PrincessColumbia

  Diane honestly could not remember a better night spent in her life. Compared to her teenage years spent hiding in her room to avoid Tiffany at all costs, a date with Caitlynn was so much better than those experiences that there was no comparison to be made. During her college years, she’d been too focused on her studies and pying that incredibly simplistic (in comparison to GU:MC, anyway) Cold War MMO that got her into spy work to even think about dating.

  And every so often her thoughts drifted back to her seemingly endless nights building kits of model starships after a grueling day hunting rogues, and the stark differences made her sad on multiple levels; sad for her life as an agent, sad for her ck of social contact, and sad for the time spent on silly little models of ships instead of trying to find someone like Caitlynn.

  Of course, she wouldn’t have found someone like Caitlynn before creating the character of “Diane Somni’els,” and not just because of the wall IRL and firewall in virtual spaces; Caitlynn was an ardent lesbian, something that Diane felt was slightly obvious but had come up some time after the impromptu demonstration of their respective Commander’s Abilities. Leki had asked about the ship’s name, Sappho’s Journey, which prompted the ship’s captain to embark on a surprisingly in-depth lecture on Sappho of Lesbos, the attempt of historians to erase her (unverified) retionship with her lover/wife over the centuries. The concept of a sexual and gender binary being a thing so prominent that it should be a matter of debate, even with the avaible surviving writings, was so foreign to the Morvuck contingent that this had prompted another tangential lecture on the nature of queer versus heterosexual life and retionships.

  Diane had learned more about lesbians in that one, off the cuff lecture than she did after the entire briefing and packet she’d received before going into the pod.

  It was now very te by station standards. Thanks to her virtual Morvuck body, Diane still had plenty of ‘go’ left in her, though she could tell she was getting knackered from the shortened sleep the night before and the long day full of heightened emotions. She and Caitlynn were walking along one of the foot paths near the ‘cliff’ that dropped down from the Ops deck to the industrial deck and aiming for the general direction of the habs. The operational lights on the lower deck were a lovely blue-violet color that made working in that sector possible with the rest of the lights dimmed, and the footpath lighting made it so they could walk without the view of the stars through the scintilting dome above being obstructed by light pollution.

  “…and so I zayz to the guy, nize ztation!” Caitlynn, who had been trying her hardest to maintain her composure during the telling of her test anecdote, promptly burst out ughing so hard she had to stop and brace herself with her hands on her knees.

  Diane smiled wanly and, as soon as the other woman finished cackling enough to be able to take a breath, said, “…I don’t get it.”

  This was, apparently, doubly hirious for some reason and Caitlynn immediately dropped all the way to her knees and was now howling with ughter. Diane found that she didn’t care whether she got the joke or not, she’d be happy to listen to Caitlynn’s ughter for the rest of her life.

  Finally, the ship captain recovered her wits enough to stand again and offered her elbow to Diane. The first time the shorter woman had done this, Diane had been genuinely perplexed as to why she would be holding her arm the way she was. It actually took Norma pantomiming what she was supposed to do for Diane to hook her hand on Caitlyn’s elbow. That had been after they’d finished dessert and the dinner party was making for beds and bunks as their particur lodgings allowed, and the pair of pyers opted to tour the built-up parts of the Ops deck. The conversation hadn’t remained long on the buildings, venturing into anecdotes from their respective educations, incidents with real-life acquaintances, and the state of the world in general.

  “That’s so cute of you!” Caitlynn said finally as she was able to stop giggling, “It’s like you grew up in one of those religious compounds in Canada sometimes. Super smart and clever but with weird spots where your knowledge of pop culture has gaps.”

  “That’s...” an uncomfortably close guess, thought Diane, “...not far from the truth. After my folks died, I wound up with my stepmother and she mostly just made sure I had enough food and clothes that CPS never had reason to come calling and made sure I went to church as often as possible so she didn’t look bad. I had books, but...” she shrugged.

