Like Slipping Under Cover: Erotic Spy Fiction

by Bethany Zaiatz, ed.

  Suddenly I wrenched my mouth away and, hearing his stunned cry, jackknifed myself further up the bed. With a fast tussling, I set his cock to my waiting hole and slammed myself down onto him. It was my turn to cry out, a ragged tear of delight that probably carried right through the room's walls. I didn't care.

  Darcy's cock filled me. I sat atop him, gripping him with my pussy. Pleasure radiated outward from the penetration, igniting every part of my body, so that the ends of my toes tingled and the tips of my ears blazed. I looked down on Darcy, his features contorted but still pretty. I planted a foot on either side of him and started to ride him. Immediately I felt the strain in my calves, but the pain was washed away, disappearing like a tree branch caught in a white-water river. Pleasure overwhelmed me. Darcy's answering thrusts started again, making my every downward lunge that much more intense.

  Again, having taken him into my body, I felt a sense of ownership that heterosexual men must never experience. It was such a beautiful thing to be entered, to take the living part of a male into oneself. It was something more than just a bodily connection, bigger than the mere fact of meat on meat. At least, that was how it felt when it was good.

  And this... this was very good.

  Darcy's hands closed over my hips, and I plunged on him harder and faster. Damp hair clung to my face. My wet mouth was open and panting, until a new cry tore from me, loud and unashamed. I tightened around Darcy, the pleasure burning over me, through me. I rode out the final stages of my rapturous come.

  Around me, the room seemed to wash over with reds and pinks. My head felt light. I started to fall away to one side. Strong hands caught me, gently lowered me. I was being rolled onto my back, with my flesh still glowing, the pleasure barely ebbing. The bed's frame creaked again, and a warm lovely weight was settling on top of me.

  I was entered again, that slick length of him filling me once more. Lifting my legs, I cinched them about his waist as he thrust himself deep into me. I welcomed every inch. Some distant part of my brain took the time to appreciate the advances in birth control that allowed this sort of contact between us. I'd been spending too much time in the 19th Century. But my mind skipped quickly past the matter, letting the sensations of the moment take over.

  It was exquisite. Darcy fucked at a steady tempo. I clutched his shoulders, looking up into those long-lashed eyes. He kissed me as we tumbled along together, toward what must lead soon to his much-deserved climax. Even as this occurred to me, I felt the fresh stirring, the pleasure seizing me yet again. He drove himself harder. I heard and felt his balls slapping against me.

  Orgasmic delight was blinding me once more when his come started to jet. I crushed my legs around his waist and dug my fingers into his shoulders, relishing the hot spurts, feeling every one. My own joy seemed to mingle crazily with his, so that for that moment I wasn't sure whose come I was experiencing.

  * * * *

  Later, in the drowsy satisfied afterglow, I thought of remarking on how much fun it had been or even thanking him for the episode, but that just seemed tacky. We lay together, nestling, and I felt genuinely happy for the first time in I didn't know how long.

  But something was nagging at me. I didn't pursue it, not wanting anything to spoil this, but it rose into my mind anyway; and I found I couldn't let it go.

  "Why," I asked, "did you want to know how old I was earlier?"

  I thought he might have drifted asleep, but when he answered, his voice was clear. It was also soft and tinged with what might have been sorrow. "I just wanted to know."

  "That's no answer." A note of disquiet sounded in my head, and I remembered thinking when I'd first met him at the Asian restaurant: Something's wrong with this guy.

  I turned to look at him, but he kept his eyes on the ceiling. Reluctantly, he said, "I wanted to know if you'd been born before the original chrononauts went on that first mission."

  Pushing up onto an elbow, I felt my brow tighten. "I wasn't. I was born a year after." It had been in a city encircled by a hastily erected chrono-shield, during those days of great chaos. I had been left an orphan by the upheaval. "Why? What does it matter?" Because plainly it did matter.

