Rees’s lips quirked in a half-smile. “He’s softening toward you.”
“That was softening?” Brianne asked.
“Yes. But I meant toward Dr. Laas.”
Brianne gave Dr. Laas a puzzled look. “My question stands. That was softening?”
Dr. Laas smiled tiredly. “Calder is the way he is because of me. Oh, not because I pushed him into the plasma fire that burned him or anything. Because I saved his life. I couldn’t save him all the way, and that makes him angry.”
“Why? You could have let him die.”
“At first he fought to live. He was so strong, I couldn’t believe he survived at all. But once he saw what I did to him, he wished I’d let him die. Twenty years and he still hasn’t forgiven me.”
Brianne glanced at the door through which Calder had just departed. “Is it that bad?”
“He was burned to the bone,” Dr Laas said. “I had to practically rebuild him—insert robotic parts in places and grow new skin for him and things like that.”
“The essentials seem to work,” Rees put in.
“Oh yes. So now he calls himself The Beast and women pay a fortune to be with him.” Dr. Laas sighed and ran her hands through her hair. “He’s lonely, like the rest of them. I’m glad Aiden and Ky have found each other.”
Brianne was too, but she would miss them. She’d return to her board meetings and her causes and this week would become a distant and pleasant memory.
The bedroom door slid open. Aiden stood in it, his eyes soft. “Brianne,” he said. “He’s asking for you.”
She was across the room and through the door so fast that she heard Dr. Laas chuckle behind her.
Ky lay on his back, his breathing rapid but better than it had been. His hair had been pulled into a loose tail that lay across his torso, and his eyes were calm and clear. Dr. Laas had cleaned the blood from him, but his body bore small pink scars where she’d cut into him.
When he saw Brianne, he smiled tiredly and held out his hand. “There’s my girl.”
Brianne clasped his fingers. “I thought we’d lost you.”
“I’m right here, darling. And I’ll be up spanking you soon, don’t worry.”
“After he rests,” Aiden said sternly.
“I heal fast, and I’m not going anywhere. I have all I need right here.” He squeezed Brianne’s hand.
“Will you tell us what happened?” Brianne asked. “Why they put those things in you, those nano-computers?”
“Yeah, I’d like to know that too,” Aiden said.
Ky hesitated. “Dr. Laas didn’t tell you?”
“No.” Brianne kissed his fingers, so happy that they were still warm and strong. “I don’t think she knows the whole story.”
Ky closed his eyes a moment and drew a breath. The sheet covering his naked body rose and fell, and when he opened his eyes again, they held sadness.
“All right, I’ll tell you. I’ve never wanted to talk about it—the pain would start when I even thought about talking about it—but you should know.”
Chapter Thirteen
Ky’s Story
“Do you remember a Shareem called Meyet?”
Ky had propped himself up on pillows, his Shareem strength already beginning to heal him. Brianne snuggled against him on one side while Aiden sat across the foot of his bed, back to the wall.
He’d invited the others in to hear the tale. Dr. Laas had made herself comfortable on the only chair and Rees leaned against the doorframe. The room smelled a bit of disinfectant and Brianne itched to grab one of Aiden’s bottles of oil and open it to scent the air.
Rees nodded briefly, and so did Dr. Laas. Aiden said, “He was a friend of yours at DNAmo. He got auctioned off and went off-planet.”
“He didn’t go off-planet,” Ky said. “He died. Because of me.”
Aiden shot him a look.
Rees said, “DNAmo’s experiments weren’t your fault, Ky. Trust me, I know all about their experiments.”
Ky shook his head. “No, I knew how dangerous it was. I tried to warn him, but I was in love with him—no, I’ll face it, I was in lust with him. I know the difference now. He was a level one.”
Aiden smiled gently at him. “You have a thing for level ones?”
“I didn’t have a thing for any Shareem.” His voice grated. “Until one day a couple scientists got the great idea to see if two male Shareem would interact sexually. Meyet and I didn’t really know each other and we didn’t know what the experiment was going to be. The researchers put us in a room together, supplying food and water and a comfortable bed, and left us alone for two weeks. I mean totally alone. We didn’t see anyone but each other.”
