The Glass Admiral Read online

  She began to suck and lick in earnest then as though she had been waiting for his reaction and it gave him the confidence to vocalize his reactions to the sensations that pulsed through him in a way that would have made him self-conscious otherwise. With a final delicious tug on his right nipple she moved across his chest to his heretofore neglected left nipple and began to work on it with the same thoroughness she’d shown his right nipple only now she began to slide her hands, which had been resting on his hips, up and down along his thighs as she sucked and nibbled.

  Kos had had his legs massaged before, hell, she’d massaged his legs before but this was very different. Saverna had soft hands and when she’d massaged him she’d been firm but gentle and very circumspect but this was different, this was sensuous in a way meant to set fire to all of his nerve endings; meant to demolish his self control. He was certain of it; became more certain of it when on the upsweep she hovered for a tantalizing moment at the crease of his thighs before moving higher to brush his cock slowly and deliberately with her thumbs from bottom to crown where she drew circles with her thumbs while he jerked and swelled further beneath her caresses. As she slid her thumbs back down the sides of his shaft he groaned; the sound a mixture of agonizing disappointment that her hands were moving down away from that part of him that so desperately wanted to be touched; sheer pleasure at the sensation of her fingers as they slid down his cock and anticipation of their return.

  A few iterations of this and he was all but mindless with desire; panting and groaning and gasping as though he were being tortured which he was he decided as his cock simultaneously basked in the light slow anticipation laden caressing and ached for a firmer more complete touch. He was at the point of contemplating reaching down and taking matters into his own hand, so to speak, when Saverna solved his dilemma for him by dipping her head into his lap and mouthing him through the fabric of his trousers. As wave after wave of pleasure rolled though him, his world suddenly consisted only of her mouth on him; covering him, sucking and tugging on him and the ache in his balls as they tightened and drew up against his body and he was no more than peripherally aware of her sliding her hands down along his thighs, past his knees and along his calves to remove his boots.

  It was the sensation of pre-cum leaking from the tip of his cock that recalled him to his senses. I don’t want to cum this way. He wanted to draw out their love-making, make certain she found her pleasure, be inside her when he came. Only a rutting animal seeks their own pleasure without seeing to their partner. “Stop.” He reached for her shoulders and tugged her off of him. He sucked in a breath as his body throbbed a protest at the loss of contact. Saverna, seeming to understand, waited. When he thought he could handle it, he tugged her closer with the intention to reciprocate. Gripping her hips he urged her onto his lap only for her to stop with her left knee alongside his thigh and her right foot still on the floor. He had a second to wonder if she’d changed her mind before she leaned in to kiss him. “Sit back.” She whispered against his lips. “Uh-uh.” She chided when he dropped his gaze in embarrassment at the reminder. “Look at me.” She waited until he met her gaze. “Your back and shoulders hurt.” She tugged at his lip lightly. “No more grin and bear it remember?”

  “I don’t want to disrupt the flow of…things.”

  “You’re not.”

  “It’s not sexy.” He said finally.

  “It’s very sexy.” She countered. He shot her a disbelieving look and she continued. “When you’re more comfortable, more relaxed—” Planting her left foot back on the floor she urged him backwards. “Your intensity increases.” Reaching behind him she pulled some of the bed pillows behind his back. “It’s like you’re thinking only of this.” Saverna gestured at the space between their bodies. She knelt on the bed and reached around him to adjust the pillows running her hands along his sides, across his belly and along his chest as she did so in a way that made it difficult to focus. When he felt heat begin to seep into his back he realized she had arranged a series of heating pads on top of the pillows.

  “How’s that?” She asked him rising up to swing a leg over his hips.

  “Good.” He admitted taking her hips into his hands and guiding her onto his lap. “Amazing actually.” He added looking up at her from his semi recumbent position. The combination of support and heat eased the sore muscles in his back and shoulders and settled into his broken joints inducing a delicious languor that flowed through him combining with the arousal and made him want to shift and stretch like a cat. He felt as though he had just woken up from a delicious dream; as though he were still half asleep; warm and satiated and heavy with arousal.

  “You look like a cat.” Saverna told him smiling down from her perch on his lap.

  “I feel like a cat.” He admitted allowing his back to arch the way it wanted to in response to her hands sliding up along his belly to his chest. Wanting to reciprocate he slid his own hands up from where they rested on her waist, along her sides towards her breasts. Suddenly uncertain he paused with his thumbs resting on her ribcage just below their swell. “May I…?”

  In response Saverna lifted her hands from his chest and drew them up along his arms until she found his hands which she grasped and lifted onto her breasts. “I think we’re beyond the point of asking don’t you?” She asked wryly as she guided his caresses.

  “I don’t want to invade your space.” He told her absently, totally engrossed in the sensation of soft female flesh under his palms. Encouraged by her gasps and groans of pleasure he massaged and stroked and explored until she was squirming and panting and then, satisfied that he was able to induce in her the same sensations she induced with such ease in him, he pushed himself up and put his mouth to her nipple.

