Claimed: Future Found Read online

  “Her? She had a very nice tree. And she was one of the few who seemed to have a bit of soul. But she wasn’t my type.”

  The words fell between them. He was her type. But she was just part of the plan.

  “It’s been a long day, Shay. Will you sleep with me?”

  She smiled at him. “I’d like that. Here?”

  He blinked. “Would you really want that?”

  “Oh, yes. There’s a sleeping platform around the singer’s tree in my compound. Sometimes every room is empty and we’re all in there.” There were three singers’ compounds, and each had a garden the equal of the Council’s formal chamber.

  Looking at his tree, he tilted his head. “Do you know, that’s never even occurred to me? Just to be in the room with it seems…sacrilegious.”

  “You managed to rise to the occasion.” She grinned at her innuendo.

  “So I did. Because you blew my mind.”

  She laughed. It felt so good, she did it again. “Can I ask for a naughty favor?”

  “My favorite kind to grant.”

  “I want to sleep in the cotton.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You mean masturbate in the cotton.”

  “Well, it depends on what kind of a morning person you are.”

  “I’ll be the available kind.”

  She laughed again. “We’ll see. This body waits for no man when cotton is at hand.”

  To her surprise, he laughed with her. It was a deep, relaxed, joyful sound. “Let’s get a lounge in here.”

  Chapter Six

  The arrangements were done by droid, as he took her to the bath. She braced for some lavish astonishment, but it was just a very nice bath, with sanitizer and waste chair. He let her use the room first. Then she spent the time back in her room choosing a focus for the evening prayer among his shelves of treasure.

  When he came to her, hair damp, she’d arranged a feather and a river stone on the altar. He reached for her hand and she clasped his. His was so big, surrounding hers in strength. She exhaled peacefully, standing with him outside the beam of light that lit the altar.

  “Shall I leave you?”

  “Will you join me?”

  They spoke at the same time. Looking at each other, they smiled. Still holding hands, they knelt. She prayed, connecting to the altar. She’d chosen the focus items because they made her think of air and water, the two most elusive elements they needed for the plan. She couldn’t keep calling it that.

  They were going to make a forest. In a temple. A point of such power that the Spirit could not be denied, or hidden. A new start on the shattered, poisoned, ruined ground the land had become. The people who lived and worked so hard would have a place of peace. The priestesses would not have to work on the streets, the priests would not have to visit houses in secret.

  She would call it the symphony. Sand’s grand strategy, the master plan envisioned by a line of priestesses and passed on to three young, privileged, powerful, devout boys. She was now an instrument in the symphony. She’d play when she was needed and rest when she wasn’t.

  Focusing on the feather and the river stone, she called to those elements. Air, water, insubstantial elements. She’d always been drawn to water, but air was a personal challenge to connect to.

  When she opened her eyes, she knew she’d been close, but hadn’t achieved the connection she wished. She turned her head. Sand was sitting cross-legged on a lounge, watching her. He was nude. The cotton outfit was folded at his side.

  “When you pray, you glow just like you do when you sing.”

  “Not always.”

  “Shay, what you just did… It’s very much like what I can do when I tap into the lattice.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about. “You pray on the lattice?” She saw technology as anathema to Spirit, but knew it was her own bias. Technology had saved what was left of the land, in the end, after the Cataclysm. The elite had been born on a tide of bloody, desperate experimentation. Eventually the singers emerged, but it had taken generations. The elite claimed their prominence by right of heritage, of their being humanity’s saviors in those first dark decades. Indeed, if the elite hadn’t been identified and created, there would likely be no one left.

  “No, your focus, the calling, the merging. It was like you went seeking, like I do on the lattice.”

  “I was praying.”

  “But I felt the echo of water, through your hand. Maybe because our chi is still synched from our loving.”

  Her heart stopped. He’d called it loving. He shouldn’t. “You mean sex.”

  “It was powerful, loving sex. There was no aggression or anger in it. Just passion, freely shared, respectfully.”

