32. Georgiana

I open my eyes when the doctor tells me I can. I see some familiar faces. I hear Axl’s voice. I sit up. I’m so dizzy. “Axl?”

His hand is in mine. I hear the doctor and the nurse talking about something but I can’t make it out. My heart is beating so loudly in my ears.

“Is this really real?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to make me return to the Empire because I’m pregnant?”

“No.”

“Are you going to live on Earth with me?”

“No.”

“What are we going to do?” Anguish crosses her face.

“We’re going to live here. I’ve renounced my House and my position in the Empire. Commander Fox has given me a place here with the Alliance Force.”

“On the space station?” I realize that I shouldn’t have said it so derogatory in front of people who call this place their home.

“Axl has given up everything for you,” the doctor says from his computer. “It’s only right you give up something for him.”

“Doctor, please keep your opinions to yourself,” Caroline chides him. Then to me says, “It’s not as bad as you think. You’ll be able to visit Earth and still have access to all your communications and social media.”

“But I have to live here?”

“You’ll be with me. It’s the only way we can be together,” Axl says. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“I did. I mean, I do. I feel so confused and upset. Did you only come back because of the baby? Would you have left me forever otherwise?”

He looks around. It’s clear he doesn’t want to have this conversation here.

“You told me there were no secrets in the Empire. What difference does it make if you tell me now or in private if everyone is going to know anyway?”

His green eyes meet mine. “So that I wouldn’t be formally charged, I signed a document saying that I would never return to Earth or seek you out ever again. That could only be overridden by outstanding circumstances such as you being pregnant.”

“Are you going to be charged with a crime now?”

“No, but the doctor is correct. I’ve given up everything in the Empire to move here and be with you. I’m no longer imperial. I no longer belong to House Zu. And I have dropped so many steps in rank and payment I can’t even begin to count.”

“Why couldn’t you have done that before?”

“We had lied to Commander Fox and everyone on this base. Do you think that would have been a good time to ask for a favor? Also there were other circumstances with the Empress that prevented me from renouncing my position.”

“I see. What now? What becomes of me?” I ask wondering if I’m just going to be a prisoner on this alien base for the rest of my life. Had I known I was pregnant I might have done something different.

The doctor says, “That’s precisely why I left your month away from Earth blank, Georgiana. I gave you the opportunity to find out and make a human decision. But your stubbornness led you back here and back to Axl. It’s the god’s will.”

“Not stubbornness or the gods’ will, it’s love,” Caroline says. “Love always finds a way.”

As my memories flood in, jealousy spreads through me. “Wait, did you marry that other woman? What happened to you while I was on Earth?”

“I left Alliance Force with the promise never to return or be prosecuted for my crimes. I took full responsibility for both of us. I paid in blood at the Grand City Temple many times over for what we did on the Lio and renewed my oath to the Empress.”

“Did you have sex with the Empress?” I ask him directly.

He looks away but then back to me. “It wasn’t out of desire. It was to continue living. It was the price she set. I was worried she would have you killed. She was furious I had returned you to Earth myself.”

“Did you marry that woman too?”

“No. That I would not do.”

“I can’t believe you had sex with another woman.”

“I was never going to see you again. And you could have been with another man on Earth.”

“Axl, I didn’t even have my memories and I didn’t cheat on you,” I say but immediately wish I wouldn’t have seen his face turn cold.

“He’s given up everything for you,” the doctor reminds me. “Everything.”

Caroline shushes him.

“I don’t know what I want,” I admit.

Axl picks me up as if I weigh nothing and walks out of the medical center. I try to ask him where he’s taking me but he doesn’t say anything. I stop asking after a few minutes, it’s clear he doesn’t hear me.

We walk through a door and we are in living quarters, these aren’t the same as before. The rooms are smaller. He takes me into the bedroom and lays me on the bed. He lays next to me, but before I can say anything he kisses me. I want to tell him that I don’t want to be kissed right now, but my body disagrees and it overrides my mind. How can I punish him now when I want this too?

I hear the doctor’s voice in my head, “He gave up everything for you.”

