Arrival

by Michelle Robbins

  He was going before he realized he’d taken the first step.

  While he crossed the empty ground between the two buildings, he considered the situation. His kilt fluttered in the same slight evening breeze that caressed his unbound junk. Mike was in the base bar? Why didn’t that surprise him? The Urilqii he encountered gave way, offering no impediment to his passage as well as—he could say it—giving silent encouragement.

  That, however, did surprise him. Very supportive people, these Urilqii.

  ::Get back here,:: a voice commanded.

  Doctor David wasn’t about to give up. His call was impressive.

  So impressive, in fact, Liam almost obeyed. Almost. He brushed off the urge to return like it was an annoying fly and continued his path between the two buildings. A wave of frustration arrived with an intensity that nearly split open his brain.

  He shook it off. There was an asshole to deal with.

  With that in mind, he stormed up to the front doors of the base’s bar and slammed his palms into the transparent plastic.

  They gave way with satisfying speed and rebounded into his hands. Liam had the satisfaction of slamming them open again before he moved between.

  The doors slid closed with a series of hiccups, blocking out the artificial lights that had lit his path. He blinked into the sudden dimness. When his vision cleared, he saw a room full of Urilqii and his people—no, just Urilqii actually. Every one of them watched him, each seated in a chair and holding one arm extended, an index finger pointed at a specific private alcove on the far wall.

  Although he didn’t need the help, he appreciated it all the same. Behind the alcove’s swinging doors was Mike. He could have just as easily followed the wall of white noise and found his target.

  Liam marched forward. ::Tighten up, asshole.::

  CHAPTER 12

  The beer on base wasn’t good for getting shit-faced drunk, but that didn’t stop Mike from trying. He was on his fifteenth can but, to his disappointment, he wasn’t feeling anything more than a slight buzz. Apparently, “light” beer was just that. Weak. He couldn’t shake the image of his fallen adnama from his mind. Live for me, he’d mouthed. Exhausted from blood loss, battle fatigue, and trauma, all he could manage was a whisper.

  A whisper that made no sound in the silence of space.

  A whisper that imprinted itself on Mike’s psyche.

  He doubted he’d ever be free of it. Maybe he didn’t want to be free of it. That was the last image of his fallen love, after all. Not the best memory. He had others, ones more intimate and perfect, but the final moments between them, the last message from Arvidnan, was a precious gift.

  Live for me…

  He was, but shit-fuck it hurt.

  Mike grabbed for the beer can. It was slick with condensation, so it slipped from his fingers. He grabbed, caught it, but liquid still managed to splash over the edge onto his T-shirt and fatigues. He jerked, startled by the cold contact on his crotch, and groped for a napkin.

  The sliding door rattled open, then banged closed behind Liam as he stomped into the room. Mike blinked, because of the entrance as well as what Liam wore. He shook his head to clear it from the haze atop his mind and squinted at the sight. No change.

  Liam stood there, wrapped in what looked like a hospital blanket. Sure, he was cute, but what the…

  Liam stormed across the room and stopped beside the table, near enough to Mike’s elbow that he could have touched him without fully extending his arm.

  “We need to talk,” pronounced Liam.

  “No. Return to the infirmary.”

  Upset by the indifferent response, Liam flushed. He jerked his arm in an angry sweep and knocked the beer cans off the tabletop.

  The chatter of aluminum raked across Mike’s hearing like a scouring pad. He surged to his feet, the chair clattering to the floor behind him.

  “We are going to talk, dammit.”

  Anger lashed through Mike, and he growled. “Think you can take me?”

  Ready for anything, even a fist to the gut from puny human muscles, Mike was thrown for a loop when Liam reached up and cupped his cheeks. Anger didn’t burn in Liam’s gaze; warmth did.

  The hair of Mike’s beard rustled beneath the contact. Liam gently traced his thumb across the curve of Mike’s bottom lip and coaxed it out of the grim frown he knew he wore.

  He licked his lips and swore he could taste Liam’s touch.

  “I can,” said Liam, “and will take as much of you as you’re willing to give.”

  He wasn’t sure what to do. Live for me. His fallen adnama.