  Oh. That wasn’t love. Love was when the person you were with mattered as much as the pleasure.

  “I think, if you’d be willing, I’d like to trace on the lattice a bit tomorrow, with the jump you’ve given my energy. Then, while I’m hooked in, I’d like to try to connect with you while you’re praying.”

  “All right.” Shit. Even she heard the stiffness in her voice.

  He frowned. “If it bothers you, I won’t do it.”

  “Do I have to be in a tracing chair?”

  “No.”

  “Then it won’t bother me.”

  “You’re upset about something. You don’t want me to call it loving?”

  Dammit. “If you must poke at it, then yes. Just call it sex.”

  He looked at her reproachfully.

  “I’m a player in your orchestra, Sand. Let’s just remember our parts.”

  Now he was outright scowling. “You are special to me, Shay.”

  Damn straight. Wait till he saw what she could do to a mature tree that could handle all her power. None of the other tree singers could do what he was asking. They didn’t have the chi for it. She didn’t even have it, yet. She’d need the mother of all binding rituals to boost her.

  “Do you trust me, Shay-non? Do you know I will never betray you?”

  She mentally rolled her eyes. “I trust you, Sand. I don’t believe this is an elaborate hoax to set me up.”

  “Then you must know—”

  “Can we go to bed? I think I was taken in prayer quite a while. I’m tired.” That was a lie. She had enough chi surging through her from one time with him to stay awake for days. But her internal clock said she’d passed over an hour in prayer, so maybe he’d buy it.

  “I didn’t wash the clothes.” He was all stiff. He didn’t buy it.

  “That’s fine. I don’t mind the smell of us.” She stood and went to the lounge, looking down at the cotton. Her fingers twitched. Her breath caught. She was going to put it on her body, completely all over her. Just draping the shirt around her neck before had blown her mind.

  “Do you want me to leave the two of you alone for privacy?” His voice was dry.

  “How long have you been wearing it?”

  “About two years. Rarely, of course.”

  “How do you bear to take it off?”

  He shrugged. “It’s like sex. It has to end eventually.”

  She stared at the neat black folds. She yearned. She coveted them. Greed crawled across her skin in a wave that left her dizzy. She reached out a shaking hand, pulled it back.

  “Help me put it on?”

  He looked at her. Stood. Lifting the shirt, he casually crumpled the torso into a ring, and lifted it toward her head. Her breath came in small pants.

  “I’ll just drape it over your head, like you wore it before.”

  Before, it had triggered a series of orgasms that took her breath and almost made her pass out. She nodded. He pulled the circle down around her neck and let go, leaving the fabric hanging on her shoulders. An immense sun, shining on fields of green dotted with white. Black earth below, air blowing clean.

  “Ungh.” She grunted, shivering.

  “All right?”

  She nodded. He pulled the shirt down so that it hung in a tube, trapping her
arms where they clung to her waist. The hem tickled the top of her ass. Her nipples were caressed by softness. Her arms stroked in warmth. Instantly, her body was surrounded.

  She moaned. He stroked her spine, his hand attempting to soothe, but causing her to sway.

  “I don’t see this working for you as a sleeping arrangement.”

  “Pants.”

  “Put your arms through the holes at the shoulders.”

  “No.” She couldn’t be that bound in it.

  “Well, the pants are going to be too long, but I can roll them. Maybe you should sit.”

  She sat, gingerly. The shifting of the whispering fabric that had once lived caused her to break out in gooseflesh.

  He knelt at her feet, ringing one leg, and she put her foot in. The fabric was a band around one ankle. He did the other foot. Shackled by pleasure.

  “Wait.” She had to take it all in. Her body was going to be surrounded in it.

  When her breathing steadied, he motioned her to stand. Then he drew the fabric slowly up her legs. His fingers brushed her knees, her thighs, her hips. His hands pulled a synthsilk strand of ribbon threaded in the waist, and cinched it.

  “Sand!”

  “I’m here.” He gently maneuvered her back. Her knees, already weak, hit the lounge and she collapsed. The feel of the cotton trapped along her legs was overloading her. It was against her ass, even pulled up into her sensitive crack. It gripped tight across her tummy, gripped her knees.

