January

Cianna sighed in satisfaction as she scraped the wide, flat shovel across the concrete one last time, scooping up a final shovelful of snow and tossing it to land on the fluffy white pile she’d built up beside the main entrance to the communal kitchen. She turned and surveyed her work, a long walkway cleared entirely of snow so that everyone could get to and from one of the most important buildings in town, and nodded to herself. It was still snowing, so she would need to shovel again, but it was a slow enough fall that cleaning the rest up could wait until the morning.

She left the shovel leaning against the wall, in case anyone else needed to make use of it before she came back. The old-world supersoldier wasn’t worried about someone stealing it: what would be the point of stealing community property when you could just ask her to help clear your walkway?

In the five or so months she’d lived in Elk River Valley— actually, she knew that it had been exactly five months and eleven days since she woke up and had to force her way out of her cryopod just outside of town— Cianna had earned a reputation as a woman who got things done.

At first, people in the village just knew her as the new girl that was happy to lend a helping hand. While they were suspicious of her as an outsider, they were happy to make use of her physical strength. And being that Cianna was seven feet tall and built like an Z7-IPC armoured personnel carrier, courtesy of the suite of genetic enhancements she’d been designed to bear and her rigorous daily workout routine, the blonde-haired supersoldier had plenty of strength to spare.

Then, two and a half months ago— or seventy-two days, by Cianna’s precise count— she had rushed headfirst into an out-of-control geothermal power plant and manually activated the emergency shutoff. The desperate move had cost Cianna her power armour, which had been cooked to the point of non-functionality... and very nearly her life. Since then, the attitude towards her had shifted from cautiously accepting to downright warm.

All the newfound friendliness and casual familiarity from civilians she barely knew felt strange to her. In her old life, the only time civilians had responded positively to Cianna’s presence would be shortly after she saved them from invading soldiers. Even then, they would be as heartbroken at their recent losses and frightened by her massive weapons and armour as they were grateful, so any happiness at seeing her had always been a mixed thing.

Of course, her old life was long-since passed. To her, the war had still been raging just eighty-four days ago, but to everyone else it had ended the better part of two centuries ago.

All of that was a lot for one sort-of-ex-military soldier to take in, so mostly Cianna just didn’t think about it too much. For the sake of appearances, she smiled widely and waved as she passed by an older man holding a bucket of sand. Jackson had been following her tonight and sprinkling a layer of grit everywhere she shovelled, to keep the sidewalk from getting too slippery.

It was a short walk back home from the communal kitchen, especially since she didn’t need to slow her pace to match Zavier’s tonight. The young man wasn’t necessarily slow, but he was more than a foot-and-a-half shorter than her and she had to constantly remind herself to shorten her stride when she walked with him.

Cianna paused for a moment just short of their front door. The windows of the bottom floor were blurred by built-up condensation, but she could see inside well enough. Most of the entire first storey of the building was taken up by a large workshop where Zavier did most of his repair work, and where his parents would also be working when they finally returned to Elk River Valley from their year-long work trip to the region’s largest city.

Through foggy, lightly frosted windows, Cianna could see Zavier working. He obviously couldn’t see her in dimness of a winter evening— and he was too focused on whatever he was currently tinkering with to look in her direction anyway. She stood just beyond the corona of the house’s lights, not to remain concealed while scanning for dangers but just to enjoy a quiet moment looking at the man she was growing increasingly attached to.

As an established member of an accomplished fireteam, and someone who had literally grown up inside of military bases, Cianna hadn’t thought much of Zavier when she had first met him. He lacked the physical bulk of members of her military cohort. In fact, at under five-and-a-half feet tall and lacking any real visible muscles, he wouldn’t have even been considered for an auxiliary support role in the old-world military. His fingers sported small calluses from handling fine tools and pinching delicate machinery, but his hands were otherwise too soft and clean for the world Cianna had grown up in.

Soft. That word, more than any other, summed up her first impression of Zavier. He was too small, too delicate, too gentle. In short, he was vulnerable.

As the months passed, Cianna hadn’t actually stopped thinking of the younger man as soft, but had instead changed her opinion on softness itself. What she had at first thought of as a weakness, a liability, was in fact a great strength. That very softness that she had at first held in contempt was now her favourite thing about Zavier.

When she looked at him now, she didn’t just see a vulnerable asset that she would have to spend extra effort to protect— she saw a picture of what the world should be. Wasn’t a peaceful, gentler world exactly what she had fought for, what she had risked her life for over and over?

With a soft smile sitting comfortably on her full lips, Cianna ascended the three stairs up to their doorway in a single long step, and paused to smack her boots against the freshly-cleared cement pad. A few good stomps was enough to shake most of the snow out of the deep treads of her boots, and incidentally would also serve to alert him that she was home before she opened the door.

She had learned quite quickly that Zavier got so hyperfocused on his work that he often became oblivious to the rest of the world, and she had scared him quite badly a number of times by walking quietly through the door and standing directly behind him. A few of those jump scares had even been accidental.

“Welcome home, Cianna,” Zavier called out in his soft, light voice as she finally opened the door and stepped in from the cold. “How were the streets?”

“The usual,” she said with a shrug, as she literally shrugged out of her light coat. There was a time that him referring to this house as her home would have given Cianna serious pause, but now the phrase felt perfectly comfortable. She hadn’t even noticed the change taking place, but by the time she had been pulled from the steaming wreckage of her power armour back in November, she had already come to accept the fact that home is exactly what this space was to her now. “The plow is supposed to be basically good as new again, so hopefully by tomorrow they’ll be able to take care of most of it without making us break our backs. End of the week at the latest.”

Zavier dropped what he was holding and turned to cross the distance between them as Cianna bent over and started unlacing her boots. A casual observer might describe the way he set down the small circuit board as careless, but Cianna knew Zav well enough by now to know that he had chosen its placement very carefully beforehand. He did everything carefully when it came to the delicate repairs he did for the community. If she quizzed him on it two hours from now, he would be able to tell her exactly where the piece was now sitting, as well as each tool he had used.

“You once charged through an exploding power plant, tackled down six doors, and wrenched a massive release valve to save the whole damn world.” His voice was so affectionate, bordered on reverent, that Cianna had to fight a rising blush as she straightened up again. “And you barely broke a sweat. I don’t think a bit of snow is going to break your back.”

“It wasn’t exploding, it was just full of steam,” Cianna corrected gently, and just as affectionately. She hung up her winter gear— far less than everyone else had been wearing outside, but Cianna had always run a bit on the warm side— and finally stepped into his embrace. They had only been apart for four or five hours, but feeling his arms curl around her ribs and waist again took a year’s worth of tension out of her. “And it was only three doors. And I, you know, almost died. Would have died, if you hadn’t—”

“Shh,” he hissed quietly, stopping Cianna before she could kill the mood. He stretched up on the tips of the fluffy slippers he always wore in the workshop in the winter, and Cianna bent to finish closing the distance.

If feeling his arms around her was like coming home, then tasting his lips against hers was like diving into a hot spring on a freezing day. Any lingering chill disappeared from her body, and a sweet flush crossed her face, her chest, and... lower. She was quite sure that if she stepped outside again right now, the fluffy snowflakes drifting down would sizzle into steam the instant they touched her skin.

Her gentle, clever tinkerer snaked his arms around her shoulders, holding her in a hunched position where he could still reach her. If she’d been standing upright, the top of his head wouldn’t even be level with the v-cut at the front of the white tank top she’d worn under her coat.

“Do you have any plans for dinner?” she asked as she broke their kiss and straightened up once more. Her arms came to rest on his shoulders, and his just below her ribs. The height difference between them never failed to amaze her.

“I was thinking we could eat out tonight. In honour of the special day tomorrow.”

He said the last with a twist of humour and a wry smile on his lips. Zavier wasn’t the kind to make a big deal out of his birthday, but Cianna ignored his sarcasm. It had been a long time since she had any reason to celebrate a special day, and her boyfriend’s birthday was as good of an occasion as any.

Besides, nineteen is a big milestone year, and it was worth celebrating a little. Her own nineteenth birthday, a date shared with the entire “alpha” generation of super-soldiers, had been celebrated with raucous party that had landed three of her peers in the infirmary, and two more in the brig. That had been eleven years ago now from her perspective, or a bit over two hundred and seventy from everyone else’s.

But there was a more pressing problem with going out to get food than just contending with Zavier’s self-depreciation. “Zav, honey, no one is going to be at the kitchen hosting a big meal tonight. On a chilly, windy day like today, everyone’s probably staying home where it’s warm...”

“Oh, no, you’re absolutely right.” He spoke the line so quickly that his words sounded almost rehearsed. “I have no intention of leaving the house tonight.”

“But you just said we should—”

“I said we should,” Zavier repeated, then gave her a playful wiggle of his dark brows, “eat out.”

Cianna groaned in mock-frustration at having walked right into that one, even as that delicious flush between her thighs settled in a bit deeper. Zavier had been a virgin when they’d met— he hadn’t even so much as kissed a girl other than in greeting— but he had been a quick learner over the three months since their relationship had taken on a distinctly sexual nature. And as eager as he was to learn, he was even more eager to please.

A promise to “eat out” from him was not something to be passed up lightly. But, on the other hand...

“I have been shovelling snow for the better part of four hours, hon. I’m a bit too sweaty for... that.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t complain if—”

Cianna cut him off with a quick peck on the mouth, which ended up turning to another slow, passionate kiss. It was hard to pass up the opportunity to savour the taste of him, but she somehow managed to drum up the willpower to separate after a few breathless moments. “I want to shower first. Why don’t you finish up down here and meet me upstairs in... thirty minutes? That should be enough time to get your birthday present ready.”

“My birthday’s not until tomorrow,” he countered, but his words failed to conceal the gleam in his eyes.

“So, I’m impatient. So sue me.” He gave her a puzzled look in answer, and Cianna shrugged. Lawsuits were a thing of the distant pass, and that turn of phrase was apparently just one more expression that didn’t quite translate anymore. “Translation: I want to give you your gift a little bit early. Is that so bad?”

“Oh! No, you won’t catch me complaining or suing anyone.”

He caught her lips again, and it was another hot, sweet minute before she could separate herself from the small man. “Thirty minutes.”

“It’s a date,” he called after her as Cianna turned and strode from the room. She took the stairs two at a time, and showered with what could fairly be called military efficiency. Her hair was short enough, cut just a few inches longer than regulation, that she didn’t have to waste much time drying it before moving on to more interesting preparations.

At the top of the closet, in a cardboard box conspicuously labelled “Zavier, do not open,” laid two important items. The first was an outfit— although calling the small amount of soft material “clothing” was a bit too generous.

