The Journal Entries

Dove felt alone in the crowded hallway filled with Pendorians and Sterlings, including her four coworkers at HonorAthena. Her dress, a very conservative affair in blue silk and black wool with top jacket and neckerchief, made her feel every inch the Spartan woman her mothers would have liked her to be.

Instead, in the past two weeks she had had sex with a masc. She had had sex with two people at once. She had casually tossed away her virginity to a mere acquaintance. Her mothers would have been horrified. Dove was abased to imagine how she had let herself be seduced into it all by her own curiosity. It had all been so nonchalant at the time, so matter of fact. That was Zia's doing, but not Zia's fault. No one had forced Dove. She had dived in of her own free will.

When she recalled the bodily sensations and remembered the laughter and the shouts of Zia and Polly, she felt a warm sensation deep in her belly that should not have been. Envy was still there. As was desire.

Taborah was watching her. "You're blushing, Dove."

Dove looked up. "I was thinking."

"Must have been good."

Dove hummed noncommittally. Two weeks. A little more than that, really, if she counted the time she had followed Polly and Zia into the park and watched them have sex under the trees during a downpour. In two weeks she had managed to push aside a lifetime of habit and training, her worries about her mothers' reputations and her own, and twice have the most irresponsible and craziest encounters. "You're blushing harder," Taborah said.

Dove scowled. "It's nothing."

"I heard you had a date with a Pendorian. A fem, but still..." Taborah's teasing voice grated on her nerves.

"She dumped me."

"Really? Why?"

"Tabs, it's none of your business. It just didn't work out." She was grateful that it hadn't. Tomorrow they would be arriving at llerkin, the governmental and economic seat of the Commonwealth that included both old Earth and Pendor. She needed to turn her attention to the firm, to business, to helping Jaylene and her team hook into the Corridor economy. She said, "What happened to the Pendorians? These seem to be as wholesome as, well, as Minervans."

Taborah shrugged. "Maybe these Pendorians aren't the same ones. Maybe they're in a phase. It's healthy for them. I can't tell you how relieved I was that I could go out into the Concourse and not see them screwing in the streets."

"That's possible," Dove said. She knew Saul was open and casual about his "queer attraction" to Ys, as he named it. Maybe most of the Pendorians were being careful because they'd been told that the Free Worlds were sexually reserved and valued public chastity, and so had adjusted their behavior accordingly.

Dove liked Saul as a person. He was too much of a masc for her taste. She could see the attraction, but she didn't share it. That he had a penis had made her happy that one time-- she was too honest with herself to deny that-- but the rest of him did not interest her physically.

Taborah said, "That dress looks so pretty on you. I like the trim. Very beautiful."

"Thank you," Dove said. It was acceptable, even preferable, that she look good if she wasn't allowed to feel good. It was in the nature of her training: Mama Suvhasri always wanted her to be on her best behavior and to put on the best face. Mama Cavana too, in her own way. It was the politician in the family who cared strongly about appearances. Both women had taught Dove a lot. She loved both of them and wanted to teach their lessons to others.

"I mean it," Taborah said.

"You'd still never date me," Dove said.

Taborah seemed to understand that she was making a joke of it. "Dove, you're a very lovely woman, but there is no way I want to have a meet-the-moms dinner with The Senator and The Opra San Cionis."

Dove sighed. That, in a nutshell, was her problem. It was not as if her mothers breathed fire. It was just that they were among the most politically connected women on Sparta. The kind that appeared on the news at least once a week.

Younger people had it so easy. Only a few years separated her from Polly, Zia, Rhiane, Ilonca and the rest she so often found herself with, but in terms of expectations that may as well have been a lifetime. Dove had responsibilities now. She knew full well that her mothers had been partially responsible for her initial posting with HonorAthena but she had reached her current position on her own merit. When Jaylene had a question that needed to be answered quickly it was Dove who did the research. Taborah and Sabienne were just as comprehensive but Dove seemed to know how to find the answers fastest. She could take a request for financial data and turn it into answers without distractions. That talent had never worked for her personal life.

"You look good, too," she said to Taborah, picking up the chatter.

"Do you like it?" Taborah said. She touched the flower pinned to the saree-like top that tucked into her more standard but still lovely pin-striped skirt. The saree was supposed to be completely enveloping, but it still didn't do its job of obscuring Taborah's feminine charms. "I found it at one of those Pendorian outlets. I don't want to call them shops, although the tailor at one was certainly professional enough. We didn't exchange any cash. Isn't that odd? How are we supposed to do our work when there's no specie to manipulate?"

