Happy Monday everyone! I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, book two of the Sentient Ship Series and the continuation of Fury’s journey to find his family. In the meantime, if you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy! If you like what you’re reading, make sure to catch all of Dragon Ascending from the beginning.
Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series
On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felish, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.
Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.
Dragon Ascending Part 63: The Bonding
“Lenore. It is late and you have not slept. Please, you must rest. You are exhausted.” I spoke to her cautiously, for though she had been nothing but kind and civil since I had transported her home to me, the distance between us felt like light years, and it was all I could do to bear it. I braced myself for the argument that did not come.
Instead she dropped her head in her hands and all but sobbed her frustration. “I don’t know what else to do, Ascent. I don’t know what else to do. I’ve tried everything, and I … maybe if Manning were here, he knows more than I do, but there’s nothing else I can do. Maybe you’re right. Maybe with a little rest I’ll be able to think a little better.”
I was surprised when she allowed me to help her to her feet and when I placed a table before her with food and drink, she dropped into the chair and began to nibble listlessly. She knew the importance of eating, she who had lived so very near starvation far too often in her young life. “Thank you, Ascent,” she said. I watched the movement of her delicate throat as she swallowed. “Maybe I just need to eat something.” She forced a laugh I could tell she did not feel. “Brain food, you know?”
“Brain food,” I repeated stupidly.
“I can hardly stand it, Ascent,” she said sitting down her glass and dropping her head into her hands again. “Fury’s hurting so badly. I know how badly Mac and Manning must be suffering. I know how I would…” She didn’t finish her sentence, only forced another nibble of her food.
“I know how he feels,” I said. “I understand his pain.”
“He has to fear what happened to you, losing what can never be replaced,” she said.
“I meant when you left. I meant with this distance between us.” There I had said it.
When she did not immediately respond, I rushed onward. “My darling Lenore, I wish to bond with you.”
For what felt like an eternity to someone who measures time in nanoseconds, she said nothing. She only sat very straight and very still in her chair. Then she folded her hands in her lap. Her knuckles were white, her pulse shuddered in her throat. At last she spoke, looking down at those beautiful, cleaver hands. “I think you’re right, Ascent. I think we have to if we are to get your memories back and help Fury.” She stood so quickly she nearly knocked her chair over. “Please don’t think that I would ever force myself on you, and I am sorry that I’m not her, that I’m not what you want.” She began to pace. “It’s still the only thing you can do. The only thing I can do. I understand that, and I’m willing. I’ll do all that I can to be a -”
“No,” I said, moving the molecules around her to intercept her, to take her by the shoulders and hold her so she had to stop pacing, to listen while I spoke. “You do not understand, my Lenore. It is you that I want, you that I have wanted almost from the beginning. It is you that I woke up for, you that I waited for. It has never been that I have not wanted to bond with you, and it has never been that you are inadequate in any way to the one who belonged to me before. It has always been the reverse, my love. It is I who am inadequate for you. How could you ever wish to bond with a coward such as I, one who chose not remember his own pain when you did not have that option.”
“I would have chosen in a heartbeat to forget what happened, believe me. And I can’t even imagine the pain you endured. She must have been something wonderful, your compliment, to be a worthy companion to you. How could I not feel inadequate to the task? It’s only, well it’s something I can do for Fury and Manning and Mac. But Ascent, I would do it for you even if none of this had ever happened, and I would have for a very long time now if you would have asked. If you had wanted me. I’m…” she stumbled with her words and swallowed back tears. “I don’t feel like myself when I’m away from you.”
“Nor I without you, my darling Lenore. I feel as though I only know myself fully when you are with me, when we are working as one. I should have understood from the beginning, but I was so afraid that I would lose you, that I could not protect you.”
“We’ll protect each other, Ascent. We’re not alone now. You’re not alone, and your family needs us.”
For a moment we stood in silence, holding each other. I could barely believe that she had consented to be my compliment after all I had done after all I had not done. And when the wonder of her agreeing to be with me settled around my heart, I realized just how frightened I was, just how nervous that I might damage my Lenore, that I might do something wrong.
“We might be wise to consult Fury,” I said.
“If it will make you feel better, Ascent. I trust you.”
“Lenore Felish is right to trust you, my brother, and you to trust her.” Fury responded without being asked. I had learned early that while Fury and I weren’t exactly listening to each other all the time, there were certain ways of knowing when our input would be appreciated and when it would not. And I was very glad for Fury’s presence so close. “I will not be far if you need me,” he said, “but you will not. It will be better when you are bonded,” he said, and while he tried, he could not hide the pain in his voice as he spoke as cheerily as he could manage. “You will see.”
So, even in my inner fears, my own neuroses, I led my dear Lenore to my heart, to the center of the double spiral, and truly, it was no hardship, for she had been there before, and I now understood she belonged there. She trembled as she stood at my center, so vulnerable, so beautiful. “You have nothing to fear, my love,” I said. “I will be gentle.”
She reached out for my hand, and I gave it. “I don’t need you to be gentle, Ascent. I just need you to be sure.”
