Lucian Ch. 08

They kissed and made love on the bed, on the floor and in the shower. And then they started on the bed again.

The girl was insatiable.

Everywhere she touched and licked and prodded him, he got charged -- and every little charge kept adding up until he screamed from overload.

She taught him where he lived -- taking him to secret niches that hid new treasures. Of course he knew that after each glorious come another chip of his 'him' would go missing.

But he had no intention to go look for it.

Part of his deal with Parker was a deal with Kurtz.

Nothing would ever be done to him anymore without asking, and explaining the nature of the planned medication and its effect.

He always had the right to refuse.

Of course she could betray him whenever she wanted -- his medical knowledge was non-existent. But just having the talk gave him the necessary illusion of having a grip on his fate.

It was more than he ever had in his entire life, wasn't it?

Back at his room, tired of waiting for Charlie, Lucia discarded her shirt and peeled the tight top off his chest. Running a slow finger down her ribcage he savored the softness of her skin. He was still as lean as ever, but the ribs' contours had softened, as had the flatness of his belly.

Pulling down his shorts, she cupped her shrunken penis, resting manicured nails on the smooth, tight skin below.

All Barbs had what she'd once thought was exclusive to Drew: no visible testicles and a tightened scrotum -- smooth and spotless. The seam where they'd stitched his skin could only be seen up close -- or felt when you ran your fingertip along it.

It was a feeling that made her shiver.

Becoming a Barb ushered in new triggers of sensuality, it seemed. It also came with a new set of esthetics.

Most Barbs loved their clean, tight underbelly -- and to show it off. They might gossip and giggle about giant male penises and huge hairy balls hanging down in wrinkled sacs. But they would recoil in horror at the thought of having those themselves.

Lucia remembered Harper's wailing over his three-inch cock -- calling it an elephant's trunk as he tramped around the Bobs' dorm waving his arm in front of his crotch as if it were a swaying trunk.

Lucian chuckled.

Then she wondered when the boy would ever graduate. Of course he saw him often, but she'd love to have him for a real -- well -- sister.

Shedding her ballet shoes, he stepped into the shower.

The water was hot and sweet, cascading over him as her slow hands kneaded the shampoo into his hair. She loved to shower, letting his hands move over her firm, slick body.

Dr. Kurtz had explained how the right combination of pills and injections, diet and gymnastics gave her this body. Every student had his own schedule, safely stored into her computer.

And, she'd said, touching his arm, there was a turning point in her treatment after which it would be unhealthy to stop -- even risky. It came as no surprise to Lucian that he'd passed that moment, and without warning.

"So you did it again," he'd said. "Turning me into a girl without asking."

Kurtz had shaken her head at that.

Most boys, she said, wanted to become girls. But it was her heart-breaking duty to tell them they could never become real women. They should be proud, though, of what they could become: a unique and gracious gender that was often envied by women -- and admired by men.

'And hated, humiliated and ridiculed by most others,' he thought.

He told Kurtz that he didn't want to be a woman.

She nodded and said she knew. She apologized for having ignored his wants and needs. His mother had been very clear, and they'd supposed she knew best.

"I guess we followed too eagerly," she said, smiling her crooked smile.

And I guess the money played a big role too, he thought, reflecting her smile.

Running his slippery hands over puffy nipples Lucia recalled Kurtz's short lecture on enhanced sexuality.

"You see," she'd explained while he lie naked on her examination table, "to be a happy human being you need an active and successful sexual life. Most people think black-and-white about sexual gratification. They think men can only be happy having this huge apparatus that fills with blood to get hard and penetrate women's vagina's, where they spew as much creamy stuff as they can."

She smiled while flopping his limp little member with her latex-clad fingers.

"Women, on the other hand," she went on, " should have a wet, slippery entrance. It should always be tight, but easily accommodate the giant intruder. If they are lucky, they climax before the man does, but in many cultures he won't wait for that."

While talking, her fingers wandered down Lucia's new absent scrotum, and slipped into his anus where she slowly fucked her sensitive walls.

"We at Norton's," she proceeded, never stopping her ministrations, "know that you don't have to despair when your penis can't be a hard pulsing spear."

She smiled at the word and pressed deeper.

