by A. C. Ellas
The yearning for more was still very much there, at least on Nick’s part, but sublimated into a slow discovery of each other’s personalities that was almost enough. Nick couldn’t lay eyes on Cai without feeling at least some urge to caress, fondle, kiss, suck…more. He let Cai see his desire, but he didn’t push. He had time and Cai was shy. He was stuck with what he’d known from the start—the slow approach was best.
Nick dreamed of Cai often, imagining Cai mounting him and pumping his long stick in and out of his body. He wanted to feel Cai’s meat moving inside him, spreading him open and using him hard. He wanted to cuddle with Cai and kiss and lick his feet, suck on his toes, worship his cock and make it very clear to Cai that he was loved. More often than not, he dreamed of himself collared and chained to Cai’s bed. The slave dreams were especially erotic because he never knew what to expect during those dreams, but they always ended the way he liked, with Cai using him hard.
Every chance he got, he touched the crystal in Cai’s palm. He wanted Cai to know how he felt. He wanted Cai to get comfortable reading his thoughts. He wanted to sleep with a telepath; he knew he had to get Cai used to him. He had nothing to hide from Cai. Every time he let Cai into his head, he hoped that this would be the time that Cai threw him down and took him.
As careful as he tried to be, his attentions toward Cai hadn’t gone entirely unobserved. One evening, as they unwound in the officer’s mess, Cortez quietly said, “You know, the Guild won’t take it well if you do manage to seduce Cai.”
“What?” Nick looked at him sharply. “Who says—”
“I’m not blind, Captain. Give me some credit here, I haven’t said a word to anyone, but it’s pretty obvious you’re spending a lot more time with Cai than strictly necessary.”
“We’re friends.”
“Astrogators don’t have friends.” Cortez snorted at him. “Be careful, Nick. You don’t want to end up like me.”
“Like you, how?” Nick rubbed the side of his head as he considered his XO. “You mean, your lack of promotion had something to do with a Gator?”
“Nah, in my case, it was an admiral’s daughter. I was quite the young stud back then, just promoted to commander’s rank and assigned as the XO to the Tiger Shark and celebrating my promotion at Orbit Control Station’s O-club. She was a sweet, pretty little thing and we had a few drinks, shared a few dances under the stars and ended up in my bunk in transient quarters. Her daddy, Admiral Fuentes, called in an alert when his little girl didn’t come home and sent the MPs door to door until she was found. He couldn’t claim rape, Socorro told him she’d been willing, and she was of legal age, being twenty, but, somehow, there’s always someone more qualified than me when it’s promotion time.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Nick finally said.
“Captain, fair doesn’t enter into it. This is the Space Corps. If you wanted fair, you shoulda stayed Earthside.”
* * * *
After another very enjoyable meal leavened with mutual sexual frustration that they dared not take any further, Cai retired to his bed, closed his eyes and revisited his favorite dream as he stroked himself.
Cai strolled through the dusty marketplace of Merope Four, called Sparta by the locals. It was the one planet in the galaxy where slavery was openly legal. The United Republic’s congress officially frowned at the custom, and every few years, one of the politicians hemmed and hawed and tried to force Sparta into giving up the practice, but the planet was one of the major suppliers of Synde as well as other space-age pharmaceuticals, and the planetary government had no problem withholding their products until the United Republic caved and once more turned a blind eye to the slave markets.
The slaves were displayed in a variety of manners but always naked so that the buyer could see what he was getting. Nick was about halfway down a long platform where the merchandise was displayed standing, with their arms extended up over their heads, chained at the wrist to dangling manacles. In addition, their ankles were chained to the floor in such a way as to prevent them from closing their legs.
Nick had a beautiful body—lean, without a trace of fat, with well-defined, bulging muscles and six-pack abs. His uncut penis was long and thick even flaccid, his large balls nicely delineated in their tight sac. Cai stroked his package, enjoying the way Nick gasped and rose up on his tiptoes in reaction to the caress. The penis grew under Cai’s encouraging hand until it was a full twelve inches of curved beauty. Cai bent down and tasted it, swirling his tongue over the head and slit.