  Caitlynn’s smile softened and her eyes took on the look Diane was familiar with that was usually preceded by, “Bless you, I’m sure your parents are in god’s arms, but surely a godfearing woman like her was only looking out for what’s best for you, right? I’m sure it wasn’t all that bad...”

  Instead of what Diane expected, Caitlynn said, “Oh, wow, almost out of a fairy tale! Wicked stepmother included.”

  Diane jerked to a stop, the change in script throwing her for a curve. Caitlynn stopped and turned to her with confusion. “You just...believe me?!” Diane blurted.

  Caitlynn’s confusion only spurred on more confusion in Diane as she asked in return, “What, were you lying?”

  “Well, no, it’s just...I normally have to expin about the heart attack and the police reports and all that before people believe me.”

  Caitlynn’s eyes softened again, “Ah, I see. I’m sorry you’ve had to live with people questioning your experience. I tell my students that I’ll take them at their word, but they don’t always believe me...the number of times I’ve had to find out halfway through the schoolyear that there’s a DV situation at home...”

  Diane’s smile quirked up, “Oh, you’re a teacher?” she asked as she resumed walking again.

  “Oh, yes,” answered the other woman, “I only got into gaming because of my students. Tried a few of the others; CoRA, of course...I think everyone’s tried that one. League of Titans, City Quest...” she shrugged, “None of ‘em really captured my interest until this one. I mostly joined so I could ‘catch’ my students pying around when I knew they were setting up non-sentient A.I. to sit in css for them.” The mischief in her grin returned and she leaned in conspiratorially, “Nothing puts the Fear of Teacher into a student like their instructor showing up in a PvP zone wearing Valkyrie armor.”

  Diane snort-giggled in an extremely undignified way and looked up to realize that she’d unconsciously wandered them over to the entrance to the habs. “Oh...uh,” she gnced down to Caitlynn and blushed, “Would you like a Jyantin Tonic? I’m pretty sure they’re human bio-compatible. Or at least, that’s what the character creation stage’s computer said. I’ve probably got the only supply of the good stuff in the sector...well, unless Leki or Koar brought some with them from Mortan.”

  Caitlynn smirked devilishly (an expression which started exciting those parts of Diane that shouldn’t be exited in public spaces) and said, “Miss Somni’els, are you inviting me up to your apartment for a cup of hot coffee?"

  Diane’s confused, “...yes? I guess? Not really...coffee...it’s served hot, though...” preceded some giggling from Caitlynn.

  “Oh, you’re so precious! Yes, I’d love to try this beverage that’s hot but not coffee.”

  A few minutes ter, Diane was opening the door to her quarters and blushing at the slight disarray of the living room. “I, uh, don’t usually have guests,” she said as she straightened a stack of tablets on her coffee table and shoved that morning’s Mortan gift (a decorative spoon, of all things, complete with dispy stand) back in the shipping box and shifted one of the breakfast bar’s stools out so Caitlynn could take a seat. She turned back to the other woman to see she’d removed her jacket and was draping it over her arm. “Oh, sorry! Let me take your jacket…” she stepped over and held out her hand.

  Caitlynn smiled warmly and passed her coat over, “So…not many visitors? Am I the first?”

  Diane shrugged, “The first purely social visitor, yes.” She retrieved a hanger from the nested closet next to the main door to her quarters and carefully hung the jacket. Very carefully not looking at Caitlynn, who’s high-waisted pants and tucked in shirt were highlighting a figure that was threatening to steal her breath again, Diane hustled into her kitchen and began digging out the tools and ingredients she’d need for a simple Jyantin Tonic. “Norma and Russe come up to eat breakfast and discuss station business, so technically those are business visits.”

  Caitlynn sidled her way up to the breakfast bar and almost oozed herself onto the stool prepared for her. “Well, I feel honored.” She propped her elbows on the counter as she watched Diane prepare the beverage, starting the electric kettle going and preparing the Earth-style coffee press. Diane had just finished measuring out the grounds and pouring the boiling water when Caitlynn spoke again, “So what do you do IRL?”