Two months ago, Cianna had been surprised to learn that this small town actually hosted several clothiers. Apparently there were a few enterprising citizens with access to sewing machines, and during the cooler months there wasn’t anything better to do than measure and sew, so there ample options for people looking to expand their wardrobes. She’d been even more surprised to learn that one of them specialized in sexy clothing. “Lingerie to corsets to tearaway underwear,” a small, discrete sign in the window promised.

It had taken Cianna nearly a month to drum up the courage to walk into the house whose front half had been converted into a showroom, and then she’d taken one look at the clothing displayed on hangers and mannequins and had nearly fled. But she was a born-and-raised warrior, a soldier who had once charged directly at a line of mounted railguns to break an enemy fortification, and a mere underwear boutique wasn’t going to be enough to scare her away.

She’d spent a few minutes studying all of the available options, given the tailor a polite nod, and walked out with some new ideas percolating in the back of her mind. The next week she’d returned again, with an exact idea of what she wanted in mind.

The idea of actually speaking to someone and describing what she wanted ended up being too much to bear. Instead, Cianna had silently handed the tailor a folded note, and had watched intently as he opened it and read her request.

“That doesn’t seem too difficult,” he’d told her with a smile so casual and friendly that she’d nearly turned and run to the door. She’d had a hundred pounds of powered armour wrapped around her when she had charged that enemy line all those years ago, and she suddenly wished she had its comforting weight as she stood there under the man’s scrutinizing stare. “I don’t have much in your size... but this is something I could make pretty easily. Do you know your measurements?”

What ensued was an awkward twenty minutes while the man, apparently named Marty, measured her from shoulder to knee, and then around every bit between those two points. Finally, he had all the numbers he needed, and she’d picked out a swatch of fabric from his pile of samples.

“That’s not a pattern I work with very often,” he’d told her as he stared intently at the patch of cloth on the table. “It’s kind of... old fashioned? But I can envision exactly what you mean, and I think the finished product will look really cute. Quite sexy.”

To get it finished in time for Zavier’s birthday, she’d had to convince him to put her near the top of the queue. But a promise to clear the snow from the roof of his house anytime it piled up too high this year had sealed the deal. In the end, Cianna had gotten the better end of that deal, since this year’s winter was mild enough that she might not have to climb onto his roof at all.

Now, four weeks later, she opened the box and pulled out several garments and laid each out on the bed in turn. First was the bra, with wide cups to hold her hefty breasts, and thick straps attached to a cute little collar around her throat— like she was wearing the collar of a suit, but only large enough to have a single button, and attached to lingerie instead of a shirt. It wasn’t the most erotic cut, seeing as it actually covered her breasts instead of just highlighting the outside of them like a lot of the other sexy lingerie on display would have. But the pattern on it was adorable, and it still showed off a hell of a lot more than her usual sports bras, so she was sure Zavier was going to approve.

Next up were the panties, which amounted to little more than a slim white band around her waist and a stripe down her ass that was hardly wider than dental floss. The crotch of it was just wide and long enough to cover her vagina, and it had the same pattern as the bra. That same pattern was repeated on the short skirt, which barely came down far enough to cover the underwear, and was completely open at the back.

The ribbon around the waist of the skirt was the same pale pink as the one-button collar. It was a surprisingly soft colour for the large woman, and Cianna felt it had the effect of feminizing her in a rather cute way.

The last part was of the outfit was a pair of long stockings that came up to a few inches above her knees. If she had been the same height as the rest of the women in Elk River Valley, they probably would have come up high enough to meet the bottom of the skirt. These had the same white base and pattern as the bra, panties, and skirt, and the band at the top was a match for the pink collar and waistband. A perfect matching set.

She looked herself over in the mirror with all the seriousness of a sergeant performing a spot-inspection before a battle. While everything looked a bit frilly to her, there was no denying that the overall effect was quite sexy. The bra lifted and displayed her breasts nicely, and was thin enough that you could see the outlines of her nipples through them. The panties were sexy and revealing, but covered just enough that they didn’t feel pointless, while the matching skirt was so short that it was sure to set Zavier’s blood to boiling. And the stockings added a certain cute innocence that contrasted nicely with the overall eroticism.

“Even if I had to shovel Marty’s roof a dozen times this month,” Cianna muttered to her reflection, “this was still worth it.”

With her exaggeratedly sexy, revealing outfit in place, Cianna fished out the last item from the box. The tailor had provided this one as well, and he’d been polite enough not to say a word while doing so. Having to hear the amusement in his voice while he handed it to her would have been too much for Cianna to handle.

She and Zavier had been having a lot of sex in the last two months, as any couple in their honeymoon period would. Sex on the bed, sex on the floor, sex on the couch. On the chairs, on the counter, on the worktable. They’d fucked with Zavier on top, with Cianna on top, from behind... they had made a point of trying a bit of everything, really. Zavier had started out quite shy when it came to discussing sexuality, but he’d quickly learned that having the courage to suggest something usually led to getting to try that something out.

But this? This had been her idea.

She settled herself in the middle of the bed and readjusted the tiny little skirt, then picked up the length of silken rope again. A small smile graced the corners of her mouth as Cianna ran the soft material over her fingers once more. Zavier’s eyes had nearly popped out of his head when she’d nonchalantly mentioned the possibility of him coming into the room to find her tied up someday, and she had filed the idea away for future use.

His birthday seemed like a fine excuse to fulfill that wish for him.

It made more sense for Cianna to be tied up than Zavier. She had more strength and experience than Zavier, and she was a lot less shy, so Cianna was normally the one in control. And the more control someone normally had, the hotter it was for it to be taken away.

Also, in the event of something going wrong somehow, Cianna was probably strong enough to break the rope— or even the headboard. Zavier wouldn’t have such an option available to him.

Cianna twisted the rope into a quick knot that turned the bottom half into a loop, then secured the other end of it to an outcropping on the backside of their bed’s headboard. The loop went around both of her wrists before she gave it one last twist to get a strand of rope between her arms, which would serve to keep the rope from getting too tight around her wrists. Cianna had practised tying her own hands in private for longer than she would ever admit to, just to get the technique right.

The end result of her shopping and her practice was one beautiful, athletic, seven-foot-tall, blonde warrior dressed in skimpy, sexy, patterned lingerie, lying on the bed with her arms tied above and behind her head. She wiggled her hips one more, and settled in a bit more comfortably. Perfect.

A glance at the small bedside clock told Cianna that her thirty minutes was nearly up. And less than a minute after the time ticked over to the half-hour mark, she heard the tell-tale sound of slippered feet on stairs. Zavier had probably set a stopwatch as soon as Cianna left the room, and had almost certainly been impatiently waiting for it to hit 30:00 so that he could come upstairs.

The old-world lieutenant couldn’t help the grin of anticipation that spread across her face as she listened to Zavier’s footfalls come to rest outside of their bedroom door. Her heart raced wildly in her chest as he stood silently in the hallway for another long minute.

“If you don’t come in here in three seconds,” Cianna mouthed inaudibly, “I am going to rip this headboard off the bed and jump on your—”

Then the doorknob was turning, and the door swinging open. It didn’t creak open, of course— Zavier was very attentive to household maintenance, and made a point of periodically greasing the hinges in the house.

“You know, Cianna, you really didn’t have to—” Zavier’s words faltered as his eyes settled on her nearly-nude form, perfectly highlighted by the bedside lamp she’d arranged just for this moment. With her arms bound above her head to keep her lingerie-clad chest exposed and her legs barely covered by the vague suggestion of a skirt and a pair of tight, white stockings, Cianna must have made quite the picture.

Zavier’s mouth opened and closed a few more times, but all he managed to get out was a quiet, high-pitched, “Oh.”

“Don’t you like your present?” Cianna asked with a mock-pout. She knew the answer, of course: she’d spent time figuring out exactly what he’d enjoy seeing, and could clearly read the arousal in his silent shock.

“Oh, oh yes,” he finally stammered out. “Oh I really— I really, really like it.”

“Do you want to look at your present up close?” Cianna tilted her face down and looked up through her eyelashes. It felt nice to have a lower perspective than him for once.

Zavier closed the door behind him— a pointless action, since there would be no one else in the house with them until his parents returned to town in the spring— and drifted towards the bed like an iron filing towards a magnet. “Where did— where did you get those... Did you go out and trade for special lingerie?”

“Mhm,” she simpered with another flutter of her eyelashes.

“And they’re... Where did you find cow-print fabric like that?”

Animal-print underwear were apparently quite out of fashion this century, but Cianna had seen the way Zavier’s eyes had bulged when she’d tried on a bovine-themed Halloween costume last month. It had put the idea of a cow-print pattern in the back of her brain, and she was very glad to see his eager reaction now. “Do you like it?”

“Oh my god, Cianna. I love it.”

He was hovering at the edge of the bed now, eyes wide and face flushed as he ran greedy eyes up and down her near-nakedness. The white-and-black blotchy pattern of the bra, skirt, panties, and stockings popped against the pale pink colour of the collar and ribbon, lending Cianna a kind of innocence and femininity that she normally wouldn’t go for. But seeing his reaction now made all the embarrassment of going to a lingerie store and ordering this outfit very worth it.

Cianna twisted slightly as he approached, undulating her body a little and flexing the rope above her head to draw his attention to it. “You can unwrap your present if you want... but you don’t need to take the string off.”

Zavier’s eyes drifted back up from her legs, skimming over the hem of the far-too-short skirt and the cow-patterned panties he could just barely glimpse, over her bare midriff and her sexy bra, past her flushed face and dishevelled hair. His gaze finally settled on the delicate rope binding her wrists, and belatedly he seemed to realise just what Cianna was offering.

“I don’t need to take the string off, eh?”

“You can leave as much or as little of the decoration on your birthday gift as you want,” she affirmed.

“But if your hands are all tied up...” Zavier whispered menacingly as he crawled up from the foot of the bed towards her bound form. The hint of dominance he was clearly working to project sent a shiver of anticipation down Cianna’s spine. “Wouldn’t that mean you don’t have any control?”

“Hmm. Come to think of it... I guess I don’t.”

Zavier moved slowly, crawling towards her with deliberate motions. Cianna couldn’t tell if he was building up the anticipation or just unsure of how to start, so she decided to give him a little hint. She wiggled her hips again, as if trying to escape, giving him another little flash of her small, sexy panties. “You could do whatever you want, and I’d be powerless to stop you.”

“Powerless, hmm? I like the sounds of that.” Zavier crawled up her legs until he was straddling her lower body and staring down at her. He leaned in close to her face, and Cianna tilted up her face to meet his lips...

But Zavier bypassed her mouth entirely. He pressed two fingers to the side of her jaw and pushed lightly, turning her face away from him and baring her neck. Then, before she could so much as pretend to be offended that he hadn’t kissed her, his mouth latched onto her neck.

