Between

Author's Note: This story is a sort of fanfiction of my own work - it takes place between books 2 and 3 of these characters' series (hence the title). For context, Gus has just recently experienced sexual contact for the first time, having grown up in a society that forbids it. Koby is her now-husband, a member of a culture that embraces sex and all sexualities - sometimes too much. As they near Koby's home planet, Gus is starting to worry...

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The whole ship seemed to sigh with Gus. She ran her palm down the smooth porthole, empathizing with the endless shape. They were still in quarantine orbit around Moura, and her new duties were already sapping her energy. At the end of each day, her mind was numb, and she was afraid she was losing what made her—well, appealing.

She thumbed her hipbone with a thoughtful lip-chew. It was still so strange to be in control of her body, to try and remember that the stirrings of arousal were not to be feared. Sometimes, the feelings themselves were not hard to avoid; her body weighed less but felt heavier thanks to the muscle loss of longer-term space travel. Three months, she thought. Three months of this, and I still have no idea what I'm doing.

She thought about Koby. He made her smile, and she did, buoyed up by the mental image of his face. She thought of his broad shoulders rippling as she dug her fingers into his back. She thought of his laugh as he doubled over at her jokes. She thought of the distinct curve of his ass, the smooth lines blurred by his soft hairs. She thought of his hands, the ones she knew as home, soft under the old callouses of working on his first-run. The thoughts made her blush and she dropped her hand unconsciously between her legs.

The door whispered and she smiled again, beaming at her harsh reflection where the Mouran sun blazed unfiltered by an atmosphere. Palms cupped her breasts under her light dayrobe. She breathed in the breath from his nose.

"Two more weeks," he purred into her ear. His hands tightened, and she felt the reassuring pressure of his tungsten ring pressing against her nipple. She clamped a smile onto her lower lip with her teeth and arched back into him.

"I almost don't want to go planetside."

His fingers danced up her bare neck to behind her ear. Koby enveloped her in a reassuringly confining embrace. "And never smell the fresh air again?"

Gus giggled. "You told me like six times it smells like shit everywhere."

"Not everywhere."

"Besides."

"Besides what?" he asked after she lingered on the word.

"I don't know."

"Baby."

"I don't know," she said, planting her palms on his chest as she spun without breaking his hold on her, "that I want to give you up so quickly."

At the end of the sentence, her voice wobbled. Koby whispered, "No," and lifted her chin with the gentlest touch of his forefinger.

"Baby," he said again, and again, until she looked him full in the face. "Are you still afraid?"

It hit a nerve so raw that she shuddered and had to look away, lest he see just how many tears the idea was wringing out of her. "Yes," she said, managing to steady herself. She met his gaze. It was deep and green and fierce. "There's so much more to your world than me."

She opened her mouth to say it, for real: There are so many more pussies, and even dicks, and tits and hair and beautiful eyes and walks that aren't stupid like mine, and whose brains aren't dead, because this is not what you signed up for, when he clamped her cheeks in both palms and smashed his forehead to hers.

"You are my world," he said. It was so angry at the possibility that she could dream otherwise that she believed him with a rush of erotic heat.

He grasped her ass, one cheek in each palm, and careened into her relentlessly until she managed to stop him with a deep kiss. She made him let go and slithered down his waist, pawing aside his dayrobe and cupping his balls with her tongue. He hissed and his fingers found her scalp.

"Baby," he breathed as she took him deep in her throat. She tilted her head back and gazed up until it strained her eyes. He towered above her, a sanctuary. "Listen to me. There is nothing. That I want. More than you."

"I know," she started to say, but he pushed the back of her head until she choked and blinked, her nails sinking into his ass.

"No. I said listen to me."

Gus's shoulders twinged and she massaged the underside of his cock with a practiced tongue. "Sorr—"

"Nothing I want more than you," he said again, his eyes blazing. "And every time you think there is, you call me a liar. I know you don't mean it, but you do. You say to me that my promises are shortsighted at best and diabolical at worst. You question my ability to think for myself or have any idea what I might like my future to hold. Do you know, Gus Gillis? Do you know what it is that I want my future to hold?"

"Me," she whimpered, tasting his precum.

"Say it again, bitch."

"Me," she said, stronger this time, gagging, then, "Me."

"Good girl," he said. She moaned and felt him throb against the back of her throat. He grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her free, squatting down in front of her. "Please. You think I'm so stupid as to let this fine ass free, you better share whatever it is you're smoking."

She laughed, stuttering with relief. "G-goddamn Mourans and your dry ships."

"Fuck," Koby said, laughing into her mouth as he consumed her in another kiss. "Just wait. I'll take you to a smokehouse."