One of Axl’s hands is in my hair and the other on my chin directing his kisses onto my lips. My body is relaxing into this as if the last months never happened. And a great relief spreads through me. I now know the truth. I thought I might have been drugged, but all the drug tests came back negative. I saw a psychiatrist who suggested it was stress and that I’d probably been traveling and then forgot. I’d never heard of such a thing happening to anyone and I hadn’t been under a lot of stress, but I had no other answers. I took the psychiatrist’s word for it as he came highly recommended and I had paid a lot of money for his diagnosis. Afterward I often had reread his report to soothe myself. I even had it on my computer’s desktop so that I could easily access it when I was anxious about not knowing what had happened to me. My aunt and roommate provided me with no details other than I had been traveling in Germany.

But this is what I had been missing all along, Axl. I kiss him back as his hands travel up and down my body. Pulling up my pajamas that I’d been wearing at the stress center. He seems momentarily surprised to find underwear separating his hand from my vulva, but he quickly puts his hand inside my underwear. His touch feels amazing. His fingers caress me in a way that makes me arch my back. “I missed this.”

“I’ve thought about you every minute of every day,” he says as he kisses my neck. “I never wanted anyone but you.”

Then a thought occurs to me. “I want those binding tattoos.”

“I’d rather be dead than be with another woman again,” he says with such conviction I know now that he really did sleep with the Empress against his will. I don’t know if it’s possible to rape a man or if Axl would ever admit to such an act, but something terrible happened there. With his other hand he pushes my pajamas over one of my breast and then teases my nipple.

I’m so sensitive, I jump a little and he replaces his fingers with his mouth. Sucking hard and I feel like I could orgasm from this alone. He must recognize this because his fingers begin rubbing my clitoris with intent. I tense from this intense pleasure. Frozen as if time is standing still. There’s nothing else that matters only Axl. I close my eyes and momentarily wonder if I am dreaming all of this.

I run my fingers through is long hair and I know this is real. He continues to lap at my nipple and stroke my clitoris at a constant pace that builds such desire in me that I don’t remember why I was ever angry with him. Suddenly my orgasm breaks into thousands of little firecrackers of erotic ecstasy. And Axl holds me close to him as I come. His mouth now on mine kissing me through this. There’s nothing in the world but him.

I begin unbuttoning his uniform. “I want to feel your body next to mine. I want you inside of me.”

“Wait,” he says and gets out of bed.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to take the binding tattoos. Georgiana, I want to prove to you that no other women have anything to offer me. Not ever. I would rather die first.” Axl opens the base’s communications and asks Commander Fox and the doctor to come to our quarters.

I pull down my pajamas. “You want to do this now?”

“We need witnesses and I don’t want you to doubt me even for another second.”

Ten minutes pass and then both the doctor and Commander Fox are at our door. We were waiting in the bedroom, but I assumed we would do this in the sitting room, so I’m surprised when Axl says, “Now let’s return to the bedroom.”

“Is this going to hurt that much?”

“It will hurt a bit,” says the doctor. “But you need witnesses as well. You never had a proper marriage ceremony anyway, so this could serve for both.”

I look at Axl. “Witnesses?”

“Yes. We must consummate the binding tattoos. Would you like Caroline to witness too? Or there’s another human woman on the base as well, I don’t know her name.”

“No. But I don’t want these men to witness us either.”

“It’s an Alliance custom. This has to be legal.”

“Only the doctor,” I say. “I guarantee he doesn’t care what we do.”

“You’re right, Georgiana. I have seen it all and then some.”

Commander Fox hands over the black box to the doctor and says to us, “May the god’s bless you with many daughters.” Then he leaves.

The doctor hands the ornate black box to Axl who opens it and then sets it on a one of the bedside tables. I can see the flash of shiny silver instruments inside. Axl removes what looks like a small stamp with a long pen on the end of it. He then walks over to stand in front of me. “Give me your right arm.”

