Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 20

Deirdre closed her eyes and sighed. Suddenly, the tension in her body was gone.

Zhair'lo stroked her again with his tongue, increasing the depth of penetration by the tiniest margin.

"Yes," she hissed, her body going completely limp.

The spot having been found, he didn't dare move. If clitoral stimulation was working, why risk jabbing her vagina with his tongue and throwing everything off? She was a Lips girl, after all, so he'd made the right calculation.

By the fifth stroke, Zhair'lo could feel her clitoris hardening under his attention. He took his hands away from her knees, an awkward position anyway, curled his arms around the outside of her thighs so he could use his fingers to gently part her lips. Deirdre's clitoris was engorged. There was no question, from his experience, that she'd received a double upgrade. Her inner lips, as well, were swollen.

Open as Deirdre was, it was easier now to work her parts individually to see what she liked best. He quickly discovered, however, that just about anything worked. Left to right was as good as up and down. Darting movements, as long as they were kept light, were as good as gentle swirls. Nothing seemed to make her as happy, though, as gently suckling at her clit.

Occasionally, Deirdre would feature him with a low murmur of approval, but Zhair'lo needed none of that to recognize how happy she was to find herself functional in his bed.

The first sign of real passion came when, whilst sucking on her little nub, Deirdre pushed her hips up into his face. Zhair'lo rode the tiny movement out easily and quickly adapted to her rhythm, pushing down as she pushed up but taking care not to pull her lips too far apart with his fingers.

It was, as with everything with Deirdre, a delicate thing. There was no question of the contrast between the strange paleness of her skin against the healthy tan of his. Now that she was naked, neither was there any question of her bony frailty - especially as he held her hips in the palms of his hands.

In spite of what Zhair'lo regarded as extreme fragility, Deirdre thrust against him. Frightened to hurt her but eager to please her, he replied with equal force.

Her hands, unoccupied until this point, suddenly slipped into the dirty brown locks of his hair. Her fingernails caught his scalp for a moment before her fingertips found a proper grip. Next, she wrapped her legs around his neck.

Deirdre pushed with her fingers and squeezed with her legs. Zhair'lo let her. He would be loathe to let a Form girl do such a thing, given the strength available, but with Deirdre he had no reason to fear.

His mouth pulled on her clitoris, reasoning that her escalation of force was an indication of the stimulation she needed. The moment he did so, her body tensed around him. A moan escaped her lips - a very long moan indeed, rising in pitch as she shook her hips against him.

Tension built in Deirdre's stomach and he felt her holding her breath.

"Gah!" she shouted.

This announcement was immediately followed by the telltale sensation of her genitals twitching around his face as she clung on to him for dear life.

Lightly panting, she released him from the grip of her legs and her eyes opened again.

"Where," she started, but had to gasp for air.

Zhair'lo wiped his face off on the back of his hand and sat up straight, stretching his spine. His bed, he realized, wasn't at optimum height for this sort of thing. It had never seemed to be a problem for the girls who had gone down on him. But then, erections were conveniently pointed upwards, weren't they?

"Where did you learn how to do that?"

"Someone asked me once," Zhair'lo shrugged. "So I tried it."

"They never mention that in classes," Deirdre whispered, her eyes wide with shock. "It's all about pleasing you and then meshing."

"That's weird," he said. "No one ever teaches us anything at all."

Deirdre's eyes narrowed as if she were trying to focus on this thought, but her expression quickly glazed over.

"Do you think I'm ready?"

"Your body is," Zhair'lo nodded confidently. "Are you?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "Now."

He had to acknowledge that her enthusiasm seemed authentic, even if there was still a lot of wariness in her voice. Though her legs were spread in unspoken invitation, some of the wariness was on his side.

"You want to be on top?" he hesitated.

"No," she said. "Just like this."

The bed might be a bit too low for licking a girl, but it was just the right height for what was coming next. Once his shorts were on the floor, he took a position over her and let his erection touch the place where her lips parted. Zhair'lo noticed immediately that it was warm against the underside of his shaft, and he felt Deirdre's whole body shaking underneath him.

The tip of his erection slid down her lips to where they were spread naturally by the angle of her legs. She gasped as he touched her entrance.

Their eyes met and Deirdre inhaled, bit her lower lip and gave him a last nod while she held her breath.