"We also know that you don't need a woman's vagina to get well-fucked and come a lot."

She hit the spot he knew was his enhanced prostate; and he saw her penis jerk and gush a glob of sperm. Closing his eyes Lucian felt a wave shake her body; he gasped, and Kurtz chuckled, slowing down her prodding.

"I could do this for hours, you know," she said. "And you'd never stop climaxing."

She chuckled again.

"But I bet you know that by now."

Her finger once again tickled his prostate, making her penis weep some more.

"In truth you can be a more perfect pleasure-creature than most women or men could ever be," she said, pulling her fingers out and cleaning them on a paper towel. "But you have to change mentally and physically to appreciate it."

Back in the shower Lucian let a curtain of hot water cover her face. He rinsed out her hair and showered the soap off his body.

The intense memories, combined with the way Lucia caressed and fondled his body left her hot and aroused. Drying her skin with a huge fluffy towel brought other, more anxious feelings. Why wasn't Charlie back yet? She needed her. He longed for her soft lips and expert fingers; her sweet body, her wonderful smile.

Dressed in a satin robe, he blow-dried his hair while she brushed it.

The girl was an hour late now.

Grabbing a thong and slippers he dressed and went out into the hallway. The corridors were empty, she saw; most students would be in their dorms and rooms, or maybe to the dining hall already.

That's where Lucian went, but all she found were two Barbs dressing the tables. No, they hadn't seen Chuck. It was a nickname, chosen because it so funnily contrasted with petite, quicksilver Charlie.

Lucia visited the Barbies' dorm, only to find Nico.

"An hour?" she asked, frowning -- then she smiled. "Ah well, where can she go? Maybe she's back already and you missed each other?"

Nico had become a friend; well, almost.

Her sarcasm seemed to have evaporated, and even though he could never forget what happened that Halloween, now a year and a half ago, the memory had lost its bitter edge. What helped soothing his anger was his own active role as a fresh Barb at this year's festivities, punishing party-crashing Bobs.

After all, it was just a tradition, wasn't it -- a rough kind of initiation, he guessed.

Walking back to his room Lucia wondered why he worried so much about Charlie being late. Nico was right, where could she go? What could she run into?

And then she heard her.

The vaulted hallways and rooms of the academy's old building had a peculiar knack to distort sounds, making some voices carry, while muffling others.

Charlie's voice penetrated it all -- clear and silvery.

By now Lucian knew her well enough to understand the exclamations for what they were. She'd heard them too often to be wrong: the girl came -- and then she came again.

The effect on him was immediate.

A rush of hot blood flared up her chest, hitting his throat. The air around her seemed to thicken, making his ears buzz.

Charlie was with another lover.

Lucian looked around, trying to fish new sounds out of the humming soup, and distill a direction from it. She turned left into a corridor with quite a few closed doors. Back down the hallway was the library, he knew. Most of the other rooms were empty, or filled with discarded furniture.

Another cry pierced the air, and it seemed to come from a door on the right.

Lucia walked closer and put his ear against the wood.

She knew he was at the right place -- realizing everything was wrong, very wrong. The sounds she heard were Charlie's all right, and they were the exact mixture of his fondest memories -- fast, almost breathless gasps, punctured by high-pitched moans that came faster, ever faster until they peaked into a birdlike cry.

He pushed against the door; it creaked, but she didn't care.

The room was dark, but for a small shaded lamp next to a bed. It turned the bodies on the mattress into gold-lined silhouettes. As they moved frantically it was hard to distinguish one body from the other -- what he saw was a many-limbed creature lost in the throes of aggressive fornication.

The upper part of the creature carried a crown of sparkling silver, swaying back and forth as its owner pumped up and down, seated on the lower, darker body of its counterpart.

Lucia recognized the face, thrown back on an arched throat. He recognized the wide-open mouth and even its contorted bliss.

"Charlie," he whispered, but the name drowned in a new wave of moans and cries.

A sleek spine bent back like a bow, holding perfectly still as a repetition of spasms ran up and down. The golden outline sparkled with moisture. Lucian smelled a mixture of sweat, perfume and sex.

It was all too familiar.

He stepped back, and as she closed the door, the upper body crumpled on the lower one.

"Oh God, so good," a girly voice sang. "Oh God, God.. please give me more."

