Chapter Text
“This is still not a sound defensive barrier,” Fox said upon reaching the filigree double-gate at the top of the stairs. “It’s a delusional wall decoration.”
“What would you recommend?” Riyo asked, snug against his back. "The decorators weren’t taken with the idea of ray shields."
He flicked one flimsy side open and carried her through. “Lanthanide. Especially when sandwiched between durasteel.”
“I’ll be sure to inform them. Left here,” she directed. Fox had hesitated in the hallway. He knew the layout, but not her intentions. Left he turned, towards her bedroom.
The pastel room overlooked the garden. It caught sunshine in the day, but the paned windows now glowed cool with artificial light. Otherwise, it had changed little since Fox had last seen it. So little, there was still no bed, only a new mattress propped against the wall. Opposite it, across a broad expanse of fine wood flooring, a delicate sideboard displayed the flowers Fox had liberated for her. He also recognized the stately Pantoran couple in the framed holo — Riyo’s parents — and four baton-like figurines: miniatures of idols he’d seen in the embassy’s shrine.
Riyo indicated that she wished to be let down, and Fox obliged. It left his back cold. The closer she came, the more he felt the absence of her. Such was the nature of spells, he supposed.
She took his hand and led him towards the table. “I had to set this up first,” she explained. “The Assembly entrusted the icons to me. And to spend a night with the gods under one’s roof but not arranged in harmony is to court catastrophe.”
“What sort of catastrophe?”
“Oh, violent earthquakes and devouring sinkholes. At worst, a total blackening of the night sky, were Voldsar to escape. We’re a long way from Pantora, and I know Coruscant has all the geophysical activity of a rug, but there’s no sense angering them. I have told you of Voldsar’s nightly suffering, yes?”
Fox nodded. The magnetic light-storms of Pantora were famous, and to Pantorans, mythic: the throbbing wounds of a legendary figure who’d sacrificed himself to the ceaseless, celestial battle between their star, Orto, and their primary, Plutonia, who struggled mightily over their moon child. If the Lights went out, Pantora’s doom was surely at hand.
“Well, there is another tradition,” Riyo began. “One grandmamas out on the tundras will tell you. They call the Lights kettuli — fire foxes. As vulptices run across the frost, their furry feet kick up sparks into the sky. And when the lights are especially red, they must be scurrying very fast indeed, looking for mates. The best nights for making babies, apparently.” Riyo gently set the crystal fox onto the shrine. “That version was always my favorite. But shhh” — she brought a finger to her lips — “we shan’t tell Voldsar. Or the Assembly.”
Fox’s chest glowed. He had no words.
And as he had no words, he pulled Riyo Chuchi into a kiss.
That one time in the penthouse had seen things get a little hot and heavy — mostly because Thorn’s covert task force hadn’t yet gotten the air-recyclers working. Fox had sweated buckets beneath his plates to have Riyo straddling his lap, kissing him, sucking his earlobe and stuffing his hand up her skirt. Swish as the place was, the air had been stale, the furniture scrounged, and the cushions grotty with the crud of tired, beer-swilling men. It’d had all the romance of a club. They’d both been high on the adrenaline of a ride, which blinded one to such things, but only somewhat.
To kiss Riyo Chuchi in her own home was very different.
It deepened slowly between their mouths into a bottomless longing, a devouring of breath. She tasted of wine and spices and chocolate. And up here, no decorators’ fumes could smother the smell of her: a perfume like ripe berries and the incense of the Manarai monks. Riyo’s soft lips gave and gave. Fox pressed everything into them while gathering her into himself, as tightly as she could come. It was not enough. Far from enough. He ached for her, bone-deep, and his groin grew heavy with desire.
The feeling did not incline him to subtlety. “You have a mattress, but no bed?” he panted, resting his forehead against hers, watching his thumbs circle her beautiful bare stomach.
“I’m sleeping in one of the guest rooms.” Riyo twisted them both round, walking Fox backwards across the room. She’d ridden to the hounds, and certainly knew how to subtly command Fox, almost without his notice. “It’s hard to find an antique bed the right size. I may have to commission one from home. But I wanted something this large.”
“Why?”
“So you could spread out and never touch the sides.” She tipped the mattress onto the floor. When it flattened with a heavy thwoomph!, Riyo spread her arms. “So, can you?”
She couldn't be serious. But she was. As serious as anyone who’d splashed out on such a huge mattress, thicker than a bankers’ lunch, and who was now inviting him onto it.
Fox had never been more conscious of his armor than when he creaked down onto Riyo Chuchi’s luxury bedding. Mindful of his boots, he squirmed into the spongy middle. He reached out in all directions. Many Foxes could spoon many Riyos in such a bed. On the diagonal, he might make it as far as her cunt without —
“I’ve seen the planks the army calls bunks,” she said.
“We wouldn’t be effective if we were spoiled.” Fox knitted his hands behind his head, comfortably, looking up her legs, already drunk on the idea of future visits. “Or so the doctrine goes.”
“My lawyer’s bassa hound has a nicer bed and she’s meaner than sin.”