  Diane’s mouth quirked up in a slight smile. This was territory she was somewhat familiar with, “I’m a network technician,” she said. This was the ‘boilerpte’ cover that the agency gave their people when they started their assignments as cyber-agents. It was close enough to their actual job duties that they were able to hold conversations and “talk shop” with actual professionals in that field, all in all it was a solid cover, “Doing work for the government. Mostly just making sure everything is working properly, monitoring the A.I. for signs of,” she caught herself and coughed, pretending to need some water for a moment, grabbing a gss from the cupboard and retrieving a swallow of tap water and gulping it down before continuing, “‘Scuse me, looking for signs of them waking up.”

  Caitlynn grinned, that warm spark in her eyes drying out Diane’s throat for real. She refilled the gss, her body feeling hot enough that she seriously pondered just dumping the gss over her head to cool herself off. “So not a lot of ‘getting out’ happening for you, especially since the strike?”

  Diane snorted in dark amusement. Considering ‘the strike’ (as the people outside the wall were calling it) in which the S.A.I. held the U.N. and all the world’s automated systems hostage was the entire reason she had a job with the agency, that was entirely correct, “Yeah, not much time to myself these days.” She touched the back of her hand to the carafe of the press, noting that the temperature was about right for the amount of time the grounds had needed to steep for the drink to taste right, she pulled a couple of mugs from the cabinet and poured, inhaling deeply of the steam that arose.

  Caitlynn chuckled, “And you said this isn’t coffee?”

  Diane rolled her eyes, “Back on Mortan this stuff is prepared by boiling the pods un-baked and un-ground for three days. The grounds are a fairly recent invention as far as cultural drinks go. Around the invention of air travel on Mortan they came up with a way to boil the pods to a paste, dry the paste to bricks, then the bricks could be shipped easily and then ground to make...” she set a mug in front of her guest, “...instant Jyantin Tonic.”

  Caitlynn cocked an eyebrow, “What, no cream or sugar?”

  “Doesn’t need it,” smiled Diane, “The syrup that gets dried into bricks has enough natural sugar in it adding more would be overkill.” She demonstrated by taking a sip and moaning expressively, only partially done for effect.

  For the first time since answering the video call that morning Diane was blessed with the sight of Caitlynn blushing. “Well,” she said as she picked up her mug, “If it makes that pretty voice make a noise like that,” ...aaaaaaand now Diane was blushing again, “Then I’ll just have to try it as the chef recommends.”

  Diane watched as Caitlynn brought the mug to her lips, and suddenly she couldn’t look away from said lips as they curled to match the shape of the mug and the owner of said lips took a sip. Diane’s throat went dry again as Caitlynn made a satisfied, “Mmmm!” noise.

  “My goodness!” Caitlynn said with a smile as she lowered the mug from her lips, “That is rather delightful! And this isn’t alcoholic?”

  Diane smirked, “Nope. The alcoholic version is called Jyantin Bitters and will knock you on your backside. I’ve had straight vodka that isn’t as strong as a Jyantin Bitters.”

  The other pyer cast a skeptical eye at the contents of her mug, “Incredible...I could swear,” she took another sip and nodded her head, “Whiskey. I could swear I taste whiskey!”

  Diane circled the end of the bar, “Nope, but apparently the human tastebuds think so. It just tastes like a particurly odd but pleasant chocote to me.”

  She was just about to sit down in the stool next to Caitlynn when the other woman slid to her feet and wrapped the arm not holding her mug around Diane’s waist, “So I’m the first lucky dy you’ve taken to your quarters, you should show me around.”

  “Uh...okay?” Diane blushed at the intimacy of the hand settling on her hip and how it made her very aware of how close said hand was to the hem of her dress. “Well, you can see the living room and dining area here, “She gestured to the rge living space where the table big enough to seat a family of six sat between the front door and the breakfast bar. “The table is where I usually unpack the gifts from Mortan...”

