A Gift of Love (in Both the Emotional and the Physical Sense)

“Ah, what a lovely couple!” Adventurer Mercenary Captain Mica’elle, of the Red Raptor, enthused, pulling her gorgeous red hair – with its single, bold black streak – which had been loosed during the ceremony she had just performed, into a businesslike ponytail. “I can tell, using my powers of telempathy, that young Milquetoast Rogers and his former employer, Sir Marzipan Carbonatus, will be very happy together, indeed.”

The dashing captain turned to her beautiful wife, fair-haired Chief Science and Medical Officer Chairite, with a loving smile. “Just as we are, dearest one!” she declared.

Chairite smiled back at her wife, but her dark eyes only barely twinkled. It could hardly be called even so much as a glimmer. “Of course,” she murmured.

O! If only Mica’elle’s telempathy would pick up on her soul-bonded lover’s vague sense of discontent! But one of the inexplicable side effects of the miraculous soul-bond of the telempaths of Lambda was that pretty often the soul-bonded telempath couldn’t tell when his or her deepest love was pissed off. Indeed, soul-bonded telempaths were occasionally even less perceptive than normal lovers, since they had never learned to listen for warning signs like the words “whatever you want is fine, of course” or “how many times do I have to ask you to stop emptying the contents of your pockets onto the coffee table every day?” like those lacking telempathy were forced to do in order to maintain relationships of any sort of happiness or length.

But no. Dashing Mica’elle had no idea that her heartmate, Chairite, was annoyed with her. Chairite frowned, running her fingers through her short, auburn hair, nibbling on her red-painted lips. How could she broach this delicate subject? For, upon witnessing Sir Marzipan and Milquetoast’s bright new love for one another, she was immediately struck with a longing for the earlier days in her relationship with Mica’elle, when all had been passion and excitement and activities of dubious legality. But now… Well. Chairite had only to reflect upon that morning’s lovemaking to pinpoint the source of her discontent:

Mica’elle was as attentive a lover as ever, of course, winding her fingers in Chairite’s silvery locks as she kissed her deeply, her tongue undulating into her mouth in a motion reminiscent of the erotic movements of the Gtharthian sea slug in a mating display. The former pirate’s other hand caressed Chairite’s pert breasts, and she slipped her thigh between her wife’s, bringing their bodies into intimate contact from mouth straight down to toes. Just as Chairite was beginning to gasp for breath, Mica’elle gently ended the kiss and slid down her body, mouthing at the rosy tips of her snow-white breasts before dipping lower to bite gently at the Chief Science and Medical Officer’s tender inner thigh.

As the Captain’s tongue slipped gently between the folds of the scientician’s feminine pleasure-purse, Chairite cried out, arching her back in delicious torment, her head thrashing upon the pillows, her eyes wildly scanning the room until they fixed upon – there. Those blasted frenulum crystals!

Indeed, at Chairite’s pleasure-soaked cry, the crystals had already begun to bud, and the Red Raptor‘s resident scientician knew that in the moment that she reached her inevitable climax, the buds would split, creating a new crop of profitable communication system components. This method of creating stable frenulum crystals had been an amazing breakthrough in the science of genespondic bonding, and one that Chairite had herself discovered. But the knowledge that her lovemaking was even now helping to solve the communications problems of the entire Dorgian Galaxy did little to comfort her.

“O! Mica’elle, my dearest love!” she cried out in ecstasy, her climax so great and so prolonged as to allow for exclamations of remarkable coherency. But what she did not say was: this sex is physically wonderful, but I feel that it is distinctly lacking in the passion and sense of overwhelming emotional connection of our earlier trysts, and, indeed, it has begun to feel almost perfunctory and businesslike, since all of our lovemaking must now take place in conditions optimal for the growth of these precious frenulum crystals!

There were few things beyond her considerable scientistic talents, Chairite reflected later that morning, gazing after the departing backs of Riadorf’s newest happy couple, but science was only rarely useful in matters of the heart.