Dove had turned her talent to the llerkin market and had developed an entry plan. She understood how the market worked, appreciated the individual effort component of it, and knew how to acquire the accessible grail of LIUs. "We have to work our way into the system by brokering offerings from unique media, art and agricultural industries back in the Ster... The Free Worlds. Once we've done that, we can leverage that to working our way up into the Heavy Industrial Units categories. With enough of those, we can start to build our own robots and starships."

Taborah stared at her. "You've actually been working?"

"That's my job, Tabs."

"It was until the Pendorians showed up. Their 'minimal cultural environment standard' bit implied that our joining the market was a fruitless activity."

"That depends on what fruit you want. It's a game, Taborah, just like the market back home is a game. You just have to play the game well. The game pieces are different. The game is the same."

"You're so driven, Dove. You have to learn how to take it easy. I think most of the team has gone into tourist mode myself, if you know what I mean." Dove knew. Right now they enjoyed themselves and took advantage of their winning some cosmic lottery, the prize being the right to be the first Free World women to visit the Corridor. It annoyed her to no end. They had a duty to HonorAthena and Sparta. Dove had enough trouble with her empty personal life. Professionally, she had no intention of returning to Sparta empty handed, of failing HonorAthena, its shareholders or her homeworld.

She heard a familiar voice approaching from behind and turned to see Rhiane and Ilonca walking up, chatting back and forth, both of them pointing into thin air. She had to admit that Ilonca looked as good in her eyeglass padds as Rhiane did. She was getting used to seeing women wearing eyeglasses, but only some put serious thought into the frames they wore and those that did looked great. Rhiane had always worn frames, but Ilonca's sense of style, honed by years as a steward, had led her to heavy rectangular frames that really made her face stand out. Zia Tau was another one who looked really good in her frames.

"Rhiane! Medolli!" Dove looked down the hall and saw two young women, maybe just girls, probably twins, holding hands and hurrying along to catch up with Rhiane. They wore what looked like highly stylized private school uniforms from some upper-class Athenian finishing school. They even wore glasses to complete the look, but they had to be Pendorians. There were no schoolgirls among the Free World women. Rhiane's face fell and Ilonca grinned, shrugging and opening her hands. They started talking rapidly back and forth even as the two girl approached them. They said in chorus, "Rhiane, tu hitmellai suevo?"

"Met na!" Rhiane said.

"What going on?" Taborah asked, fishing out her eyeglasses from a pocket. Ilonca made a gesture that Dove thought was directed at her, then Rhiane turned and looked in the direction Ilonca had pointed. She made a small skewed moue with her mouth, heaved her shoulders once in a dramatic sigh, and walked over to where Dove was standing. The two girls trailed behind her. "Dove, I hate to do this to you because you're a friend, but..." She glanced back at the two girls. "These two... boys... would like to know if they could sit with a Sterling contingent. I've told them that I'm going to be busy with ambassadorial duties, and Ilonca is going to be in the kitchen doing traffic cop."

Boys? Dove looked twice. They were both the same height as she, with smooth, unmarked skin that had both a dusky, dusty cast and an underlying hint of gold that was quite lovely. Their hair was long, wavy and dark brown with red highlights. It took Dove a second and a third glance to be sure, but they were both definitely Pendorian and probably masc. They were so pretty in their clothing and the subtle makeup that emphasized the feminine, convex curve of their cheeks and jaws that they could have passed for fems without provoking the necessary extra glances needed to dispel the illusion. They even wore single stud earrings: deep yellow diamonds, Y seeks X. "Will I regret this?" she asked in Pendorian Quen.

"Probably," Rhiane said, returning the favor.

"No," said one.

"We won't let you," said the other. "I'm named Ash. Pleased to meet you."

"And I'm Arwen," said the other. Each opened his arms in the common Free Worlds gesture inviting a greeting kiss, and Dove reacted with the force of habit that would have pleased her mothers, giving each a brief kiss on the cheek and receiving one in return.

"What are you doing dressed like this?"

"Don't you like it?" one said, twirling. Goddess, she... he looked lovely in it. He made the skirt billow modestly with the kind of skill that made Dove jealous. She had never quite mastered that maneuver. He pulled at the edges of the vest and glanced up at her. "We love your clothing. Fashion like this hasn't been around in three or four centuries. We're so glad we found you. Wow, you're cute."