  Finally he looked at me. "That's my mission, the one assigned to me by Time Zenith. I'm supposed to go back and stop the first chrononauts from making their retro-jump. I tried once already, but...things didn't work out. So I have to go try it again, they told me. I just thought if you had been born before 2068, my target year, then, y'know, you'd still grow up to be you. The changed history wouldn't affect you. I don't want you to change."

  Around me the room reeled, and I just let it whirl, closing my eyes and slowly shaking my head. It had come to this. TZ had given up on the ideals that had driven the chrono-agents for so long. Utopia couldn't be achieved. That was what they were admitting by sending this newbie on a jump back to 2068 to cancel out the whole endeavor. This was surrender. It was failure.

  But Darcy didn't understand. I touched his cheek with my fingertips. "You don't have to worry. This is the Hub. Whatever happens, whatever is undone or nullified--it doesn't matter. Here I'm outside the timeflow. So are you. So is every agent here. Causality is meaningless at the Hub. This, my sweet, is schizo time." I gave his cheek a friendly stroke. "You'll get used to it."

  He smiled, and we kissed. Maybe he understood the full implications of his mission, maybe not. Maybe I wouldn't be sent back to erase Hitler anymore. Maybe every last agent would be ordered by Time Zenith to undertake Darcy's assignment. One of us might eventually eradicate the entire retro-jumping technology, returning reality to what it was before that first chrononaut mission. Earth would still be overpopulated and suffering from environmental degradation, but perhaps those problems could be addressed head-on.

  Meanwhile, we chrono-agents would continue to do our duty, whatever it turned out to be. I nuzzled with Darcy on the bed. You'll get used to it, I'd told him several times now. But I wasn't sure I believed that any longer.

  Passing

  Kaysee Renee Robichaud

  Everyone wore a mask on the Rigel-7 Royal Scepter; therefore no one noticed the two spies passing each other in the space station's passages.

  Each corridor and room was enclosed in adamantine-titanium walls, and thus free from the planet's swirling cocktail of deadly gasses--the atmosphere was rich with hydrogen, helium, methane, and ammonia--but too many hull problems led to an inordinate number of compromised sealant issues. Quarters--particularly those of slumming Merchant-Liege dignitaries--were regularly maintained and reinforced, but the rest of the hundred square mile vessel was catch as catch can. Placards and regular Public Service Announcements on the internal Scepter Staff Missive System warned how precious atmosphere processing masks and a healthy dose of caution could be.

  The spies walked independently, passing each other without any indication of recognition. Theirs was not the profession for nods or curtsies or small talk. None of the other station pedestrians paid them the slightest mind or suspicion.

  Which was exactly how they wanted it.

  If Sukikun drew attention, it was for her lithe figure, her muscled arms and the sensual, graceful way she walked. She moved with the casual attentiveness of an acrobat. Her clothes were midgrade nobility, clinging to her hips and legs, fashionably loose around the torso. The mask and hood hid all but her eyes behind breather cylinders and protective rubber.

  Makioki was no svelte athlete. His frame was broad and bulky, sculpted like a bodybuilder. His stride drew his trousers taut across his codpiece, showy and boastful in ways only the nobility would or could be, and though his gloved hands were broad enough to palm a tea kettle, they were capable of the most precise and subtle manipulations. His mask was shaped like a surrealist vision of a rhinoceros, the lower half bulging with the filtering canisters which was crowned with a pair of horn-shaped transmission antennae. It was the mask for a noble's favored seneschal or pet plaything.

  Though there was no particularly noticeable rec
ognition between the spies, they did exchange information. Subtle shifts of the hands, blinks of the eye in an established code-pattern.

  An invitation, her to him: "Come to the rendezvous room."

  His reply: "I will, but I'm being watched."

  They walked different routes to their destination.

  * * * *

  Sukikun arrived at the room first. It was a nondescript meeting place fit for any of the pleeb processing engineers toiling in the bowels of the station, fishing valuable elements from the roiling gasses outside with HoT filaments and CoLD nets.

  A pair of lights overhead revealed the sleeping palate, a personal sized cooling unit for food and drink storage--sized to hold a week's worth of rationed perishables and bottles--and the standing room only water closet.

