CHAPTER 9
FINALLY, A SEX SCENE!
Gray had spent the afternoon napping, or trying to. Her thoughts were spinning in all directions, and after staring at the canvas above her head for a long time, she realized that her feelings were not incompatible with each other. In fact, the fire in her belly burned for two reasons, like riders approaching each other from different directions on the road. They met, now. Shook hands. Her lust for the sentinel and her frustration with Wesson were one in the same thing.
If he showed up tonight—there was always the chance he wouldn’t—and if he didn’t use this opportunity to wreak bloody havoc—there was always the chance that he would—then maybe, just maybe, this was the solution to her problem. The middle finger she was looking for. Gray could dangle her treason in front of his face every time she stepped into his office without him suspecting a goddamn thing.
Maybe she could have this.
One of her bunkmates came in to change out of a shirt drenched in sweat. “You’ve been hard to find lately,” she said, pulling the garment off to reveal a back crisscrossed with a few old switch scars. “Gonna play some strip horseshoes when the sun goes down. You in?”
Gray swallowed. “Nah, I’m busy.”
“With what? C’mon, don’t you wanna see that nice ass Tucker’s got? Or how ‘bout Hill’s?” Hill was a woman.
“I think I might have a date with somebody else’s ass, actually.”
“Ooh. Who’s the corpsman?”
Gray bit back a smirk and her heart began to race at the thrill of it all. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“I’ll find out one way or another,” the other woman said, pulling down the new shirt. “Have fun!”
Gray waved her out. “I’ll try,” she murmured to herself.
* * *
2140 arrived. Gray was restless, abuzz with anticipation, excitement, a sense of danger not unlike the kind she felt in a firefight. But she wasn’t going to war, so the corpsman had settled for spending a friday to throw back some hard shine near the checkpoint to watch the summer sun dance along the far horizon. Near the end, it flattened into a lumpy red blob in the haze for a short while, then finally winked out of existence along with her drink.
Dusk in the Southland was her favorite time of day. The tans and golden browns of the landscape ripened to purple and ochre, and when the afternoon heat finally began to evaporate into the cooler night air, it was almost possible to imagine that the world wasn’t one endless, shell-pocked desert. As she started walking, a pleasant breeze picked up and Gray found that her nerves had calmed a little. But she couldn’t delay any longer, it was almost time.
Gray made her way up the canyon, shivering despite the heat.
For all intents and purposes, she looked like any other tired corpsman taking an evening stroll to clear the mind. She passed the mules in their corral, passed the pair of patrolmen whose movements the sentinel had tracked, noted, and memorized long ago. Their uniforms indicated that they were with Rose Fox, so she didn’t know them and by her guess, they were only a few minutes away from the beginning of their circuit. The Anak’s comment about their behavior was proven right also: these two were taking their sweet-ass time, barely aware of their surroundings as they talked and chewed on what looked like a couple codys. She nodded to them as they went by, but neither noticed.
The canyon began to narrow here, its walls steep and rocky. Gray had no idea how the sentinel would find his way down from a path along the top of the hills, but she didn’t doubt that he had one in mind. The hairs on her arms stood on end as she turned her brown eyes upward, following the ridges above, trying to see any signs of life or movement among the tall grass and tobacco trees. Nothing but the rustling breeze. Up ahead was the long maze of storage: mismatched crates, boxes, barrels of varying make and age, all of it salvage. Inside them? Extra tent canvas, spare parts for everything from guns to cot frames, paper, light bulbs, copper wire. The important stuff was kept under better lock and key, but everything here, bulky and unconcealed, was the boring necessities of sustaining a Corps camp. And it provided ample cover for an illicit encounter. In fact, it was a surprise that she hadn’t stumbled across anyone else with the same idea yet.
“Can’t believe I’m doing this,” she whispered to the mass of containers.
Gray passed row upon row of storage, some piled neater than others. She hurried along, not quite sure why, but decided that she was looking for a place they could meet. Don’t mind me, she declared in her head. Just figuring out where to fool around with a goddamn ‘Nak.