Dove grimaced, and one of the two said, "We'd love to hang out with you."

"You seem to be getting along," Rhiane said, ignoring Dove's frantic look. "I'll leave them with you. Just be careful. They're, um, playful. And mad for anything Sterling."

"We're sorry if we upset you, Rhiane," said one. "Please reconsider," said the other.

"I'm sure Dove will hear your pleas," Rhiane said.

"But you were first!" "And we like you!"

"You'll like her!" Rhiane said insistently. "And I get the feeling she might like you."

"Don't you like us?"

"Of course I do. But you're a bit... much. And Ilonca and I are..."

They both pouted. Goddess, they even pouted like girls. They had that bottom lip trained. Then they brightened. "We'll light a candle for you!" "Carry it everywhere!"

Rhiane laughed. "You guys are neat. Take care of Dove. Polly says she needs care taken of her."

They both whirled on Dove. She felt like she was caught in the crossed beams of eager searchlights. "Really?" "Now?" "No, not now," one said, laying a hand on the other's arm. "Right now, we have to eat."

Dove glared at Rhiane's retreating back. "She really has thrown me to the wolves, hasn't she? Wait a minute, you two. Will you stop that? I could go crazy trying to keep track of who's saying what, not that I can tell you two apart. Is there a way to tell you two apart?"

"Not with our clothes on," one said. Taborah coughed impolitely. One turned his eyes to her. "Hi, who are you?"

Taborah paused to read her glasses. "I'm, uh, Taborah," she said.

"She doesn't speak Quen." "She's pretty though." "Not as pretty as Dove, though." "True." Taborah glared at them as the translation scrawled along the bottom of her vision. "But she is very cute." "Yeah."

Dove blinked. Rhiane was right. These two were definitely going to take growing some familiarity. "Which one is Ash?" she said. One pointed at the other, and the other nodded. "And you're Arwen," she said, pointing to the other. "When I turn my back, you two won't switch positions, will you?"

"Maybe." "Only if it makes you laugh."

Dove sighed. It would, and they would. "Y'know, maybe I should introduce you to Zia."

"Zia Tau?" Ash said. For the moment, she knew it was Ash. "We've met her." "She's scary," added Arwen. "Like an Uncia!"

"I can see that," Dove agreed. The doors opened and they were allowed in. True to the way this ship seemed to be run, Ash and Arwen had already been given seats at the same table she shared with other members of her team. They were her "Pendorian Guests," according to their place cards.

They surprised her by becoming perfect guests. Their manners were impeccable, they held off on their staccato volleying when talking to different people and they treated the questions given them with seriousness. When they were talking to others, she discovered, it was possible to tell them apart. Arwen was the deeper one, clearly the leader in intellectual pursuits. It wasn't that Ash wasn't interested-- in fact, he weirdly seemed to know everything Arwen was talking about, and tossed in comments here and there as needed, and Arwen just grinned when he did-- but he was much more interested in talking about clothes and fashion. But the differences were slight. When they talked to her, clearly something other than clothes or scholarship was on their minds.

The dining hall was packed. The noisy bustle and flow of voices, to which her table only contributed its fair share, filled the room, the echoing kept to a dull roar only by the many flags hung from the curiously textured ceiling with its soft, waveform shapes. She had gotten use to the visual appearance of the Pendorians, to the many and varied bodies, from the gigantic Han and Ursas down to the Mustelakin, who made her feel the way Han must have felt about her. She even spotted Haylee, the cat-woman that Rhiane had met the day the Pendorians arrived.

She tried to watch around her, pleased with her rare privileged position: of all the Sterlings on board, only a few had really spent any time at all mastering Quen, and she had started even before she'd won the opportunity to go on the Einstein's Canvas. Of the three hundred Sterlings, only twenty really spoke the language with any competence, and most of them were military. They were probably intelligence, chosen for their ability to master a language rapidly.

Dove continued to wear her glasses as camouflage. She listened to the two Pendorians behind her for a few moments and decided that they weren't worth overhearing: they were both clearly fascinated dissecting the Sterlings' Hospital Ship telenovel series. She had asked Polly about it and Polly had laughed: real life was nothing at all like a telenovel. The Vulpin was clearly fascinated with the theme of sex and gender and the way it was communicated or not communicated by the characters in the show.

