Dreamspinner Press Year Five Greatest Hits

by Tinnean

“Did you think of me in the shower tonight?”

  “That’s an inappropriate question, Anderson, and you’re aware of that.”

  Anderson’s tongue darted out ever so delicately and traced a drop of gifted recycled water down C.J.’s shoulder blade. C.J. sucked in a breath so harsh it hurt.

  “You thought of me,” Anderson said with satisfaction, and C.J. groaned softly.

  “How do you know?”

  “After ten years alone on that shuttle, do you think I don’t know the smell of come that’s not mine? Is it on your fist, C.J.?” He moved around to C.J.’s front and pulled C.J.’s hand to his nose, much like he had when he’d put C.J.’s thumb in his mouth in the middle of the night. This time, though, he went directly to the webbing between C.J.’s thumb and forefinger and suckled hard.

  C.J. snatched his hand away, but it was too late. Anderson looked at his returning erection with knowing eyes and smiled that flirty, predator’s smile. “You taste like come,” Anderson said, the words all in his throat. “Someday, you’ll taste like mine.”

  Chapter 14

  The Crackling Façade of Reality

  ANDERSON WAS wearing one of his new outfits tonight, this one bright and slinky, a tight black bodysuit with a tank-style top and a bright, belted tunic over that. It reminded C.J. that Anderson had been swimming every day for nearly two months while C.J. had only gone every other. Anderson’s thinness was now slender, muscled strength, and his hair had been re-cut in a different style, this style shorter and less wispy, making him look less like a lost boy and more like a young man who was aware of his own prettiness.

  His big, fathomless brown eyes remained the same, with their dark fringe of lashes, and the range of emotion on his expressive face was still fascinating and heartbreaking to watch, but the other changes—those were the changes that bred confidence, that made Anderson seem healthy and able and oh, so desirable.

  It was a lie that C.J. needed very much to believe.

  C.J. took care with his own appearance that night. He wore classic faux-denim, with the graffiti-style hologram stitching and a tight black tank with a bright turquoise overshirt. He’d gotten his hair buzzed tight to his head, with the exception of the little compact wedge of tight coffee-blond curls at the top, and his light green eyes were big and luminous in his wide-cheekboned face. He splashed a little bit of Anderson’s scent on his cheeks, a smell that made his stomach both tighten with desire and roil with anxiety at the same time, and wondered if maybe the gods would favor him and he’d be able to simply get off, come in his shorts while being coiled and uncoiled in the sinuous press of throbbing bodies at the dance club. Compared to the terrible confusion of protection, pity, and desire he’d felt for Anderson these past two months, anything was preferable.

  Then Anderson saw him emerging from the bedroom, and his eyes lit up, and C.J. didn’t want an anonymous press of bodies. He wanted that—that beautiful combination of appreciation and possession on Anderson’s face and that aggressive, flirtatious sideways look from those brown eyes.

  “You look good enough to be my birthday present,” Anderson said, wiggling his eyebrows, and C.J. swallowed and tried to be the responsible grown-up who would make sure Anderson had a healthy approach to sexual relations in his new environment.

  “We’re going to be in a club at the hub, Anderson. I’m pretty sure you can go shopping for a birthday present, if you like.” He wasn’t kidding. The hub featured all sorts of entertainments that, if not frowned upon planetside, were at least a lot more easily covered in inhibition. If people wanted to party, gamble, cheat on their spouses, buy sex they’d rather their neighbors not know about, dance naked in a club of non-humans—not that C.J. was planning to take Anderson there—or try a substance banned on Hermes-Eight but not banned by the Space Trade Federation (who, coincidentally, owned the station), they did it in the hub of the space station. About the only thing the hub didn’t have was an amusement park, complete with roller coasters and anti-gravity rides—but from what C.J. understood, they were working on it.

  C.J. and Julio and Michelle explained all of this to Anderson as they were walking around the middle rim to the spoke exactly opposite the shuttle bay. Marshall and Cassidy were joining them in the restaurant below, and from there, they were planning on the dancing that C.J. had been looking forward to all week.

