Author of SF and Fantasy erotica

“Our last experience before dinner is not going to surprise you,” Cerise explains with a wide grin. “A spa classic, the massage!”

I feel hot in this room. The floor is lined with a thicker carpeting than the corridors outside, and the yellowish walls have a papery texture with an embossed, cumulonimbus design. There’s a long unit of cupboards up to waist height on the far wall, by which I mean waist height for a Human. They come up to the shoulders of the girls working here. A small, fan-looking machine on the surface of the cupboard is spitting a thin stream of scented vapour into the room. We left the music outside. And my gown is boiling me, or so it feels. I thought the gel was supposed to have come off us by this point. Why does every touch still feel so potent?

The twin pallets in the centre of the room look like earth-coloured, textured wood, which I doubt is actually the case. Some sort of clever mimicry, more likely. Each has a raised cushion attached to one end for massage recipients to rest their heads, hollowed out like a square-shaped donut so you can keep your head down without suffocating. Based on the positioning of the pillows, Audrey and I are going to be lying head-to-head.

“Before you start asking for your money back,” Cerise continues, chuckling mischievously, “or telling me you can get a massage just fine on… Earth, right? We have a traditional Cardinal Worlds routine ready for you that I think you’re really going to enjoy.”

“Sounds lovely.” Audrey’s voice is a sighing whisper, and I’d be a fool to not hear the sadness in it. When I look to my wife, I see her gazing sleepily down at the floor, hands stuffed into the pockets of her robe. She looks up at my attention, and she smiles a brave, sad smile.

“I’m just tired,” she tells me. “I could go for a nap after this.”

“Or during, that’s fine too,” suggests Cerise. “Our technique is all about redistributing tension from the core of your body out to the extremities. Most of our customers doze off during, and there’s no shame in that. The one thing we’d ask is that you don’t talk to each other while we’re working.”

“Here I was thinking this was a couple’s package,” I remark with a smirk.

“Yes, yes, Mr Ethan. Very funny. I know it might sound counterintuitive to separate you when you came here together, but trust me. We do our best work like this. You can discuss the blow by blow after we’re done, if you like.”

I glance at Audrey again to gauge her reaction, but she’s still staring down at the ground. Cerise is also watching my wife with a furrowed brow. She reaches out and lays a hand on her shoulder.

“Just relax,” she says. “We’re here for you.”

Audrey nods her head, and content that she is coping, I turn about. Carmine is standing right beside me, close enough that I can feel the body heat radiating from her even through my robe. That endless, mercury gaze is still fixed upon me, and since it has been a few minutes since her blowjob in the shower, it renews my blood with lightning.

‘I’m here for you,’ her eyes say. But I can’t tell whether the tone is doting compassion or targeted desire. ‘I am here for you.’

Audrey takes her place beside the table on the right, I take mine on the left. As Cerise steps up to the cupboards and selects some jars of oil from their shelves, Carmine walks to the opposite wall in the direct centre of the suite. A thick, red curtain is attached to a rail that goes all the way along the middle of the room. Slowly, with the sound of metal rings running across a beam, Carmine draws the curtain between me and my wife.

“Really?” I ask.

“I’m serious about you two not talking,” Cerise explains with a chuckle. “You can still hear each other if you’re really invested in sharing something, but this time is yours alone. We can’t have you getting distracted while we’re trying to get you relaxed, okay?”

I see a shining glimmer of humour in Cerise’s silvery eyes, visible over Audrey’s shoulder as she reaches up to remove her robe. Then, the red curtain comes between us.

Leaving me alone with Carmine. The Cardinali girl turns on her heel to face me, and there is no question what she intends to do with this time we have together. Her smile, the smile she only gives to me, cannot be misinterpreted. She reaches down to her wrist and presses something on her terminal, and music begins to play across the room. I hear Cerise chuckling on the far side of the curtain at her partner’s choice of backing track. It’s no soothing flute. It’s a deep, droning synth, accompanied by the steady, primal beat of a set of drums. The blood pumping in my chest, down in my stiffening cock, obey the beat without question.

