by Anthology
“As soon as this last adjustment is finished, I’m going to…” His hot gaze swept down her body.
“Hand me the amp meter, Henderson,” she said with a grin.
He slapped the tool into her outstretched hand, closed his hand around hers and swept her into his embrace. Their lips met in an open kiss full of heat and promise.
Lorie had to push him away, or she’d never finish the job. “Keep it in your pants. I’m almost done.”
He stepped back with a growl. “Hurry up.”
She chuckled at his impatience.
One last check, a prayer to whatever gods might exist, and she stepped back from the glowing energy crystal. The ship shuddered with renewed power.
“As much as I’d love to get naked with you again, it’s now or never, Henderson.”
His expression serious, he nodded with understanding and drew her into a tight embrace. “Let’s strap in and give it a go.”
They shared one last lingering kiss, perhaps the last one they’d ever share, and reluctantly broke apart.
The spacecraft rumbled and shook as Lorie coerced it toward light speed. With no celestial markers to judge their speed against, she had to trust the digital readout on the pilot console. Still, she squinted into the blackness.
Her heart hammered in her chest when she spied a fleck of light. “Look!” She glanced over at Dodd to watch his reaction. “Do you see the strip of light?”
His brows lifted in surprise. “I see it.”
Shaking violently in her seat, she adjusted their trajectory and aimed for freedom, praying the ship would hold together long enough to break free.
After a few interminable minutes, she frowned. “We’re not getting closer.” She glanced down at the instrument panel. Their momentum wouldn’t last much longer. “Damn it, we’re not going to make it!”
Dodd cursed beneath his breath.
She looked over at him with fierce determination. He looked back at her, sorrow softening his eyes, along with the impression that it had been hopeless from the start.
“I’m not giving up!” she shouted at him. “I’m going to give it everything we’ve got.” Her fingers gripped the thruster.
“Don’t.” His palm slapped on top of her hand. “You’ll break the ship apart.”
Anger flared. “What difference does it make now?” she yelled.
The engines choked.
“No!” Tears welled in her eyes. She shoved the thrust lever forward, giving the engines all the power the ship had left.
The ship sputtered into a stall.
She sat back in her chair, stunned. The light disappeared.
They were going to die, gasping their last breath in a tiny metal shell no one would ever find.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t think. She stared into the blackness, seeing nothing but the reflection of her distraught face and the ship’s interior behind her.
Her gaze locked on the cryotubes.
“There’s still hope,” she said lifelessly, unstrapping the restraints and leaving her seat. “Somebody, someday, is going to solve the mystery of black holes. Who knows what they’ll discover when they find a way inside.” She strode toward the cryotubes, glancing back at Dodd’s bleak expression as she pressed the chamber release button. “I’m not giving up on us, Dodd.”
He nodded and rose from his seat.
The curved panel on her cryotube slid open.
A shocked scream tore from her throat. She jumped backward and bumped into Dodd’s solid chest.
Strong hands latched on to her shaking arms. “What the—”
“Ohmigod, ohmigod.” She couldn’t stop staring at the preserved body inside the chamber. Her body.
Her heart pounded in her chest. “Am… Am I dead?”
With profound dread, she swung her gaze to the life-support gauges, all nonfunctional because they didn’t friggin’ need them!
She broke free of Dodd’s hold and spun on him. “Are you—” She hit the release button on his chamber before he could stop her.
She couldn’t breathe. He looked so peaceful. So still.
“Holy fuck,” he said softly.
Lorie stared at Dodd in disbelief, the Dodd she thought was alive, but couldn’t be. Which meant she wasn’t living either, at least not in a physical sense. She pressed shaking fingertips against her temple. “What happened to us?”
Dodd didn’t reply. He pulled her close and banded his arms around her. “Do you feel my heat? Can you hear my heart beat? We’re not dead, Lorie. I don’t know what we are, but it’s not that.”
A chill raced over her skin. “Could this—us—be a dream?” Another one of my wild fantasies about you, Dodd.
“Yours or mine?” Dodd asked with skepticism. “’Cause the last two hours seemed pretty damn real to me.” He raised his hand to her shoulder and glanced at the raw cut on the back of his hand.
“Me, too.” She sighed, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her cheek to his chest, listening to his rapid heartbeat, at a loss to make sense of it all. “Purgatory,” she whispered with dread. “My father warned me working undercover with bad guys would—” Her fingernails dug into his warm, solid back.
“There’s no point in making yourself sick with wild conjectures. Whatever the situation, it looks like we’re still in stasis, safe and unharmed, with enough liquid nitrogen for another five years.” Keeping one hand wrapped securely around her, he leaned forward and closed the cryotube doors. “Our subconscious is free. Is that so bad?”
Better than their minds imprisoned, she supposed. She looked up into his resolute face. “What do we do now?”
A devilish grin slowly lit his face. “We seem to have a lot of time on our hands, Freckle Face. I plan on making the most of it.” One of his hands slid down her back and pressed her pelvis against the bulge in his pants. “I have a lot of ideas for filling the hours.”
She melted into his embrace. “Do you think we’ll remember any of this when we’re roused from our frozen sleep?”
