Page 58 of Splintered Shadow
“Tolerable?”
Another chuckle. Another fluttering ache. She was sore, and parts of her twinged from being used for the first time in years, but damned if her body wasn’t on board for another round. Had she always been this lascivious? She hadn’t felt desire for anything—person or vibrator— in so long she’d forgotten what having a libido was like. Or maybe this was a hormonal change now that she was in her thirties.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Right, right.
“Perfection,” he said.
Sarah kissed him, cautious of morning breath. He groaned, deepening the kiss.
“This is for me?” She reached down, taking both cocks in hand. They were a… handful. Fine, that was bad. She was too turned on to care, ready to stuff herself with a double helping of princely penis.
He pumped his hips, fucking himself in her fist. “Only for you,” he said.
Then Vekele had to ruin her perfectly lecherous moment by being romantic.
“How are you so sweet? Like, no one knows you’re a total cinnamon roll.”
He stilled. “Are you hungry? Is that why you compare me to a pastry?” He pulled away. “We will eat. I have been selfish and neglected you. I will bring you water.”
“No, you don’t. I’m not done with you.” Sarah grabbed his hand and pulled him back to bed. “You are going to finish what you started, mister.”
And he did.
Twice.
* * *
The first day,they kept the world at bay, too wrapped up in each to care for anyone else.
The following morning, the world would not wait. Outfits had to be fitted. Stylists came to do her hair. Again. It was a whole Cinderella experience. Public relations managers had a list of questions and acceptable answers to be memorized. A medic installed a translator chip into her head and a dose of pain meds for the headache from said chip being implanted in her brain.
A particularly stern-faced man arrived to coach Sarah in court etiquette. How to walk. How to talk. How to stand perfectly still like a statue, because that was what people did at court, apparently: standing around looking beautiful but not actually doing anything. The mice in the story never yelled at Cinderella because her poor posture was common and insulting.
After hours of frustration, the instructor pronounced her a barbarian but passable for polite company. Hooray.
Sarah got why Vekele ran away from palace life to his house in the mountains.
The palace was, well, a palace. She hadn’t been given a tour, but what she saw was stunning and more advanced tech-wise than she expected. Summerhall had electricity and hot water, but that wasn’t so different from her apartment back on Earth. Just fancier with gilding and a lot more rooms.
The palace had an AI to answer questions, play music, light a path along the floor to guide Sarah through the labyrinth of the palace, and it even gave her the weather report.
Screens that were nothing more than a thin layer of glass that floated. Just floated. Sometimes they floated over a console table. Sometimes it was against a wall like a flat -screen TV. The screen had amazing clarity and if Sarah left a room with a program playing, the program followed her from screen to screen.
The biggest surprise was Arcosian soap operas. She asked the AI to randomly play a program, curious to see what alien pop culture looked like. What she got was a long -running series—think decades—of half-hour programming with dramatic stares into the camera and lovers clutching each other passionately.
She had no idea what was happening. There was a dude—a doctor, maybe? —in the military. He left behind his sweetheart to fight for the king. When he returned home, his brother had stolen his inheritance and his sweetheart. So the dude did the logical thing of marrying literally the first woman he saw, a disheveled maid. The cast acted as if the maid were hideous, but no amount of dirt and bad makeup could hide the way the actress glowed.
It was amazing. Sarah was hooked.
Vekele found her curled up on the sofa, her eyes glued to the screen on the far wall. “I refuse to believe you enjoy this.”
“Don’t judge. This is fascinating.” She was certain she missed nuance and cultural references. No one said anything directly, or maybe they did with body language, and she didn’t understand.
He watched for a moment, then made a dismissive noise. “We have books. An entire library. A library bigger than Summerhall.”
“That’s your judgy tone.”
