly didn't want to look. She rarely looked at herself in the mirror when she was naked. Dressed, yes: she cared about how she looked in front of other people. She wanted to look like a woman even though she was a Y who thought she preferred Ys. "Look," Saul said with more insistence. Reluctantly, she turned her head and looked. There were the eyes, the big eyes that made both X's and Y's swoon over her, there was the short military hair and small but real and firm and prominent breasts, "like cupcakes," Rhiane had told her, "small and delicious." Saul let his hands fall from her shoulders to cup them briefly. He said, "This is Polly. There are so many shapes our universe lets us be, but we're only born with one shape. This is the shape you're meant to be, Polly. This is you: A nice girl... with a big cock." Saul stood behind her, kissed her shoulders, her neck. "Polly," he whispered, "You're beautiful."

As his kisses touched between her shoulder blades and his beard gently scruffed against her skin, even as she began to melt from the sheer physical pleasure of his touch, she understood. Her eyes could see his blocky shape behind her, even as his mouth reached the small of her back, his hands on her sides, about the smooth and gently feminine belly. He was kneeling slowly, his kisses reaching the base of her spine, down to her ass. He kissed at the top of the cleft, licked gently at each dimple. With his hands he gently parted her asscheeks.

Polly could feel tremors welling under her eyes. The feeling in her heart reached up and filled her head, her chest, her belly, and she began to weep almost silently, staring at herself in the mirror even as Saul's mouth probed between her cheeks. He stopped. "Polly?"

"Don't stop!" she said. "Goddess, Saul, don't stop!" She knew he could tell something was wrong.

But, Goddess and her Prophet bless him, he didn't stop. His mouth reached between her cheeks and probed at her asshole, his tongue reaching out to deliver gifts of pleasure so intense they should have been outlawed. His hands pushed her cheeks further apart, his tongue pressed against the ring of muscle. Saul's tongue invaded her secret places even as her weeping grew. She fell forward, one hand landing on each side of the mirror, and she spread her legs apart. His hand played with her cock while his tongue performed magic upon her asshole, opened her up to his invasion. "Saul, Saul..." she whispered.

He came away from her ass, now dripping with his spit, and maneuvered his bulk around her legs until he was facing her cock. She looked down to watch as he opened his mouth and his tongue and lips came out to caress its length. "I like your cock," he said. "It's so big, but it looks like the kind of cock a girl should have. Smooth, straight, with a pink head and no bulging veins. Elegant. Fah, but you're beautiful, Polly." Every touch of his mouth sent waves of pleasure through her. She couldn't deny that. She couldn't deny that as a lover Saul was better than anyone she had ever had. Saul was completely unconflicted, dedicated to her pleasure as well as his own. His own cock was down there somewhere, probably as hard as ablation shielding. When it came to lovemaking, Saul took it "like a man," but a gentleman nonetheless. He sucked at her cock, taking it into his mouth, surrounding her with his attention, his love, his willingness to do anything that would make her happy. He demanded that she enjoy him, that she come for him. His mouth was around her cock, sucking on it, making love to her with the patience and willingness of the prophet herself.

Polly felt the tension building all the way down in her groin, felt it rising into her pelvis, filling that hollow ache where she felt she should have something but didn't, had the "wrong" hormones, the "wrong" hardware. Saul had told her a truth: the Goddess thought there was nothing wrong about her and neither did the universe at large. Polly had simply not known how much the universe had changed since Jehanne Sterling and her crew had set out on their fantasy voyage. The Prophet had been right: the universe would accept them once it knew about them.

She thought all of these thoughts as readily as she could before her body told her mind to shut up, to stop thinking, to concentrate on the pleasure delivered by the handsome man whose mouth was around her cock, whose head bobbed back and forth insistently. She was going to come. Few lovers appreciated the taste of come. "Saul..."

"Mm, hmm," he said, one note high, one low. He knew. He cared, but he cared only to know not to stop. She felt it, the shivers overtaking her, the trembling in her thighs, her arms, her eyes. The ecstasy that was going to overwhelm her in a way no circle jerk or fellatio had ever before. She was crying, she was laughing, and the universe she had just learned to trust plunged into her soul and made her climax with a drawn-out cry of his name: "Saul!" She felt the tremors in her cock, the pulsing jets of come, the pressure of his tongue against the underside of her cock as he swallowed the load she gave him. "Oh, Goddess, Saul..."

He looked at up at her, the smile on his face unambiguous in his pleasure. He stood up, wiped his mouth with the back of his hairy arm then pulled her toward him, kissing her. She responded with the intensity of some hungry animal willing to consume this man, this handsome, oddly furred human. Polly had thought it would be oddly kinky to have sex with a masc. Saul's deep, raspy voice and modest stature had made him seem harmless enough. It had not quite worked the way she'd anticipated. "Saul?"

"Polly," he said.

Her hands found his cock standing hard, jutting out from his body. She stroked it and he chuckled gently, a deep sound, a combination of happy amusement and serious pleasure. She was willing, she found, to give him as much as she had ever given anyone else. "I want you to fuck me."

"Have you ever been fucked before?" he asked, his voice breathless.

She nodded, then added truthfully. "Once."

He shook his head. "If you've only done it once, you didn't like it."

"Saul," she said. "Maybe my lover was a jerk."

"Why risk a good thing?" he asked, that annoyingly handsome smile showing up once more. "Polly, I don't want to ruin this feeling we have."

