CHAPTER ONE

One of the downsides to being a Monitor is the lack of a family life. One of the upsides is the orientation and training. After you've been through it, there's not much you can't do-or won't do, if the job demands it. Not that you always enjoy everything, but you learn. And some things you wouldn't have imagined you would like turn out to be not that bad once you've tried it a few times. Occasionally, they even get to be downright enjoyable. In fact…

Take sex, for instance. The Orientation and Monitor training increases the sex drive way beyond that of normal people. That can be either a plus or minus, but it's almost always a positive development. I grew up as a normal heterosexual girl and given a choice, I'll take a man over a woman most of the time, but I've learned to enjoy being in bed with women, too. It's fun for a change and can be quite stimulating and enjoyable, even tremendously pleasurable with the right woman. Or even the wrong one, to an extent. The orientation teaches us to accept whatever comes and make the most of it while we're observing and setting the stage for possible intervention by the Hegemony.

Before being posted to Arrowhead, I was between assignments and enjoying a fling with another agent, Erik Jovelin. Erik isn't a big hunk, but I like him. He's a good-looking man, even if he isn't a lot bigger than me; I'm five six and he's only five eleven. He has short, wavy brown hair and a slender, well-muscled body. He would have made a good-looking woman if he had been born female. But I like him as he is. This wasn't even our first affair; we had been together once before. When you live a long time, events have a habit of repeating themselves.

What I like most about Erik is his easy acceptance of the type of woman I am. He knows how quirky I can be; how changeable; how I like to be the dominant one in bed a lot of the time.

Like right now. I was on top of him between his legs, with his arms and legs around me and his fingers digging into my back. I had my hands in under his shoulders and was rotating my hips against his groin in a short, circular motion moving faster and faster, right in tune with my breathing, which was coming in short, urgent gasps. I heard him cry out and that was the last stimulus I needed to reach my own climax. My body tensed along its whole length, muscles locked and straining as the release swept over me. I cried out again and again, almost in agony over the wonderful sensation. Whatever I said was probably incomprehensible, but I can no more remain silent during a good orgasm than I can resist slowing down when I pass a gun shop window demonstrating their latest wares, or a lingerie display with the models moving around so perfectly lifelike, you would take them for real women if you didn't know better.

Finally, my ecstatic howls faded to murmured words more nearly resembling human speech and I collapsed, utterly spent, letting my whole weight sink onto Erik, unable to even use my elbows to take some of my weight off him for a few minutes. When I stopped trembling and was able to move, I raised my body a few inches. I nuzzled his neck and nibbled on his ear.

"Erik, you've been practicing," I said.

"Mmm. Jan, honey, that was so great. Why don't we run away somewhere and forget the universe for a few years?" Erik responded. He turned his head and licked my chin, then my lips.

I raised up and looked down into his long-lashed brown eyes. Could we? Yes, but I had tried that once before and finally gotten bored almost to death.

"If I ever decide to try it again, it will be with you, love," I told him, and stretched out again with my full weight resting on his hard body, wriggling against him with the pleasure of complete satiation. "Ahhh. I could stay here for hours, but I think…I don't know what I think."

"I think we're disconnecting," Erik chuckled.

And so we were. Men. That's the one place where I think the design went wrong. Why can't men keep it up until a woman is completely satisfied? Oh sure, it's easily possible. There are drugs available for exactly that purpose but I knew it became painful for a man after a time. And how do you know that's what he really wants if it's an artificial stimulus? Anyway, I guess anticipation has something to be said for it, too. Waiting for another round can be pleasant in itself, so long as you know for sure it's coming. With Erik, I knew it wouldn't be too long.

I rolled off him and onto my back, feeling my breasts shift until they regained their center of gravity. I closed my eyes for a moment, then blinked them open again when I sensed Erik was still looking at me.

He was propped on one elbow, gazing down at me with that slow, easy smile I loved.

"You're more beautiful than ever," he said.

Well, you can't go wrong telling a woman something like that, even if it isn't entirely true. Sometimes I think men just like blondes, or strawberry blondes in my case. Even more, they like a good figure and nice boobs and I did have both of those, even if my face is a bit too angular to be called really pretty. That could be changed, of course, but it was the face I grew up with and I like it, even if it doesn't quite fit the stereotyped, pouty-lipped feminine faces so popular in this particular cultural cycle. The next generation might prefer high cheekbones and stick figures for all I knew. It didn't matter. Monitors were seldom on earth long enough to have to care about such things, and on another planet, the ideal of beauty might be entirely different than what was current here and now.

Erik liked my long hair, too. He reached over and toyed with some errant strands laying on my breasts, then moved them aside. He covered one of my breasts with his hand, cupping the firm contour gently as he rubbed his palm against my nipple. Damned if it didn't start growing larger again, tickling at first, then sending little signals of arousal out over the rest of my body.

I smiled and reached for him. I pulled his head over and down for a long sweet kiss, then pushed him away.

Copyright © 2005 Darrell Bain