by Cameron Hale
My scream rose above the susurrating ocean as I came, slick with sweat and my own wetness. I glimpsed her face hovering among the starlit mist of her world and wept. Seeking her, I rolled over and reached for her firm flesh beneath my hands. Her slick body smelled of the sea and the lemony musk of her arousal. Tasting her silken skin with my hands and mouth, I felt an indentation at the base of her throat that opened at my touch to reveal a delicate shell pink pouch. She sighed languorously as my tongue slipped into its clinging warmth. Circling, probing, I withdrew and inserted a finger. Uttering a single, sharp bark, her body arched and shuddered in my embrace.
The surging tide washed over us and cooled the fire raging in our bodies. Opening my eyes, I looked through her at an armada of shooting stars arcing through the alien sky of her home. Emotion choked my throat at the indescribably lovely vision.
Rising slowly to her feet, the creature glanced wistfully at the horizon of my world. “Perhaps we will meet again some other night,” she said.
Gentle remorse filled me as I spoke. “Wait. Don’t go. Not yet.”
There was so much I wanted to ask, so much I needed to know, but she was already drifting away with the tide. I could not bear the thought of losing her.
“I’ll look out for you next time,” I said, stumbling through the water after her.
“Yes, next time,” she murmured from a great distance.
She vanished into the mercury sea beneath a subtly shifting sky. The moon and its familiar constellations once again dotted the heavens. Reluctantly, sorrowfully, I turned and waded back to shore, the lights that welcomed me now flat and one-dimensional.
As softly as a caress, her voice whispered in my mind. A profound sense of joy infused me.
“We will meet again.”
I smiled, knowing we would. Though she was gone by the time I reached the dunes, I was already anticipating my next moonlit walk by the sea.
FUSION
Ciel rushed along the corridor, her footsteps muted by the pliant, ocean blue carpet. Her body was flushed despite the coolness, her impatience mounting with each step. A turn of a corner brought her to the observation bay. Her heart skipped when she spotted Jake adjusting one of the telescopes, his body eerily illuminated by the quicksilver moonlight filtering through the vast tinted windows. Renown for its dramatic design, the great glass arch of the observatory spanned jagged cliffs that plunged steeply into the turbulent sea below. Suspended like a celestial bridge far above the froth-veiled rocks, the angry ocean constantly sought but never quite breached the lofty support towers. In the pre-dawn twilight, only the whispering ventilation systems punctuated the hushed silence of the structure.
She paused to watch him from the shadows. Oblivious to her presence, he peered through one of the scopes at a display of distant fireworks exploding across the starlit horizon. The glorious pyrotechnics flared and flamed, etching the skies with heavenly graffiti. Her pulse quickened at the sight of his shirtless torso. She imagined the feel of his broad shoulders and a smooth muscular chest beneath her hands, the rise and fall of his body like an exotic landscape. Blonder, slimmer, the transformation of thirty years was kinder but not so different from the man she knew in the future. Her hands unconsciously smoothed the fabric of the tightly clinging silversheen dress barely covering her bare thighs.
Without warning, a youthful Jake rose from the eyepiece and turned toward her. “I felt you watching me,” he said with a beguiling grin. “It’s like being in a vacuum when you’re near.”
Fired by his presence, she smiled and approached him. She ran her fingers through the golden down on his arms and trailed them across his bare chest. He watched her with unfathomable blue eyes, the lines around them still faint. Hungrily, he bent to kiss her. Their tongues fenced as they eagerly dropped to the floor in a twist of limbs and hurriedly discarded clothes.
Urgently, silently, they devoured each other, Jake’s eager mouth nursing the soft cushion of her breasts. He trailed his tongue along her creamy flesh, randomly licking and nipping until he arrived at the hot delta of her cunt. Clutching her thighs, he probed her salty wetness, his fingers straying inside. She ground her hips violently against him, urging him deeper, her nails raking his back and ass. He complied by wrapping her legs around his shoulders and thrusting his cock deep within her.