Nick moaned, his body shuddering, and Cai slid his left hand down the long, curved shaft to the balls, which he cupped and rolled in his hand. He slurped the head into his mouth and sucked on it hard, the fingers of his right hand stimulating the shaft further. Nick’s groin pressed forward, and Cai allowed more of the cock into his mouth, still sucking while his hands played with the rest.
“You’re doing it backward, Astrogator,” said the oily voice of the slaver appearing at his elbow. “The slave’s supposed to suck you, not you, him.”
“I just wanted a taste,” Cai replied, releasing Nick’s package.
“Best not to give stud sex slaves any ideas.”
“How much for him?” Cai patted Nick’s bulging thigh, ignoring the slave’s whimper at being let down so close to completion.
“For you, Astrogator, only a thousand credits.”
“A thousand?” Cai shook his head in mock disbelief. “You must be joking. No slave’s worth that much; I could buy a house for less. Five hundred.”
“You would bankrupt me! Where else will you find such a fit specimen? I feed my slaves on the finest of foods, give them the best of conditioning training to make sure they’re healthy, I even train them to serve you in the bedroom so that they won’t fail to please.” The slaver did something with the remote on his belt and Nick was lowered into a kneeling position. “Try him, Astrogator. Have him suck your cock and then tell me if you think he’s only worth five hundred!”
Cai opened his pants to release his erection. He looked down at Nick and stepped closer. Nick strained, pulling against his chains to reach Cai faster. Cai took the final step to bring his package within Nick’s reach, and he gasped happily when Nick’s tongue lapped over his cock. Nick licked him thoroughly, as if he was savoring the taste of it, and Cai watched him with pleased amazement. Nick was good at this, very good. “Seven hundred,” he offered.
“Nine,” suggested the slaver.
When Nick swallowed his cock and sucked, looking up to meet his gaze, Cai almost came from the excitement of it right then and there. He controlled himself and smiled down at Nick. The slave looked so beautiful with his mouth full of cock. He pumped his hips and groaned when Nick bobbed his head in a matching rhythm. He felt his control slipping, and he reached down and gripped Nick by the hair as he pummeled Nick’s mouth with his meat. His orgasm was shockingly strong, wresting a cry of sheerest pleasure from his throat as he pumped his spunk down Nick’s hot throat.
When he relaxed and released Nick’s head, the slave slipped off his cock, only to latch onto his balls, pulling them into his mouth. “Eight-fifty,” Cai gasped.
“Sold,” the slaver agreed, and Cai slapped his right palm onto the pad the slaver held out to complete the purchase.
While Cai readjusted his pants, Nick was freed from the display rack, a leash was attached to the steel collar about his neck and handed to his new owner. Cai stroked Nick’s erect cock then turned and led his slave away. The shuttle wasn’t far and Cai had Nick kneel in the cargo space with his knees spread wide. “Play with yourself,” Cai ordered as he slipped into the pilot’s seat. He watched as Nick’s hands began to stroke his erect cock in a sensual manner while he ran through the preflight. It was a wonderful distraction, and Cai almost delayed take-off to use Nick right then and there. But he wanted to wait until they were back aboard the Laughing Owl.
He expertly flew the shuttle back to his ship while
keeping an eye on Nick through his sensors, not because he didn’t trust his slave, but because he was enjoying the display. “You don’t have permission to come,” he said when it looked like Nick was close to doing just that. His slave groaned but somehow held off the orgasm, which conversely made Cai even hornier.
Cai slid the shuttle into the landing bay with ease and mated it to the assigned docking ring a moment later. He led Nick from the shuttle into his ship and paused just inside the lock to stroke Nick’s erection again. “I like it when you keep this erect,” he said.
“Thank you, master,” Nick replied, smiling at him shyly. “I want to please you.”
“Oh, you will,” Cai promised him and led him quickly to his chambers and the waiting bed, looking forward to what would come next. He positioned Nick on his back, spread-eagled, chained to the bed frame at wrist and ankle, with a pillow under him to raise his hips.
