by David Burke
“You are gonna have to do better than that, fiancée of mine,” Amelia said verbally in response to his greeting.
That answered Jay’s question. Their bonding boded trouble for him. How was a man to keep up with even one woman, let alone five? Still, Jay manned up and decided that he had to take a stand, now or never. He needed to give as well as he got in order to maintain equilibrium in their relationships.
“Is something wrong with me greeting the most beautiful women in all of this experiment?”
Meikiyo frowned. Mia giggled. Jessie ignored him. Amelia and Huong looked at each other and giggled.
Huong said, “Look at him trying to be cute.”
“Well in his defense he does have that cute backside,” Amelia said.
Jessie stood up and walked around behind him. “Yes, I can confirm that it is still quite cute.”
“Oh turn around and show us all,” Huong said and when he didn’t respond she added, “Please.” She spoke with a pouty face.
“Fine, fine, what did I say wrong?” Jay asked.
Meikiyo stood up and stomped off. Now Jay started to get really worried.
Amelia came up against him and ran her finger under his chin and then ran her other hand across his chest. She leaned in and kissed his neck. In his mind he heard her voice very clearly, “You can’t treat us all the same. We aren’t a single unit. We are individual women who all want individual relationships with you. We may be willing to share because that is the world that we are in now, but that doesn’t mean we want a cookie cutter greeting from you. And don’t forget that I’ve got dibs.”
Jay needed to act quickly and decisively. He recognized that this was no less a battle than the dungeon was. He boosted his strength and immediately jumped into the air and soared thirty feet over their heads.
He landed and then sprang again so that he landed in front of Meikiyo. She was startled by his sudden appearance. With boosted speed he surged forward and pulled her into his arms.
“Good morning, my precious. I missed you last night. I missed our time. I am sorry that I needed some time to think but perhaps I would have been better off spending time with you. Rarely do I find my thoughts as clear as when I am staring at the stars with you in my arms. Will you forgive me for my selfish evening?”
Her frown didn’t instantly fade but as she stared at him, he could see her break down. “I can’t seem to stay angry with you. It was okay that you took some time for yourself. I know that this is as hard on you as it is on all of us. I see into your soul and I have heard your dreams expressed when no other ear could hear. Just remember that I am my own woman, not part of a collective.”
“I could never forget that, and if you have truly forgiven me, may I have a kiss?”
She hesitated before speaking into his head, “You know I can hardly deny you anything, my savior and lover, but you know that I’m not really comfortable with PDA.”
He spoke right back into her head, “Then you will have to feel the sincerity of my intentions. I love you.”
Jay felt warm as he said the words that knew she had been longing to hear. He surprised himself, but he truly meant it. He had said something similar the night before, but this was more intimate. The telepathy created a shared emotion, not as strong as that tangle of nervousness that he felt in the back of his mind from Mia.
From there Jay sent more specific telepathic greetings to each of the girls. He included pet names for them. Huong was his flower, Jessie his kitten, and Amelia his joy. That last was something of a play on her often contrary personality.
The last greeting went to Mia. He assured her that he was glad to see her and that they still needed to test out the limits of the bond that she had created between them. Her words back to him were far more direct than he had anticipated. “Did I do something wrong? I thought I was supposed to get initiated into the team last night.”
With practice conversing with telepathy could be much faster than speaking aloud but it also was harder to hide surprise and more prone to allowing him to stick his foot in his mouth. “What? Oh no, you don’t have to do that. We want you on the team for your brilliant mind. You have so much to contribute.”
Hurt washed over him through the bond. Jay knew it wasn’t his emotion, and it certainly wasn’t like the emotions that Jasmine forced on people. Yet the bond made him feel the cutting pain that Mia was feeling at that moment and more than anything he wished he could take back his words.
“Oh so you are only using me for the team’s benefit. What am I to be Q and not Pussy Galore?” There was almost an indignant tone to her words, if such a thing was possible in telepathic communication.
Jay wasn’t sure whether he was more worried about having upset her or impressed with her use of James Bond characters. She really was a keeper. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just didn’t want you to feel that you had any obligation to do that.”
“Fuck you, Jay. For a guy who cares so much about the people around him, you can be a royal ass sometimes.” After that she put up some kind of wall and Jay felt his further attempts at telepathy rebound away. That was certainly a useful skill and something that he needed to get her to teach him, but she wasn’t likely to be receptive to anything that he had to say now. She then sprinted away.
“Fiancé, you really need to learn that it’s sexist to think that only men want sex,” Amelia said out loud once Mia was gone from sight.
Jay didn’t know what to say to that, so he pivoted towards Huong, and asked, “Did you make any progress last night.”