Fox smirked. “How can the commander of the Guard do his duty on pendledown?”
Riyo dropped around him. “I can think of some ways.” She kissed him some more. Her tongue imparted some of her ideas. And when she cupped his chest, fingers brushing over his nipples, Fox lit up like Corusca Circus. He arched into her hands.
“Have you ever had a bath?” she asked, easing back onto his codplate.
At this rate, Fox felt like he’d short-circuit in water. But that’s what he got for not changing into fresh blacks. The smell of Femur’s rotten lunchtime discovery was probably clinging in every crease. “I can take one,” he offered bashfully.
“No — I mean, you might enjoy it. You’re very tense.”
No kidding. A senator, and the most beautiful of the bunch, was sitting on his groin. Fox shook his head, relieved and intrigued. “I’ve never had a bath.” Not even a bacta one, thank Fett and the aim of undisciplined thugs.
Riyo ran her finger down the off-center seamline of his blacks, all the way to his belt. Her touch seared Fox into two uneven pieces. “May I take this off and give you one?”
Fox was sure her sweetness would melt him down the drain. But he would deny her nothing. He could not. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, I’d like that.”
They clambered to standing. Riyo yanked at his belt and kama, wasting no time, though she took special care in properly hanging his holsters. Fox didn’t bother with another demonstration with his remaining plates. He longed to be rid of them and all the gription seals that sealed him off from her.
The person dekitting before a senator was not Fox; he was watching from somewhere distant, somewhere elevated — half-judgemental, half-proud, but all aroused. His cock was ready to make a third in the room. It bulged against his blacks, straining for Riyo’s exposed tummy. Adrenaline prickled in his armpits. It heated Fox everywhere but where he needed it: warming his brain.
He fumbled with his neck seal, the point of no return, and finally released the tab for her. Riyo pulled it down to his hips and stepped behind him to unpeel his arms.
Fox’s skin was too thin for him. Surely he would explode out from it, starting at his crotch.
Nudity itself wasn’t novel for a clone. They’d been observed and poked and prodded in their decant suits more often than not on Kamino, so the longnecks might get the full, unvarnished picture of their product. By the time they were old enough to get erections, they’d adopted the armor of adolescence: amusement. Nothing was funnier than the wide-eyed disgust of a technician who’d made a perfect human and hated themselves for it. Their magnificence was in their numbers, not in their hairy, horny, oily corporeality.
But to stand naked before someone interested in touching him back ... it was incredibly heady. Fox hadn’t known it since those first weeks of deployment, when they’d been held in orbital over Coruscant, waiting for engineers to find space to stuff them all. That had ended badly.
But Riyo didn’t let Fox think too hard about it. She stood on her toes to kiss him again and tugged insistently at his blacks. Fox got the message. He dragged his mouth from from hers and rolled his undersuit down and off his feet —
Six hells, he was stiff. His cock was bobbing like a restless cadet from his motthole.
She’d touched it before, through his greys — a hand high on his thigh, which met something she wasn’t expecting. It was harder to own it now, in all its ruddy, veiny glory. Fox straightened up, certain he’d earned his redjob nickname. “Sorry, I — I’m … you’re very pretty.”
Riyo looked once. Then she averted her eyes, grinning, whispering like she might scare it. “Don’t be sorry.”
Then she led him down the hallway. Fox didn’t spare a second thought about leaving his comm behind. So giddy was he, he might’ve tripped over the grain in the floorboards if not for the steadiness of her hand.
Her bathroom — it really didn’t merit the simple term refresher — was in keeping with the rest of the house: lavish and colorful, yet quaint where it could afford to be. It was at least twice the size of Fox’s room in the barracks and fully tiled. In the center, a bathtub was partially sunk into a dais; to the left was a large open shower recessed into the floor. Copper pipes snaked artfully along the walls. One could drown oneself easily in the sinks.
“I'd insist on the sauna, but the panelling isn’t finished,” Riyo said from the far wall. She swivelled a faucet above the tub and twisted series of handles. Water gushed forth.
“What’s so great about a sauna?” Fox asked. If there was anything better than five minutes of stored-up water, blisteringly hot, he couldn’t imagine it.
Riyo looked genuinely shocked. “I will show you! But tonight: bath.”
She busied herself around Fox, who was stood like a dumb grunt, his bare flesh prickling with the anticipation of … well, everything. Fluffy towels were produced. Steam rose from the filling tub. A pink ball was tossed into the water, a grenade of sodas and salts that bubbled and fizzed. She carefully rolled up a sleeve and tested the temperature. “You must tell me if it’s too hot,” Riyo said, and waved him over.
Fox stepped onto the marble platform. He eased himself into the water, deep enough to reach his nipples. There was just room enough to get his knees beneath the foam. The tub wasn't made for him, but Fox was grateful it would accommodate him at all.
“Good?” asked Riyo.
“Yeah,” he sighed, the heat softening his spine.
“You’re sure?”
Fox’s eyes closed under a heavy pleasure. “Mm-hmm. ’S perfect.”
Riyo rustled behind him, somewhere beyond his halo of heat. Situational awareness: another professional casualty of this evening. She returned to press gently on his shoulders. “Wet your hair.”
