by L. M. Brown
“Come on,” Jamie said. "Let’s get you settled in. I’ve got some old jeans and shirts you can have until you get the chance to go into town. I won’t let you starve either.”
“Thanks,” Ryder said. “We’ll pay you back, I promise.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
AJ nudged Ryder who looked at him with confusion.
“What about other stuff?” AJ whispered.
“Like what?” Ryder murmured back.
“What is it?” Jamie interrupted as he observed the exchange.
“Ask him,” AJ whispered.
“Ask him what?”
“Where to get some—you know—for when we…”
Ryder blushed and shook his head. “I’m not asking him that.”
“But we’ll need some.”
“We’ll figure it out for ourselves.”
“What is it you need?” Jamie asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ryder replied. “It’s not that urgent.”
“Speak for yourself,” AJ muttered.
“It can wait.”
“Obviously it can’t,” Jamie said. “What is it AJ?”
AJ looked at Ryder pleadingly. Ryder shook his head in response. “You’re on your own for this one. I asked about the facilities, now it’s your turn to embarrass yourself.”
AJ stuck out his lower lip and Ryder chuckled. “Looking at me like that won't work. Ask him yourself.”
Jamie smiled at the two of them and shook his head. “Let me take a wild guess here. You’ve been together less than a month?”
“Less than a week,” AJ replied. “How did you know?”
“Been there myself,” Jamie admitted. ”When the relationship is so new you think you can’t go a day without fucking. What is it you wanted to ask me?”
“Can you tell us where we can get—you know—stuff?” AJ asked.
Jamie’s lips twitched. “Stuff?”
AJ groaned and his face heated.
Jamie laughed. “Okay, I’ll take pity on you. If the stuff you're after is lube and condoms, then I think I can help you out there.”
AJ breathed a sigh of relief, even though he had no idea what condoms were.
“Are you gay?” Ryder asked.
“Yes,” Jamie confirmed. ”And believe me when I say I’m delighted to no longer be the only homosexual man in the village. Though it’s just my luck that when another gay bloke finally moves here, he brings a boyfriend with him.”
AJ covered his mouth to hide his smile. Ryder didn’t even try to conceal his amusement. Thankfully, Jamie didn’t seem to be offended and he carried on walking towards the house, pointing out various parts of the grounds on the way.
AJ suspected Jamie was only humouring them, and that he didn’t truly believe they were from the future. He guessed it didn’t matter. Jamie was giving the two of them a chance anyway, and for that AJ was grateful.
* * * *
The room Jamie had allocated to them was small, but private. The bed was soft and cosy and the view from the window overlooked the garden AJ was now in charge of maintaining. They had decided between the two of them for AJ to take this job. Since Ryder was able to read and write they suspected he would find work fairly soon anyway.
“What if I ruin it?” AJ asked nervously as he looked out of the window.
“What? The garden?”
“Yes. I don’t know anything about plants.”
“You won’t ruin it. I’ll help you until I find work of my own.”
“You don’t know I won’t screw this up. Jamie talked about pruning and weeding and I didn’t even understand what I’m supposed to be doing to what plant. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t understand a lot of what he was saying. He talked about spring and summer and I’ve no idea what they are. And where’s this Mars he mentioned?”
“Spring and summer are two of the four seasons.”
AJ threw his hands up in frustration. “And what’s a season?”
Ryder quickly hid his amusement. “The seasons are the times of year. I’m not sure which one it is at the moment, though I think it might be late summer, or maybe autumn. As the seasons change, so do the plants and also the weather. If I’m right about what time of year it is, then we can expect some more rain over the coming weeks."
“Oh great,” AJ muttered.
“I don’t think it’ll be so bad as long as we’re not sleeping outside in it.”
“And what else have we got to look forward to besides getting wet?”
“Well, after the autumn it’ll be winter, and that’s when we’ll probably see some snow.”
AJ gave Ryder a wry look. “Do I even want to know what that is?”
Ryder laughed. “Let’s try not to worry about it, okay. The weather is something mankind has to put up with and we’ll get used to it.”
“I just feel so—”
“Don’t say it!” Ryder interrupted. “You are not stupid. The only reason I know this stuff is because I grew up hanging round in the archives. If you’d had the same opportunity, you’d know as much as I do, maybe even more.”
“Maybe we should just go live at this Mars place,” AJ suggested.
Ryder shook his head and AJ could tell he’d said something inadvertently amusing again. “People don’t live on Mars,” he explained. “It’s another planet. Although a small number of humans did manage to travel there, it isn’t habitable. I’m afraid we’re stuck here on Earth.”
AJ sighed. “It sounds like Blake was right about being careful what you wish for. The past sounded so much better than being stuck in the Labyrinth.”
“It is better,” Ryder replied. “How many years would you have had left if you’d stayed down there? Three or four at the most, right?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Here we could live another sixty years or more. Yes, it’s going to be tough figuring things out, but don’t you think it’s worth a bit of confusion and occasionally looking like a idiot—and I’m sure it’ll happen to me too—to have all those years together?”
AJ smiled at his lover. When Ryder put it like that, there was no question about it.
