WIP Wednesday - First Mataras: Irene

 

 

A little music, a little mood...a first kiss?

“Give me.” Sherv set aside the uferliss to take the guitar Irene was again navigating with less than stellar results. “Try this.” He played a variation of the notes she’d thought would work with the third song they’d been concocting.

“Much better. Show me again?”

“I play. Uferliss not working on this tune, I think. You sing.”

“Okay, but I still don’t know why you want this song in English rather than Kalquorian.”

“Your language works with sound better. And it easier for you to sing your words.” He started to play the intro, and Jemi’s trasbu joined in. Another measure, and Rusp swept in with a gentle drum roll.

Irene had to admit that particular song did work best without the uferliss. “What about adding piano or keyboards, though?”

“We’re going to need a bigger band,” Jemi laughed.

“Or just use backing tracks.”

“Lemanthev never use backing tracks,” Rusp argued

 “This not lemanthev. This music is ours. We do backing tracks if want,” Sherv told him. “I like keyboards. And in English.”

“Who are you getting to sing with you when you leave, though?” Irene demanded. She stuck her lower lip out in a ridiculous pout. “Are you going to be chasing other Earther women around to sing for you?”

“We steal you. You sing for us, forget opera.” Sherv grinned.

“And keep me in chains between shows?”

“You do cashool in-u-en-do again?” Rusp’s brows wiggled at her. He chuckled when she blushed.

“Is that a thing for Kalquorians? Keeping their women in chains for perverse activities?” She blushed harder at her own audacity.

Jemi chattered in his own language.

Sherv snickered. “Perversted means good sex.”

Irene gasped and covered her mouth with both hands. Shocked laughter chuffed behind her palms, then she spluttered, “I didn’t say anything of the sort! And the word is perverted, you Kalquorian heathen. Which means weird or immoral.”

“Like he say, mean good sex.” Rusp’s strong features lit with mischievous merriment. “More immoral, more better.”

“You three have no shame!” Irene tried her best to sound disapproving, but the giggles pouring from her ruined the affect. Talking of the taboo subject was just as thrilling as sneaking out to listen to bands play.

“Sex no shame. Sex like good music. I show if you let me play you.” Rusp wiggled his fingers over his drum’s skin, making it hum like far-off thunder, his tongue peeking out between his grinning lips.

Sherv was laughing so hard, he was in danger of falling out of his seat. “Irene so red.”

“Don’t laugh at me.” She swatted his arm. “It isn’t my fault my government is crazy.”

“You so embarrassed about what’s normal. You think it’s perversted.” His humor quieted, and a hint of sadness drifted over his expression. “You even never kiss?”

“No.” A spark of anger greeted his pity. “Is it such a big deal?”

“Big deal to me. I be mad if not allowed to kiss.”

“Why don’t you teach me then?” The words were out of her mouth before she realized she’d said them.

Jemi and Rusp stilled. Sherv regarded her, his emotions impossible to gauge. “You want learn to kiss? Earth say bad.”

Irene debated walking the challenge back. She was insane to dare such closeness. What if Sherv turned lust-crazed? Except he’d done nothing to suggest he was the unrestrained sex fiend Earth insisted all Kalquorian men were. Except for a few teasing comments, there’d been no hint of depravity.

We die anyway, why should we fear taking chances?

“Earth says everything is bad. I’m already doomed if I’m caught with you. How can a kiss make it any worse?” She lifted her chin, challenging him. Challenging Earth’s overbearing dictates. Challenging her own fears.

Releasing Summer 2023

WIP Wednesday - First Mataras: Irene

 The first draft is done! The first round of edits are underway. Plus, we have a cover, courtesy of the brilliant Erin Dameron-Hill!

A woman who wants to experience life

“Is it worth your life?” Sherv took her hands in his.

Irene wished she wasn’t wearing the gloves. She wanted to know how his skin felt against hers. She wanted the warmth, simple contact with another. It leant a note of desperation to her tone. “This is life. Getting out, meeting people who aren’t ‘safe’ for me to know, seeing and hearing and touching and tasting what Earth would keep from me. When I run away is the only time I truly live.” She gripped his hand tightly. “Don’t send me away. I know the risks, and they’re worth it.”

He considered. Long seconds slipped by as Jemi and Rusp watched in apprehension, their gazes shifting from Irene to Sherv and back.

“I not know how to decide,” Sherv said at last. “You make sense, but I scared for you. I want you here, but this is hard when you could suffer.”

“Give me my own choice, Sherv. Do what Earth won’t, and let me make my own decisions.”

Another pause. He slowly nodded. “You be as happy as you can. We will help if you want to visit.”

“Thank you.” She felt a soaring lightness to not be shown the door. “This is a gift you’re giving me.”

