The Boss & The Intern: A Single Dad Next Door Romance

by Tia Wylder

  Interstellar Security had learned that the Terran Union had been targeted by members of a hostile alien power, the Dhurians. These aliens operated by capturing their foes and sealing them in body sacs containing an immersive bio-agent that penetrated the cells of the victim and overtook the nervous system. To meet the Dhurian threat, Interstellar Command had set up training units in space stations at strategic points in Terran-controlled space. In this training units, Stellarforce personnel had been physically enhanced against outside control and to make their nervous systems compatible with advanced battle exosuits that would make them living weapons against the Dhurians. Jay was a member of one of these elite units, selected after a rigorous physical and mental vetting process. He had been in training at the Sigma Pegasii Station when it came under surprise attack by the Dhurians, who boarded the Station and began to assimilate the personnel. In the battle against the aliens, Jay was cocooned, and the Dhurian bio-agent started to penetrate his suit. The bio-agent contained amoeba-like cellular components that disrupted the interface between Jay and the suit and caused his violent, hallucinatory trauma. Jay’s training and conditioning had thrown off the Dhurian influence enough to allow him to escape his cocoon, but in a mentally compromised state. An extreme and instinctive fight-or-flight response had taken him over, in which Jay retreated into a Transit port and set it to lock on to any outside communications signal and send him to the point of reception. The Transit port found the holo-transmission signal of the concert being beamed to Tia’s birthday party and sent him to a Transit Bay orbiting Sigma Cygni. In a hallucinatory state, Jay had seen the Security personnel at the Colony as Dhurians and engaged them in battle. He commandeered a shuttle, took it down to the planet, took an aircycle stored on board, and fled onto the planet itself to find cover, inadvertently flying right into Tia’s party before being captured.

  The good news was that the exosuit protected Jay from the effects of making a hyperjump without a spacesuit, and the suit itself was capable of weathering the jump as well—but the amoeba-like parasites infesting the suit were not so lucky. They died instantaneously, leaving Jay alive but temporarily, violently insane.

  Knowing what had happened to him had brought back Jay’s entire life to him, slamming it all into his head with a force that felt to him like the blast of the concussion grenades with which Colonial personnel had finally brought him down at the pavilion. His cognitive and memory enhancements kicked in, helping him with the process of filling in the vast empty space in his mind. He remembered everything, including the things he could still do even without the exosuit, which the Colony had impounded and was keeping under even tighter security than the surveillance placed on Jay himself. His enhancements and training enabled Jay to operate both physically and mentally at an almost superhuman level. And because of the interface between his nervous system and his exosuit, which was still in effect even when Jay was not wearing it, Jay had other capabilities that the Colony did not suspect—and which Jay had not disclosed. He had kept them to himself, partly because of his training to keep them a secret, and because Jay suspected he might have need of them.

  When Colonial Security first apprehended him, they had kept Jay in a detention cell. While he was there, he had taken advantage his neural enhancements. He had discreetly, mentally accessed the computer systems in the detention facility and sent the fingers of his mind out into the systems of the entire settlement. He knew the complete layout of his surroundings. He knew that Colonial Security had given his exosuit its own detention cell, an accommodation that amused him. Now that his identity and background were known, he had been provided with an empty apartment in which to stay until Stellarforce issued him transfer orders—or decided what discipline to hold on him for desertion. Jay crashed onto the bed in the apartment and fell asleep for several hours until Colony administrative staff awoke him to bring him a meal. Lying on the bed in the apartment, Jay now recalled his entire life: his family, friends, and upbringing back on Earth, his enrollment at Stellarforce Academy and eventual commission in the Stellaforce itself as one of its most promising young officers, his selection for the Enhanced Operatives Program and his assignment to Sigma Pegasii—everything. Breathing deeply, replaying all the facts of his life and what had brought him here to Sigma Cygni, Jay slowly came back into himself and felt like a whole person again. He was not a cipher, not a blank slate, not an enigma. He was a young human male, just out of boyhood, with a past and future, feelings, and needs. And gradually, one particular need came to the forefront of his mind.

