Chapter 20

40 YAL

“I want to give you something.”

“Hmmmm?” Hovering at the edge of sleep, drained by the demands of the day, I rolled within the warmth of the merged sleeping cocoons towards my sister, feeling her long legs brushing against mine. The inside of our tent was dim, the taiga biome’s linelight cool and grey through the thin fabric.

Hiking to the bow had taken us three days, our progress slowed by an unexpectedly early microwinter, the snow falling so deep we’d been forced to stop while the factos fabricated poles and snowshoes. We’d finally made camp a few hours from the entrance to the Cupola capsule, bundling the youngest children inside their tents as the temperature continued to plummet. After a hasty evening meal, everyone had retired to bed.

Arm heavy with a pleasant feeling of exhaustion, I stroked the warm, familiar curve of Zuri’s hip in the darkness, my nostrils tingling with each breath of mountain air. By mutual agreement we’d kept the tent’s interior barely above freezing.

“I want you to fuck my ass,” Zuri said.

Brought immediately into full consciousness, I blinked twice. “What?”

“My ass, Master. I want to give it to you.”

Frowning, I raised my head, resting it in the cup of my hand as I continued to slowly stroke her hip, intimately aware that the round, taut ass suddenly under discussion was just millimeters away from my fingertips. “What brought this on?” As far as I could remember, we’d never discussed anal sex.

“I’ve been thinking about it a long time,” Zuri confessed. Holding the cocoon tightly under her chin with both hands, the puffball of her hair bulged the silvery fabric. Her dark eyes were huge within its framed circle. “Seeing Kirra’s children growing up has a little to do with it. The knowledge that eventually you’ll be having sex with them.”

“Zuri,” I protested. “That’s decades away.”

“A decade,” she corrected. “Maybe a little more.” The silvery fabric rippled as she shrugged. “Either way, you’ll probably be fucking them. And at some point, one of them will want to give you that pleasure. If not Kirra or her children, then one of our descendants. I want to know that I was first.”

Inside the cuccoon my hand curled around the warmth of her hip. “You’re sure?”

Zuri nodded. “I’ve been experimenting for a while. My fingers at first, then some things that I had the factos fab for me. Enough to learn how to relax ... and that I really enjoy being penetrated there.”

I felt myself pulsing and rising with the thought.

Interpreting my silence as hesitancy, Zuri pressed on. “It was something done all the time by the saps,” she pointed out. “And not just male to male.”

“I’m not averse to the idea. Only of hurting you.”

She smiled. “We’ll take it slow. I’ll be fine.”

“Here? Now?”

Her nose wrinkled. “If you want to. But I was thinking it might be better when we return to the river. I’ll need a lot of foreplay, I think. The factos can create lubricant if we need it. But right now, it’s very cold.”

“It is. Colder than last night, if that’s possible.” Moving closer, I slid my hand up her back. “Thankfully, I know a quick way to warm up...”

Dad? Ananya’s voice entered my head. Are you busy?

Fingers curled at the back of Zuri’s neck, my hand froze as I debated my response. Not at this moment, daughter. Anything wrong?

I can’t sleep. Can you come see me for a bit?

Looking at my sister staring desirously up at me caused me to waver. But Ananya wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important. Of course. Give me a moment.

Zuri frowned as I pulled back. “Ananya,” I explained.

“Everything okay?”

“Not sure.” Slipping out of the silver cocoon I stood up, ducking my head to avoid the clothing hanging from the tent’s apex. “She can’t sleep. I’ll let you know.”

“Okay.”

Years of living by the ringriver left us sleeping nude out of habit regardless of the biome. Rejecting the thermals above my head, I took the easier option of an engram. Moments later, my skin started to tingle as a hot flush ran down from the nape of my neck. I had a good idea what Ananya was after; clothes would probably just get in the way.

Crouching in the tent’s low entrance, I waited for the panels of the inner door to seal behind me before engaging the outer shell with an evoc command. Parting cleanly from top to bottom, the fabric opened, and I stepped outside.

Breath left my lips in a curl of moonline-lit steam as frigid air gripped my entire body. The soles of my feet burned where they touched the compacted snow.

The alpine meadow we’d encamped in was a smooth, shallow bowl of white nestled at the base of a valley in the bow mountain’s mid-elevation, about as high as we could climb unassisted. To my right the peaks continued to march upwards, layer upon layer, the arrowheads of rock becoming less defined under the moonline until they disappeared beneath a thick torus of cloud. The capsule dock to the Cupola, where Kirra’s children would experience the true nature of their home for the first time, lay further up the valley, concealed within a narrow rock pass.