“A ton, with Mia’s crystals we were able to finish armor suits for Meikiyo, Amelia, and myself. We haven’t yet been able to figure out how to make an armor suit that will work for Jessie because she has so many variations to her form.”
“That is great, what do they do?”
“First, I hope it’s okay that we made the armor first instead of making weapons for you.”
“Yes, yes, Huong. You don’t need to worry. I trust your judgment about what is needed first.”
“Okay, well then you need to get Mia back here because we need her and you to finish the armor. I mean they will work now, but they may slow us down. So you better go help her clear her head.”
“Get to it, the reset is gonna be in like an hour, and I thought the plan was to get to the dungeon as early as we could this morning.”
“Fine, I’ll fix this. Back as fast as I can be,” Jay said as he ran off in search of Mia.
“Don’t rush too much. We want her to stay on the team,” Amelia yelled after him and he could swear that he heard her burst into laughter along with Huong and Jessie.
Fortunately, the emotional node in his head that was linked to Mia made it easy to find her. “Note to self, probably can’t hide from Mia now,” he thought. Once he came up on her, he found her back in their spot. She must have run all the way to make it the three miles or so to the pass. Then it dawned on him that she had probably borrowed his speed while she ran away.
“Mia, I’m sorry. Will you please talk to me?”
“Go away. I need time to think.”
“I am willing to listen, you can think out loud with me,” Jay offered.
“Sometimes, I just need to be alone. Isn’t that what you said last night?”
“Yes, but I can feel your emotions. You don’t really want to be alone now,” Jay said.
“Oh so now you give a shit enough to bother checking the emotions I’m having. You know that bond goes two ways. I don’t control it anymore. It just exists between us.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Jay was starting to get upset. He was just trying to give her space and not make her feel like she had to be pressured into anything. She was always so nervous and insecure. It seemed like the thing to do. They had welcomed her into the group and he wanted her to know that it was on her merits, not just cause he thought she was hot, and certainly not because he couldn’t stop wondering what uses he could find for her Enhanced Flex
ibility.
“It means that I could sense your emotions last night. You were relieved to be going off alone. You didn’t even consider how I might feel and you couldn’t have possibly bothered checking on my emotions or you would have known how nervous and excited I was,” Mia said.
“I guess it feels like it’s intrusive for me to listen in on your emotions, so to speak. I don’t want to invade your privacy.”
“Oh so now I am invading your privacy. You know what. I take it back. I don’t want to be on Team Jay. Maybe Miguel will respect me more.”
She seemed to be twisting everything that he said. “Whoa, I respect you. I am the one who wanted to train with you every day. I am the one who saw potential in you. I still am the one who thinks that you are amazing.”
“But you just said that it is an invasion of privacy to try and sense what the other one is feeling through the bond. So you must think that I have been invading your privacy. If I knew a way to get rid of the bond, I would.” She looked to Jay like she was about to cry. He couldn’t handle that.
“No, I don’t think you are invading my privacy. I trust you. I know you didn’t mean to form the bond with me. Honestly, I am happy that it happened though. It creates a special relationship between us. I just meant that I didn’t want to invade your privacy by peeking on you through the bond.”
“Oh so it’s fine when I do it, even good, but it’s an invasion when you do it? God, I swear, Amelia is right. You can be so clueless sometimes. You can literally feel my emotions and still you are this blind. What am I supposed to think but that you don’t want me?”
“Fuck, I want you so badly. I wanted you that day in the jungle when we were training. Heck there were even times back when I was on the council that I wanted you. You are gorgeous and sometimes I can’t help myself. I just stare at your long legs. Then I feel like a cad.”
“I like you staring at me. Especially now that I can feel you through the bond. I don’t know everything that is going on in your head but it is a huge boost to my confidence to know how you feel about me. So why don’t you want to know how I feel about you? I’m not a porcelain doll.”
Jay realized this was more self-sabotaging behavior. He had taken the instructions in his dreams about focusing and not being distracted to mean that the girls and the romantic entanglements that came with them were a distraction. He had been allowing that to make him question everything about himself.
There might never come a day that he didn’t have some twinges of doubt about if it was right for him to get attached to so many women. Yet, he hadn’t created this scenario. Those feelings weren’t helping him and they certainly weren’t helping the women. Focus was going to require moving past those feelings and accepting reality for what it was.
How much potential progress had he already lost because instead of training he had been fretting about being a lecher? How much had he held back some of the other girls because of a moral concern about bringing them onto the team? If he was back on Earth, he would say that those were legitimate concerns.
Now though, they were in a fight for their survival. He would be a fool to not take advantage of every opportunity that he had to grow stronger. In that moment, Jay realized that growing stronger didn’t just mean him leveling.