“They imprisoned you?” Brianne asked. “Why?”
“To see what we’d do.”
Aiden broke in. “Shareem have to release sexually every day or we die. Our bodies heat up—and heat up—until we release, either with full-blown sex or sexual play. DNAmo hired women to help out with that in the name of science. But if we formed attachments to any of the ladies, they disappeared and we never saw them again. DNAmo wanted us to keep everything distant and casual.”
“That’s cruel,” Brianne flared.
“Well, yeah,” Aiden said. “But we’re only Shareem, right?”
Brianne quieted, more determined than ever to put everything right for them.
“So you can see why being stuck in a room alone for two weeks was dangerous,” Ky went on. “We could release using our hands, but that got old fast. So one day when we were looking at each other we started wondering what it would be like. We talked about what we could do then we started doing it.
“At first it was little things like touching each other and helping bring each other off, then we tried going down on each other. We liked that and we went on from there to full-force sex. We figured if we had to be stuck in that boring room forever, we might as well enjoy ourselves.
“The researchers watched. We knew that, but it’s easy to forget when you never see or hear the watchers. Pretty soon we were having some pretty magnificent sex. He was a master with his tongue, and I could see why women adored being with him.
“We started to enjoy it. We’d wake up planning what we’d try that day. Or he’d take over for the whole day and massage me and touch me with his level one hands. It felt so damn good. Or I’d take over and make him my sub. Trust me, I made him do everything you can imagine.”
Brianne pictured the two of them locked in the small room, meeting in the middle, their eyes blue with arousal. The two men kissing, lips and tongues tangling, hands moving on each other’s bodies. Ky spreading his legs and ordering Meyet to kneel behind him, part his cheeks and lick…
He was a master with his tongue.
And then Ky lying on the bed while Meyet ran his palms all over Ky’s skin, massaging and stroking as Aiden had done to her. Her next vision put Ky with a strap in his hand, kneeling over Meyet on all fours on the bed, Ky’s cock gleaming with lube as he pressed it into Meyet’s ass.
The researchers had watched all this, through hidden cameras most likely, their Shareem performing for them.
“What did Meyet look like?” she asked suddenly.
She tried to sound innocent, but Aiden grinned. “I think your story is heating her up.”
Ky stirred and Aiden shifted position. Even Rees looked uncomfortable. Brianne realized that the conversation had triggered her pheromones, which triggered Ky’s, touched Aiden, then Rees.
“He had dark red hair. Fairly dark skin. A little shorter than me and not so big. Much better-looking than me. He was—nice.”
“I’m sorry,” Brianne said quickly. “I shouldn’t ask.”
Ky shook his head. “I think he’d like knowing we still got turned on thinking about him. He was damned good at sex. We weren’t sure whether—if we ever got out of there—we’d keep our discovery of each other a secret or tell other Shareem and get them interested too. An all-Shareem orgy was tempting. We deci
ded to keep it to ourselves for a while and tell others gradually, maybe seducing them one at a time.”
“You sure did keep it to yourself,” Aiden said.
“This was before we became friends. Although I had my eye on you as one to seduce.”
“Really?” Aiden laughed. “Couldn’t resist me even then, could you?”
Rees eyed Ky curiously. “What did you think about me?”
Ky shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t know you existed then. They kept you behind closed doors.”
“True. I’m kind of surprised they didn’t try the experiment on me. They tried so many others.”
“It wouldn’t have worked,” Ky predicted. “I heard about some of the things you did. You’d probably have ended up with five women locked in with you willing to do anything you and the other Shareem required.”
Rees smiled. “You’re probably right.”
“One day you’ll have to tell me how you did all those things.”
The smile turned mysterious. “One day.”
“What happened next?” Brianne prompted, snaking her hand down to clasp his. “They let you out, presumably.”