Zhair'lo pushed.

It might have been difficult. It wouldn't have been for lack of moisture. He had definitely taken care of that. But it could have been tight. There could have been rings of tensed muscles at any point inside her. It was especially possible for her body to have involuntary seized up somewhere inside as an after effect of the orgasm.

But none of those things happened. The entry was smooth, moist and tight.

...

The mesh came on in a very strange way. There was no doubt he'd pulled her along. She was definitely present in the mesh, but her will was so weak ...

"So full," she hissed, letting out the breath she'd been holding.

Yes. He'd filled her up in more ways than just physical. The girl was like a fog around his mind, flitting in and out, cluttering his view for a moment and then whizzing around behind him with the next gust of wind.

Arousal? Yes, Deirdre had that. Zhair'lo could still feel the tingle of her last orgasm and feel the echoes of his own impending release bouncing back off her mind.

He could feel, alongside the arousal, her desire for him.

'But so very weak,' he realized.

It took Zhair'lo a moment to figure out this had nothing to do with him. It was something deep inside her. Since he had physically penetrated her, the mesh let him plumb the depths of her mind, too.

Deirdre didn't feel she deserved happiness, at least not where sex was concerned. Since so much of life in the Temple revolved around sexuality, this was more than a little disconcerting.

On top of all that, Zhair'lo found his eyes being diverted from her body, but he couldn't understand why. Some urge was turning his head this way and that - anything but to look at her. It was a very strange feeling, because the two of them weren't otherwise moving. He knew better, after all, than to start shoving his penis around while Deirdre's body was still getting used to his presence.

And yet, every time he tried to look at her, that instinct caused him to turn away.

It was not, he realized, his own instinct.

It took a lot of effort, especially considering how weak she otherwise seemed to be, but Zhair'lo managed to override Deirdre and look her in the eyes.

'Why do you force me away?'

Her eyes turned away from his and down, while the red shame in her cheeks filtered through the mesh.

'Ugly.'

Ugly? What an awful word. What a terrible thing to think about one's self. Zhair'lo had never felt such a scathing self-indictment before. In the face of that startling deprecation, he came to a very sudden realization: the effort to expose herself to him - to spread her legs for his lingual attention - could only have been the result of a great burst of courage.

Deirdre hated her body. That was the short version of the story and, feeling her thoughts from the inside, Zhair'lo realized how it was connected to her starvation.

He couldn't let that stand. Could he change her mind? That seemed like a huge attitude adjustment to make in one night. The best he could hope for was to put a dent in her mindset, just enough to get the pendulum swinging in another direction - any other direction.

Taking Deirdre's chin in hand, Zhair'lo gently lifted and turned her face so their eyes met.

'Beautiful,' he sent through the mesh.

It wouldn't have worked if he'd said it out loud. The link he had with Deirdre was nowhere near as strong as the ones he'd had with Talla, but it was a mental link all the same. Any word spoken aloud would be meaningless if it wasn't backed up by the wholehearted sincerity of the emotions of the speaker. And since the mesh was there as the ultimate arbiter of honesty, it made the most sense not to speak at all when the concepts were as simple as this.

Deirdre didn't believe him, at least not wholly. The mesh told him that instantly. But there was a crack in the foundation of her self hatred, and that was something.

What was beauty, anyway? Did it make you a better person? Zhair'lo had certainly been taught the opposite by every Temple instructor he'd ever had. Beauty was an accident. For a woman, at least, it was a perfectly repairable circumstance if nature hadn't tossed quite the right qualities in her direction. Zhair'lo distinctly remembered the teacher who had taught him that exact lesson, right down to the shrug with which she had dismissed the very idea of getting upset over appearances.

That caused him to squint a moment, because he was very sure that this memory was not his. Why in the names of the gods would any female teacher have given him such a lesson?

Still, the point had sunk home and he tried to pass it on to Deirdre: beauty was irrelevant and fleeting, a quality no more or less important than the size of one's breasts or the colour of her skin; what mattered was the actions she took.

It seemed that Deirdre had heard this lecture, for he saw her eyes roll just the slightest bit. He wouldn't win the argument that way.

'Nine hells, then,' he thought. 'I'm already inside her, which is the hardest part.'