  Guilt stormed Mike. He pulled his head free. Liam’s hands fell away without protest—to the knot around his waist. He tugged and the blanket cocoon dropped to the floor and pooled around his feet.

  In a moment, Liam was gloriously, beautifully naked and fully aroused. A flushed, rampant cock thrust from the dark nest of hair at his groin.

  Now it wasn’t anger that lashed Mike; it was heat and hunger.

  His balls tightened and his cock jumped inside his trousers. Blood surged through his veins with a speed and intensity that threatened his personal control. Waves of desire broke over him.

  Liam stepped closer. Their bodies brushed. Liam’s cock tip poked Mike’s navel. Adrift on an emotional sea of desire, besieged by a (thankfully) minimizing guilt, Mike fought to locate language.

  “I thought you wanted to talk,” he managed. Yeah, they did need to talk, especially since he’d encouraged Liam’s transfer.

  A sultry tone filled Liam’s voice as he said, “The only conversation we need to have takes no words.”

  “Well, the mind-speak—”

  Liam’s mouth on his silenced Mike.

  Desire flashed into existence like a burst of laser light. It was a bright spark of sensation that arched along his nerves and seared his awareness, fast and bright. Soft lips pressed against his and everything came to a stop—his breath and his brain—and caused his heartbeat to stumble in his chest.

  His dick filled with an anticipatory pounding of blood.

  Mike played his tongue across the sensitive seam of Liam’s lips. The soft question was answered by a moan of encouragement and parted lips. The sound acted like a prod. His cock was so hard he swore he could use it as a weapon.

  Liam’s hands slid across his cheeks to the nape of his neck and tugged as he arched still closer. His cock tip played across the seam of Mike’s waistband and zipper, a soft caress that revealed a timidity that Liam’s brazen mask concealed.

  Shyness was not Mike’s way. He wrapped a hand around one of Liam’s tight ass cheeks and used the other to cup Liam’s head.

  Liam whimpered again, a barely audible plea, and Mike complied. He slanted his head for a deeper angle and slipped his tongue into Liam’s mouth.

  Reality shifted. ::So good…so good.::

  He flicked his tongue in and out of Liam’s mouth, teasing and taunting, until Liam’s suckled on the agile, muscular invader with determined intent. Mike opened his mouth wider and pushed his tongue deeper still. Sweet musical sounds filled the room as they licked and purred and lapped, suckled and tongue-fucked.

  His skin tingled. His sex scent danced in the air between them Liam broke the kiss. His mouth and breath were hot on Mike’s cheek as he rasped, “God, you smell so good. I could get drunk on it. I want to get drunk on it.”

  Mike shivered. So long he’d been without the exquisite connection of his mind and his adnama’s…

  Liam’s firm, carved ass was deliciously taut beneath his grip.

  He drew his hand up and across the fit, muscled back and down one sleek side to the curve of his hip. Liam, treasure that he was, reacted with his usual exuberance. He moaned and shifted back and forth, rubbing their cocks together with a delicious rasp of fabric and skin.

  “Live for me.” This was living. This was the wholeness of being alive.

  Passion swarmed the area between them, hot and crackling across his skin
like an electric storm. He wasn’t ashamed of it. In fact, he pressed into it, fanned it with his own desire, reveled in it.

  “Ah, yes.” A soft moan chased the rasp of Liam’s breath.

  Delight shuddered between them. “Just like that. God, you’re a gorgeous beast. You make me burn.”

  Liam thought him attractive. Beastly.

  Liam wanted him. Badly.

  He didn’t bother to suppress the surge of delight that filled his soul. The part of him, so long empty, rose up from the darkness and leapt into the raw, honest passion Liam offered.

  Liam caught the bottom of the forest green T-shirt and tugged it up, up, up. The wad of fabric bundled at his neck; the soft breath of Oregon’s spring evening atmosphere kissed his skin; sweat prickled his shoulders, back and neck.

  Mike broke the kiss and ducked beneath the T-shirt’s neck hole. Freed of the collar of light material, he shook his arms and let the shirt fall away. Liam threw it to one side where it landed on the table, atop the pool of spilled beer. The green color darkened as it absorbed the liquid.

