Alien Terrain (6 page)

As promised, she’d awoken with a T-shirt full of spattered
cum. Jane had to peel the cotton from her lower back, and when she finally got
it off, she missed it. Almost enough to slip it back on again. Disgusting,
probably, but she’d always been the sentimental type.

Although never before about dried cum.

Jane stared at her reflection in the closet mirror. Did she
look different or was that just a trick of her imagination? There was
definitely something going on. A day ago she would have sworn she couldn’t care
less about sex, but now that it had happened she was happy—puffed up like she’d
just accomplished something.

Before her wedding Jane had imagined sex would be a sort of
sleepy, love-soaked rapture. Not the right dreams to prepare her for her
husband’s lovemaking techniques. Rick had calloused hands, which he used to
randomly tinker with her sex parts—grab the tits, finger the pussy, insert
cock, and presto. Yuck. Jane screwed her face up like she meant to spit the
memory out. She’d tried to get into the spirit of it. And she’d failed.

But last night, it had come close to the dreamy rapture
thing. A little cruder maybe, but the crude part had been really good. Heat
crawled up Jane’s neck at the memory of her spread legs, her thrusting hips.
The blush wasn’t embarrassment. In fact she felt a little proud.
Proud to have been nasty.
With a man.
At last.

The way his hands felt, the way his breath felt, the way his
mouth felt on her breasts. That part had been so good.
And
his voice, low and soft in her ear.
“Pull
this off so I can lick you.”
If she were alone, she’d let the memories
flicker through her in an all-day zone out. But she wasn’t alone. And who knew
what the day would bring?

She walked out of the bathroom, one hand still buttoning her
jeans.

And there he was.

First she noticed he’d made coffee. There was a full pot
waiting for her in the kitchen for the first time in a decade. He poured a cup
for her while she took in his naked body: all those lovely, dark hues shading
his hard angles and his rippling curves. Then she saw that he was mixing
something in a bowl. And there was something else…

“Your eye.”
Jane took a step toward
him for a closer look. The puffy, angry swelling had gone down almost
completely. The shadowy remains of a few cuts and bruises lingered, but it was
unreal how much improvement there had been.

She skimmed her fingers over the trace of his wound. He
grabbed her hand and kissed the palm.

“Do you always heal that quickly?”

“With proper treatment.”
His gaze
slid languidly over her chest.

“What’s that mean?” Jane could guess, but she was dubious.
“I saved you with my orgasm?”

“You did.”

That was ridiculous.
And nice.

“What are you doing?” She looked at the familiar batter in
the bowl.
The yellow box with its tempting picture, the egg
shells in the sink.
“Are you trying to make pancakes?”

“Trying?” he objected. “I take it you have little faith in
my abilities.”

“Au contraire.”
There was a smirk
on her face before she’d even finished the lame joke. What was she doing?
Breakfast repartee?
Easy, girlfriend.
One
orgasm does not a vixen make
. “I thought you said you couldn’t read my
mind,” she said over her mug.

“I didn’t read your mind; I read your pantry. Six bags of
coffee, four boxes of pancakes, not much of a puzzle really.”

Jane had to give him that one.

He turned back to his bowl. She frowned at the cheap pan
over the burner. These weren’t her things. Her things were gone. She’d never
see her mother’s ancient skillet with the burn mark on the handle again.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”
Jane shook it off. “I’ve
never watched a naked man make pancakes before. It doesn’t look completely
safe. Hang on a second.” She went into her room, returning with a pair of black
sweatpants, the trousers he’d been wearing, and her sewing kit.

“Try these.”

He slid the sweatpants on. They fit over his hips just fine.
The legs, however, gathered awkwardly midcalf, which made the look a little
less than a success. “Give them back a second.” Jane dug her scissors from the
kit and cut the sweatpants just below the knees. Raj stepped back into them,
pulled them up, and looked…well… He looked a little like a king caught in a
failed attempt to pass himself off as a servant. But for the moment, they would
do the trick.

“Do I need clothes?” he idly asked, returning to the bowl.