Fox obeyed, sinking and slipping beneath the foam to lay in a liquid moment. He was the water and the water was him. There was a peace to it, like the warmth of the glass womb, bright and buzzing with the voices of brothers, before life and duty demanded anything of him.
When he emerged, it was into the hands of the galaxy’s greatest head massage. Riyo’s sharp nails scratched him silly, and his toes curled as if on strings. She cleaned his hair with shampoo that smelled fresher than her bouquet.
“You’ll need a new manicure,” he mumbled. “Bucket scalp is grody.”
“Not as grody as mine was.”
Fox frowned — then he grimaced, embarrassed at his slowness and for stepping right into unpleasant topics. The day’s cognitive load had caught up with him. “You’re doing a much better job,” he said, remembering how long it had taken him to wash her hair of somebody else’s cranial ejecta after the assassination attempt.
“If that’s so,” she said, kissing his ear, “I think you’ve earned it.”
Medals were nothing, he decided. The regard of Riyo Chuchi, who suffered fools and, whatsmore, forgave them their foolishness after she’d outlasted them, would be waiting for the deserving.
Fox closed his eyes. His life before Riyo’s house seemed so far away, like it had happened to someone else. The Annex? He didn’t know it. General Tiaan? He’d never had the misfortune to meet her. Everything stretched so pleasantly in all directions like warm taffy. Even time must have passed differently, as his brain broiled in the tiled heat, despite the open window sucking steam out into the garden.
Maybe he’d even slipped into a dream.
Because the next thing Fox knew, Riyo Chuchi was standing naked before him.
“May I join you?” she asked.
Fox jerked at the the sight of her, bare as the blue sea. His very expensive higher functions ceased to operate. Dumbstruck, he yanked his knees up, making room.
She disappeared under the bubbles before his eyes could fully drink their fill. But Fox would remember those round, pinkish nipples, if he never saw them again. And that tight triangle of hair, too, which matched her hair on top.
Riyo was such a wisp of a thing, the water hardly displaced as she squeezed down between his knees. Fox was thankful for the liquid film; there was still something between his skin and hers. The thinnest veneer of deniability where her bare ribs pressed against his calves. He would not acknowledge this new intimacy if she did not. He would not take advantage.
She’d tucked her hair up, so that nothing but the curls around her neck might get wet. Her shoulders poked out from the water; her collar bones were finer than whipcord; and somewhere below the suds were breasts that had looked perfect for his palms. Fox clung to the tub, instead. If he let go, one of three things might happen: he’d grab her, he’d grab his dick, or he’d collapse through the floor into the room below, dragged down by the dense weight of his hard-on.
Riyo’s brow furrowed. “This isn’t working.”
Fox had fucked up. He’d fucked up, though he didn’t know how. He swallowed thickly. “What is it?”
“You’re still too tense.” She ran her hands up his shins, cresting over his knees. “Like a crab before the tidal feast.”
“I am relaxed! This is amazing.” Fox sank an inch deeper, so he could rest his head against the tub and demonstrate how very tranquil he was, though his pulse alone was probably making waves.
“Hmm. No. It’s something else” — she wiggled forward between his thighs, cleaving the foam — “there must be a manual reset around here somewhere ...”
And, wonder of wonders, Riyo Chuchi’s small hand found his cock. “Ah! Here it is!” she said, beaming.
Fox’s grip whiteknuckled. He forced himself to breathe.
Riyo was holding him. His crush was touching him there. She began to move. Her first strokes were light, led by her fingertips, as one might polish sugar glass. It was agonizing. Fox wanted to thrust, to shatter in her hand.
“Is this alright?” Her voice was equally delicate.
“ — nnngyeahhh,” he whimpered, struggling to keep still and keep his eyes open.
How many times had Fox eased his own grip, removing a finger or two, fluttering over his shaft, so that he might imagine it was Riyo’s soft hand? Fox felt his error now: he would need a chamize glove.
Finally, Riyo brought the breadth of her palm to bear and squeezed.
Fox made a noise that would embarrass him later. His orgasm was a fixed thing now, not something he’d have to chase: another minute tops and he’d spill for sure. He’d jerked off in the shower enough times to know that no amount of colorful bubbles would make it pretty. Hot water and bodily proteins didn’t mix. And he wouldn’t have Riyo bathing in his spunk.
“You — you should drain the water,” Fox croaked. He winced against the waste; and against the brief absence of her hand when she agreed, reaching back to twist a dial at the wall.
She rubbed him tenderly as the water retreated. It exposed his tip; then it exposed Riyo’s blue hand, incredibly small, wrapped around his shaft. Mostly. Fox might have laughed, if he weren’t so painfully turned on. She added another hand with a determined squeeze.
“Fuck — gods beyond —” Fox groaned, awestruck, watching her work. Each firm stroke was better than the last. She spooled a knot of bliss below his cock. It was almost enough.
But his cockhead bobbed pink, well out of her eager, double-fisted reach. She’d need to cover it ... cover it with her mouth to suck out the string of —
And then it was all way too much, too fast.
