Chapter Five
“You always laughed a little too fast and long. You always ran faster than me, and didn’t look back to see if I was keeping up. And you were always very quick to push me if I got in your way.”
“Now you’re going to list all of my childhood faults?”
He made a glowering face. “Maybe.”
Society dictated the behaviors of its citizens. They had choices they could make, of course. We lived in a Golden Age. Who could complain? But we still were human, mostly. Even those of us with cyborg parts. We still listened to our egos, and needed to feel important. We too often sought that outside ourselves, beyond our hearts, seeking approval from our self-made gods and icons, those we admired or drew praise from or wanted to be like, young or old, royalty or the son of a guard.
I got up from the couch, came around Night’s out-stretched legs and knelt. Slowly. So I did not startle that untamed energy that seethed inside him. I admired him for it. I always had.
I put my hand on the edge of the couch by his thigh, not touching. “I did not want to leave you.”
“But you wanting something else more,” he replied.
Fair enough. I nodded. “Let me put it this way, then,” I said. “I should not have left you.”
He glanced at me through half-shut eyes, dark and anything but serene. “No,” he said quietly. “You shouldn’t have.”
“I mean it.”
He laughed, high and ridiculing. “I think you think you mean it.”
That stung. I took a deep breath. My chest swelled. I held my breath, and then let it out with my next words. “I’ll quit the Academy and come back to you.”
That statement was unplanned. And yet my heart would argue it was not. My heart had known. It always had. I’d missed him, wondered about him, dreamed of him. I simply never allowed myself to project my fantasies any further onto my longings.
Now Night sat upright, his hands falling to his lap. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“But—you’re ridiculous. Look at you! Listen to yourself! You can’t just—“
“I can. I can change my mind, right? There’s no law that says I can’t. This calling was chosen for me when I was twelve. What did I know at that age? I’m allowed to say no now. I’m allowed to rescind consent.”
He gave me a look as if I were speaking a language he had never heard. “You’re being stupid. You’re someone great now. Looked up to. Admired. Famous, even. You have the support, the approval, even the admiration of the entire city. ‘Star is a rare gem,’ they say. ‘The rarest, the best. The one so many virgins hope to have in their beds on their night of the Rite of Ecstasy.’”
Now I laughed. “People don’t say that!”
“They do. You’ve never heard?” A slight smile crept at the edges of his mouth.
“No. And I’m not stupid.”
He frowned. “You are.”
“When is love stupid?”
He shook his head and backed away from me, sliding across the couch until he could stand without touching me. “All the time,” he said. “People do stupid things for love all the time.”
He moved toward the table, his boots crunching broken glass as he went. “Is there any more wine?”
I stood, surveying the room. The Sacred Chambers were always well-stocked with extras of everything: snacks, candles, incense, oils, vibrators, lubricants, and alcohol. I went to the bed and rummaged about the nightstand, finding a box of supplies hidden just under the edge of the bed. Among the goodies within were three more bottles of wine.
I stood, thrusting out my arm to show off my treasure. “Here.”
“Bring it.” Night grabbed a fresh, unbroken goblet and held it out.
I went to the table and opened the new bottle, then filled our goblets full to the rims. I set the bottle down and picked up my glass. As I did, Night reached out over my arm, picking up his glass. His elbow bumped me. I started to back off, but he locked his arm around mine until they were entwined, then pulled his wine to his lips, the act forcing me closer to him. After two long swallows, his arm relaxed.
I stood stock-still in the strange embrace.
Night’s lips glistened from the drink. “Maybe you forgot me—“
“I didn’t!”
“—but I never forgot you.”
“I didn’t,” I repeated.
He moved closer to me until his chin was practically touching my shoulder, our arms and hands trapped between our heaving chests. The wine sloshed over us. He seemed to take no notice.
“By all the gods that never were,” he said. “You are so fucking gorgeous.” He nearly gasped out those last words.
I didn’t dare move. Nor did I want to.
Then Night put his free hand up to my shoulder and turned his head until his mouth almost brushed my chin. He looked up at me, his lips opening a fraction, his breath warm against my jaw and neck. I nodded forward and gently pressed my mouth to his.
They were watching. The city. All of them. I could feel it.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to Night. This was no longer a ritual. This was something more.
But there was nothing I could do about the blue camera eyes now.
Night’s dark, errant locks caressed my cheeks. His mouth opened. He pushed up to get closer and more wine splashed against my chest and dripped down my stomach to the floor. Probably, his own shirt was soaked as well.
My other arm stretched back, automatically searching for balance and finding the edge of the table. I leaned against it, then brought my hand up to his nape and curved my fingers there, holding, not pulling, caressing, not grabbing.
He let out a little moan into the kiss, which grew fierier with every second.
Every cell in my body became a tiny flame until I felt engulfed in the burn of desire, of love.
Reluctant to end the kiss, I pulled back. “Wait. I’m all wet. Let me set this down.”
Night wobbled a little as I set my goblet on the table. His white shirt had a gray stain across the chest. We both had more wine on us than we’d drunk. He looked dazed so after I set my goblet on the table, I took his goblet from his grasp, asking, “You didn’t want more, did you?”
“More what?” he asked.
I smiled.
He put both arms around me now. This time he initiated the kiss.
My body had become immediately hard for him during that first searing touch of lips. There was nothing left to hold me back but knotted and torn silks that were sheer as light.
Night had said I was disgusting. Night had said I was beautiful. Whichever it was, he was about to find out.
His hands went up and down my back, tearing even more holes in my silks.
I didn’t care. The only clothing I cared about now was his. It was in the way of me touching him skin to skin. But I didn’t want to push or rush him. I wanted this night to be his decision, his lead. I wasn’t sure he was a true virgin, but I knew he was quite capable of communicating what he wanted, and what he did not want.
