Instructing the Novice Read online

  God, she could still remember the sight of his dark head bent over her breasts, her tight, swollen peaks disappearing into his hot, wet, mouth. It hadn’t hurt when he sucked her the way it hurt when she used the inadequate breast pump. There had been nothing but pleasure as he massaged her full breasts and sucked and swallowed, drawing out the thick nectar and sending sparks of pleasure straight to her wet pussy.

  Lizabeth’s right hand somehow found its way between her legs and with a low moan, she parted her outer lips and began a swift, delicate caress of her aching clit. She wondered what Lone’s fingers would feel like there…what his cock would feel like inside her. It would be so much better than the stupid purple bullet which wasn’t nearly big enough to fill her properly and ease the empty ache she felt inside…

  The memory/fantasy was shattered by a sharp rapping on the metal door at the front of her suite.

  “Councilor Paige?” a deep, familiar voice called. “I have some news on the BleakHall case—we need to talk.”

  There was no doubt about it—it was Lone, the very man she’d been having illicit fantasies about while she got her nipples sucked and her pussy filled!

  “Shit!” Lizabeth muttered to herself desperately. She wondered if she ought to try and pretend she wasn’t at home. But Lone knew her schedule—he would know that she would be studying the Yonnite documents and trying to make sense of their strange judicial practices here in her home office since the Mother Ship’s law library was crowded with students at this time of the evening.

  “Councilor Paige? Lizabeth?” he called again, breaking her momentary paralysis. “I know you’re in there. Let me in.”

  “Shit!” Lizabeth muttered again. “Hang on,” she called as she turned off the pump and hastily removed the cups. She started to remove the purple bullet also, but her pussy was slippery with her juices and she couldn’t get it out. Meanwhile, Lone was going to know that something was going on if she didn’t get to the door quickly!

  Giving up on the bullet, still buzzing quietly inside her, Lizabeth raced to get dressed in the most professional clothes she could find—which wasn’t hard since, aside from her yoga clothes, her wardrobe was almost exclusively made up of business suits to wear to court.

  She pulled on a bra and inserted two nursing pads to cover her nipples—a ridiculous necessity now that she was apt to leak nectar at any time. Then she threw on a pale green blouse and a black pencil skirt. She left off her shoes—she never wore them in her suite and Lone knew it—and took a last look in the 3-D viewer to one side of her bed.

  A flushed face, wide gray-blue-green eyes, and a crazy cloud of dark hair greeted her glance—she looked guilty as hell, there was no denying it. Lizabeth quickly tried to smooth her wild mane. Did she have the appearance of a woman who had just been masturbating? Could you really consider what she had been doing masturbating though? She’d simply been dealing with the effects of the needing—it wasn’t like she got off on performing a necessity. Right?

  Right—except you were fantasizing about your assistant who’s much too young for you while you did it, whispered a snarky voice in her head.

  Lizabeth shifted her hips uncomfortably and the purple bullet humming inside her pussy seemed to nudge her accusingly. God, she wished she’d been able to get the damn thing out! At least it was quiet—there was no way Lone would be able to hear it? Right? Right?

  She wasn’t quite sure. As a precaution, she flipped on the exer-cube again, setting it to soft yoga music. There, that should cover any unwanted sounds—she hoped.

  Taking a deep breath, she put on her most blank, professional courtroom face and pressed the side panel to open the door.

  Two

  Standing outside her suite, tall and muscular and much, much too young for her, was Stands Alone. He was wearing a dark green, long-sleeved shirt, tight black trousers and tall black boots—the uniform of the Twin Kindred.

  He was so much taller than Lizabeth’s 5’7 that she had to crane her neck to look up at him and his shoulders were fully twice as broad as her own. Yet his size didn’t make him menacing—just a little overwhelming at times. Though Lizabeth had been living and working on the Mother Ship for two years now, she was still getting used to being around the massive, muscular Kindred all the time.