  That girl, the one whose party he had crashed—that Tia Swift. Now feeling human again after hours of doubt and confusion and no memory, what came pouring into his mind and his feelings was the memory of the one thing that he loved even better than being a member of the Force and serving his home planet and it all now coalesced around Tia. Even more than service and duty, Jay Goodwill loved sex: the feeling of his body commingling in the deepest, most profound and powerful ways with the body of a warm and willing girl. He had bedded plenty of girls in his twenty-one years. His looks and his uniform had brought him the attention of all the young women he wanted. He had known many a girl’s bed and many a long and exuberant night of joining loins with girls eager to have him inside them. Now, returning fully to himself, Jay wanted nothing more than to return to what made him feel most alive. His head was filled with the lovely face and the limber and leotard-clad form of Tia Swift. And it was not just the way she looked. It was the fire she exhibited when she came up to him in the gym and confronted him about what he did to her party. It was the way that fire simmered down into a warmth of compassion when she learned he had lost his memory and himself. It was the way she looked at him with such concern even after he had so terrified her—and the feeling that charged through both their bodies when he touched her. Jay wanted that feeling back, and more.

  Jay’s interrogation of the settlement’s computer systems had given him certain specific pieces of information that he had effortlessly and perfectly committed to memory: the address of the Chief Administrator’s home, where Tia Swift lived with her father. He even knew exactly where her room was. And accessing the computers in Merrill Swift’s office told him that Tia’s father was busy this evening, conferring with Chief Administrators of other colonies that lay in outlying areas of Terran space as Stellarforce and the Union briefed them about the Dhurian situation. If Tia were home tonight, she might well be home alone, which would suit his needs ideally. Outside, night had fallen, which was good. Though he was no longer a prisoner, it stood to reason he should not call too much attention to himself to go where he wanted to go—and do what he wanted to do.

  Chapter Six

  When the door sounded at the Chief Administrator’s dwelling, Tia was curious. After the melee of her birthday party, her friends had offered to throw her another party tonight to make up for it, but Tia had declined. She decided that after all that madness and how scared everyone had been, tonight she wanted just to have a quiet, mellow evening at home. But when the front door slid open, she saw that her evening was once again about to become something other than what she expected it to be.

  “Can I come in?” asked Jay.

  Scarcely believing he was actually at her door—that he had actually come to her house—Tia let him in. And there he was—every gorgeous inch of him, now dressed in a jacket, pants, and boots that she guessed the Colonial Administrators had printed for him.

  There was an awkward pause before Tia found the voice to ask him, “Do they…my father and the other Admins…know you’re here?”

  “No,” said Jay. “They’re not watching me anymore. They’ve kind of released me on my own recognizance. They’ve been in touch with Command; they know my story. They know I won’t do anything.”

  “What is your story?” Tia asked.

  “That’s what I came here to tell you,” he said. “I actually shouldn’t tell you; I’d probably get a reprimand and a mark on my record for it. They mig
ht even throw me in the Stockade. But after what happened to you, what you went through…I thought you deserved to know. Since, you know, it pretty much struck home for you, actually. You can’t tell anyone until it goes out through official channels. But I thought you deserve to know first after the way I scared you. Can we sit down?”

  They sat on the sofa facing the sunken fireplace in the middle of the living room. And Jay told her the whole story. Tia took it in, by turns amazed and frightened and stunned. She listened quietly to all of it, and watched him carefully as he did. During his telling of the story of what happened at Sigma Pegasii and how he came to Sigma Cygni, he remembered the Dhurians—not just the fact of the attack; not just what they did to him, cocooning him for assimilation and use as a weapon against his own people. At last he remembered them.