  “The what-now?”

  Diane blushed and started slowly walking as she expined the trip to Mortan, meeting the Matron, and her subsequent status as First Found Daughter, “...and now they’re sending shipping containers full of gifts. We have an entire cargo bay dedicated to the gifts now, and I’ve stopped insisting I be the one to go through them. We have an automated system scanning all the packages and writing some tempte-based thank you notes. Food gets put in cryo or earmarked for occasions like dinner tonight, the clothes are catalogued for me to integrate into my wardrobe...someday, and various knick-knacks like this,” she indicated a framed painting of what was apparently the first recorded adoption of a Morvuck by a Matron, though obviously stylized since the event was purported to have happened nearly ten-thousand years prior, “Are returned to storage for me to open and specifically write thank you notes for.” She smiled at the picture and the framed page of construction paper next to it. It was one of the pieces of hand-drawn art made by the First Flyer’s css she was an honorary member of, and she was quite sure she personally valued the child’s drawing more than the painting, though she’d never tell either artist she had a favorite.

  “It’s sweet that you’re writing thank you notes to the NPCs,” commented Caitlynn as they resumed their walk, now down the hallway connecting to the bedroom.

  Diane paused briefly to turn on the light for her office, “I learned...that the S.A.I. could wake up from just about any character or program.” She took a sip of her drink to choke back the lump in her throat that formed just mentioning it, “If I assume every NPC is just a dumb bot, who knows what S.A.I. might be thinking humans are just a bunch of horrible monsters that can’t bother to treat other sentient beings with respect just because I don’t?”

  Some of what she had just said was from her own bitter learning experience, but a lot of it was from memories she had forgotten she carried from before her mother died when they’d talk about the episode of Star Trek they’d just watched.

  Caitlynn gnced around the office, clearly less interested in the room than the person showing it to her, “That’s...quite profound. I’ll have to remember that.”

  As it was obvious there wouldn’t be any real discussion of the room on the tour they were ostensibly doing, Diane turned the light off and continued down the hall. “I just know if I had written...I dunno, one of the stars of Star Trek if I was around back when they were still alive I’d be over the moon to get an answer, even if it was just a form letter with their signature or something. It costs me nothing and takes just moments to do, and if I can show some random S.A.I. I don’t even know that humanity isn’t all bad, then it’ll be worth it, even if it never did anything for me otherwise.”

  Caitlynn hip checked her as they crossed the threshold into the bedroom, “Humanity isn’t all bad...we do so much good and...goodness, we as a species birthed a brand new sentient race! I’d say that, on bance, we’re pretty good.”

  Diane smiled wanly, “We’ve had three world wars, the most recent one almost killed the pnet. I want to believe we’re alright, but...”

  Caitlynn stepped in close, her arms bracketing Diane’s waist, “But we also ended those wars and are working to repair the damage. And we’ve started exploring the sor system and there’s talk of expeditions to the stars...”

  Diane found her throat feeling dry again as she felt the warmth from Caitlynn’s body. The smaller woman leaned in, almost imperceptibly, and closed her arms gently around Diane’s torso. “You know,” Caitlynn said with a warm smile, “I don’t think you’ve even hinted that you wanted me to stop even once. Even on the video call you didn’t tell me to stop watching, you just stopped removing your clothes.”

  Diane felt her face become rocket hot as a ball of uneasiness started warring with the bubble of warm attraction inside her.

  “You merely,” Caitlynn slid her empty hand up to cup the back of Diane’s head, gently pulling her down, “Need to say,” the shorter woman pushed up on her toes to bring her mouth up to Diane’s, “‘Stop,’ and I will.”