“Don’t let me — Riyo, I’m gonna come —” Fox heaved, before he spasmed, bodily. Come striped his chest, flinging as far as his neck. His arms flopped against his sides and his skull lolled back, all his half-fed strength thoroughly zapped.
“That’s better,” chimed Riyo.
Fox felt anaesthetized by the syrupy remains of his pleasure. He could barely muster shame when she ran a finger through his mess and licked it clean.
“And here I was, thinking I had every delicacy known to sentience in my kitchen,” she said, grinning. She produced a hand towel.
Fox snapped to with effort, holding her back. “No. No, not the nice towel. Let me —” He glanced around for some third-rate something to wipe himself down.
Riyo shoved his arms aside. “I’ve made a fine mess and I will clean it up.”
His secretions were disgusting; he’d accepted this as he’d accepted Kamino’s incessant rain and the maximum effective range of a carbine. But here was an aristocrat with an acre of Bardottan flax in her hands, cleaning Fox’s streaky skin of his base functions like she, too, loved him all the more for being real. It was the best wet dream of his accelerated life.
Foam clung to Riyo’s legs when she stood. Fox had never seen a more perfect figure, and he lived in the capital of cosmetic conceit. How much more remarkable was she for being the beautiful child of chance!
She repositioned the faucet.
“You’re going to run another one?” he asked, incredulous.
“Of course!” Riyo spun around and spread her arms with a flourish. “Welcome to Fourteen-Fourteen!”
Fox had trained himself to appreciate his ninety seconds of water. It wasn’t hard. The temperature was good and the pressure better — much better than what front-line or even fleet clones got. This tub would have two weeks’ rations, at least. But, truly, it was hard to grouse about how the top crust of the upper crust lived, as the water slowly rose again and Riyo soaped and groped his chest.
“Smoother than I expected,” she mused, almost forgetting to turn the faucet off again.
Fox looked down at himself and the smattering of hair on his sternum. “They engineered some of it out.”
“You put me to shame, and I can’t say I’m mad about it.” Riyo cupped his pecs in her hands — which probably did exaggerate them a little.
Fox flushed. “I don’t think so. It’s the bike. Mostly.”
“Are you benching your bike?”
“Takes a lot of torque to balance the swoop —”
“Because it looks like you could.”
Stars, she was going to flatter him firm again. “Well, if you’re gonna beat the shinies, you better be prepared to join them.”
“Beat?” Her face grew a little stern.
“Drop ‘em. Make them do push-ups.”
“Do you do that often?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I’ll do it with them. Sometimes I’ll do it for them. That really stings.” Fox cracked his knuckles, trying to give his hands something to do as Riyo rubbed the soap low on his belly. The pads of his fingers had wrinkled, something he hadn’t seen since the earliest basic, when they’d had to tread water for hours till they were too exhausted to climb into their pods.
Feeling overindulged, Fox plucked the milky bar from her hand. “Let me.” He pulled her closer.
Riyo twisted against him and nestled her back to his chest. He soaped up her arms, and she lifted her legs so he might cover those, too. He lathered her collar, delicately, like street painters on the Avenue sponged their canvases. Like he might shear her skin, else.
Holding Riyo like this, Fox was surprised by a surge of anger behind his eyes, until he found its source: how often and with such violence others had tried to break her. Assassins. Cad Bane. The fucking Zillo Beast. That fanatic bully Chairman Cho. He even found outrage enough at General Skywalker, for saving her life in such a careless, oafish fashion. She had limped away from that hostage incident with broken ribs, concussion, and a fractured spine. Didn’t he appreciate how perfectly fragile she was? Fucker might’ve broken her fall, at least; he had two functioning arms and Senator Amidala had not needed both.
Jedi. All magical intuition two klicks ahead, blind as hawkbats where it mattered.
Riyo was the softest thing Fox had ever felt. And he promised to always keep her that way.
Setting the soap aside, he placed a hand under the crease of her breast and the other on her stomach. The limits of his presumption.
Riyo challenged him, wordlessly. She guided one hand down. Down over her patch of hair.
Fox would forget more than most people ever learned — and he forgot nothing. But he’d forget his own ten-digit serial number to make room for the indelible memory of Riyo’s naked, wet cunt beneath his hand.
Slowly, he traced a mental map of it. He carved her folds with his fingertips. One pass would be enough for his eidetic mind. But Fox wanted to know this more intimately than he knew anything. Even more than his bike. Possibly more than his pistols.
Feeling his way up and down, Fox found the place where his finger had might have slipped inside her before, if not for her underwear. He hadn’t thought to take his glove off when she’d guided it where he never would have gone himself; later, when bringing a midnight ration bar up to his mouth, he’d caught a whiff of her and had to sit down.
Fox didn’t slide a finger inside now, either. His restraint was rewarded by the slow swelling of her flesh and the desperate noises she made with every pass. He liked them — maybe more than was fair.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a colossal tease?” Riyo whined, her damp cheek plastered against his jaw.
“No. Normally they just tell me I’m a colossal dick.”
“I think, on this occasion, it’s possible for you to be both.”