  Their shape was all that they had in common with humans. The Dhurians did not speak, at least not audibly. They were either telepathic, or they communicated cybernetically on some channel or frequency to which Stellarforce had no access. As far as the humans battling them were concerned, the Dhurians only moved and acted. Their eyes were luminous red ellipses set into flat faces with slits for nostrils and mouths. Their bodies looked as if they had been formed of purplish grey clay. Each of them apparently had a particle-beam weapon built into its right arm; they could all discharge energy bolts right from their arms the way Jay and his fellow members of the exosuit training program could fire from the gauntlets of their suits. The battle on board the station was terrible, raging through corridors and decks and chambers, casualties mounting on both sides. Then Jay remembered the terrible moment that a Dhurian unfurled its cocoon from its non-blasting arm and enveloped him with it. He recalled the terrible sensation of struggling against the membranous sac in which he was abruptly sealed, while it filled with the noisome bio-agent that would penetrate first his suit and then his body—if he let it. After that came the slimy, churning, all-enfolding darkness, the desperation to get out, the flailing and the blasting inside the cocoon, the rupturing of his membranous prison—and the madness.

  Hunched on the edge of the sofa, staring into the flames in the sunken fireplace as if he were staring into the battle of Sigma Pegasii and the violence and violation that still haunted him, Jay said, “First I felt myself about to lose everything. Then I felt myself lose my mind. I couldn’t see anything the way it really was. All I could see was them. All around me—them. If it was really them or my own people, I could only see them. And I had to get away. And where I ended up was here.” He looked over at her. “You know the rest.”

  At first, Tia did not know what to say. She only sat watching him, seeing the play of emotions across his face, the most handsome she had ever seen. She thought nothing should ever cause pain to anyone who looked like that. No one so beautiful should ever know a moment of hurt.

  “I’m sorry, Tia,” said Jay. “I’m sorry for what I did. If I could take it back, if I could make it never have happened, I would. I could have hurt you. I could have…I don't even like to think what I could have done to you. But I’m sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Tia said earnestly. “You didn’t know what you were doing. That bio-thing, whatever it was, got into your suit which was linked up to your mind. You weren’t responsible. And you were still strong. You still fought it.”

  “I signed up for the exosuit program, went through the changes the Stellarforce medics made to my body, my brain, because I wanted to serve and protect, like nobody else could. I volunteered for that, competed for that. I wanted that. But the Dhurians…they were turning me into something else. Something I didn’t want to be, something no human should be.”

  “And you fought it, and you won,” said Tia. “You were stronger than what they tried to do to you.” She looked at him as if to underscore her meaning. “You won, Jay.”

  Tia’s hand rested on the sofa, just inches from him. Jay saw her hand there, so soft, so warm, and could not stop himself. He moved his own hand from his knee where it rested, and slid it over the few inches between them and put it on hers. A feeling passed between them like a sudden electric tingling. Tia kept her hand right where it was, together with his. She looked down at their hands together, then back up at him. “I never could have lived with myself,” Jay said, “if I came out of that and found out I’d hurt you. I’d never want to see anything hurt you, ever.”

  The tingle of their touch became a flash of warmth inside Tia’s body at the sound of him speaking words so much like the ones she had thought. “I don’t think you could ever hurt me, Jay,” she said softly.

  “Not now,” he replied. “And …not ever. I could never do anything to hurt you, Tia.”

  Gently, Jay went from just touching her hand to taking it in his. Now the warmth spread between the two of them.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

  Quietly startled, Tia blinked at the question. “N-no…I don’t,” she managed to answer, her heart fluttering. Then, she ventured, “Is there…a girl? Someone back home?”

  “There hasn’t been for a while,” said Jay. “Not since I signed on with the exosuit program. I haven’t been with anyone, haven’t…done it…since then.”

  Tia’s heart fluttered all the harder. “Oh,” she simply replied.

  “You’ve never had a guy do it, have you?” he asked. “I mean, I’m not judging. Maybe I’m assuming wrong…”

  “I never have,” she replied, surprised at both the quickness and the frankness of her answer. On one level she was surprised at how open and forthright she was with him. On another, she thought that if there were anyone on any world with whom she could be open and forthright, it was Jay Goodwill.

