Kitchen sounds from the room below gently clattered in his mind. He turned over to let the tired flesh he’d been lying on for the last several hours receive some badly needed fresh blood and rolled up against a soft, warm body – definitely female. An unfamiliar but erotic scent drifted gently across the bed.

For a moment, he thought he’d been dreaming again. Béla was still gone forever and he’d only dreamed her back into his life. In the last hundred years, he’d awakened many mornings with those exact thoughts roaming through his mind – destroying any possibility that today would turn out all right.

He opened his eyes and gazed into a pair of dark, almond eyes almost identical to his beloved’s own.

“I trust you slept well,” Annalisa whispered, smiling at him.

Jake sat up, feeling unusually disturbed. “Did we…” Then he realized that, although she was naked, he was still dressed, though his shirt was open. What was her name? God, I can’t remember!

“Relax, will you?” Annalisa said, grinning at his obvious discomfort. “Nothing happened. Not yet, anyway…”

“I must have fallen asleep,” Jake mused, running his hand through his mussed hair.

“Right in the middle of a sentence,” Annalisa replied. “You were telling me about the wild night life in the mass of boss’ town. Something about a dead stick where people gathered for sacrificial orgies.”

“Boston, Mass.,” Jake corrected her, smiling, now. “The place was called ‘Club Dead’, but you got the last part right.”

“The two women you were telling me about,” Annalisa said, reminding him of their earlier conversation. “They actually had a ‘gun’ fight? You were going to explain that, but you fell asleep.”

Jake grinned. Here was another totally innocent immortal who knew nothing about the efficient ways mankind had dreamed up to slaughter each other.

“Oh, I’ve done my share of killing,” Annalisa said, answering his unspoken thoughts. “And I’m really not all that innocent.”

“I don’t remember,” Jake said, ignoring that last part – it was rough enough trying to pretend that it was perfectly normal to talk to a beautiful, naked body lying right in front of him absently running her fingers along her thigh like she didn’t know it was driving him to distraction.

“I don’t remember,” he began again, “if I explained exactly what a ‘gun’ is.”

Annalisa shook her lovely head of long, dark hair, still staring raptly and leaning on his every word.

“For almost a thousand years before there were guns,” Jake began, “there was black powder than burned.”

“Yes!” Annalisa replied, suddenly brightening up. “I remember that! We used to make little ‘houkas’ and shoot them up into the sky during special celebrations. We have those here! They’re called fire rockets!”

“Yes,” Jake said, almost laughing at her girlish enthusiasm. “Well, we call that black substance ‘gun’ powder. If you make a little metal ball, and put it into a long metal tube…”

“Uh-huh,” Annalisa interrupted. “That’s a rifle. We use them for hunting, sometimes.”

“So you have guns here,” Jake said, knowing he sounded lame, now.

“A rifle is a gun?” she asked. “And you use it for fighting? What do you fight with it?”

“It can be used like any other weapon,” Jake explained. “You can kill people with it.”

Annalisa didn’t reply as she thought about what he said. Jake could tell, though, that the thought of using a rifle to shoot a person upset her – her languid body, which had been relaxed and alluring, was now more controlled; almost tense.

“These women,” Annalisa said, finally. “They fought with rifles? How? It would be a very short battle.”

“It was,” Jake admitted. “But there is a smaller weapon only about this long,” he held out his hands in front of him. “You can carry it in a leather pouch strapped to you leg.”

“Like a knife?” she asked. She knew about knife fights.

“Yes, exactly,” Jake replied. “The rules are: when you begin the fight, both guns have to be in their holsters – pouches, I mean. The one who can grab their gun and shoot the other one first, wins the match.”

“One killed the other,” Annalisa said thoughtfully, “by shooting her.”

“They killed each other,” Jake told her.

“Why?”

“I have no fucking idea!” Jake replied, falling back on the bed. “But the audience loved it! The orgy lasted more than an hour while the attendants paraded those two dead girls around on stretchers. Some of the men even used the dead girls’ bodies for sex.”

“They didn’t use a club,” Annalisa said, still working out the details in her mind, “but they were still dead.”

“A ‘Club’ is like a bar, Annalisa – a tavern – where people go to be entertained,” Jake explained, smiling at her naivete. “You usually have to be a member, so they call it a ‘club’.”

“Oh,” Annalisa said, pretending her best that she understood.

She stretched her body up closer to his and laid her head on his arm.

“Tell me more about the girls shooting each other,” she purred.

“God Damn!” Jake exclaimed, then laughed unbelievingly. “This is really turning you on!”

Annalisa blinked her large eyes up at him, not understanding what was so funny.

“It makes you…” Jake stopped, suddenly realizing he could seriously insult this immortal goddess. “It makes you feel… too warm and friendly.”

She hadn’t really noticed. Yes, she was feeling very friendly. And warm. How did he know?