The perfect spot was near the end. Crates stacked well above her head, encircling a small area. But that’s when she saw it: several storage rooms dug out of the hillside, kept cool and hidden by a board of plywood and canvas flap. Gray glanced around, listened, heard nothing. Heart beating, she set the board aside and pushed away the flap. Feeling around for a switch, with a flick the single bulb heaved to life above. It couldn’t have been more than 20 watts. Just enough to bathe the small space in a meager, shadowy glow. Enough to find one’s way through a tangle of limbs. She checked her watch: 2158.
She immediately shrugged off her overshirt and undid her belt, setting them quietly down on the floor just inside. Her sider was going to be next, but as she considered its modest weight in her hand, Gray turned on the safety and put it in her pocket… just in case. He was still an Anak after all.
Then, she waited.
But she didn’t have to wait long.
There was a noise outside. It wasn’t him, as far as she could tell, and it took a few moments of searching to find the source: there was a stick at her feet that hadn’t been there before. When she held it to the light, she saw that it was roughly inscribed with three straight-lined marks, separated each by one dot. Her Morse was rusty, but the prosign was familiar: ATTENTION, it meant.
There was another noise, then. A faint crack from the right, the smallest shuffle, and a moment later her eyes fell on that towering wall of gray shadow that blended expertly into the twilight, rounding the corner with predatory skill. The sentinel was right on time. She looked at him, some part of her still in complete disbelief at what was unfolding.
The soldier in her reached for the comfort of her little sider, ran her fingers over it, told herself that if this was all a ruse then she still had a chance to make it out alive, because there was no turning back now. She wondered if she could ever trust him more than this, or if she was going to be content fucking a man she might have to pull a gun on.
All nine feet of him stood beside the bank of crates as he rested his elbow on it, the wood creaking under his weight. In the thinning light, though, he was quite a sight: lean, imposing, with his face obscured by that cloth and eyes hidden behind the striking green lenses of what could only be a pair of night–vision goggles. She’s heard about them before, but never seen a pair herself. Gray could only imagine what they would look like while in the squeeze.
Quickly he tugged the fabric under his chin and raised the eyewear to rest above his forehead, and his face caught the light in just such a way that it occurred to her she was looking at one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen in her whole goddamn life. Besides her nerves, it felt like her heart was going to explode.
“W-we’ve got forty minutes,” was the first thing she said. Gray could have smacked herself for how unsexy of an opener that was. Worse, her apprehension was showing.
But he didn’t seem to give a damn. The giant wasted no time kissing her: it was deep and salty and he tasted like cigarette smoke. That roughed–up palm of his glove was behind her neck, up in her hair, down to her shoulders and then her arms. He broke away, giving her a little wink and a smile before twisting on his heels and pushing her in through the door as though he knew what she’d planned for them.
“We’d better get started, then.”
Gray glanced at her watch for reference, committed the hour to memory and marveled as he entered the small shelter, ducking deeply. He closed the door behind them. This was it now.
As if reading her mind, he asked: “We gonna do the enemy soldier song and dance again?”
Fuck, she loved the sound of that deep voice, so raspy around the edges. Gray couldn’t tell if she wanted to jump him or call it all off. But she steeled herself. This is it, corpsman. You’ve got treason to commit now, or didn’t you know?
He didn’t have his pack on, she realized—he must have left it somewhere nearby—and so he started with his body armor. Slim spaulders went first, dropped to the dirt floor, then he quickly undid the bracers around his big forearms. Gray watched him in fascination, forgetting herself for a few moments. She never in her life imagined be here, close enough to a ‘Nak to see the whites of his eyes outside of a battle, outside the do or die logic of war. Well, she did on the rare occasion. But she never told a soul.
“Why?” she countered, blood still beating in her ears as she went for the belt holding her pants up. “You want to?” Surely, false confidence was better than none.
The Anak shook his big head.
“You wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight in a tight space like this,” he said with a smirk, eyes roaming around the interior of the sandstone bunker for a moment to punctuate his point. “I’d have you on the ground in no time.”
Was he talking about killing her, or fucking her?
Gray shot him a look, at once wry and flirtatious, and realized that he was trying to make her—or the both of them, maybe—feel more at ease. She was half his size and a quarter his weight, sure, but he could still catch lead like her, could still bleed out with a well-aimed shot. She cocked a hip and an eyebrow at him, acutely aware of the gun in her pocket and the fact that once she discarded her pants, she wouldn’t be within easy reach of another weapon.
