“Challers.” She gave me a dubious look. “Think about what you’re doing. Are you saying that staring into each other’s eyes is actually going to create something beyond what we already have? We live together, we study together, we have sex on a regular basis. I like you. I have the crazy idea that you like me too. What more do you want? What more do you expect to accomplish?”
“Are you saying it’s meaningless? Silly?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes. I think it is a little silly. There’s a lot more to a relationship than gazing into each other’s eyes.”
“Is there any harm in it?”
“No, of course not. Except maybe as a waste of time.”
“We’re here, having fun. Wasting time.” I leaned closer and set my glass down, still half full. “So no harm at all. It’s safe, right?”
She took a big swig of wine and shook her head. “You’re a romantic, you know that?”
“What’s that?”
“Someone who believes in the power of love to overcome every obstacle—that all you need is to love someone deeply enough, completely enough, and everything will turn out all right in the end.”
“In that case, maybe I am. And why not?”
“It’s going to hurt when you realize the world doesn’t work that way. Falling in love,
really
falling in love, leads to a great deal of pain.”
“And yet you still love Robert, even though every time you have to say goodbye, you hurt all over again.”
She looked down. “That’s different.”
I finished my drink and took her hand. “Come on. Finish your drink and let’s dance.”
When she looked up, she wore a crooked smile and shook her head. “All right, Challers. All right.”
We danced close, closer even than when we practiced our partner movement exercises. I held her close and, before long, she was holding me, as well. We had our thighs between each other’s legs, grinding against each other. She might have been trying to get me turned on enough that I had to leave, or it might have just been the way she wanted to dance. It didn’t matter, though, because she was finally letting me in, letting me through the doors of her eyes.
We stayed there, our dance slow and sensuous in spite of the changing music, for what seemed like hours. Our gazes stayed in that mutual reflection the whole time, and by the time we were too tired to stand any longer, I could tell that something had changed. It wasn’t anything overt, or even anything I could point to in any logical way, but I could feel in my heart that I had finally gotten through. We didn’t try to talk. The thudding music made it impossible. I didn’t care. Words would have been a distraction.
The dance floor slowly became more and more crowded, until there simply wasn’t enough room for us anymore and I pulled Shirley away. We went back out to the promenade and found a bench that wasn’t too besieged by the swelling traffic.
I took her hand in mine. “There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“It was marvelous, Challers. Thank you.”
“Do you feel any different?”
“It’s a very intimate thing, looking into the eyes like that. It touches something very primal.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“You’re asking so much. I don’t know if I can give it to you.”
“You can. You are. You just have to let it happen. All those things you told me, about opening my heart, about loving more than one person? It’s not a lie, Shirley. You may not have been saying it sincerely, but I listened to what you said and I agree with it. Don’t you think we’ll be better off if we’re honest with each other, if we let ourselves feel the things that go with what we’re doing?”
She closed her eyes. Her voice grew tight and strained. “I’m scared, Challers. Vack! I’m not supposed to get like this with a cadet. I’m supposed to be the authority!” She choked back a sob and looked away, trying to hide her tears from me.
“I won’t lose my respect for you if you cry, Shirley. You brought me through the math section of Astronavigation when I thought it was going to wash me out. I owe everything here to you.”
She curled sideways, into my arms. I could hear, in her breathing, that she was using the meditation techniques she had taught me to keep control.
I pulled her to her feet. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go out to the oxygen deck. I know this quiet place down by the water.”
We sat by the water, my arm around her, for an hour or so before I thought of something worth saying.
“Valka and I used to sit in the communications center for hours at a time, looking out at the stars. It had a big window for some reason, and if the station was oriented right and we turned off all the lights, it seemed like the whole galaxy was laid out for us. We didn’t talk, at least not the whole time, and we didn’t spend the whole time kissing, either. We just sat together, enjoying just being together.”
“We’ve never done that,” she said.
“Until now. Shirley, I know I can love you. In perfect honesty, I still worry whether that’s going to make me love Valka less, but if anything is going to make our time together worthwhile, it’s going to be allowing ourselves to fall in love. And that means doing silly things like taking long walks by the river and gazing into each other’s eyes. There’s one thing I can’t do, though, and that’s love someone who doesn’t love me back. That would hurt even more.”
“Do you really think you can
make
love happen, just like that?”
“I think you know it’s possible. Whether it actually works for
us
is a question I can’t answer without your help.”
She kissed me. It wasn’t just a touch of the lips, either. She rolled her head up, nuzzled under my chin, and then pushed me onto my back and kissed me like I had never been kissed before. Her kiss was insistent, almost desperate. I submitted to it, rolling with it, then returned the passion and desperation. It didn’t have the same quality that kissing Valka had, there wasn’t the overwhelming sense of
rightness
, but it felt good that I had gotten through to her.
After what seemed like only seconds, she pulled her shirt up over her head, quickly followed by the rest of her clothes.
“What’s this, time for class all of a sudden?”
“No class, Challers. No questions. No answers.” She straddled me and pulled my shirt over my head. Her nipples dragged over my skin as she ran a trail of kisses down my chest and abdomen.