“I— oh!” Cianna’s voice was a low purr as his lips pressed into her sensitive throat. A spike of hot arousal shot up her jugular to set her mind ablaze, and she couldn’t help the quiet whimper that slipped from her lips.

Cianna instinctively tried to wrap her arms around his shoulders, but stopped short with an audible creak of rope.

“Like I said,” he whispered as his lips made their slow way up her neck and to the shell of her ear, “you don’t have control tonight.”

“Mmm,” she agreed happily as Zavier’s hot breath tickled her ear. His lips and teeth soon followed, one grazing against her ear, and then the other. “You can do whatever you want to.”

“Oh, I will.” His voice was low, deliberately pitched down from his normal octave, and the raw lust clearly coming through was enough to leave her breathless.

Then he was moving back down her body. He trailed his lips and teeth down the line of her cheek again, briefly kissing and nibbling at the underside of her jaw before travelling down her throat once more. He kissed and teased along the line of the pink collar sewn onto the top of the bra, down the line of exposed cleavage, and across her navel.

Each gentle kiss sent tingles of warmth outwards, until the flush had spread from her cheeks to her chest— and lower still. Then he would lightly graze her with his teeth, sending a flare of heat up her spine. He carried on downwards until his face disappeared beneath her short hem, and the warmth of his breath on Cianna’s inner thighs coaxed her anticipation to staggering heights.

His lips pressed down lightly on the inside of one thigh, then the other, moving upwards with teasing slowness. When he finally trailed his way to the place where her thighs met, his mouth was joined by his fingers.

Zavier took hold of the edges of her white-and-black panties and pulled down, peeling the thin garment away with glacial slowness. Cool air met hot, flushed skin as he slowly unveiled his birthday present, freshly shaved and utterly bare. As he finally slid her panties down over her ankles and off of her legs entirely, Cianna was too flooded by desire to speak, so she settled for a low, “Mmm,” of encouragement.

Then Zavier’s mouth was on her stocking-clad leg, this time starting at the knee. Cianna spread her legs eagerly as he moved, parting her thighs to allow him access as he travelled back up.

Kiss by kiss, inch by slow inch, he moved his mouth up her right thigh in a winding path towards her core. Cianna’s legs seemed to move of their own accord, opening wider and wider until they were out at almost ninety degree angles. Zavier followed the path she was offering, his mouth tracing along her very inner thigh until his lips were bare centimetres from the hot, wet centre of her arousal... but then he stopped.

“Nuh,” she grunted senselessly as Zavier paused just shy of her labia. She needed to feel his mouth on her, needed to feel him inside of her! What was he waiting for?

But then his head was retreating. Cianna’s heart sped up in a surge of raw adrenaline as she watched him straighten slightly. She eagerly waited to see him pull off his own clothing so he could pounce on her and take her right there... but no. He wasn’t stripping.

Zavier turned his face and replaced his mouth on her skin, this time on her left leg. He started just behind her knee this time, teasing his mouth along the thin fabric of her stocking, and back upwards to the pink band at the top of it before stopping to savour the skin there. Cianna groaned in impatient frustration as Zavier teased her and delayed her pleasure.

“No need to get impatient,” he chided, briefly halting his upwards progress. “I can unwrap my present as slowly as I’d like, right?”

“Nnng,” Cianna groaned. “Zaaa-vier. Touch me. Taste me.”

“I will,” he promised, tearing his eyes away from her muscular, toned thigh to meet her eyes. “Eventually.”

Then his mouth was on her again... a few inches lower than it had been before. Another impatient noise tore itself from Cianna’s throat as he restarted his slow meandering exploration of her leg. Again the rope caught on the edge of the bed and stopped the movement of her arms as Cianna tried to reach down to grab him by the shoulders.

Being bound and unable to control the shape of the night was beyond frustrating... but it was also incredibly hot, Cianna realised. The sense of powerlessness, of vulnerability, only served to making Zavier’s teasing even more effective. Her face burned with a deepening blush, which was mirrored by the heat growing steadily more intense between her legs.

Zavier and his warm mouth eventually drew level with Cianna’s aching, needy pussy, but even then the teasing didn’t stop. When he leaned in, as if finally about to dive face first into wetness, she initially groaned with relief, but the sound morphed into a hiss of frustrated arousal as he pressed his mouth into the space between her labia and the dip where thigh met groin. He kissed and gently licked the sensitive skin there, ratcheting up the strong woman’s desperation, but refused to actually give her what she wanted.

Then his face was on the other side of her groin, teasing and threatening without offering any satisfaction.

“Please,” she finally gasped. “Zavier, please!”

“Please what?” he whispered, breath hot against her wet, swollen labia.

“I want to feel your mouth on me. Your fingers in me...”

“Well...” Zavier paused for a moment, as if he were actually thinking Cianna’s request through and deciding whether to indulge her or not. “Because you asked so nicely.”

And then this mouth was on her, lips spreading and clamping over her arousal. Cianna gasped with delight and relief as she finally felt his tongue swiping over and between and through her outer lips. And when he passed his nimble tongue up over the top of her slit to flick over her most sensitive place, Cianna was in heaven.

Not satisfied with just licking her, he started gently pressing a finger into her tight opening. Cianna’s excessive arousal had left her so slick that he faced little resistance.

He made a crooking, “come hither” gesture with his finger at the same time as he flicked his tongue from one side to the other, and Cianna felt the heat inside of her double and redouble. He repeated both gestures, playing her with the ease of a master musician plucking notes from a violin.

Zavier had come to her with no sexual experience, and almost no idea of what physical intimacy could look like beyond the very basics, but he had been a diligent student since then. There were times when they were having sex that he would get the same look on his face that he often got when he was taking apart an unfamiliar piece of technology: a focused squint that told her he was working to memorize a new configuration. He had studied her body and her responses like they were blueprints until he knew exactly how to drive her wild after not even three months of exploring.

The excessive teasing he’d subjected her to had left Cianna desperate and hyper-sensitive, and now he was pulling out all of his best tricks— all of her favourite techniques. Cianna could feel herself being driven higher and higher before the onslaught of pleasure. Already she was coming close to that glorious height.

Then, just as she felt herself coming to the edge of bliss... he stopped. His mouth came off of her clit with a wet popping noise, and his finger stilled within her.

She opened bleary eyes to stare at him, again fully expecting to see Zavier working on stripping off his own clothing. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d gotten her right to the edge before pressing into her, wanting to experience her orgasm more intimately. She also happened to rather like cumming while he was inside of her, as a matter of fact, so it worked out nicely.

But no, he wasn’t working on getting his clothing off. Zavier was just kneeling there, one of his hands pressed against her and one finger inside of her, grinning like a kid in a candy shop.

“Nnn,” she groaned as that beautiful, orgasmic cliff slipped just out of her reach. “Zave...”

“Mm-hmm?” He asked it casually, as if he had no idea what she was trying to tell him or wasn’t very interested.

“Don’t stop. Please.”

How quickly she had been reduced to begging. Cianna marvelled at her own desperation, and at how quickly Zavier had been willing to take control once it was offered. Before now, he’d always been eager in bed— she was honest enough with herself that she could admit that it wasn’t a mystery why someone would be so eager to be with a tall, fit, beautiful woman like herself— but he’d always been shy. Submissive, even. Happy to follow her lead.

Tonight she was seeing a whole new side to this man she was so infatuated with... and she could privately admit that she actually quite liked it.

But this teasing had gone on too long!

“Zavier... touch me again.”

“As you wish,” he answered smugly before positively diving towards her.

All at once the assault on her senses started up again. His tongue was a fast, swirling blur as he swiped it across her engorged clitoris, and his finger— make that two fingers, now— returned to that twisting, curling motion. In mere moments, Zavier brought her right to that edge again.

And then stopped abruptly once more.

“N-no,” she groaned in mounting frustrating. “It’s so good, Zave. You’re doing so good— just make me cum!”

“Not yet,” he said simply, that smug smile still on his face. “I like seeing you... just like this.”

Cianna opened her lips in a wordless snarl, giving him the kind of look that had cowed unruly recruits into stunned silence in the past, and Zavier finally started moving again. With finger and mouth, he stroked and sucked and pressed until she was heaving and panting and sweating. And just as she closed in on an explosive release...

“God damn it, Zavier,” she growled. “Stop stopping!”

“Wait, do you want me to stop,” he asked in mock confusion, “or not stop? Because you said stop, so maybe you’d like me to...”

“Just let me finish!” She thrust her hips up as she spoke, grinding her pelvis against his hand to try and muster up enough stimulation to get herself over the finis line. But he partially withdrew his fingers in response, pulling away until she didn’t have enough to work with, and she had no choice but to lie there and wait.

He got her right to the edge twice more and seemed ready to leave her unfulfilled again until she actually snarled at Zavier that if he stopped again she would shatter their bed into splinters, pin him down, and ride him until she was satisfied.

And so, Cianna rushed towards her peak even as anxiety and frustration swelled in her chest at the thought that Zavier might stop short again. But he must have been swayed by her threat— or else simply satisfied at how long he’d been tormenting her— because he didn’t stop this time. Cianna cried out in equal measures of pleasure and relief as she finally hurtled over that edge.

And then she was coming undone around Zavier’s fingers and beneath his tongue. He curled two digits inside of her and swivelled his tongue around her clit, and came to an impossibly explosive release. After all of her building excitement and the long delay, the orgasm that hit her was like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

Blinding lights flashed in her vision as she bucked and writhed, every muscle in her body shuddering as she came. The sounds coming from her mouth were nearly animalistic, but she was too lost in the heights of pleasure to notice or care.

When Cianna came down from her high, Zavier leaned back over her and finally kissed her. Panting, breathless, she eagerly opened her mouth to run her tongue against his. The flavour of her own arousal was cloying in his mouth and washed into hers: thick and heady, almost metallic, with hints of saltiness. Tasting herself on her lover’s mouth did nothing to turn her off, and Cianna moaned against his lips.

Zavier’s hands moved quickly as they kissed, undoing the single little button on the pink collar attached to the curving straps of her cow-print bra. They were forced to stop kissing for a moment as he pulled the loop over her head. With the strap out of the way, there was nothing to stop him from flipping the whole front of the bra down to reveal her large breasts. When he finally palmed one of her tits, flicking a finger over a surprisingly sensitive nipple, her groan of pleasure was almost as loud as his.

He took a moment to enjoy himself, pressing his face even harder against Cianna’s as he cupped and squeezed her breasts, hefting the smooth globes and rolling his thumbs over her stiff peaks. Cianna longed to wrap her arms around him and knead the light muscles of his back while pulling him even closer, but all she could do was strain futilely against the bonds.