  She wondered, as she often had, if he would have been the Light Twin or the Dark Twin of the pair if his brother had lived. He seemed to have characteristics of both—the stubbornness of a Dark Twin and the calm, even temperament of a Light Twin. Personally, she thought he was the best parts of both types.

  “Hello, Lone,” she said as coolly as she could. “Is there a problem? You said something about the BleakHall case?”

  “Yes, I have some news.” He inclined his head, his pale gray eyes flashing under his dark brows. “May I come in?”

  “Oh, uh, certainly.” Clearing her throat, Lizabeth stepped back, giving him room to enter her suite.

  “Thank you.” Lone stepped inside and went to take a seat on her couch. Lizabeth shut the door and followed him, wondering what this was all about.

  She had scarcely said two words to her assistant since that fateful day—the day the Xi-46 had been released into the Mother Ship and he had helped her with her first needing attack.

  Lone, with that admirable delicacy of feeling and attention to her moods she appreciated in him, seemed to have sensed her reluctance to talk about what had happened between them and he had been giving her space for weeks. But now he had come to her private suite and practically demanded entrance. What was going on?

  “Well…” Lizabeth settled herself on the edge of the couch cushion as far from him as she could get and folded her hands primly in her lap. She was uncomfortably aware of the purple bullet still buzzing inside her. Sitting down seemed to make it press on a more sensitive area—possibly her G-spot—and though she tried to shift around, it wouldn’t move.

  Lone was eyeing her with a slight frown on his face.

  “Are you all right?” he asked abruptly. “Your face is flushed. Are you well, Lizabeth?”

  “Oh, I…I’m fine.” She cleared her throat and ran a hand over her hair self-consciously. “Just…I was just doing some, uh, yoga before you came in.” Which was true, in a way. She had been doing yoga before she’d been forced to stop and deal with the needing.

  He eyed the crumpled mat, stained with droplets of nectar which was still lying out in front of the couch with the exer-cube playing softly.

  “I see.”

  Lizabeth wished she had rolled up the mat before he came in.

  “I…I was trying a…a difficult position,” she said quickly. “It was hard to get into and I was getting out of breath…I…” Then she realized what she was doing—babbling like a guilty defendant trying to cover her crimes.

  Stop it, she told herself fiercely. Stop acting like an idiot!

  Straightening her shoulders, she took a deep breath and looked at Lone directly.

  “What do you need?” she asked in her coolest, most professional tone. “I’m kind of busy at the moment.”

  “You’ve been busy for the past two weeks, ever since The Great Needing,” he said in a low voice, alluding for the first time to what had happened between them.

  Lizabeth felt her stomach clench. What was he trying to say? Was he accusing her of distancing herself from him—from the partnership that had grown between them in the past two years ever since Lone had first been assigned to her?

  “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling guilty all over again. “I’ve been a bit…preoccupied.”

  “I understand,” Lone said softly. “And I’ve been trying to…to give you space to be preoccupied. But this case won’t wait forever.”

  “I’ve been working on the case,” Lizabeth protested, feeling more guilty than ever. Her attention to detail and her work ethic had been seriously impacted by the constant spells of needing that had plagued her ever since the Xi-46 had been released. Of course, she could hardly help
it since there was no cure for the needing attacks other than male attention—attention she was determined not to seek.

  “I assumed you were. And I…” he cleared his throat. “I further assumed that you didn’t need my help with anything since you haven’t asked.”

  Lizabeth realized this was his round-about way of asking if she’d had any further needing attacks and if she was all right. Some women had been known to get sick if they didn’t satisfy the cravings and urges the Xi-46 had caused in them. Thank goodness she’d been able to get by—barely—with the breast pump and her vibrator—which was still humming unstoppably inside her. She shifted her hips again.

  “I’m fine,” she lied shortly. “I only had the…the one attack. And then of course, they came up with the antidote so…I'm perfectly okay.”