He looked Nick in the eye as he mounted the man and entered him, thrusting the head of his lubricated cock firmly into Nick’s hole. Nick moaned, and Cai could sense his pleasure as Cai filled him thrust by powerful thrust, reveling in the tight velvet heat of Nick’s tunnel. Nick rocked his hips, pushing his ass into Cai’s thrusts to deepen the action. Cai was delighted by the proof that Nick wanted this as much as he did, that Nick was enjoying being taken.
“Good slave,” Cai grunted in his ear as he rocked against Nick’s body. “You know you like this.”
“Yes, master,” Nick agreed fervently, “I love it when you use me. It feels so good, master. Please fuck me harder!”
Cai responded, his cock pounding into Nick’s body as hard and deep and fast as he sensed Nick could stand, taking his cues from what he could read of Nick’s thoughts and emotions, which were his to know as he chose. He used Nick hard and delighted in his partner’s pleasure as the man reached orgasm before him. When he finally unloaded his semen deep inside Nick’s body, he cried out from the intensity of his orgasm, so much greater than any he’d experienced before. He collapsed atop Nick, enjoying a moment of rare physical closeness with another person.
Chapter Eight: Attack
As they spiraled ever inward, closer and closer to the black heart of Tarasch, Cai edged closer and closer to doing to Nick in reality what he was already doing in his dreams. The sensation of Nick’s body yielding to him was one he savored even though it was imaginary.
How much better would the real thing be, he asked himself.
Not as good as my dreams, he argued back, and Nick’s my friend. He deserves better.
He wants it as much as you, the argument in his head continued.
I won’t risk destroying him over a little physical pleasure, Cai snapped at himself. It was a circular argument with no good answers. Fortunately, he had work to distract himself with.
Cai studied the asteroid belt as he passed by it. Large chunks of nickel-iron were interspersed with even larger chunks of stone. The pockmarked boulders showed the scars of life in space, but the scarcity of smaller debris was interesting. Perhaps the titanic gravitational forces of the singularity and trinary suns or the pulls from gas planets swinging by on their weird ellipses cleared out anything smaller than a respectable mountain.
This was the innermost of the asteroid belts and the most barren, lending credence to Cai’s thoughts on the matter. Inside of this belt was one last gas giant, a planet sixty times the size of Jupiter and hotter than hell, orbiting so close to Tarasch A that it had amazed astronomers the first time it’d been seen. Not that early astronomers had seen Tarasch—there was a nebula blocking the line of sight to Earth. Tarasch was technically part of the Orion Nebula—the system occupied a bubble within the fields of glowing gas.
As he had slowly orbited in toward the singularity at the center of the mess, Cai had grown more and more convinced that something was there. It wasn’t anything Cai could put a finger on. More like a ghost image in a sensor or a flicker of motion seen in the corner of the eye. He was convinced that they weren’t alone. But without a shred of proof to support his theory, he couldn’t justify bringing the crew’s alert level up. Now, he watched for other ships with the same intensity as he watched the orbital mechanics of Tarasch.
Searing pain suddenly tore through him from hip to ankle. Even as he screamed in agony, he was shunting power to his shields and searching for the source of the pain. Motion off his stern focused his attention. There! Another ship was closing fast from the asteroid field. It was an alien ship, round as a child’s ball, a silvery sphere with black lines bisecting the hemispheres. It took Cai only a fraction of a second to calculate, Two hundred point one, eighteen point four relative, thirteen point six thousand klicks, closing at point zero three c.
He routed that information to the gunners. On the bridge, his captain had already gone to red alert and was calling battle stations. His heart swelled with pride as his crew responded like a well-drilled and well-oiled machine. The guns opened up on the approaching enemy, taking out the next round of inbound missiles. Fighters lifted off the silver sphere and, eschewing any type of recognizable formation, they swarmed toward him like a cloud of angry bees.
Obviously, Nick had seen it, too. He picked up a handset. “Kenison, your wing is cleared to launch. Enemy fighters inbound at one nine seven.”
