"Can't handle a little foreplay?" Taylor ran two fingers over the front of Amy's panties feeling moisture beginning to soak the front of her underwear. "Damn. Did my little massage get you this excited already? It really has been too long."
Amy moaned again as Taylor's fingers began to rub her pussy through her panties. "Well, we've been busy..."
Taylor kissed her other nipple and nipped at it slightly. "And whose fault was that?" She slid her hand inside Amy's panties. "Don't worry. I'll take good care of you." Her fingers firmly rubbed again Amy's pussy, brushing against her clit and teasing her slit. Taylor pulled her fingers out and licked her lover's juices off her hand, running her tongue suggestively along her fingers and sucking her hand.
Amy blushed slightly at Taylor's display, but she felt the heat spike between her legs. She didn't want Taylor to stop touching her. "Let me return the favor." Her hand gripped her lover's hip and pulled her close while her free hand began to rub at Taylor's pussy. She could feel Taylor's arousal dripping from her wet pussy and pushed one finger inside her.
Taylor pulled Amy's panties down. "If you can still talk, I'm not doing my job." One finger slid into Amy's pussy and began to finger her. Amy moaned and threw her head back and Taylor moved her thumb to rub against her clit. "That's better." She grinned and added a second finger while taking one of Amy's nipples in her mouth and beginning to suck. She could feel the heat building inside Amy's slick pussy. "Are you going to cum for me already?"
Amy's back arched, pushing Taylor's fingers deeper inside her. She gripped the sheets hard, feeling heat surging through her body. "Yesss..." she hissed.
Taylor added a third finger and began to rub her clit faster. "Then stop holding back on me."
Amy tried to let out a scream as her pleasure peaked but Taylor caught her mouth in another kiss. Her entire body tensed and her pussy spasmed around her lover's fingers as she hit her climax. Taylor fingered her relentlessly through her climax, keeping their mouths looked together until Amy slumped back on the bed, panting slightly. "Fuck," she moaned.
"Better?" Taylor asked brightly.
"Yes," Amy said, still out of breath. "Yes." She shook her head, forcibly clearing the pleasant post-orgasmic fog. "But I still haven't managed to return the favor."
Taylor grinned and spun around so they were in a 69 position, hanging her wet pussy enticingly above Amy's face. "Then be my guest. I want to taste your pussy before I let you go back to studying."
Warm Sparks
(Автор: Shana the Short)
"In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers."
? Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
* * *
I typed out my notes in a rapid staccato, jotting down the words almost as fast as they left his mouth. It wasn't nearly as impressive as it might have sounded — Mr. Gladly was a genial man, the kind that liked to connect with his students. That meant he frequently paused after making jokes, or to just look around and smile warmly at the class. He did so now, selecting me as his eye-contact target of the moment. I felt his gaze on me and glanced up, offering a smile of my own.
I made sure to crinkle my eyes a little, even if it did give the expression a shy cast. If Aleph had taught me anything, it was that the illusion of sincerity and vulnerability was priceless. He had actually admitted that he was jealous about how easy it was for me. I didn't have the heart — or, perhaps more fittingly, the time or patience — to explain that I wasn't actually faking anything. He understood when we Collaborated, but outside of that he found it difficult to really grasp some things, like the way the average person dealt with their emotions. Or social mores. Or taboos. Sometimes even things like basic human decency, but that was less and less common these days.
The Canadian breeding protocols were fucked up, in my somewhat biased opinion. I was unspeakably thankful that I was assigned to pair off with Aleph, and not one of his brothers; he told me stories about them, sometimes. I got lucky, with him.
That wasn't to say the American protocols were much better. I dropped my smile and went back to typing as Mr. Gladly moved on and my thoughts drifted into more troubled waters. In retrospect, though it had felt like a raw deal at the time, manifesting really had been one of the best things to happen to me. It certainly hadn't felt like it at the time, however. Back then I had still been 'just Taylor,' equal parts nervous and excited about finally getting my period and catching up to Emma, who had even then been beginning to fill out like her sister. I had been a late bloomer, in both senses, and I certainly hadn't expected to manifest; my mother certainly hadn't, and my father had a weak Architect affinity, but that was all.