“Well!” Mica’elle said, rubbing her hands together in the brisk motion of a person preparing to move on to some other activity after the successful completion of some task. “Now that the wedding ceremony has been performed, we should get to work preparing this morning’s frenulum crystals for transport, don’t you think, beloved?”

“If you say so, darling,” Chairite replied, her violet eyes flashing a message in a code that any more perceptive and less telempathic woman would have easily deciphered as a signal to take cover against friendly fire. But alas! Mica’elle’s emotional cryptology once again proved insufficient!

“I’m so glad you agree!” the daring Adventurer Mercenary Captain enthused, rifling her fingers through her soulmate’s knee-length raven tresses. “You see, the crystals-”

“O!” Chairite cried, driven to the depths of her endurance, as a Joul whale-donkey is driven to the depths of the oceans of Gij by its skilled drivers. “Crystals, crystals, crystals! All you care about are the Proet-damned frenulum crystals!”

“My heart’s half?”

“Are you so blind?” Chairite demanded, her tufted cat-like ears twitching. “Oh, that’s right! You’re not! Because I, as Chief Science and Medical Officer, checked your eyesight only three days ago and no degenerative blindness is that swift (except perhaps ensorenating goutflaxia, from the Mikli system). And we are on the other side of the galaxy from that benighted region!”

Mica’elle’s black eyes, indeed possessed of twenty-twenty vision in all but the matters of the heart, opened wide! “My dainty duck!” she cried. “My dear!”

“Enough!” Chairite expelled, her nictitating eyelids blinking furiously to wash away her fulsome and crystalline tears. “I need some me-time!” And she blundered her way towards the door, pausing only to disentangle her long pink curls from a space-cactus.

“But we’re soul-bonded! We only have us-time!” Mica’elle remembered to mention, but alas, too late. The space-door had shut firmly behind her lavender-toed lover. “Oh, poot,” she added indecorously, along with a number of other revolting phrases which she had picked up from her rough, yet loyal crew of pirates-turned-adventurer mercenaries. “I suppose that I shall have to confess!”

“Er… excuse me?” coughed a small voice from behind her, and Mica’elle turned fiercely, one hand on the hilt of her lumino-epee, ready to draw with a moment’s swiftness, before she recognized the countenance of the speaker as that of Lieutenant Awkward Jeffries, the Red Raptor’s pet groomer. He immediately blanched, olive skin turning sallow.

Mica’elle frowned slightly less fiercely, for the Lieutenant was a skilled technician in his demanding and crucial position, and released the hilt of her deadly weapon, with the air of a captain who has just decided not to kill an eavesdropping insubordinate, no matter how rude it is to listen in to the conversations of others, particularly when they are having a lover’s quarrel, unless, of course, one is an author, in which case the Muses decree that such inquisitiveness is not merely helpful, but a Sacred Duty to Art.

Besides, her telempathy was telling her that the Lieutenant was embarrassed, and yet determined to make recompense.

“I am so embarrassed!” he expostulated. “I am determined to make recompense for this accidental overhearing – and I have an idea as to how. I fear that the Chief Science and Medical Officer might be too distraught to listen to you, Captain, but perhaps if I was to ask her to accompany me to examine some specimen on the com-holo-deck-view-screen-”

“-com holo-view-holo-screen-” Mica’elle corrected absently.

“-that, then you would be able to tell all.”

“I approve,” Mica’elle said approvingly. “Make it so.”

Lieutenant Jeffries performed the traditional salute of the crew of the Red Raptor, blowing a kiss to his superior officer and winking rogueishly, and then turned on his heel and walked down the corridor in the direction that the departing Chief Science and Medical Officer had taken with great celerity.

Being quite long-legged (indeed, many would describe young Awkward as “lanky” or “gangly” or perhaps simply “tall”), the Lieutenant soon caught up with the distraught redhead.

“Pardon me, Chief, but may I have a word?” the Lieutenant hazarded, hoping that “Chief” was an acceptable title to use when addressing the Captain’s wife. He had never before had to initiate a conversation with the woman, and wasn’t entirely sure what the etiquette was.

