Chapter 8 - The apparatus of state.
Stevo 21.
There was a slight grunt that burst from his lips as Silvia pushed him back onto the sofa, but with her lips securely sealed on his, the sound that actually came out of him was rather muffled, to say the least.
They had made out like hormonal teenagers for the entire elevator ride. Fifteen decks worth of heavy breathing and enthusiastic tongue-play. It was passionate, it was heated, and it was something he could somehow tell she had been holding in for just as long as he had. The dinging of the elevator arriving at their level had forced them to part, their breathing still panted, and her cheeks - if not his as well - were more than a little flushed. Somehow, they had made the short walk from the elevator bank to the door to her office without drawing any undue attention from the dozen or so people in the corridor, and he had waited patiently for her to open the door and let him inside. But as soon as that door clicked shut in its frame, all bets were off. Silvia practically threw herself at him, flinging her arms around his neck and crushing her lips to his hard enough to make him think he would chip a tooth.
His hands had held onto the small of her back, but the feeling of her grinding herself against the fully masted bulge in his dress slacks made him catch on pretty quickly, and he allowed his hands to slide lower to her ass. The mewling moan she purred into his lips told him clearly that it was a gesture she wholeheartedly approved of. She started walking him backward toward the brown leather sofa that was behind him, waiting until the backs of his legs bumped into them before shoving him back onto it. Once again, she was on him in moments, climbing onto him and straddling a leg on either side of his, pressing her core against his bulge again and grinding her hips against his as she sealed her lips back to his.
Stevo was not a stranger to women. He had been a Marine in the Imperium, not a prisoner, and despite public pre-conceptions, he had neither been kept on some far-flung outpost nor had he been forbidden from taking leave to mix with the locals. With no family to go home to visit, his leave had often been spent bar-hopping in one of the leisure districts that invariably sprung up close to military bases the Empire over, and he had done pretty well for himself. Even going as far as scoring a few semi-long-term relationships.
But this was different. There was a fire and a passion in Silvia's touch and her kiss that he had never expected. It was like she had a fatal disease, and his lips held not only the cure but her only chance at getting it. Like a starved woman getting her first meal or a drowning woman being offered a liferaft. Stevo had been enamored by the woman from the moment he saw her, but he had never in his wildest dreams thought that the sentiment was mutual, let alone to this degree. This wasn't the cheap, meaningless fumble of a one-night stand, nor was it the passionate exploration of a quickly-building-quickly-dying fling; this was desire at its most fever-pitched. This was the very definition of passion, and every breath he exhaled was consumed by Silvia, just as every heated, panted breath from her lips was swallowed by his.
They kissed. They made out. They explored each other's painfully clothed bodies with their wandering, almost frantic hands. They consumed each other. They fed and fed on one another. Lips moving, tongues dancing, breaths shared, and - for a brief moment - two halves became one. It was more than Stevo ever imagined a kiss could be, so very much more.
Finally, the kiss broke, and Silvia rested her forehead against his. Her breath, like his, was hard and heavy; her chest was rising and falling with every inhalation, and that, in turn, seemed to drag the swell of her breasts over his. They were as close as it was possible for two people to get while still having their clothes on, and contrary to the frantic, throwing caution to the wind exuberance of his more youthful dalliances, Steve realized that there was nowhere in the entire stretches of the galaxy he would rather be. It took a moment for him to notice that they were staring into each other's eyes; he was literally getting lost in them. He had no idea if he had been gazing into those bottomless cerulean orbs for a few seconds or half an hour, but the only sound in the room was the rasping breaths both of them were sucking in and out.
"Jesus, I feel like a teenager," Silvia whispered. "Kisses aren't supposed to be this good."
"Nope, sorry," Stevo smiled up at her. "I don't remember them being this good, even when I
was
a teenager."
She chuckled, nodding her head in agreement. "God, it would be so easy to go further. But..."
"But...?"
"You know, first date rules and all that shit."
"Oh, so this is a date?" He gave her a lopsided grin.
"Don't make me pull rank, Captain."
"Yes, Ma'am." He smirked back at her, his eyes being pulled—as if by gravity—to those soft, pillowy lips.
"Yeah, so I'm gonna have to keep kissing you. Hope you don't mind," she purred with a radiant, beaming grin.
"Not at all, Ma'am," Stevo smirked back, his hand coming up to stroke her cheek. He pulled her a little closer, tipped his head back a little, and sealed her lips back onto his.
As soon as they joined, a mutual moan echoed around the room; it was like a sigh, an expression of sublime desire, a passion given to such a simple touch yet one that transcended time itself. Everything else evaporated. Existence, in all its glorious splendor, boiled away around them until only the two of them were left. Nothing else mattered; nothing else existed, just them, just the feel of each other under their fingertips and the taste of each other on their lips. Just their kiss.
His hands hooked onto the small of her back, not sexually, but tenderly and affectionately holding her against him. Her arms clung to his shoulder, one of her hands rubbing through his closely cropped hair. For a handful of minutes, ones that seemed like they stretched out for hours, There was only their kiss.
"I want you," She breathed as they broke apart.
"I want you," he said back. It wasn't the most original response, but why mess with perfection? The fire behind his eyes and the tone in his voice added more weight to that statement than any flowery string of words could.
"But..."
He silenced her with a soft, much shorter kiss before she could finish her sentence. "I want to take you out," he said, resting his forehead back against hers. "Here on the Hyperion, in some bar when we get planetside, out to a fancy restaurant, I will think of something, but... I... I like you, and I want to do this properly."
The smile on her face said it all. "I'd like that."
"Does that mean we have to stop now?"
"Fuck no," she laughed. "I like how your stubble feels on my skin, and I am going to stay here for as long as we can get away with."
"Excellent. I grew it myself," he chuckled as he brushed a few unruly locks of her hair behind her ear. She laughed loudly, like a release of building tension, before relaxing into his touch, leaning forward, and pressing her lips back to his.
********
Janus. 2
Now, Ellie had a nice set of tits. Not too big, not too small, the perfect amount of gravity defiance, and attached to a rather fetching rest of her body to boot. But tits were tits, and Janus loved them all. If she were ever asked - not that she ever was - Janus would say that she was bi-sexual but with a heavy, less-than-healthy leaning toward women. It wasn't the fact that she leaned toward women that was unhealthy; modern society had its flaws, of course, but discrimination based on sexual orientation was a thing of ancient history. No, the concern came from
how
heavily that lean was. Janus often wondered if there was something wrong with her. She had heard somewhere that a pedophile's sexual interest in minors was a result of an abnormality in the brain, that the sexual attraction first developed in childhood never matured as the rest of them did.