One day I was 'just Taylor' and the next — the next I was escorted to Brockton Bay's Purebred Regulation Terminal, for registration. We were all caught off-guard, I think. If my parents had any idea that I would end up coming out a Pure Architect — and more than that, a strong one, one of the strongest recorded in my generation so far — they... well, they probably would have still tried to fight my registration and breeding assignment, but they would have had more time to research the system first. Looked for loopholes. Protested in a way that didn't get them removed as my primary guardians, if nothing else.
They had settled down a little over the years since then, but I knew it still stung that any meetings between us had to be instigated by me, and that I was living with Aleph. I didn't know if it mollified them or not when I told them that the two of us weren't sleeping together yet — outside of actually sleeping, that is — or if they believed me when I said it, but that was the truth. I could sort of understand where their skepticism came from, though being a Carrier somewhat numbed me to the values that reigned in normal humans; Aleph had already been put out to stud a few times, before he had been sent over to Brockton Bay for permanent assignment. He had only been thirteen, when we were slotted together.
Fucking Canadians.
I took a deep breath, shaking free of the cherry-pit of anger still smoldering in my chest. The last class of the day was not the time or place to have a temper tantrum. The point was, American regulations were much more lax; they even encouraged pairs to wait to breed until late into their twenties, so they could grow and enhance themselves through contact with other pairs and crossbreeds before producing a new purebred. Aleph had been fine with taking a break from being a glorified turkey-baster for a while, and I was fine with him 'taking the edge off' however he wanted. And the PRT didn't care one way or the other, as long as we didn't breed outside of our pairing.
We weren't in love, not like how the movies and books sometimes depicted being paired off. But Aleph was one of the few constants left in my life, and I loved him for that if nothing else. And I think he loved me too, in his own sort of way. We were stable, and happy, and when we Collaborated we were a force to be reckoned with. By all indications, we were the type of success story breeding programs dreamed about. Our children might be a vital step closer to being true Architects. To being actual Entities.
The bell rang and my fingers slowed to a stop. I slid my tablet into my bag and stood, nodding goodbye to Gladly as I shuffled out of the classroom. When I slipped out into the bustling hallway, I was prepared for the shoulder that knocked into mine and caught my balance on the edge of a block of lockers before I could crash into a wide-eyed freshman. I smiled apologetically at him and he mumbled an unnecessary apology before scurrying away.
"Oops. Sorry about that, Taylor!" Emma chirped behind me with fake sweetness. My smile dropped as I glanced over my shoulder at her. The pretty face that had once been a comfort to me was tinged with an almost imperceptible tinge of bitterness and resentment. "Oh — no, I meant Taf, obviously. Sorry, I'm all over the place today!"
I suppressed the urge to sigh. Back when the original arguments about my registration erupted, I had expected Emma to be my rock. I had expected her to be in my corner, to commiserate about the strange new rules and abilities I had to scramble to understand, and the boy I suddenly had to integrate into my life. Instead she had become jealous and confrontational. We had pretended that we were Carriers, before then, and had taken turns when it came to who was the crew member and who was the Carrier. But that had been child's play, literally, and Emma...
Emma had wanted to be a part of my crew someday, I was sure. The problem was, she hadn't wanted to be part of Aleph's crew, and he and I were a package deal. I don't think she ever fully forgave me for not taking her side, and in retrospect Aleph hadn't helped matters in the slightest. I could forgive him for that, because I knew I was the first thing — er, person — he could truly call his own, instead of being forced to share or fight over with his ever-growing batch of siblings.
"It's fine," I told her, because I didn't want to start a fight. "It happens to everybody."
Her jaw clenched and an ugly look entered her eye when I didn't rise to the bait. Being called by my birthname instead of my Carrier designation wasn't actually an insult; that was just some weird trope that was used in movies and on TV to try and emphasize the otherness of Carriers. Like anybody actually needed the reminders. Even if it had been insulting, I wouldn't have started something. Though we had drifted apart over the years, I didn't want the last words I might ever say to her to be cruel or angry ones.
"Have a good weekend, Emma," I bid her, almost as an afterthought, and then I dove into the crush of students and allowed them to usher me down the hall and out to the monorail.