As the short Cardinali steps gracefully towards me, I take stock of how far I have fallen today. There is no question any longer that Carmine’s behaviour is in violation of her professional ethos. The touch of her hand in the bath may have been an alien attempt at relaxation gone too far. Her lips on my cock in the shower may very, very possibly have been her strange attempt at making a customer happy. But when she reaches me and reaches her hands gently up onto my shoulders, gazing at me with those magnificent eyes, I can argue misunderstanding no longer.

Carmine takes my interface specs in hand, gently removing them. She folds them up and places them in the pocket of my robe. The last barrier between my face and hers has been vanquished, and I am vulnerable before her.

And unfortunately, I am too far gone to care. She has taken me twice now. Allowing a third time is far, far too easy. Carmine pushes herself up on her toes. I bend my body down towards her, and she presses her lips against mine. I put my arms around her as I lean into the kiss with one of my own.

Supposedly, the sensitising effect of the gel has been washed from our skin. Even so, I feel a rush of static on my fingertips as I run my hands along the soft cotton of Carmine’s uniform tunic. And her lips are soft indeed, the pillowy touch of ripe fruit. Saccharine, too. Carmine tastes of the same alien sweetness that was left on my hand after being submerged in the gel bath. Has she used some on herself, I wonder, to heighten the effects of sex? I certainly would.

I haven’t heard Carmine speak much since our meeting. Still, her gentle sigh against my mouth is now a familiar cadence. She runs her hands across my shoulders and around to the back of my neck, before sliding her fingers into the hem of my robe and gently pulling the clothing down to my elbows. I relinquish my embrace of her reluctantly so that the garment can fall to the floor with a thwump of fabric and leave me naked. Then, I touch her bare arms. I run my hands luxuriantly over the silk of her peach-coloured skin. I lap at her lips with my tongue, and she suppresses a little giggle as she receives me into her mouth. There’s that taste again, sweeter than ever.

A voice comes to us through the red curtain. “Just like that, very nice,” says Cerise. “Let me do all the hard work, okay?”

Audrey is getting an actual massage from this actual massage session. I wonder what it looks like. But when my eyes drift up and past Carmine’s head to where the far side of the room is obscured, Carmine presses her hand onto the side of my face and pulls my attention back to her. With her other hand, she slides her fingers down my torso, briefly tangling them in my pubic hair, and grants my erection a long, loving stroke.

I shiver, hissing out my desire at her touch. Yes, it’s just as electric as in the bath. I’m just as sensitive, just as vulnerable. Carmine teases my cock with a soft brush of her fingertips, and she meets my sigh with one of her own. The sounds mix and meld in our mouths until they are one.

“You’re still too tense,” comments Cerise beyond the barrier. “Close your eyes if you think that will help.”

Being careful not to create too much noise, I turn with Carmine and press her back against the faux-wood of the pallet. My neck is starting to ache from how far I have to bend to reach her lips, and I can feel her legs wobbling with the effort of staying on her tiptoes for me. I release Carmine long enough for her to hop up onto the pallet and adjust her legs and skirt. Then I come upon her again. Carmine parts her legs and allows me into a full embrace of her body. My cock slides between her bare thighs, up the skirt of her tunic and into the intimacy of her warmest parts. Like this, we are roughly the same height. We kiss deeply, her hands on the sides of my head and my fingers gripping the heaviness of her hips under her clothing.

She smells excellent, I realise. A heady mix of organic body and fragrant oils. I open my eyes to take in the sight of Carmine once again, and I see her silver eyes creased with desire as they regard me in turn. When I lean back from her kiss, she follows me needily, her tongue dripping with my saliva. She licks at the corners of my mouth and plants herself deep inside me, anchoring her face against mine with her tongue. She sucks on my teeth, and she groans quietly and secretly down my throat.