***

Lucian lifted his head from his soaked pillow, moving it in vain to find a drier part.

All kinds of haphazard thoughts cartwheeled through his mind, some trying to clutter into a real sentence, but unable to pierce the fat cotton balls that filled his brain. Some thoughts began with 'why,' but many more already found an answer to that. There were 'what's' too, like in 'what had he been thinking?' Or 'what are you going to do?'

How could he have allowed himself to end up this vulnerable -- assuming someone would love him, or at least care enough not to hurt him? Didn't he know better? Shouldn't he?

Then the door opened.

Charlie looked her usual energetic self.

Her silver curls were damp from showering, and her porcelain face was fresh, scrubbed clean of any make up. Her pale blue shirt looked wrinkled, though, and there was a loose ribbon on her left foot.

She dived on the bed, crying out her greetings, but Lucian rolled away, leaving her to fall face-first into the soaked pillow. Looking up her violet eyes searched for his.

"Is something wrong?" she asked. "You... you cried. You cried?"

Lucian sat up against the headboard.

"I saw you," he said. It was all he said, allowing his silence to confuse the girl.

"I saw you getting yourself fucked in a room by the library hallway," he then went on, his voice flat.

Charlie blushed, but she didn't look away.

"Yes," she said, nodding. "It was on short notice; sorry, you must have been worried."

He stared at her innocent face, rendered speechless by the irrelevance of her words. She was sorry for not telling him she'd be late?

Puzzlement changed Charlie's wide-open eyes to a darker shade.

"It... it was just that, honest," she muttered. "Just a chore. Mac got sick and..."

Still too shocked to respond Lucian turned away from the girl. The sheet he pulled over his ear muffled her words.

"They warned me you might respond this way," she said. "I should have known. I'm sorry."

He pulled down the sheet and watched her.

Her eyes had turned down to see what her fingers did -- which was a nervous plucking at a button of her shirt.

"They told you?" Lucian said, lifting his eyebrows. "Who are they? Does everybody know what you did?"

Charlie's eyes returned to his. They shone with moisture.

"Of course they do," she said. "All Barbs do it, if needed."

He found no words, and it made her nervous.

"I should have known you're different," she said. "That you wouldn't understand. That's why they told me not to tell you... I'm so sorry."

She crawled forward to be closer, but Lucian slid off the bed and shied away from her begging hands.

"You let others fuck you behind my back," he said, still trying to keep his voice steady. "What else is there to understand?"

The girl cried now.

"Please hold me," she sobbed, reaching out. "Please, I love you and you should love me. Don't be like this; it's just chores. They all do it. It's got nothing to do with us -- you and I. Love me, Luce, please."

Breaking down she added her tears to the drenched pillow.

"Be out of here before I return," Lucian said, picking up his shirt and walking to the door.

A muffled cry made him stop, but he didn't look back before opening the door and walking out.

***

Charlie looked drawn.

No, worse than that, she looked as if all tension had left the muscles of her face. Her eyes were a pale lilac, washed out against her almost translucent skin; it showed the contours of her skull.

"I didn't know," she said, stretching the o into a whine. "How could I know?"

Lucian hadn't seen a mirror for days, but he guessed he didn't fare much better than Charlie.

Mamselle sat across from them, looking like she always did -- prim and tight and exotically tasteful.

"You should have known that Lucien isn't your everyday Barb, Charlie," she said, sprinkling her words with French highlights. "If anyone should know, it must be you."

Charlie sighed.

"I've been a fool, I guess," she said. "But it was nothing, was it? Everybody does it, and I do love only him. How can I make him believe that?"

Now Mamselle did the sighing.

"Is it 'him' again, now?" she asked.

"Yes!" Lucian said -- growling as deep as he could. Which wasn't very deep.

Mamselle plucked a speck of invisible dust off her pencil skirt before looking up.

"Whatever," she said, making it sound like 'whatevèèr.'

It sounded so silly that she had to hide a wide smile behind her manicured fingers. Incapable of checking himself Lucian chuckled and soon all three of them were laughing.

Tears ran down Charlie's face, but she blushed and her eyes radiated.