  “We had amusement parks on the holodeck,” Anderson said excitedly. “They used so much power, but they were a lot of fun!”

  Julio got excited back. “I know, little man, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. We’ve got some big men who run the hub who would love to hire you on, right? I’ve patented your designs, so right now, you’re the only one who can work on that shit, and they want you bad.”

  Anderson’s face lit up for a moment and then fell. “We’ve got to go planetside,” he apologized. “Right, C.J.?”

  C.J. nodded, and Julio looked at him sharply. None of them—C.J., Cassie, Marshall, or Michelle—had advertised that C.J. and Cassie were going down for a little job-funded PTSD treatment or that Anderson was going to need his head shrunk for a good long time before he was functional. “Yeah,” he said now, meeting Julio’s eyes. “We’re going to go spend some time at Jensen’s facility. I already got him to promise that Cassie gets flowers in her room.”

  Julio had been spared a lot of what Cassie and C.J. had sat through, but still, the other holograms talked. Or, sometimes, didn’t talk, as Julio told C.J. once. Apparently, when the vid-screen viewing had been particularly brutal, the other holograms retreated outside and ignored anyone coming and going into the shuttle. Julio knew it had been rough, but C.J. didn’t think he’d known it was bad enough to send two of the station’s senior staffers planetside for some R and R.

  Julio saw the truth of that now and nodded. “Well, Anderson, as soon as you want to come back, you just call up here and contact me. I’ll hook you right up, okay? We’ll get you a job, and you and C.J. can hang out, and it’ll all be gravy!”

  Anderson blinked. “I don’t think that was a mining colony expression,” he said politely, and C.J.’s chest ached a little more.

  “It’s an old Terran expression,” C.J. said softly. “It means ‘everything’s going to be all right’.”

  Anderson smiled smugly and then grabbed C.J.’s hand, casting one of those sideways looks that told C.J. that the little shit knew that short of yanking his hand away and making a scene, C.J. couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

  “As long as C.J. and I are tight,” Anderson said, his eyes flickering sideways again, “you’re right, Julio. I can build roller coasters out of thin air, and it’ll all be gravy.”

  DINNER WAS lovely. The restaurant had intimate, darkened booths, big enough even for the six of them, and they ate braised quad-mammal from Hermes-Eight-Prime and fresh greens from one of the many eco-cycles that the space station towed around Hermes-Eight-Prime in its orbit.

  Michelle and Julio carried the bulk of conversation this time, regaling Anderson with stories of some of the less mainstream species they’d come to know and some of the weirder meldings of technology and psychosis that Cassie and C.J. had encountered. Some of the stories Anderson had heard before, and some of them were ones that C.J. hadn’t wanted to tell because it made working in the space station sound more dangerous than it was.

  Anderson apparently knew C.J. more than was comfortable, though, because he turned toward the end of dessert and said, “Oh my God! C.J., you’re like a hero or something!”

  C.J.’s entire body went hot. “Marshall was the one who hit the button closing the bay doors,” he mumbled, and Marshall snorted.

  “He’s going to make a great second, isn’t he? The federation is going to give me all sorts of credit because C.J. is two tons of absolutely amazing.”

  C.J. blushed harder, thinking about letting Anderson sleep in his bed at night and how every muscle in his groin ached from being tightened unbearably into a steel-spring of want. He thought
about falling apart badly enough to need a trip to the planetside treatment facility, badly enough that he was afraid he wouldn’t be there for Anderson when Anderson was the one who had suffered the most.

  “I’m not that amazing,” he said softly, retreating back to the shadows of the booth. The conversation continued, and Anderson leaned back, too, talking softly to him in the darkness.

  “I think you’re amazing,” Anderson said, trying to pull up his big, sunbeam-style grin. Tonight, it was tinged with melancholy, much like C.J.’s mood.

  “I think you need to get out more,” C.J. said, trying to joke about it. He was not prepared for Anderson’s scowl and the stubborn glare that made his brown eyes cold.

  “Maybe so,” he snapped, and then he sat forward. “Thank you, Marshall. It was an amazing dinner. Are we ready to go dancing now?”

  THE DANCE club was loud, with strobing lights and thrusting bodies and music that pounded in primal throbs.