She felt joy, disappointment, wonder, and lust all at the same time. She wanted to do more for Saul than what he had done for her, and she couldn't imagine anything that would make her more vulnerable, that would have been a bigger sacrifice, than letting him fuck her. Maybe that was the problem, she reflected. She thought of it as a sacrifice. "Do you like fucking, Saul?"

"Both," he said. "Top and bottom." He smiled. The idea of fucking Saul had not at first occurred to Polly. The Ys she had dated had generally been like her and expressed no real desire for intercourse, especially not after they saw her size. "Why? Would you like to fuck me instead?"

"But..."

His mouth pressed against hers, and he was backing her up against the bed again. They tumbled against the full, fluffy comforter that seemed so out-of-place in his masculine abode, and his body was on top of hers. He was pressing his leg up between hers again, his erection hard against her thigh. She was getting hard again herself. Their cocks batted one against the other. Polly's body quivered.. He pulled at her shoulder, pulled her until she was on top of him. Naked, her cock between his legs, her cock pressing up against his balls. He grinned up. "Come, Polly. Fuck me." He took hold of his own legs and pulled them toward his chest, exposing himself to her.

"It won't work. Not... "

He groped over to the bedstand, then handed her an amber-colored bottle. She took it, looked at it with a confusion. It contents smelled of peaches and rosemary, and she understood. She poured a puddle into her hand, then slathered it over her cock. It felt warm and slick, and it was completely unlike the mineral oils or hand creams she had sometimes used in the past for jerking off. Of course the Pendorians would have oils and lubricants optimized for this. Compared to them, Minervans were repressed and Spartans downright medieval.

She pressed her cock downward. "Gently, girl, gently," Saul said. She gave more pressure inward, trying to get into Saul without hurting him. It all happened suddenly: one moment she was just trying to make sure she had the right opening, the next her cock was sheathed in the warm depths of his ass. He arched his back briefly and sighed. "I take too long between lovers and forget how good this feels."

"It's okay?" she asked him.

He reached up with one hand, gestured for her to come down. It was only his short stature that allowed her to reach his mouth, to kiss him, her back arched over his pelvis. Her hips made little motions against his ass, her cock slipping in and out of him. He was tight at the opening and for a short length inside and she soon learned how to take advantage of that tightness to enjoy him. He groaned and stroked his own cock, making it grow hard under his hand. He was jerking at it with an intensity that made Polly breathless as she began to fuck him, then pound at him. "Oh, yeah," he groaned. "Yeah, Polly, girl. Come on, fuck me. Fuck me. You mean it, don't you?" His words came between gasps and his whole body was tense with the physical thrill of their lovemaking. His free hand flailed at her breasts, holding them, touching her nipples. His strong meaty hands on her softest flesh sent streaks of joy coursing down through her belly and up into her cock. Polly could feel him approaching climax, she worried that wouldn't come at the same time. "Oh, yes," he moaned. "Fah, yeah... Yeah!" His asshole spasmed around her pistoning cock and then his cock shot come all over his belly. "Yeah!"

Polly slowed down. Saul said, "No, girl. You started this. You finish it."

"Are you sure?" she said.

"Of course I'm fucking sure, girl. Now, dammit, fuck me already." She resumed. The position was awkward, but that never occurred to her as she slid in and out of his ass, her hips hitting his buttocks with a satisfying thud on every downstroke until she felt the twitch in the head of her cock, the signals that meant her climax was immanent, the growing cacophony of pleasure building within her until she whimpered something incomprehensible, her body thrown over to coming, jetting her own semen into him. For whole seconds pleasure overwhelmed her and made the real world inaccessible.

Her cock slipped out of his asshole and she fell on top of him. He caught her with a grunt, then wrapped his arms around her, lowering his mouth to nibble at her breasts. "Fah, but you're beautiful, Polly," he whispered. His lips on her nipples were reminders of the pleasure they had shared, microshocks of ecstasy. She did not know if she could stand more lovemaking right now, but she knew she wanted more of Saul's attention. His mouth kissed her belly again, then back to her breasts, as if he were making of her a buffet. She didn't object.

He kissed her mouth, and she warmed to him now, feeling more romantic, less frantic, less horny. She had what she wanted. "Saul?" she asked.

"Hmm?" he said, looking down at her. He was still odd-looking, a kind of face that was unfamiliar to her, but no longer alien or offputting. It was the kind of face she might have wanted for herself before he had shown her the reflection in the mirror, the one he desired.

"Was I..."

"You were perfect," he said. "Don't you worry a thing." They kissed again, tongues flickering rather than fighting. It was a wonderful sensation. Polly felt her cock grow hard again. She tried to ignore it. Saul said, "I'd invite you to stay the night, if I thought you might accept."

"Sometime..." She let the thought trail off. "Maybe. I don't know. Not tonight."

He nodded. "I didn't think so," he said. After a few minutes while they lay together, trying to collect as much air as they could, Saul rolled off the bed and offered a hand. "We should get cleaned up." They walked to the shower together. Saul paid extra attention to her breasts, admiring them as much as he had her ass and cock just a short while before, and Polly liked the attention. She kissed him before they said goodbye for the evening, and Saul just nodded. "You were astounding, Polly. Thanks."

"Goodnight, Saul."

He nodded. It was all she was willing to give him at the moment. She wished she had more, but she didn't. Not right then. Someday, she would figure out what she really wanted. She gave him one last kiss and then headed back to her room.