Trustworthy

by Astrid Amara

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Loose Id Titles by Astrid Amara

  Astrid Amara

  TRUSTWORTHY

  Astrid Amara

  www.loose-id.com

  Trustworthy

  Copyright © May 2017 by Astrid Amara

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.

  eISBN 9781682523278

  Editor: Molly Daniels

  Cover Artist: G.D. Leigh

  Published in the United States of America

  Loose Id LLC

  PO Box 170549

  San Francisco CA 94117-0549

  www.loose-id.com

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning

  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id LLC’s e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  * * * *

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  Prologue

  Living the Dream

  I could suck cock like a champ, but when it came to competitive sportsmanship in the field of recreational foreplay, my old pal Robert Mackenzie had me beat.

  Mack was an expert at screwing the living daylights out of a person, to the point that his lover couldn’t remember to breathe. Granted, I was biased. It wasn’t like I’d fucked a lot of guys. In all honesty, Mack was the only guy I’d ever screwed around with.

  The only person, really, if one wanted to get technical. We were exclusive.

  It sounds sappy but was more just the way things worked out between us. We’d been best friends since we met at age six at the Calypso Center for Vulnerable Populations. From day one we had each other’s backs. And when puberty struck, we had each other’s fronts too. It seemed a natural progression of things. We never gave it much thought.

  And we were a formidable team, both against the dicks at the orphanage, then later at boot camp. At one point, Calypso Recon had the plan of splitting us up, putting us in different units to improve our attention levels or some other bullshit. That didn’t work out too well for them.

  So yeah. We were close. I was Mack’s cover, and Mack was my bodyguard. I was a lazy fucker, unwilling to train or get ripped for duty, so I let him do the heavy lifting and instead waited for my opportunity to shoot someone between the eyes.

  A lot of people thought Mack was a muscle man, all brawn, no depth. What they didn’t realize was that he was also a brilliant motherfucker with a fabulous memory, a great knack for fixing things, voracious reading habits, and a total sucker for postcoital snuggles. He was complicated like that.

  If anyone was the simpleton of the relationship, it was me. I liked blowjobs, beer, and shooting things. That was it, honestly. I was good at those things. I sucked at reading, programming, and conversational chatter. I dressed for shit and I’d been told by more than one person I had horrible hygiene standards. I didn’t care, because Mack loved me just the same.

  So when we were finally granted shore leave after a solid year of action defending the corporate farms against the Calypso revolutionaries, there was no question over what we were going to do.

  I booked us a suite at the Beltway Fairmont. It wasn’t cheap, but what the hell were credits for if not for splurging on bottle service and a penthouse Jacuzzi in the Tourist Biodome? We deserved a little pampering after endless combat, sleeping in airlock bivouacs, and making jump after jump out of shitty, second-rate gyropods.

  I provided the ambiance, the soundtrack, the booze.

  Mack provided the blowjobs.

  Damn, I was living the dream.

  * * * *

  We spent three days following my agenda of fucking and room service until Mack got too restless and had to go on a run or meditate or find zen or whatever it was he did to calm the perpetual-motion device operating inside his body.

  Declaring another dinner of delivery unacceptable, Mack demanded a restaurant, so I obliged him. I yanked on my clothes, and he shook his head but smiled nevertheless. I removed them again and tried for something a little less stained.

  “Oh,” I said. “You want to go somewhere fancy.”

  Mack laughed. “I want to go somewhere that would frown upon motor oil on the ass of your jeans. That’s any place other than a convenience store.”

  I huffed in mock protest, but, honestly, Mack could have asked me to wear a tutu and dance down the boulevard waving sparklers and I’d have done it for him.

  Clothes had never fit me very well. I was skinny and a little flabby at the belly. Trousers were either too tight around the gut or too long in the leg, and it wasn’t like the agri-domes and military bases where we spent all our time were known for their plethora of tailors.

  Of course, here in the Tourist Biodome…

  I considered ordering a suit and having it tailored while we were on shore leave, just to see the shock and lust in Mack’s eyes if I put it on. And, undoubtedly, took it off again. The last time I’d dressed in my actual parade uniform, I’d spent a total of seven minutes in it before Mack had maneuvered me into a bathroom stall and taken it off. Now my excuse was that there wasn’t any point in dressing up if he was going to rip everything off anyway.

  I also didn’t wrap presents. Best to be consistent.

  But this time I gave in and wore clean dress slacks from a wedding I’d attended last year, and a form-fitting black crew-neck shirt. With my longish brown hair and three-day stubble, I looked like a musician-banker. Or maybe an investing-artist? Hard to say, but it wasn’t really me. I preferred T-shirts, cargo pants, and of course, my old brown cowboy boots.

