Free Switched: Brides of the Kindred 17 by Evangeline Anderson Page A

other seating arrangements she’d left out in the living room to
worry too much about that.
    “ All right,” Kerov said, sounding like he was barely holding on to his
temper. “What’s
wrong with you now? Why did you jump off the sensu-chair before it
could do its work?”
    “ Do its work?” Frankie hissed, trying to keep her voice low. “Are you saying
it’s supposed to do that? Supposed to…to grab you between your legs? I mean, that damn chair
freaking molested me.”
    He sighed deeply—or
made a mental noise that sounded like a sigh, anyway.
    “ Of course it’s
supposed to do that. That is the whole point of the sensu-chair—to
get sexual partners ready to copulate.”
    “ So we’re just supposed to sit there letting our respective
chairs feel us up until we’re ready to, uh, do the deed?” Frankie
still couldn’t quite believe it.
    “ Yes. And if you don’t ‘do the deed’ as you put it, soon , I’m going to be in very deep
trouble.”
    “ All right, all right,” she muttered. “I was just surprised,
that’s all. You should have warned me the chair was going to grab
me.”
    To her surprise,
Kerov made a sound of assent.
    “ Agreed,” he
grudgingly admitted. “It never occurred to me that you would not have such a thing
as a sensu-chair where you are from but it should have.”
    “ Okay—well are there any other surprises I should know about
before I go back?”
    “ Not unless you’re surprised by the act of intercourse,” he said dryly.
    “ No, I have had sex
before,” Frankie said, feeling irritated. “Just not on an alien
world and not while I was in the body of a man trying to make love
to a woman. A really skinny, bitchy woman.”
    “ Xirnah is extremely
boney and her disposition is not always the best,” Kerov said
stoically. “But it
is not her fault she was assigned to me.”
    “ All right, I’m sorry for talking bad about your girlfriend.”
Frankie sighed. “It’s just… I don’t understand her. I feel like I’m
messing this up for you but honestly, I’m doing my best. What am I
doing wrong?”
    “ Stop trying to be so affectionate and effusive,” Kerov advised. “That only makes her
suspicious. She prefers for our encounters to go as quickly and
impersonally as possible.”
    “ She does?” Frankie frowned. “And what do you want?”
    “ What I want does not matter,” he said shortly. “My only function is to service her as she
prefers to be serviced.”
    “ All right. So I should just go out there and be all
business.” Frankie squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Just
get it over with.” It seemed a strange way to go about having sex
but at this point, she just wanted all this to be over.
    “ Exactly,” Kerov said. “Say as little as possible. Just do what needs to be
done.”
    “ I
will.” She frowned. “I was only trying to make it nice for her, you
know. To treat her the way I would want to be treated.”
    “ That is how you would prefer to be treated?” Kerov sounded
interested. “You
mean you want a male to talk to you before beginning carnal
activities?”
    “ Of course—talk, touch, kiss… I don’t want a
wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am type of encounter. I had enough of that
with Carlos.”
    “ Who’s Carlos?”
    “ My ex-husband.” Frankie shook her head. “He wasn’t exactly
the greatest lover in the world—although he certainly liked to
think so.”
    “ So…he treated sexual relations with you in the same way
Xirnah and I do—that is, quick and perfunctory—but you didn’t like
it?”
    “ Of course not! I want a man who can make it last,” Frankie
sighed with longing. “Someone who’ll care what I want—not just
about getting his rocks off.”
    “ So…you’d be open to a prolonged encounter?” Kerov sounded fascinated,
as though the very idea of a woman enjoying sex and wanting to make
it last was a novelty. “One that lasted for longer than it takes to accomplish a
single insemination?”
    “ Well,