  Sand pushed her legs open and suddenly his fist was grinding in kneading circles in her core. His pestle worked the fabric into her, where it stuck, twisted, touched. His thumb added in. She arched, clinging to herself under the shroud of black cotton.

  “So pretty. Come on, red. Open those brown eyes.” His other hand was stroking her back under the shirt, his skin practically coarse compared to the feeling of the shirt on her body. His wrist twisted in a steady, sinuous dance. She stared down at his pale skin, the white lines of scars, against the black encasing her body.

  “Come on, red. Come on. Come.”

  Dazed, she dragged her gaze up his forearm, with the strands of sinew, up over his bulging biceps, rounded shoulder. His hair was shaggy against his neck, long for an elite. His jaw was clenched, his lips opened, revealing the edge of white teeth. She met his eyes, and the green exploded in her vision.

  She fell back, the pleasure a radiating nova from her core. Her back arched as her shoulders hung over the far side of the chair, her head hanging upside down. She closed her eyes.

  Then he took his finger and drove the cotton up inside her. It was so thick. The opening of her vagina burned as it took in the damp fabric. She came again, arching, rolling as her hands bit into her ribs. Then his hands were ripping at the waist, and his fingers were inside the pants, shoving harshly inside her without the cotton. She clamped hard on the three he shoved deep. The blood was pounding in her head, her eyesight spotty. He stretched his fingers inside her. This time the orgasm was on the edge of pain, her muscles locked so hard as to be nearly a cramp.

  She was grabbed up and slung onto the length of the lounge, the change causing the room to spin. The pants were at her knees, and his hips were plunging against hers. Because her legs couldn’t open, only half of him could reach her. But it was a thick, hot, hard half. Her breath was a harsh rasping in the room, only matched by his. She looked at him, shocked. He thrust and thrust, but couldn’t get deeper. The head of him dragging in and out of her entrance blew her apart in a few strokes.

  Her back ached, her neck bowed, and she screamed. She felt the heat of his ejaculation in scalding wetness against her sensitive opening. She was rocked with shudders. He writhed on her, his weight crushing, his hands clenching in her hair.

  “Shay, Shay, Shay, Shay,” he chanted between breaths.

  His chi exploded into her and she caught it, swallowed it, slung her own back. They were so beautiful, so much more, together. It was all she knew before darkness took her.

  Chapter Seven

  When he woke up in the night, he was rock hard, the tip of him pushing into something soft and grasping. Spirit help him, he was inside her while they slept. For some reason, the thought seemed taboo to him, utterly intimate in a way he’d never thought to be. He grew harder, throbbing. He’d spent the entire day loving her. Over half his time, gone. His heart clenched.

  He pulled back, concerned, but she seemed to be breathing all right. He turned her, slowly, carefully. Settling in behind her, he greased her ass with her own cream. Slowly, he nudged her with his forefinger. He’d never been more patient. One millimeter at a time, to the first knuckle. Retreat. Gather more cream, again. He lay with her soft, cotton-wrapped warmth tucked against his front. His dick ached, furious at being wrenched from its warm home.

  For an hour, he worked her ass until he was slowly sliding his entire finger in and out, painstakingly, drowsily. When he’d managed that, he nudged a second tip in along with the first, and worked her all over again, incrementally. He’d just gotten both fingers as deep as they could go for the first time when he felt her breath change. He froze where he was, body relaxed, breathing steady.

  Her ass burned around his fingers, boiling hot. The cotton was still around her thighs, and the curve of her fit to his groin perfectly. Deciding he’d stolen enough, he closed his eyes, and dreamed of his cock being where his fingers were. Owning her. He matched his breath to hers as she sank back into sleep.

  The dream slipped up sweetly. Three boys, racing across the wide courtyard of the elite training compound. They jumped up on the sculptures sprinkled throughout with casual displays of energy and athleticism. Laughing they held poses as they balanced precariously on the free-formed pieces.