  Liam stared at his bared chest, seemingly mesmerized. His eyes dilated and darkened. He licked and bit at his lower lip, now reddened from the passion of their kisses. Sexual hunger, intense and bright, sizzled between them.

  If he could have, Mike would have drunk it down, taking it into himself body and soul. Impossible, of course, since it wasn’t anything he could touch. It was something he could only feel.

  Liam’s attention fixed on the design that indicated his cabal affiliation. With a soft puff of breath, he curved closer still to trace the icon with his tongue in a way that felt almost spiritual. Liam appeared to realize what that icon meant to him, understood how it manifested his identity in a physical form.

  Liam understood what it meant to Mike.

  He honored that importance.

  Mike threaded his fingers through Liam’s hair as he worked his mouth, that agile and talented tongue, across the breath of Mike’s chest, from one pectoral to the other. When Liam’s lips closed around one nipple, a long-unused conduit of pure sensation came to life between his nipple and his cock.

  Push Liam away? No. Instead, he pulled Liam closer to encourage Liam’s suckling mouth draw harder on the tiny, tender nub.

  “Ah!”

  ::Dark stars that feels good.::

  “Liam…”

  ::I know, babe. I can feel your pleasure. It makes me hot. So hot.::

  Then Liam’s mouth was gone as his attention shifted. One hand, then also the second hand, caught his left forearm. Thought struggled to push sensation aside inside Mike’s mind.

  ::What’s that?::

  Liam’s attention had telescoped down to the markings on his arm. Curiosity overrode sexual exploration like a bucket of water tipped onto his head. The shift tore Mike from the sensual web they’d spun together.

  “What’s this say?” Liam traced a finger across the permanent marking.

  Galvanized, he jerked his arm free. ::No! Not for you!:: Mike’s power on this light gravity world was such that Liam was spun by the force of his action and he crashed against the tabletop. It tipped on two legs as Liam struggled for balance, but came back to the floor with a thump. Shock slashed into Mike’s awareness, as well as confusion and emotional injury.

  Liam tried to push himself off his stomach with trembling arms.

  Pain, his and Liam’s, slammed into Mike, like he’d piloted his flight suit into a stone wall. Mike bit his cheek as guilt flooded him.

  He’d knocked Liam hard. Too hard. I can’t do this, Arvidnan.

  Too much damage has been done to me, and I’m hurting others.

  Fuck, all he wanted to do was sleep. Sleep forever Mike stepped backward, putting distance between them before he unwittingly caused more damage to that delicious, accessible and willing body and mind. He cut the connection between them, a sharp severing that sliced through him like a knife to the gut.

  Liam’s howl of protest filled the air and blew though his mind like a tornado.

  “What are you doing?” Liam sobbed.

  The sound was like the grieving at a graveside. Maybe it was.

  But one reality remained. ::This has to happen.::

  “::Why?::” Liam wailed, both aloud and along the mind-link.

  “I can’t do this.”

  Liam managed to force himself onto straightened arms and watched him, his eyes filled with tears and betrayal. He pushed up from the tabletop.

  “Can’t or won’t?” he challenged.

  The question stole his breath. Mike didn’t have an answer for Liam or for himself. So he said nothing and, in truth, bailed like the cowardly fuck he was.

  He felt Liam’s pain the entire journey to his barracks. In fact, he felt Liam’s pain, the grief and disappointment of his cabal, and Steve’s rage. The maelstrom of emotions swirled through Mike like a stomach-churning tornado.

  The storm raged through him unabated, even as he shoved himself through the door to his quarters. He paced a restless circle from his living area to his kitchen to his bedroom again and again.

  The tempest churned.

  His stomach churned.

  He shouldn’t be alive. He should have died on that mission.

  He’d refused the volunteer mission. Arvidnan hadn’t. And, as he’d figured, the mission had been shot to shit-fuck, but if he’d been there, he could have…

  He’d anticipated exactly what had happened, death and destruction and explosions. A trap, he’d warned.

  Ignored.