I willingly hold out my arm for him. He positions the pen and then says softly, “Georgiana Smith, my wife both fictitious and truthfully, now we will bind ourselves together not only by vows but by the physical body. Our bodies will never know another upon pain of death.” Then Axl places the binding pen on the underside of my right forearm, below my elbow. I look up at him expectantly as I don’t feel anything but the coolness of the instrument. “Now you must say that you accept this by verbally agreeing.”

I look into his green eyes. Can I really do this? Is this for real? With all the technology I’ve seen why couldn’t this be real too? “Axl, my husband, I accept your binding as yours will be the only body I willingly touch until the last breath I take.”

“Then by the god’s light I take you as my one and only,” Axl says and I feel like a million cold needles are punching through every nerve in my body in a steady rhythm that lasts for minutes. I cry out and would have collapsed on the floor if Axl hadn’t have caught me.

When I finally regain my composure I look at my arm. There are two intertwined circles there just as Officer Sem had shown me months before. “I can’t believe something so small could be so painful.”

“Just don’t have sex with anyone else or it will be even more painful,” the doctor says. “I hear it’s one of the worst ways to die.”

“How romantic.”

Axl says nothing but hands me the binding instrument to administer his tattoo. My hands are a bit shaky from the pain. “Axl, I asked this of you because of my jealousy, but you have agreed and for this you will always have my loyalty, I bind myself to you until the last breath I take.”

Axl says, “I accept your binding as yours will be the only body I willingly touch until the last breath I take.”

I put the binding tattoo in a similar place to mine on his grey forearm and he doesn’t even flinch or close his eyes through the pain. “Did it work?”

Axl kisses me passionately and I drop the instrument as an intense wave of arousal sweeps through me.

“Do you feel that?”

“Yes,” I say my voice not my own because of my sudden desire for him.

“That’s the binding tattoos. They make our attraction for one another a hundred times stronger. Now we must orgasm together now for the binding tattoos to be optimized and complete.”

“With the doctor watching?”

“Yes. He must witness this for legal purposes.”

I look over at the doctor. If I had to describe his expression, I would say, ‘bored.’ But still as far as I knew no one had ever watched me perform such an intimate act.

“Georgiana I assure you; I’ve seen many human women pass through this base. Unlike most Alliance men, the fur between your legs isn’t exotic or interesting to me.”

“You’re not making me feel more comfortable,” I say. But then Axl puts a hand under my chin and forces my gaze up to meet his eyes.

“Only me. Forget about him. There’s only us here.” Axl’s mouth comes down on mine. In between kisses, Axl says to the doctor, “Let the medical record show Georgiana orgasmed before I summoned you to our room.”

“Noted,” replies the doctor.

I pull back. “Why are you telling him that?”

“Because it’s considered rape to penetrate a woman without her orgasming first, up to the hour before. I assume you would like privacy as soon as possible. Or I can…”

I hesitate, letting his words sink in. “No, I mean yes, I want privacy as soon as possible.”

Axl begins removing his clothing, revealing his magnificent grey body. His muscles are precisely toned. In seconds he’s completely naked and coming towards me. His penis erect, the ridges across the top exposed. My thighs push together in anticipation of what he feels like inside of me.

Axl wordlessly removes my pajamas and underwear, then sets me on the bed. He climbs on with me and caresses my breasts and torso with his hands. “I’ve dreamed about you so many times since you left me.”

I wonder if he watched the holos we made. I don’t want to ask that in front of the doctor, but I remember we made a few and I blush.

“I’m telepathic my dear,” the doctor says from the corner of the room.

“But you’re not supposed to be listening to our thoughts,” Axl reprimands him.

“Sorry, occupational problem when I hear ‘doctor’ in someone’s thoughts.”

“Georgiana,” Axl says as his fingers find their way to the entrance of my vagina, circling it in a tantalizing way. “Do you want me to enter you as your husband and only lover forever?”

I don’t answer him. Not because I don’t want him but because the pleasure from his fingers and the expectation of what’s coming is too much.

“Georgiana, you must answer me. I know the effect of the binding tattoos make it difficult to speak right now.”

“Yes,” I manage. “Now, please.”