“Mmm. I hope so,” he said, dragging a moist kiss from her temple to her cheek. “If not, I’ll seduce you again. I’ve had you in my sights for a while and I’m not backing off.”
“Are you planning to break your one-night stand trend?” She said it lightly, but she needed to know.
His brows dipped together. “Why would I go back to that when I have you?”
A slow smile broke the tension in her face. “Sounds good to me.”
Epilogue
“What is the status of the transport crew who sent the distress call?” the commander of the IDC ship, Unity, asked the medical cyborg.
“Cryonic thaw is complete,” he replied in his computerized voice.
“Good.”
“Their bodies are healthy, but they remain unconscious. I have tried every method to revive their mental state, sir.”
He made a small incision on the back of the male’s hand and watched it clot. “All body functions operate normally. It appears the IDC placed a telepathic block in their minds in case of mission interference. Fairly standard procedure five years ago, sir.”
Vaguely familiar with the IDC’s controversial safety measures, the commander nodded. “The ship’s log indicates they were headed for Pluto IV. Something—or someone—knocked them way off course into uncharted territory. They’re lucky our new long-range sensors picked them up. Who knows how long they’d be drifting out here, otherwise.” He studied the duo’s bio readings scrolling across the headboard of each cot, not that he really understood much. “What can you tell me about this mind game the IDC has instigated?”
“The block is deep and strong. Based on their similar brain wave patterns, I believe it has connected them together in some way. A key phrase is probably required to rouse them.”
“You haven’t found a computer file or anyone at IDC who knows the pass phrase?”
“No luck yet, sir.” The medic adjusted the brain scan band on the male’s head. “I
nquiries are difficult because I cannot locate identity records for either individual. It’s as if their transport never existed.”
“Or the IDC has reasons for not sharing,” the commander muttered. He took a hard look at the pair lying on the med cots. Speculation about the unidentified crew ran rampant through his brain. They could’ve been mercenaries, political refugees, prisoners, undercover operatives or in the witness protection program. The IDC had more secrets than all the other galactic agencies put together.
The cyborg’s electronic eye rotated from his patients to the commander. “Instructions?”
The commander hesitated. It seemed unlikely that the crewmates would wake on their own, but if they did, he couldn’t afford any more distractions. The ship required his full attention. “Put them back into suspension and store them in the hold.” He clasped his hands behind his back, comfortable with his decision. “We’ll hand them over to the IDC at Space Station 5423 and let them figure out who they are. We refuel there in three months.”
He turned on his heel and strode toward the door. “Possibly sooner if we can’t fix the engine shudder problem.”
Passion’s Song
Jory Strong
Chapter One
Restlessness rode Raeder du’Faerin. It howled along his nerve endings with the same force as the sandstorm battering and rubbing against the outer walls of the tribe’s tent city.
He wasn’t the only one on edge.
Men he claimed as friends looked up, their expressions ranging from guarded to hopeful as he passed where they gathered in small groups, waiting—as he waited—for the council to finish its contemplations and send word to those who’d be lucky enough to claim a female, a third joined to a pairing that had already proven itself stable and useful to the tribe.
Among the Faerin, there was no petitioning for a joining as there was among some of the other tribes on Adjara. The Faerin elders met in council, listened to reports from the scouts—men who traveled to other planets in order to locate and identify the females who should be brought into the tribe—then decided which bonded pair of males would take her as their third.
The council’s decisions were final. Its word, law. And the matching of a given female to a pairing wasn’t subject to negotiation, only to acceptance or rejection.
Raeder had never heard of anyone turning down the chance to add a third, though occasionally a pair returned to their home world without the female they’d gone to claim. It was not an outcome he understood or found acceptable. It didn’t matter whether the females were initially willing to be brought to Adjara or not—in the end they all made a place for themselves in the tribe and most found great happiness.
As he drew near the tent that was home, Raeder’s hand went to the erection hidden beneath the loose folds of the robe he wore during those months when the tribe lived in the desert. Anticipation turned his thoughts away from the council elders and their deliberations.
Raeder knew even as he reached for the tent flap that he’d find Haven inside—waiting not on the council’s decision, but for him to return home so they could spend the time when the sandstorm raged making love.
He tightened his grip on his penis, steeled himself against revealing any weakness. It was a game they played, a test of dominance and masculinity, each trying to make the other beg first. And though he was most often the victor, he made sure Haven had no cause to complain.
They’d been together for years, knew every inch of skin, every sound of pleasure—and yet still Raeder’s cock throbbed when he stepped through the tent opening and saw Haven sitting on their sleeping pallet.
Dark eyelashes framed gray eyes guaranteed to inspire fantasies of fucking. And unlike most of the Faerin men who wore their hair short, Haven’s was a black mass of waves flowing down his back to stop at his hips.
Raeder had wanted Haven from the moment he first saw him at the spring gathering. He’d known the attraction was more than physical even then.
“Come here,” he said, his voice harsh with command as he unbelted the robe and it slid to the floor, leaving him standing in only a loin covering.