Meanwhile, I am making up for missed experiences earlier this morning. Though the tantalising slit of her pussy is calling me, I want to try out every inch of the gorgeous alien who has so captivated me. I run my hands up her sides and savour the static of her tunic between my fingers. Then I slide over her breasts and squeeze greedily. At once, Carmine clamps her thighs around my hips and wraps her arms fully around my neck, holding herself against me. Her breaths in my throat become keening and grating as I massage her, feeling out the points of her nipples with my thumbs. The throbbing tip of my cock is tickled by the shivering hairs between her legs, and I can feel beads of moisture alighting on my skin, dripping from further within.

“How’s that?” Cerise’s voice is hushed behind the thick velvet of the curtain and the thrumming of the music.

Audrey doesn’t respond with words. Her vocalisation is a familiar one, though, a shy gasp of pleasure. How I loved to bring that noise out of her in our long nights together at the start of our marriage. How I’ve missed that sound.

Cerise shares my enthusiasm, chuckling proudly. “I’m glad to hear it,” she says.

The sound of my wife enjoying herself causes the shameful fires burning in my belly to flare. I push out of Carmine’s four-limbed grip with my cock an awkward perpendicular to my body. She stares at me, her sleepy eyes anxious. Has she done something wrong?

Instead, I nod down at the pallet, and she nods back in understanding. We don’t need words when we are this far gone, after all. Carmine slips off her shoes with her toes and lets them drop, then turns about so that she is lying on the pallet. Being as short as she is, she doesn’t take up much of it. All the better for me to share it with her. I clamber up, making space for myself between her raised, parted legs, which hook around me jealously as soon as I am in place. Carmine slides her hands along my bare chest and stares up at me with that everlasting, worshipful stare. Her smile is radiant.

“Alamessa sai-varientie,” she whispers up at me.

“I don’t… understand,” I whisper back.

Carmine shakes her head. Her braided hair is coming loose against the pillow of the massage table, and I wonder how long it is when it’s not bound up. Carmine reaches down my body and rubs at the tip of my cock with her fingertips.

“Good,” she says softly in deeply accented, deeply charming Galactic Standard. “Very good, Ee-ssan.”

I’m done playing. With Carmine’s help, I begin to manoeuvre myself into position to penetrate her. It’s harder than I thought, since the stark difference in our body lengths makes my mounting her unnatural. If I’m to properly skewer her the way I must, her face will need to be down by my stomach. The mental image of me leaning fully over and rutting into a partner I can’t properly see is not a fun one. But I’m also impatient. I’ve committed to sinning with this gorgeous girl, cheating on my wife while she relaxes on the far side of a thin veil. That understanding and my furious lust make me snarl as I try to fuck in this uncomfortable arrangement.

A tap on my chest brings be briefly back to the surface. When I am still, Carmine pulls herself up the pallet so that we are face to face once more. I see beads of sweat on her peach brow, and her smile is awkward and uncertain. She raises a finger for me to wait, and I do so with gritted teeth.

Carmine rolls over. She pulls up her bare legs and wriggles onto her hands and knees while still trapped between my pinning arms. It becomes clear what she is doing when she leans herself forward on her elbows, then raises her bum in a splendid arch of her spine. I can feel the sharp, alien ridges of her bone against the length of my torso, but the softer cheeks of her rear push insistently up against my stomach. I smile with approval.

“Good,” I whisper into her ear, and Carmine sighs with eager anticipation.

I complete our positioning by rising up behind her. I take her skirt in hand and tug it up and over her hips. Carmine, big and round, soft to the touch. I savour the feeling of her excess with my hands as I slide my cock between her thighs. This is much easier. I am perfectly placed. So, with Audrey’s pleasured moaning drifting through the curtain as accompaniment, I thrust my hips and enter Carmine.