The moon shone golden behind us. I could see the windows through Night’s hair, glimmering. Everything around us shimmered. The kiss was made of stars and crystals, moons and secret shadows. Everything about Night had enticed me from the moment I’d entered the Sacred Chamber. His dark defiance. His lean silences and cocky scowls. His resentments and his untamed, never forgotten love for me that had filled him up when he was twelve.
I—well—I had taken that for granted.
Never again.
His devastation would not be my doing any longer.
I felt him grow heavy in my arms. The heat. The wine. The arousal.
I wanted to take him to the bed. But was it too intimate too fast?
I broke away. “Can you stand?”
He chuckled. “Take me to the bed.”
Relief swept over me along with a greater longing that had me hurting. I nearly doubled over from the intensity.
In my opinion, we could not get there fast enough.
He led, but allowed me to support most of his weight. He was drunk, but not on wine. What a thrill.
Even now, before anything between us sealed our fate and connected us forever, I could not imagine any future now where I was not at his side. Already our love was consummated. It had been in my heart, and his, all along.
I was at my best when I was bold. Fearless. But I cared so much about him, and this. And my jaw still ached from where he’d pummeled me.
And so I was tentative when I said, as he settled before me on the bed, “I won’t do anything you don’t want to do. Whatever you wish, anything, it is yours. Your decision alone.”
“You’re in this with me?”
“Of course.”
“Your decisions count, too, then.”
“But if I—“
“Shut up,” he said, for about the millionth time tonight. He touched his fingertips to my open mouth. “You can’t do anything that would be wrong. Not now.” He searched my eyes with his gaze. “I know that now. I just—know.”
After all these years, trust returned as easily as if we were two boys again exploring the secrets of the palace, running through the halls, teasing the androids who could not understand our jokes, and pinky-swearing on the rising moon that we’d be friends forever.
He pulled me to him, almost rough but not, and fell back among the pillows with me on top. He began to kiss me again, and his hand gripped the silks at my back, tugging, pulling them away. They were designed to come apart easily for unfettered access to my talents and my training. Before too much time passed, I was naked before him.
He leaned back to breathe, saying, “You’re so hard all over. Are you sure you’re real?”
“I’m not an android,” I assured him.
He ran his hands over my chest and shoulders. His palms brushed my nipples and I shuddered. Then he ran his fingers through my hair. “You’re golden all over,” he said. “Even the darkness of your hair.”
“They say you have nine tattoos,” I replied. “Show me.”
His laugh came out light, like music. “I have three.”
“And piercings.”
“That,” he said, “is a lie.”
I can’t say I wasn’t slightly disappointed.
It was sacrilege, of course. Tattoos. Piercings. What would the people watching the cameras think when he showed me his three designs?
The air seemed to still all around us as I slid aside to allow him to remove his shirt. I realized I was holding my breath.
The first drawing I saw was a Mandela of knots just below his rib-cage on the left. It was intricate and complex, like Night himself. The second he showed me was on his hip. A tiny winged being. A golden angel. The third was not revealed until he removed his boots and denim slacks. I helped him scurry out of them until he was naked before me, tanned and glorious, lightly dusked with hair on his abdomen and groin. There was none on his chest.
That was when I saw the third tattoo. A crescent moon with stars swirling about it. Below that image, a single word: Star. It had been drawn upon his right inner thigh, close to the groin.
His erection stood proud above it.
“Star.” He spoke my name as he reached for me.
“I can’t believe it.” My voice came out hoarse. “You got that in the Grim Lands?”
He nodded.
Guilt swarmed me. Yet how could I have known as such a young boy that I should have rejected my calling and stayed with him? Still, my cheeks flamed. I looked away.
Gentle hands cupped my face. Turning me to face him. “I want you to touch me there, on the tattoo,” Night said.
I had sat up to let him undress. Now I sank onto the bed and into his embrace. We lay side by side. He arms around me were strong and warm. I’d participated in many such embraces, many rituals, but this felt like happiness, like home. I had been aroused before, but not like this. Not as if the entire world was burning and I would not survive it if Night did not hold onto to me and keep me from falling apart.
We came together, chest to chest, hip to hip, our hard cocks trapped between us side by side, smoldering. We were both already damp down there, so ready for each other.
Our mouths met again, open and seeking. He tasted of childhood, the desert, and forever. My hand moved between us to his inner thigh. To the place where my name was inked into his flesh.
Night shuddered, pulled his head back a little.
“I’ve never done this before.” He pushed himself half onto his back, grabbing a pillow and clutching against his abdomen..
My eyebrows rose. “You are a real virgin?”
He nodded.
“That’s delightful.”
“Why? You’ve only ever been with virgins.”
I smiled at him. “The statistics we’re given at the Academy state that seventy percent of the people we service in the Rite of Ecstasy are not true virgins. I am positive the percentage is more like ninety.”
“Well, I’m that other ten percent and I don’t want those eyes watching.”
There was little I could do about that. I could pull the sheet over our heads, but it would be in the way. I could block his body with my own to give some remaining mystique to his first time at not only sex, but making love, but the eyes would still see most of what we did from all angles, giving close-ups as their programs decreed.
It unnerved me that I couldn’t help him into a more private setting. That if we wanted that, we would have to wait it out until the replacement for me came and Night fought his way out of the Sacred Chamber.
Also, in his state—in both our states—we’d certainly suffer if we had to wait. We were ready for each other now, our flesh on fire, and our hearts striking lightning in our chests. We might jump into a cold bath together and still the waters would steam.
I glanced about the room and had an idea. I started to laugh.