  Why had Arvidnan volunteered? He’d begged him to retract his decision. Begged. But no. Arvidnan had been determined. His adnama had refused to stay behind. He’d teased Mike and promised him a fiery reunion upon his return. Then the trap had closed.

  Mike was first in the ship to rescue and retrieve their cabal mates.

  But too late. He’d arrived too late.

  Live for me.

  He jerked himself free from his memories and discovered he’d found a perch on a kitchen chair with a bottle in his hand. One from his own personal stock aboard the distant ship. Almost empty, too. Now that was giving him a buzz.

  Sweet, precious oblivion beckoned.

  He finished off the bottle of tart, blue booze with a single, long pull. It should have burned a path down his gut, but it didn’t, at least not now. It probably had early on in the bottle.

  He stood, chucked the bottle into the trash and headed for his bedroom. Inside, he flung himself into his bed. Sleep pulled at him, heavy and sweet. He should get undressed.

  His boots. Probably not a good idea to sleep with them on. The laces were beyond complex, but he managed and kicked them off his feet anyway. Two soft thumps sounded somewhere around his bed. Where…? It didn’t matter. He’d find them later.

  Mike decided he’d undressed enough. Since there was no one to complain about his choice of bed clothing, he decided not to give a shit either. He groped for and seized his bunk controls. After confirming his readiness for duty tomorrow, he dialed in a command for ten hours of hibernation and relaxed into the soft embrace.

  The cool sleep of emptiness folded him with its endless blanket of softness Like that blanket around Liam…

  * * *

  Mike awakened to the sensation of being watched. Annoyance rained down on him like a hailstorm. Something wasn’t right. He’d been in hibernation and should be feeling both perky and refreshed, not like he was on the ass end of someone’s bad day.

  He cracked open his eyes and suffered a shock. Above him, beside his bed, stood his cabal’s commander. Frown wrinkles mapped his face. Impatience simmered beneath his exterior. Well, maybe not simmered. More like boiled, he was that pissed.

  Mike’s awaking hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  “So,” barked the cabal commander, “this is how my first sergeant handles problems? He bathes in booze and dives into his bunk?”

  “No, sir!” Wait… he had. “Yes, sir!” That came out wrong.
<
br />   “No, sir!”

  The sun’s bright morning light filled the room and painted yellow squares onto the carpet. Sunlight? He jackknifed into a sitting position. Shit, what time is it?

  The chronometer beside the bed reported unpleasant information. He’d slept through this morning’s reveille, as well as yesterday’s and Saturday’s as well. He hadn’t programmed in two days of hibernation!

  He was in for a serious ass kicking.

  “No, I retroactively cleared you for two days of R&R.”

  The arrival of this other voice, alerted Mike to the fact there was a witness to his humiliation. Two, in fact. The Envoy and Doctor David stood on the far side of the bed. It had been David who spoke.

  “Uh…” Mike’s mind stalled over the unusual situation. The doctor had overridden his programmed hibernation session and put him to sleep for two days? “Thanks?”

  Cabal Commander frowned harder. Mike bit the inside of his cheek and focused on the pain instead of his embarrassment.

  Hoping to deflect a threatening blush, he bent down and searched for his boots. He found only one on the right side of the bed. He tipped over and glanced beneath the bed for the other one.

  Not there.

  “The unplanned R&R was authorized at my request.” The Envoy spoke into the room’s silence. “Our volunteers are not the only personnel experiencing a paradigm shift. David reminded me that our Urilqii are also bound to suffer adjustment concerns. You especially.”

  Mike’s snapped his attention from beneath the bed to the Envoy so fast his back gave a twinge of protest. “Me?”

  The Envoy squatted. When he again rose to his feet, he held the missing boot in his hand, which he offered with a stoic expression.

  “Yes, you,” Doctor David answered the question. “After all, you are Patient Zero of our control group.”

  Shit-fuck-damn. He was legendary, both on and off the battlefield, and now especially as a fuck-up. Space-shit, it was just a kiss.

  “Apparently it was much more than that,” said the Envoy with a smile. “As I said in conversations earlier, it’s—”

  “Don’t say it.” Mike snapped the useless demand. The grinding of his back molars had to be audible to everyone in the room.