  Suddenly, their motion halted. Caitlynn had stopped pushing herself up as well as halted the pulling motion. They stood like that, slightly awkwardly, lips barely a quarter inch apart as Diane could feel the other woman’s warm breath brush past her lips and even inhaling some of Caitlynn’s breath as she found herself almost panting. Diane swallowed, trying to push down the anxiety she felt bubbling in her gut, her mind feeling like the rest of the world could go hang while her heart was yearning for more so much it felt like it would climb out of her chest and take matters into its own hands.

  “P-please...”

  The warmth of a long, slow huff of Caitlynn’s single ugh tickled the skin under Diane’s nose, “‘Please’ what, princess?”

  “Please don’t stop...”

  Diane realized as the burst of emotion and sensation started fading enough for something resembling rational thought that this was the actual first time she’d kissed anyone this way. Or at all. She’d received motherly kisses from her mom, of course, and her dad used to kiss her on the head when she was little, but a long, deep, nguid kiss that involved lips and tongue and the pressing of their bodies together? The awkward dance of how to position themselves so their noses weren’t in the way of each other and somehow not caring about the absurdity of it? Of having closed her eyes without realizing it and not caring to open them because then she’d be letting her eyes tell her things that might distract her from the sensations coming from her mouth?

  Never once.

  How long had they been kissing? It seemed like forever to her. She couldn’t actually remember how the kiss started, just that there was a moment in time after she’d almost begged for it and Caitlynn had resumed their motion...and then she was reeling in a void of comfort and warmth as her tongue dueled with Caitlynn’s and she found herself being ‘tamed’ through her tongue and she wanted this woman to be on top of her and around her and ciming her and owning her and she never wanted anything else ever again...

  ...and then their lips parted, and Diane could think at least somewhat rationally again. Her lips felt wet and slightly numb, and the tip of her tongue was lolling out of her mouth. Her breathing was coming in pants as her eyes refused to focus on anything, but that was okay, because Caitlynn’s face was occupying all of her vision.

  “You seem a little unsteady on your feet there, princess. How about I put that mug on the desk for you? Wouldn’t want to spill on this lovely carpet, now, would we?”

  Diane blinked in incomprehension, barely understanding that there was still a mug in her hand only as Caitlynn removed it. There was a pair of ceramic-on-gss ‘clinks’ as both the mugs that had been brought into the bedroom were pced on her desk. The sound pulled Diane out of her haze enough to stand straighter again and realize that she’d zoned out at some point in the middle of the kiss. God, I hope that doesn’t make me look like a complete moron... she desperately hoped.

  She turned to see Caitlynn smiling at her with a somewhat unreadable expression. “I think I’m going to use the little girl’s head, do catch your breath, princess.”

  Diane nodded unnecessarily as the other woman went into her bathroom and the door hissed shut behind her.

  Without the seemingly narcotic presence of Caitlynn in the room, Diane began working to regain her sense of composure at the very least. She gnced around and saw a mirror and began to check her appearance and realized that she had a bit of a tenting problem near the hem of her skirt. She turned bright scarlet and really hoped that Caitlynn hadn’t felt it, though realistically she would have to have noticed it with how closely they had been pressed together. Diane gnced at the bathroom door and, hoping she had enough time, lifted the hem of her dress up above her hips and adjusted her proliferator genitalia so it was at least being held against her body instead of sticking straight out. She was also desperately trying to shove down the unexpected fear and anxiety she was feeling. Thoughts of ‘monster’ and ‘demon’ and ‘rapist’ started flitting up from her subconscious and she scrambled to get her panties adjusted and her dress tugged back down.

  Just as she was straightening the hem, the door to the bathroom hissed open and Caitlynn stood there, framed by the doorway and the light streaming into the dimly lit bedroom from behind her.

  And Caitlynn was naked.

  Any hope of her genitals settling to an unobtrusive softness that could easily be tucked or hidden away from view were shattered. All ability to process coherent thoughts shut down and she started breathing raggedly at the sight.

  “So, princess, I figured you gave me a show, I should do the same,” purred Caitlynn.

  As though her body were trying to one-up the ship captain, her own chest kicked off a rumbling purr.

