Treacherous Seas

by LM Brown

  “I don’t have any of those.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Marin nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll live here, with me? You’ll have the conveniences of modern human technology but with the ocean and your people just a short swim away.”

  “You thought of everything when you decided to live here, didn’t you?”

  “You’re mer and you’re never happier than when you’re in the ocean. I won’t take that from you. I should never have asked it of Phoebus, and I won’t ask it of you.”

  “You’re wrong,” Marin whispered as he leaned closer.

  “What about?”

  “There are times when I am happier than when I’m swimming…when I’m in your arms.”

  Caspian smiled and pulled Marin closer. He kissed him slowly, careful not to be too forceful, cautious not to scare him off. He didn’t need to be told that the memories of Rafe and Urion were recent enough to be disturbing.

  “I love you, Marin,” Caspian whispered.

  Marin smiled at him. “I love you too.”

  “I’m sorry I never told you how much I loved you when you were Phoebus,” Caspian said. “I was a fool.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” Marin said. “But it’s in the past. Besides, even though you never said the words, I knew you loved me, even back then. I wouldn’t have agreed to give up my fins if I had doubted it. Now, I know it’s early, but how about we have some lunch?”

  “Okay, what do you want?”

  “Something edible,” Marin teased. “There may be a lot of reasons I love you and want to be with you, but your cooking skills have nothing to do with it.”

  Caspian laughed and the two of them headed into the kitchen in search of food. He wondered whether it was a scene like this that Cari had seen in her vision, but he supposed it didn’t matter. She had always said that no person should know too much about their own future, and he found he agreed with her in that regard. He and Marin had a future together, and he intended to make the most of every single day.

  Want to see more from this author? Here’s a taster for you to enjoy!

  To Change the Stars

  L.M. Brown

  Excerpt

  “You were fired?” Jessiah groaned as Ashleigh delivered her bad news.

  “I asked if I could change one of my days because it clashed with one of Blake’s parties, and he kicked me out.”

  “He was our best shot at getting information about the laboratory.”

  Ashleigh snorted. “He wouldn’t have told us anything. I think we should try a new target.”

  “Who do you suggest?” Jessiah asked. “Most of the scientists have live-in staff already. They don’t need any extra help.”

  “This one does,” Corrine announced with a smile. “His name’s Garrett, and he could be the answer to our problem.”

  Jessiah and Ashleigh turned to see who Corrine was referring to. She had called up a new profile on her small tablet computer and the hologram of the man’s head hovered above.

  “He’s dishy,” Ashleigh said with a dreamy sigh.

  “You’re not his type, love,” Corrine said.

  “Always the way,” Ashleigh muttered.

  Corrine hit a few buttons on her tablet and Garrett’s current advertisements appeared in the air. “He’s looking for a part-time maid.”

  “What credits is he offering?” Ashleigh asked.

  Jessiah glared at her. “Does it matter? You already have a job that pays pretty well. It’s not as if you need the credits.”

  Ashleigh folded her arms across her chest. “If I’m going to be interviewed, I need to know what he’s offering, and if it’s too low, I intend to negotiate. I’ll look like an amateur if I don’t.”

  “Just don’t negotiate yourself out of the job,” Jessiah warned.

  “I’d like to see you do better,” Ashleigh snapped. “So far I’m the one doing all the work here.”

  “I’m not a maid,” Jessiah pointed out.

  “As anyone who’s seen your quarters could tell.”

  Corrine clapped her hands together sharply, drawing their attention back to her and ending the squabble. “Ashleigh, go apply for the position. Jessiah, you should finish your errands before the boss gets back. Keep your eyes and ears open for anything useful about this Garrett, anything we can use to get closer to him. I’ll keep searching for any other prospects, in case this one doesn’t work out either.”

  Jessiah and Ashleigh hurried to do as they were told, leaving Corrine with her own job to do.