“Shirley?”
“Don’t talk.” Her legs made a small splash entering the water. She pulled down my shorts and engulfed my flaccid cock in her mouth. It seemed almost like hunger that drove her, using her lips and tongue to work it towards erection. The sudden passion confused me, but I had no intention of complaining. I lay back on the ground and enjoyed her attentions. Somewhere in the corner of my mind, I noticed that I was sliding down the slope into the water.
She pulled me in completely and wrapped her legs around me. “I can’t wait to have sex with you on the ship, in zero gravity. It’s incredibly liberating.”
She paddled with her hands and pulled me out into the deeper water.
I splashed, panicking a little at the way the water seemed to want to pull me under.
“Like this,” she said. “Watch my hands.”
I imitated her movements and found that I could keep my head above the water level by pumping at it the right way.
I was panting, half from fright and half from erotic tension. My cock bumped against her ass as we floated in the water and I knew that it would only be a slight motion to slip it inside her.
I wanted it. I wanted it so bad I could taste it. But even as we drifted there in the water, I didn’t want it enough to actually do it. The fact that Shirley wasn’t pushing herself down onto me told me she was holding back too.
I felt a shudder pass through her body. “I think we need to get out of the water. It’s colder than I thought.”
I had to agree. I could feel the cold seeping into my flesh.
“Uh, how?” I tried to alter my paddling to produce some sideways motion.
“Try and go that direction.”
“I
am
trying!”
We drifted further and further downstream. The current in the center of the river was faster than it was near the edge. The glowing rectangle of the entrance to the promenade had disappeared behind something. I couldn’t tell how far we had gone. The only light came from starlight filtering down through the transparent ceiling and the distant lights of the far side of the ring, not nearly enough to see by. I felt like I was floating in nothingness, floating in the void. My heart pounded in my ears and my breathing came faster. I fought down the urge to thrash against the water.
The only thing that kept my wits about me was the firm grip of Shirley’s legs around my waist. “Stay calm, Challers, let me use my legs. I think I can get us out of the water.”
“Don’t let go of me!”
Panic flashed through my brain. I thrashed in the water and my head went under the surface for a moment. The river couldn’t have been very deep, but for that moment, it felt infinite. I got my head back to the surface and gasped for breath.
“Don’t worry! I’m not leaving you.” Her ankles unlocked from around my waist and we drifted apart a little. I splashed and sputtered, trying to keep my head out of the water. She turned her back to me. “Grab my shoulders, but don’t push down. Just put your hands there.”
Her skin was slick and I could feel goosebumps under my fingers. It took every scrap of will I had to keep from climbing on top of her to get that much further out of the water. She swept her arms and legs in wide arcs and, gradually, we moved through the water. I couldn’t see well enough to even tell where the bank was, so thick was the darkness.
Then, suddenly, I felt Shirley’s body lurch under me. It felt like something had grabbed her. She slid down, then forward, briefly going under the water, but then straightened up. She had found something to stand on, some solid ground under her feet.
We pulled ourselves out and lay there, shivering. I was coughing, panting, gasping.
I looked around, but all was blackness. Once I had caught my breath, I felt around. My groping hands found fibrous, dense vegetation in every direction. We lay on a thick, spongy mat that felt like miniature grass.
“I can’t find a way out,” I said, nearly frantic.
Shirley’s hand found my hips. “Cuddle close,” she said. “We’ll wait here until the end of the dark shift, then we’ll find a way when the lights come on.”
I settled down and found my place behind her, curled up around her back spoon-fashion. My arm, draped over her side, found a natural place on her breast. Gradually, our body heat returned and the shivers faded away. The air wasn’t really very cold, and once the water on my skin had evaporated, I felt almost normal again.
I felt my erection return and, with it, the passion that had been driving me ever since we left the promenade. I turned Shirley on her back and ran my hand over her body, feeling her skin from neck to crotch, figuring out where she was in the pitch dark.
Shirley put her hand on my chest. It might have been a gesture of caution, but I was too turned on to stop. I wanted her, badly. I stroked her breast and felt the nipple harden against the palm of my hand.
“After all that, you’re still aroused?”
“I can’t help it.” My erection bumped against her leg. I leaned down and nuzzled her chest. When I located her nipple, I took it between my lips and sucked.
She let out a soft sigh and ran her fingers through my hair. “This is nice.”
I slid my hand down and found her pussy. My fingers slid between her warm, wet lips. Her nipple popped out of my mouth. “No fancy bed. No lessons. No rules. Just you and me and the darkness.”
I felt her body tense a little. “Challers, just because . . .”
“No, Shirley.” I probed her more deeply, touching her most sensitive places in the most effective ways I had learned.
She let out a long breath and arched her back. “Challers, what are you—what are you doing?”
“Shh.” I stopped any further protest with my mouth on hers, while I shifted my body between her legs. Guided only by touch, the head of my cock found her slick vulva and bumped against her lips.
She made a weak sound of protest into my mouth and I pulled back, giving her the chance to refuse me. I wasn’t going to rape her, but I wasn’t going to take anything less than a
no
to stop me.