  “Ah.” Lone nodded. His eyes flickered briefly to her breasts which were definitely much larger than they had been but then flicked away again. “I see. Well…good.”

  The awkwardness between them tugged at Lizabeth’s heart. In the two years that they’d been working together, she and Lone had developed a warm relationship which was equal parts friendship and mentorship. The Kindred High Council had first assigned him to her to help her learn Kindred law and assist in a difficult case she had to try before the World Court when she started working for them. But Lone had stayed of his own volition afterwards, claiming that he had much to learn from her as well. He wanted to know about her court room technique and Earth law and he wanted to study her practices as a powerful and successful attorney.

  Lizabeth had kept him on, though she privately thought he was long-past ready to practice law on his own. She had mentioned several times that he could go into practice for himself but Lone always demurred and said he wasn’t done learning from her yet.

  He liked to do little things for her—fix her coffee just the way she liked it or give her neck rubs when she worked late and her shoulders got tight. He had a warm, self-deprecating sense of humor too—he was always saying or doing something to make her laugh.

  In fact, right before the first needing attack had struck her, they had been joking about going to Yonnie Six to learn the convoluted Yonnite laws in person. Lone had dropped to his knees before her and called her “Mistress” as the male bodyslaves called their female owners on the female-dominated world. Lizabeth had been laughing at him but at the same time the way he looked at her had made her feel tight and warm all over…

  No, stop thinking like that, she told herself sternly. The point was, she genuinely enjoyed Lone’s company and they had grown close—probably too close—in the time they worked together. But now it seemed like they were back to the beginning—back when she’d first interviewed him to be certain their personalities would mesh well before accepting the ruling of the Council and taking him on as her assistant.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so…so busy lately,” she said haltingly to Lone. “Since the Great Needing, I just…I…” But she couldn’t make herself talk about what had happened between them—couldn’t explain how mortified she was at the way she’d acted or bring herself to apologize for cutting him out of her life for the past two weeks as neatly as a surgeon might excise an unwanted growth.

  “I understand,” Lone said and there was something like sorrow in his voice. “But I was hoping that now that the, uh, antidote has been distributed to everyone we might…might get back to business as usual.”

  “Oh, of course. Business as usual.” Lizabeth felt a strange combination of relief and sadness. He just wanted to work—that was all. Well, good—that was what she wanted too, she told herself firmly.

  “Having said that…” Lone cleared his throat and lifted his chin. “I think I might have found a solution to our problem.”

  “Problem?” Lizabeth looked at him blankly. “What problem?”

  “The difficulty of learning the Yonnite Law sufficiently to take them on in their own court system,” Lone said patiently. “You were complaining about it before…uh, the last time we worked together,” he ended in a low voice.

  Right before that damn sickly-sweet Xi-46 started blowing through the vents and my breasts ballooned up with nectar for the first time is what he means, Lizabeth thought.

  “I remember,” she said dryly. “So what have you found? Some Kindred educational technology I can jack directly into the base of my skull and learn their convoluted laws instantly?”

  Lone smiled slightly, an expression that lit up his face.

  “I wish it were that simple. No, unfortunately. But I did find a place where you can study and learn the law directly from Yonnite professionals just as you said you wished you could.”

  Lizabeth bit her lip. “You mean go to Yonnie Six? I don’t know if that would be a good idea, Lone.”

  She couldn’t help thinking again of the way he’d been joking with her right before the first needing attack struck. He’d gone down on his knees and begged to serve her…begged her to use him however she saw fit and though he’d only been joking his words had still affected her deeply.

  Lizabeth wasn’t exactly a domme in the bedroom but neither was she submissive. She was old enough to know exactly what she liked and she didn’t mind taking control. Also, she was wise enough to know that she liked her too-young assistant much more than was good for either of them. It was better not to take that particular dynamic to a place like Yonnie Six where it would only be exacerbated.