“You don’t know what I’m packing,” she half–joked.
Before she had a chance to slowly shimmy off her slacks, he had her by the hip–bones against him again, pressed very fully against that familiar tenting in his pants. Every nerve–ending in her body lit up when he ground those hips into hers, pressing that bulge against a much smaller mons. She was surrounded by him, his dust, his need. She had to remember to breathe.
“You don’t know what I’m packing either,” he smirked into her shoulder as she could feel heat beat her cheeks red.
She braced herself against that wall of a body as his still-gloved hands began to roam, and it wasn’t long before he came to the familiar shape in her pocket. He reached in with two fingers and pinched it out. Gray looked away. Embarrassed?
“Weren’t going to be able to hide that for long,” he said, and dropped the sider to the floor before yanking her pants down.
Gray still averted her eyes, settling on the rippling muscle of his clothed thigh. “A little protection,” she said, forcing a laugh.
“Yeah,” he said with a faint snort. “Old habits die hard, don’t they?”
Then he reached into his boot and slid out a fierce looking knife, showing it to her before pushing the blade into the dirt beside her gun. The small gesture said a lot to someone like her. He kissed her again, finally tearing off his gloves.
“It feels weird to not be afraid,” she said when she broke for air. It was another dumb thing to say, but it was true.
The sentinel chuckled and it sounded like gravel. “Spoken like a true corpsman.”
A minute later they were both shirtless and he was on his back with her straddling his firm waistline. Finally, she could see what he looked like under all that brown and gray.
And he was marvelous. A quick survey of his chest, broad and strong, revealed a hard life: scarring, chillingly symmetrical from implants, and scattered others from his time in the wilderness. There was a fading tattoo underneath his left collarbone: R-402, it read in plain black. Gray became momentarily aware of the slight metal chain around her neck, and the stamped tags tucked into her compression top that had a something similar pressed into them, her Enlistment Identification Number. Her fingers found the ink in his skin. She wanted to see if she could feel the tattoo, and found that she could.
“They call me Rice,” he murmured. No given names for Anakim either, then?
“Gray,” she replied.
“I know.” His bare hands, almost as rough as the gloves, were on her back now, imposing against her slender bones. Imposing, but god, so good.
How could this be treason?
She could sit there, staring at that body, that handsome face, and feel those strong hands against her spine for eons. But they didn’t have eons: they had barely more than half an hour. The giant soldier underneath her seemed to remember this and he decided to push her compression top up to reveal soft, lean breasts.
Gray sucked in air as the sensitive flesh was exposed, and Rice rumbled deep in his chest, his eyes fixed on the smooth swells punctuated by dusky pink. His fingers soon followed, each one taking a breast and giving an almost reverent squeeze.
She couldn’t help the little moan. He grabbed harder this time, raking his thumbs across a pair of nipples quickly puckering up at the attention. He seemed to revel in their meager weight, their plump curves, stroking and cupping. Gray was aware of a throbbing heat between her legs and realized that she wanted to be touched there too. She arched, sliding her hips back so that her ass just grazed him through the fabric of his pants. A bold move.
“I’m not going to fit,” he grunted after drawing her face down to his for a second. Then he kissed her, as if to make up for the disappointment. “You know that, right?”
“Like hell you won’t.”
He cocked his head at her. “I’m nine–one, five–hundred and sixty pounds, Gray.” A chuckle. “If you’ve never taken five fingers, you’re not taking me.”
She bent over and nipped along the side of his thickly corded neck. “Never say die, Anak.”
The little human had no idea why she was fighting him over it. He probably could have convinced her if he’d stopped suppressing his pheromone, though, and the thought made her shiver.
“Hmm.”
In a swift motion, he was suddenly on top, a padded knee on either side of her ankles. He palmed at the bulge in his pants for a moment before going in to undo the buttons on the fly. She watched, enraptured and curious. It’s not that she’d never seen ‘Nak dick before, but she’d never seen one like this. Never seen one that wanted her.
Then there it was. The length of flesh that slipped out was almost startling, actually— thick, long, and with a little bit of a curve to his left. It only took a half second to realize that it was as big around as her forearm, and not at the wrist.
Poised above her, Rice met her gaze again with a pair of very dark eyes. “Told you,” he said.