“It’s a little less distracting.”

“I don’t mind distracting you.”

“Forget sex for a second.”

“Why?” Again
that smooth
delivery
of his.

“So you’ll have something to look forward to.”

“That’s not a bad reason.” He turned toward her with a look
that made her squirmy. Did any of his looks
not
make her squirmy? “Now what are you doing?”

“There are two rips in these trousers I think I can mend.
You don’t mind my trying, do you?”

“I’d rather you not have to work.”

“It’s not exactly breaking rocks.” Her gaze rose to the
muscles in his stomach, imagining him wielding a great hammer in a dusty
quarry. She made herself go back to mending. The pants would look okay once
they’d been washed and pressed out with a little steam. Raj turned the flame on
underneath the pan, and her attention strayed again.

“Do you cook at the Body House?”

“Not there,” he said. “I did cook on the
Diam Da
and at the temple.”

“The
Diam
…what?”
She made a few quick stitches over the first tear.

“The
Diam
Da
.
That’s what they called the spacetraveler that brought us all to
Earth.”

“I see. How long did that take?”

Raj grunted, and she raised her eyes in time to see his head
snap quickly to the window. He shifted like a stallion in a pen and cleared his
throat. “Two years.”

“Two years,” she repeated, watching him. “That sounds
awful.”

“In fact, it was much worse than awful.”

Why’d he do it? Who is
he really?
“Will you ever go back home?”

“Not if I have any choice.”
Another
stallion step.
Another grunt.
“I spent two
years in space to get here. Two long years surrounded by gray walls and bad
smells. I’m not putting myself through that again.”

Jane thought about two years trapped in the vast, still
nothing that was space. How did he handle it? No trees, no sky. A thought
struck her. “How’d you manage having sex?”

Raj shrugged and made a gesture in the air.
“As well as possible, given the circumstances.”

“Who with?”

“The women.”

Women?
Backusian women?
No one had ever mentioned they were
on the planet.

“Are there women at the Body House?”

He hesitated. Jane got ready to withdraw the question.
“There are,” he finally said. “Not in sexual service. And we like to keep their
presence quiet.” He gave her a thoughtful glance.

Jane snapped the thread and checked the cross-work patch
over the tear before examining the other. “They won’t hear it from me.” She
mumbled this around the needle in her mouth.

“We’re quite protective of our women.
Perhaps
too much so.
The thought of their mistreatment is unbearable. And in the
given climate, we’re all glad few people know about the presence of Backusian
women here on Earth.”

Jane nodded, cast around for something else to talk about. Raj
poured a bit of batter in the pan. He watched it sizzle and reached down to
lower the heat.

“There were seventy-two of us on the
Diam Da
. Thirty men, all future Bods although unchristened with the
name as yet, and forty-two women. Eight of the women were the craft’s crew.
They’ve gone home now, of course. The others came to Earth with us for
scholarship. Purely observational scholarship, I hasten to add. No one’s
experimenting on anyone.” He paused, monitoring the contents of the skillet.
“So while in space and while the Body House was building up its clientele, they
were amenable for play.
Likewise of course.
We all
look out for one another still.”

“So for those two years in space, did you have sex with one
of them, or all of them?”

The look he gave her said she’d asked a startlingly stupid
question. “All of them, of course.”

“Of course.”
Jane went back to her
mending. “How many women have you had sex with?”

“Thousands.”
Raj flipped the
pancakes. She sensed that they’d be brown and fluffy and delicious. She also
recognized she wasn’t very hungry, which was weird given how little she’d been
eating.

“A thousand women.”

“Thousands,” he corrected. “I’ve been in service nearly
thirty years.”

“Thirty years?” Now that was shocking. Jane fit the needle
in its sheath and stared at him. “Did you start when you were still a kid?”

“Sixteen,” he said.
“Or thereabouts.
Time is very hard to calculate outside the galaxy. I’ve tried to factor in for
differences, but it’s so irritating, I’d rather believe it isn’t worth the
trouble. In any case, I was full grown before I started, and I’ve been in
service quite some time.”