While nipple play always felt good for her, tonight his touch on her sensitive buds was enough to send her brain reeling. It was probably just an after-effect of his ruthless teasing and the intense orgasm he’d driven her to, but she savoured the extra layers of pleasure all the same.

His hands left her chest, and Cianna wasn’t surprised to hear the sound of his own clothing rustling. He started with the buttons running down the front of his shirt, then pulled the garment backwards and off of his torso without even breaking the contact of their lips. Then he was working on his pants, undoing the buckle and button with one hand while he propped himself up with a hand beside her head. For the thousandth time that night, Cianna reflexively tried to reach out, this time to help him strip the clothing away. And for the thousandth time, she belatedly remembered that her arms were trapped.

But Zavier managed all by himself. He had to stop kissing and touching her for just a moment to shuck his pants and underwear from his hips and slide out of them before the whole mess plopped down on the floor a few feet from the bed.

As obvious as Cianna’s pleasure had been— visibly explosive, even— Zavier’s arousal was just as apparent. His shaft jutted straight out from his body, waving slightly in the air as he moved forward on his knees.

Again, Cianna was expecting him to lunge forward and slide into her, and again Zavier surprised her. Instead of lowering his hips to line himself up a vagina that had never been wetter before in her life, he leaned forward to press against her and kiss her again.

Cianna certainly didn’t mind feeling him holding her close, feeling his lips on hers, or feeling his hardness pressing into her bare stomach. And she certainly didn’t mind feeling his hand sliding up her inner thigh again. Only...

“No more teasing, Zavier,” she hissed against his mouth. “Please.”

“I promise,” he answered solemnly. Then his fingers were between her legs, the middle two brushing against her most sensitive point. A quick slide through her copious wetness was enough to lubricate his motions as he pressed down and started moving in a circular motion.

Her young lover had once requested to watch Cianna finger herself to completion, and had watched with keen interest. Now, his finger motions mimicked how she would have touched herself, copying the technique she’d honed in lonely bunks after lights-out through a youth spent on military bases. Zavier touched her with almost as much familiarity as Cianna would have touched herself, quickly finding the embers of her pleasure and building them back up into a flame.

“I want you to fuck me,” she told him— begged him, really. “I need you, Zave.”

“I will.” His fingers were moving faster now, the intensity of his motions growing in tandem with her own pleasure. For someone with less than a season’s worth of sexual experience, he’d become quite the adept lover. “I’m just close already from teasing you so much, and I want you to finish again before I do.”

“I don’t care if I finish again,” she whispered breathlessly. “I— ah!— I just want to make you feel good, Zavier. You can finish before me—”

But anything else she might have said was lost as his lips pressed against hers. There was nowhere for Cianna to go, no way for her to control the shape of the evening any more than she already had as Zavier circled and rubbed the hood of her clitoris with growing speed and intensity.

True to his word, Zavier was quickly bringing her close to that edge again. After the first, immense orgasm of the night, she was almost too sensitive, but still she felt herself rising higher and higher.

Abruptly, his hand was gone from her wetness again. But instead of constricting with frustration at the sudden cessation of pleasure, Cianna’s heart raced with mounting excitement. This time, Zavier wasn’t holding back to keep her from reaching her peak, but just moving things to the next step.

The young man— and at almost nineteen, he really was so much younger than her— had his prick in hand, and Cianna eagerly tilted her hips up to bring her wetness in line with the approaching cock.

And then the swollen, rounded tip of him was pressed between her aroused and puffy lips. Zavier slid the head of his cock down and found the entrance to her wetness immediately and, before she could so much as draw in a breath of anticipation, started pressing into her.

The air in Cianna’s lungs came out in a needy huff as Zavier slowly pushed into her. He had been taking everything so slowly tonight, kissing her and teasing her and delaying this moment for so long.

Maybe Zavier was easing his cock into her so slowly because he was afraid of hurting her, of forcing Cianna’s pussy to stretch too much and too fast. Maybe he’d forgotten just how wet and warmed up he’d gotten her with his fingers and his mouth.

Or maybe he was still trying to exert his control, to make her desperate for him to give her more. If so, he’d forgotten that her hands were the only thing tied up.

Cianna’s legs, spread as wide as she could stretch them, suddenly closed around Zavier’s thighs as she grew impatient with his glacially slow progress. With powerful thighs, she held him, and with muscular calves hooked behind his skinny legs, she pulled him towards her.

Zavier’s cock plunged the rest of the way into Cianna’s depths as she pulled him in, and they both gasped in synchronized pleasure as he suddenly bottomed out.

“Oh shit,” he gasped as every inch of him was immediately engulfed between warm, wet, tight walls. He repeated the words as Cianna flexed internal muscles, rhythmically contracting the barrel of her vagina to massage his length without even needing to move her hips. Even if he’d chosen not to start moving his hips, Cianna was confident that she could have repeated that gesture enough to bring him to his finish line.

Fortunately, Zavier didn’t need any more encouragement than that. Cianna had made it abundantly clear that she was eager and ready for him, and he responded by shifting his hips back and thrusting into her under his own power.

“Oh, God yes.” Her voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper as Zavier drove his body against hers.

The ministrations of his fingers had left her close to the edge a few moments ago, and as he started rocking his hips in a steady rhythm, it wasn’t long before Cianna found herself halfway up that mountain again and starting to rise. From this angle, the base of his cock and his pubic mound pressed against her clit each time he bottomed out, adding a sweet note of pleasure on top of the already-amazing feeling of him sinking that lovely cock of his into her pussy.

“Just like that, Zave. Don’t stop.”

And he didn’t. Zavier gave no indication that he had any intention of giving anything less than his all to the beautiful woman he’d found tied to his bed. His hips only moved faster, his length sawing in and out until it felt like it was all Cianna could do to keep herself from flying away on the rising tide of bliss.

Between one hard thrust and the next, the mounting pressure finally reached its breaking point, and all at once Cianna was coming apart.

“Zave!” she cried as pleasure exploded up through her body in a roaring wave, surging down every synapse and nerve until her body was alight with the electric sensation of it. She clamped down around him, clenching tightly with her thighs and her calves and the internal walls of her pussy.

Zavier grunted— a sound that was too close to either pleasure or pain to easily tell which inspired had inspired it— but kept thrusting. The hard, fast, steady movements, the rhythmic driving of his stiff cock into her convulsing pussy, kept the feeling alight within her. Cianna’s body twisted under him without her conscious input, her spine arching back as her explosive release came in wave after wave of pleasure.

She longed to wrap her arms around him and squeeze Zavier even tighter against her, but her hands only fluttered uselessly against the rope binding her wrists, and Cianna had to settle for squeezing him from the waist down.

“Yes, Zave,” she hissed between surging waves. Cianna’s voice was raw from crying out so loudly, but Zavier didn’t seem to mind her desperate hoarseness. “Oh fuck, that’s so good, Zavier.”

“Oh God, Cianna.” Zavier’s own grunt was almost a match for hers in terms of scratchy breathlessness.

Cianna knew her young lover well enough by now to tell just how close to his own peak Zavier was drawing, and the warm knowledge that she was bringing him as much pleasure as he was bringing her only heightened her sense of bliss. “Don’t stop, Zave.”

“Cianna, I-I’m close.” The warning wasn’t necessary, but she appreciated the valiant effort it must have taken him to pull his thoughts into order long enough to verbalize it. “Are you— God! Oh! Are you still safe? Can I finish— Can I— inside of you?”

The sundering waves of her orgasm had mostly receded by now, but the pleasure was still so sharp, so acute, that it felt like she was undergoing a miniature climax with his every thrust. It was hard to string together two thoughts in a row, so it took her a moment to understand what Zavier was asking. Then, as she understood his concern, a bloom of gratitude rose to twine with the surging warmth of her pleasure. Many of the other guys she’d been intimate with before him had been too focused on pursuing their own pleasure to check in with what Cianna wanted or needed.

She was still on her birth control from the old world, but like the rest of the medication that had been cryogenically frozen alongside her, it was on the brink of running out. In fact, tomorrow morning she would take the last of her old-world contraceptives, so they would need to be careful about where Zavier finished starting later this week— at least until the new contraceptives the doctor had ordered for her arrived.

But until then, she may as well enjoy the deep pleasure that came with unprotected sex. And besides, getting to cum inside of her clenching pussy with his bare cock would be a pretty good way to finish off his birthday gift. “Yes, Zavier. Inside of me!”

Despite him ostensibly being the dominant one while she was tied up, the need for her permission had been enough to hold him back. And as soon as Cianna spoke the words, Zavier’s control broke.

“Shit, Cianna,” he groaned, drawing the three syllables of her name out as pleasure overtook him.

Then Zavier was driving his hips forward with renewed vigour, bringing their bodies together loudly as he grew even stiffer within her. Cianna could feel his shaft swelling and hardening against her slick, sensitive inner walls. He flexed and squeezed the full length of his muscle as the pleasure built within him.

On the next deep, hard thrust, right as he was slamming forward to bury his hard cock in the welcoming confines of her wet heat, his shaft started its own rhythmic convulsions.

“Yes,” she sang out as he expanded in the tell-tale pulsation that heralded the explosive peak of his pleasure.

“God yes.” Zavier’s voice was so strained that his groan was barely audible, but the sheer need laced into those two syllables sunk into her core like a burning ember. “Cianna—”

He rocked his hips back and drove himself forward again, pressing his delicious cock through the slick, silken walls squeezing down around him. And just as he slid home, right as his wide head pressed against the deepest wall a man could reach, another heavy convulsion of his long muscle brought forth the first rushing wave of his pleasure.

“Oh!” Cianna gasped as the throbbing of Zavier’s cock drew out a heavy eruption of warmth. He unleashed himself in her with all the force of a volley of artillery fire, the payload arriving in the form of a thick rope of sperm-laden cum that exploded against her rearmost wall. Sweet heat spread up into Cianna’s body as Zavier filled her with the first wave of his release, radiating outwards and into her core. “Oh!”

Zavier’s hips bucked as he reflexively tried to reposition himself, like an animal seeking to push as deep into his mate as it could get, to deposit his seed where it would be most effective. And in time with his short thrust came another quavering pulsation, and another burst of sticky release.

The feeling of his climax unfolding inside of her, of his cock throbbing while buried to the hilt between soft, tight walls, was almost enough to set off another climax in Cianna. She panted wordlessly and floated on the wave of tingling bliss as the young man shuddered and pressed himself tighter against her. Again his cock expanded and contracted, and again she felt the impact of thick, heavy fluid splattering into her innermost passage.

Cianna had another moment of gratitude for the powerful hormonal contraceptives she had been on for her entire adult life. It was infinitely comforting to know that she was safe as Zavier twitched, shook, and loosed another burst of his young, virile seed as deep in her as he could get it.