God above, she is good. Carmine’s pussy is wet enough to drown in. How desperately she must want me! Plus, the grip of her vagina easily rivals the intimate enclosure of her fingers and the suction of her mouth. I roll my hips against her bum with my hands firmly pressed against the small of her back, and I sample her down to the deepest recesses. And after a long morning of teasing and playing, it’s hard not to cum immediately.

Beneath me, Carmine is reacting with similar enthusiasm. Her body shudders as it receives my cock, and a plaintive yelp begins to escape her lips, one she silences with a firm hand slapped over her mouth. I briefly consider giving her a moment to compose herself. Unfortunately, I am too far gone. Holding tightly to her waist, I push into her a second time. Then a third. I begin to rut into her like an animal, and my very blood lights up with the primal satisfaction of her pussy.

“Yes…!” I hear Audrey’s voice like a whispering wind. “Oh… Oh, yes!”

Carmine grips the head of the pallet with both hands so she can press herself more steadily against my pounding. She hangs her head to try and mask the moaning escaping her throat. But with her back arched, I’m still pumping against the tight recesses at the back of her vagina. She can try to suppress her noise as much as she wants, she still feels incredible.

“Yes! M-Mmhm!” sighs Audrey.

“Shh!” insists Cerise with a chuckle. “You’ll disturb your husband!”

It’s enough to make me grin through the effort of my fucking. At least Audrey is enjoying herself, maybe even as much as I am. I fuck Carmine deeply and vigorously. I take all of the frustration and loneliness and channel them into fucking her. I want to hear her cum. I want to leave my mark upon her. Only then will I be able to convince myself that I am still capable. Only then will I reclaim the pride I have lost over the months that Audrey and I have been passing ships in the night.

“I’m gonna…!” groans Audrey, before being silenced. The sound of her voice is muffled suddenly by the palm of a hand, if I’m hearing correctly. Cerise says nothing, but I do hear what might be heavy Cardinali breathing from the far side of the curtain. Her whispering grunts joins my wife’s in a sweet chorus.

For a moment, Audrey and Carmine swap places beneath me. Audrey is gasping like that because of my cock in her pussy, the same way she’d gasped that one night on our honeymoon where, after nights of trying, we’d finally gotten good enough at fucking each other to make it really, really work for the first time. That same desire, that same satisfaction, replicated here and now on a massage bed on an alien world.

And it all falls into place.

I push into Carmine again, really letting my weight fall on the cushioning of her cheeks. My cock brushes the very depths of her, and the healthcare technician shivers delightfully under my care. But I’m not doing this to give her pleasure. I’m doing this so that I can reach out with one hand, take a firm hold of the curtain at the head of the pallet, and yank it aside. The metal rings rattle above our heads as the red fabric slides to one side and the split room becomes one again.

And I see Audrey. Her bed is a mirror of mine, so I find myself looking down her body. Naked and red-faced, lying on her back on the pallet, with Cerise atop her. The salmon-skinned Cardinali is facing me, and she has one of my wife’s legs up and over hers, wrapped around her hip. The other is below her. And the pair’s pussies are coming together under the thin veil of Cerise’s fluttering skirt. One of Cerise’s hands is covering Audrey’s mouth as the Human wriggles and writhes under the ministrations of the Cardinali technician. The other hand is clamped solidly over Audrey’s breast. And Cerise is grinning with the same absent, possessed desire that I saw in Carmine when she kissed me. Cerise’s brow is wet with perspiration, and her ample body rolls with the beat of the music as she fucks my wife.

For an instant, the scene plays out before me. I watch as Audrey receives the pleasure of another woman on the massage table, and I watch as Cerise enjoys the touch of my wife with a rictus grin of effort. Then they are frozen, like they have been caught in a photograph. Audrey is staring up at me through her dishevelled, wet locks of blonde hair, and Cerise’s black and silver eyes are locked onto me with open horror. Below my rutting body, Carmine has gone deathly still as she looks up and meets the eyes of her senior and my wife. The four of us are motionless for what feels like an age.