Fox chuckled. “Will it mollify you to know what I’m thinking?”
“Maybe.”
Removing his hand, Fox tucked loose strands of hair behind her ear. He whispered into the hollow of it, hardly believing the boldness of what he was about to suggest. “I would like to kiss you —”
Riyo whimpered. “I am not mollified.”
“Hold on, hold on. Let me finish.” Fox squeezed her. “I would like to kiss you here.” He touched her lips. “And here.” He caressed her neck. “And here.” He pinched her nipple. “And here.” He poked her navel. “And here.” He fingered her cunt, spreading the petals of her skin.
Her body jolted beneath his hand. “Oh! Yes!”
Graceful as a goose, Riyo splashed up and out of the bath. And with a plush towel and some impatience, she beckoned Fox to follow. He did, drying himself vigorously before he could trail any more water onto her tiled floor.
Needing to take a desperate piss, Fox absented himself into a side room. He wasn’t even surprised to find multiple options open to him: a fancy ceramic catch-all and what looked like miniature bath, with its own copper spout and fixtures and basket of little rolled towels. Fox figured that was hers, and concentrated his aim very carefully above his own bowl, feeling happily domesticated indeed.
Remembering his six P’s, Fox retrieved the dirtied hand towel and came up behind Riyo as she was repinning her hair. He peppered kisses along the damp tendrils on her nape, pleased as cheese when she turned and jumped into his arms.
There wasn’t much ground to cover between the bathroom and bedroom. But the bare walls seemed to beg for Riyo’s back. Fox pressed her here and there, kissing her like a drowning man, his cock stirring again.
“Window — the window —” Riyo urged, when they finally crossed the threshold of her room. Fox set her gently down in the same recessed frame where he’d sat the first time he’d visited, bringing himself down to an easier height for her kisses.
She stopped him before he could kneel at her tiny feet. “Wait! Please — use one of those,” she said, pointing to the cushions stacked into the corner of the room. Fox selected one, red and heavily embroidered. He settled it under his knees, finally appreciating the phrase lewdly luxurious.
Riyo bit down a smile and widened her legs upon the windowsill. “Grandmama taught me how to decorate that. She’d be very happy to see it used so practically.”
Fox tried to balance himself, wobbly under the weight of expectation — and at the sight of Riyo’s swollen pink cunt. He was mostly sure he couldn’t leave babies in there, even if he ever got the chance. “Does Grandmama believe in those fast foxes?” he asked.
Riyo giggled without a trace of care. “Yes. She would congratulate me for netting one so sure-footed, he cuts the sky red.”
Fox flushed with pride again. He could do nothing more than press an open-mouthed kiss between her thighs, where Riyo Chuchi was warmest.
In truth, he had no idea what he was doing. He knew what he liked. And he knew what a happy girl looked like from holos. But rock up to an encounter and say, no worries, I’ve done this in a sim, and the Blueys or the CSF would laugh you off the beat. The reality on the ground was always very different.
Riyo’s pale curls reminded Fox of candy floss, every street vendors’ side hustle. He’d never tried it. With Riyo under his mouth, fine and soft and satiny, he didn’t think he ever needed to. The sponginess of her sex bore comparison with nothing. And she tasted of ... nothing. A touch salty, maybe. But to a man in love, nothing could’ve been sweeter than how she slowly melted onto his tongue. How she keened and whimpered and scratched at his head. How her heels dug into his back.
Fox savored every second.
“Gods, don’t stop. Don’t stop,” she moaned. Her canary eyes were clenched, her brows bunched in a way that looked promising.
Fox ducked lower. He licked harder. The soft ropes of muscle in her thighs strained beneath this hands. Her ass slipped nearer his face.
Cadence was key. Fox knew that much — as an amateur lover and a clone drilled, trained, and tested to mnemonic beats since decant. He buried his nose where the folds of her flesh peaked. Nuzzling and lapping together, he brought his entire mouth to bear upon the whole of her slick cunt for as long as she needed him.
Not long at all. Not long enough. A wetness began dripping down his chin; still eating her, Fox spread it down his neck one-handed, painting himself in her. Then he tongued her deeper.
“That’s — yes — Fox, Fox!!” Riyo gasped, suddenly, quivering and coming into his mouth. Breathlessly panting his name.
Fox jolted, suddenly hungrier than he had ever been before. He had done this — to Riyo Chuchi! Who might have anyone the galaxy could dress in silks and call a lord. And she’d let him, just one clone of millions, drink her down. And he kept doing so, until she finally shoved his smug head away.
Slumped and breathing hard against the window, haloed by its light, Riyo looked both undone and divine. If it didn’t mean never getting to touch her again, Fox would have framed her like that. The proudest curator, the most acquisitive collector in the galaxy, would never behold her and they did not know the magnitude of their loss.
Fox leaned his cheek against her thigh, wondering what came next. Was she happy? Would there be more? He could wait, though his hands itched for his cock. It had hardened again, eager to supplant his tongue in her wet warmth. Acknowledging it would be vulgar, like picking your teeth in front of a Jedi. Only much worse: Jedi did not get attached, so there was no love to be lost. And no Jedi had ever floored Fox as much this slip of a senator.