“I’ve cleaned rabbits, and helped clean deer,” Annalisa murmured. “There is always a neat little hole where they were shot. When I lived on earth, we used the ‘deba’ and ‘supea’ to kill people. They were blades, but in a novice’s hand they could be quite messy. Bullet holes are small and neat. What did the dead girls look like? Did you see them?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jake admitted. “The sight of them drove Béla crazy with lust. We had sex right in the middle of the floor while we just stared at the bullet holes.”

“You liked it, then?” Annalisa asked, her fascination obvious in her eyes. “Tell me more. Tell me about them dying.”

Annalisa was gently twisting her body to rub her sensitive nipples against Jake’s arm. Her left leg half straddled his torso as she stared raptly into his face.

“All right,” Jake agreed. “They stood there about, oh, ten feet apart and started shooting at each other. One girl had her back about halfway to us, so we really couldn’t see anything. I saw her jerk, though, so I knew that she’d been shot.

“The other girl,” Jake continued, “well, she just blazed away at her opponent while little bursts of red appeared on her stomach and breasts. One girl on the floor near us took a bullet right between her eyes. The guy who was having sex with her didn’t even notice, but that’s probably because he was behind her, holding her up. When she sagged forward, he thought she’d fainted.”

“The girls were blazing?” Annalisa asked, rubbing her naked pelvis against his trousered hips. “You mean, ‘on fire’?”

“That’s just an expression,” Jake replied, trying to ignore the erotic images in his mind and the really sexy goddess rubbing herself all over him. “She kept pulling the trigger on her gun and shooting at the other girl.”

Annalisa’s body tensed as she shoved her pelvis hard against Jake’s hip. She trembled for a moment, her breath ragged in her throat. After she settled down a little, she gazed up into Jake’s eyes and whispered, “Tell me more.”

“Not much to tell after that,” Jake told her. “Both girls were full of bullet holes and they just kind’ve dropped to their knees and fell over dead. End of story.”

“Full of bullet holes,” she whispered, her slender body trembling again.

Jake lay there, trying to ignore his raging hard-on. Annalisa lay naked halfway on top of him, very still except for her breathing, which seemed a little intense.

“My sister; the Goddess Béla,” Annalisa finally murmured, “she enjoyed watching this?”

“She loved it,” Jake admitted. “She wanted to get up on the stage and let someone shoot her.”

“I can well imagine,” Annalisa replied. “Did she go onto the stage?”

“No, of course not!” Jake laughed. “The show was already over. Besides, she and I were already having sex. She couldn’t just ‘climb off’, could she?”

“I suppose not,” Annalisa admitted. “That would probably be rude. Can I climb on you?”

“What?” Jake asked, then a spark of understanding *finally* lit in his mind. “You want to have sex with me.”

“Oh, yes!” Annalisa replied eagerly. “Everyone wants to have sex with the consort of the Goddess of the Land!”

“The Goddess of… Who? You mean Béla?” Jake asked, trying to hold on to the tops of his jeans while Annalisa enthusiastically yanked then down around his knees.

“My sister goddess chose you for her lifemate,” Annalisa panted, still pulling his pants off. She had one leg down past his ankles now. “That means you’re the best lover she’s found! I want you to love me, too!”

“But I love Béla!” Jake cried, losing the tug-of-war for his jeans.

Yanking the final leg off Jake’s body, Annalisa triumphantly gazed at her now-naked prize, sweeping her eyes up and down his well-built, if somewhat hairy, body.

“You look like an ordinary man,” Annalisa observed, suddenly very discerning. “What’s so special about you?”

“What? Now, look, Anna…” Jake protested. “Wait!”

Heaving a great sigh and hoping she wouldn’t be too disappointed, Annalisa rose up and moved forward suddenly. Planting one leg firmly on each side of his torso, she dropped down. His cock popped rather painfully into her with a loud squishing sound.

Still grimacing from the impact of his entry, Annalisa began moving up and down, fucking herself on Jake’s hard cock. She grinned at the funny look of consternation on Jake’s face. With him inside her, she could feel his mixed emotions about making love to her. He liked the idea that she wanted an affair with him, but he was worried about upsetting Béla.

“We’re sisters,” Annalisa whispered to him. “Sisters share everything.”

That wasn’t strictly true. Her sister Elaine only shared her lifemate at the New Years Celebration. The rest of the time, she kept him strictly for herself.

“Béla and I have an understanding…” Jake began again, not really knowing why, because he and Annalisa were already fucking.

“That’s not stopping your body from wanting me,” Annalisa interrupted, knowing what he was going to say. “Besides, I want you to tell me something, and you can only answer me from this… position.”

“Annalisa,” Jake pleaded, knowing that it was much too late to convince her to stop – not that he wanted her to, now.

“Where…” she began, her eyes glowing with pure elation.