She trembled against him, the heat from his flesh banishing the last echoes of caution from her mind. Coming explosively, her body wracked with spasms, the sharpness of her cry was countered by the shuddering groan of his release.
Exhausted, satiated, they lay entwined. “I guess I have a lot to look forward to,” he said, idly twirling a thick strand of her mahogany hair into a corkscrew and releasing it “You are so beautiful. You remind me of a sleek jungle cat on the prowl. Getting older will certainly have its advantages.”
She said nothing as her gaze dropped to the bare ring finger of his left hand. “Perhaps,” she murmured.
They watched the bloated opal moon set in the west, their bodies drying in the cool air. The magnificent fireworks display had finally ended, relegating to history another Fourth of July. A satellite masquerading as a star winked like a gleaming eye. Jake distractedly stroked her cheek.
She traced the fullness of his lips with her finger. “What are you thinking about? Or do I need to ask?”
He playfully nibbled her fingertip, and then paused to watch her stretch languorously. The movement was sensual, uninhibited. “I’m wondering which of us you prefer.”
She rolled to her side and sat up in a single fluid motion. “I have no preference. It’s like having two men, each one unique.”
“Isn’t my other self enough? Doesn’t a fine wine only improve with age?”
She smiled wistfully and gently kissed his cheek. “The fusion project brought me to you after the arch was re-designated for temporal studies. I joined the staff soon afterward as a project theorist. We were immediately attracted to each other. You love me in the future, but you’re not free. Your wife is a prominent scientist on the interdimensional project. She’s a powerful and influential force in the field.”
He grew somber. “What’s my ‘wife’ like?”
“Not like me,” she said after a pause. She watched him silently rise and stroll to the window. The sinuous movement of his body elicited in her yet another burning stab of desire. Longingly, he stared at the twinkling stars, willing them to reveal their jealously guarded secrets. “It scares me when you talk about the future. I can’t imagine the arch as anything else but an observatory. No matter how many times you tell me, I can’t believe that my career as an astronomer is going to veer off into unimaginable directions and that I can love you now and in thirty years.”
“Then why question it? Accept what you have now and think yourself unique in the whole world.”
He moved toward her and shook his head emphatically. “If you’re able to come back then this must have been somehow destined. I don’t believe in coincidence. All I want to know is if you’re the catalyst…”
“In time you’ll understand the concept,” she interrupted. “Please, Jake, you know I can’t say anymore. I’ve told you too much already. If my visits should be tracked…” She let the words trail off, knowing there was far more at stake than her job.
“Do I remember you in the future?” he persisted. “Is a subliminal memory of our relationship what attracts us when we meet, or are we treading with a paradox here?”
She sighed, wishing he would not press the matter. “You know me while I’m with you. Isn’t that enough?”
His voice softened as he knelt beside her. “Why do you come to me now? Why at this age and not in ten or twenty years?”
She searched his face to find confusion and uncertainty in his startling blue eyes. “I already know the older man, the esteemed scientist. I wanted to meet the youthful, aspiring astronomer.”
He laughed. “You mean you’re after my youthful body.”
“I have no complai
nts,” she said, slithering between his thighs and cupping his burgeoning hard-on in her hands. “Now or then.”
* * *
The portal flared a spectral blue in the darkened lab and winked out after Ciel quickly stepped through. Around her droned a symphony of equipment. She paused long enough to slip a lab coat over her rumpled dress and rushed to her computer station. Quickly, she assessed the temporal fusion pattern displayed on the screen before deleting it. As a precaution, she doctored a few more entries before entering her logout. Her lips moved silently throughout the process, her concentration fixed on the scrolling algorithms.
A hand suddenly clamped on her shoulder. She started, her pulse racing. “You missed the fireworks,” Jake said in a huskier voice. “Everyone at the party was asking about you.”
She swung her chair around and looked at him, the aroma and feel of his youthful body still resonant on her skin. Gray now touched his temples, adding an air of distinction to his ruggedly handsome features. His lined eyes were still deep blue, still unfathomable as he tenderly stroked her cheek.
