Scouts (29 page)

Her lips met mine, and then she slowly dragged her four breasts across my chest. Our nipples touched, sending little flashes of pleasure down my spine.

It was really going to happen. Finally, Valka and I were going to have sex. Just the idea filled me with joy.

Her fingertips touched the skin just below my navel and moved slowly down towards my pussy.

“Please don’t tease me,” I said between gasps.

“Oh, but that’s the best part. Have to build up the anticipation.” She traced a lazy circle over my abdomen and thighs.

I grabbed her hand and shoved it against my crotch. “Do it, Valka. Please.”

She chuckled and stroked my pussy lips. A part of my mind was aware that they had become warm and swollen, but that part was now very small and quiet compared to the lather of anticipation in the rest of it.

Then she knelt at my feet, gently pushed my thighs apart, and licked. At first, it was a tentative touch—a stroke here, a poke there—but gradually, she gave it more and more energy.

My eyes practically fell out of my head. How could anything feel like that? How could anything feel so good? I gasped with the pure pleasure of it. My head thumped against the wall of the shower but I didn’t care. My knees shook and wanted to buckle, but she held me there, as the broad softness of her tongue ran through my new sex, dragging over my clit with every stroke. There was no finesse, no exploration, just a relentless, insistent, driving stimulation.

Oh yes. This was arousal, like nothing I had ever felt before. Each touch of her tongue pushed me another inch higher on a wave that seemed to have no crest. Desperate to reach the top, I grabbed my breasts, squeezing them, pinching my sensitive nipples between my fingers. It wasn’t like my cock had been shrunk down to the size of my pinky finger without losing a single nerve ending—though, in a way, that was probably true. It was a completely different experience. My consciousness seemed to expand rather than contract, taking in everything. The feel of steam in my lungs, the faint antiseptic scent of the gel, the slick feel of my skin under my hands, the hard floor under my feet, and the unbelievable touch of Valka’s tongue on my clit—it all combined in a synaesthetic whirl of sensation, twisted together in a mind-bending cyclone of pleasure.

I whimpered something incomprehensible as the first shudders of true orgasm racked my body. My vision blurred. My knees buckled and, once again, Valka held me up, pinned to the wall, helpless under her tongue. As I paused and caught my breath, I thought that would be it, but Valka kept at it, and within moments, I felt my body launching into another cycle of arousal, even greater than the first. I cried out this time, her name I think, and I felt her slip her fingers inside me. In a more lucid moment, I would have been able to name the places she touched, but at that moment, I was too far gone for conscious thought. My whole body quivered as a third orgasm ran through me and I screamed in ecstasy. Every orgasm I had ever had as a man paled in comparison.

She relented then, finally, standing again under my shoulder, helping me to stay on my feet. I stared, mute, unable to put any of my experience into words. She put a gentle hand over my pussy, as if to protect it from further stimulation.

“When this is over,” she said, “I think you will be the best lover the Scouts have ever known.”

Then she flicked a finger across my nipple and shudders, weaker this time, echoed through my body again. I put my hands over them, but I had only two hands and four breasts. She flicked again and another spasm made me let out a little gasp.

Valka giggled and I had to laugh a little myself. Then she flicked a finger against my clit, and the laughter dissolved into another sigh of pleasure.

“Stop,” I said. My voice was little more than a breath. “That’s . . . oh . . . enough. You’ve made your point.”

Then she kissed me. It wasn’t like the quick little pecks we had shared now and then, but a deep, languorous kiss, making full use of tongue and lips and teeth.

When I regained something of my composure, we climbed into the warm air vent and dried each other off.

“I have something I need to tell you,” I said, my higher voice still sounding unfamiliar to my ears.

She shushed me. “It’ll keep. We have an hour ride in the transit car in front of us. There will be plenty of time to talk.”

We tied our hair back in braids and dressed in the clothes we had prepared.

I knew, then, why it was that more Scouts didn’t go through this kind of transformation. There was a disconnectedness, as if everything that was happening to me was artificial, a simulation. The change had a price, I could tell, a price borne by living through the slightly altered perceptions of a body not wholly my own. In time, I could get used to it, but going through this kind of change too often probably wouldn’t be good for my mental state.

As we made our way carefully through the empty section of the academy, my thoughts drifted to Trace. She had gone through something similar to this and hated it. I could understand like I couldn’t before. I loved the feel of a woman’s body, so having one of my own to play with wasn’t such a terrible thing. If I didn’t feel that way, though, this body could easily be a prison.

Once Valka had diverted control of the transit car and we were on our way, she turned to me with a serious look in her eye. “All right,” she said. “Something’s on your mind.”

I had to take a moment to collect myself, to remember what I had wanted to say after we had gotten out of the shower. Then another moment to think of exactly how to say it.

“I love you, Valka. Even with everything that’s happened, I still love you.”

She giggled and shook her head. “That’s just the hormones. A really good orgasm can make you feel like that for a while. Don’t pay it any attention.”

“No, I felt like this before. I’m sure of it.” I brought my gaze up to her eyes. “And I think you still love me, too.”

“Tell me that when you’re a man again, and we’ll talk.” She gave me a broader grin than I had ever seen.