“U-Um, Mr Ethan,” stammers Cerise eventually. “Th-This probably looks bad, doesn’t it? Actually, th-the truth is that Cardinali women are… um, we’ve learned since first contact that we’re, uh, what’s the word in Galactic Standard? ‘Needier’? Uh, our libidos don’t listen to us like they should and… Well, that means we sometimes… very rarely… overstep our professional boundaries, so… So I hope you don’t blame Mrs Audrey for… for, uh…”

She trails off slowly as she realises that Audrey and I are laughing. And Carmine turns over her shoulder to regard me with a mirroring pair of wide eyes.

Their reactions just make me laugh harder. My stiff cock jiggles inside Carmine’s pussy, and the sensation is a little uncomfortable. But I can’t help it. I’m just… so fucking relieved! And I can see that Audrey is, too.

“So, you like women now?” I tease my wife, and she puts a hand over her eyes in embarrassment, her laughter never letting up.

“I’ve always liked women!” she replies between breaths for air. “Don’t I agree with you when we see a hot actress on the public net?”

“But this is your first time getting fucked by one?”

“Um, third time, I guess,” Audrey replies with a grin. “The first time was in the restroom after that lovely bath we had. Cerise was… Ah, Ethan, she was so fucking hot! She knew just where the tension was building up in me, and it was such a relief to get it out! Then again in the shower. That wasn’t so much for the tension, just for fun.”

“In the shower?” I laugh. “I should have realised you were getting some too!”

“‘Too’? You were…” Audrey stares up at me, her mouth wide. “Were you getting a cheeky blowjob behind the partition, weren’t you? Shit, Ethan! And here I was thinking I was scum for enjoying the staff behind your back!”

“Me too,” I agree with a sigh. “Me too, love…”

I really should have realised. I remember meeting Audrey in that café on Luna and being overwhelmed by how alike we were. Not in our opinions, but in the way we expressed them. The way Audrey gushed over a trashy novel was the same way I enthused over the latest Gustav Chlone exhibit at the Olympus Art Gallery. It’s what made me first realise that what we had was going to last.

Why had it taken this long for me to also realise that she was a freak, just like me? That my wife was a degenerate, randy pervert, just like me? That she’s been checking out hot people we pass in the street, just like me? That she has needs and desires and obsessions that are same as mine?

How much shame she must have been keeping locked away inside her chest. Just like me. Just like me…

Well, no longer.

“You sounded like you were having a good time,” I tell her. “I was getting jealous. Hope you don’t mind if we join you two.”

“Jealous? Please!” Audrey laughs, raising her arms and letting them hang off the top of the massage table towards me. “Look at you, having a tumble with young Carmine! I’ll bet she’s been taking very good care of you, Ethan. Mmm…”

Audrey bites her lip as her green eyes rove over our coupling bodies. “Is it wrong that I think you two look seriously hot together?”

“W-Wait, I’m sorry,” says Cerise suddenly. “Wh-What’s happening here? Are you… not going to sue us?”

“Not if you properly finish my wife, Cerise,” I tell her with a wink, and the Cardinali’s cheeks turn deep red.

“Yeah, Cerise,” Audrey giggles. “Earn the money my boss spent on this ticket and fuck me!”

“W-Well…” Cerise’s fluster lasts just a moment longer. Then, she is laughing right along with us. “The customer is always right in matters of taste, as you Humans say. If you don’t have a problem with the Cardinal treatment…”

Cerise’s hips begin to roll seductively against my wife’s crotch. The way her cotton skirt ripples around their entwining legs is nothing short of magical.

“…then you’ll get no complaints from me, either.”

Audrey tips her head back again to regard me, and her eyelids flutter as Cerise rubs her pussy with her own. When she opens her lips, her exultant cries are no longer secret or hidden.

“Fuck, yes!” she moans.

