The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) (26 page)

"Just spread your legs, so I can see."

As he glanced down, he saw everything she had.  He stared, the surprise over her utter nakedness dragging open his lower lip for a split second.

And holy shit, was that the start of a blush pooling in his cheeks?

His eyes suddenly flicked to the gash in her thigh.  Without another glance at her exposed sex, he lifted the wet rag to the wound.  He went through the same careful process he had with the wounds on her hand, dabbing and rinsing the cloth and dabbing again, amidst her flailing kicks and screams and attempts to rise up and bash him in the mouth.

He finally dropped the cloth into the bucket and left it.  She was panting from the struggle.  He remained kneeling there between her knees, but he was gazing blandly at her face. 

"I'm sorry it hurts.  I'm just trying to help," he said.  She didn't care.  Couldn't.  She was too embarrassed, flat on her back, without the armor of her boots or her pants, to even accept the apology.  "Let me just see how deep the cut is, okay?"

She didn't fight him.  She was too humiliated to even try to kick him again.  She felt the tiny mouth of her sex open and close as her leg moved with his painful prodding.  She bit down hard on her lip to keep from shouting at the pain.  He apologized, but prodded some more.  When he placed his hand on her kneecap, to steady her shaking leg, the bud at the peak of her cleft throbbed.  He let go.

"Stay here.  I'm going to get the salve," he said.  He stood and went to the counter, taking down a jar, mixing something in a dish.  There were no covers, no clothes around her.  Nothing to cover herself.  If she got up to run, she knew he'd catch her before she got three steps away.  She threw her arms over her eyes.

His tread returned him to the bed.  She felt the vibration in the floor as he kneeled down again.  She didn't move her arm, but her spine jerked when the flat of his palm touched down on her still-quaking kneecap. 

"It's okay," he murmured.  She peeked from beneath her forearm as he dipped his fingers into the dish beside him. When he turned back, he glanced down, lower than the wound, between her legs.  She was mortified, and yet, the tender knot at the peak of her sex throbbed like a million-kilowatt light
bulb.  How the hell could she be getting off on him looking?  She moved to close her legs on it, but his fingers firmed on her knee and held her still.

He applied what felt like a cold paste to the open wound.  She drew in a sharp breath. 

"It's going to burn a little," he said.  She was about to tell him he was wrong, when it hit her.  The heat jumped inside the cut and raced into her veins so she had to clench her teeth.  She shrieked, dropping her hands onto the bed, fisting the fabric.  She tried to kick him away, just for putting the stuff on her, but he locked his hands on both her knees, his brow hooding his eyes as he ordered her firmly, "Don't kick or I'll have to reapply it."

She kicked and jerked anyway, and he swore, a word she didn't recognize, under his breath.  One hand left her leg, but then she saw him lift another large bead of the salve on his fingertips.  She struggled against him as he applied it, the flash of cold nearly a relief in the residual burn of the first application, but then the second application hit her in a wave, like a rolling boil over a red-hot coal.  She screamed as he caught her hand and applied it to that wound too.  Her second scream felt like her lungs would break out of her ribs.

"I can help," his voice boomed over the top of her shrieking.  "Do you want me to help?"

"YES!" she shouted through clenched teeth.  What the fuck was he thinking?  That she'd say no?  That she
—

Tears squeezed from the corners her eyes as he stuck his fingers in his mouth.  She grit her teeth, trying to hold her legs still while willing herself to get her teeth open enough to scream at him.  He popped his wet fingers from his mouth.  They disappeared between her legs.  She felt them stroke intimately against her. 

She sucked in a breath as he slid his first two fingers up against the tender bud.  He stroked it, glancing up at her as he did.  The burn was still like holding her eyeball over an open flame, but then, his thumb planted against her, rubbing in a slow circle that replaced the burn with an intense tingle—but still too intense to be comfortable, until he slipped his fingers inside her.  Her sex sucked at his knuckles, the movement of his fingertips overwhelming the horrible burning sensation with each small, but consistent, stroke.  The pain was replaced by his rhythm and Maeve found herself trying to press against the relief of his touch.

Her mind skittered, trying to categorize the experience.  A moan broke free from her lips and beneath lowered lashes, she watched him as the muscles in his shoulder flexed in the same rhythm with which he moved his fingers within her. 

This was a one night stand, a one-hour stand...sex at the bar...yes, she'd had sex at a bar once...the man was a stranger standing behind her at the crowded counter.  She'd glimpsed him as she waited for a drink...and then he'd lifted her skirt and done this same thing...touched her.  Maeve had been drunk enough to allow it, to enjoy it. 