Chairite turned at the sound of his voice, her mid-length raven locks swirling about her shoulders. “Yes, Lieutenant Jeffries? What can I do for you?” She quickly rubbed her hands over her face, trying to compose herself, though she was unable to banish all traces of emotional agitation from her pale green eyes.

Awkward frowned in concern, touched by Chairite’s distress, before schooling his facial expression towards a more businesslike demeanor, the better to convince the Chief Science and Medical Officer to accompany him back to the com deck on the pretext of work-related work.

“I was hoping you would have a moment to look at the holo-com-view-holo screen,” he said.

“Com holo-view-holo-screen,” Chairite corrected absently, in the manner of a woman whose mind is on a recent spat with her lover which was the culmination of a lengthy period of mounting frustration.

“Yes, that one,” the un-short pet groomer agreed. “There seems to be something wrong with it, and we all know how expert you are at correcting problems through the use of your considerable expertise in science.”

“There’s something wrong with the holo-view-holo-screen?” Chairite queried. “Really? But we just had it serviced!” She adjusted her eyepatch and then tapped her fingers against her orange-painted lips in an attitude of contemplation, distracted for the moment from her worries about her relationship with the Red Raptor‘s Captain. “Well, I suppose I’d better take a look.”

Awkward resisted the urge to perform the jig of a man who has just convinced a woman to follow him back to a location she had recently quitted for personal reasons on the pretext of impersonal business so that he could facilitate her reconciliation with her soulbonded lifemate. Doing so would be highly inappropriate. Instead he smiled vaguely and made a gesture that conveyed the meaning of “let’s go, then” as effectively as the words “let’s go, then” might have done.

The Lieutenant and the Chief Science and Medical Officer were soon upon the comdeck once more, where they were promptly approached by none other than the dashing Captain of the Red Raptor, Mica’elle!

Chairite’s brown cheeks turned faintly purple in a rich profusion of blood, but her voice was firm and level, betraying none of her inner anguish and irritation. “Excuse me, Captain,” she said. “It seems I must inspect the com holo-view-holo-screen. If you could stop phaser-loading the fraxinator, then I could-”

“Certainly, Chief Science and Medical Officer,” Mica’elle said, her black eyes betraying no impersonal gleam. Lieutenant Jeffries, hearing the full use of this title and correctly divining his earlier gaffe, winced in the embarrassment of a young man who had embarrassed himself already that evening by accidentally overhearing the argument of his superior officers, and has accidentally compounded his error by inappropriate address.

Meanwhile, this professionalism, which, even in the earliest days of their meeting-by-kidnapping, had never been directed at Chairite, caused the blonde scientist’s diaphragm to tighten and her lungs to compress, the air expelled from those pinkish-grey organs, moving up through her throat, vibrating her vocal cords, and expressing from her rounded mouth as a despairing “O!”.

Nevertheless, her devotion to science and duty was nearly as marked as her devotion to the captain, and the former had not been shaken by a long period of physically-delightful-but-possibly-mercenary lovemaking compounded by a lack of proper communicativeness, so Chairite advanced on the holo-view-holo-screen, attempting to ignore the tantalizing closeness of her wife, and wondering if Sir Marzipan Carbonatus had not been as thorough and precise as she had thought him.

“But it is working perfectly, Lieutenant Jeffries,” she cried. “What is this foolishness?”

“Are you positive?” Mica’elle inquired devilishly, leaning over Chairitie’s metallic shoulder. “Perhaps you should check the last co-ordinates to make sure?”

“Of course I’m positive!” Chairite harrumphed, but her knees were weak at the smell of Mica’elle’s hair (which was lightly dusted with a scent made from sunpoppies and the glands of the rare Joklian sea-slug) and she complied with her wife’s request before it became an order.

The latest co-ordinates had been entered by the fair Captain’s hand, and when Chairite complied, she was startled to discover that they showed a lavish scientist’s space-lab-research-facility-complex, located on the third silvery-grey moon of Riadorf.

“What is this?” she wondered questioningly, soot-coloured eyes widening in inquiry.

“Hm, that?” Mica’elle asked. “Oh, it appears to be your new space-lab-research-facility-complex. A happy BiMoon SoltiFest of Light and Love to you, beloved light of my heart!”