Ky’s expression went bleak. “You bet they did. Just about the time Meyet and I were really enjoying ourselves, they rolled back the doors and kicked us out without a word of explanation. Experiment done.
“We went back to our usual routine, but we couldn’t keep away from each other. We found we liked to keep our encounters secret. It was fun to haul his butt into a closet or an empty lab room and have wild sex before we strolled away oh-so casually.
“We’d meet in the middle of the night or the middle of the afternoon—in the middle of just about anything. We were crazy about each other. Because we were both strong Shareem we could be rougher than we could with women, and we liked that too. You name it, we did it to each other. It almost made living at DNAmo worth it.”
Aiden’s brows lifted. “Almost?”
Brianne wondered whether Aiden felt jealousy hearing Ky describe his past encounters, but the look he gave Ky bore only tender relief. Shareem were like that, she was learning, able to not let the past mar their present or future.
Rees shifted against the door. “I’m betting there was no way the researchers let you be happy. They didn’t have it in them.”
Ky grew somber. “Meyet and I found out too late that we were part of a two-step experiment. Part one, Given the chance, will Shareem want to have sex with each other? Answer, Yes. Part two, How are we going to stop them?”
“Oh no,” Brianne breathed. “Because Shareem were created to pleasure only women.”
“Oh yes,” Dr. Laas put in, her tone acid. “DNAmo was making a fortune breeding the perfect pleasure slaves for wealthy women. With all that sexiness bred into them, it was logical that they might start experimenting on each other, and maybe prefer it over what they were supposed to do. And DNAmo might lose money.”
“The gods forbid,” Rees said.
“So we had to be stopped,” Ky finished.
Brianne shuddered. “With the nano-computers?”
“They tried psychological conditioning first. They put us back into the same room and left us alone again. We were thrilled and started fucking right away. Then they punished us. First with shocks or loud noise, then with food deprivation.
“We agreed to stop while we were in the room so they wouldn’t hurt us. That was hard because we were back to our hands alone for release, but they let us out soon, thinking they’d taught us a lesson. But they’d only taught us not to do it in the experiment room or where they could catch us.”
Aiden snorted. “Idiots. DNAmo scientists had egos so big they couldn’t see anything in front of them. Oh sorry, Dr. Laas.”
“I agree with you,” Dr. Laas said crisply. “They were idiots.”
Ky continued. “Meyet and I kept on meeting whenever we could. I don’t know if we were in love, but we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I only did it with him, but he started seducing other Shareem. I don’t know how many of them he snagged, but he was having fun. I didn’t mind—like I said, I don’t think I was really in love with him.
“Then one day the researchers came into my room and knocked me out with anesthetic. I didn’t think anything about it, because they did it all the time for experimental techniques on our bodies.
“When I woke up I didn’t feel any different, and they didn’t tell me what they did. I didn’t realize what had happened until I met Meyet a few days later, and we started playing. I felt a tingle in my arm but I was too distracted to pay attention. All the sudden it was full-blown pain, so bad I was screaming.
“I recovered, but it took a while. The researchers told me, smiling like they were so damn clever, that they’d given me implants to counteract my ‘behavior’. They told me that any time I started with Meyet, the nano-computers would trigger and start to tear me apart from the inside. Scared the shit out of me.
“Meyet hadn’t felt anything, and the researchers told me they hadn’t doctored him. They’d figured only one of us was enough to teach us to lay off.
“Meyet had already started having sex with other Shareem. I warned him to stop before they got him too, but he didn’t. One day a Shareem he’d been with came and got me, scared to death. We found Meyet in an unused room rolling around on the floor, blood everywhere, kind of like you found me. We got him to the medic, and they tried to turn off the implants and stop the bleeding, but they couldn’t. Whatever system they used on us hadn’t been tested and they didn’t know how to control it.