Ryder crooked his finger and beckoned AJ to join him on the bed. “Now, come here and stop worrying. Your first day is tomorrow, which means we have the rest of the day to ourselves.”
AJ climbed onto the bed and into Ryder’s arms.
“And what do you suggest we do with the day?” AJ teased.
“Oh, I have a few ideas,” Ryder replied as he eased AJ down onto the mattress.
AJ gazed up at Ryder. “I have an idea too,” he whispered as he eased his legs apart.
Ryder brushed AJ’s hair out of his face and kissed him softly. “Do you mean what I think you do?”
AJ nodded. “I trust you not to hurt me.”
Ryder’s smile lit up his face as surely as the sun brightened the perfect twenty-first century sky. “Thank you.”
AJ knew he’d made the right decision.
Ryder grabbed the bottle of lube Jamie had given him after showing them to their room. He ignored the little foil packets Jamie handed over at the same time. He guessed they were the condoms Jamie had mentioned, but neither AJ nor Ryder had any idea what to do with them. “You promise to tell me if it hurts?”
“You won’t hurt me,” AJ replied.
“Promise me or we don’t do this. Blake’s put you through so much this last week. You might not be recovered enough for this yet.”
AJ stood up and stripped out of the clean clothes Jamie had loaned him. “I promise,” he said as he returned to the bed and stretched out on his back. “Now please make love to me.”
Ryder undressed in a flash and settled himself between AJ’s legs, spreading his thighs wide and stroking them slowly. AJ sighed softly as Ryder’s fingers began to explore a little further. When the first digit circled his hole he couldn’t seem to stop himself from tensing up. Ryder, unlike Blake, used the lube generously and when he fina
lly eased a finger into AJ’s tight hole the digit slid in with relative ease.
“Are you doing okay?” Ryder asked.
AJ nodded. “It feels nice.”
Ryder chuckled. “Just nice?” he questioned as he crooked his finger.
AJ bucked beneath him and cried out at the intimate touch that caused his erection to pulse where it rested against his belly. “Do that again,” he gasped.
Ryder’s finger, buried in his arse, rubbed against the same spot again and AJ writhed with pleasure.
“You think it feels good now, just wait until my cock rubs against it,” Ryder warned as he inserted a second finger to join the first. “One day I’ll make you come without even touching your dick. You’re so responsive.”
With Ryder continuing to massage his prostate AJ couldn’t summon a single word in response.
“Are you going to come for me so soon?” Ryder asked.
AJ tried to control his orgasm, but the moment Ryder’s free hand stroked his length a wave of pleasure crashed over him and he spilled everything he had over both their chests.
He was still seeing stars when Ryder replaced his fingers with his thick member. The feeling of fullness was the same as he had experienced before, but everything else was different. Where Blake had been rough, Ryder was gentle. While Blake had fucked him hard and fast, Ryder made love to him slowly and tenderly. And when Ryder spilled his seed, deep inside him, AJ didn’t feel dirty and used. Instead he felt closer than ever to his lover and reluctant to break the intimate connection.
Ryder recovered his breath enough to speak before AJ managed to. “Did you enjoy it?” he asked quietly.
AJ could hear the nervousness in Ryder’s voice and he turned his head to look him in the eye. His teasing response of ‘couldn’t you tell?’ died on his lips at the fear he saw in the wide brown eyes. “With you, I’ll always enjoy it,” he replied instead.
The relief was visible on Ryder’s face and AJ rolled onto his side and into Ryder’s open arms. Their future might be uncertain, but AJ no longer feared what it held. He had a roof over his head and a new job working outside in air fresher than any he had breathed before. Best of all he had a long life ahead of him with the man he loved at his side.
Epilogue
Jessiah wandered through the archives looking for something to read. Ryder had taught him how to read and write when he’d first come to work for Blake and he had never lost the habit, even after Ryder had vanished into the depths of the labyrinth with his lover AJ more than two years ago.
He strolled down the aisles, casually browsing, when a battered book caught his eye in the science fiction section. It wasn’t the somewhat boring cover that caught his attention, rather the name of the author—AJ Ryder. He pulled the book from the shelf and read the back cover with idle curiosity. The book appeared to be a tale of corruption in a futuristic world that sounded very much like the one Jessiah lived in. He looked at the publication date to see when the book had been written. There were no publishers of fiction in the underground community. Only books that served to further the survival of mankind were published and they were few and far between, supplies being far too low to waste. Logically, Jessiah knew the book he held had to have been printed before the war, but how could a writer back then have known about this world? To his surprise he read the year of publication of 2020. He flicked through the book and saw his own name on the pages, along with the names of Blake, Ashleigh and the rest of the household.
Jessiah didn’t want to wait until he got back to the tower to start reading the story and so he found a quiet spot in the archives and settled down to read.
In the early hours of the next morning he finally finished the story. He checked the book out and went back to the tower to talk to the rest of the staff.