  But Lone was shaking his head.

  “Not Yonnie Six—Yonnie Two,” he said. “Another planet in the Yonnite system. It’s on the edge of their solar system’s habitable zone but some of the Yonnites have chosen to settle there in a kind of commune dedicated to learning and knowledge. There are several prominent legal councilors there you might learn from.”

  “But…wouldn’t the same principals apply?” Lizabeth asked uneasily. “Wouldn’t I need a…a bodyslave to go there?”

  “Actually, the women who live and work in the Tower of the Higher Mind—which is what they call it—take a significantly different view of female/male relations,” Lone said. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and looked at her intently. “They don’t believe in owning males as slaves. In fact, they don’t have bodyslaves there at all.”

  “Oh.” Lizabeth felt relieved. She didn’t like the idea of putting Lone in a pain collar and a leash and pretending to be cruel to him. The very thought was distressing to her.

  In fact, what she really wanted to do was reach out and ruffle his short, dark hair or stroke his scratchy cheek as she used to do before all the awkwardness had come between them. But touching him was off-limits now—especially considering that she’d been touching herself just before he came in and she still had the stupid purple bullet humming in her pussy.

  It was a damn good thing it was inside her instead of pressing against her clit, she thought grimly. If it had been buzzing her button, there was no way she could have kept her composure.

  “Well,” she said, trying to pull her mind back to the matter at hand. “Thank you for finding this place for me, Lone—I really appreciate it. If they don’t have bodyslaves, I guess I can just take a trip by myself and learn everything there is to know in time for the court date.”

  “You want to go by yourself?” There was hurt in his pale grey eyes which often looked silver when the light hit them just right.

  “Well, I thought you said I didn’t need a bodyslave,” Lizabeth protested. “You said they didn’t have male slaves at all—and knowing the Yonnite ideas about males, I thought that meant there were no males anywhere.”

  “There are, though,” he said in a low voice. “Just because there are no male slaves doesn’t mean there are no males on the entire planet. They have Novices there—male acolytes who learn from their female mentors and who also perform the menial tasks and labor it takes to keep the Tower running. After a number of years, a Novice is considered a master in whatever field of study he chooses to take and he leaves the Tower and
strikes out on his own.”

  “Oh? Novices? That’s an interesting idea,” Lizabeth remarked.

  “It’s not so different from the relationship we have now…or had.” Was there a faint trace of bitterness in Lone’s deep voice?

  “I…see.” Lizabeth didn’t know what to say. “So…you want to come?”

  “You need a Novice in order to enter the Tower,” he pointed out. “And besides, you’ll need protection at the landing area. The Tower is in the mountains and the only available place to land is in hostile territory.”

  “Protection? From what?” Lizabeth frowned. She was well aware that it was more dangerous to travel as a woman alone in certain parts of the world—and certain parts of the galaxy for that matter—but she had managed quite well for a number of years before she’d met Lone. She’d even gone to Egypt and Yemen—places the US State Department warned against women traveling by themselves.

  Lone’s face darkened. “Unlike Yonnie Six, not all of Yonnie Two is female-dominated. In fact, there is a large portion of the planet—specifically the area around where we’ll need to land—that is home to another culture.”

  “A hostile one, I take it?” Lizabeth raised an eyebrow at him.

  Lone nodded. “To say the least. The Friezens live on the plains of Yonnie Two and their beliefs are almost diametrically opposed to those who live in the Tower of the Higher Mind.”

  “Meaning they’re male-dominated?” Lizabeth asked, frowning.

  “In the extreme.” Lone’s face got even darker, his pale eyes stormy. “Rape and assault are common and rarely punished. Female trafficking is one of the main sources of economic growth and women in general have no rights.”

  “That sounds bad,” Lizabeth agreed. “But I’m probably too old for them to take much notice of me,” she added, lightly. “It’s probably pretty young twenty-somethings they’re looking to buy and sell.”