That’s my cue. Poor Carmine is still staring about at each of us, thoroughly out of the loop with her incomplete language skills. I add her to our group again with a firm thrust of my dick, and she yelps with surprise and joy as I fill her up. Carmine throws one hand frantically over her mouth again to try and trap the sound. But as I hold tight to her bum and fuck her, the hand slips down to hold the side of the pallet for balance. Carmine’s breathy gasps are let out into the air, and they fill the room with sound. It’s far and away the loudest she has ever been.

“Ah-ah-ah-ah!” she moans. “Ahh, ahh, ahh!!”

“Oh, fuck!” Audrey, watching on with hungry eyes, begins to grind her pussy against Cerise with increased vigour. Her hands rise up to grab possessively at the athletic Cardinali’s waist and breasts. “F-F-Fuck!”

The four of us enjoy one another amidst the thumping beat of the music. I quickly find myself falling into a sort of trance as our bodies writhe together. I can’t tell where my cock ends and Audrey’s pussy begins, where Carmine ends and Cerise begins. It’s as if we are all sharing one singular sex act, despite the fact that we aren’t all touching. Our sex transcends physical space. We’re melding psychically and emotionally.

I find my eyes catching on the red of the separating curtain, and I see in my roving mind’s eye Cerise choosing the twin massage room, choosing the lie that Cardinal techniques require participants to be silent and unaware of one another. I see Carmine opening a second door to the wide shower chamber and her senior inventing a story that the Calpara Resort drain system can’t take two people’s washed-off gel at the same time. And I see Audrey sadly fretting over her relationship with her husband, who she thinks is drifting away from her. Accepting the comforting touch of a beautiful woman in the porcelain echoes of the ladies’ restroom.

As the walls between Audrey and I come crashing down, I lean forward and plant my hands on either side of Carmine’s. I slow my rutting as my stomach presses against the alien ridge of her spine, my legs around the sides of hers, my fingers brushing at her hands. I kiss her ear as I penetrate the lovely Cardinali slowly, methodically and lovingly.

“Thank you,” I whisper. “Carmine, thank you. This has been really worthwhile.”

Carmine turns her face towards mine, her thick hair rubbing against the side of my face as she does. Her glittering eyes regard me without understanding.

“Ee-ssan?” she asks.

I lean around and peck her on the lips. “Very good work,” I explain.

She smiles shyly. “Y-You and,” she says. “You, very good work! V-Very g-g-good… woooork!”

Suddenly, her eyes are rolling back in her head. Carmine struggles for balance as her arms buckle beneath her. I hold her with the full length of my body, curling myself around her, as Carmine cums powerfully around my cock. She lets out a dainty shriek of joy that I feel reverberating through my entire body. And I help her through the throes of climax with my cock deep inside her pussy, anchoring us together. She engulfs my cock through the juddering of her climax. She makes it slick and wet with her fluids. And she comes down from her high with long, laboured groans of ecstasy.

“Carmine, selvente agga-rientie!” Cerise remarks with a laugh as she rides my wife, then turns her eyes down on Audrey. “I’ve never heard her make that kind of noise before!” she translates. “Your man’s cock must be something special.”

“Oh, it’s good,” says Audrey, looking up and meeting my eyes again. “It’s good cock!”

Fuck. Why have we gone so long without sex, I wonder? Why have I not been pushing my wife down when she comes in the front door and fucking her brains out? We’d enjoy it, and she deserves it! In the back of my mind, I know that imagining rigorous sex with Audrey is much easier while I’m balls-deep in a new girl. My endorphins are making this simple, when it would be so much harder after Audrey and I have both endured a long day of work. I guess this is what we needed, then, time away from responsibility. And the encouragement to re-open ourselves to one another. I glare a promise into Audrey’s eyes from across the room. I am going to fucking ravish her tonight!

“O-O-Oh…!” Audrey begins convulsing, and my eyes widen. Did I do that to her with a silent look? Maybe fucking her properly wouldn’t be so hard after all. Whatever the reason, her sudden climax is enough to make me grin foolishly, and I watch with rapt fascination as Cerise rocks the Human woman through a shaking, wriggling orgasm. Audrey’s hands grow tight on Cerise’s body as she cums against her partner, and her face turns bright red, just like a Cardinali.