The excitement went straight between her legs and she unconsciously arched up toward him, wanting, needing to be touched again. Gray, partly driven by a refusal to admit defeat and partly driven by some animal need to feel that thing between her legs, set her jaw and dug in her heels.
“Never say die,” she repeated.
He quirked a brow at her and one corner of his mouth curled in the faintest hint of a smirk. “I would if I were you.”
Rice seemed to enjoy moving her comparatively slight weight around because he had her again, grabbed her with those huge hands by the hip and the shoulder, turned her as he pulled her up to him and sat back on his heels. Gray’s shoulders were against his warm chest, simply dwarfed by the breadth of his own. The crown of her head barely grazed his chin as he held her precipitously above that heaving organ.
Big, was the only word that crossed her mind for a moment. Fucking big… all of him. Jesus!
With a hooked thumb he slid her underwear down her thighs just enough to expose that moist heat between her legs with practiced confidence. The suspense was killing her and she fought back a whimper.
Her mind nearly exploded when the head, a rich, purple-red, slid up against her folds and brushed her clit, sending a jolt of pleasure rushing from her head to each of her curling toes. Gray arched even more, trying to angle herself against it by some primal reasoning but froze when she felt the pressure of him trying to enter.
“Yeah,” he panted above her with both warmth and frustration, “Never say die until you realize you have no lube. Now hold still while I…”
He wasn’t interrupted so much as he didn’t bother to finish. With a deep growl he was in. Well, the first inch of him.
Gray hissed loudly and gasped.
“F-fuck!”
The sentinel’s girth had her stretched as wide as she’d ever been in her life and her aching cunt stung around the invading member. She had to do something with her hands— anything—and they settled for holding on for dear life. He shifted slightly underneath her, and even that seemed to push the air from her lungs.
Still, Gray was no stranger to pain, and it didn’t take long for her to feel the pleasure percolating beneath it.
“You can tap out.” Rice’s words were breathy and ragged, and he struggled to hold still.
“So can—” Gray whimpered when he moved the tiniest bit. “—you.”
That appeared to be a challenge he wasn’t going to walk away from. Quickly, the giant adjusted their positions, pinning her knees to her chest with one arm and wrapping his fingers around her slender neck with the other. A pang of fear electrified her and her own little fingers grasped at the hand at her neck, strong enough, she imagined, to crush her windpipe in the blink of an eye.
He plunged in another nearly unbearable inch, and muffled her cry with his tongue in her mouth.
Gray’s head swam, and she was prepared to regret playing with fire. But what she didn’t expect was the intense wave of pleasure when he pulled out. A clever quip would have taken more wherewithal than she had now. A wordless moan was all she could manage instead.
“Unh.”
He worked himself back in with what few inches her body could accommodate like this, hand still on her neck but not tightening. It was there for effect—an effect that she found she liked. It kept her on edge like the pheromone.
Gray realized that she wasn’t going to last long like this. Rice withdrew once more and drove back in, rocking his hips so carefully into her, and she was all ragged whimpers and straining muscles and hot, hot heat—
Orgasm rolled through her, spreading from the pressure in her pussy down to her toes and up to the scalp on the top of her head.
His hand was quick to cover her mouth before her cries could reach their crescendo. The corpsman’s body stiffened so much and so quickly that her bones felt like they would break if her climax had hit any harder, and she made ugly, desperate noises against the palm of his hand.
Her legs shook and her cunt shivered, greedily clutching at that massive cock, either trying to push it out or pull it further in, maybe both. The giant groaned when her muscles gripped him even harder, but he was patient, she dimly noted—he was waiting for her to finish. Eventually she collapsed back against him, shaking and holding onto herself.
“Mm, you sure showed me,” the giant muttered into her hair.
Gray didn’t dare move because he was still in her, still hard, and still putting pressure on all the right places. But she was tired now. Her hips ached. She was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. It felt like she’d just walked a mile with a hundred-pound ruck. But they weren’t done. At least, Rice wasn’t, and something told her that he hadn’t risked life and limb just to get her off.
She was about to say something, but the rosy haze had turned her mind to mush. After a moment he gave a small thrust into her hypersensitive cunt: she yelped, and he laughed.
“Wake up, corpy,” he chuckled. “We’ve got fifteen minutes.”
He eased himself out of her, and she whimpered.
