Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

“You telling me to get a helmet, Captain?”

“I’m telling you to keep your head down and don’t stop thinking.”

Silence like space hangs between us. I’m not sure what I’m going to say until the words come out. “If we’re going to talk while he’s sleeping, we should probably go into the other room.”

He nods, stands silently — ducking under the overhead — and turns around to give me a hand up. When I stand, he bends down and presses his mouth to the side and then the nape of my neck, right at the hairline, where the healing scars are still pink and tender and the lumpy outline of my nanoprocessors used to sit. I stiffen, pinned between fight-or-flight and melting into the pleasure of a kiss I feel tingling down every limb, all the way down to the pit of my belly, warm and dizzying as liquor.

The hammocks and grab bars, it turns out, come in handy when gravity fails.

Gabe closes and locks the door behind us but remains standing — back toward me, head bowed, his broad hand still resting on the latch. I watch his shoulders rise and fall with the slow rhythm of his breath. My own heart blurs in my chest as I look at him, waiting for him to turn.

This is real. This is now.

He stands as if paralyzed, and at last I come back to him, sliding my right arm around his waist. He’s warm and solid, present as an oak tree as he sighs and leans into me. “Gabe.” All the words I can find are stupid words, pointless ones. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

He turns in my embrace and raises his right hand, palming the side of my face where the scars used to be. It feels… yes. The skin there is tender, unaccustomed to touch. It’s as sensual and foreign as if he ran that hand along my thigh. “I thought I’d made my intentions plain, mon amie.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything before?” I bend into the caress. I can’t help myself.

“I…” and he takes a slow, thoughtful breath. “First there was the problem of ranks. And then I figured that if you hadn’t said anything, it was because you didn’t want to risk ruining our friendship.”

“And then there was Geniveve.”

“And then there was Geniveve.” He shifts forward, not closing his eyes, so I don’t close mine. He smells of aftershave, of wintergreen. His thumb strokes the angle of my cheekbone and he holds my gaze with his own as his lips brush mine. This is really…

feedback: slow susurrus of his heart, blood moving under my fingertips when my right hand drifts up his spine, the nap of his shirt rough and then the blond curls, softer than I would have imagined.

… happening.

soft as his mouth on mine, and I savor the look of concentration on his face as his mouth opens, teasing, flicker of a wet rough tongue and the quick, sharp nip of teeth

“Ah. That feels…”

“Je t’aime.”

with the little indrawn breath, his hand is suddenly knotted in my hair, pulling enough to hurt, lips still gentle, teasing until I close my own hand hard and yank his mouth down

“Oui. Oui. Gabe…”

“Ne parle pas.”

his lips moving on my lips, his left hand coming up now, my suit crumpled against his chest, right hand bending my head back, mouth against the tendons of my neck

“Gabriel. I—”

“I said. Don’t talk.”

silence and a little whine at the back of my throat, whimper of pleasure made the sharper by a touch of pain, my left hand splayed against his chest as my body starts to shiver, my breath comes deeper, hips rock against his as of their own accord

“Je parlerai. You will listen.”

“Ah. Ssssss.”

his hand in my hair, pulling, sexy, his hand on my breast, soft, warm through plum-colored worsted fabric, warmth through my white cotton blouse not crisp any longer, hot flush up my body and melting in my belly, my metal arm pinned between us, his mouth now on my throat, my collarbones, teeth at the corner of my jaw, breath over my ear with the sound of his voice

“Je te veux. J’ai besoin de toi. Veux-tu que j’ait dit à toi que je vais faire?”

“ Yes. ”

left hand unbuttoning the jacket, tailored armor, warrior in business attire, mouth a moment behind as he pushes open one blouse button at a time, heat and wetness, shivering, painful, and the only thing keeping me off my knees is his grip on my hair and the fact that the car is slowly losing acceleration, my left breast bared to cold air now and the slow spirals of sharp teeth, rough tongue, and the tickle of his voice against my flesh

“Je vais te deshabiller. Je vais embrasser chaque pouce de toi. Je vais te lécher et je vais te faire toi jouir and then I’m going to open up that pretty scallop shell between your legs and fill you up with my cock until you want to scream…”

Soft, promising between the love bites, oh so dirty and sensual and sharp and already I want to scream; he’s let go of my hair and is pushing jacket and blouse off to lie forgotten on the floor, and kneeling now, exploring my navel with his tongue like a promise of what’s coming, fingers nimble as he opens the button of my slacks, slides them down over my ass, hooking my panties down with the same smooth motion and I step out of my shoes as I step out of the trousers and he pushes me back against the bulkhead. Cold.

Breath harsh in my throat, both hands knotted in his hair, pulling the collar of his white, white shirt. My knees are like water. I have to lean against the wall.

“Ta chatte mouille, n’est-ce pas? Je veux toi goûter.”

“Never thought I’d hear a man with daughters talk so fucking dirty, Gabriel.”

“Comment pense-toi que je leur ai reçus?” And while I’m laughing, shocked at his audacity and his filthy, sexy mouth, he presses those enormous hands flat against my hips and shoves my ass hard against the icy bulkhead. Somewhere in there the acceleration cuts out and we sail into sudden weightlessness and spin, drifting, helpless, but he holds on to me somehow and I have no idea, when it’s over, if I screamed his name or God’s, or what language, or if I managed to hold my tongue. There’s blood on my mouth, and through the twisted collar of his shirt I can see a pale handprint darkening where my left hand clenched, somehow not hard enough to break skin, crush bone. My whole body shudders and as he pulls me naked into his embrace I bury my face against his shoulder and I am weeping, am laughing, am shivering in the cold capsule air.

“Shhh,” he says, stroking my hair, floating, spinning slowly. A droplet of blood drifts free of my bitten lip and splashes his cheek, followed by a salt-sticky tear. I swallow the rest, scrubbing my face against his shirt to jar the swelling globes out of my eyes. “Shhh, mon amie, mon amour. Don’t cry, Jenny.”

I sniffle against his shoulder, tension gone, and the next round of shivers are from the cold. “We’ll sleep,” he says. “There’s time later.”

“Bullshit.” I grab him by the cheeks and, spindrift, kiss him, tasting myself on his mouth like butterscotch. He catches my waist. We bump lightly into a wall, careen off, and while he’s holding me I start working on the buttons of his tear-stained shirt, not really sobbing, and then kissing his throat, burrowing through the curly pale hair on his broad chest to let him feel teeth on skin, floating, twisting, my struggles with his belt sending us gyrating like a top. I elbow him in the head and he kicks me in the knee and we connect with the bulkhead again, and it doesn’t seem to matter…

I’m a pro. Thirty-five years ago, I would have had him zipping his pants back up before he was finished with a cigarette. Some little voice still tells me that I should feel bad about that bit of ancient history, but what I’ve got left is just the gritty acknowledgment: I did what I had to do and I lived. I’m not ashamed of it. I lived.