It also meant him becoming a better leader. It meant consolidating his power-base. He couldn’t let Tyler, Miguel, or even Jasmine stand in the way of that. His will toughened, and he decided to do what was necessary for them all to survive.
He felt a twinge of guilt, not about the new plan but about his previous failure to do everything within his power to secure a future for all of them. The details still had to be worked out. And, wow, if they ever did make it back to Earth, things would be complicated.
Today had enough problems for him to tackle though. A tomorrow which might never come would have to take care of itself. The decision was strangely painful to make but as it solidified in his mind it was also freeing.
“Mia, I’m sorry. I do want to know how you feel,” Jay said as he opened himself up to the cluster of emotion in his mind that was the bond. He could feel her hurt and confusion. As he focused though and pushed deeper he could feel more.
Jay felt her attraction to him. She seemed to adore him. There were all kinds of jumbled emotions. Her feelings of inadequacy were woven all through the feeling she had of him as a hero.
When he pushed past that, there was yet another level. There was a young woman who wanted to be seen. She wanted to be understood, and she wanted to be loved. Seething beneath that was a storm of need, passion, and desire. Jay looked forward to tapping into that but first he needed to address her self-esteem.
“I see you.” The words were simple. At first they had no effect.
Then after perhaps five seconds Mia asked, “Do you mean it?”
“Yes, I see you for who you are and who you can become. You are nothing but amazing and beautiful to me both inside and out. I’m glad that this bond happened and sorry for not trying to understand it better yesterday.”
Mia reached out with her arms and encircled his neck. She started to kiss all over his face. “I’m not used to being this much shorter than a guy. I kinda like it.”
She had to have been just over 6’0” tall and so he could understand what she meant. “Mia, we don’t have much time now before the reset. I don’t want to wait, but I also want to give you the time that you deserve.”
“There will be plenty more opportunities to take it slowly, right now I just wanna wrap my legs around you.”
With that the last of Jay’s resistance faded away and he embraced her, both in body and bond. Their kissing became urgent as they both felt the shortness of their time and the needs of their bodies. It was intoxicating as he learned to open himself up more to the bond to feel her desire echoing and even eclipsing his own.
This wasn’t quite like his sensual projection which shared physical sensations. This was a more emotional link but in some ways richer in its depth. Even rushed, Jay wanted to take the time to explore her. For now that meant, his tongue exploring her mouth and its full luscious lips and eager tongue.
She was built so different from any of the other girls. More the classic model. Mia was tall and slender but still had just enough curve to her hips. Her breasts were perhaps smaller than he would have liked but as her top came off, he saw that they were larger than he had expected.
It was probably just because at her height they seemed smaller. They still filled his hands, and he ran his thumbs over her nipples. She moaned into his mouth as they kissed demonstrating just how much she liked being touched. Why he had ever put this off was beyond him now.
It was rocky all around them and while that was fine for sitting, he didn’t want to bruise her up against the ground. A new solution came to him and he used his formation ability to create a bed of sorts.
It took a minute to get it to feel right. After a couple of tries though he managed to create a platform about as big as a king-sized bed. The hardest part was getting it to have just the right amount of give.
Up to this point all of his constructs had been made for combat. They were hard and sharp edged. He only wanted one hard thing to be poking Mia.
The breakthrough came when he realized he could tie the form of the construct to her emotions through the bond. He still had to supply the PSI but the firmness of the construct fluctuated to match what she was feeling.
As he laid her down onto the psionically crafted bed, he felt it give just enough. It was like a high-end bed that he had read about that shaped itself around them, holding her up for him to get at but being soft enough for her to relax into.
Time and desire combined to push Jay to unwrap her further. He pulled down her skirt first. Left in just her panties and shoes, she kicked the latter off while trying to get his shirt off.
Rushed or not though, he still had things he wanted to try. He had a burning desire to pleasure her. The more he opened himself up to the
feelings flowing through the bond the more delight he found in her reactions.
Jay began kissing down her body, tracing his way from the valley of her neck, over and around the mountains all so slowly and with deliberate care. Then he descended onto the plains and kissed while she shivered.
He hooked her panties with his thumbs and lowered them as his mouth approached the cradle of life. Jay paid close attention to the way she looked. Each time he saw the womanhood of another of his lovers, it was a joy. They were all so distinctive and yet whenever he gazed upon one of them he couldn’t help but think of it as the sexiest thing he had ever seen.
In Mia’s case he found a neatly trimmed bush that was light and wispy and matched the chestnut brown of the hair upon her head. He ran his nose through her patch and took in her scent. As his breath rushed along her labia, rustling her bush, he sensed the urgency that she felt for him to press in more forcefully.