  “Oh, good! I was worried you might not find a little ol’ human like me as attractive as I find you.”

  The swirling vortex of anxiety suddenly surged up inside her and wrapped itself around her want and desire and pleasure in seeing her guest’s nudity. Lust and loathing tangled up inside her and she wanted what she saw so badly but felt horribly guilty, like she was stealing something precious for the purpose of defiling it.

  And her body betrayed her by purring louder. A memory of a factoid from an internet video about cats bubbled up to her conscious awareness about how purring doesn’t necessarily mean ‘happy,’ it just means ‘loud emotions.’ Cats purred when they were happy, but they also purred when they were stressed or in pain. Mother cats giving birth purred quite loudly even when the birthing process was painful for them. She was purring because her emotions were loud, but she couldn’t seem to kick her vocal cords in gear to speak her feelings. Caitlynn, who was now grinning like the...well, the proverbial cat who caught the dinosaur, was completely unaware that the purring wasn’t necessarily a “go” signal.

  “My goodness!” she strutted closer to Diane, her hips rocking seductively, “I guess you like what you see!”

  Mutely, Diane nodded, her tongue working to work saliva into her mouth so she could say something!

  Caitlynn started gently guiding Diane back to the bed and, as her calves hit the end of the mattress, pushed her down. Instead of climbing into bed as Diane expected her next step to be, Caitlynn gently lifted Diane’s legs one at a time to remove her shoes, casually tossing them toward the closet but paying no attention to where they may have nded.

  Now Caitlynn started crawling onto the bed, her torso parallel to the legs her arms were straddling. Diane started scooting back, trying to figure out a way out of this situation when her speech capability seemed to have fled. Caitlynn apparently mistook this as being coy and kept stalking Diane further onto the bed.

  Diane’s head and shoulders finally bumped against the headboard and Caitlynn loomed on top of her, none of her body parts yet touching Diane but the Morvuck still felt like she might catch fire from the heat of their bodies.

  “Now,” grinned Caitlynn with an almost predatory expression, “How about we finish that little show you started this morning?” She shifted her weight to her knees and moved one hand to reach for the bottom hem of Diane’s dress.

  Monster! Demon! Rapist! Vile! Thief! Pervert! Whore! Monster-demon-rapist-vile-thief-pervert-whore-monsterdemonrapistvilethiefpervertwhore... A chorus of indictments started smming into her conscious mind, repeating accusations so horrible she wasn’t sure where she heard them or why, but she knew that Caitlynn was a lesbian and if she continued with her current action, she’d discover that Diane wasn’t actually a woman and then she’d hate Diane and break her heart and would want to hurt her. Her hands shot down to her crotch to pin the dress down and keep herself covered as she frantically cried, “WAIT!”

  Caitlynn rocked back as though spped. “...what?”

  “Y...you’re a lesbian and a woman and you’re very beautiful and sexy and I don’t deserve this please don’t hate me I didn’t mean to lie I didn’t know you were going to~”

  “DIANE!” snapped Caitlynn.

  Diane would ter reflect that it was somewhat sadly funny that the woman who’d single handedly stormed an entire sver compound and stood up to a dragon with nothing but the clothes on her back should be cowed into submission by a woman who was smaller and, by all measures, physically weaker than her. But submit she did, her eyes closed, legs cmped shut, trapping her hands over her crotch as she shivered and anxiously purred.

  “Diane, princess...” Caitlynn’s voice was now as soft and gentle as it had been loud and commanding just a moment ago, “Why did you say you didn’t mean to lie to me?”

  Her breath shuddered in her chest as she inhaled, trying to make sense of her own responses. “Y-you’re a lesbian, and y-you deserve someone w-who’s not...not p-pretending...t-to be a woman.”

  With her eyes closed she couldn’t gauge what Caitlynn’s reaction was, and her own shaky breathing kept her from listening for the micro-gestures that might tell Diane what was happening. At the very least she couldn’t smell anything like anger...more like worry.