Riyo batted her beautiful eyes open. “You’ve sucked everything out of me,” she said, sighing deep.
Fox’s cheeks curled. And he said, despite himself, “I could ... put something back?”
“Yes, please! With interest!”
Riyo scooted from the windowsill. She seized his hand and tugged him along, so that when she flung herself backwards on the mattress, Fox was pulled down with her. Ninety kilos of clone, coming to land hard, compressed in wave that flung her back up. Their torsos smacked together, and Fox thought Riyo Chuchi might laugh herself to death; and before it was over, his own chest burned, breathless with happiness, tight with the suspense of what might happen next.
Eventually, Riyo calmed. She beamed up at him. Her bright eyes were wet with delirious joy.
Dead stars, she was small. Fox looked at the impossibly petite body beneath him — then he spotted his cock, heavy and overlarge, hanging in her delicate direction. His groin clenched in anticipation. But it was all wrong. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, quietly.
“Why would you?”
It took a moment for Riyo’s playfulness to register. She would make him say it. She wanted to hear him say, my cock is so big, I’m afraid it won’t fit — and if it does, it’ll be wearing your heart as a party hat.
Fox ducked his burning face. “My arms might give out. You’d be crushed."
Riyo stroked his biceps, and Fox suddenly knew why he’d spent all those stupid-dark-thirty hours in the gym with Dodger.
“I have the utmost faith in your arms. Besides, I’m not made of glass, as we’ve seen. Maybe I want to be smothered into this mattress,” she said.
“I have an oath to maintain.”
“Something, something, ‘I will dedicate myself to the Republic’s legitimate servants with all my strength’? That oath?”
He was thinking of the final line, about the RCMJ and its big, bad, catch-all article about conduct unbecoming, but ... “Yes.”
“Like I said,” she said, stroking his shoulders, “your strength is not in question. You will not hurt me. You never have.”
She seemed very sure. Fox didn’t want to ask how she knew — to make her choose between a lie and his feelings.
Riyo cupped his face. “Come here.” She pulled him down to her lips.
The mouthfeel of her sex had cleaved to his tongue. With her own, she worked it free, drinking down his lust and hers in equal measure.
Fox shivered beneath a building sweat. She circled her legs around his hips, drawing those down, too. He was glad she’d gotten his first load out. Frotting into the crease under her ass without blowing again was hard enough.
Planking onto his elbows, Fox tucked his arms beneath her shoulders, keeping his weight off her, hugging her up to him as he kissed her with a greed that almost scared him.
He trailed his lips down her jaw. Along her chest, chinning the softness of her breast. He found her pink nipple and sucked, plucking it in and out of his mouth, stupidly thrilled by its jiggle. And how breathless Riyo became when he twisted and flicked the hard nubs like the series of dials in her bathroom. He wondered, by the desperate sound of her, if he could make her squirt again. There was a puzzle to figure out there, if he had the time.
Riyo punched his shoulder. “Fox, please,” she whined. “My cunt’s going blue.”
“Mmm.” He nibbled her nipple once more, popping it from his lips. “The rest of you is blue.”
“I’ve heard you rail against the color.”
“You and the sky get a natural pass. Boys in blue, that trio of turds—they can get fucked, yes.”
“My cunt needs to get fucked! Right now, if you please!” She groaned and bucked, shoving her hand down between them, fumbling for the cock she couldn’t reach.
Only in Riyo Chuchi were politeness and vulgarity so perfectly married. It added a veneer to all the filthy, selfish things Fox wanted to do.
He wrapped her face in his hands. He loved how breathtaking her features were. He hated that he knew exactly how to snap her skull from her neck.
It was the galaxy — maybe even the Force, if it cared to advise a clone — reminding him that he was bred for violence. How could he not hurt her?
But Riyo, who refused to hold any weapon, was holding Fox like she’d die if she didn’t. Like her life would blink out. How could he refuse her? She trusted with him with her heart and her softest parts; he could snap his own neck just as easily if he broke that trust. He would probably disappoint, but her wish was ever his command.
And there was ... something else. A black void between his ribs, where the rest of the army’s fly-by-night freedom hollowed out his sympathy.
He was lonely.
Commander Fox is the law. Fuck the law and it’ll fuck you back.
The law of probabilities alone made it so.
He’d let his desperation run away with him, once. Reaper, his kama lined with blackmail and stitched with secrets, could always be counted on to remind Fox of it. He almost certainly knew about Riyo. But what happened here, on this mattress, was just between Fox and her.
“You must tell me how to go. Promise you’ll be honest,” he said.
“I promise,” Riyo nodded. “But pleasure and pain often wear the same face. Don’t judge mine.”
“Okay.” He already didn’t like this. But Fox reached between her legs, feeling her wet interest. His finger slipped in easily. Her thin noise of delight was encouraging.
“That’s it! Yes, yes, yes ...”
