by David Burke
“Wait? Why do you want to keep the implants?” asked one of Miguel’s girls. Jay didn’t remember her name but before he could answer, one of Team Jay made an accusation.
Simone said, “You just want to keep us as sex-crazed puppets.”
From in the back, Ava said, “Yes, please,” and Huong said, “All the better to have fun with you.”
Jay looked back to where the two wives were standing together and said, “Not helping.” Then he addressed the question and the accusation. “No, I would hope that if we can reproduce the stimulant that we would be able to keep its growth promoting factors while leaving out the aphrodisiac effect. As for why we would want to keep the implant and stimulant that is simple enough.
“We have been constantly threatened since we got here. When we leave this ship, that isn’t going to go away. The question of whether humans are alone in the universe has been definitely answered and we have learned that our neighbors are not very nice. Would any of you want to confront the A’snkarnt, Forlorn, or even the Bel’gi with less than the most power we can possibly have?
“That said, if we can find a way to remove the implants and eliminate the stimulant from our water then we will not require anyone to take whatever replacements we come up with. That will be optional, but if you want to be able to do all you can for your people you will have to give it serious consideration.”
Jay waited for more questions but instead there were clearly a number of telepathic conversations going on. Likely they were discussing what he had just said. Finally, Simone spoke up again. “Okay, I’m sorry. I spoke out of line. You have earned our trust. So, what can we do to help?”
He smiled before answering, “I am glad to have all of your support. If you have any problems, Miguel, please come see me, otherwise, if you are part of Team Miguel, see him or part of Team Jay see your pod leader. I am planning on going on a mission to scout out and possibly find a way around the seventh floor today.
“I have a specific team in mind and I will be seeing you to invite you if I want you to come along. Before that we are going to do a couple of short bursts of tempus fugit at the lab and for a short range around it to allow for some training. Miguel, I will include an area where you can train with your team. Trina, I will need you to pick out some people because you will be on guard duty during the first two bursts, although neither will be very long.
“I will need all of my wives to be there, even if you are pregnant, and I will let Huong decide who else is necessary. We will be doing some training but the primary purpose of this is going to be to do research on our projects. It will also be a test of something that I have been wanting to try out.”
Most everyone nodded so he added, “I am going to go talk to the people for my dungeon team but then I will meet everyone that is supposed to be there inside the tech building in thirty minutes. Please don’t be late. As of right now, we are headed to war.”
One by one, Jay sought out the girls that he intended to invite on his team. He had thought about it long and hard. He intended for this dungeon trip to be a bit of a trust fall. He needed to find out if it was even possible for him to fuse with these girls and for that he had to see them in action.
The first girl he approached was Trina. As efficient as ever, she was already going about forming up a squad to provide defense while Jay was occupied inside the tempus fugit field.
“Trina, can you spare a minute to chat?” he asked.
She immediately waved off the other girls with her and turned to look at him but didn’t say anything. He stepped forward and froze time around them for the tiniest fraction of a second. He believed he had managed barely more than a tenth of a second but his new subconscious processing power told him that the field was still going to last for almost three minutes.
Trina stood still and didn’t even seem startled. Jay had expected some reaction from her so he said, “Sorry if I surprised you by that.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to say sorry. At least that is what your wives told me. Especially for things that you aren’t truly sorry about or don’t have any reason to be sorry about,” Trina replied calmly.
“Oh,” Jay replied.
“I can tell you don’t mean me any harm. I don’t think you would be able to hide something like that through the fusion even if you tried. And, honestly, I trust you. I guess, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure until this very moment, but I trust you with my life. You have earned it,” Trina said.
“Wow… that means a lot, thank you. I am learning to trust you and…”
Trina interrupted him by saying, “It also doesn’t hurt that I can sense how… hmm what is that, oh yeah, how kissable you think my lips are. Jay, if you aren’t careful I might think you have some intentions towards me.”
It didn’t seem possible, but somehow being flirted with by Trina, especially after she had opened herself up to him, still made him flustered. Jay stumbled over his words before finally saying, “Yeah um… so I want you to go with me on this dungeon dive today. I think it will be a good trust building exercise.”
“I was hoping you would invite me,” Trina said calmly. Then when Jay didn’t say anything more she asked, “Is that all?”
“Uh, pretty much.”
She stepped closer to him and asked, “How much time do we have left before the field collapses?”
“A little less than two minutes,” Jay answered. Her scent was intoxicating as she got closer to him. He could feel her warmth and damn if she wasn’t right, she had some of the most scrumptious-looking lips ever. She always had.
“From what I hear, you aren’t exactly a two-minute man, so that won’t be enough time for anything serious, but maybe I can show you how kissable they are.”