Chairite’s own twin hearts began to beat out a rhythm as frantic and delightful as the Gyu!tki drummers of Wert, except with the circulatory system and not hollowed out rocks covered in lizard skin for an instrument. “But how could you possibly afford-” she began, and then her scientific mind assessed the information and keenly adduced a conclusion from the premises! “The crystals!” she cried.

“The crystals!” Mica’elle agreed. “I had to-”

“Of course! You had to increase production so as not to stress the profit margins of the Red Raptor and thus deprive our rough but loyal crew of their justly earned shares.”

“Indeed, and I had to-”

“And you had to keep it secret from me so that this fantastically appointed space-lab-research-facility-complex would remain a surprise!”

“Well, exactly,” Mica’elle murmured. “Tell me, do you really love it?”

Chairite’s holographic eyes glowed with the fires of a thousand suns, only considerately muted so as not to blind her love. “Love it?” she queried, boldly sliding her hands around her lover’s dashing neck. “Let me show you how much I love it – and you – with the aid of science!”

“O, Chairite!” Mica’elle gasped, her dark eyes becoming even darker with arousal, so that they were an even blacker black.

Alerted by the tone of their Captain’s voice, the crewpersons of the Red Raptor glanced decorously away from the titian-with-a-black-streak-haired beauty and her petite lady love. Several of the more senior members of the crew began to move casually towards the exit from the comdeck, desirous of giving their beloved leader a little privacy, though daring Mica’elle had never been and would never be ashamed to be observed in the pure and beautiful act of lovemaking.

Lieutenant Awkward Jeffries, of course, missed all of the signs, and was deeply startled when big-boned Chairite reached for her lover’s space-blouse and ripped it neatly in two, exposing the firm breasts of the Red Raptor‘s Captain.

“Guh!” young Awkward exclaimed. He covered his eyes with his hands and bumbled his way sightlessly from the room, muttering apologies with the air of a deeply embarrassed and apologetic young man who was perhaps less used to the healthy displays of sexuality on the part of their Captain than was the bulk of the Red Raptor‘s crew. “Sorry! Sorry!”

Mica’elle noticed none of this. Her senses were entirely occupied by her wife’s activities, for Chairite was applying all her considerable knowledge of science – specifically, of the science of anatomy – to her partner’s body. As Chairite swept her tongue over the most sensitive pleasure centers of her Captain’s tender throat and fantastic boobs, Mica’elle moaned the moan of a woman who is about to receive really, really good oral sex and totally knows it. She allowed all of her muscles to relax, leaning trustingly into her love’s embrace, and Chairite gently lowered the partially-undressed redhead to the floor of the comdeck.

“I’m going to give you really, really good oral sex,” Chairite whispered huskily, her breath ghosting across Mica’elle’s face like the breath of the famed Farvigian Ghost-Breathers, a strange species of cat who are not actually, strictly speaking, ghosts, since they are very much alive.

“Nnnngh,” Mica’elle replied, her fingers tangling in Chairite’s cerulean-hued hair, pulling her down into a kiss that could be described as slurping if slurping wasn’t such an inherently gross-sounding word, unfit to describe a kiss so deeply loving and elegant, albeit a little drooly.

Breaking from the kiss with a gasp, the dashing former pirate drew her trusty pocket-laser and made quick work of removing both her own and her wife’s clothing, leaving them both gloriously nude on the comdeck floor and with hardly any singeing of either of their skins.

The Chief Science and Medical Officer crawled sensuously backward, revealing a grace that most women can never dream of possessing, since crawling backward generally looks far more silly than sexy, and positioned herself between her soulmate’s knees. “Are you ready, my heart?” she queried. “Are you ready to open to me like the unfolding petals of the Livolian moon-cactus, except with fewer spines? Should I give you the really good oral sex now?”

“Proet, yes!” the Captain cried out. “Please, my love! Please do it!”

So Chairite did it. On the comdeck.

The Momentary End

Onward to Part Three: The Perfect Party (in the Sense of Both a Group of Friends and a Social Occasion)

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