Our camp was a cluster of domes arranged in a rough circle, the tent’s tunnel entrances pointed protectively inwards. Kirra and her children occupied one tent. Ananya and Hotene had chosen to start sleeping apart years ago - not coincidentally, soon after my eldest had expressed interest in sex - but their dwellings remained beside each other. Bouncing between all of us and never entirely comfortable in one place, adoptive Esther had elected to sleep by herself.

Standing equidistant between the temporary shelters, invulnerable to the cold and unmoved by the wind that howled down from the mountain peaks, a dozen factos stood motionless in the middle of the camp, legs already half-buried in snow.

The thin shell of warm air clinging to my body blew away with a gust of wind, pinpricking my face with tiny grains of ice. Even my scalp tingled: after decades of feeling hair brush against my shoulders, I’d decided to crop it very short just ten days ago. The blond stubble that remained had proved practical in summerland heat, but disadvantageous at altitude.

Carried on another gust of wind, a high, mournful cry echoed against the rock around us and down through the valley. Its source hidden within the dark band of trees surrounding the camp, wavering endlessly upwards and impossibly drawn out, the sound had almost faded completely when it was joined by another howl, restarting the first. A moment later, a third joined the chorus, this one a half-scream. Different in tone, each wove together in harmony, climbing up and down, falling into the deep silence of the forest before another took up the call.

An atavistic shiver worked its way down my spine. Even after exploring the habitat for nearly forty years we’d never so much as glimpsed the timberwolves of the taiga. Ranging across the entire biome, the pack was wary and remote, rarely leaving behind more than the occasional giant pawprint pressed into the snow. Once we’d found evidence of a kill, dark blood scattered across a field of white with a few scattered scraps of flesh and gnawed bone. But never anything else.

A reactive gasp of shock left my lips as I shook myself, feeling the cold lancing into my bones. As the last of the wolves’ cries faded, I sprang forward. Sprinting across the space between the tents, the weight of my footsteps punched through the snow’s crust like bites into a crisp ripe apple. An outer door parted, and I tumbled into the vestibule of Ananya’s tent, stamping my numbed feet.

“Dad.” Ananya’s voice came from inside.

“Here, darling.” Shivering, I opened the tent’s inner fly.

The heat inside the dome was volcanic, transforming the flecks of snow clinging to my skin almost instantly into droplets and steam. Loosely draped in her silvery cocoon, Ananya lay on her back, long black hair serpentine against her pillow.

Every year Ananya astonished me with how much more beautiful she had become. Over the last half-decade my daughter had grown into herself, her lean frame rising to the statuesque height of her mother while her mind shot past mine in every respect.

Traces of her youthful shyness still surfaced from time to time, but it was immediately clear that all feelings of childhood had fled for the moment. The air of the tent was thick, hot and humid with the unmistakable musk of feminine arousal. Ananya’s light brown eyes were almost eclipsed by the expanded black moons of her pupils as she looked up at me, the rhythmic motion of her hand stirring the silvery cloth at the juncture of her legs urgent and unceasing. Despite the chill that my engram was still struggling to overcome I felt myself begin to stiffen.

“You can’t sleep?”

My daughter nodded, her hips shifting slightly under the drape of fabric. “Carrying Itzel up the mountain today was exhausting. I used math problems as a distraction.”

“Sweetheart, you should have told me. I’d have been happy to carry her.”

“I didn’t mind.” Ananya smiled. “I was happy to help. But now I can’t stop thinking.” The fingers of her other hand twitched the sleeping cocoon open a fraction. “I’ve been masturbating, trying to sleep. But I can’t quite get there.”

“Sweetheart...”

“Please?” she whined, lower lip pouting just slightly. “I just need one really good, hard orgasm. You always do it best.”

She knew how to play me perfectly. Knowing that I could never refuse her, Ananya grinned as I knelt with a dramatized sigh of exasperation, opening the silver fabric completely.

Framed in the dark honey interior of the cocoon, my daughter’s naked body was a wonder, a perfect landscape of unblemished caramel. Her breasts were like two scoops of fresh dark fruit placed high and proud on her chest, capped with aureoles just a shade darker than her skin, the nipples diamond-hard little points as she eagerly raised her hands to my head, pulling me down to her.