The moment of Zavier’s climax surely didn’t last longer than thirty or forty seconds, but lost amidst the pleasure, time seemed to stretch out for Cianna. It felt like he came for ten minutes without breaks.

But the moment eventually had to come to an end. Zavier pressed against her one final time, pushing hard enough for it to almost hurt, and wrapping his arms tightly around Cianna’s back. He held himself against her, his face buried between her large breasts and his cock buried within her warm, cum-filled passage as he throbbed once more, then twice, the action bringing with it the final spurting release of his pleasure.

Then he was still inside of her. Empty.

“Damn,” he sighed after a long moment of them both struggling to catch their breaths. “I wish it was my birthday every day.”

Cianna was pleasantly sore when she woke up the next morning, and her arms were stiff from being bound above her head for so long the night before. It was nothing a hot shower couldn’t fix, although the warm water didn’t do anything to alleviate her fatigue and the cloying feeling of heat behind her eyes.

The sense of heaviness in her chest persisted as she took the last of her old contraceptives and the day’s half-ration of pills— she’d been cutting her medication in half for weeks now to spread out the dose and stave off the moment when she would have to go off of all of them completely. On another day, she might have considered putting off the morning’s work until she had time to do a small workout and stretch away the muscle fatigue, but she didn’t want to leave Alannis waiting.

Cianna arrived at their meeting spot forty-five minutes early, and wasn’t surprised to find the old lady already waiting on the wooden bench. Cianna had long-since given up on trying to compete with the town’s most experienced forager over who could show up first, since that would only result in Alannis waking up and leaving her home even earlier than she already did.

Alannis Janesdottir looked good for a woman whose years of life counted in the triple-digits: the white-haired old lady could have easily passed for a young seventy.

“Hello, dear.” Alannis greeted Cianna with an offered thermos when the blonde-haired amazon stopped before the bench. Cianna took the metal container and wordlessly poured herself a small cup of the fragrant, herbal infusion. “I hope you’re feeling well today— we have a lot of ground to cover.”

“Me? I’ve had this stupid, low-grade fever for days, but I’m fine,” Cianna said with a roll of her eyes. “You’re the one I’m worried about. I really think you should reconsider letting me take over the foraging for the rest of the season. It’s just too cold out here, and your lungs... I just don’t want you catching a fever at your age.”

“I’ve been gathering nuts and berries and herbs in these woods since—”

“Since sixty years before I was born, yes,” Cianna finished for her. She and Alannis had had this conversation so many times by now that either of them could have spoken all of the other’s lines. Of course, Cianna didn’t bother mentioning that she’d actually been born long, long before Janesdottir.

Spending a two and a half centuries half frozen in a cutting-edge cryogenic pod really kept one looking youthful.

“A low fever, eh?” Alannis asked, smoothly changing the subject as she rose on legs that were still steady despite a century of living. “The drink should help. Conifer needles are high in vitamins A and C, and full of antioxidants. Just what you need to keep you healthy, which is especially important now.”

“Pine needles?” Cianna scowled doubtfully at the old woman, but took a sip when Alannis gestured at her. “Yep, yeah... that tastes exactly as bad as I thought it would. Who would ever put put needles in tea?”

“It’s not tea, dear,” Alannis explained with a bemused expression on her face. “It’s an infusion. It’s only tea if it has tea leaves in it.”

Cianna rolled her eyes again and held out a hand to held the old forager step over a fallen log. “Well, it tastes awful.”

“I never promised it wouldn’t, love. Now, what might we go looking for today?”

She asked the question like a teacher giving her student a pop quiz, but Cianna couldn’t tell if Alannis was testing how much she had learned from the old lady... or if she was still testing to see if Cianna really was a local. This game of cat and mouse was so familiar to Cianna by now that she didn’t even blink. “There are a lot of winter forageables. Acorns, wintergreen berries for eating or leaves for chewing on or making into tea—”

“Infusion, dear. It’s only a tea if it has—”

“Actual tea in it, yes,” Cianna finished for her. “And hawthorn berries— and yes, I know we have to skip the seeds, which are poisonous.”

“Nuts and berries and mint leaves,” Janesdottir said with a nod. “Sounds like quite a feast. Are you sure you’re alright, dear?”

“I told you, I’m fine.” Cianna wiped her wrist across her damp forehead. “Just a bit warm.”

“You look tired, Cianna. No sense pushing yourself if you’re sick. If you want to go home and rest...”

“I probably didn’t sleep well last night, that’s all,” Cianna said quickly. Alannis looked genuinely concerned for her, but seeing the small, thin old lady fussing over her just annoyed Cianna. Which one of them was a career soldier, used to waking up at four in the morning to run a dozen laps around the facility before breakfast? “Don’t worry so much about me, old lady. Maybe we can make a detour and find you some rose hip?”

“Rose hip is supposed to increase blood flow and prevent disease.” Alannis politely took the bait and allowed Cianna to change the subject. “I don’t know about all of that, but it tastes really nice when you brew it into a warm drink. Oh, or a jelly! And if I wanted to stock up on medicinals, I would also look for...”

“Usnea, also known as old man’s beard.” They stopped to stare upwards at a tall pine tree, and the long strands of lichen growing down from a branch. “You can make it into a tincture and apply it directly to wounds.”

“Or drink it hot to help with indigestion, fever, pain, and inflammation.” She gave Cianna a pointed look as she listed off these benefits, which the soldier pretended to ignore. “Exactly what someone in your condition could benefit from. Why don’t you gather a few clippings?”

“If you’d like,” Cianna offered noncommittally. “Most of us locals just call it Old Man’s Beard, you know.”

“Yes. Us locals.”

Cianna was tall enough to reach the bottom half of the long strings that grew like an actual old man’s beard from the branches of the tree, and she snipped a few strands to drop in a small bag. “That enough?”

“It’ll do, dear,” the old woman said, voice tinged with something like concern. “Why don’t we rest a moment before we move on?”

Then it was Cianna’s turn to be concerned. “If you’re feel tired, Alannis, I can take over for you today. I’ll walk you home, then I can come back and grab some more—” Alannis barked out a laugh, sounding so surprised and amused that Cianna stammered to a stop.

“I was just worried about you, love,” Alannis told her. And when Cianna shot her a puzzled look, she sighed and went on. “You’re moving slow today, like you’re tired. And you’re sweating a lot— even for you.”

It was true that Cianna had always run warm, a side effect of the genetic augmentations she’d been born with. It meant that she was a bit more comfortable in the cool weather than most, but it didn’t explain why she felt like someone had set her brain to a low simmer this morning. “I’m fine, Alannis. It’s just a light fever, I’ll sleep it off.”

“How long has it been going on for?” the white-haired woman asked, ignoring Cianna’s protests.

“A few days... no, maybe a couple of weeks?” Cianna reluctantly accepted the metal mug from Alannis and let the old woman pour her another cup of that awful tea— infusion, whatever. “It sort of crept up on me. It hasn’t gotten any worse, just sort of lingering— ugh, that tastes awful!”

“Maybe you’ve got a flu, dear,” Janesdottir suggested. She was squinting at Cianna, appraising her, as if looking for something. “We can go home early, if you like.”

“It’s not a flu, I think it’s just—” Cianna caught herself mid-sentence, shocked that she’d almost mentioned the pharmaceutical cocktail she’d been taking since waking up in the new world. Just how tired was she that she was blundering along so incautiously? Maybe Alannis was right, she thought. Some extra rest today might help.

“This tea really is awful,” Cianna said through a grimace as she took another sip.

“You know it’s an infusion, not tea,” Alannis chided. “Stop trying to change the subject. I have a hunch that there’s something specific you don’t want to tell me. You’re not as clever or subtle as you think you are.”

“There’s nothing I—”

“In fact,” Alannis continued, cutting the much larger woman off again, “I actually know exactly what it is that you don’t want to tell me.”

“I seriously doubt that...”

Alannis politely ignored Cianna’s commentary. “I didn’t want to say anything before, because it’s obvious how much you enjoy your privacy. But it really does seem like the best way to make sure you can talk to me about whatever is going on for you, because I don’t think you have a flu. Here, wipe the snow off this log, dear, so we can sit down for a spell.”

Cianna did as she was asked, mutely sweeping a gloved hand over the fallen tree to clear enough space for her and the older— but also sort of younger— woman to sit.

“Thank you, Cianna.” Alannis sat down with a grunt, while Cianna settled in with much more grace despite probably outweighing the smaller woman by the better part of two hundred pounds. “Now, before I tell you what I know, I just wanted to assure you that it’s not your fault. You were very, very sneaky, and I doubt anyone else figured out your secret.”

Cianna’s heart, already prone to over-performing in stressful scenarios, started racing in her chest at the word “secret”.

There was no way Alannis had figured out her identity, right? And if she had, could she have told anyone else? Would Cianna be in danger if the local government knew she was a member of a military organization, even if it was now defunct?

Alannis must have been able to see Cianna’s mounting anxiety, as she laid a small, frail hand over Cianna’s much larger fingers. “Just breathe, dear. You’re in no danger here. No matter where you were from before, you are part of our community. Elk River Valley looks out for its own.”

Cianna latched onto those words, using them as an anchor as she grounded herself with a few deep breaths. She had a home, now. A community. A mentor. A partner.

“That’s better.” Alannis gave her a warm, genuine smile, and Cianna was nearly shocked by how much that simple look was able to reassure her. “Now, just to make sure we’re on the same page: I know that you are from what we might call the ‘old world’. You were part of the military during the last great war, which ended a bit over two hundred and seventy years ago. You would have missed the last year or so of it, the awful and drawn-out finale, since you were cryogenically frozen alongside ten others as part of an operation code-named Snow White.”

“Wh— How do you know all this?” Cianna barely even recognized the small, quiet voice she spoke in. Even as a young girl, she’d had a strong, booming voice— she’d been trained almost from birth to become a leader, and leaders didn’t mumble or murmur.

“I know about operation Snow White— a delightfully cute name, by the way— because I’ve met other members of your fireteam.” She saw Cianna’s sudden excitement and shook her head sadly. “They woke up long before you did, I’m afraid. Several decades ago, when I was much younger.”

“If they all woke up years back, how come I...”

“I’m not fully sure, to be honest. But I’ve put some things together over the years, and I think I have a pretty sound guess, if you’d like to hear it.”

Cianna nodded mutely, and Alannis Janesdottir gave her another of those sad smiles. Then the old woman gave the now-cooled herbal infusion in Cianna’s hand a pointed look.

“Alright then,” Alannis said when Cianna took another obedient sip of the foul brew. The needles of the local coniferous trees might be a great source of antioxidants, but there was no excusing the taste. “Here’s what I know for sure. There was an earthquake some years back. Forty years ago, maybe? No, it was before Hank had his little one, and she’s already had kids of her own, and now they’re all grown up, so it must be more like fifty years, or even... never mind how long ago. There was an earthquake, and a subsequent flood fifty or more years ago. At that time, your military base, so well-hidden that no one else ever knew it existed, partially collapsed. The fallen ceiling killed two of your comrades instantly, I’m afraid, but at least they perished in their sleep.”