  * * * *

  “Absolutely not,” Corrine stated with a shake of her head for good measure.

  Ashleigh remained silent as she chewed on her nail.

  Jessiah had known before he spoke that his suggestion would not go down very well. “AJ did it to get the credits for his sister’s medicine,” he pointed out.

  “You’re not AJ, and while he felt he had no choice, we do. Ashleigh got the job and has been working hard to find out whatever she can about the laboratories. She’s already uncovered a wealth of information about rotas and current projects.”

  “It’s taking too long,” Jessiah said. “Hundreds die in the Labyrinth every day that we waste.”

  “Try to be patient,” Corrine advised. “We don’t want to ruin everything by doing something foolish.”

  “It’s not foolish. You know there are only two things everyone who knows Garrett seems to agree on. He’s a pretty useless scientist and he sleeps with more whores than most of the other scientists combined.”

  “I think the boss could give him a run for his credits,” Ashleigh muttered.

  Corrine sighed and shooed Ashleigh away. She took Jessiah’s arm and steered him to a quiet corner in the staff quarters of their residence in the tower.

  “You know it could be the answer to our problem of getting closer to him,” Jessiah pointed out quietly.

  “It could, but I still don’t like it. We don’t know enough about this man or how he treats the men he takes to his bed.”

  “Ashleigh doesn’t think he’s like the boss. She says he seems kind.”

  “I know, but so does Blake, when he wants to come across that way. Do you really want your first time to be with someone who’s paying you?”

  Jessiah wanted to deny his inexperience, but he knew it would be a waste of time. He had never been able to lie to Corrine, and she and Ashleigh knew him better than anyone else, except perhaps Ryder.

  Once upon a time he had thought Ryder might be the one for him. He had harbored a youthful crush on him for years, though now he knew that was all it had been.

  “I have enough credits to hire a collar,” Jessiah said. “If it looks like Garrett might be interested in me, I can buy it after a few…err…”

  “Fucks?” Corrine supplied with a grimace. “Is that the word you’re looking for?”

  Jessiah nodded as he tried to reconcile what he had heard with the fact that it had come out of Corrine’s mouth. She swore so rarely that it always took him by surprise.

  “For goodness’ sake, be careful,” Corrine warned. “If he treats you even half as badly as the boss treats his bed partners, promise me you’ll walk away.”

  “I promise.”

  Corrine shook her head and pulled him into her arms. “I wanted so much for you to find a nice young man who’d treat you like you deserve.”

  “I’ll be fine, and maybe when this is all over, I’ll find someone in the past. The population was much bigger back then.”

  Jessiah left Corrine shaking her head.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she called after him as he reached the door.

  “Of course I do,” Jessiah replied. Privately, he hoped so too.

  * * * *

  Garrett swore as he tried to make sense of the equations on the hand-held computer in front of him.

  “Have you got those results for me yet?” His father sounded even more impatient than he had been an
hour ago, the last time he had asked for them.

  Garrett sighed. “Nearly,” he called back. The lie came with ease. After all, he’d had years of practice.

  “Struggling?” Harland whispered from his terminal across the room.

  “Is it that obvious?” Garrett replied as he pushed the computer aside. “I’ve no idea what I’m doing.”

  Harland took pity on him, as he almost always did. “Let me take a look.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ten minutes later, the report his father had been waiting for was spooling from the printer.

  “How do you do that?” Garrett asked.

  “I just have a head for science,” Harland replied. “Some of us are lucky like that.”

  Garrett snorted. His father was similarly blessed, as had been his mother, his grandparents and great-grandparents before them. Garrett, on the other hand, had no business being in a laboratory at all. If his father hadn’t been who he was, Garrett had no doubt he would never have been allowed entry into the inner sanctum.

  Harland had earned his position, thanks to his brains. Garrett, thanks to his father’s credits and influence.

  Garrett’s father appeared in the doorway. “Are you done yet?”