She turned back and watched as Ash talked to Taborah and Arwen held his own in a conversation with Jaylene. Arwen made a good show of giving Dove's boss all of his attention but he still managed to creep a hand onto Dove's thigh, touching her skirt and gently giving her a squeeze. She should have been upset. She felt thrilled. It couldn't possibly be serious. They were Pendorians and mascs and probably a whole bunch of other things with which she could never connect.

She froze suddenly, a fork-full of some concoction of eggs and rice and spinach and cream hovering halfway between her plate and her mouth as another hand crept up the other thigh. She looked at Ash, who had turned to her with a glass of wine in his hand. "Maybe we could raise a toast," he said in Francaise. "To taking a dare?"

"To taking a dare," Arwen said behind her.

She glared at Ash. She didn't want to get caught. He smiled. Goddess, he was beautiful the way a woman could be beautiful. The thrill she had felt at his touch, and at Ash's, was still inside her even as their hands left her thighs. She quelled her tremor, finished her bite, reached for the wineglass and lifted it. "To dares," she said. She was not sure if she should take up the one presented.

Taborah watched her. Dove had worked with Taborah since starting at HonorAthena and knew that she was quite conservative for an Athenian. She seemed to enjoy living on Sparta, and most Spartans would probably consider her mainstream.

Then again, she knew two Spartans who seemed to have lost all control of their "mainstream" inhibitions. She glanced across the room and found Polly sitting at a table half Free World Intelligence, half Pendorian. Zia was on duty and she could see Zia standing just to the side of the stage, tall, proud, impeccable. She wondered if Zia had the irresponsible courage to wear a sex toy under her clothing while at full attention. Dove had no doubt she was capable of it.

The speeches were unremarkable. The Captain thanked the Free Worlds for their openness and generosity and promised that however the women of the Free Worlds got back to their homeworlds the captains of those returning vessels would be assiduous and responsible in ensuring the return trip as uneventful as the trip out. That resulted in some scattered laughter. For many of the Free Worlders, this trip had been anything but "uneventful."

The ritual of a meal together before parting ended in an offhand, staggered fashion as diners finished their rich desserts and their wine and left in ones, twos and larger groups. Dove had enjoyed the meal and the attention but now she was tired and ready for sleep. The ship would be pulling into orbit around llerkin tomorrow afternoon and everything she needed to have done was done. She wanted to get to bed early.

Which meant getting rid of Ash and Arwen. She was starting to think of them that way, AshandArwen, as if the two of them were one person. She just didn't want to do it in a way that would upset them. She might run into them again in the future.

She yawned. The table was already half empty. Aside from the boys only Taborah remained. Dove put her napkin on the table and rose. "Tomorrow's a busy day. It was nice to meet you both. See you at the landing tomorrow, Taborah?"

"Of course," the other woman said. She looked relieved when Ash and Arwen stood. She wasn't going to be left alone with them.

Ash said, "We'll be going too. It was nice to meet you, Taborah." He held out his hand. Surprised, she kissed it gently, and he repeated the gesture for her. They did the same for Dove. They wandered off in a direction away from the nearest exit. Dove watched them go. "What strange girls... boys."

"Yeah," Taborah said. "And they seemed to be whirling around you."

Dove tried to shrug without committing herself to it. Some small part of her watched their small retreating backs with their perfect long hair waving lovely from their white caps and wondered if letting them out of her sight was a mistake. They had been whirling around Rhiane, too. Another woman who was 'cute' instead of beautiful. "I'm going."

"I'll stay for a while. The wine's good." Taborah lifted her recently refilled glass to make the point.

Dove nodded and headed toward the nearest exit. The dining hall had been inside a larger group of conferencing rooms inside D deck, the social and functional space aboard the Canvas. She made her way down the hallways, through an attaching passageway that led to one of the recreation districts. She heard loud music as she stepped out into a lounge area filled with Pendorians. "There she is!"

Dove spun at the voices. Ash and Arwen were heading right for her, still in their uniforms. They encircled her. "We hoped you'd come this way!" One stood behind her, the other took her hands and pulled her close. She yelped loudly as she suddenly found herself sandwiched between them. A kiss planted on her neck, a perversion of the kiss of welcome. Ash (was it Ash?) was staring into her eyes. "We're so glad you did. Can you stay and dance? We wanted to thank you for being so nice to us at the dinner party! "

"That's my job," Dove said. She didn't believe those words herself. Goddess, she was surrounded by them. She felt a lump against her backside that was definitely part of the Y equipment package. Hands on her arms, hands on her waist. There were four hands. Two mouths. She felt one of the hands on her waist slip down. "You two can't... read minds... can you?"