In that moment, the music pounded a heartbeat into the entire building and Maeve pretended that every person in the bar was just a cell within the heart.  She pretended that the stranger behind her was a handsome man and she let herself be taken away in the beat and the sensations.  She'd panted her order to the bartender, as she pressed her ass back into the hand that penetrated her.  It felt so good, deep inside her...moving in slow, easy circles...she'd orgasmed twice before the bartend dumped her drink in front of her.  The fingers retreated, but as she'd turned to catch a glimpse of the stranger, the crowd surged and she was shoved down the bar.  She studied the faces, trying to locate the stranger, but she couldn't identify who it had been.

But with Diem between her legs, she couldn't pretend he was a faceless stranger and she wasn't drunk.  Just in pain, although even the pain had given way to the pleasure he now brought her, impaled on his fingertips.  She suddenly wanted him hovering over her.  She wanted to grip the thick ropes of muscle in his shoulders.  She wanted to kiss him as he slid himself into her.  Not just fingers.  Not just—

"It's okay, it's almost over," he whispered and her eyes flew open.  His eyes were so intense on hers, the thought of him slipping into her returned and lit the rockets on her orgasm.  Her breasts heaved up, her back arching off the bed, her knees shaking in place, as a racking moan spilled from her mouth.  She caught sight of his face, his eyes scanning her erect nipples with a small lick of his lip.  He closed his own eyes then and she saw his Adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallowed hard.  Her body slowed and finally stilled, his fingers slipping out of her. 

The shame of what just happened filled up every inch of the room.  He cleared his throat and the sound was rough, a deep rumble.

"It's done," he said.  He was back to studying the wound on her leg.  "Look."

He held out both hands and she took them numbly.  She could still feel her slick juices on them and it just added to her shame.  He pulled her up to sitting and her eyes slid down to her thigh. 

The wound was closed, the skin puckered together with a white seam running down the center.  It was still red around the edges, probably from being burned, but as she watched, at the very top tip of the wound, the redness began to fade.  She had to stare hard, the same way she remembered seeing the hour hand move on an analog clock if she really concentrated on it, she could see the wound heal, leaving nothing but the consistent color of her skin.

"What the..." she began, but he stopped her from using the curse, which was obviously on the tip of her tongue, by placing his fingers on her lips.  She grinned a little beneath them, to show that she wouldn't finish the curse this time.  When he removed his fingertips, she licked her lip and swore she could taste herself. 

"Sorry," she blushed.  "How, uh...why did that...you know...work?"  

"Replacement of sensations," he said. 

"I meant the salve," she said.  At least the blush burned less.

"It's a Plutian medicine.  If a cut is very deep, it cleans, seals, and heals it.  Great stuff, but it stings like...well, you know how much." 

She supposed he'd won again.  She should thank him, but reasoned herself out of it.  She wouldn't have gotten cut if he hadn't left her out on the dragon in the first place.  Without knowing what to do or say next, she pulled her legs into the circle of her arms.

***

Her heels blocked her sex from his gaze.  As if he would even look there now.  He didn't want to embarrass her anymore than he already had.  They both needed something else to replace the awkwardness since she was still naked from the waist down and he had just had his fingers buried in her.  She had been so warm, so silky
—

"Could you, uh...hand me my pants?" she asked. 

"No," his tone was a little too direct, too intense.  She immediately set her jaw for a fight.  He began again, but calmer this time.  "You can't cover the wound or it won't heal correctly.  Besides, your pants are ruined."

One of her eyebrows lifted as the edge of her mouth dropped in disbelief. 

"Well, that's convenient," she said.

"Look, it's not a play.  I didn't rip them, did I?" he said.

"What am I supposed to do without pants?"

"I'll get you something," he said.  "But it's late and...aren't you tired?"

"Yeah, I am," she said, but he could already tell that there was no way in hell she was going to just agree to sleep with him in the shack while she was naked.  He moved around the room, snuffing the fire seed lights.  Maybe if it was dark, she'd rest. 

He dropped his body down beside hers on the bed, puffing the fabric up against her.  The shack was blacker than the night outside.  He sprawled there, lying on his side, his broad shoulders facing her.  From behind him, her voice cut through the dark, "You can't sleep here..."

"There's not two beds," he murmured, bunching up the loose part of the bed to cushion his head.

"Then be a gentleman and sleep on the floor...over there." He felt the wiggle in the bed and imagined her hand flicking over his head in the dark, probably aiming in the direction of the farthest corner.