  “Watch this!”

  “Ho-oh, he’s losing it!”

  “Overbalanced by that fat head once again.”

  “Ah, but which one? Upper or lower?”

  The boys laughing, jostling and happy.

  In a blink the clear yellow light changed to glaring white. Tavish’s slack body leaving a red wake down an old tiled hall. Cullen crying, sobbing, as he struggled with a foot under each arm. Sand’s hands gouged into Tavish’s arms as he struggled to lift the man’s torso.

  The light changed again, to a shadowy cream that was supposed to be soothing. The boys waiting for each other as they left the conditioning rooms, silent, exhausted. The pain conditioning left no marks, unless a person inflicted them upon themselves in agony. Today, Sand had four long furrows in his right forearm. He hid them with his shirt, but it hurt. Halfway to the dorm, Cullen’s knees buckled. Tavish picked him up. The look they exchanged made Sand look away.

  Bright golden light, shining on more earth than he’d ever seen. Tavish’s hand lying on emerald moss, the hair on the back glinting copper compared to the dark smears of drying blood. Blackened flesh smoking.

  An acorn sat near his thumb. It whispered, “I hunger, Sandor. My child, feed me. I hunger. Feed me. Save me, I’m dying.”

  I can’t feed you. I don’t understand you.

  The acorn replied, “You don’t understand her, either. She’s wary. She’ll test you, like I did. Don’t back down.”

  Cullen walking on his hands in the courtyard, the sunshine lamps on full, simulating midday. His shirt tumbled down around his chest as if gravity were playing peekaboo, revealing the stripes of a lash on his back. Flipping to his feet, he pulled the shirt down roughly. All the laughter the boys had shared shut off.

  Tavish scowled at him. “If you’d just back down, keep it to yourself, he wouldn’t go at you. You’re too bold.”

  Cullen ignored him. “I’m starving, let’s go eat.”

  Tavish let the dark moment pass. “You’re always starving. You’d think you wouldn’t be so puny with all the bites you pack away.”

  “Come to my room, I’ll make some toasted crackers.” Sandor hated the cafeteria.

  “Huzzah for the chef.” Cullen leaped on Sand, buffeting his hea
d as he jumped up onto his back.

  Sand staggered under his weight and wove in the direction of their dorms.

  “I call first serving.” Tavish ran ahead, massive legs churning.

  Sand laughed…happy. It was dark, and warm, the smell of life thick in his throat, and the sound of leaves blown by the wind soothing him, calming him, strengthening him.

  When he woke, her ass was pressing rhythmically against his hand. He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled, pushed his fingers farther into her body. The length of her against his front amazed him, filled him with gratitude and wonder. Both of Shay’s hands were moving subtly on her front. And his balls hurt, hard as rocks.

  “Sand…”

  “I’m here.”

  “Inside.” She clenched her ass on his fingers again.

  “How?” Baby, just say yes.

  “I’ve never had it there.”

  “Does it feel good?”

  “Yeah…” She sounded so adorable, sleepy.

  He moved his fingers, twisting them in place. She sighed.

  He pulled out, a bit faster than he’d done before, until he was at his first knuckle, then pushed back in. He mimicked the movement with his hips, sliding himself against the soft skin of her spine. He pumped into her with smooth strokes, working against the movement of her thrusts.

  “Can’t you, you know, do both?”

  He chuckled. “Are you feeling empty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Use your hands,” he urged.

  “I don’t like to. I feel all gushy and sloppy.”

  He paused, surprised into more of a chuckle. “Well, you’ll just have to settle for touching your clit then.” His other hand was trapped under him, between them. He wasn’t at the right angle to be in her, and her damn pants were still on.

  He felt her shift her hands. After a little bit she grew rigid along him. Shivered. Such a sweet, sleepy, morning orgasm. He kissed her neck. Her smooth, unscarred neck. He slid out, gently pulled her pants up.

  When he came back from the bathroom, still toweling his wet hair from a shower, she was walking stiffly around the room.