  Sukikun hit a switch and the shutters slowly rose, revealing a blanket of chartreuse fog on the other side of the viewport. No apparent cracks or breaks in the transparent alloy. Her wrist sensor affirmed a good atmosphere mix in the room. As well, it detected no listening apparatuses. She hit the button to drop the shutters, once more.

  The spy smiled to herself, wondering what mechanical architect had been foolish enough to install windows in such a place as the Scepter. Sukikun's mother would never have agreed to such a thing, would have railed against even the idea...

  Of course, the very real possibility was it had been an architect ordered by a know-nothing Imperial Seat noble. That architect or engineer would not be quite as headstrong as Sukikun's mother, then. Undoubtedly, that architect engineer still lived. How might Sukikun's life have been different, had her mother not been quite so headstrong or fearless or heedless?

  This was no time to think about dead relations or stolen opportunities. It was time only for last moment preparations for the information exchange. After that, there was closing business to attend and a quick escape. She had the schedule of scheduled departures for the next five hours; each would give her ample opportunity to jettison enough cargo to compensate for her mass so no obvious signs of her passage could be had.

  Providing, of course, Makioki had not failed.

  The door summons chirped before the slab slid aside. Makioki entered, bowing his head to avoid striking the low doorjamb. His mask's heavy breaths told her he had been hustling to get here. Though the tunic was intended to be loose across his chest, his inhalations expanded the muscles beneath to flatten the folds and strain the material. She caught the sight of sweat sheen and rosy red muscle fatigue.

  After the door slid shut behind him, he moved toward her, and she embraced him. His induction into the role of spy and revolutionary was from a very different source than hers. He grew stony silent when asked, but Sukikun could tell his loss was also a personal one. A parent or spouse? A child or sibling? Everyone in the Undrentine League had sorrow and fury.

  Someone important was gone. He had broken himself upon the rocks of physical perfection to compensate. His body was hardened from the attention.

  Through the mask's speaker, his voice became a boxy cough. "Do I speak to your ears alone?"

  She leaned back and pulled her mask up and off. Revealing the soft, golden-hued skin and dirty circles around her eyes. "You do." She gestured to him to follow her lead.

  After a moment's staring, he pulled his mask up and off, taking a deep breath of recycled air. His nose had been broken and improperly set since his dossier's last photograph. His eyes were ringed with the same sleepless darkness as hers. His dark hair rose in spiky waves from the hood. There remained a quality of handsomeness to him, however. And danger.

  "Any news?" she asked.

  He shook his head.

  She said, "If you haven't secured passage, the Cutty Sark is carrying ore to Capital tonight."

  He nodded.

  "Why so quiet?"

  Finally, he spoke. Gruff as a roused panda. "I've been suffering bad dreams. Suffocation, blaster beams cutting some kind of vessel and a kill team on the prowl."

  She frowned, considering. Makioki's dossier and the Grade 5A stamp it bore. 5A: Psychic Sensitivity. Minor levels of telepathy, telekinesis and precognition. When he was fifteen, he had been inducted into the PSYker School, but having showed no improvement in these areas after six months of intense testing and observation, he had been discharged.

  Sometimes a dream was simply a dream, but with Makioki? They might be something altogether different.

  Sukikun asked, "Are you feeling tense?"

  His lips pursed, but his head dropped and rose in a single, deep nod.

  She pulled him down into a kiss. He was resistant at first, but her yearning lips chipped away at the frost on his feelings. His mouth proved warm, his tongue skilled. When she slipped him the lozenge report, he accepted it and slotted it into his cheek without disturbing the passion exchange. He was good.

  After the kiss broke, he chewed the pill. She waited while the info gel soaked in. Within seconds, his eyelids fluttered, vision overwritten by the video data transmission.

  "I'm going home," he said. The half-smile on his face was almost relieved, mostly disappointed. "I still have much to do in the Imperial Seat, but they're calling me home."

  "Everyone needs time to restore their head and heart," she said. "Don't you have something for me?"