She twitched, underneath him, as if she sensed something about his resolve.

'The evidence, dearest girl, is all around and inside you. If you weren't beautiful - if I didn't find you attractive - would any of this work at all?'

Zhair'lo knew that it couldn't be said aloud. There was something about this insecurity, this shame, that could barely be understood in the darkness of night. Never mind trying to shine the light of day on it, the slightest word spoken in its direction would send it deeper than anyone could ever dig. The place for this battle was inside the clenched muscles of her vagina and the more tightly clenched repository that was her mind.

Withdrawing his erection very slowly, he felt a protest from the inside of her body. A tunnel so recently filled for the first time wanted nothing to do with a sudden vacancy. He pulled back anyway, until the ridge of the head of his penis hit the tight ring around her entrance. As the mesh wouldn't let him pull himself out any farther anyway, this was the point at which he started pushing back in.

Opening her up again, for she was clenched as tightly as she had been for his first thrust, he beamed over the link as much happiness and satisfaction as he could.

Frail and desperate, Deirdre lapped up every bit.

For a moment, it felt to Zhair'lo almost as if he could heal her entirely, but the ever present shadow of the Temple fell over him, knocking him down from his vain perch.

'You're just not that important, kid. Don't let it get to your head.'

If nothing else, though, it was working for now. Deirdre and Zhair'lo, for this brief interval of time, had happiness. She was, for the first time since she had discovered her own sexuality, happy with her body. For his part, Zhair'lo was glad that he was pleasing her without hurting her.

There was no question, though, from either of their nearly unified perspectives, that the risk of damage to her weakened body was foremost on his mind.

"Am I so fragile to you?" she whispered.

There was no point lying to someone while meshed.

"It frightens me, yes."

"Maybe I should have been Form."

The word 'blasphemy' burned a path through Zhair'lo's mind, though surely no one had taught him, or any other man, the sheer heresy of thinking that the gods had failed to direct Deirdre to the right Discipline.

"Because that would make you stronger."

It sounded harsh, but he was only echoing her thoughts.

"If I could have strength ...", Deirdre wished.

"Then have it," Zhair'lo told her, and injected ice into her veins.

He felt it, too, whatever it was he had done. A tingle went up her spine, making every hair on her body stand on end. Her eyes hardened, daring as they had not yet dared, to stare directly into his.

Next, Deirdre wrapped her legs around his back and pulled him - painfully pulled him - deeper inside. Zhair'lo knew that she was stretching herself.

"I will have strength," she declared, her eyes watering.

The pain washed over her resolve like water over a marble statue. It did not, however, flow so easily over Zhair'lo, who seemed to be feeling Deirdre's pain more than Deirdre did.

"Very tight," he breathed.

There was something about the way she was forcing herself forward, both in body and mind, that combined in a overwhelming way with the sheer physical stimulation around his erection. Zhair'lo could take very little of this.

Deirdre relaxed her thighs, allowing him to withdraw perhaps a centimetre, before tightening again and forcing him against the very end of depth.

Wincing with pain she could no longer ignore, she repeated the gesture again and again.

"I. Will. Not. Be. Weak," she insisted, punctuating each word with a thrust.

It occurred to Zhair'lo, very briefly, that he might have injected a little too much ice into her, and that the arrival of this invulnerable core of marble might have been his fault.

A moment later, however, all thoughts were blissfully erased from his mind as Deirdre's determined self impalement brought about their climax. The statue was no more. She became a living, breathing, moving mass of flesh and bone, twisting and contorting as half of her tried to run away from his spasming erection and half of her tried to jam him in more deeply.

As the mesh dissipated, two things happened at once. The first was that he got less and less of a sense of Deirdre's body and mind. The second was that the mesh's ability to mask pain faded, too.

With a panic, Zhair'lo began to realize that they had done a lot of damage to her insides. There hadn't been a lot of friction, but the way she'd thrust against him had opened her up in a way she was going to regret very soon.

'Two fingers in,' a voice in his mind said, reminding him of how the girls were told to masturbate in order to make their first nights easier.

"Two fingers in" wouldn't have covered this kind of brutal expansion.