If AJ and Ryder’s story was true, Blake and the other scientists had been lying to them all for years. They might not have been able to stop the corruption personally, but Jessiah had got their message loud and clear. In his heart he knew it was true and all he had to do was check the journals in the study to prove it. Of course there was a chance Blake had destroyed the records, but he was arrogant enough to have kept them anyway, secure in the knowledge that the only two people who knew of the portals had been permanently exiled to another time.
Jessiah didn’t care if Blake had destroyed the evidence. One way or another he would expose the science teams for the greedy manipulators they were. It was what Ryder and AJ would have wanted.
He wondered if Ryder and AJ had found happiness in the past. He turned to the back sleeve where he found a short biography. AJ Ryder is the pen name for the two co-authors—which Jessiah had figured out for himself—who are happily married and living in England. In between writing stories, AJ and Ryder travel far and wide, usually on a budget, preferring camping out under the stars to staying in expensive hotels. They are both keen gardeners and enjoy spending time outdoors. AJ and Ryder can normally be found in the company of a Golden Retriever who likes digging up the flowerbeds just as fast as they can plant them. This is normally his way of telling them he thinks they should hit the beach—AJ and Ryder usually agree. Above the text was an author photo, a candid picture of the two men together, with a dog sitting between them, against a perfect summer sky. They were older than they had been when Jessiah had last seen them, but their joyful smiles told him everything he needed to know.
Coming Soon from Total-E-Bound Publishing:
The Borders War: One Breath, One Bullet
SA McAuley
Released 3rd June 2013
Excerpt
Chapter One
Year 2546
The Dark Continental Republic
I hated the heat of the desert.
The mask on my face was confining, filling with the condensation of each breath I dragged into my lungs and forced back out in shallow gasps. The goggles over my eyes should have protected me from the yellow and grey cloud of Chemsense the Dark Continental Republic Army had unleashed on our battalion, but I could feel my eyes watering, the liquid gathering in pools that threatened to make my skin too damp to maintain the protective seal.
I was on my knees and I couldn’t remember when I’d stopped walking. I wasn’t far enough away yet. The shouts of the DCR soldiers—and the sonicpops of their weapons as they picked off States soldiers—were muffled but still too close. My body tilted, and I planted my hands into the sand without thought. I collapsed into the dune when my right shoulder ground together, bone against bone, tendons ripping. I thought those DCR goons had only managed to dislocate it, but this pain was worse than that—a grinding impact of racking, vision-blackening pain that didn’t ebb even when I flopped onto my back and let my arm lie unmoving in the scorching sand.
My mantra, pounded into me through years of training, repeated in my head as I consciously stilled my body.
One breath.
Inhale.
Hesitation is my enemy.
Solitude my ally.
Death the only real victory.
Exhale.
A ferocious hot wind whipped around and over me, driving sand into my open wounds, like a million simultaneous pricks of a pin. If the wind kept up like this it was going to drive away the lingering cloud of Chemsense. And I needed the thick, toxic cover if I was going to make it over the dune and out of sight of the DCR forces.
If I was going to survive, I had to keep moving.
My body was drenched in sweat—mine and the ripe remnants of the soldiers I’d fought hand to hand. My ribs on the right side were crushed and with each breath I wondered if this would be the inhalation that sent a spear of bone into the soft, vulnerable flesh of my lung, collapsing it and killing me before backup could arrive.
I ripped the transport chip out of the hidden pocket where it was sewed into my tattered uniform. My thumb hovered over the button as my mind warred with the instinct just to press it. But I couldn’t simply transport out of this clusterfuck. The transition would
be too much of a shock to my mangled body.
If I was going to succeed, I had to keep moving.
The thought was all that propelled me. There was no desire to survive left in me. No want of more from life. It was my orders, my mission, that forced me to sit up, shift to my knees and stumble to my feet.
My right arm hung loosely at my side. My firing arm. Without it I could never be a sniper again. And that should have been the least of my concerns, but I couldn’t silence the part of me that contended that death would be preferential over never shooting my rifle again.
I staggered, then caught myself before falling again. The pain of my disconnected shoulder was almost too much to bear—a jolt of red, angry agony that sliced across my vision with each step forward. Silver droplets swam in my peripheral eyesight, a sign that my already throbbing head was on the verge of erupting.
I trudged through the unending sand of the DCR desert because I had no other choice. To stop was to fail. And I didn’t fail. The sand felt thicker than the detritus of an American Federation riverbed. My feet sank deeper than into the suck of a United Union bog. I moved slower than the day I’d taken my first tentative steps off the hospital bed in the States when I was five years old and my legs had nearly been taken by the sonic explosion that had destroyed the only home I would ever know.
And I knew this desert was worse than all of those places because I was dying.
I was closer to death than I’d been in the People’s Republic of Singapore the night Armise took a blade to my throat.
Armise.
The name rushed through me like endorphins, heating my already boiling blood. I barely had enough brain cells left active and firing to stand, let alone move, but my hate for Armise fed me like a vial of surge emptied into my bloodstream.
That I’d fucked him more times in the last year than I wanted to count didn’t matter.
That there had been a part of me anticipating he would be on the ground in the DCR when I arrived was like a psychotic practical joke.