  “It’s just printing, sir,” Harland said. “I think you’ll be pleased with the results.”

  “Will I?” Blaine shot Garrett a hard glare. “And why is that, Garrett?”

  Garrett had no clue, and when Harland tried to jump in to save him again, Blaine held up his hand and halted his words. Garrett hung his head, ashamed of his ignorance.

  “You’re a pitiful excuse for a scientist,” Blaine sneered. “If you weren’t my son…”

  Garrett didn’t need to hear the unspoken words. He had heard them many times before.

  “Get out of here,” Blaine snarled. “Harland, let’s go over these results and see if we can boost the output from the generators.”

  It was tempting to offer to stay to help or at least try to learn something, but Garrett had figured out the hard way not to bother. Besides, right now he needed a drink and a willing arse to bury his cock in.

  Garrett escaped from the stifling confines of the laboratory as fast as he could. His father had once again humiliated him in front of one of his co-workers, just as he seemed to do at every opportunity.

  He headed down, not right into the Labyrinth but not far off, heading for his favorite watering hole. Everyone knew what happened in this sector. It was the worst-kept secret in the entire underground community. Garrett had been coming down here for years. It was the only place where no one would shame him for his lack of brains. They only saw his hard, trim body, his long blond hair and his dark blue eyes. Here he was judged on his looks and his sexual prowess, which was just the way he liked it.

  Garrett scanned the tavern, avoiding the gaze of the whore he had fucked the previous week. He knew the man wanted to hook up with him again, but Garrett never went back for seconds, at least not knowingly.

  He felt the gaze of the newcomer before he spotted him. The blue-eyed whore sat on the stool at the end of the bar, the flashing blue lights of his collar telling anyone who cared to look that he would take credits from men in exchange for sexual favors.

  Garrett sipped his drink as he watched the prostitute from the corner of his eye. He wasn’t as scrawny as most whores in this sector. He certainly wasn’t starving in the bowels of the Labyrinth. He didn’t seem to have as much dust on him as the lab rats did either. He must have cleaned up in the public facilities before coming to the tavern. His brown hair brushed his shoulders and Garrett recognized a professional cut when he saw it. He wondered if perhaps he might have a benefactor already, though the look of interest in his eyes was clear.

  The whore watched him as he drank. He didn’t approach, though Garrett couldn’t tell if it was because of nerves or whether the guy was simply confident enough to believe Garrett would come to him.

  He didn’t have the look of a lab rat, nor did Garrett recognize him as one of the tower dwellers. Normally, Garrett could guess just by looking at someone where they had come from.

  The whore who had caught his attention appeared to be in his early twenties, yet everything about him was a contradiction. To Garrett, that made him a lot more interesting than any of the other prostitutes in the place.

  When it became clear the whore wasn’t going to approach him, Garrett moved down the bar to speak to him instead.

  “You busy?” he asked.

  The whore shrugged. “Not right now. What do you have in mind?”

  Garrett waved the bartender over. “I’ll have another and whatever my friend here is drinking.”

  “Jesse,” the whore said. “My name’s Jesse. And I think I fancy something fruity.”

  “Garrett.” He stuck out his hand for his new drinking companion to shake, glancing at his credit band as he did. Jesse carried just twenty credits on his band. It wouldn’t last him more than a couple of days. “So, what’s on offer?”

  Jesse looked him up and down with a smirk. “Whatever you like, gorgeous.”

  “Prices?”

  Jesse glanced quickly at the bartender who was pouring them their drinks.

  “Oh, don’t worry about him. The money he used to buy this cave and set up his tavern was earned by spreading his legs. He won’t care if we want to do a bit of business here.”

  Jesse relaxed and picked up his glass.

  “You’re new to this, aren’t you?” Garrett asked.

  “No, I’ve just not been in here before.”

  “I didn’t think I’d seen you around. So, that’s enough small talk. Back to your prices?”