  “...Diane, I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why are you saying you’re ‘pretending’ to be a woman?”

  Diane suddenly realized that the wrong answer would shatter her OpSec. Her emotions and the heat of the moment had been so incredibly overwhelming that she had genuinely forgotten that she was in a VRMMO game on an assignment. Sure, she remembered it was VR, but so much of her life for the st few months had been just the day-to-day operations of her station punctuated by the occasional burst of activity that felt life-altering, even months ter.

  Even so, she shouldn’t have come that close to revealing her status as a deep-cover agent of a foreign government on assignment to establish a foothold in a possible underground railroad. So what triggered that? Sure, this whole situation is outside my wheelhouse, but I shouldn’t have reacted like I did... She mentally reviewed everything that had led up to that moment and realized that the closer Caitlynn came to seeing her naked, the more a fear response reared up and cowed her. Even now, trying to rationalize her way through the steps that led her there, she was feeling the echoes of that same absolute terror that Caitlynn would disrobe Diane and find...

  “Diane?” Caitlynn asked, concern ced into her voice.

  “I have a penis,” she blurted, “I found Morvucks in character creation and I almost went with progenitor, th-that’s the actual women in the Morvuck species, but I saw the proliferator option and I tried it out and I didn’t want...I couldn’t...” a whine escaped her throat in an embarrassing dispy of fear and weakness. “I like being this! I know it’s impossible and I know it means I’ll never be with anyone ever in the game, but I wake up in the morning and I get in the shower and I feel nervous until I check and find everything is ‘right’ down there and when the docs give me an exam it feels awkward and embarrassing but it feels right to need both exams and...”

  She was stopped by a finger on her lips, “Shhh...take a breath.” Diane did as instructed and Caitlyn said, “So you wanted a penis and took the chance to try it out. Why does that mean you’ll never be with anyone?”

  Diane opened her eyes and looked at Caitlynn in confusion, “...because I’m attracted to women...?”

  Caitlynn was still quite naked but was sitting off to the side of Diane’s bed, apparently giving her space. “You’re not sure if you’re attracted to women?”

  Diane shook her head, “No, I mean, yes. I’m attracted to women, but women who like women the way I do don’t want penis or they’d pick a man character. I could never date a man, but I picked a character that has a penis because of a stupid spur of the moment decision...I could have kept looking and I could have just picked progenitor but I picked proliferator and now you probably hate me.”

  Caitlynn chuckled, “Diane, I don’t like sleeping with men, that has nothing to do with whether you have a penis or not.”

  “But...women don’t have penises. I have a penis so I’m not a woman.”

  Caitlynn threw her hands in the air in exasperation, “Oh, mygawd! You really were raised by the church! Just because a woman has a penis doesn’t make her any less of a woman!”

  “...what?” Diane’s voice sounded very small. If it hadn’t been so quiet in the room, she doubted she could have heard herself say it.

  Somehow, though, Caitlynn heard. “I’ve dated IRL women who have dicks! We have to use protection, but it can be fun! Sometimes they think of it like a permanent flesh strap-on, sometimes they ask me to ignore it, and sometimes they’re more proud of their cock than a guy is. Your genitals don’t make you more or less of a woman, Diane, they’re just genitals. And besides, there’s one thing you’re not considering.”

  Diane was probably the most confused by this conversation than she had ever been in her life. The concept that a woman could have a penis had...implications. Implications she didn’t have time to consider right now. “What’s that?”

  “I figured you probably had one.”

  Diane’s brain felt like it crashed into itself again, “...what?!”

  “I saw the bulge in your panties on the video feed. Of course, I didn’t want to assume, but then you mentioned your in-game species name when we first met on the docking bay. I said I was going to look it up, and I did. I put the facts together and realized that you probably picked Morvuck because of the genitalia. They’re pretty much the only race in the game to offer that particur configuration.” Caitlynn pushed herself forward so she could almost crawl on top of Diane again, her breasts hanging down and pressing against Diane’s in a way that caused the purring to restart. “I really do think you’re...so beautiful, Diane. I watched you interacting with your NPC crew and how you give every bit of your attention to whichever one of them you’re talking to, and the way you didn’t even think about sending me and my ship on my way and treated the whole thing as a minor problem to be solved, and then you just solved it.”