Haven smiled at having correctly guessed the mood Raeder would return home in. He flopped backward in a lazy sprawl so his loosely fitted trousers settled against his hardened cock, revealing its state and tormenting Raeder with it.
“You know I don’t obey those kinds of orders,” he said, sliding his hand beneath the waistband of his pants and wrapping his fingers around his penis. Reveling in the tightening of Raeder’s face and the pant that escaped before Raeder clenched his jaw against another one.
Haven slowly pumped his hand up and down his shaft, shivered as exquisite sensation shot through him. The only thing better would be Raeder’s mouth, and if this played out the way he’d planned, that’s what he would get. He lifted his hips on a moan, letting Raeder see and hear how needy he already was, knowing that only rough, dominating sex would take the edge off Raeder as they waited for the elders to finish their contemplations.
Lust pooled in Haven’s belly, fueled by fantasies of sharing a woman with Raeder, of making love to her together and separately. He imagined her soft and submissive, delicately featured and wonderfully curved as she knelt in front of him and took him in her mouth as Raeder watched, as Raeder mounted her.
Arousal leaked from the slit in his cock head. Haven used his free hand to push the light trousers down, watched Raeder’s hand tighten on his cloth-covered penis before taking a step, and then another—silently conceding a measure of defeat as he closed the distance between them.
Haven’s nipples were pebbled points, a weakness Raeder wasted no time in taking advantage of. Masculine fingers captured one nipple. A mouth covered the other, sending icy-hot bolts of lust straight to Haven’s cock.
Raeder straddled him, bringing potent heat and a masculine scent. Haven’s hips lifted off the mattress in a silent plea, with the urgent desire to touch his cock to Raeder’s and rub against it until they were both panting.
Haven freed his own penis in favor of stripping away Raeder’s loin covering and cupping the heavy testicles in one hand, circling the thick, hard length of Raeder’s shaft with the other. Teeth clamped down in reaction, fingers became punishing on nipples that had been trained so pain and pleasure blurred into a perfect merging.
The silken crest of Haven’s cock grew wetter. He moaned, bucked when Raeder increased the torment to his nipples in a silent command that forced Haven’s hands back to his own penis and tight ball sac.
Haven’s buttocks clenched as he fucked through the fist of his hand in quick frantic jerks. It’d be so easy to give in, to utter the single word necessary to signal his capitulation, his acceptance of the submissive role.
Haven fought against saying please. His buttocks clenched and his fist tightened mercilessly around his cock. He refused to come so quickly, to spill his seed across his chest and abdomen like a man with his first lover.
He wanted to draw their play out, to make Raeder fight for his victory. Then it’d be so much sweeter for both of them.
Mindless lust and the bestial urge to dominate and fuck roared through Raeder. He knew he was being managed, that Haven was giving him an outlet for the frustration he felt at having no control over the council’s decision and whether they’d gain a third, but Raeder didn’t care.
He gave Haven’s nipple another rough tweak, another stinging bite and felt savage pleasure in the way Haven jerked, moaned, fought not to beg just as hard as he fought to keep from gaining release from the use of his hand.
Raeder was torn between twin desires, to kiss upward and ravage Haven’s mouth, or to kiss downward and take Haven’s cock. Raw hunger twisted and clawed in his chest and belly, poured into his testicles and made his foreskin retract in anticipation of possessing Haven in a way as carnal as it was intimate.
He moved downward, knowing if his lips pressed to Haven’s, if his tongue slid against Haven’s in a mimicry of fucking, then he w
ouldn’t be able to stop himself from settling his weight on Haven, from rubbing his cock against Haven’s until all it would take was canted hips and spread thighs, the promise of ecstasy and it would be all over.
Beneath him Haven started panting, moaning as Raeder used his teeth, his lips, the wet lash of his tongue to build the passion. The veins on the underside of Haven’s shaft stood out, dark purple against dusky brown skin as the tip glistened with arousal.
Haven’s hands speared through Raeder’s hair as if afraid Raeder would stray from his course and fail to take him in his mouth. Another time, Raeder might have drawn the torment out longer, but at the moment he was a prisoner to his own frantic need to hear Haven’s shout of release, to experience his own.
With a groan, Raeder curled his fingers around Haven’s penis, felt it pulse in greeting as an answering throb of pleasure had his own cock bobbing, licking his abdomen in a sensual caress. They knew each other so well, were rarely separated from one another for more than a few hours on any given day, loved with the depth of a pair committed to each other for the duration of their lives, bound by law as well as in body and soul.
Raeder tightened his grip on Haven’s cock, stroked from base to tip as his other hand found the soft globes of Haven’s testicles. The dual assault made Haven arch and cry out, tighten his grip in Raeder’s hair and say the words guaranteed to free Raeder from the tight leash of control.
“Please. Please suck me.”
White heat scorched Raeder. But he didn’t give in immediately.
He punished Haven with his tongue, rasping and rubbing it over Haven’s engorged penis until Haven was shuddering, held on the razor’s edge of release. And then he took Haven’s cock into his mouth and started sucking, controlling the depth as Haven thrust upward in a violent frenzy that soon ended in a cry of total surrender.