  Saverna arched her back pushing her breast more fully against his mouth and shifted her hips so that he could feel her against his engorged length. Unable to help himself, he began to rock his hips as he held her against him. A tell-tale pain in his lower back warned him to stop but the pleasure of having her against him; of feeling alive and seen and wanted had him ignoring the warning. Wave after wave of bliss rolled through him sweeping out all the dark corners of his body making him feel whole; as though he he was reconnected with bits of himself that had been cut off and isolated.

  He felt Saverna's hands on his shoulders pushing him back and loss rolled though him only to intensify as she pushed his shoulders back against the cushions and then used them to steady herself as she swung her leg over his hip and climbed off of him. Kosuri struggled to control his breathing as pain and shame at the rejection flooded his body. He closed his eyes in an attempt to regain control over his still aroused body only to jerk them open again at the sensation of hands unfastening his trousers. His position, the twin phantoms of pain and shame, the lingering arousal and the sensation of hands on him, stripping him combined to jerk him into the past and he was once again a young lieutenant broken in body and spirit on his back on a sickbay exam table being stripped of his filthy, stinking uniform with clinical efficiency by a young nurse who couldn’t quite hide her horror and disgust at the arousal he was humiliatingly unable to control. Unable to do anything else, he twisted away from her and her invasive, prodding hands and hanging his head over the side of the exam table heaved ineffectively as his painfully empty stomach tried futilely to relieve him of his shame.

  11

  22:05, SATURDAY, ADMIRAL’S QUARTERS, THE ASARO

  “PLEASE LEAVE.” QUIET. SO QUIET AND not looking at her.

  “Kos—” Saverna started only to stop when he flinched. Hunched forward over his knees, hands fisted in his lap as he shook and sucked in air and didn’t look at her; Kosuri was a man on an abandoned moon.

  Wanting to comfort him she took a step closer to the bed and more quickly than she could process, he flung out a hand to stop her. Still struggling to get her bearings as shock and residual arousal competed for control of her body, it took her a moment to realize that she was towering over
and advancing on him in a way that could easily be perceived as threatening. Get a grip girl.

  Lowering herself into a crouch she tried without avail to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry.” She said.

  “What have you got to be sorry for?” He gritted out as his jaw clenched and unclenched.

  “A lot of things… looming over you… hurting you—”

  “I’m. Not. Hurt.” He interrupted.

  You are doing a very good impression then. “What are you then?” She asked cautiously taking in the way he held himself away from her. Like an abused horse. Something’s happened to you. Something I did has triggered you.

  “I am not your concern.”

  “That’s not exactly true.” Saverna felt compelled to argue.

  “Not. This.” He ground out. “This has nothing to do with you.”

  “From where I’m standing it has a lot to do with me.”

  “It has nothing to do with you.” He repeated curtly.

  “I’m here to help you.”

  “I don’t want your help. I want you to leave me in peace.”

  It was Saverna's turn to flinch. She couldn’t see the man she’d been kissing; grinding against just moments ago in this taciturn, locked down man in front of her. She watched his hands clench and unclench as the shaking in his body increased. “Fuck.” He cursed as whatever was riding him pushed itself closer to the surface. He did look at her then. “Please just go—I need you to go so—” His face twisted violently as he tried to contain himself.

  You need me to go so you can fall apart in private. Saverna finished silently. “Okay.” She pushed herself to her feet and strode out the door heavy with the knowledge that the man she was falling in love with / Kosuri didn’t feel safe with her.

  22:35, SATURDAY, ADMIRAL’S QUARTERS, THE ASARO

  Saverna stared into her cup of tea as she listened for sounds from Kosuri’s room. No matter how intently she stared however, the tea gave her nothing in terms of insight into the situation. She wondered if she should call Isa but couldn’t decide if she wanted her friend to know that she’d been having sex with Kosuri. She was beyond his purview so it wasn’t against regulations but… She was also certain that the kind of discussion she wanted to have with Isa was a violation of Kosuri’s privacy and she suspected that his privacy had been violated enough for a life time.

  Part of her recognized that she was in shock and that it was this that accounted for her fascination with the tea. As hard as she listened she heard nothing from Kosuri and that was a concern. What happened? She wondered. From the otherwise haziness of her mind the answer shot through her like a knife. You happened. He doesn’t trust you. You screwed this up.

  “I should have stuck with horses.” She told her tea numbly. The words settled in the still air of the room and buzzed at her until the numbness burst.

  She flashed back on Kosuri, his expression still and intent as he asked her what kind of life she was looking for. His admission that she had soft hands. She’d told him she wanted to return to her former position. How many times have I told him something similar? No wonder he doesn’t trust me. Saverna tilted her head back against the back of the sofa as regret/shame twisted through her. These are not things someone who is going to be around for the long haul says and there is no way that someone like Kosuri, someone who has had his privacy repeatedly violated is going to open up to someone just passing through.

  She studied the door to Kosuri’s room. Thought about the shock and horror that had suffused his face when she’d started to undo his pants. He could use someone—someone to see him through this and he does well enough with me. She took a long swig of tea, debated calling Isa again and once more rejected the option.