“I had some work to catch up on.”
“Naughty girls shouldn’t be in the office after hours,” he said with a grin. “Are you going to tell me what my star theorist has been up to? Or do I have to use forceful tactics?”
“The theorist has been busy theorizing about a theory,” she murmured playfully. She rose and pressed herself against him, the rhythm of his heartbeat still robust after thirty years.
“Come now, Ciel. Do you honestly expect me to believe you’ve been busy with a theory that keeps you up this late for almost six months? he asked, gently stroking her disheveled hair. “Could it be you’ve discovered an antidote to sleep?”
“In a manner of speaking. I’ve been testing the access of past fixed location events.”
He pulled away from her with an exasperated sigh and sank into a nearby chair. “You’ve certainly done an outstanding job covering your tracks. Your logs don’t reveal a clue about your activities. I watched you re-enter just now but I bet I couldn’t trace where you’ve been. Is there any reason why I at least shouldn’t know the details?”
She sat down and clasped his hands. The veins were more prominent, the skin rougher than the hands that had caressed her only a short time ago. Her eyes flicked to the plain gold wedding band on his left ring finger. “Bear with me, Jake. The principle is a bit¾unorthodox. I’m really not at liberty to discuss it yet. I need to conduct some further tests.”
“Well then, let me see if I can guess. You’ve been exploring the temporal memories of the arch, perhaps? After all, it’s almost seventy years old. A lot has happened here, especially since the changeover.”
She forced a smile and tried not to shirk his pointed gaze. “You’ll be the first to know when I’ve got something conclusive.” Prompted by a sudden, prophetic urge to flee, she rose and turned toward the door. A liquid timepiece flashed three a.m. “It’s late. Won’t you be missed?”
He laughed harshly. “Irina left the party early. You know work comes first with her.” He grabbed her hands and flashed her an enigmatic look. “Come with me, Ciel. I want to show you something.”
Silently, they stepped into a lift that whisked them to the observation bay filled with the faerie glow of moonlight. Despite herself, she shuddered when they approached an array of futuristic telescopes poised at the sweeping windows like alien weapons. They bore no resemblance to the older, friendlier models. Her eyes drifted unconsciously to the place where they had made love, her body language betraying what her words could not.
Aware of Jake’s scrutiny, she turned to find him watching her intently, his eyes filled with longing and something else that she could not identify. She felt his urgency consume her resolve. Drawn by the heat of his body, she wanted only to surrender to it.
He moved to the window and pressed his hands against the cool tinted glass, his gaze drawn to the distant glitter of a passing ship. “Do you ever come up here, Ciel? I occasionally did until about six months ago. One night I had the strangest dream, or so I thought. It was incredibly vivid and terribly disturbing. It troubled me so much I came up here to think it through.” He paused, as though lost in thought. “Since then, I come here every night. Me and the stars, no one else. I had no idea how beautiful the sky is at night.” He shook his head. “Soon I couldn’t be separated. I even arranged for the Fourth of July party to be held on this floor. There’s no better view for the fireworks¾or for the soul.” He turned and approached her with a deliberate pace. “Something keeps drawing me here, something very powerful, something very sensual.”
She started to back away. He pulled her close and slipped off her lab coat, his hands easily finding the seam to her silversheen dress. The garment fell away, her aroused body revealing a trail of nip marks left by his teeth. In a tangle of limbs they fell to the same spot on the pliant carpet, his lips sizzling her bare flesh. Without preamble, he pressed his body against hers and fucked her with the urgency of a rutting animal.
The air around them shimmered and wavered with a spectral beauty of an aurora borealis. She felt the inexorable, disorienting embrace of the approaching paradox, but felt the pull of Jake’s heart even more. Tears brimmed in her eyes as a younger and older face suddenly overlapped and fused into one.
He leaned over to nuzzle her neck, his hand now bare of the wedding ring. “You see,” he whispered against her ear a moment before he came. “I do remember you.”