Cianna winced, and opened her mouth to ask who they’d lost, but stopped short when Alannis gave her an impatient wave. “No interruptions now, dear. Not until I’m finished. Now where was I... Oh, right. Two soldiers were killed when their pods were crushed, but they actually lost three. You see, I later learned that a third pod was on the other side of the collapse, and everyone had just assumed it was destroyed as well. The facility registered the emergency and its fancy artificial intelligence, or heuristic protocols, or whatever you want to call it— the facility responded by waking the inhabitants of the eight remaining pods.”

“Didn’t they check to see if all three missing pods were crushed?” Cianna asked, then winced when Alannis raised a brow and shot her a stern look. “Right, sorry. No interruptions.”

“The facility was unstable, you see? Ceiling cracked, at risk of collapsing at any moment. And then there was the flood waters coming in. The captain and her seven remaining soldiers woke in a hurry, and staggered out of the facility to find themselves in a world that was both familiar but also powerfully changed. Sound familiar?”

Cianna nodded mutely, earning a smile from the older woman before she continued on. “They explored the area, figured out how much time had gone by, and correctly determined that their mission had failed long before it ever began. They dispersed and integrated into a smattering of communities, abandoning their old identities.”

“But how did I...”

“When you woke, your pod was nowhere near the facility, correct?” Alannis was clearly waiting for an answer here, so Cianna gave her a nod. “It had been moved quite a distance. I think it happened during that flood. Rushing floodwater can move a car, and a disconnected cryogenic pod is lighter than that.”

“So the waters carried my pod downstream... to here?”

“Seems that way,” Alannis said with a nod. “And buried it under muck and sediment. The machine must have malfunctioned, and didn’t wake you up like it probably should have. And so it carried on, keeping you alive and frozen...”

“Until the power core it was using as backup power ran out,” Cianna concluded, and Alannis nodded.

She was silent for a time, and Alannis was content to let Cianna digest this information privately. If what the old woman had said was true, then... then Cianna’s mission was over. Every single one of her comrades, her captain and the nine teammates that were left from the cohort she had served with, were dead. There was no one left to find, no team or command structure to reconnect with.

This information, this catastrophic revelation, should have crushed her. It should have been enough to break the soldier, except that...

“I think I already knew,” Cianna whispered. “The odds of even one of us being alive almost three centuries later was already so infinitesimally small that I think I accepted months ago that they were gone. It was just... too long.”

“I’m sorry, dear,” Alannis offered, squeezing Cianna’s large had a bit tighter. Cianna squeezed her right back, mindful of her great strength and the other woman’s relatively frailer bones.

“Thank you,” Cianna said with a bowed head. But like a true soldier, she didn’t let her sadness slow her down. She was in information-gathering mode, so every other thought was carefully compartmentalized and tucked away for later consideration. “But that doesn’t explain how you knew where I was from. I’d hidden my military insignia long before I met you, and surely the members of my team weren’t the only seven-foot-tall people you’ve met. It must have been when I used the power armour to shut down the plant, right? I worried that once anyone saw the suit, they’d know that I—”

“Oh no, dear,” Alannis interrupted her softly. “I knew long before that. I knew what you were before you even walked into town.”

“What? How could you possibly...” But Cianna’s brain was finally working at full steam again, and she sighed in exasperation as she put together the obvious. “It was late summer. You must have been out here foraging.”

“Mm-hmm.” She sounded amused this time. “I watched you punch your way up through the earth and struggle your way out of that old armour like a butterfly from its cocoon. I saw your pod, your armour, your emblems... I worried you might be feeling a bit worked up after your rude awakening, so I decided to leave before you even finished shedding the metal shell. Went back to town to get ready to explain to everyone what was going on, if you came in full of bluster.”

“But then why didn’t you say anything?”

“To you or to the town?” Alannis asked, and when Cianna shrugged as if to say ‘all of the above’, she chuckled again. “I didn’t tell anyone else in town because it wasn’t their business. I figured I could keep an eye on you well enough, make sure you weren’t planning any mischief. And I didn’t say anything to you because you never brought it up, dear. It wasn’t hard to figure out that you’re a very private person, and I decided that I wouldn’t press you about anything until you were ready.”

“Until today, that is,” Cianna corrected, and Alannis gave her an amused shrug. “Because... you were worried about my fever?”

“It might be more than a fever,” Janesdottir told her again. “Now that you know you can speak freely, tell me what else is going on.”

“Like I said, it feels like a low-grade fever that just won’t quit,” Cianna said pensively. “I’m worried that it’s because I’ve been taking half doses of most of my meds, to make them last a bit longer. So this might just be a slower withdrawal effect.”

It was surprisingly comforting to be able to talk about this with someone else. She spent the first four months keeping this secret from everyone in Elk River Valley. Even though she’d been able to talk to Zavier about it for the last two months since coming clean to him about her past, it had still been lonely and frustrating to pretend to be someone and something else around the rest of the world.

“Mmm, I can see why that would be a challenge,” Alannis agreed thoughtfully. “How does your chest feel?”

“My chest? I’m not showing signs of pneumonia or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. But my heart feels like it’s been going a bit too fast sometimes, but it’s hard to tell because some of my... augmentations.” It felt weird to be able to say that part out loud to another person, but Alannis just nodded in understanding. “But recently, it feels like I’m working just a bit harder, feeling just a bit short of breath.”

“Any pain?”

“No, it doesn’t hurt.” Cianna paused, then reconsidered for another moment. “Well, the outside of my chest has been a bit sore for the last few weeks. Maybe even swollen?”

“The outside of your chest?” Alannis asked, clearly amused. “You mean your breasts, dear?”

“I— that’s, uh,” Cianna stammered, feeling a prickle of heat in her cheeks. The sudden warmth was a nice contrast with the chilly winter breeze. “Yeah, yes. My breasts.”

“That’s quite common for women in your condition. The higher temperature and hear rate, too.”

“In my condition?” Cianna turned to face the old woman again, forgetting her earlier embarrassment. “You mean you know what’s wrong?”

“Yes, Cianna, dear.” Alannis looked like she was struggling to choose between being sympathetic or being amused at Cianna’s expense. “It even explains the fatigue, for that matter. Plenty of women start feeling tired when they’re pregnant. But the good news is that most of the rest of those symptoms should ease in a few—”

“I’m not pregnant!” Cianna’s voice was sharper than she’d meant it to be, almost shrill as it echoed off of the snowy trees.

“Trust me, dear. I have seen a lot of pregnancies in my century of living.”

“Well, you’re wrong on this one,” Cianna insisted. “I’ve been on contraceptives for most of my adult life. And old-world pharmaceuticals were serious business. I’ve taken the pill every single day— I only just ran out today. And I’m waiting for the shipment of meds from the city so I can try a few types out and figure out which one will work without screwing with my system too badly.”

“You may as well leave those for someone else in town who might need them,” Alannis told her seriously. “I’m not sure it’s healthy to take any of those while you’re pregnant.”

“But I’ve been—”

“Medicine has an expiry date, dear,” Alannis interjected before Cianna could argue, and the whole world seemed to freeze. Every word the old woman spoke hit her with the force of a well-aimed shot from a sniper rifle. “You only held up so well in the cryogenic state because of the chemicals they pumped into you before freezing you, but your meds didn’t have any extra help. Every pill you’ve had with you probably hasn’t been effective since the day you woke up.”

“Uh, I,” Cianna stammered, standing up suddenly. The world spun slowly around her, threatening to tip her over. “You’re wrong, Alannis. I know I’m not pregnant.”

“That’s alright, dear,” the old forager said soothingly as she stood up too. “Maybe I’m right, maybe not. Why don’t you take a moment to—”

“I need to go home,” Cianna mumbled, not listening to the other woman. “Are you... If I go, will you be alright finding your way back on your own?”

“I’ve been foraging around here for eighty years before you woke up, Cianna,” she said patiently. “It’s not too far back to my house from here. And I’ve got my radio to get a hold of someone in town if I get lost or have trouble. You go on ahead, dear.”

Cianna gave the old woman one more distracted nod, turned back towards home, and set off at a jog.

She hoped that a nice, brisk walk would clear her mind— heaven knew that Cianna had used exercise to deal with unpleasant emotions before. But with each long stride, her mind just felt more muddied. The anxiety dug at her, a sharp rock in the shoe that poked every time she took a step.

Alannis was wrong. She didn’t know Cianna. She might have known more about the antiquated soldier’s past than Cianna would have ever thought possible, but that didn’t mean the old woman knew everything about her.

It didn’t take her long to make it home, tension speeding her footsteps.

Zavier called out from upstairs as soon as Cianna stepped through their front door, and the sound of his voice did more to ease her tension than a dozen workouts ever could.

“You’re back earlier than I expected,” he chirped as she came upstairs and found him at the kitchen island. He had a knife in hand, and a variety of neatly-diced vegetables sat in piles on a cutting board. “I’m just making up a salad. You want?”

“That sounds divine,” she said with a genuine smile.

“Any luck on your hunt?”

“Depends on if you call coming home with a mitt full of Old Man’s Beard ‘luck’.”

“Like the plant, or an actual beard?” Zavier asked with a wry smile as he portioned the food into two bowls. It was a surprisingly good selection of greens for the season, courtesy of the town’s large greenhouse— which in turn was powered by the geothermal plant that Cianna had saved from catastrophe just two months ago.

“It’s a lichen, not a plant,” she corrected absentmindedly as she settled onto one of the stools that sat before the wide counter that divided kitchen from living room. She pulled out the small bag, and separated out a handful— how much did you need to make two cups of the disgusting stuff? “Technically, that makes it an algae colony. But you can make tea out of it. Supposed to be good for indigestion, fever, pain...”

Cianna paused, hand halfway out of the bag, as she remembered the way Alannis had looked at her as she listed out the infusion’s benefits. The expert forager had said it was exactly what someone in Cianna’s “condition” might need. The foraged medicine would surely help a woman dealing with the early symptoms of pregnancy.

Not that Cianna was pregnant, of course. But obvious the old lady thought she was.

“You okay, Ci?” Zavier asked softly, concern evident in his voice as he circled around the island to stand behind her. He probably had to stand as tall as he could to reach her shoulders, but the feeling of his strong, dexterous fingers sinking into her sore muscles was heavenly. “You feel tense.”

“I’m fine, I just— oh, right there, Zave!”