"Not even each other's." "Not that we have to." "We know what we like." "We like you, Dove." "You're so cute."

"Don't say that," she hissed.

"But you are." "Be proud of it." "Cute is hard." Even as they said this their hands roamed about her body. She should have been furious. She should have been embarrassed. Instead, she felt herself warm to their touches. Goddess, they were making this hard. Goddess, they were good. Goddess, she shouldn't. "Okay," she said. "One dance."

"Whee!" The two of them separated from her, leaving her cold. She wanted them to come back. Dove's body reacted with a shock of loneliness as bad the day after her first time with Polly. "Come on, Dove."

They were reaching out, hands open, inviting. She laughed, because if she did not laugh she would have cried. They laughed along with her.

Bodies between one and two meters tall jittered and shook across a crowded floor to a hard, driving, raucous genre of music she didn't recognize. There were Felinzi and Humans and Mustelakins and Tindals and Mephits, males and fems. There was nothing like this, not the bodies, not the music, not the abandonment to the almost animal rhythm, anywhere on the Free Worlds.

The boys were enthusiastic dancers. She couldn't keep her eyes away from them, they both looked so girlish, so pretty, so right in their uniforms and skewed caps. She had become familiar enough with them that she could see the obvious lines of masculinity on their faces, but they managed somehow to pull off a feminine appearance without looking false.

She stayed for three, then four dances. Finally, though, her feet hurt, her eyes burned, and her body told her it was time to get off the floor. She also knew she should go to bed. She no longer wanted to go to sleep. She wanted their attention to go on. She liked the way they looked at her, smiled at her with bright eyes lusty and innocent at once. She took a deep breath and said, "I'm going to stop for one dance."

"Sure," they said in chorus.

They relaxed at a table. Someone brought her a drink in a tall champagne glass, and she sipped at it, surprised by the intensity of it. "What is this?" she said to the waiter.

"It's called a sweet conviction. Three parts white champagne, one part bourbon, powdered sugar on the rim, ice-chilled."

"Nothing else?"

"No," he said.

"Thanks," she said, drinking it straight. The bourbon burned down her throat, the champagne bubbled in her nose. She looked up at the boys, who had apparently taken this moment to kiss each other, doing so with enough attention that when she noticed them they noticed her. But they kept the kiss going just a few heartbeats longer, long enough for her to realize that just watching them was enough to make her feel wet. "You girls never stop," she said before remembering that they weren't "girls" at all.

"Why should we?" "Every kiss is better than the last one!" "Because the last one is just a memory!"

They both got up and surrounded her even as the bourbon went straight to her head. It hadn't been much but she had never been a heavy drinker. She took in their white pure skirts with blue lace trim, their feminine cut vests and their golden faces, and she knew that one of them had ordered that drink for her and she knew why. As they descended upon her, gentle kisses on her neck, hands trailing up her calves and under her skirt, she learned of her own sweet conviction. "Girls... boys, I can't take you back to Sterling Country. We'd be seen by too many people."

"There are love nooks around the edge of the club, just for people like us on days like this," one said. The other nodded, kissed his... brother? That's what they looked like. Twin brothers. She couldn't get the idea out of her head. The first took his brother's hand and kissed it, taking fingers into his mouth. The other said, "Wanna go see?"

She could have just watched them all night. "What's a love nook?"

"We'll show you." They each took one of her hands and led her. Her knees were weak and she was having trouble standing. It wasn't the alcohol. It was desire. It was a hunger to have sex, as she had said to Zia only a few weeks ago. It was a desire to get away from her mothers, to free herself, to find out what her body could do. Was that a Pendorian viewpoint, to find out what her body could do for her, to find out who she was to the limits that her body was capable? She would ask the boys later.

A door seemed to open in the wall leading to a room with a deep red carpet, low indirect lighting, three deep red walls and one that was entirely a mirror. There was a single giant bed and what looked like a fireplace. That couldn't be real, they were on a starship. The heat coming from it was real enough. "Come on, Dove, let's get out of these clothes!" They were at her again, hands on her skirt, on her blouse, taking her jacket. In moments, they had her naked and on the bed. Goddess, the bed was as bad as they were, it made her feel like it wanted her pleasure too.

