“Emilia and I won’t disappoint you.” Rarev’s voice cut into her savage self-criticism and she looked over to see that he was staring at her with his golden eyes half-lidded. He reached for her hand and enfolded her fingers in his large, warm grip. It felt like he was wearing velvet gloves, she thought.
Unbidden, the image of him running his big, velvety hands over her bare skin popped into her mind. Em tried to push it away without success.
“Er, yes—I mean, no. No we won’t,” she said, rather breathlessly.
“Very good.” The Mining Director smiled. “Now then, my dear—shall we take them to the Cleansing and Dressing chambers so they can go through the Purifying Mists and meet the other contestants?”
“Yes, my love,” the puffy purple lips on his chest said. “Let’s do that. But first, I have a treat for you.”
The lips migrated down the director’s bare chest and found his crotch, where they fastened around his long blue member and began to suck.
“Oh, my dear!” the Director gasped, pumping his hips. “If you do that, how can I concentrate?”
Em stared blankly at the scene going on below his waist. She knew it was rude but she couldn’t help it—she had simply never seen a blow job where the mouth doing the blowing wasn’t connected to a body. It was a very strange sight indeed.
After a moment, however, the purple lips migrated back up to the Director’s shoulder.
“Very well, my love,” they said. “Later perhaps.”
“Later for certain,” the Director promised his disembodied wife. But was she really disembodied or was she sharing his body, Em wondered? No matter—either way they appeared to be leaving the office now.
“Right this way,” the Mining Director told them. “You can get cleaned up and refreshed and then meet the other couples vying for the rights.”
Still holding hands, Em and Rarev followed him.
What else could they do?
11
The Mining Director led them to another clear glass door at the end of his office—the Rigellens seemed to have a fondness for glass and crystal apertures and furniture, Rarev thought—and ushered them into a long, glass corridor.
There was nothing to see on either side for, though the glass was clear, the walls outside it were painted a pure, sparkling white. The corridor seemed to slope slowly downward and Rarev wondered if they were going underground. It was impossible to say.
He still held Emilia’s hand in his—he refused to call her “Em” as she had asked, since it was apparent that she didn’t really consider him a friend. He shot a sidelong look at her to see how she was handling the situation. Her cheeks were still pink and she was looking pointedly away from him, staring at the blank white wall as they walked past it.
Rarev wished she would look at him—he wished even more that he could speak openly with her. He had seen the look of shock on her lovely face when the Director of Mining had made it clear what would be expected of them if they were going to win the rights to the Yillium—he only hoped she was up to the challenge.
At least they really were attracted to each other—attracted to each other’s bodies anyway, he thought dryly, as they walked, hand-in-hand down the corridor. He knew he was attracted to her and her scent proved that she returned that attraction. In fact, if anything, the scent of the curvy, Mature Elite’s feminine desire had only grown stronger since he had taken her hand. But could they make a mental and emotional connection as well?
Rarev had an uneasy feeling that he and Em weren’t going to pass these “trials” if they couldn’t manage that. He didn’t think the Rigellens were only looking for the most sexually compatible couple—there needed to be genuine affection between them. But unfortunately, the emotion that Emilia seemed to feel most for him was irritation and annoyance. How could he overcome that and win her over?
He remembered Commander Sylvan telling him that the British Minister had been left by her previous mate for another female. Maybe she distrusted and disliked all males now, because of that? If so, he was going to have to work doubly hard to earn her trust, Rarev thought. She—
“And here we are, at the entrance to the male and female Cleansing Chambers,” the Mining Director said, interrupting Rarev’s train of thought.
He looked away from Emilia and saw that the blank white corridor had ended in two glass doors, side-by-side. The glass in these, however, was frosted so that they were much less transparent.
Behind the frosted glass, Rarev could see mysterious colors swirling—cerulean blue and crimson and emerald green. What could they be, he wondered? And more importantly, was the Rigellen Mining Director really expecting him to leave Emilia alone here and let her enter a strange chamber without him to protect her? Because that wasn’t going to happen.