“So Meyet died. The researchers kept it quiet, telling everyone he’d been auctioned off and sent off-planet. They threatened me and the Shareem who’d found him—who conveniently disappeared off-planet soon after—not to say anything. They said they couldn’t take the implants out of me without killing me, but as long as I didn’t try to have sex with a Shareem I’d be all right. They made me sign something swearing I wouldn’t tell anyone else on threat of termination.”
“They never asked me,” Dr. Laas broke in. “I could have gotten the implants out. I didn’t know about the experiment until a long time later, after DNAmo shut down. And I didn’t realize it was Ky they’d experimented on until recently.”
“When Rio told you…”
“Rio, who can’t keep his mouth shut,” Aiden growled.
“I’m glad he didn’t keep the secret,” Brianne said, running her fingers across Ky’s chest. “It saved you.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll talk to him later,” Ky said. “The implants worked in one sense—I never wanted to do what I did with Meyet again. I moved in with Aiden and we got along fine. It was good to have a friend. I never felt the pain again and after a while I assumed the implants had ceased to function.”
“Until we started,” Aiden said.
“Exactly,” Ky finished.
The room went silent. Aiden folded his arms, meeting Ky’s gaze. “You should have told me.”
“I know. Like I said, I couldn’t talk about Meyet and what happened for a long time. But I should have tried. For a while I hoped it didn’t matter, but I didn’t realize the damned implants would last twenty years.”
“You won’t have to worry about them now,” Dr. Laas said. “I found all the nano-computers and destroyed them. I know why DNAmo never told me about them—they knew I’d pitch a fit. Genetic research and discovery is one thing, torture and manipulation is another. Assholes.”
Ky grinned at her. “I always liked your attitude.”
“Shareem were my idea, the culmination of a dream. I care about the wellbeing of all of you, even if I’m stuck hiding out in a compound.”
Aiden blew her a kiss. “And we love you.”
“Most of you do.” She stood up and brushed off her pantsuit. “Time to take me back to my dungeon, Rees. Lady d’Aroth, walk out with me.”
Brianne pressed a kiss to Ky’s cheek and scrambled off the bed. She followed Dr. Laas and Rees to the living
room, closing the door on Aiden and Ky, who still stared at each other.
Rees, enigmatic as ever, stood behind Dr. Laas, arms folded across his massive chest, eyes quiet.
“Take care of them,” Dr. Laas said to Brianne.
“Ky and Aiden? I will. I plan to stay here until Ky gets better.”
“That’s good, but I meant all my Shareem. I can only help them indirectly, when they come to me. Talan does what she can, and Nella is trying on Ariel, but you, my dear, are a d’Aroth.”
“I have some ideas,” Brianne promised her.
Dr. Laas closed her hand on Brianne’s. “It will be hard. Shareem are feared for what they are. You will have to battle that.”
“I know.”
“I will help as I can. My compound is a refuge and only Shareem know where it is. I won’t tell you how to find it, but if you need to, one of them will bring you to me.”
“Thank you,” Brianne said sincerely. “Thank you for saving Ky.”
Dr. Laas eyed her speculatively. “You really care for him?”
“Yes. And Aiden.”
Dr. Laas smiled. “Well, I can think of worse relationships to be in than with two Shareem. Good luck, my dear.”
She swathed herself in robes again, donned sun-blocking goggles and followed Rees out into the waning afternoon.
* * * * *
Inside the bedroom Aiden and Ky sat silently. Aiden laid his hand on Ky’s leg, his hand warm through the bedcovers.
Aiden smiled, eyes watchful. “And here I worried that if you knew I was getting hard for you, you’d leave town.”
Ky threaded his fingers through Aiden’s. “I thought maybe if we just played a little nothing would happen. I didn’t know it would get serious.”
“That sucks about Meyet dying. I’m sorry.”
Ky remembered Meyet’s warm red hair, his blue eyes, his laughter. The way he’d groan when Ky entered him, that’s it, right there, gods, don’t stop.
“I don’t think I loved him, although I thought so then. I was excited by him, and man, could he spur my imagination. But it’s different this time.”
Tales of the Shareem 04 - Aiden and Ty Page 16