  She went back to staring into the depths of her cup. The sticking point, she decided was that everything up until their trip to sick bay could be classified as the business of being a bat with a little casual fun thrown in. Everything that had occurred in sickbay right up until he’d demanded she leave his bedroom however, fell into different territory altogether. Emotionally complex territory. Saverna took another long sip of tea as she tried to sort it out. Personal territory. An image of Kosuri grinning at her in the ventilation shafts as they crawled toward the bridge flashed though her and the accompanying warmth that shot through her had her almost choking on her tea as it occurred to her that she might have fallen just a little in love with him.

  “How the hell did I let this happen?” She asked the room at large and her tea cup specifically. “I can’t stay here.” She told the tea.

  The tea mocked her silently.

  “I have a job—a career I love to get back to.”

  More silence.

  “This was supposed to be temporary.”

  Nothing.

  “I’m not even in Fleet.”

  Nothing.

  “I’ll never see him again if I go back.”

  That hollowed her out in places she didn’t even realize existed. She flashed on Kosuri, prickly, defensive Admiral Kosuri letting her massage his aching, distended abdomen; tired, pain wracked, uniformed, up to his neck in hot water and bubble bath Kosuri asking for a rain cheque; embarrassed, off-kilter Kosuri dropping his forehead to her shoulder and teasing her as his nervous system ran amuck; reserved, withdrawn Kosuri letting her strip away his armor in the shower, kissing her, making love to her in the shower; frustrated, uncertain Kosuri confessing his lack of experience in the entry way of his quarters. He’d been trying she realized. Exposing himself, making himself vulnerable to her despite the fact that she’d essentially been yanking the ground out from under him repeatedly with her comments about returning to the horse guard.

  “I’d have never been so careless with a horse.” Saverna told her by now thoroughly disinterested teacup. The problem, she decided, was that she’d gone into this thinking it was a formality, a bull-shit, short-term position; more favor than job and as a result she’d done damage to the person she was meant to be protecting.

  “I can’t keep treating this like a formality, like a joke. I have to do better. He deserves better.” Saverna stared at Kosuri’s door as the realization twisted through her filling her with equal parts regret and anticipation?. “I’m going to have to stay.”

  12

  24:06, SATURDAY, ADMIRAL’S QUARTERS, THE ASARO

  A CRASH FROM THE ADMIRAL’S ROOM had Saverna up on her feet and bounding across the living room before she was entirely awake. Thus she was in the perfect position to tackle the man who came running out.

  They hit the ground with a thud and Saverna, on top, took advantage of the man’s stunned struggle to breath as the wind was knocked out of him, to grab a heavy lamp off a nearby side table and bash him in the head with it. After verifying that he was out cold, she pushed herself to her feet and hit the comm panel. “Saverna to security. I need a security team in the Admiral’s quarters now. The admiral’s quarter’s have been infiltrated. I have secured one intruder and am about to sweep for others.”

  “On our way Lieutenant. What is the admiral’s status?”

  “Unsure. Will get back to you on that.” A glimmer on the floor caught her eye and she tilted her head to get a better look. “Shit.” She swore, adrenalin surging through her body as she realized it was a knife, a blood covered knife. Slamming her hand down on the comm she ran for the admiral’s bedroom door calling for a medical team as she went.

  13

  04:26, SUNDAY, SICKBAY, THE ASARO

  "WE HAD TO RESTRAIN HIM." THE CMO was waiting for her when she entered sickbay.

  "Are you fucking kidding me?" Temper already frayed from the events of the evening Saverna shoved past the woman and strode across sickbay toward the private patient rooms. A quick scan had her heading toward the one marked 'Kosuri'. Pausing briefly at the door to collect herself she braced herself for what she might find on the other side of the door.

  Nothing could have prepared her for the sight of the Admiral flat on his back, one thick strap bind
ing his chest and arms to the bed while another bound his thighs. As she watched, he twisted and jerked against the bonds trying to break free. The harsh sound of his breathing filled the room and propelled her forward into the room.

  Without thought, she started to undue the restraints. Before she could even start a hand grabbed hers. "You can't release him Lieutenant." The CMO's voice, shrill and anxious rang out.

  Saverna froze at the contact. "Get your hand off of me."

  The woman gripped her harder. "I am the Chief Medical Officer and--"

  "And you have no authority over me." Saverna ground out. She didn't look at the woman. Didn't trust herself to look up from Kosuri's restraints. "If you know what's good for you, you will unhand me." She did look round then and whatever was in her face had the woman dropping her hand and backing away. "You don't understand. He's out of his mind—psychotic! A threat to everyone! You can't release him!" One part of Saverna's brain registered that Kosuri had stilled and she reached back to give his hand a quick squeeze while she studied the CMO. You're terrified of him. That made her mad. "Get out." She told the woman as levelly as she could. "Get out. And send me Dr.Kincaid”

  "You don’t have any right to give orders here!" The woman blustered. "I am in charge—”

  "Not of the Admiral." Saverna interrupted her swiftly.

  "I out-rank you!" The CMO tried again.