He grabbed her roughly by the waist and spun her around, forcing her spine down with an authoritative hand. She bent before him, straining towards him, flipping her dayrobe over her back so he could grasp her.

He didn't. She waited. A hum slipped through her lips. "Koby?"

"I don't think I'm done with you," came his voice from somewhere else in the tiny observation chamber.

She lifted up onto her toes, straining her ears. The ship was angled away from the sun now and he hid in the shadows. Gus slid forward a step, light on her feet.

"Robe. Off."

It tumbled silently to the floor even as he said it. She danced naked with the shifting star-shadows, touching herself with delicate fingertips. Some ways through the song in her head, Koby joined her, his body as light as hers. They spun together, and when he diverged, she corrected to follow. Her embellishments were her own: a brief reminder of the muscles along her inner thighs; bending as she circled him, the tip of her tongue scooping him clean; the flick of her head as she looked at him, looked away, looked back with all the drama and coyness of an AE star. She caught him laughing his dirty laugh, his muddy snarl of satisfaction, like a great stag rutting. It made the wife part of her twinge in satisfaction, deep in her guts, and she came, squirting, believing in her protective magic as the half.

And that was that. Her fear retreated, subdued and whimpering. She sighed, coming again, rippling around his cock. He grunted, "God," and choked on a laugh. "I should be worried. You could earn the Scales with your shit. You're still young enough to serve."

Gus warmed. The moment had dulled, but now she just wanted him. Gritting her teeth, she bounced back, pushing against the wall. "I fucking serve you."

"Nnnf. I mean in the service. They could—legally, I guess."

She shrugged and flipped over without releasing him in a show of dexterity that left her breathless and grinning. "Let 'em try. I'm House Ryad first, ex-Paracletian second, Mouran third."

"Ex-Paracletian, huh?" Koby caught her fire and slammed her against a pillar. His eyes glittered with the nearby planets. "And what exactly is that, broken and stubborn?"

"I'll give you stubborn," she said. A pause, weaving her head, then she added, "Broken, no, more like...patchworked. A little bit of everything, and sometimes it doesn't all work normally."

He understood that. "Ahhh. C'mere. Show me a little bit of everything."

Gus rocked back, forward, back-forward-back-back and they were dancing again. It was clumsy and primal but he held her above the floor and she rode him. They lurched around the room until they came back to the porthole.

She reached back and grabbed the edge of the porthole. Her forearms shivered with the strain. Gus gnashed her teeth as she pulled her ass into the hole and settled in, heedless of where the metal dug into her thighs. She split her legs and wolf-grinned.

Koby's eyes darkened delightfully and he lunged for her, tongue already fluttering. Gus tipped her head back and reveled in the burn in her elbows and the burn in her clit. He tickled and taunted her, sometimes raising his eyes to her straining face and lowering them in immodest satisfaction.

The tension in her pussy grew, and the porthole ground into Gus until finally she grunted, "Can't," and he stood up and caught her gently beneath the arms. She leaned into him, her skin singing with relief. Without a sound, he flipped her flat and laid her on the cool floor, coiling over her and returning to his work.

It didn't take long for her to climax, her spine echoing the zenith of pleasure in her brain. Koby slipped his arms beneath her and brought her spasming pussy to rest just over his cock.

Gus strained her abs to pull herself up so she rested slightly above her husband. She put her hands on his cheeks. His arms shook against the battle between holding her still and wanting to plunge inside of her, but his eyes smiled steadily back at hers. Her lashes fluttered, chasing away a tear she refused to spill, and she smiled like a goddess of lust.

"Take it," she said. "Take what's yours."

"I don't need your permission," Koby snarled as he lunged. Their pelvises met with a shattering smack, and Gus threw back her head to whoop as he left handprints on her ass.

She cried out as he jounced her. It felt as though the months of frustration and fear were sloughing away with every stroke of his cock. Koby caught her hair up in his fingers and pulled her to him. Their noses touched. His tiny sigh warmed her lips, and she brought her hands up to enclose his. They aligned their heartbeats.

Gus pressed herself down until she thought she could take him no further and squeezed. Koby came, not as he usually did with a quake of release—but softly, thoroughly. She clenched him until he was done and slipped out of her, and then she draped her body across his.

The air was still and the light through the porthole stretched in a cool oval around them. Gus sighed and nuzzled into the soft hairs on Koby's chest. "So. Tell me about somewhere on Moura that doesn't stink."

His laugh tickled her scalp. "You're a cheeky bitch."

"Your cheeky bitch," Gus said happily.

She was drifting, and didn't need to hear it—but it warmed her anyway, warm as the kiss in her hair.

"My cheeky bitch."