GAME POINT
McLachlin's thin lips twisted into a cold smile as the amber alarm light flashed and trilled from the matrix cradled in his hand shortly after midnight. He spun his low-slung leather chair around and leapt from it with the fluid grace of a leopard. Surrounded by a bank of mirrors, his reflection revealed wintry eyes set among an emotionless canvas of stark, Slavic features framed by a close crop of platinum hair. Only the faintest rise at the corners of his mouth betrayed any emotion. He strode toward the west-facing window of his angular, split-level house. Like him, no hint of warmth or color relieved the lunar landscape of black leather, chrome and glass, even to the vast windows that had been specially tinted to block the glare of sunlight.
Pausing at the vast sweep of window, he casually reached for an onyx box perched on a nearby glass ledge and withdrew a thin black cigarette. It self-ignited, wafting a minuscule trickle of aromatic smoke into the air. He puffed thoughtfully before tapping the matrix in a particular sequence. Nothing more than a translucent wafer of pulsing colors, the device was his own creation, a tool capable of controlling every aspect of his property.
The window partially de-opaqued to an expansive view of a moonless, starkissed night. Two floors below on the tree-shaded forecourt, a young woman cased the car. Though dressed in an anonymous camosuit, the utilitarian garment could not conceal her shapely figure. Full breasts strained at the dun colored fabric, eliciting a twinge of arousal in his crotch. A feral expression crossed his face. A female chaser, he thought with a dry smile. This was going to be even better. The term was slang for a thief or anyone involved in illicit trade. He peered more closely at her and noticed the adept way she tested for traps. A good chaser, as well. No doubt she had wasted hours casing the grounds before approaching, not knowing of course that easy access to the car was part of the plan. Settling down into a massive leather armchair positioned by the window for optimum viewing, he chuckled softly and punched a command on the matrix balanced on his knee.
The woman materialized on a 360º circle of holographic panels that dropped silently from the vaulted ceiling. McLachlin adjusted the matrix to counteract the bleaching effect of the security lights to better study her. Attractive she certainly was, though women as a rule held little appeal to him. A thick ebony braid trailed to her waist, offsetting an olive complexion boasting dark liquid eyes, full lips and a slightly Roman nose. Her brow was knit with concentration, almost detracting from a tiny tattooed Omega, a clan symbol, on her left temple.
Th
ough she appeared no older than her early twenties, he knew that chasers were a breed to be respected. With the odd exception, crime existed mainly underground in response to an increasingly authoritarian police force. McLachlin knew he was the odd exception, a throwback to the more primitive societies of the past, but he relished the risk. Protected by a wall of money and influence, his foibles had become an entertaining pastime, his hunger for novelty an addiction. As for the chaser, she was the latest, if not the last, to try and snatch the car.
Or rather, the prototype Sirius XV. The low-slung beast was his child, a creation of the engineering genius that had placed him in society's upper echelon and allowed him privileges few could imagine. Freedom was the most important prize, permitting him a reclusive lifestyle enjoyed by few on a noisy, cluttered and troubled Earth. People were basically inconsequential to him, a facet of his ascetic character long known to him. The dreary ties of wives and children burdened those with whom he had little or no contact, subsequently providing no hindrance to his special interests.
Puffing his cigarette appreciatively, he studied the woman's fluid movements, the aroma of fine tobacco gently tainting the purified air. Her method proved better than her predecessors, the use of a contraband probe even more impressive. Though he understood that even chasers had hopped onto the technology bandwagon, he never expected to see such sophistication from the resistance. Of course the woman knew the car was rigged, but her determination to break the security code was admirable. He decided to skip the preliminaries and canceled protect mode.
The woman registered only brief surprise when the passenger door whispered open. Characteristically, she treated the situation with the respect it deserved and continued probing. A kaleidoscope of emotions crossed her face as she surveyed the state of the art controls blinking invitingly at her. Temptation, curiosity, hesitation¾all briefly surfaced.