Fox slipped another in. And squeezed in a third. His spring could not have been wound tighter, to feel the grip of Riyo’s cunt. Warmer than warm. Squishy, like the fingers of a glove filled with bacta, and leaking like it, too. Fox fumbled around for the hand towel he’d had the presence of mind to bring and tucked it under her bottom.
Riyo trembled as he rocked his hand into her. She loosened a little. Her thighs opened ever wider. “Now you, if you’re ready, now you —” she whined, pawing around between them in the direction of his dick.
Finally, Fox gripped himself with fingers that were deliciously wet with her. He thumbed his slit, spreading his leaky excitement over his head to ease the infil; he lined himself up against her puffy folds, a big fat missile where det cord might have served.
And slowly, as if to escape his own notice — but not too slowly, lest he think of an excuse to stop — he pressed forward.
A current of want burned beneath Fox’s skin. It screamed for him to thrust. It’d been so long since he’d felt the warm clench of anything but his own hand. Time enough in clone-years — time enough to unlearn perverted habits. He’d hardly allowed himself to even think about it. Not since the first natborn he’d looked at twice had made it as plain as a piss-drunk pilot that she thought Fox was something lesser.
Fox breathed deep, concentrating on the grip of Riyo’s fingers and the press of her spongy flesh around him. Listening to her breath. Trying to get a read on her.
When he watched his cockhead disappear into her pink slit, Fox could neither breathe nor concentrate. Everything he was felt scooped down to somewhere behind his balls. Riyo Chuchi was in his arms. Incredible. Impossible. And his cock was inside her, slowly filling her up.
How was he still planetside?
Fox had stood on Corrie’s tallest cloudcutters. He’d inverted his bike out above the Works, high on octane fumes and adrenaline, going belly-up before he could punch through the atmosphere. Nothing swooped his guts like this — the slow give of Riyo's body beneath him. He struggled to keep his face a careful blank. To belie how frenzied he felt. How much he hungered for her.
Riyo exhaled, nasally and sharp.
Fox froze, momentarily separating from everything happening to his undercarriage. “Fuck. Riyo, I shouldn’t, I don’t —”
“Keep going! Keep going, Fox,” she urged, her fine nails stinging his arms.
Her heat was beyond anything. Fox eased deeper, giving her a long prelude in which to stop him. He was sure she would, or that any moment he’d find the end of her. It couldn't be this good. This tight bliss couldn’t extend forever —
His thighs met her ass. Fox had bottomed out. The intimacy squeezed up into his chest and caught in his throat. “Oh — my — gods,” he croaked. He dropped his forehead against her mouth, trembling, keeping his spine balled up. He was desperate not to let it go.
Sleenshit, had anyone else ever felt this? And, if so, how had they ever come up for air? Fox was so tense, he thought he might crystalize around this moment. He wanted to.
“Can you move?” Riyo asked.
He’d only just got in; he didn’t want to push his luck. “If you think I can,” Fox said hoarsely.
“I think you should. If you really want to fuck me properly,” she teased in a sing-song voice.
Fox swore, snapping a little against that marble of flesh he felt above his tip. He pulled back a fraction, fuzzing at the sensation.
He did it again. And then again and again. He confined his movement to his hips, his thighs straining to keep his motion small as he politely fucked her. Feeling his cock, inch after inch of intense sensation, flush and tight within Riyo’s hot, hidden skin. Coiling his momentum until it was a misery to contain. Fox dragged himself nearly out and pushed back into her, slowly, groaning to feel her body envelop him a second time. The slip of her little slit against his hood whited his brain and blackened his vision. It was exquisite.
Tucking her heels against his lower spine, Riyo canted herself up. Her raw noises belonged to someone twice as big as she.
Fox’s core ached. It ached from building up a rhythm. It ached from holding himself against tremendous pressure, determined to push his perfect agony out by degrees. It was the best fucking thing Fox had ever felt, by a Kessel mile.
Riyo moaned in time to his taut thrusts. Fox tangled his fingers into her hair, suddenly needing all of her. Whatever his little sweetheart could allow him. He eased off the clutch and made Riyo’s body roll with his. The mattress moved. They fucked across the floor.
Riyo convulsed like a fried droid when she peaked. Fox’s name cracked into a wail in her mouth. She spasmed bodily and went limp in his arms. Went limp everywhere but around his cock, which felt very fat with her throaty praise.
Her orgasm coiled around the lewd idea Fox was rubbing breathlessly against.
The penthouse roof ... Riyo without panties ... spread over his bike, wide open and waiting —
Fox couldn’t help himself. He was gone.
Purely, perfectly, primally gone.
He crashed into Riyo, jerking like he’d been shanked. He came. Her hot cunt pulled his pleasure out and out and out further still. The heat of their consummated fuck surged through his limbs until he felt skinless, utterly sheared with bliss.
When the fire in his pelvis settled, clarity of mind began to crawl back up.
This was the moment of truest peril; Fox tensed, fearing her regret. She’d soiled herself with a clone — a bruised one, who had neither the distant pity of the people, nor the pride of his brothers. And he’d probably just hurt her, as he'd sought his own crude comfort.
Fox sank into her neck, pressing the expensive smell of her into his mind while he still could, while an apology formed in his throat.