“Over there.” Rice picked her up and set her on the ground against a few crates. Kneeling, his cock was at the perfect height for her to use her mouth. Above, she saw him brace his massive hands on the containers, effectively pinning her down. Gray swallowed, reminding herself that this was a dangerous position to be in. More dangerous than what she’d just done? Hardly. But things still felt weird without the fear. Disorienting; only, in a good way.
The one thing she could know for sure, though, was that this Rice, this deadly Anak sentinel, was using her as a means to an end. But it was mutual, they both understood. Their allegiances didn’t matter here in this cramped room, only that base hunger for touch. For a witness.
But there was something else, too: why agree to go through the trouble to fuck a corpsman on camp soil? Surely, there was another, bigger game he was playing that Gray was providing a set piece for.
And yet, it still didn’t seem wrong. Or, wrong enough.
As the massive man rolled his hips in closer to her face, Gray momentarily thought of Wesson. She’d slept with him a number of times; the sex wasn’t bad, exactly, but not good either. He’d been gentle and mealy, sentimental. But there was no time for that. Not at Fox, not in the Corps, not anywhere in the vast rolling desert of the Southland.
Why Wesson wanted romance was beyond her. Romance didn’t just stifle, it made things more complicated than they needed to be. Then she remembered another corpsman, his name forgotten to her now, and how he’d put his hand around her neck once too. But still, it hadn’t been like this. It hadn’t been an Anak’s hand.
Rice’s boots scraped against the floor, and the sound drew her out of her head. Boots in the dirt, she thought, turning the image over in her mind a few times. It was one of the most honest sounds she could think of.
He grabbed himself, touched the sticky moisture at the tip of his cock to her lip. Gray smelled herself on him and blushed. But beyond that, he was clean. He must have bathed for this, somehow.
Gray’s tongue darted out to lick at the precum, and she could feel his eyes digging into her from high above. She took him in both hands, suddenly wondering if her knowledge of human anatomy would be enough here.
“Are you… it’s like a human’s, just bigger, right?”
She glanced up, suddenly sheepish and feeling very, very small now.
“Far as I can tell,” he grunted.
Rice reached down to grab and stroke her chin, a little roughness in the gesture reminding her that the clock was ticking.
Licking her lips, Gray opened her mouth as wide as it would go and he pushed in to the back molars, which was as far as he could go. Even then she had to fight a gag.
Rice felt it and massaged at the bulge under her chin. “Don’t need you to deepthroat,” he murmured. “You can grip me harder than that, though.”
Gray nodded with his cock still splitting her mouth open and got to work synchronizing her pumping fists with bobbing her head around the first few inches of his heaving length.
She couldn’t believe how hot he was! Or how rock-hard now; it was like stroking sun-baked saddle leather. His veins were so pronounced that she felt like she’d be able to feel the pumping blood under the tight skin. It was like even his dick was made of muscle.
“Fingers can’t wrap all the way around me, can they?” he quietly teased.
She responded with a short moan that vibrated around his hot cockhead, so swollen now that she could barely tug at his foreskin. She rubbed her tongue along the underneath of his head, and when she pulled away, she licked up along the slit, oozing his moisture now.
“Getting close, keep going.”
Gray picked up her pace. She stroked along his thick shaft as hard as she could, lubricating him with her spit, and hollowed her her cheeks to suckle at the tip. A swear left the giant’s lips and wood creaked high above.
He reached down to cup the back of her head, threading fingers through her hair as he began rocking his hips in a way that told her he was still in tight control. One overzealous move and he could choke her. Or have his dick bitten. It was impossible to tell which one was the stronger motivator.
Before long, Gray was sucking and stroking as fast as her tired little body could go. He helped by grabbing himself at the root to stroke his bottom half, and from what she could see, his breaths were growing more labored, his cut belly tightening with every heave of his chest.
“Y’ready?” he breathed.
A second later he grabbed her by the hair hard enough to sting and stiffened. His huge body convulsed once, twice, and he kept his cock firmly buried in the back of her mouth as he pumped his load into her with a groan. Gray held onto his hips and made a noise as she struggled to swallow the globs of heat hitting her throat, concentrating on not gagging, don’t gag, don’t gag!
There was still so much of it in her mouth when he freed himself from her aching jaw with a thread of milky split connecting them for a moment.