  Caitlyn lowered herself down and kissed Diane again. Diane’s mind didn’t go bnk this time and her sensorium wasn’t overloaded like it had been, but it did shut up her anxiety and the rumbling purr started to turn into the roar of a combustion engine.

  The maddeningly attractive woman eventually ended the kiss and pulled away enough to allow them to talk face to face instead of eye to eye, “I meant what I said earlier, by the way. I know the church does fuck-all to teach about consent, especially for women, but you need to know; I will never overstep a boundary you set, princess. If I’ve been doing so, please tell me now. I don’t want to wind up hurting you just because I want to scratch an itch, okay?”

  Diane felt herself begin to rex. “What...what sort of boundary should I be setting?” She found herself feeling a slightly detached sense of righteous fury, an understanding built from the things Caitlynn was saying that implied that women experienced moments of fear and doubt like she’d been going through and nobody was teaching them how to deal with it, or ideally, how to keep it from happening. This was followed by a level of disgust for her IRL gender, but before she could examine those feelings, Caitlynn answered her.

  “When it’s okay for someone to touch you, if it’s okay for someone to touch you,” Caitlynn propped her head up on her palm, her elbow on Diane’s pillow next to her head. With the fingers of her other hand she started tracing nonsense patterns up and down Diane’s arm, “I’m realizing now about you not even knowing you get to set boundaries as a woman, it’s terrifying how easy it was for me to get you into this position. It’s like your stepmother almost purposefully left you ignorant of the fact that you deserve to have your own agency as a woman.”

  That would be because she had a step-son, but...Caitlynn’s right, I never was taught about a woman’s...boundaries as a boy, either. Rather than voice her thoughts, Diane swallowed heavily, gncing down at the sight of her breasts being squashed by the other woman’s...and noticing that hers were actually rger, a fact that made her happy for some reason. Her purring ratcheted up and she swore to herself she’d figure out how to control that autonomic reaction...somehow.

  Caitlynn chuckled, “Well, as much as I’d like to take that as consent...let’s do this by the book, shall we?” Diane found herself smiling as she looked up at the other extremely attractive woman that she definitely wanted to do naughty, adult things with. Caitlynn continued, “I will ask if you’re okay with me doing something, and you say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ okay?”

  Diane nodded, the clenching in her gut starting to loosen as it started to sink in that Caitlynn was actually going to honor her boundaries, even if she didn’t quite know what they were yet.

  Caitlynn smiled indulgently down at Diane, “You need to say it, princess, or it doesn’t count as consent.”

  “Yes!” Diane almost chirped eagerly.

  “And you need to tell me to stop if something suddenly stops being okay, even if you’ve already told me yes. Just like when you panicked earlier and I stopped, right?” Caitlynn let Diane nod before reminding her, “I need you to say it, princess.”

  “Yes, I understand,” she said, almost breathlessly, her anxiety almost completely gone by this point.

  “And the same will go for me. You may ask if you’d like to do something to me and I will say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and you stop if I tell you to, alright?”

  “Yes, I understand, captain!” Diane blushed as the rank title fell out of her mouth, pretty much on automatic. But unlike when she was introducing the woman to her crew, this time it felt...intimate, like Diane was acknowledging her as an authority and she wanted to answer to this woman in authority.

  Caitlynn chuckled, “Very good, princess!” The purring was loud enough to have a bit of an echo as the sound bounced off the walls in the rge bedroom. “So let’s see if we can find out what those boundaries of yours are, shall we?”

  Diane found herself eagerly wishing to be just as naked as Caitlynn was.

  PrincessColumbia