Then she stepped up closer to him and stood up on her tippy toes as she pressed her lips just firmly enough against his. Old Jay might have stumbled backwards, but this Jay slid one hand behind her head and the other under her butt. He pulled her up to him, negating their height difference and then for the next ninety seconds, they made out as furiously as any two hormone-driven teenagers ever did in the backseat of a car.
When the field dropped, Kayla and the rest of Trina’s original team were standing there. After a moment of shock, Abby called out, “Get some, boss.”
Jay was pleased to see that he wasn’t the only one slightly blushing. Seeing that color rise on Trina’s cheeks made him think that there really was hope for them yet. If she could still feel strongly enough about this to be embarrassed, that had promise.
“Okay, ladies,” he said with a bow of his head, “I return your esteemed leader to you, and am off to my next appointment.”
Madison was easy to ask. She was already on his very short list of girls he liked the most outside of his wives and he knew she was willing to go into the field. That was something that not all of the girls were willing to risk. She gleefully accepted his invitation to join him on a team-building exercise with their dungeon dive.
Her enthusiasm waned a bit when he said there wouldn’t be room for Charlotte to come along if all the people he was going to ask accepted. He did promise though that if any of them refused he would ask her next. It was a rash promise, but truthfully even if her power set wasn’t the most important to his development, Char was also on that same short list.
He almost considered inviting her rather than the next person on his list but ultimately decided to stick with his original plan. So he then sought out Bong-Cha. He had been intimate with her just like all the girls on Team Jay, but it always felt like part of her was distant. They got along fairly, and she repeatedly expressed her gratitude for saving her, but he could always feel that the specter of her dead brothers weighed her down.
When he found her she was doing the thing that she did more than any other activity. She was constantly training in martial arts. It was more flashy than what Hanna had taught him. She did flying kicks and spun around from low sweeps to hook kicks up in the air. He loved wa
tching her on the few occasions he had the chance. It was a dance but beautiful in a deadly way.
After the end of a form she stopped and turned towards Jay and nodded before she started working on punching a tree in front of her. Her knuckles would get bloody but healed as quickly as possible. Just as much as her skin got torn up the bark was ripped away from the tree. Jay asked, “Do you have a minute to talk?”
She kept punching away and started to add in knees and elbows. He coughed and when she still didn’t stop he said, “Would you mind sitting down with me. I’d like to talk to you.”
“Yes, it was rude of me to not stop. I apologize. I owe you so much, it was truly unacceptable. I just get caught up in my training. I just need to be stronger. I can’t ever be in that situation again,” Bong-Cha said.
Jay didn’t bother to ask what situation; he knew she was talking about the death of her brothers and her inability to save them. Even though she had been captured, bound, and tortured the same as they were, she still had a form of survivor’s guilt. It killed Jay that she was so deeply affected, but he could understand it. The death of his mother and sister had ruled much of his life.
“I get it. I really do,” Jay began.
Bong-Cha scoffed, “How? How could you get it? You are indestructible. You can do anything.”
“You don’t know my past. You don’t know about the death of my mother and sister. You don’t know about how it was my fault or how I let that ruin most of my life up until recently.” Jay’s voice rose as he got angrier. “So, I know what you are feeling. Will you just sit down with me?”
After his question he conjured a PSI blade and sliced two other trees nearby into stumps for them to sit on. His motion so fast that it was a blur.
“See that is what I’m talking about. You sliced through those trees like they were nothing,” she protested but did sit down on one of the stumps.
“And you think I could do that when I was a little boy. I understand feeling helpless. I understand feeling to blame and I know what it is not to be able to do anything about it. Once those loved ones are gone you never get them back. Instead you have to live on feeling guilty for even being alive.” Jay watched as his words brought a tear to her eyes.
What they had been through so far in this experiment was more trauma than most to handle. He and Meikiyo had often spoken late at night and wondered about that. Was it part of the stimulant or part of their evolutionary process? Either way it didn’t seem very natural or very human.
Jay moved and kneeled near to Bong-Cha. He placed his hand on her back but didn’t say anything more. Sometimes there was nothing you could say. Some hurts just had to be felt, but it helped to have someone there.
In many ways it was odd to him. She wasn’t sitting there sobbing but she was softly crying. She wasn’t asking for anything from him but he knew she needed to be held. He forged a temporary bond between them so that they could commiserate together. It was strange to him that this was a woman he had been physically intimate with repeatedly but this moment was more real than all of those put together.
Finally she said something, but he couldn’t hear it at first. She spoke so softly. He had to ask her to repeat herself.
“Make me stronger. I need you to make me stronger. Teach me to be like you,” Bong-Cha pled.