  He frowned. "I've been scrutinized. I have to exchange the data via another method. It's encrypted, so there's no chance of interference."

  "Meaning?"

  He said two words, and she shook her head. "No way."

  "It will be easy for them to extract it. The data seed will speed toward your ovum but won't impregnate anything. They're not actual sperm. And any real stuff that comes along is irradiated beyond the ability to--"

  "Extraction is not the issue," she said. "I don't connect that way."

  "Ever?"

  "I did," she said, "and now I don't. No offense."

  "How am I supposed to not," he said with a humorless grimace, "take offense?"

  "Are you clean?"

  "Of course."

  "And your most recent papers?"

  He said nothing.

  "Makers," she said. "How many partners since the last test?"

  He blushed.

  "That many?"

  In the refrigeration unit, he found a bottle of Imperial rum. He showed her the bottle, and she nodded. He poured two glasses. "Succeeding in the Seat requires," he said, "copious hand greasing."

  "And body greasing, from the sounds of things."

  "And I wanted to kill them all," he said. "Each and every one. I envisioned them dead before I came. It's not very healthy." Vendettas made for lousy bedfellows.

  She blanched. "So whack off into a cup or something. I'll seal it, bring it back."

  "You know delivery of unprotected intelligence materials is unacceptable. If the information is going to be meaningful... useful... it cannot be compromised."

  "What's unacceptable," Sukikun said, "is your assumption that I'd just bend over at your insistence."

  "I apologize," he said. With a heartfelt smile, he added, "I can be charming, if you let me."

  She did not doubt that, but this felt too coercive for her preferences. "Will you take a STEEDTest?" It was not the most thorough test for diseases and genetic contagions, but a STEEDTest could at least put her worst fears to rest after a fifteen minute wait.

  "If it will ease your mind," he said. "I'm sorry this is so difficult for you. The Seat has inured me to... shyness."

  The STEEDTest applicator drew a blood sample from his thumb, and then went to work. It purred softly on the table between them.

  Five minutes later, he said, "It's funny."

  "Hmm?"

  "Time's flexibility. Fifteen minutes flies when I'm performing the deed that led to this test. But now? Fifteen minutes feels like an eternity. Long enough for me to consider every one of my mistakes and fears."

  She nodded and silently added, Or confirm my own dread. Of course, the five minutes had already expanded t
o contain all her own terrors. Worries multiplied like termites.

  Say he had something. Then what? She had come too far to simply abort the mission. Her hatred had driven her here. The memory of her mother's death, the memory of the hundred hate crimes and cruelties the Imperial Seat had been party too. The hundred she had witnessed, that was. There were a googol more, she was sure. The Seat controlled a hundred worlds, after all.

  Could fear counteract that motivation? Would it? And the most terrifying question of all: If she gave in to her fear, might that hatred turn inward?

  She leaned her forehead on her palm and stared at the test. "Hurry up, little guy."

  "I believe I'm fine," he said, but his voice trembled. He looked like he wanted her to take his hand. She considered doing just that, but something stopped her.

  It was crazy. They had exchanged saliva, after all. Reaching over and setting her slender hand atop his, maybe squeezing to offer a little human contact and comfort was a hell of a lot less... body fluidic... but she hesitated. Crazy or not, her feelings did not want her to do a simple little thing like that.

  Maybe because of his presumption.

  "They can cure most everything these days," he said. "So even if there's an issue... If it's a small one, there's a cure."

  "My body," she said, "is my temple. I don't profane it. I don't pollute it. I don't poison it." Hurry the fuck up, STEEDTest!

  "Not even if your mission is compromised? No memory adjusters? No retardation gas?"

  She said, "Don't call it 'retardation gas.'"

  He said, "I'm sorry," in a shamed, little boy voice that seemed utterly out of place coming from him.

  "But to answer your question, no. If the mission is compromised, I find a way out. If there is no way out, there's always one final solution."

  His face betrayed no emotional response to this.

  The STEEDTest rumbled on, working as quickly as it could. Still not fast enough.