  To C.J., for just a moment, it looked like a big emotional hot tub ready to suck all his troubles away. He looked to where Anderson stood, and shuddered, his yearning for the dance floor suddenly eclipsed by foreboding.

  Anderson hadn’t said much as they’d ventured from the restaurant to the club, but he’d sent C.J. calculating, fulminating glances filled with both lust and determination. For a moment, C.J. had felt oddly off-center. There was something familiar about that look, something that froze his blood a little, something that should have been terrifying instead of arousing.

  C.J. saw that look again as they were standing there, on the fringe of the seething dance mob, and just as he thought Alpha with a terrible chill, the look changed.

  It became Anderson’s look again, flirty, predatory, but not angry. Anderson sent that look C.J.’s way, and C.J.’s cock became immediately hard, and then Anderson slid into the dance crowd as though he’d spent an entire wastrel youth in its center.

  Cassie gave a half-surprised, half-concerned bark of laughter and then looked at C.J. in exasperation. “What the hell are you waiting for?” she shouted above the noise. “He wants you to go get him!”

  C.J. paused for a moment before plunging into that crowd. So much of the last two months had been about him being in control, and so much about that crowd was about letting control go. Anderson’s alone in there. It’s as frightening being lost in the crush of the crowd as it is being lost with light-years between you and the next pulse.

  It was that thought that sent him tumbling into heart of the sex music, and for a giddy, heady moment, he lost himself in it. There was a firm male body behind him, rampant erection tight against stretched pants, and it nudged and slid along his crease as hard male hands grabbed his hips. He moved then, teasing, feeling the length of that stranger’s cock through the fabric of his jeans and the hard hands sliding up his ribs and across his chest. So good.

  A woman came up to him, her breasts visible through the wet, sheer swath of fabric sticking to her skin and allowing her nipples to poke through. For a moment, they teased the smooth skin of his chest, and then her hands came up and rubbed his pectorals, shiny silver nails scraping along his nipples. He grunted, thrust against her, realized that she had nothing on underneath her short vinyl skirt, and pulled back—right into the giant with the hard-on at his back. Ah, gods. Anderson!

  He whirled then, found himself face to face with a slight young boy barely a man, whose face and body were covered in nothing but skin dye in sparkling, fluffy white, for clouds, and the stunning blue of a spring day sky. His pubic area was shaved clean, and his penis lay, half erect, painted white to match the cloud that covered his entire crotch. His hands made a very personal perusal of C.J.’s waist band, and he was about a breeze away from lowering C.J.’s zipper when C.J. put his hands on the young man’s shoulders with gentle but firm intention and slid sideways. He allowed hands on his flesh, teasing, cupping, squeezing, fingers tracing his crease through his pants, his cock under his fly, the muscles on his chest and his stomach, then rising to pinch his nipples. After a few moments, he relaxed into it, allowed himself to be fondled, aroused, pressed, and rocked, using his hands and his hips to stroke through the sweet touches of rampant sex like a swimmer strokes through a river current, whirling through eddies and keeping his eye open for the solid rock that he had a mind to anchor to.

  He whirled sideways, a woman’s hand sliding off his cock, and found himself face to face with a wide-eyed Anderson, who wrapped his arms around C.J.’s neck and clung, their erect, aroused bodies pressed together like pillars of granite.

  C.J.’s hands moved up to his shoulders, soothing him, gentling him, feeling Anderson’s body quiver like a piano wire from overwhelmed arousal. He lowered his head and put his lips close to Anderson’s ear, feeling the heat of Anderson’s body spread over his skin when Anderson’s hips twitched even closer to his own.

  “You doing okay?” he asked, and Anderson’s hands slid down his shoulders, insinuated themselves under C.J.’s arms, and grabbed C.J.’s ass.

  “I’d be doing better alone with you!” he shouted, and C.J. shook his head, feeling used. He looked up and realized that they were close enough to the edge of the dance floor, and that he’d better take that opening or he’d end up in the very center, where all the bodies were bare and most of them were lubricated.