Licking her lips, Gray was finally able to actually taste him. His flavor was surprisingly clean, too, and human enough, but there was a note there, faint, that was immediately recognizable, and it made her heart jump.
Rice sat down, an arm resting on his knee as he breathed slow and content, need satiated for now. Gray was still busy swallowing the last of his cum as she went to sit beside him. Idly, they both watched his erection flag until it lay limply against his leg.
He tucked it away again, buttoned up his fly, then without warning pulled her up into his lap like the rag doll she suddenly was. They sat like that for a minute or two, half–listening for approaching corpsmen, half lost in the doped–up haze of post–orgasm. But something else made her not want to get too comfortable.
“How’d you learn to fuck a human like that?” Gray asked, not sure she really wanted to know the answer.
“I’m a sentinel,” he grunted. “A free-range operator. And there’s still a lot of free–range humans out there.”
Gray started to wonder what that meant, having been only sixteen when she left that world behind. But why should that surprise her? There were more people out in the wastes than the Corps, after all. She supposed that if he had something valuable enough to offer someone, then they would probably have no problem trading themselves for it. She wondered if he ever threatened anyone for sex, but something struck her odd about the idea.
“Though to be honest,” he continued lazily, and there was the faintest hint of satisfaction in his voice that she couldn’t get a read on. “I’ve never fucked a corpsman before.”
Neither of them said anything for a long beat, but the way the air in the storage room was starting to feel, Gray could tell that a something was bubbling to the forefront of both their minds. He spoke to it first.
“Question is, the hell do we do now?”
He’d been naive, she realized, in pursuing her like that, and he knew it. Maybe he was used to having the kind of latitude that let him follow his whims, used to being able to bend the rules. Gray wondered if he hadn’t actually thought this through, or if he’d been thinking with his dick too much.
Because fuck knows she hadn’t been thinking with her brain either.
Her mouth was suddenly dry, but she spoke anyway. “We put on our uniforms and go back to doing our jobs,” she muttered.
Gray suddenly felt that his pants were too rough for her bare thighs, and his skin too warm for her bare back, so she released herself from his loose grasp and staggered back to her clothes across the room. Her watch told her that their time was almost up.
She hefted up her pants and underwear at the same time, and reached for her shirt. She stole a glance at the Anak as he dressed, watching him strap on his matte beige gear. He must’ve caught her looking, because he nodded in distant agreement, but her answer also seemed to bother him.
She was ready in the short span that he was, and it was time for him to go. The light was switched off again. She sucked in a shaking breath and held it as she peeked outside the door, listening to the silence for any trace of movement. There was none, and Gray stepped out. He followed and the two found themselves among the crates again, obscured by the deeper shadows of night.
“Let’s do that again,” he said. He’d taken a knee, goggles hanging loosely around his neck. His gloved hand held onto her hip with his thumb stroking her belly.
Images and sensations passed through her mind’s eye and she tingled with a small surge of adrenaline. Could they have this? Would they be able to hang onto this simple, dangerous arrangement, even when all the forces of their world were hurtling them towards the grim and inevitable? Gray felt compelled to try. If she couldn’t assert herself against the interests of the upranked, she could at least assert herself here. She could bring this back to camp and unlike shifts, unlike fridays, unlike codys and blankets, the Corps didn’t give it to her, and so the Corps couldn’t take it away.
Gray’s own game had begun.
“Yeah, we should.”
“When?”
“This is your territory, isn’t it?” she countered with a little smile. “You tell me.”
He laughed quietly, and she almost lost herself in that deep, earthy sound. “You won’t like me gettin’ the drop on you.”
Gray grabbed the webbing of his vest and yanked him forward with the help of his cooperation. “You thought my pussy wouldn’t like your cock either. Seems to me like you’re in the habit of being wrong.”
His smile widened and he showed teeth. “Big words for a human.”
She snorted, was about to make some kind of clever, sexy rebuttal, but Rice just kissed her before she had the chance. His fully-loaded silhouette, ominous and striking in its effect on the senses, blocked the starry sky from her field of vision. But he was gentle, if not a little trepid, even. Not the behavior of a well-trained ‘Nak.
Then he lifted up his goggles, depressed a button along the side, and disappeared back into the wild like a rustle on the breeze.