"This is my bed and I'm sleeping here.  And so are you.  There isn't any place comfortable and you're safest beside me."

"Fat chance," was her curt reply, but the moment she tried to stand, he caught her wrist and pulled her down. 

"Go to sleep," he said gruffly.  He hoped it was enough to set her at ease that all he was preparing to do was sleep beside her.  He waited for her body to loosen in his grip, before letting go.  "You go out there, the dragons will get you.  Or worse.  Just trust me and go to sleep."

"It'd be easier if you said you weren't planning to hump me in the middle of the night."

"It is already past the middle of the night," he said.  His flex stirred, but she didn't have to know it.  "Is hump the same as mating?  Are you worried that I'll want to mate with you?"

The darkness held her answer for several moments.  Then a small sigh.  "I'm not worried about anything.  You're the one that should be worried."

"If I wanted to, I'd be sure you wanted to do it too," he said.  "Good?"

"Well, I don't want to," she snapped.

"Then go to sleep," he said.

"I don't want to," she said, but he felt the bed move as she laid down beside him. 

He liked the feeling of sharing his bed, the way he could feel the fog of her body heat at his back.  His flex pinched and he adjusted it with a slow push of hips that made him think of how her legs had been wide open in front of him earlier. 

He stayed where he was until her breathing dropped into the mechanical rhythm of rest.  Then he shifted to his back.  Her back was to him, a soft landscape of a shadow beside him.

He thought of how she'd fought him as he'd held her legs open.  His mind wandered to what it shouldn't—the velvet of her lower mouth suckling his fingers; the slippery heat and softness inside her; the pleasurable swell at the mount of her sex that pulsed beneath his thumb.  She snored softly beside him and he laid there in the dark, willing himself not to touch her, not to taste her, not to do anything that would break this fragile bit of trust she had seemed so loath to give.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

Hot Season Six, Year 2095

The morning came fast for Diem, but not as fast for Maeve.  He woke and felt her beside him and laid there longer than necessary to enjoy it.  Her back to him, he memorized the colors in her hair, the odd weave in the fabric of her shirt, and then the way her naked hips sloped up from the valley of her waist.  He traced the sensual thickness of her thigh, the fold of her legs at the knee, and he sat up with the pretense of a good stretch, when he really wanted to view that secret place of her. 

The sight of it grew him even harder, so he stood.  He was building trust.  He played the tune of the words over and over in his head as he stepped out of the shack and walked out into the spindlings to relieve himself instead. 

Just as Diem finished emptying his bladder on one of the spindlings, he heard the crunch of the leaves far off behind him.  He turned to see Phuck, at a distance, picking his way toward him.  Forge was already threading out of her lair, so Diem gave her a short double whistle, to halt her impending attack on the overseer, while still keeping her on guard.  She couldn't do much from the open ground, as the spindlings were fire-proof and supplied some protection, and there was no way Forge would torch the overseer if Diem was close enough to get it too.  However, Diem did fantasize, as he always did,  about bringing the overseer into the opening and letting the dragon do whatever she wished to Phuck.

"Blessings!" Phuck called out as he advanced.

"Blessings," Diem returned, with far less enthusiasm.  He needed to keep Phuck away from his shack, away from Maeve, since he hadn't gotten to ask Hold House for their help yet. 

If Phuck saw her, there was no telling what would happen.  Out of suspicion that the humans were keeping other humans secreted away from him, the overseer could kill her on the spot with one hissing stream of his venom.  At the very least, he would likely take her away for inspection and questioning, which the Plutians did in the very beginning, right after the Scorching.  Diem had heard Breathe and Journ
ey speak of it, and even though they never gave any specific details, their brows would pinch and their voices quake with the memories.  All Diem knew was that the inspections must have been highly disturbing and the retelling of them too horrific.

Diem stayed where he was, since walking out to meet Phuck seemed more suspicious that waiting for the Plutian to stumble and pick his way over.  Phuck's face was particularly dark at the center that morning, as if the darkness was spinning at the base of his absent nose.  It was always unsettling to look into the rotted, open pod of Phuck's face, but it was particularly disturbing today.  Diem looked off into the spindlings instead, as was acceptable for Plutian conversation.

"What brings you to the private grounds so early this morning?" Diem asked.  He didn't work very hard to veil the bite in his tone.  There was no reason for the overseer to come out to the grounds, other than to be making trouble or digging up the eggs he'd hidden.  Phuck didn't trust Diem so much after all.

"I've come to speak with you," Phuck said.  "Could you cave your dragon so that we may have a cup of caffe together?"

