Seeing Stars Read online

  “I’m going to Selkca.”

  He hadn’t pegged her for a Homesteader. “Yeah?”

  Milla smiled, the first she’d given him. Jarden would never cease to be amazed at the power of a woman’s smile. He wouldn’t have minded hearing her laugh either.

  “Yes. This cruise is my passage there. I figured…I’ve got a long time to be alone. I might as well have some fun on the way.”

  “But you didn’t.” Jarden watched her carefully. He’d been trained to find the signs of arousal. Bright eyes, flushed skin. Just like he’d been trained in a hundred ways to bring a woman to orgasm.

  If there was power in a woman’s smile, her frown had strength too. A Pleasurebot wouldn’t want to take a woman in its arms and take away whatever was troubling her. Jarden, on the other hand, couldn’t stop himself from wanting to.

  When he got up and pulled her against him, Milla looked startled. “What are you doing?”

  Jarden rubbed her upper arms gently. “I owe you two cred-hours.”

  She shook her head. “No. I told you, I don’t want them.”

  He didn’t let her go. He slipped a hand inside her robe to cup her breast. The nipple perked at once against his palm. He rolled a thumb over it and watched her mouth part.

  “I think you do, Milla.”

  She closed her eyes, and the glimmer of tears on her lashes punched him in the gut. “I can’t. Didn’t you figure that out yet?”

  Jarden moved his hand lower, over her belly. Tiny muscles leapt under his fingertips. Lower he moved, over the smooth mound of her pubis to the delicate pearl of her clit. He pressed it and it throbbed. She was turned on, no question of that, and not just from the Arous-All.

  “I think you can.”

  She shook her head again, harder. “No. I can’t. Maybe with a Pleasurebot—”

  “You think a ’bot could do what I can’t?” He really wanted to know. His fingertip pressed against her gently, and her legs parted a bit more. “Why?”

  She looked at him then, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright. “Being with a ’bot wouldn’t be much different from being with myself, would it? A ’bot’s just like a big vibrator, only I don’t have to operate it.”

  He slid his finger lower, along her folds. She was still slick. Hot. His cock thickened at the sensation of the wet heat on his finger. He parted her gently and found her entrance, but didn’t push inside.

  “A real…man…” She paused to take a breath and her eyelashes fluttered. “…expects…things.”

  “What sort of things?” he murmured, watching her.

  Her eyes opened and she pushed out of his arms. “Things in return.” Her voice shook. “Payback. A ’bot’s reward is his orgasm, and he’ll have one no matter what.”

  “Even if you have scars?” Jarden asked.

  Milla turned from him. “Yes. Even then.”

  Someone must have hurt her, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out how. “Who was he?”

  Her shoulders straightened. “My union partner. His name was Derek. It was an arranged union.”

  The term, union partner, told him a lot about her. “You’re from Nidar?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Where women are only as good as the men who unite with them.”

  A few moments earlier Jarden had wanted to hear her laugh, but hearing it now wasn’t what he’d imagined. “So you left. Lots of Nidar women do, I’ve heard.”

  She threw him a wry look. “I didn’t want to leave. I loved him, even though I hadn’t chosen him. He was so handsome. He was so smart. It hurt, how much I loved him, Jarden. I was foolish. I was just a girl. But Derek was all I’d ever believed I wanted.”

  She didn’t look like much more than a girl now. “So what happened?”

  She held out her wrist. “This.”

  Jarden took her arm and studied the faint, barely discernable line at the base of her wrist. “What is it?”

  “I was shopping for union gifts for Derek’s family. I needed to find something special. His family had much higher status than mine, you see. While I was at the market, there was an attack.”

  She pulled her wrist gently back. “I understand the ideals of the group that did it. They call themselves Imperfectionists. They cut a lot of the women in the market. Marking them. I was lucky. They only managed a slice before they were gassed. I had the wound repaired, of course, right away. The best surgeons. But that white line remained. And on my union night, Derek couldn’t stop looking at it. Every time we made love, he made me hide it. He said it disgusted him. After three weeks, he said he could no longer bear to make love to me. We had a barren union.”

  As a Nidarian woman, she’d have been a virgin when she united, that much Jarden knew. But what she said next surprised him.

  “I had an affair with Derek’s business partner. His name was Stephal. He came to our house often while Derek was away. I had many affairs.”

  Jarden had heard stories of Nidar’s unequal treatment of genders. “And what happened?”

  “None of those men could make me climax,” she told him bluntly. “I’d discovered I could have orgasms very well on my own. Masturbation for women is forbidden, of course, but every woman I knew did it. Pleasurebots are illegal for women too, though men can use them. I knew I could come by myself. I knew I could come with a woman too.”

  The image of Milla, legs spread beneath a woman’s tongue, two soft and curved bodies writhing in pleasure, filled Jarden’s cock a bit more. “You slept with women?”

  Milla waved a derisive hand. “In Nidar, all women fuck each other. It’s often the only way we have to get any pleasure. And I like women, Jarden, but they can be hard work. Women fall in love too easily. It can be…awkward.”

  Her eyes flashed. The folds of her robe had stayed open after he’d parted them with his hand. He glimpsed her breasts and sweet pink nipples. She’d tasted good.

  “One of my lovers didn’t understand the need for discretion. She fell in love with me.” Milla paused, voice low. “But I didn’t love her. She went to my union partner.”

  “What happened?” His voice was a little hoarse from the memory of her flavor.

  “Derek dissolved our union. I was lucky he didn’t have me put in prison for defiling our union, but when I told him about all the men—his friends and business partners—who’d also violated the union with me, he relented. The laws are more lenient for men, but the scandal would have been very bad for Derek and his family. I took the dissolution settlement and used it for a deposit on a plot on Selkca and this trip. I wanted to fuck,” Milla said with a lift of her chin. “I wanted to come with a cock inside me and hands on me that weren’t my own. I wanted to just take care of my own pleasure without worrying about what my partner wanted.”

  “You wanted a ’bot.”

  She nodded. “Yes. And I got you, instead. And you see? I couldn’t come, even with you.”

  Jarden thought of how confident she’d sounded when she’d told him to get on his knees for her. How her pussy had slicked beneath his mouth and hands, and how she’d responded. There was no problem with her being able to reach arousal.

  “Because I’m not a robot?” he asked, amused despite himself. “Milla, I’m more metal and plaz than I am anything else.”

  “But your mind’s not a hard drive,” she told him with a small smile. “You’re still a man.”

  “You don’t like men?” He wouldn’t have blamed her after hearing her experience.

  “I love men,” Milla said. “I love everything about them. I love hard, thick erections and long legs and tight bellies. I love hairy legs and arms and chests. I love the way a man feels on top of me.” Her breath hitched.

  “But you can’t come with one.” Jarden thought of how she’d arched beneath him as if by instinct. How good she’d felt. “You’re beautiful, you know.”

  Milla frowned. “Stop. You don’t have to.”

  Jarden made a show of looking around. “What else do we have to do?” It was th