“How many thousands?”
Four more
pancakes were stacked on the platter. He poured out more batter and stepped
back to give that one some thought. Jane smoothed her hands over the
stitched-up pants and set them down. “Five hundred a year would be a
conservative estimate,” he said. “Times thirty would be…” He looked at her.

“Fifteen thousand.”
Even she could
do that math.

“Is that too many?”

“No.” Jane shrugged.
If a man was going to
stick his cock into lots of strangers, why not fifteen thousand of them?
She glanced up at his body one more time. He had the muscled chest of an
outdoorsman, but those muscles weren’t from splitting logs. Instead, his body
had been hewn by all the countless repetitions needed to fuck women into
screaming climaxes. One after the other, boom boom boom, day after day. No
ranch-hand stuff, just opening women’s thighs and fucking them until they came.
What could that be like? She wondered if he made it all as pleasurable as what
he’d done to her.

The fire under the skillet went off. Another four pancakes
were lifted out onto the platter.

“Have you ever hurt anyone?”

He set the platter down and took the chair beside her.

“Hurt anyone?”

Jane served herself and him. She poured a little syrup on
the side. He waited for clarification.

“Have you ever hurt anyone during sex?” She took a bite.
Pancakes were a perfect food. Jane chewed contentedly, despite the way his
eyebrows lowered and his hands came to his thighs.

“Tell me what you mean,” he said.

“Hurt as in cause pain.”

“As part of sex play?
Clamps and
crops and flogging? Or in some kind of nonconsensual, sadistic fit of cruelty?”

“Neither,” said Jane. She took another bite. While she was chewing,
she looked down at the outline of his cock. Even sleepy, it was big. And she’d
seen it much bigger. The slight impatience in his eyes was fun. When was the
last time she’d had fun? “What I mean is”—she took a sip of coffee, nodded
toward his prick—“does that thing always fit?”

“Ah.” He took his own bite of food, chewing slowly in
retaliation. He swallowed.
Drank a bit of coffee too.
“Yes,” he said. “It always fits. And no, I’ve never hurt anyone, beyond the
wanted sting of play. Accidents are caused by inattention, and temple lovers
like
myself
are trained to keep their focus.”

They went on eating. Suddenly, Jane realized she was
waiting.
Waiting for an offered demonstration.
No such
luck. One orgasm later, she was still a lousy flirt. She stared down at the two
remaining pancakes, the edge completely off her appetite. “That was good.”
About to reclaim territory at the kitchen sink, Jane pushed back in her chair.

“Leave it.” His hand landed on her forearm. She looked into
his eyes, and there it was: her invitation. The one she couldn’t deny wanting.
“Come back to bed.”

Jane knew her head was moving back and forth in its old
self-denial habit. She also knew it was inevitable they’d be having lots of sex
that day. And she was glad.

“Come back to bed. I want to show you how well I can fit my
cock between your legs.”

“I believe you.” Jane rose, smiling as she set her plate
down by the sink. “I can take your word for things, you know. I don’t always
need proof.”

“Do you have plans today?”

She did, actually. She’d planned to hit the Reset button on
her life. Which meant she’d read and journal. Contemplate the future, do yoga
tapes. They were the kind of plans only a teenager would ever say out loud.

His chair moved, and her skin pulled into gooseflesh. He set
his plate beside hers. “Aren’t you curious?” he said into her ear. “I can show
you many things. Not just how it feels to have a large cock push into your
pussy. I can show you any fantasy you’d care to name. You have, with all due
modesty, an accomplished lover entirely at your disposal.
Someone
who’s been practicing the art of sex as long as you’ve been drawing breath.
I can tie your body so you have no choice but to stay open and unmoving while I
fuck you. I can tease you. Tempt you. But if you’d rather, I’ll submit to you
and let you use me selfishly. Any fantasy you have, Jane, I’ll help you
explore. What you won’t hear is no. What you won’t feel is pain. The rest is
all quite possible.”