The ride back to the apartment felt as though the tram was inching its way through tar, even though I knew it was going as fast as it always did. Brockton Bay may not have been the most advanced or largest colony out there, but it met the bare regulations when it came to standards of living. Still, before today it had felt as though time was spinning too fast — that we wouldn't get done packing in time, that the credit transfers wouldn't go through fast enough, that a million things would be left undone and come back to bite us later.
It felt surreal, when the doors finally slid open at my stop and I shuffled off towards the elevator. The apartment building was right across the street from the station, and surrealism bled into the uncanny when I unlocked the door and found our home as barren as it had been the day the PRT liaison first showed it to us. All that was left was the stock furniture and drapes that had come with the apartment itself, and Aleph, sprawled out over the kitchen counter.
"Don't scuff the corian," I scolded him on reflex, swinging the door shut behind me.
He rolled onto his stomach, stretching out like a cat, and gave me a Cheshire grin. "What do you care?" He folded his arms under his chins and waggled his eyebrows at me pointedly. "We aren't exactly leaving them a forwarding address, and we don't have a deposit to lose. We could set this whole place on fucking fire and they couldn't make us cough up a single credit."
"Remember that talk we had about 'impulse control' and 'terrorism'?" I asked, dropping my backpack next to the open suitcase on the stiff loveseat we had both always hated.
"I do!" He pursed his lips, as if in thought. "Now, which one was the terrible life choice I was supposed to avoid...?"
"Ha ha," I rolled my eyes and plucked up the dress-bag and underwear he had left out for me. "Just don't totally wreck the place while I'm in the shower, okay?"
"I won't move from this spot," he promised, his blue eyes sparkling angelically. Considering he had to get ready as well, I highly doubted that.
"...don't touch the sink or garbage disposal, either," I added as I ducked into our bathroom.
"Oh come on!" He shouted after me. I flicked on the fan to drown out his whining and turned the shower on, hanging my clothes on the back of the door as I waited for the water to heat up.
I gave myself a critical once-over as I stripped down, and I felt as uncertain and nervous as I had the day our crew first cooked up this mad gambit. Aleph and I both had our parts to play, but I was fairly sure he'd be the one doing most of the work. I was tall and slender — like a model, Aleph sometimes told me, when we were in bed late at night, ghosting along the edge of a true Collaboration and just indulging in the pure intimacy of the connection, rubbing his cheek against my throat like some skin-hungry cat. He said, as his other half, there was no way I could be unattractive. And, given the high cheekbones and long, dark curls I got from Mom, I was even inclined to believe him.
But 'not being unattractive' wasn't exactly the same as being alluring.
I sighed and shook my head, stepping into the spray and sliding the glass door shut behind me. If nothing else, I tried to console myself, I was supposed to have biology on my side.
There were four main breeds of Carriers — the Fighter class, which manifested as Protectors or Warriors, like Scion himself; the Planner class, which manifested as Architects or Thinkers; the Infiltrator class, which manifested as Observers or Assassins; and the Creator class, which manifested as Producers or Healers. The reason breeding programs were even necessary was because each class supposedly fell under an 'opposites attract' mentality when it came to more... physical types of Collaboration.
Planners and Fighters, Infiltrators and Creators.
I had no idea, though, if that was true or just another outdated belief. I had never met a Pure Warrior or Protector before; they stayed mostly around the Docks, where fighting was permitted. The closest I'd ever come to one was Brian, an Assassin-Warrior crossbreed who had joined our crew early on, and his sister Aisha, an Observer-Protector mix. They went by 'Grue' and 'Imp' respectively when they interfaced with us, which was more canted towards the Fighter-designation trend of taking on the names of mythological monsters. Bitch — she preferred that to Rachel — was a Protector-Healer crossbreed, but for Aleph and I had never felt as attracted to her as we did the Laborn siblings.
Brian had let me down gently, early on, making it clear that he saw me as a second little sister rather than somebody to... physically collaborate with. He still had to turn down passes from Aleph almost daily, but that was little more than a habit these days. Aleph would leer, Brian would roll his eyes, Aleph would try to cop a feel, Brian would dodge and cuss at him, and then we'd go on with whatever job we were running that day. It was old hat, by now. Aisha had no such restraint, but she was still a little young for my conscience and Aleph had caught her eye first.