“Oh,” Jake murmured, understanding, now.

“Use your fingers and show me… touch me… where you saw the girl shot!”

Annalisa was breathing harder and her pussy was definitely wetter that it had been a moment ago.

“The first one hit her here,” Jake said, pressing into Annalisa’s soft belly right next to her navel.

The dark-haired goddess trembled as she reconstructed the event in her mind. She closed her eyes so she could concentrate better.

“The next one was a little wild,” Jake told her, “because the other girl was getting shot, too. It hit her right here…”

He pressed his finger into Annalisa’s shoulder – the soft spot right beneath her smaller shoulder bone. Annalisa quietly began to moan.

“The next two were right…” he pressed his finger into her solar plexus, “here, and here.”

He pressed into her lower belly just above her pelvis. Annalisa shuddered as an orgasm swept through her slender body. Her soft cry was so endearing to Jake that he almost came inside her – he wanted her so badly – but that wasn’t all…

He wanted to shoot Annalisa as badly as he wanted to continue fucking her, and as badly as she wanted to be shot. But in their rush to abandon Solar City, most of the inhabitants, including Jake, had fled with only the clothes they were wearing, and perhaps a single bag of precious belongings. Jake’s guns were millions of miles away, probably buried under nuclear slag by now.

Annalisa was becoming aware of her surroundings again after her tremendous orgasm. Leaning forward with a satisfied smirk on her face, she placed her hands on his chest and bent down closer.

“Was that all?” she asked, feeling coy, now.

“Was that enough?” Jake tossed back at her, grinning with his secret knowledge of her.

“You didn’t come,” Annalisa mentioned, wiggling her rump against his legs.

“Tell me,” Jake said, ignoring her comment. “Are all of your sisters nuts about sexual mutilation?”

“What do you mean?” Annalisa asked, not fully understanding.

“Well,” Jake said, trying to be as articulate as possible with his raging dick buried in this hot girl’s insides. “Béla loves to be shot. Her sister Beth loved it, too. She even used black powder to burn herself.”

“Ooo. I hadn’t thought of that…”

“What?” Jake asked incredulously. “You’ve tried stuff like that before?”

“Well, yes,” Annalisa replied, slowly beginning to move her pelvis against his rigidity. “But it’s hard to find places where you can experiment here. There’s no real privacy in New Eden. Too many people can hear your thoughts.”

“What experiments have you conducted on yourself?” Jake asked, his cock getting harder as he considered seriously mutilating this sweet, feminine body surrounding his cock.

“I’ve burned myself,” Annalisa whispered. “Sometimes I play with fire.”

“Tell me,” Jake whispered hoarsely, his own eyes lighting up with forbidden desire, now.

“I…” Annalisa began moving on his cock again. “I sometimes press myself against the cook stove and burn my tummy when no one’s looking. And once I laid down in a bed of embers in the fireplace and masturbated with a burning stick between my legs.”

“Did you…” Jake gasped, almost ready to lose his control. “Did you get it inside you?”

“Yes!” Annalisa cried out, her body remembering that incredible orgasm with another one, right now. “Right where you are now!”

Jake was no longer able to control himself any longer. His cock jerked as streams of cum spurted up inside this incredible goddess. If it wasn’t for Béla, he could easily fall in love with this girl – perhaps he was beginning to, anyway. If she was any indication of what the girls were like here in New Eden, this was definitely the Garden of Paradise.

The dark-haired goddess collapsed down onto Jake’s bare chest, whimpering and sobbing from the power of their shared orgasm. Jake held her tightly, certain that his cock would have exploded had it not been contained in her tight, warm pussy.

Their combined cum dribbled down past his balls, slightly increasing the need for them to move once again. He intended to put off moving as long as he could.

“Yes…” Annalisa gasped, barely conscious. “I see why she loves you…”

Then she was asleep, lying peacefully on top of him, just like Béla had gone to sleep on top of him many times before, in the early days when they were just learning each other.

Jake stayed awake a long time, not completely understanding what he was feeling. It would have been easier if he had met Annalisa back on Earth before Béla had returned to him. It would have been better, of course, never to have met her at all. But to meet her now was the most terrible thing that could happen to him.

Annalisa was Béla all over again. Béla, before she died; not the powerful, god-like Béla he knew now, but the original one. The one who needed his arms around her at night and to whom he was the center of her world, not the Béla who was often gone for days at a time on some world-saving mission or seeking some desperate solution to their survival.

He sobbed into her sleeping shoulder and neck for a moment, not wanting the way things seemed to be turning out. Finally, he stopped, and gently rolled Annalisa onto her side and sat up.

“Why couldn’t it have been you?” Jake sadly whispered as he watched her sleep.

He wasn’t sure if he meant the question for Annalisa or Béla. He wasn’t sure of anything, anymore.

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