“There’s something else,” I said.

She nodded.

“I love Shirley, too. When I thought I had lost you, when I gave up hope, I turned to her, and made something of a bond.”

“I hoped you would.”

I leaned over in the seat and hugged her. Maybe it was just the lingering chemical influence of the encounter, but in that moment, I could not imagine loving her any more than that. She was perfect.

The trip to the Ovor maternity school took something like an hour, and Valka and I talked the whole way. I coached her a little on Ovor customs. I didn’t know whether the Ovors here at headquarters would follow the same rules as their counterparts out on the stations, but it couldn’t hurt to know.

But that was a cover. I was nervous. I couldn’t get the sex we’d had in the shower out of my mind. When the conversation paused, I just came out and said it.

“Do you like me better like this? I mean, as a female.”

She gave me a quirky little smile and looked out the front window of the transit car. “Better isn’t exactly the right word. More like, I just couldn’t stop myself. When I saw that you were all excited like that? I wanted to just make you come and come.”

“Do you like women more than men?”

“No. I like men too. Men are . . .” She shrugged. “Different.”

“Of course. What I mean is, would you rather have sex with a woman than a man? Because there was this cadet, Trace, who liked having sex with men. Only men. The Scouts turned him into a woman.”

“That’s rather drastic.”

“She hates it. Hates her partner, hates her life. I worry about her sometimes.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about me. I like having sex with men just fine.”

“Fine?”

“All right, so Masters isn’t exactly the best partner in the world. It’s not like I can’t orgasm with him. I’d just like it better with someone a bit less wrapped up inside himself.”

“Like . . .”

She rolled her eyes. “Challers, we’re
not
going to be having sex any time soon.”

“We just had sex.”

“I mean with you as a man.”

“Why not? We’re already breaking all kinds of rules here, enough to get us killed, what’s one more?”

Her shoulders slumped and she closed her eyes. She sagged in her seat. A breath laden with emotional cargo passed her lips and she shook her head. “I can’t.”

I put my arm around her and pulled her close.

“You don’t understand, Challers. You
can’t
understand. You’re so innocent, so sweet . . .”

She sniffed and sobbed. I had a hard time keeping myself from breaking down, too, and I didn’t even know what she was crying about.

“Valka, what’s wrong? You can tell me. You can
trust
me. Okay, so I’m a virgin. So what? So are you. What’s the big deal?”

That just released a whole new burst of tears. “No, Challers. No.”

“Don’t do this to me. Don’t tell me there’s some reason that you don’t want me, and then not tell me what it is. Is it something I did? Something I said? Something that makes me always a boyfriend, never a lover?”

“Oh, Challers, no. You’ve always been a good guy.”

“Then what? I think I deserve that much, at least. To know why? Don’t I?”

She took a long, calming breath. I recognized the meditation trick from Physicality class. She spoke quietly with her eyes on the floor. “For a long, long time, back on the Station, my father was . . .” She swallowed. “He would come in my room at night and . . .” Her voice trailed off and she choked a bit.

“What?” She was trying to get me to fill in the empty spots for her, but the blanks were just
blank
.

Her tears suddenly flashed into anger. “Do I have to diagram it out for you? Do I have to show you a damn holo? Vack, Challers, how dense can you be?” She was nearly shouting at me.

“Are you saying he beat you up?”

“No! Come on, Challers! Don’t make me say it!’

“Say
what
? I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I slapped my hand on the seat between us.

She turned and shouted at me. “He’d fuck me, Challers! He’d vacking
fuck
me!”

The image of Valka’s father, huge and stern, loomed in my imagination. How could someone so much in authority take such advantage? I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to do anything like that. It was completely alien. But he had never liked me and this told me why. The thought of him, on top of . . .

No. I wasn’t going to imagine it. I pushed the thought aside and tried to calm my angry stomach. I breathed, remembering my meditation exercises, keeping oxygen in a brain that very much wanted to fade into hypoxia. Time went by, seconds that felt like hours, and I realized that Valka’s expression was shading from anger to resignation.

“See? You’re horrified. Vack! I shouldn’t . . .” She sobbed thickly. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“What? No, no, Valka, I’m just stunned.” I put my hand on her shoulder. I felt like an idiot. I couldn’t think of what to say that would make things any better, so I just said what I felt. “I’m horrified by what happened. I’m not horrified by you. I love you. I could never be horrified with
you
. Come here.” I turned her around, held her close, and let her cry.

After a long time, her tears dried up and her gasping sobs quieted to quivering but mostly even breaths.

“I’m still here,” I said when I judged the time was right. “I’m stunned and I don’t know what to say, but I’m still here, and I still love you.”

“Thank you.” She managed to uncurl herself enough to give me a peck on the cheek, and then she lay her head down on my lap.

I stroked her hair. “I wish I could sing or something. I’d love to sing you a lullaby, but I don’t know any.”

“That’s okay. Just being with you is enough.”

I looked up to see a light approaching on the side of the tunnel. “Unfortunately, you can’t stay there much longer. We’re here.”

She blinked and looked around as if waking from a deep sleep. “We are?” Her voice seemed to convey dread at the end of our trip.

“You can wait here, if you like. With luck this won’t take long.”‘