  “I’ve got to get out of here!” he hollered, and broke away from Anderson, plowing through that press of bodies and hands without any finesse whatsoever.

  He broke through, feeling the cool splash of air on his face when the body heat was no longer suffocating, and waved to his sister from across the room, pointing to himself and then the exit. She looked surprised and was probably even more so when he took off running. His body was trembling with arousal, his heart aching with untold needing for the young, damaged person who had just tried to seduce him in that press of bodies.

  He was fit, and driven, and he started sprinting down the corridor, keeping to one side like the people who ran along the rim for exercise, setting up a steady pace that would keep him going until he reached his quarters and could use the shower or the fresher or a wash cloth and get rid of the smell of other people’s sex and the erection that hungered for one touch and one touch only.

  He ran the same way he’d strained his shoulder swimming—like he was trying to get away from something. He was so focused on getting the hell out of there that he didn’t hear Anderson’s winded voice until he’d already turned off of the spoke and was halfway down the outer hub to his quarters.

  “C.J.! C.J., dammit, slow down!”

  C.J. kept going for a couple of paces, because quite frankly, he felt too fucked up to answer that plea. He was a man, and he wanted… wanted so bad. The hell of it was, Anderson wanted him back, and the bogeyman of “should” was less and less frightening, less and less of a reason to hold back, and C.J. was surrounded by the siren song of “could,” and right now… oh, right now, the things he could to that pliant, sweet body….

  “Cyril John, dammit! Slow down! Ceeeeeeee Jaaaaaaayyy, please!”

  Fuck. Aw, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

  C.J. whirled on his heel and looked at Anderson in exasperation, which was his best alternative to blazing fury and come-fuck-me lust. “What, Anderson? What do you want now? You were surrounded by people who would have done you right there. Why did you need me? I’m the one person on the whole fucking station who can’t fuck you because it’s wrong. Why do you have to play this fucking game!”

  Anderson caught up to him, holding his side and panting, while he glared up at C.J. with raw fury. “It’s not a game!”

  “I can’t do this!”

  “Why not!” Anderson demanded, catching his breath enough to stand straight and mash his chest into C.J.’s in honest confrontation.

  “Anderson—God.” C.J. ran his hand over his head and tried not to cry. “I’m a bad pick, man. I’m a buddy—it’s probably the whole reason Cassie let you stay with me. I’m a friend. You can trust m
e, I’m as loyal as a fucking gamma bird, but you don’t want me for a lover. You… you’re not in a place right now where picking a lover for forever is going to do you much good!”

  Anderson’s anger cranked down a notch, and a hard version of his predator’s smile twitched at his lips. “Who said anything about forever?” he purred, and C.J. dropped any pretenses of having the upper hand and just slouched against the beige wall that made up the side of the hub. Far out there, through two feet of vacuum-enforced steel, was open space. Cool, brutal, without oxygen or remorse, and for a moment, C.J. wished he was out there, too, floating like space debris, serene and compassless and without pain.

  “I did, Anderson. Man… I’m in love with you. I’m… I’m rock-off-the-cliffs-of-Emerald-overlook in fucking love with you. And you’re not ready. That little stunt you pulled in there? That was all kid, Anderson, and you get to be a kid, okay? You shouldn’t have to worry about my bullshit, because I knew better. I know you’re not ready. I saw… God, I saw what you lived through, and I don’t even want you to be ready. I want you to go out and play, and have some guilt-free fun, and just… you know. Go to school, get a job, have other options than the first flunky who greeted you when you got off the boat. But I’m shredded. I’m aching and bleeding and shredded. I know you lived it, and I know you’re way more fucked up than I am, but I got to watch you live it, and every frame, every hit, every moment of fucking pain was one more reason I should not be sleeping in your bed to comfort you, and one more reason I should not wear that shit you’re buying me to mark me, and one more reason I should not let you keep trying to seduce me!”

  Anderson’s eyes were luminous now, resting on C.J.’s face like he carried the goddamned light of the fucking universe in his heart. “You love me,” he murmured, and C.J. groaned. God, he really did.

  “And that’s why I have to say no,” C.J. muttered. His heart wasn’t in it, but Christ, he was trying.