Zavier chuckled as she groaned out in a mixture of pleasure and pain as he kneaded a particularly bothersome knot in her right shoulder. The next sound that slipped out of her mouth was close to the kind of sound she might make with more... intimate contact.

“You know,” Cianna said coyly, a grin spreading across her beautiful face, “I can think of other ways you could use those clever fingers of yours to relieve tension...”

“Oh really?” Zavier paused, hands still resting on her shoulders. “Do tell.”

She pressed against the edge of the counter and spun the stool around until she was facing him. Even sitting down on the swivelling seat, she was still taller than he was. Zavier didn’t miss a beat, immediately stepping into her space to wrap his arms over her shoulders and bringing his lips up to meet hers.

Today, Cianna was actually able to hold him in turn, and she gripped him around the ribs now as she returned the kiss. “What I’m thinking of is sort of like a massage, but from the inside.”

“I think I can picture exactly what you’re describing,” Zavier said in breathless snatches between kisses. His voice was thin with nerves and excitement, and Cianna couldn’t help but grin. “I can picture it very, very vividly.”

Without another word, Zavier simply dropped to his knees before in front of the stool she was sitting on. Cianna’s grin grew even wider as she watched this charming, beautiful, wonderful man kneel in front of her. She obligingly brought her legs together when he reached up to seize the band of her pants.

Cianna half-lifted herself from the stool to allow Zavier to pull her pants and underwear down over her wide, muscular hips, and past her toned ass. She settled in and stretched her legs straight out in front of her so he could pull the clothing the rest of the way down and off her feet before piling it neatly beside his knees. Then she spread her legs anew, parting her thighs to give him an unbroken view of the prize he wanted.

“This is where I’m holding a lot of tension,” she told him teasingly. “Do you think you can do anything about that?”

“I can certainly try,” he promised in a voice barely more than a whisper as he leaned in closer and closer to the place where her thighs came together.

Then his mouth was between her legs, his lips touching her labia and his breath hot against her. He didn’t rush into the heavy contact— even eager and excited as she was, Cianna preferred a little more warm-up time before the “main event”. Instead, he let his breath fall against her bare lips again, teasing her with its warmth, then slid his tongue up the skin just outside of her outer lip.

“Mmm,” Cianna sighed contentedly, head draping backwards to stare at the ceiling as Zavier warmed her up with light, almost teasing touches. “Good boy.”

There was no chance she was going to be willing to endure the remorseless teasing of the night before this time. But Zavier must have known that, or at least been far more eager this afternoon, because he smoothly transitioned from teasing to tasting, from tasting to lavishing.

Zavier laid his attention on thick, diligently attending to Cianna’s needs. He delved deep with his tongue at first, tasting her arousal, before sliding upwards and focusing his attention exactly where she wanted it.

It was clear just how much he’d learned in their time together. Cianna couldn’t even imagine how someone could be better with their tongue than Zavier. He didn’t like to talk nearly as long or as often as most people did, but she would never argue that the young man didn’t know how to use his mouth.

“That’s helping a lot,” Cianna cooed as Zavier latched himself more firmly against the engorged, peaked point of her arousal. “That’s exactly what I need. Don’t you stop, mister.”

And he didn’t. Zavier licked and licked, finding a comfortable rhythm and keeping to it as he drove her steadily onward and upwards. It wasn’t long before Cianna found her tension rising towards a sharp point, in spite of all the talk about relieving pressure. But Zavier just kept at it, working that lovely mouth of his and swiping his tongue over her clit again and again until Cianna couldn’t take it anymore.

She came with a scream, muscular thighs wrapping around his head and squeezing as her whole body tensed up. Zavier didn’t complain about the tension, just kept using his mouth, kept tongue-fucking her as Cianna came against his face.

Liquid pleasure seeped from her as the neurons in her spine fired in overload, and she briefly wondered if the neighbours could hear her cries of ecstasy. Before long, Zavier’s parents were going to come home, and she was going to have to learn to find her pleasure more quietly... or find somewhere else for her and her boyfriend to live. But until then, she was happy to raise her voice and let the sky know just how much she appreciated Zavier’s oral attention.

As she came down from her high, her shirt suddenly seemed much too confining. Cianna stripped it over her head and tossed it aside with none of the concern Zavier had shown for her clothing, and her supportive sports bra soon followed.

Zavier was still between her legs, still licking and sucking, as Cianna finished stripping down. But it didn’t seem right for her to get all the pleasure, when he must surely have his own tension she could help alleviate.

“Get up here,” she whispered, and Zavier was even quicker to obey this command. He sprung back to his feet in the way that only someone under twenty can manage without their knees popping, and Cianna pulled him in for another kiss.

Her hands were fast and aggressive, lacking any of his delicacy as she pulled his shirt up over his head, then opened his belt and the top button of his slacks. His mouth was hot and tasted like her again, and was just as needy as her own. Nobody in the world could match a nineteen year old boy in terms of raw libido— so far, he’d always been willing to engage in sex at the merest hint of a suggestion.

Cianna pushed at the top of his pants, and Zavier wiggled his hips so she could help him out of the clothing. Her legs were spread wide in clear invitation, but with a grunt of frustration she realized the angle wouldn’t work. Zavier wasn’t even tall enough to line up with Cianna’s need when she was sitting on the tall stool.

She slid forward on the seat, pushing him lightly backwards as she came to her feet before him. But of course, even if she turned around and bent over, the angle still wouldn’t be right. She was over seven feet tall while Zavier wasn’t even five-foot-six. Cianna’s eyes wandered down the space between their bodies, coming to rest on the hard shaft jutting out to press against her inner thighs. They could always lie down...

But then her eyes flicked back over to the stool. Would that work better? Yeah, it would definitely work.

“Want to get up on that stool, Zave?” His eyes followed her gaze, although he started moving before he even had time to figure out what she meant. He really was a very, very obedient young man. “If you kneel on it, and I turn around like this...”

Cianna put her back to Zavier, and she heard his sharp intake of breath as he picked up on her meaning. Or maybe he was just that excited to see her nude backside.

Either way, he scrambled up to the height offered by the seat as Cianna brought her legs together and went up on the tips of her toes to get a bit more height. She gave a quick glance over her shoulder, checking his progress, and nodded in satisfaction. This would definitely work.

With her legs held so close together, she had to bend quite far over to make herself open for the young man kneeling on the seat behind her, but she decided the results were well worth it as Zavier took hold of her hip with one hand, and his cock in the other. And then he was pressing against her, the swollen tip of his cock nestling between her well-lubricated lips, and she didn’t need to think anymore.

Zavier slid his cockhead back down along the length of her slit once more, eliciting an excited moan from the athletic blonde as he brushed against her clit, before gliding back up to the opening to her wetness.

“I’m ready for you, Zave,” she whispered in a low, almost sultry voice, and her tan-skinned lover shuddered in palpable excitement.

And when he finally took her, when he finally rolled his hips forward and pushed the head through the tight seal of her lips, their excitement came out in a synchronized groan. And when he slid all the way home, pressing deep until every inch of him was buried in Cianna’s wetness, she couldn’t help her gasp of pleasure. And when Zavier started moving his hips again, started pulling himself out before pressing into her...

“God yes, Zavier.” Cianna gripped the edge of the counter so tight that her knuckles turned white.

“You feel so good, Cianna,” Zavier gasped as he bucked his hips forward again and again. Every motion, every deep thrust, every long slide of his delightful cock pressing into her wet, silken embrace, was pure perfection. “I can never get enough of you.”

“You too! I could do this every single day.”

The tightening of Zavier’s grip on her hips clearly telegraphed his enjoyment, which only further heightened hers. “That’s a big promise to keep, Ci.”

Sex every single day might have been a big promise, but it also wasn’t much of an exaggeration. She had first given him a blowjob four months ago, as a way of showing her gratitude for all that he’d done for her, and then there had been nothing else sexual between them for more than a month. Then she’d had invited him into her bedroom shortly after he saved her life, back in November.

That first morning they spent together had been like the opening of a floodgate. Since then, they had been almost inseparable. Insatiable. In the last two and a half months, they really had had sex almost every single day, if not more than once. They were two young, healthy adults in the honeymoon period of their relationship, after all.

“Just you watch me.” Cianna craned her head to smirk at him over her shoulder.

Zavier’s face was a mask of lust and pleasure as he pulled her hips back towards his next thrust, trying to get himself even deeper into her welcoming embrace. The extra force of it had her gasping and groaning, until it was too hard to keep up her banter as flashes of pleasure raced up her spine with each thrust.

For a moment, Alannis’ words rose up through the sex-addled haze of Cianna’s mind. She couldn’t really be pregnant, could she?

If they had been having sex almost every day, just how many times did that actually translate to— four, five, six dozen? And how many of those times had she let him slide his bare, unsheathed cock into her slickened pussy, just like today? A pussy that, as the old woman had warned her, might well be completely unprotected?

Of all those times they’d had unprotected sex, how many times had Zavier reached the peak of his pleasure inside of her? Not every time they’d had sex, of course— plenty of those sexual encounters had ended with his cum in or on her mouth, or coating some other part of her or even him— but well over half of the time. Just how many loads of his virile cum had this young man pumped into her? If her birth control really had been defunct this whole time, and she had to admit that it seemed possible now, then surely having dozens of loads of his cum dumped as deep as he could get it would be incredibly risky.

Zavier just kept thrusting away, completely unaware of the direction of Cianna’s thoughts as she hung her head down between her arms.

Had they really been having unprotected sex this whole time? Strangely, this thought didn’t evoke as big a wave of fear or anxiety as Cianna would have expected it to. If anything, she only felt hotter inside as she wondered about the risks they’d taken. Wetter, slicker, more sensitive. Why wasn’t she more concerned? Why wasn’t she horrified?

Too many thoughts were floating through her brain. Sure, maybe they had taken some risks. Maybe her pills hadn’t given her the protection she’d thought they had, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was actually pregnant.

One of her hands slid from the counter-top and dipped between her legs, finding the sensitive point at the top of her sex. She was hot and wet and puffy, engorged with arousal, and it was all too easy to let her middle and ring fingers grow slick with her own lubrication, and spread that upwards. Then Cianna was pressing down against her clit, applying pressure and rubbing in a tight circle.

Cianna couldn’t stop wondering at her own reaction, her own lack of fear at the idea that she might have gotten herself pregnant. Her thoughts were too much, too loud. She needed him to knock any sense from her mind, to fuck her so hard that she couldn’t think anymore. “Faster, Zave. I want you to fuck me faster.”

“Anything for you,” he hissed, somewhat ironically. It’s not like the teenage boy needed much convincing to pound his hot, athletic girlfriend faster.

“Harder, babe.” If he could fuck her hard and fast and good enough, maybe this anxiety would go away. She just needed him to slam into her faster, faster, faster.