"Please, Luce, I'm a moron, but please forgive me," she said. "I hear you have a deal with the headmistress that I shouldn't do... chores. I didn't know. I just... helped out. It was a misunderstanding, but I should have known better. I don't want to loose you, please."

She reached out, touching his knee. He didn't withdraw.

"Are all Barbs whores?" he asked Mamselle, looking away from Charlie.

"Alors," the petite woman said, stretching the word.

Lucian knew that it was her way to win time and avoid difficult situations. He wouldn't stand for it.

'Is it...," he said. "Is it what we do? I mean, are we supposed to do it?"

He knew the woman felt uncomfortable.

What could she say? "We don't force anyone?" It would make Charlie look even worse -- to him at least. And if she admitted that the school forced Barbs to fuck clients, it would make Norton's look pretty bad, wouldn't it?

Charlie might look a bit better, though -- a tiny bit.

As it happened it was Charlie who saved Mamselle, in a way.

"I won't lie, Luce," she whispered. "I volunteered when Mac got sick. I could say I did it because it helps our school and things, but I do it because I love to be fucked by a real, hard, big cock. Please understand, Luce; you would love it too. You really would."

The silence was deafening. All relief from the earlier laughter was gone.

'I volunteered,' she'd said. 'I love to be fucked by a real, hard, big cock.'

It hurt on so many levels.

Ever since being at Norton's Academy Lucian had stopped worrying about things like size and other fetishes of locker room machismo.

It just hadn't been a topic here -- on the contrary, he thought.

Being soft and small and clean was the norm; esthetically and sexually. Being a good lover meant to give and to please, not to grab and to take. It meant honing your skills, being inventive. You learned using your mouth and your tongue and your fingers; objects too, like humming vibes. You used anything to make your partner come as often as you could; elegant, gracious and sweet smelling.

Had it all been just another lie?

'A real big cock,' she'd said. He'd tried to protect her, but she volunteered, cause she loved it. She also said: 'I do it because I love it -- not 'I did it.' That could only mean it was a regular thing, and meant to be going on.

"How long have you been doing this?" he asked. "Fucking the real hard big cocks you love?"

He emphasized the 'real' and the 'hard' and the 'big.'

She looked confused. Could it really be that she didn't understand why he was hurt?

Her hand again touched his bare knee, but this time he moved away.

"But..." was all she said.

It was time for Mamselle to intervene. She had watched

his emotional response to Charlie's words with mild surprise -- or was it amusement? Now she leant in and placed a narrow hand on his shoulder.

"I think I need to apologize on behalf of Norton's," she said, her eyes dark with gravity. "After their graduation Second Level girls are supposed to pleasure sponsors and clients to guarantee the ongoing existence of the Academy. As Ms. Parker told you: we are happy with every dollar of tuition and donation, but in relation to our ambition those will never be enough. Without other, eh, funds the school will flounder, and all protection will be lost."

Lucian had never heard Mamselle use so many euphemisms strung into so many strings of political bla bla. And it seemed she wasn't done.

"Lucien," she went on, "what petite Charlie did... alors, what she does... is contributing to our school to help her fellow students who are... less fortunate. I think we should admire her extra for it because she doesn't have to. Her parents already pay generously for her tuition, as do yours."

A tiny smile touched her lips.

It only added to the mute rage that was building inside him. 'Accumulating astonishment' would hardly cover his feelings.

"She sacrifices herself?" he asked, hearing a tremor in his voice. "Are you crazy? She loved it; every second of it. She screamed and thrashed and kept coming like a fucking... fucking machine!"

His words cut right through Charlie's ragged defenses. Her hands went to her blanching face, and she started wailing.

Mamselle rose and embraced her until her misery toned down to mere sobbing. The French woman kept her eyes on him all the time. He tried to ignore her reproach -- he was seething.

He'd been right, hadn't he?

"Lucien," Mamselle finally said. "Your hurt might be understandable, but if there is someone to blame it's the school, not this sweet girl. There is no need for the language you used to describe her."

She lowered her head and kissed Charlie's brow.

As usual Norton's was turning reality upside down, making a hero out of a fucking whore. Moreover, if the girl was the unselfish martyr for the greater good, what did that make him? A spoilt, selfish kid with no heart for his poor fellow students? Was this a guilt trip?