Cai focused again on the enemy ship, launching his own missiles and aiding his gunners by supplying updated firing coordinates every few seconds. He also coordinated the repair bots already scrambling to seal the damaged section of hull. Fortunately, the inner hull hadn’t been breached, and the bots worked in the space between the hulls, so there wasn’t much risk of losing them.
As much as Cai was linked to the ship, however, it was Steele who was in command here. He told Cai what to shoot and when to shoot it. He told Cai how to position himself. Nick turned the tables on the attacker quickly and guided Laughing Owl’s attacks with skill. But after the second time Nick passed on taking the kill shot, Cai pinged him on the shipnet.
Nick picked up the handset. “Yes, Cai? What can I do for you?” He sounded as calm as if he were at an afternoon tea rather than in the middle of a space battle.
“Why aren’t you closing in for the kill? That’s the second perfect kill shot opening you’ve ignored.”
“Because I don’t want to kill it. That’s the same type of ship as attacked Scarlet Dragon. I want to capture it. We know nothing about this alien species. If we can take it in tow to Hevertich…well, that’d be something, don’t you think?”
“We don’t have marines,” Cai protested. “How are we going to board it?”
“We’re not. I figured we could vent it to space.”
“I’m not sure this is wise, Captain, but I’ll follow your lead,” Cai finally said. He worried about the difficulties of towing a ship larger than he back across Tarasch when his mapping was only half done. But he trusted Nick, so he continued to attack as the captain requested. It did seem to be working, too. One by one, the fighters were destroyed, then the waves of missiles stopped and the enemy’s guns fell silent one by one.
Cai’s fighters formed up in a loose escort position as Laughing Owl closed on the enemy ship, which now drifted apparently helpless. Caution caused Cai to order the fighters into the landing bays as the distance between the ships closed to ten thousand klicks. The last fighter had barely cleared the buffers when the enemy ship exploded. The shockwave of light and energy passed over Laughing Owl in an expanding sphere.
So much for capturing it. Cai hadn’t felt any pain when the shockwave had passed over him, indicating that his shields had held, deflecting the debris away. He did a quick systems check anyhow, making sure there weren’t any subtle problems occurring below his pain threshold. He found quite a few of those and routed the various repair crews and bots appropriately. By the time he was done with housekeeping, so was the captain. Cai exited the Astrogation Chamber and fell into Nick’s embrace.
“Hey, there,” Nick mur
mured. “You okay?”
“Mmhmm,” agreed Cai. “Tired. Hungry.”
“We’ll have to fix that.” Without any apparent effort, Nick scooped him up and carried him into the dining room.
The next span of time was a blur to Cai, all that really registered in his mind was that Nick was there, holding him, helping him. He relaxed into his captain’s embrace and realized that he didn’t want to be anywhere else. With great regularity, Nick popped food into his mouth or pressed the rim of a glass to his lips so he could drink. He realized that Nick was hand feeding him like a baby, but he couldn’t find it within himself to care.
The repetitive regularity of the food being offered, however, gave Cai’s wandering mind something to focus on, and after taking the umpteenth bite, he turned in Nick’s lap and began to undress Nick with single-minded intensity. Nick, his expression surprised, went very still, but he wasn’t uncooperative. Cai pulled his shirt open and stared at a very familiar chest, a chest he’d seen in numerous erotic dreams, exact in every detail right down to the placement of scars.
It woke him up like nothing else could have. He tried to pull away, but Nick’s arms were like iron about him. “Captain,” he protested.
“It’s okay, Cai,” Nick said and let him go. “I suppose dreams are better than nothing at all.”
“Dreams?” Cai gasped, feeling his eyes widen as a combination of horror and acute embarrassment slid over him like thick, cold mud.
“I’m not the only one dreaming those dreams, am I?” Nick caught his right hand and turned it palm up. He traced the crystal’s border with a long finger, causing Cai to squirm from the odd sensations that coursed along his spine in reaction. “Cai, I know what you want. I like what you want. I want what you want. I just want it to be real.”
“But your mind…”
“If I can survive being had by you every night in our shared dreams, I think I can survive being had by you in the flesh.”