Zavier panted behind her with the effort of his pumping, but he didn’t quite reach the level she needed. He and Cianna had had sex in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of positions, fast and slow alike. She knew he could do better, do more than this, but with every hard thrust of his hips, the stool under him rocked audibly.

“I can’t— I can’t go faster,” he grunted plaintively. “The stupid stool... I just don’t have the leverage.”

Cianna groaned with desperation. She needed him to pound every single thought, every single worry, out of her head. Not for the first time in her life, she silently cursed her height and the inconveniences that came with it— this would easier if he could just reach her properly when she was bent over.

“If I move any faster, the damn thing will tip.” Then he stopped moving entirely, and Cianna nearly growled. “Do you want to try a new position?”

“I’m game for just about anything right now,” Cianna told Zavier with a hungry grin over her shoulder.

“I read about it, while I was, uh...” Zavier actually looked embarrassed, which was enough to pique Cianna’s interest in and of itself. “While I was doing research.”

“Go on,” she encouraged him gently, deciding not to tease him this time for his sudden bashfulness, nor for apparently doing ‘research’ into new positions. “Where do you want me?”

Zavier leaned back enough for his stiffness to slide out of her, and Cianna almost winced at the sudden feeling of emptiness. There she’d been, begging for more-more-more, and now she just had an unfulfilled emptiness inside of her again. He lifted his chin to indicate the adjoining living room, with its fireplace and the plush rug before of it, and Cianna grinned again. They’d had sex on that exact piece of caret, in front of the fire, on a few occasions before.

“I’ll show you,” he offered as he slid off the offending stool. Then he amused her again by offering his hand, like a gentleman escorting a lady, and led her towards the plush fabric on the floor.

He lowered himself down before her, laying down on the rug without ever taking his eyes off of her. There was something so endearing about the way he had dragged her over here, like a kid excited to show off his new toy— even cuter was the bashful smile on his face and the hint of blush on his cheeks, like he was embarrassed to be showing her.

“It’s... it’s a bit different,” he said hesitantly. “I kind of— I’ll put my legs up, like this...”

Still flat on his back, Zavier sort of folded himself up, bringing his hips up into the air and his knees towards his chest. Cianna was briefly reminded of the time she’d taken almost that exact position, draping her knees over his shoulders while he fucked her from above and behind.

The big difference here, of course, was the presence of a stiff erection jutting straight out.

“And then you sort of... you sort of kneel behind me?” Zavier waved a hand, looking more bashful than ever. “And you can, you know—”

Feeling merciful, not to mention incredibly eager to sink the teen’s long, delicious cock back into her, Cianna filled in the gap for him: “Ride you?”

He nodded appreciatively, with as much eagerness as she was feeling, and Cianna considered the position for a moment. Obviously, she could understand why she would want to straddle Zavier’s hips and ride his cock, but she was confused as to the athletic, yoga-like pose he’d taken.

“It’s called the Amazon position,” Zavier offered, obviously seeing the uncertainty on her face as Cianna moved to stand with one foot on either side of the smaller man’s ribs. “It’s supposed to feel like... like you’re the one fucking me.”

“Oh really?” she asked with a quirk of her brows and a wry smile forming on her lips. “I can see how that would be nice...”

Feeling more confident, Cianna dropped to her knees behind Zavier, then sidled forward until she had one knee on either side of his narrow hips and small backside. He held his legs up, hands clutching behind his own knees, to keep himself nicely folded up as Cianna got herself situated above him. A shiver of anticipation trickled down her spine as the athletic blonde reached between them to grab his hardness and give it a final, loving stroke before angling it to point up towards her.

Cianna was slick with her copious arousal— not to mention the lingering saliva from when Zavier’s mouth had been plastered against her pussy. Zavier’s cock, by extension, was just as slippery, and once his shaft was suitably lined up with the opening of her lips, he slid in with almost no effort.

“Yeah, just— just like that,” Zavier sighed as Cianna pushed forward and downwards and started sinking downwards onto his length.

In a moment, she had him fully inside of her. Every inch of his cock was nestled within the tight confines of her inner walls, right where he was meant to be.

As she wiggled a bit to adjust settle more comfortably, she decided that Zavier was right: despite it being his cock sinking into her pussy, it really did feel like she was the one fucking him.

Cianna raised her hips and eased herself back forward, exploring the wonders of this position. This motion wasn’t quite the same as when she was straddling his hips. Instead of rocking on him, or even lifting herself up and down with her thighs, she was really just thrusting her hips forward.

“That feels amazing,” Zavier sighed, and Cianna couldn’t disagree.

Cianna rolled her hips backwards, sliding partway off his slickened shaft, before thrusting forward to embed herself on him again. While she may have been straddling his ass, legs opened around him, his legs were spread and held in the air to leave Cianna in total control. It was almost hard to tell whose shaft was sliding into whose pussy, who was fucking whom.

Starting to grow accustomed to the new position, Cianna tried driving her hips forward a bit harder, and gasped at the resulting sensation as Zavier’s cock slammed back into her.

“Oh!” he gasped as Cianna thrust forward again, driving herself onto his shaft. “Oh, wow!”

A wide, delighted grin crossed Cianna’s face as she found her rhythm, taking Zavier— or maybe just allowing herself to be taken— with hard, fast motions. His legs were still pointing straight up, so Cianna shifted her grip to Zavier’s ankles for more leverage and got into pounding him with reckless abandon.

“You like that?” Cianna hissed as she drove herself forward again and again. She’d been getting close while bent over the counter with Zavier behind her, and it was easy to pick up where she’d left off. Especially when the angle of his cock made it brush against her clit with each powerful thrust of her hips. And the way the position her feel so powerful, while treating her to a view of Zavier supine and spread out in front of her, certainly helped.

If Zavier minded being manhandled or having his cock pointing down instead of out, he certainly wasn’t showing it.

“You’re doing so good, Zave.” The pleasure mounting with each sharp thrust left Cianna’s voice nearly a whisper. Zavier’s only answer was a pleased whimpering, which Cianna took as encouragement. She started giving it to him even harder and faster, grinding her hips forward and impaling herself on his hardness over and over.

And then the pleasure and tension and pressure building inside of her found its peak, and suddenly Cianna was cumming.

She threw back her head and cried out as pleasure overtook her, clenching down around and above him, and distantly she could hear Zavier’s answering groan. Cianna kept moving, kept snapping her hips forward, kept his cock sawing in and out of her.

Each deep penetration only spurred her on, until she was bucking in a frenzy. The living space was filled with the wet slapping of their bodies coming together, although this sound was nearly drowned out by the noise of Cianna’s ecstasy.

And just as her climax was reaching its peak, as her pleasure hit a dizzying height, Zavier gasped and managed to stammer out that he was cumming, too. Then his shaft was even stiffer, even harder and thicker inside of her as Cianna pumped her hips forward and back with nearly blinding speed.

Cianna didn’t stop, didn’t slow, as Zavier reached his peak. Even knowing that she might well be unprotected, that she might well be at risk of becoming pregnant if a single sperm breached her cervix, Cianna kept riding.

His cock throbbed, throbbed, throbbed inside of her, the juddering rhythm of it not lining up at all with the motion of Cianna’s hips, but somehow adding to the beautiful symphony all the same. And as she drove her body forward, slamming her hips into Zavier’s to bring his length into the furthest depths of her, she felt him give another shuddering convulsion— and this time it came with a burst of sweet, sweet heat.

“Oh!” Cianna cried as she felt that first moment of her lover’s release, his hot cum surging up to inundate her. “Oh fuck, Zavier!”

The feeling of his explosive climax, the wave of sperm rushing out in a thick rope to paint her from the inside, only served to stoke the incandescent blaze of her orgasm. She clenched down with the walls of her pussy, squeezing him in a wet, silk-lined vice as she slid up and back down his throbbing length. The motions of her body, the way she gripped and massaged him, milked Zavier’s own orgasm out of him and drew him to new heights until he was groaning in a what sounded like both pleasure and pain beneath her.

The way she squeezed his climax out seemed to spur him to cum all the harder, and the second fluttering pulse of cum jetting up into Cianna’s waiting body accelerated her pleasure in turn. The two lovers gasped and shook as one, each orgasm feeding into the other’s until there was nothing but pleasure.

The teen filled her as best he could, pulsing and contracting to draw spurt after sperm-laden spurt up from his virile testes. And Cianna was happy to be filled, delighted to feel his warmth flowing up into her as she shook and brought her hips down to collide with his.

Eventually, her climax tapered off, and Zavier finally grew still inside of her. Cianna stared down at him, the warmth in her core and in her heart matched by the affection in his gaze.

“Holy shit,” she finally whispered.

“Yeah, me too.”

“That was...”

“Yeah,” he said again, just as quietly, “me too”.

Cianna rolled her muscular hips backwards, wincing in slight discomfort as his still-hard cock dragged along her chafed, oversensitive insides. Not caring about the mess currently leaking out of her, she laid down beside Zavier as he lowered his legs and seemed to deflate.

“Thank you for that,” she said quietly to the younger man. She was talking about more than just the fun new position.

“You’re welcome,” he answered, meaning more than just the sex.

They stared at each other for a long moment, studying each other as if trying to memorize every contour of the other’s face. “Zavier?”

“Yes, Cianna?” he asked with a muzzy smile.

“Do you love me?” The question that fell from her lips shocked her. Cianna had certainly not meant to ask that, had not meant to just blurt out such a massive question apropos nothing. She wasn’t ready to ask him, wasn’t ready to talk about it yet! Even more shocking than the question she’d just asked was the way her voice had sounded: self-conscious, thin, vulnerable.

Small.

“Of course I do,” he answered immediately, blinking in shock. “I— yes, of course, Cianna. I think I’ve loved you since the day I first met you.”

“Oh,” she said, voice just a bit more confident than it had been a moment before. “Well, good. Because Zavier... I love you, too.”

And then his hands were on her face, her hands beside his head, and they were kissing again. Her heart had only just started slowing down after the exertion of that massive orgasm, but the feeling of him kissing her sent her heart rate back into the stratosphere.

It wasn’t just the feel of him, which she loved. And it wasn’t just the taste of him, which she craved. It was the meaning of the kiss, the way it proved his words.

“I love you,” she said again, tasting the words as she spoke. “I love you, Zavier.”

“I love you, Cianna.”

He loved her. And she loved him. And that made this next part much easier.

“Zavier?” she asked again, pulling away from his lips enough to be able to watch his face.

“Yes, Cianna?” he repeated, an echo of the moment before.

Alannis was probably wrong. But it was possible that she was right. In fact, as her mind slowly cleared itself, rising above the post-coital haze like a ship emerging from a fog bank, she had to admit that it was even likely. And Zavier deserved to know, either way.

“I think I might be pregnant.”