  The boots had been Mack’s birthday gift to me on my twenty-first birthday. They were the only boots I wore.

  The corner of Mack’s mouth lifted when I finished dressing. “You do clean up pretty, don’t you, cowboy?”

  He looked immaculate as always. He had on clean gray denim and a checkered button-down flannel, a black faux-leather jacket, and new dress shoes he’d bought that day. He’d fashioned his black hair with some gel, and other than the remnants of the bruise around his left eye where fragments of a shell had exploded a little too close for comfort last week, he appeared entirely respectable.

  “The bruise really brings out the blue
in your eyes,” I commented, looking him over.

  He smirked, but I’d been serious. I drank in the sight of him, for the millionth time marveling that he was mine. How I had been the lucky fucker to have Mack as my everything, I’d never know. But no day went by that Mack wasn’t the first thing I thought of getting up, and the last thing I treasured before going to sleep.

  After nineteen years of us being together, Mack could read my mind. His eyes got a little glassy, and he held out his hand.

  “Aww,” I joked, but I took his hand anyway.

  “You sure know how to kill a moment, don’t you?” he said, without any actual anger.

  “All I know is how to kill.”

  “There are a few other skill sets you have.” He winked, then opened the door to the hallway outside our suite.

  “And I’d be practicing them on you if you weren’t in such a damn hurry to eat out all dressed up.”

  Mack snorted. “Dressed up. For you that means pants, right?”

  “I can’t help it if I like to show off my legs in short shorts and cowboy boots.” I followed him into the elevator and we went down quickly, exiting the main doors of the Fairmont to join the masses of people congregated along the Beltway.

  Calypso was a large planet, but the majority of it consisted of sand dunes. It had a breathable atmosphere, but the wind was strong and so full of particles it hurt to inhale, so everyone lived in one of the forty-eight biodomes that stretched across the endless, rocky land mass.

  The biodomes formed a girdle around the center of the planet, connected to each other by a civilian and a military trainset. Most of the biodomes were agricultural in nature. Located on the equator of Calypso, next to Sol 10, they were perfect for growing pricey crops.

  But the real heart of the economy of Calypso was here, on the Beltway, where commerce thrived and a stock exchange that represented the entire quadrant dominated the skyline and employed nearly half of the population in the finance biodome.

  Tourists flocked to Calypso, chasing the money. Where there was business and power, there was also entertainment—dance shows, titty bars, traveling aquaria, five-star restaurants, virchworlds, gambling halls, shopping complexes. The Beltway was where you came to drop obscene quantities of money. Schleps like us were on the periphery, taking in the sight of the rich and famous without being either.

  It was easy to forget there were this many people on Calypso when you spent all your time hunched over in soybean fields, trying not to get your head blown off. But as Mack and I made our way down the main boulevard, thousands of people walked with us. And as we walked, Mack talked. He talked incessantly, all the time. He even mumbled in his sleep.

  He commented on the passersby and made me laugh as he made observations, kind and cruel, regarding the crowds around us: families, with children gripping their parents’ hands and shouting as they pointed to the animatronic robotic sculptures; college tour caravans; corporate wanabees rushing to appointments; couples on honeymoons, flashing the newest trend, osys-bonded systems, worn as earrings and sharing on open communication between the two that couldn’t be switched off.

  “Should we get bonded osys?” I interrupted Mack, curious what he thought of the idea.

  Mack shrugged. “We got that already.” He tapped the traditional osys wristband he and I both wore, property of the Calypso Land Forces for whom we worked.

  “Yeah, but if we had the bonded kind, I could whisper dirty words to you all day while we’re out and about.”

  “I can read them in your eyes, pervert.” He narrowed his eyes, taking in my expression. “But right now, you’re not thinking about my dick.”

  “I’m not?”

  “You’re thinking you want a burrito. A big burrito and a margarita.”

  I glanced at a soldier crossing the street to hide my surprise. I had been thinking about a burrito.

  “Nailed it,” Mack said.

  “Shut up, smartypants.”

  Mack chuckled. “Before we go to dinner, I need to make a quick stop, all right?”

  “What for?”

  “It’s a secret.” He smirked.

  He ended up taking us to a crowded shopping district. New tech always distracted him, and he stared enthusiastically in the windows of the shops, rambling about what he wanted, what he thought was stupid, and what he could have made better. At last we came to a small packaging store that shipped goods off-world. The long service line made my stomach growl. I was hungry.

  “I don’t want to wait,” I groaned.

  “It’ll only take a few minutes,” Mack said.

  “Why don’t you use your authority? Flash a badge, show you’re Calypso Recon, cut the line?”