  Releasing Summer

WIP Wednesday - First Mataras: Irene

 

                                                                                                                    Photo credit: Jernej Graj

 Unwelcome visit?

Rusp slapped a panel on the wall next to her, and the ship’s hatch closed behind her. He stared at her with what appeared to be anger. “What you do here, Irene?”

 A weight slammed in her gut. She swallowed a wad of unexpected hurt at his blunt, almost harsh question. “I…I wanted to see you guys. Say hello, maybe talk music some more? You don’t want me here?”

Jemi startled her by rushing forward and wrapping his arms around her. Irene was suddenly pressed close to a strong body, enveloped in his musky-spicy scent and warmth. “No want you hurt. You in danger, Irene. Shouldn’t come.”

“Rusp learn about Earth. Cruel to women who come too close to men. We stay away and think you stay away too.”

Irene found it hard to concentrate on Sherv’s speech. Jemi was holding her tight to himself, his rock-hard chest against her breasts, their stomachs touching, and below…

A stab of heat spiked through her. She’d never been held by a man before, and it was a revelation, her softer curves molding to his powerful physique. She couldn’t breathe.

She almost grabbed Jemi when he finally stepped back and held her at arm’s length. His worried gaze cleared the fog of whatever it was she’d been experiencing, and she returned to her senses.

“It’s okay. Nobody messes with Odeergins, right? I’m careful.” They didn’t have to know about her near-encounter with Clan Nil.

“Is big risk,” Rusp said, his anger evaporating in favor of concern. “What Earth do to you if you catched…”

“If you were hurt because come to see us, I not stand it.” Sherv raked his fingers through his thick black hair, mussing it. “Why you take chance?”

Still feeling a ghostly sensation of Jemi against her, Irene went to their dinette and sat on one of the huge chairs surrounding it. “My world has been so small. Not Earth, but where I’m allowed to go, what I’m allowed to do. Imagine never going anywhere, never seeing anything except what people tell you is proper. Could you live like that?”

Sherv sat next to her so they could gaze eye-to-eye. He spoke to her slowly, carefully, as if she were a child. “Your government torture and kill for this, Irene.”

“Do you think I don’t know this? They took me from my parents when I was sixteen. They ripped me from my family to sing for them. My parents would have been jailed if they hadn’t agreed to it.” Irene choked on bitter laughter. “I know all too well what my government is capable of.”

Releasing Summer

WIP Wednesday - First Mataras: Irene

 

                                                        Photo credit: Jernej Graj

Aftermath of a night playing music with the clan 

 She should have been dropping with exhaustion, but she’d never felt less like sleeping. She couldn’t get the strange but compelling music she and Clan Sherv had composed out of her head. Most of it had been Sherv’s doing, showing he truly did have a talent for music beyond the limited howling he’d chosen for a career. He’d written a few lyrics for her to sing too, showing an astonishing grasp of what she was capable of. Some of the notes he’d encouraged her to sing were challenging, but she’d been delighted to work on his ideas until she’d executed them flawlessly.

She was in a thrall to the potential directions their discoveries could lead them. If only she had the option of pursuing such an exciting direction! What they’d done delighted her as much as the first time she’d stepped onstage to sing before an audience.

There was another component to the night’s thrills. Sherv, Rusp, and Jemi excited her too.

It didn’t matter they’d gone no further than the “cashool in-wen-do,” as Jemi and Rusp’s stumbling attempts at pronouncing “casual innuendo” had labeled the trivial flirtations Rusp had begun. His Imdiko clanmate had added to the teasing. In the end, Sherv had given up on trying to stop them and made a few intimations himself. Nothing crude, always in a joking manner, but there had been an underlying tension to quicken Irene’s pulse. It was in a glance, in a lowered tone, and sometimes in a seemingly unintentional brush of fingertips against her hands.

Irene had committed her own subtle sins of attention over the hours they’d been together. Holding a gaze…wetting her lips and noting how her companions’ catlike pupils widened as they watched…moving so the cloak exposed a flash of knee.

She had only her opera castmates to refer to when it came to the art of seduction, and under the watchful gazes of the government’s and Church’s chaperones, those opportunities to witness such had been few. No doubt her repertoire was laughably miniscule, but she’d found herself ready to dare, even if a naked knee was so much less than what her companions had displayed earlier that night.

Such small demonstrations. Yet they would have been more than enough to put her in an Earth prison if her minders had seen.

Irene sat in her huge bed and ordered the lights off. She stared into the darkness, her mind cataloguing every precious second she’d spent with Sherv, Rusp, and Jemi.

Was it the call of the forbidden? Would she find them so attractive if she were at liberty to indulge in intimacy? Maybe not, but it was hard to imagine feeling less fascinated. They were each beautiful men in their own particular fashion.

Releasing this summer.