“Please!” Carmine is watching, too. She breathes a plaintive gasp against my chin. “Please, you! You!”

I’m already so close. Holding Carmine’s shoulder with one hand, I place my other on her bare hip and then slide it up her clothing. I wriggle under the tight cotton fibres until I find the magnificent rise of her breast. I’m so close, and I don’t want to miss the chance to sample her skin-to-skin. I squeeze and rub at Carmine’s tits, committing the shape to memory under my palm. Then I fuck her. I fuck her with every inch of my twitching, throbbing cock.

“C-Carmine! Yeah!” I moan desperately into her ear. “Oh, oh… Yeah!”

Carmine is moaning right along with me. She holds herself up with the length of her forearm and raises her free hand to stroke my face tenderly. She revels in my lovemaking. Her body matches my slapping tempo. She makes letting go so very easy. And after only a handful of gasping, sweating, plunging thrusts, I’m cumming. I’m filling her up with my cum. She deserves it, after everything she’s done for me today.

The explosive release of my cock is so great that I find myself biting down on her shoulder. Carmine’s breath is hot against my ear as she encourages my seed out of me. Her body pumps it all out. She drains me. I’m happy to give her every last drop. And the resulting relaxation of my body is so potent that I have to lean heavily atop her to keep my balance. Carmine giggles as she holds me up, then kisses my cheek tenderly.

“Y-You don’t have to…” Cerise is groaning, and I look up to watch my wife in action. Her hand has vanished up Cerise’s skirt, where she’s clearly giving the woman a treat with her fingers. Great manual dexterity, my wife. Cerise tries to argue a moment longer, eyelids fluttering and hips bouncing, and then she relents with a throaty laugh.

“If you’re sure,” she sighs.

I watch as Audrey coaxes a climax out of her therapist with her hands. I can make out the funny expression of concentration on Audrey’s face. She’s chewing her tongue and one eye is partly squinted. It’s an expression I’ve seen on her before when she milked my cock for me. How long ago was that? Too long. I’m gonna have to make her do it to me again.

Cerise is certainly enjoying herself. She leans back, her breasts rising and the dyed points of her hair tumbling back along her shoulders. She seems to stop breathing for a moment, and she is silent as she cums atop my wife. Then, she’s falling forward. She gasps out a great torrent of air, and her satisfied sigh is long and deep. She falls atop my wife’s naked chest.

“Ooh, fuck.” Her voice is muffled by Audrey’s breasts. “Fuck. You could be a masseuse, Mrs Audrey. No question…”

Audrey looks up again and meets my eyes. She is grinning proudly as she hugs Cerise against her body. And though I search for the words to express how much I love her, I can’t seem to find the need for them. Just gazing upon one another is fine. She smiles, and I smile back. And there are no walls between us.

—

“S-So, if there’s nothing else?” Cerise clears her throat before continuing. “Are you… satisfied with today’s service? Mrs Audrey? Mr Ethan?”

Cerise is standing close beside her junior as if for support, and Carmine’s heady stare, still directed right at me, feels muted by the quiet commotion of the atrium. Around us, small groups of robed guests make their way between experiences or towards the signposted dining hall, and polo-dressed Cardinali move about with them to offer support.

And my wife is by my side. Audrey has her arm through mine and is holding my hand tight. She moves gently back and forth in time with the ambient flute music of the platform’s speaker system, hugging my arm all the while, and I move with her.

“No complaints whatsoever,” Audrey says with a wide grin. “I’m sorry it had to end when it did, honestly.”

Cerise gives a proud smile and Carmine, sensing the mood, blushes brightly.

“We’re off duty for the day now, but I’ll try and get us added to your agenda for tomorrow, if you like,” suggests the senior technician.