  Jesse took a drink before he answered. Definitely nervous, Garrett realized.

  “Virgin?” he asked.

  “No,” Jesse replied, a shade too quickly.

  Garrett’s cock hardened at the idea that Jesse might be untouched. It wasn’t likely, of course. He had only ever come across one other whore who claimed he had never been fucked. He hadn’t been a virgin, but his arse was. Garrett had bid in an auction for the pleasure of deflowering him but had been outbid by a man with more credits than Garrett could compete with.

  “How much would you charge for me to bury myself in your arse?” Garrett asked. He stroked a hand over the backside in question and the whore named Jesse shivered at his touch.

  “How about we discuss my prices at your place?” Jesse suggested.

  The offer was tempting, but Garrett shook his head. “I don’t take strange whores home with me.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  Garrett gave him a questioning stare.

  “Your parties are legendary,” Jesse said.

  “That’s different. Those whores are sent by the agency, and they know damn well they won’t be seeing any more work if anything should disappear.”

  “Are you calling me a thief?”

  “No, but I don’t take chances. Before I host a party, I make sure anything valuable is locked away and I know the agency will compensate me if something should go missing.”

  “I got this from the agency.” Jesse toyed with his collar.

  “I’m sure you did, but you’re not on their clock at the moment, are you?”

  Jesse seemed to realize he wasn’t going to be invited back to Garrett’s apartment and slid down from his stool. He was shorter than Garrett by nearly a head. “Where do you suggest we go then?”

  “Your place?”

  Jesse shook his head. Maybe he was a lab rat, then. Whores who lived down in the Labyrinth rarely took their clients deep down into the dusty realm beneath the towers. In the hierarchy of the Labyrinth, everyone seemed to want to look down on someone else and, unfortunately for the whores, they were at the very bottom of the ladder.

  Garrett finished his drink and nodded Jesse back out into the main cavern.

  “Where are we going?” Jesse asked.

  “Not far.”

  Garrett led Jesse into o
ne of the small caves off the main one, down a couple of twisting tunnels into the darkness, where there was at least the illusion of privacy.

  “Here?” Jesse’s eyes widened, the whites of them bright in the shadows.

  Garrett nodded. “Now, about those prices.”

  “One hundred credits if you want to fuck me,” Jesse said.

  “A hundred?”

  “Fifty,” Jesse amended quickly.

  Garrett smiled in the darkness. He might claim to be experienced, but only a newcomer to the trade would drop his price so quickly. “Done.”

  The lights on Jesse’s collar stopped blinking the moment the deal was agreed. Jesse fumbled with his belt and dropped his trousers so they pooled around his ankles.

  Garrett nudged him with his hand. “Turn around and brace yourself against the wall with your hands.”

  Jesse did as he was told without question. Garrett traced his hand along Jesse’s spine, slipping his fingers between his buttocks, brushing the tip of his index finger against his hole. Jesse moaned softly.

  “You can be as loud as you like down here. No one will care.”

  Jesse nodded, and the next time Garrett touched him, he moaned so loudly they probably heard him back in the tavern.

  Garrett undid his trousers and pulled out his cock. He never came down here unprepared and this time was no different. He removed the bottle of lube from his pocket and coated his fingers. Now to see if Jesse was as untouched, as his reaction seemed to indicate.

  He slid a single finger inside Jesse’s arse and his cock hardened in anticipation when he realized how tight Jesse was.

  “Tell me the truth,” Garrett whispered into Jesse’s ear. “Have you taken a cock up your arse before?”

  Jesse shook his head.

  “Good boy.”

  “I’m not a boy,” Jesse snapped.

  “How old are you?” Garrett asked. His curiosity was piqued, as well as a little concerned that his trick might not be legal.

  “Eighteen.”

  Garrett crooked his finger inside him. “The truth?”

  “Eighteen, I swear.”

  Garrett breathed a sigh of relief. He really didn’t want to call an end to their play.