Diem ignored the request.  "How did you know I was here?"

"Well," Phuck giggled, leaning a shoulder on the damp spindling that Diem had just coated. "Locating you was not such an easy task, but your House Party was a great success, it seems.  There are humans scattered from the front clearing of the House, all the way to the spindlings.  All of them making those hideous sleep growls."

"Snoring," Diem provided, leaning a shoulder on a dry spindling.  A few hampigs skittered through the bushes toward the training grounds.  Diem watched as the tiny animals made it to the field where Forge scooped them up and ate them.

"So many humans!" The overseer was still blabbing.  "I couldn't make two steps through the lot without stepping on a face!  I resorted to walking over them like stepping stones, there was simply no other way.  It did not make them joyful, but that is what happens when there is such a surplus that they make their beds in the way of the House steps."  Phuck leaned on the trunk of a spindling.  "I found one of your House Mates, Spirit, by luck, wedged between two females from Breed House.  I should say they had some good mating, as I had to pick his face off the ground by the hair, in order to have our conversation.  He was not in the best of mood, but he provided my answer to your whereabouts."

"Good," Diem sighed.  "So what is it that you want?"

"There are new developments," Phuck said.  He twisted his hands with excitement.  "Our trade is expanding."

Diem pushed his shoulder off the tree to stand straight before Phuck.  "We're getting more dragons?"

"Well," Phuck drawled. "No.  Just expanding the trade.  We plan to offer other items to the planetary market.  It's quite exciting." 

"What other items will I be responsible for harvesting?"

"Well," Phuck giggled, his mouth swallowed completely in his facial black hole.  When the giggle faded, the lip dropped back down in a flat line beneath the shadow.  "Humans.  That is what Pluto will be harvesting.  Humans, for service to the other planetary beings."

***

Phuck wasn't prepared for the entire weight of Diem, the whole bulk of him, to come sailing through the air like a dragon, before falling down on Phuck's shoulders and dropping the two of them into a pungently scented puddle on the ground.  Phuck's back hit with a splash.  Diem, landing on top of him, wisely captured Phuck's jaw knob, forcing the whole face to the side, so the Plutian could not lash out with his deadly venom. 

Phuck assumed the human did not know that Phuck had expected this anger, although not to this degree.  Phuck was fond of Diem, mainly for having a sister who Phuck wanted to mate with, but also for having the ability to perform the necessary actions he needed to gain his own independence through the barters on the Hope Market.  Once that independence from Pluto was reached, he was certain he would be less fond of Diem, but as it stood now, he couldn't kill him without some detriment to his own future.  Fond, he would be.

"Humans?" Diem snarled.  "You plan to harvest humans?"

Phuck's cheeks, compressed beneath Diem's hand, made it difficult for the overseer's lips to move.  It was no way to have a conversation.  Yet, Phuck insisted to himself that he must maintain a level of fondness, even under these circumstances. 

"It is not a foreign concept to humans to take one another as servants, or to trade one another," Phuck's words accordian'd out through fish lips.  It seemed Diem compressed the Plutian's face even harder. 

"Just because it was done does not mean it has ever been acceptable.  You cannot do this." 

"It was," Phuck said, slurping up the saliva and venom that pooled in his jaw, "not my decision.  My superior...Shetbahg...he came to speak with me."

"Shetbahg," Diem hissed between his teeth,  "he's here?

"He has departed.  Would you release my face, yes please?"  Phuck asked.  He felt the human's hesitation and knew exactly why he wasn't being released.  All Phuck had to do was spray a shot of venom at the human and the liquid would burn through the flesh and seek out the human's organs, disintegrating him from within.  The humans called it coring.  But Phuck, having just returned from being spared his own beheading by 38596, felt a little generous with his forgiveness.  "I understand your dismay, and therefore, will spare you from a coring in this instance."

Diem pushed down a little harder than Phuck thought necessary, using Phuck's face to steady himself as he got to his feet.  Once released, Phuck stood too.  His face still felt compressed and he kneaded it with his sensory digits, every now and then punching into the dark center by accident.  Diem watched, although it was obvious his vision was elsewhere than the Plutian's face.

"When is this happening?  And how will it happen?  Why?"

Phuck continued to knead the jaw knob, beneath his food receptacle.  "Shetbahg had noticed declining shipments, and Pluto relies upon those resources."

"Shetbahgs," Diem mumbled.  Phuck steepled his fingers, pointing them at Diem.

"No, no, this is not for his own family's well being.  It is for the whole of Pluto."

"Yes, because you're all so impoverished."