Jay knew this had to be handled carefully. He was considering her for fusion but he couldn’t take someone who was only there for the strength it would give her and the hope of revenge. Of course that made him feel hypocritical because after all the reason he was going along with these extra fusions was that he needed the power that they would give him, needed it to protect all these people.
He needed to make sure there were no more Bong-Chas mourning the deaths of those close to her. But even as he thought that he realized there was no certainty in life. There was no way that he could promise them all they would be safe, not with what they had to face.
“I can help make you stronger, but power alone isn’t going to fix this for you. You have to find that inside yourself. You have to forgive yourself and learn to accept that your brothers would be glad you are alive. You honor them by embracing life and if you get power you use it to fight for the living not to avenge the dead. The dead take care of themselves, we are all that each other has now. This cluster, this team, this family, we have to be here for each other,” Jay said.
“That is what I want. I burn inside with hate, but you are right. Hwa-Rang wouldn’t want that for me. He would want me to live my life. He would want me to find my own way. He would want me to find happiness with a good man.”
Even as she finished speaking she turned her face and their lips grazed across one another. She pushed her face forward, followed her mouth against his. Her hands fumbled up under his shirt and he trembled at the passion and need in her.
Things were spiraling out of his control. Of course, when had he ever really been in control? He felt a connection with her. Jay believed that she really would share his vision for protecting everyone here. He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that her loss was gone. Of course it wasn’t.
Jay just knew that they shared in a loss. It shaped them, but he also felt that they could share in strength. But there wasn’t enough time. Then he almost laughed. Of course there was enough time. He could manipulate that around them.
Almost reflexively a bubble in time sprang into existence around them. His precision was much less refined than earlier as his hands fumbled with her clothing just as she did with him. The bond allowed him to know her more deeply and he felt her need and it echoed in him. He certainly hadn’t intended this but it was happening.
It was natural and Jay decided to get out of his own way. They were two people who had loss in common and that was more to build upon than many couples could claim. He kissed her cheek and could taste the salt of her tears. In that moment as their bond let them share emotion he wanted nothing more than to make sure that she never cried again. That none of these beautiful, wonderful women ever cried again.
She had his shirt off before he realized it but the rush was over. He had created a moment in time that they could share together and he didn’t mean to waste it. Jay pulled her to him and then guided her down into the grass at their feet. He didn’t even bother with creating a PSI construct mattress. This was natural and doing it in the grass couldn’t have felt more right.
Jay brushed her hair out of her eyes and then with the look of welcoming he saw there, he began kissing down her neck. The salt of her tears mingled with the dried salt on her skin from where she had been sweating with her workout. It tasted delicious to him and he licked it off her skin like an addict trying to get just a little bit more.
His hands had managed to undo her top by that point. It was a martial-arts-style wrap-around top. Jay couldn’t remember the name for it now but didn’t really care. She shared the same small breasts that Huong and Meikiyo had but maybe that was unfair. She had a tight band of cloth binding her chest tightly.
It dawned on him that she probably made that to make it easier to move around while fighting. Well this was a different kind of fight and she didn’t need it now. Quite to the contrary he needed her breasts bared before him. So, a tiny PSI blade appeared and with a flick of his mind he cut the material loose and set free her breasts.
He was delighted to see that they were most definitely larger than the other girls he had originally compared her to. They certainly weren’t Daphne’s or even Amelia’s perfect ones. But they were more than a mouthful and probably a good handful.
Still he had to put that to the test as he kissed his way to them. He ran his tongue over her nipples and made her shiver and was rewarded by the immediate response of her nipple quickening beneath his assault. He sucked and worked them with earnest desire and she arched her back up as though trying to feed her breasts to him.
Her eagerness turned him on in the worst of ways, but he had gotten used to dealing with that. Her need only stoked his desire to
control this more. He would make her know what it was to be joined with him. In no particular hurry he ran his hands over her toned body. It was perfect and he suspected that she had been very fit even before being trapped here.
Jay worked her loose pants down, but didn’t move to that treasured spot; instead he left her wanting as he worked his mouth over her neck and breasts. Running his hand over her tummy, he felt her tense up. Then her hands tried to force his down, but she might as well have been trying to move a mountain. Jay knew his own mind and he would do things in his own time.
When he felt her quivering in need he began kissing his way down her stomach. Her hips arched up in anticipation but he made her wait. He would lick and then blow, sending shivers down her spine and raising goosebumps all over her. Then he kissed down further.
Her scent pulled him in and he didn’t deny himself. She was his and they both knew it. When he felt her legs squeeze around his head he was already diving in with his mouth. Jay’s lips met her second set of lips and he found them just as delightful as the first pair that had grazed so lightly across his.