  “I would never, ever hurt you, Tia,” Jay said. “And I’d never ask you to let me do anything you didn’t want. But ever since I realized what happened at your party and what I could have done to you there… I want to make it right, Tia. I want to make it better, make you feel something better than I made you feel then. That is…if you’d let me. It’s up to you.” In spite of his words—and the fact that he meant them—Jay felt a hot rush of blood and the stirring of growth and hardness in his loins. And in his mind he called out to her, Please say yes.

  Tia did not answer in words. She moved herself a little closer to him on the sofa, making his blood rush down below to make him harder yet. And with the hand that Jay was not holding, Tia touched his face. She touched the face that had filled her mind with his incredible handsomeness in all the time that had passed since her disastrous party. It was the most beautiful thing she had seen that night. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Jay closed his eyes at her touch at first, then he opened them again and fixed her with a look as if she were everything in the universe.

  “I want you, Tia,” he said. “Will you let me—please?”

  Surprising herself again, and again feeling a certitude that it was truly right, Tia half-whispered, “Yes.”

  In the next second, there was no space between them at all. He came all the way to her and drew her into his arms. He brought his face to hers; his face—and his lips. And he took Tia’s mouth in a kiss unlike any other kiss she had ever felt in her young life; a kiss that felt as if she were being not only kissed—but claimed.

  The kisses melted from one into the next, and Tia took in the urgent press of his lips and the slipping and sliding of his tongue and wanted more and more of him. In the midst of the kisses, and between them, Jay shed his jacket and his upper leotard, rendering himself half-naked. For the first time since he began kissing her, Tia could see his body—at least from the waist up—in all its glory. In the flickering of the firelight, he was the perfect boy, the perfect man, and a god all at once. She had never seen such lean, beautifully cut muscles in all her life. And she knew that he would only get better. There was still the matter of what awaited her inside those slacks. Sensing the desire radiating from her, Jay slipped off his boots and the slacks, sitting beside her now in just the bot
tom of the leotard. Then he went for her clothes.

  Tia’s blouse, slippers, and capris soon lay on the floor beside the sofa, leaving her clad only in her panties and the supports on her bosom. Jay quickly had those off her as well, and there she sat, naked with a man for the first time. He stripped away his leotard bottom and revealed the rest of himself to her. The thing she most wanted to see fell into view, long and thick, pulsing and ready. Jay climbed up to put one knee on the sofa and keep one foot on the floor, presenting his amazing boy-manhood to Tia. He took her by one hand and kissed it, then moved that hand between his legs where Tia’s entire being thrilled with the feeling of touching an erection for the very first time.

  Jay whispered to her, “Stroke it. Feel it. Think how it’ll feel in you.” And Tia did. She wrapped it fully in her hand and moved her hand up and down the shaft, feeling it surge at the way she held it. She would have whimpered at the exquisite sensation if Jay had not leaned forward and taken her mouth again in another long, deep kiss—and eased her down onto her back on the sofa.

  Lying half on top of her, Jay kissed her again and again, repeating that deep mingling of their mouths and their tongues, claiming her ever more with every kiss. Then he moved down to her neck and her shoulders—and then to her breasts.

  For a moment Tia was afraid, the first time she had been afraid since he showed up at her door. Jay had done it to other girls, likely many other girls, before her. What if somehow he found some part of her inadequate, wanting, compared to all of them? What if her breasts, or her body, or her inexperience proved to be somehow not enough for him? She need not have worried. He filled his hands with her breasts, cupping and squeezing, and from his touch, she could feel herself filling him with delight. The anxiety ran out of her like water pouring from a stream into a river, and she shut her eyes and sighed a long, sweet sigh at the feeling of him first cupping and kneading her breasts, then taking one nipple into his mouth. Tia wanted to cry out. She moaned softly at the rising pleasure of Jay sucking her nipple. The pleasure fell with his release of that nipple, and rose again with his licking and sucking at the other. Her soft moans went on with his continued attention to her bosom. Then she felt him start to kiss his way lower, down her stomach, towards his ultimate destination.