  “Because that’s rude. And an abuse of power.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Give it to me.”

  Mack frowned. “Why?”

  I waved my hand at him, and he reluctantly pulled a small packaged letter from a pocket inside his jacket. I grabbed it from him and walked past the long line of citizens, withdrawing my Recon ID as I did so.

  “Hi!” I interrupted the woman at the counter, who was helping the first person in line.

  She had curly red hair and bright blue eyes that glared coldly at me. “You need to—”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying for my most charming grin, “But I need to mail this package immediately. It’s a matter of public security,” I added in a whisper.

  I stealthily flashed her my Recon ID badge.

  She smiled nervously at the woman in line. “I’m sorry, ma’am. This will take just a moment.”

  I read her name icon and winked. “Thanks, Angela.”

  I handed over the package, and she scanned it quickly. “It’s coded already. I’ll put it in this evening’s launch.”

  “You made a difference today,” I told her. I smiled one last time, then whistled past the angry customers to Mack’s side.

  “Let’s eat,” I said.

  Mack shook his head. “You can be a real asshole, Ivo.” He led me out of the packaging store.

  “It’s called social hacking, by the way.”

  “You made a difference today?” he mocked.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, yeah. But you still love me anyway.”

  “More fool me.”

  * * * *

  Mack picked a crowded, narrow-shaped restaurant that offered pig-sized burritos. I had never seen an actual pig, but the general concept appealed nevertheless.

  We ordered pig-sized burritos, margaritas, and watched a recasting of the day’s robot wars on the stage. As we sat there, Mack’s leg bounced and he played with his napkin. He was always in movement, restless. As long as I’d known him, the only times were when he was sick, severely injured, or freshly fucked. Even in sleep he tossed and turned like he was dodging projectiles.

  The first night I’d slept with Mack I had been about seven, and he had thrashed in his dreams in the cot alongside mine. I climbed into his bed and tried to talk him out of his nightmare. I knew it had something to do with his dead mom, and it made me sad and angry that he hurt and I couldn’t help him.

  He calmed after I crawled next to him, so I simply made that one of the things I did as his pal.

  We developed a good trade-off over the years. No one was better in a fight than Mack, and, while I’d been tough, being smaller and weaker meant I was always the target of the other kids in the center. Mack never asked if I’d started the fight, or was even guilty; he’d just pull me out of whatever jam I landed myself in. After a particularly nasty injury to my knee basically left me unable to defend myself and stay upright, Mack decided to stand at my vulnerable side. He’d never strayed.

  In return, I offered him something no one else was willing to. Finding Mack pleasuring himself in the boys’ bathroom in the basement gym one day, I stepped behind him, reached around, and helped him out. It seemed like the least I could do for my best friend. That’s what I’d told myself anyway—it was easier than thinking about how my heart r
aced in my throat, my cock swelling with the feel of Mack’s hot, hard flesh in my hands, the way he leaned back against me and whispered my name as fervently as a prayer.

  Since that day, we’d been doing all sorts of little things to help each other out. When we finished our burritos and Mack got up to use the restroom, I went ahead and ordered him a flan because I knew he’d want one. I paid for our meal before he could protest, because he spent his credits on osys upgrades, virchworlds, books, instruments, gadgets, whereas I saved every penny so I could buy Mack shit.

  When Mack came back to the table, the bill paid for, the flan, and sugary Mexican coffee awaiting him, his look of boyish delight melted my heart. It was hard, sometimes, to love someone so intensely that you felt like breaking just by breathing the same air as them.

  “I love you so much it hurts,” I told him, in a rare moment of emotional honesty.

  He seemed surprised by my vocalizing my feelings but not embarrassed. “I know.” He reached forward and touched my hand. “I’d be lost without you, Ivo.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” I replied, though the sentiment warmed me. “You got a built- in compass in your head.”

  “That’s called an osys uplink, idiot.”

  “Always have an answer for everything, don’t you?” I said.

  “I do.” Mack flashed me his wide smile. His lips were still a little red and swollen from kissing my stubbly face, and the thought stirred my groin. “I bet I can answer the question, ‘What is Ivo Toreli thinking right now?’”

  I grinned. “What am I thinking now?”

  “You’re thinking about my lips. And how much you wish you were sliding something in between them.”

  I shut my eyes and groaned. “Jesus, Mack.”

  “Am I right? Am I right?”

  “Shut up.” I stood, then reached for Mack’s arm. “Time to show you how right you are.”

  * * * *

  “Hey,” said Mack.

  I didn’t reply. I stared up at the ceiling, admiring the faux plaster layering and coloring of the honeymoon suite.