Zhair'lo felt panic rising in her as his erection spent its last twitch and the mesh faded away into nothingness. Gently as possible, he withdrew from Deirdre's body, hoping that was the right thing to do for the pain she was in. She seemed to acquiesce, curling her legs up into her stomach and laying her head against his chest.

He embraced her, feeling her trembling in his arms. There was no point asking how she was, knowing rather intimately what the honest answer would be.

"I don't think I can do that again," she whispered. "Not tonight."

"That's okay," he assured her. "That's fine."

Of all the damned things that could have happened; of all the things that could have gone right or wrong, the one thing he had wanted to avoid was damaging this fragile creature who had come to his bed.

'Damn it,' he thought.

"I'll be okay," she promised. "It feels better now."

It might have been a lie. Deirdre still seemed to be wincing.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I wanted ... I wanted it not to hurt you. Of all the ..."

"No."

The sudden determination in her voice shocked him.

"What?"

"I did that, not you."

"I could have stopped -"

"No," Deirdre repeated firmly.

With considerable effort and no small amount of wincing, she propped herself up on her elbows so she could look at him.

"I did that," she said. "I wanted to be strong, so I pushed myself -" another wince "- maybe a bit too hard."

She curled up into his chest again.

"I'm an adult," she said softly, as if she didn't quite believe it. "I'm an adult now."

With one arm trapped under Deirdre, Zhair'lo pulled a blanket over their naked bodies with his free arm before embracing her again.

"Anything I can do?"

She shook her head.

"I can feel it relaxing now," she said. "Maybe in half a bell I'll be okay to walk home."

There was no way, Zhair'lo realized, that this girl in his bed had the experience to make any estimate like that. Nine gods, he did not feel good about this.

"I'll be stronger for it," Deirdre declared.

"I hope so. That was rough."

Deirdre took a deep breath and started stretching her legs out, sliding them past his until their bodies were lined up smoothly against each other.

"It was what I needed," she pushed away from him. "I don't know how I'll feel when I wake up. I don't know how this will change me, or if I'll be the same person tomorrow morning that I was yesterday morning. But this was something I needed to do."

"It will change you," Zhair'lo offered. "But you'll still be the same person."

Deirdre appeared to consider this before acknowledging the wisdom of it with a tilt of her head and returning to the shelter of his arms.

There was a spell of silence, gods knew how long, before she spoke again.

"I really wish we could do it again."

"I really don't want to hurt you again."

"Oh," she agreed. "I'm definitely done tonight - I think I might be bleeding a bit."

Zhair'lo winced. He'd never had that happen before.

"I just meant that I trust you," she sighed contentedly. "I couldn't have done it - wouldn't have pushed myself with anyone else. It would be nice to Serve you again, without all that."

He could only nod.

"You must get a lot of virgins, being a Seal Breaker."

"Yeah."

"Do most of them do it more than once?"

Zhair'lo didn't want to answer that either. It felt like pressuring her, but he trusted in her resolve to recognize the importance of her own health.

"Yes. Two or three times."

"Maybe we'll meet again," Deirdre sighed.

"You all make your rounds," he replied, thinking of Talla and how they could have occasionally had each other, quite legally, if they'd been more patient.

Her head twitched suddenly.

"Have you ever been Served by same woman twice?"

Zhair'lo stammered a moment. What a question to ask, right while he was thinking of Talla.

"I-"

But she interrupted him before he could get more than a word out.

"Of course not," she lowered her head back to his chest, withdrawing her intense glare, "Hasn't been enough time yet."

She yawned and they lay in silence once more.

"I wonder if there are lots of men like you," Deirdre said longingly.

"I have no idea," he replied honestly. "It seems to me no one at all is like me."

"I feel like that too," she said. "Maybe everybody does."

"Maybe."

An odd scraping and tapping pattern came from the hallway.

"Some of the girls are leaving early," Deirdre translated. "I may as well go."

"You okay to walk?"

She sat up gingerly.

"I'll manage," Deirdre winced once more and gathered her clothing.

Zhair'lo rolled over to watch her fasten the white pieces of fabric to her body. Two laces later, she was ready to go.

She looked down at him, her narrow features cast with a sudden ominous strength in the flickering light of the room's single candle. Deirdre knelt by his bedside, sitting on her heels to bring her face level with his, and took his face in her hands so she could kiss him very gently.