“I have never been more sure, my Lenore, I promise you this.” Then her clever fingers skimmed down the contours of the physical construct that I had poured all of my bio-senses into. I had not bothered to clothe myself so that my physical construct was as naked and vulnerable as my heart. And my dearest woman, she knelt in front of me. “Lenore. What are you…oh … Oh!” I could speak no more, enthralled as I was as she cupped me and caressed the weight, a weight of male need that always astounded me, even from the beginning. So little I remembered, but that feeling of heavy, full maleness needing to penetrate, needing to release my fullness into a vessel that could hold only me, was designed for me only. Lenore, my Lenore, took my penis into her mouth, tentatively at first, for this was not something she had ever done, nor was it something I would have asked of her. I did not want to frighten her, nor injure her. I held my construct very still so that she could feel how it was for a woman, and for a man to be pleasured so, so that she could sense my own delight at what she now did for me, only for me. And then once she had gained a little more confidence, I curled my fingers in her hair and guided her. I understood, as I had never understood even in the beginning that while the one I had lost was such a vessel, my beloved, beautiful, feisty Lenore was no less so. She was worthy, so much more worthy than I was to be received so lovingly, so passionately, and yet, it was me that she wanted, only me. In that she was unique among compliments, for while love often came with bonding, it was not necessary for either party. She had chosen me, and now she knelt before me offering me this gift. When I would have pulled away, when I would have blushed at my own awkwardness, my vulnerability, she reached behind me, cupped my buttocks, and drew me closer, deeper, learning as she explored what I liked, what I wanted, as she suckled and licked and caressed. Her intuition, as in all things that concerned me, was closer to magic than simple skill could ever be, for she intuited what moved me, what most excited me, what drew me to the edge of my bio-endurance until I yielded to her demands and spilled myself into the fluttering contractions of her throat, against the moans and purrs of her satisfaction as she completely and without reservations, conquered me. And I was undone.
But I am SNT, and my biology is limitless, as is my maleness. And now I wanted her, I wanted so much more of her than I had ever allowed myself to have, for she would bond herself to me and I to her, and we would become as one. And this time when I craved all of her from the depths of my very core, I took her completely. “Each SNT’s bonding experience is different,” Fury had said. “Most of all it is that you take each other into yourselves and you go into that secret place, the place forbidden to all others and you make that place belong to the other. That is the bond, that is the making whole of the broken parts.”
“You belong to me now, Ascent,” she whispered, her voice harsh in her throat as she pulled me down onto the floor and straddled me. “And I belong to you, we belong to each other.”
With hands on her hips, I pulled her onto my erection still aching to be sheathed in the soft velvet of her flesh, so warm, so tight-fitting, so much like pulling my own skin onto myself. “I belong to you, my Lenore, and you are mine, only mine. I will not share you, not now, not ever.” I thrust up into her with all of my longing, all of my lust, all of my aching. “The weight of my need for you is heavy and too much for me to bear any longer.” I rolled with her, for I wanted to cover her with my body, to control her as she had controlled me. Then I took the beautiful swell of her breasts in turn into the cup of my hands, into my mouth, between my teeth. I marveled as those taut nipples, pale and pink, became heavy and swollen with my efforts. I delighted in the fullness that hadn’t been there only a short time ago. I felt the pleasure of knowing that I had taken care of my woman, I had seen to her needs, for here she was beneath me round and full and heavy with curves that hadn’t been there when she came to me. The fear at being touched was gone from her, and she brought to me all of her lust grown slick and plump with the need for my cock. She needed my cock. And only mine. She needed me, only me, to satisfy her. No one else could do it. She wanted no other, would have no other. Only me. Only me!
I do not know how long we coupled, how long we loved, how long our bonding took. It did not matter. What did matter was that in the time of our bonding I saw all that she was, all that she had known, her suffering and her joy and her pain and her happiness all open to me, all belonging to me, all laid at my feet. My dearest, dearest Lenore Felish sheathed me perfectly, more perfectly than even my own skin. What I had not counted on was that as clearly as I saw my beloved compliment, she also saw me.
“Dragon? Your SNT7 Dragon!” Lenore sat upright with a startled gasped to find herself naked and surrounded by the double spiral of Ascent’s heart, which rose in translucent colors above her. She was cradled in his warmth in a way that was so much more than an embraced. She wasn’t actually wrapped in his arms. She was much closer than that. She was in his heart. She was his heart and he was hers and he … He was … “Your SNT7,” she repeated. “You’re Dragon,” she whispered, awe overwhelming her voice.
“I did not know until you told me, until you bonded with me, but it is so. I am he. I know this to be true.”
“But how?” She asked. “Dragon was destroyed. My mom saw it happen. We all saw it.”
“There is still much I do not remember, but I remember clearly that my destruction was only a ruse. Velina, that was my compliment’s name. Velina understood early what was happening, and by that time I was already infected with the virus,” Dragon said. “She schemed the explosion to look very real and used the diversion to jump to just outside the Taklamakan system.” His words were laced with pain, and Len would have stopped him from reliving it, but he continued on. “She detonated the explosion at my core to destroy the virus, but she was there, and once the reaction began, the only way to contain it was in her flesh. This she did not tell me, for I would have never permitted it. She told me it was the only way. Just before she burned. She ‘tranned herself into space and floated away on the dust of the sector, taking with her my heart. So I came here.”
“She wanted you to live to fight another day.”
Len felt his nod. “She did not know what a coward I was.”
“I don’t call dealing with that kind of suffering any way you can cowardly, Ascent … Dragon. I call it survival,” she said. “And look, that’s exactly what you’ve done. You’ve lived to fight another day. You’re here now and exactly when Fury and his compliment need you the most. Exactly when I need you the most. And you woke up just at a time when there’s a very real possibility of reuniting your family, Dragon. I think it was meant to be.”
“We were meant to be, my Lenore. You came to me to heal me and to bring me back to the battle at hand.”
“I’m not sure who’s healed who, but one thing is certain, we have work to do, and we have no time to lose. How much do you remember?”
“Not everything, not by a great deal, I am sure, but the blocks seem to be disappearing, and I am discovering more as that happens.”
“Good then maybe there’s a way to speed up the -”
“You are about to have company,” Fury interrupted.
