Page 53 of Prima
He emits a guttural sound and grips her head. “Stop. No exertion for you.”
"This is not exertion. It’s fun.”
“Then stop because I’m going to be done this second.”
She glances up, her eyes full of a lascivious mischief. “Good. Do it. I want to practice my swallowing.”
He nearly loses it on those words alone. Her lips, her tongue, the suction she creates inside her mouth?—
“Does it—does it feel the same when I do it to you?”
She releases him and ponders for a moment. “I don’t know if it feels the same but I used to lie awake all night thinking about it—thinking about you.”
To think, that over the years some of their sleepless nights might have been shared, thousands of kilometers apart.
He swivels her around. He might be barely not a virgin, but he’s heard of a certain mutually beneficial position.
Which might indeed be one of the most benevolent discoveries humanity has ever made on its own behalf. To trust and be trusted by the lover to this extent, to give and receive unspeakable pleasure at the same time, to create an all-encompassing intimacy without a single word.
But the best part is when she forgets what she’s supposed to do, because she is trembling and crying aloud.
When they finally join together, she on top of him and he deep inside her, he feels as if he’s holding not only the woman of his dreams, but every single hope he’s ever nurtured deep in his heart.
“Have I ever told you that I love you?” he asks.
“Yes,” she tells him, “in every way that counts.”
* * *
They make love three times, which they agree, averaged over how long they’ve gone without, comes to a lot less than a little sex. It’s practically verging on zero.
She falls asleep as the sun climbs high overhead. He scribbles things down in his notebook, moves the canopy once in a while to keep her out of direct sunlight, and makes a simple meal from ingredients she already has aboard, feeling as light as a dandelion puff, traveling the entire world on a single springtime breeze.
When she wakes up, he sleeps for a while. And when he gets up, they have a leisurely late lunch together.
Refugees approved for sanctuary in New Ryukyu are required to perform their reclamation services first, eighteen months, same as that demanded of citizens. Occasionally, the requirement is waived, as in his mother’s case, if the applicant can make a significant contribution to New Ryukyu.
“Not because she knew the secrets of sericulture—that she could not prove for years,” says Lanzhou, “but because of the naval architectural blueprints you sent along.”
He remembers those, which included a surface vessel designed to be even faster thanThe Arrow of Time, and a conceptual vehicle meant to “sail” over large expanses of Plant Cover, neither of which he ever showed anyone in Dawan.
“When you finish your eighteen months of service, there will be people who are very eager for you to start working.”
“But I’ll be doing two years alongside you, won’t I, because you have those six months added by your mother for losing that solar yacht in the war zone?”
She looks at him significantly.
“Ah, I understand now, my lady. I am to produce something brilliant in those eighteen months, something half-finished but so genius that people would not want me to waste another six months removing Plant Cover. But since I’ll refuse to leave your side, they’ll strike down those extra six months for you and now you’ll need to serve no more than the eighteen months required by law.”
She grins. “What did I say years ago? I knew you were more than a pretty face.”
“Huh,” he says. “I’m not sure you’ve bothered to look at my pretty face today. I don’t think your gaze strayed north of my navel very often.”
“Huh,” she retorts. “As if you’ve paid attention to anything other than my nipples.”
“So…we keep looking where we shouldn’t?”
She laughs, the most beautiful sight and sound in the world. “Sure, why not? Two wrongs don’t make a right, but two negatives can result in a positive.”