The boys pounced on her although they were still mostly dressed. One put his mouth between her thighs, licking and kissing at her knee, working his way up to her pussy. Polly had licked her, but not with this kind of outright fire. The other hovered over her and did something none of her previous lovers (Goddess, could she really think in the plural like that less than a month after losing her virginity?) had ever done: he kissed her mouth. She whimpered, her whole body given over to these two. They made it clear that they wanted her and if it was just a game to them they weren't letting her know that. "You're so adorable, Dove. We're gonna love you forever."

"Goddess, you are reading my mind?"

He looked concerned, even as the other's tongue reached her pussy and licked over her furred mound, working his way deeper between her labia. "No, I can't. I don't want you to believe that I can. We're just making good guesses."

"About myiiieeee..." That tongue had reached her clitoris.

"She has a pretty clit, Ash," the one between her thighs said.

"Ooh, I wanna see." He leaned over, his skirt falling forward. They hadn't worn any panties to the dinner party! His dick hung forward, beautiful and tempting. "Ooh, it's tiny! So pink and pretty." He dropped back onto his haunches, the skirt falling back and covering his erection. "About your what, Dove?"

"Ohhhh," she moaned. "About my state of mind..."

He stretched out on the bed, his head near hers but upside down. "State of mind? That seems obvious!" He kissed her again, their tongues meeting in the middle, spit covering and cooling her face. Goddess, she was going to be soaked through by the morning.

Her back arched off the bed as a finger invaded her pussy, then another. "You're kinda tight, aren't you, Dove?" Arwen (she knew it was Arwen, would know until they traded places a few times) said. His fingers squirmed inside her.

"I... I... " She couldn't form words. She couldn't make words. She didn't want them to stop. He was lifting her off the bed, pulling her pussy toward his mouth, licking around her soaking wet lips and adding spit and lust. "So cute," one of them said. Mouths, on her pussy, on her lips, hands everywhere, she was coming, she was going to explode, she screamed out so loud the world seemed to black out for a second.

"Oh, goddess," she breathed. "Oh, goddess." Where were they? She turned her head, the world swimming through her pleasure, and she found them. They'd taken off their skirts, although they still had their shirts and vests on, and one was slowly sliding his tongue over the other's dick. Goddess, they managed to look adorable doing even that. "Where... did you guys... come from?"

"We were in the Realm," one said.

"What?" She turned and pushed herself up, head propped up in her hand. "You're not... those aren't your...."

"These are ours. Lots of Realm folk have their real bodies down in storage." "Doesn't take up a lot of room." "Lots more would just use a robot. But these are our organic bodies. When we heard that we were visiting a world full of such cute girls, especially when we heard about your sex arrangements, we had to come out."

"Then..." She looked down the length of her body. "You're probably disappointed I'm not a Y, huh?"

"Oh, no!" Both of them seemed to leap toward reassuring her. "No, we like girls!" "We like boys, too. We like everything!" "And I think we especially like you!"

They were encircling her again. One lay down behind her, spooning her body with his, his hands caressing her breasts. She sighed, leaned back. She wanted to let this happen. Goddess, she couldn't believe how badly she wanted them. "We want you to like us, Dove. We want you to be our girlfriend."

"Both... ha... both of you?"

"Yes." She felt the one behind her roll her over until she was lying face-up on top of him. She could feel his cock in the small of her back. The other rose between her legs, his hard cock looming over her mound. "We'll stop when you want us to."

"I... goddess... don't want you to stop!"

He slipped into her. He felt bigger than he looked. She wondered if she could tell them apart by their dicks. Maybe someday she'd learn. "How is it?" the one behind her said.

"Fantastic. She's so tight, so warm. She might be better than you."

"Then I get to go next!"

"But... wait! Too much... Oh, goddess." She was already coming from the feel of that sweet cock deep inside. His hands slipped down and held her ass, and he was gentle as he stroked in and out of her, making her pleasure rise and rise again. She leaned back against the warm body underneath her, let his brother fuck her over and over. He seemed so careful even as his own body shook. She came twice as she made love to her, and when he came she felt the wet stickiness of it, so much of it that it seemed to dribble out from around the kind pistoning of his dick. "Ohhh...."

Dove rolled over. Her body was hot and full. Having sex was supposed to be like this. What she'd experienced with Polly and Zia had been hard and efficient, just like them, but this... these boys knew how to do it. They knew how to make love.