"Actually, our planet is quite satiated.  But it is only fair that we would like more."

"Fair?  How gluttonous of you."

Phuck smiled, since his mental palate couldn't sense Diem's bitter coating of sarcasm. 

"We do enjoy our plenty," he said.  As Diem seemed to pale, Phuck leaned back against the urine-washed tree again.  He sought to ease the human a bit.  He did not wish for his highly talented dragon trainer to be so riled.  "There must be a great cost associated with humans, as Shetbahg is willing to collect only one human for each dragon our House is short of quota."

"Wait," Diem's eyes flicked back to the overseer.  "A human is collected only if a shipment is short?  What is the quota?"

"Yes, that is the way it was explained.  The quota, however, is nine dragons."

"Nine!"  Diem yelped.  "We've only ever shipped seven and that was only when the entire operation began.  When no one knew what they were doing!  Why would Shetbahg do this?  He must know we're skimming for the Hope Market."

"I did not receive that impression," Phuck said, massaging his head stem.  Indeed, the proposition of the new trade, rather than his swift beheading, was proof to him that 38596 did not suspect their small, side business.

Diem dragged his hand through his hair.  "Well, we can make it this quota...there are only four hens in training, but we can take four from the unexpected catch..." 

The human's eyes wandered off to Forge, who was now lying on her side, her eyes glued to Diem and the overseer, as the hens tumbled and frolicked together around her belly.  Phuck cleared his throat.

"I would be willing to donate the five from my catch," Phuck said, "as there is another caveat which concerns me."

"Your catch..." Diem snarled.  Pulled lips, tucked brow, growling voice.  Phuck was losing control and he simply did not want to core Diem and lose the most talented dragon trainer he had on Earth.

"The caveat," Phuck replied sharply, "is that if Fly House's shipment is short, then the Rha is expected to contribute a human from his own bloodline for the harvest."

"From my family!" Diem roared.  The ground shook as Forge jumped to her feet.  She shot a hot draft of flame into the air in warning.  The trainer did not whistle to calm her and, for the first time, Phuck realized his huge disadvantage.  Even if he were to drop the human in his tracks with a shot of venom, the dragon would still seek revenge.  The thought dried the venom in the tube beneath his tongue.  There wasn't enough venom in twenty Plutians to drop a full grown dragon. 

The regrets multiplied in Phuck's head.  He should have sucked up his fear of the dragons and trained the creature for his own use from the very beginning, as he was supposed to.  But all the overseers had allowed their human Rhas to control their own dragons.  But, Phuck saw the mistake clearly, now that it was too late.  Diem's dragon was puffing small bursts of fire in the direction of the spindlings.  Phuck searched for the fattest trunk nearby to take cover.  None were thick enough to shield his entire body.

"What do you mean from my family?" Diem ranted on.  Phuck watched how the dragon began to pace in the clearing.  "I will lay you all to drait before I give you either woman from my family!"

"Calm, yes please," Phuck said.  His own voice jumped.  "I do not want this fate upon you either.  You know my feelings for Karma.  I would not wish to see her given to a Plutian house, much less...oh, the worst...to the Grafian.  Those beings...oh!"  Phuck shook his head and made a slippery tsk, since the black hole obscured his tongue.  He meant to calm the human, to highlight that there were far worse places to be sold than to a household in Pluto, but all the explanation seemed to do was rile the human even more.  Diem's eyes were wild, his body movements sharp and aggressive.

"They will not go anywhere!  But what do you plan to do about it?  There is only her and Breathe and I!  How will you keep them safe?"

"I wish to keep Karma safe," Phuck corrected.  "And you.  You are a valuable dragon trainer."

"And Gra Breathe!" Diem fired back.  "She is like my mother and I would sacrifice myself before I would let her go."

"I would not allow it!" Phuck said.  "Why do you object to her as a candidate for harvest?  She is too old to be of use!  She cannot create generation for your House; she cannot toil like the young.  Honestly, what value does she bring?  She is not even beautiful..."

"She is beautiful to me!"  Diem shouted and the raw sound that came out of the human, as he grabbed hold of Phuck's collar, convinced Phuck in that very moment that humans were indeed the wild animals that other Plutians insisted they were.  His brain rolled around the idea and quickly correlated the thought to Karma with the idea of her being a wild animal that he would bring into his bed.  It excited him and Phuck's urine straw shot up like a post.  It slammed against Diem's leg and caught the human off-guard.  Diem's eyes shot down between them.  A frown pulled at his lips as he released the Plutian with a shove.  "Don't you dare go after my family, Phuck."