“Wow,” Riyo breathed at last. “That really happened.”
“Yeah ...”
“It should happen again.”
Whatever tension Fox had left finally rolled from his shoulders. “Yeah?”
“Without question. Once I learn how to walk again.”
Fox squeezed her into his chest, where a fist of tender feelings had lodged. “I’ll carry you. Wherever you want to go,” he reminded her.
"Don’t tempt me," Riyo said, hugging him back.
“Tempt you?”
“To make you fuck me into a wall.”
Fox had to muffle his groan of longing into her hair. There must be something in the water here, where he might spill and spill again and still find lust within him. And there was definitely something in her: ten pounds of sexy in a two pound bag.
He slipped out from her, sloppily, and gently dabbed her dry with the towel’s cleanest corner. Not quite the ablution he’d enjoyed, but he had to own it: he was too damn tired to lick her clean. Fox finally sank into satisfied stillness. “It’d be my greatest pleasure. If you can keep the decorators from hanging too many pictures,” he mumbled, though thinking she’d look very fine pressed into a frame.
Riyo squirmed, tucking herself against his side, and yawned with an uncouth ease that made Fox smile. She rubbed his back. “Happily, I much prefer sculpture.”
Her arm sagged, eventually. Her breathing slowed and broadened. It was better than any morning’s breeze, for it blessed his naked skin.
Brief contentment was one thing. Fox had known moments of it. Usually skywards, on his bike. Or ten minutes’ additional sleep before his ten-minutes-early alarm, time enough to rub one out. But anxiety, a certainty that everything in a clone’s life tended to ill, was almost always sitting in the corner, silent but looming.
Tonight with Riyo was different. Tonight saw a presence of joy, breaking cloudy atmo and coming to land, billowing all worry into the distance.
.
.
.
The galaxy was spinning differently and only Fox knew it.
The room had begun to pale with the faintest light, seeking his secret: he had slept with Riyo Chuchi.
She looked beautiful, frozen like moonlight on one of the pillows he’d fetched from the guest room. It’d be a shame to wake her. An even greater shame to leave. But when Fox finally caressed her cheek with his thumb, he at least got to watch her warm life return.
“Yes?” she squeaked.
“I have to go, sweetheart.”
“Oh.” She stretched and scrubbed her sleepy eyes. “When can I see you again?”
Fox’s mind whirred, searching for means by which he might bump into her. But it was a recess. His tactic of finishing every circuitous, winding round of the district by passing her office door wouldn’t work. Usually, he couldn’t connive anything better.
“Tonight?” she suggested, speaking to his hardness and flipping his stomach.
Fox’s cock twitched. He could nudge her onto her back and —
No. It was stupidly early for her. And Dodger would give him enough grief as it was, without a nutting to make him gooey under the weights, too. “Tomorrow night. I promise,” he said. Thire would get a night with his sweets — and any sweethearts he had in the wing — for delivering on his promise of a silent comm. Then, after remembering to be humble in his bunk, Fox would dash back to this secret heaven in the clouds.
Riyo sighed. “Mmm’kay. I’ll be waiting.”
Fox bent over her, kissing her deep. “I won’t be late.”
He left her open-mouthed, yawning and ready to drool some more on her pillow.
After quietly collecting his plates and blacks, Fox padded downstairs to the kitchen, naked. The fantasy had not only survived the drawing in of night: it had turned with a fresh face towards the day. How easy to imagine himself a natborn, risen to his rank through half his hard work — and, maybe, his influential wife. Reality was held at arm’s length a little longer as Fox loaded the dishwasher and primed the caf machine for her. Just going to work, he told himself; he’d be home in the evening, to play husband to a wonderful woman who liked to waste water on him.
Oh, what a lovely recess! One could almost fancy it'd been arranged just for them.
As he kitted up, Fox inhaled some fancy cured meat. Boxes of biscuits and packets of tuiles, jars of curd and tins of jelly rolls: all were packed into his bike. Choruk would probably get the lot, after Thire made a hoovering pass. They knew what was good for them and kept their sugar-pitted teeth tight.
Wandering back into the kitchen, Fox decided he must return soon: there was now just enough room among the treats to unwrap the finest and most delicious one and devour her all over again.
The backpack he reserved for personal goodies. The fingered haselnutta. The marchpane fish. The box of sweet-sand cookies not destined for Wint. The paper was nearly buried under all this sugar.
There is no occasion when a hand-written note is not appropriate.
Or, as Stone might say: finish the fucking drill.
Mustering himself, Fox tiptoed back upstairs, wondering how ARCs didn’t wake Sep space making this much plastoid noise.
Riyo was still perfectly dishevelled around a pillow. She slept on.
He would tuck the note under the crystal fox. Leaving it under her pillow risked someone else finding it. Too salacious. No decorator would mess with a shrine.
Fox unfolded the paper and contemplated it one last time. He’d struggled with one word in particular, the longest of them all, but he’d been determined to get it right: a demonstration of how persistent his love for her was. Her goodness would forgive the scrawl, he was sure.
For Riyo.
Ever faithfully yours,
Fox.