Already, they were touching her body. The one who'd just been inside her reached out with his hands and helped her up into a kneeling position, holding her, caressing her sides and back. His brother, who had just been her bed, came up behind her and she felt his cock against her thighs, his mouth on her neck again. He nipped her gently and she tossed her head back and howled sweet, mad laughter. They both laughed in response, and then his cock, the one that hadn't been inside her yet, took its turn. "Oh, Goddess! If you girls keep this up," she said, forgetting her pronoun again, "I'm going... I'm going to lose my mind!"

"You're right," the one behind her said. She tried to remember which one he was, lost track, realized she'd lost track after that first climax. "You feel incredible, Dove." His brother was holding her up, giving her something to hold on to, giving her a place to rest. She held his head in her arms, put her cheek against his shoulder, as she took his brother's dick up into her pussy, pleasured herself on that beautiful dick (she could tell them apart this way, she thought, she just needed to figure out whose was whose), let herself be loved and surrounded and taken places she had never been. She came again and again before he reached his own climax deep within her.

She collapsed against the bed, which responded with ripples that seemed to try and reassure her that all was well. She curled up onto her side instinctively, reaching out with a hand to stroke the bed's surface, to assure it that she was reassured. She hadn't realized before now that the bed surface wasn't cloth, it was fur. She pressed down on it, and it flexed back. "Yaah!" she screeched, rolling out of bed. "That thing's alive!"

"Of course," said one of the boys. "You've never seen a Fixer bed, have you?"

"You mean, these things are... "

"They're not uncommon." "Lots of people have one." "We were thinking about buying one, but they're expensive." "We haven't got enough LIUs to afford one yet, not after storage."

She walked back to the bed, touched it. It shivered. "Is it, I mean, does it think?"

"Sort of." "Not really." "It's a cognitively modified organism." "CMO. That means that it has a tiny brain, just enough to support the rest of it." "And what it does think about is being touched, and keeping those who touch it happy." "Like us." "Only we have a brain." "More than one." "Like, two." "Or three." "Two and a half."

They kissed each other, apparently to stop the volley back and forth, or maybe to distract her from what they had said. She wanted them to explain it all to her, how they could have one brain, or three, about how Fixer beds felt about the world, about how they had lived in the Realm and come back, and about how Pendorians managed to survive such a weird, wacky, wild world without going mad, and she wanted them to touch her, to take care of her, to keep being a part of her life and her daily routines. She knew her mothers would hate her, would pray for her, would despair at the scandal her betrayal of Free Worlds ideals would create. "What are you thinking about, Dove?"

"I was thinking," she said softly, "That I'm really starting to like you two."

"Really? Yay!" Again, she was hauled down into a tumult of hands and legs and bodies. She wound up on top of one of the boys, facing him. He smiled at her and she felt commotion between her thighs as his brother grabbed his cock and guided it into her pussy. "You feel good, Dove. You feel so warm."

"I'm glad you... Eeep!" She felt the other boy press his cock up against her pussy. "You can't. I can't. I've never..." Would they together be bigger than Polly? By much? By a dangerous amount? She couldn't believe that they wanted to try this. But the one behind her pushed in, gently. She was wet from them both coming inside her already, but was that really going to be enough?

Apparently it was, because he did manage finally to slip into her pussy next to his brother. She felt her insides being stretched and if it was a little uncomfortable it was also the most wonderful thing she had felt yet. "Now you're very tight, Dove," the kneeling one said.

"And very beautiful," said the one she faced. She barely heard him. They both thrust into her, again with the gentleness of angels, with the strength of the Goddess, and with an unending amount of care and pleasure. They liked her, they wanted her to be happy. The bed wanted her to be happy. So she was, for this moment, with the dicks of two beautiful brothers sliding in and out of her pussy, and she came again and again, unable to stop, unable to do anything at all but bathe in their perversely innocent and beautiful light. When they came-- at the same time-- it was as if they were just putting a final ribbon of white on the celebration sweet that was Dove San Cioni.

She lay on the bed, on her back, breathing deeply, feeling wave after wave of joyous pleasure make way for happy sleep. They hovered over her, their faces swimming in her liquid gaze. "Wow," one said. "You came a lot, Dove."

"You two..." She gestured with her arms, felt tears squeezing from her eyes. They cuddled close to her, one on each side, surrounding her. "You two... may stay."

"Oh, Dove," they said as one. One spoke alone. "We'll try to make sure you don't regret it."