“That would be perfect,” I say with a firm nod, and Audrey nods along with a little flurry of motion.

“Great. This has been great. You’re… very, very good customers.” Cerise clears her throat, suddenly embarrassed. Once she has composed herself, she gestures across the atrium in the direction of the stream of guests. “Go and enjoy your dinner, lovebirds. Evening is free time, so have a look around the platform at what we have to offer. And hopefully we’ll run into you again. Take care.”

Carmine suddenly takes a step forward, reaching for my hand. On seeing this, Cerise puts her hand on Carmine’s wrist and pulls her back, glancing nervously at the other people in the atrium. None spot the attempted affection, but Carmine flushes with embarrassment.

“See… a-again,” she says quietly instead. “Please.”

It’s touching, naturally. Today’s adventure has proven without doubt that the Cardinali keep up their numbers despite a significant gender weighting by having their women brimming over with sexual desire. Families on the Cardinal Worlds are probably massive to make up for all the fucking. Ah, to be a Cardinali male… But Carmine’s desire to draw close to me doesn’t strike me as lust. Perhaps I’m thinking wishfully, but it looks to me as though she genuinely wants to make a connection with me. Which would be nice, because I’d love to get to know her, too. And this without sharing more than a handful of words. Do Cardinali women fall in love at a rate to match their sexual need? I’m not the one to work that out.

Waving shyly, the two girls depart. They’re holding hands as they move away down the corridor. They turn a corner and vanish from sight.

And at once, I am being spun about by Audrey, who twirls us around together with her hands on my arms and then brings me up against the atrium wall. Yellow sunlight filters in through a window at my back and lights up her lovely face like an angel’s. And then she kisses me. I pay no heed to the whispering guests walking past us, nor the Cardinali girls who gasp with secret admiration. I kiss my wife, and I savour every inch of it.

“God, I love you, Ethan,” she sighs against my lips when she is done. “I wish I hadn’t… No, I’ve always known that I love you. But I take it for granted, what with work and other shit to occupy my mind. And I wish…”

“I know,” I tell her, stroking her hair with my fingers. It’s clean and sleek after all the washing it’s been through. Her cheeks are flushed and vital, her green eyes sparkling. She looks like a brand-new woman. “I love you, Audrey. More than anything and anyone.”

“I can’t believe we did that, though,” she says with a giggle. “I didn’t think I was that sort of woman.”

“But if someone had told you before all this that we would, you’d have been more excited to come here, right?”

“What a strange thought.” Audrey holds tight to the hem of my robe. “You’re right. I’d have been really excited.”

“Me too,” I tell her. “And I’m glad I’ve learned that about us.”

Audrey lets out a sigh and then falls against my chest. I hug her tightly, and she buries her face in the thick fabric of the robe.

“Ethan, can I admit something?”

“Anything,” I say at once. “Anything at all. I want to hear all of it.”

“I don’t really want to go to dinner. I want to go up to our room and lie down for a thousand years.”

“Let’s do that, then.”

“Oh, but…” She shakes her head, though it’s more like she’s wiping her face across my chest. “But I’m hungry, too.”

“Well…” I begin to smile as a naughty thought comes to life in my mind. And I know Audrey will approve. What a liberating realisation. “You know, this is technically a hotel. And in many hotels across the galaxy, you can call down to reception and have them bring you stuff.”

“You’re talking about room service?” Audrey looks up into my eyes and laughs. “Do they do that here?”

“I’m willing to try it and find out. And who do you think we could ask to bring dinner up to us? Since they’re free, and they might want to go over tomorrow’s agenda with us?”

Audrey’s eyes slowly widen. Her lips part, and I feel her grip on my clothing grow tighter. “My God,” she sighs. “You really are the perfect man.”

I put my arm around Audrey, and we walk quickly in the direction of the lift up to our room. “You remember that while you’re fucking a hot Cardinali girl, okay?” I tell her.

“I’ll never forget it,” she sighs.

shortstory