Love for the Cold-Blooded. Or

by Alex Gabriel

  Nicholas’s hands sliding over Pat as though he wanted to consume him. That was — Pat didn’t even know. Being touched like this, with open desire and even need…

  He thumbed Pat’s nipples roughly before smoothing his palms down his stomach; rubbed one thumb tantalizingly just beneath his belly button while leaning forward to bite at Pat’s jawline. Pat wriggled rather desperately to get the touch to settle just that little bit lower — but a large hand was on his hip, holding him down, steel fingers wrapping all the way around his side as though he really were as diminutive as Nicholas had made him sound.

  He could feel Nicholas’s breath against his neck, cool on moist skin. There were teeth setting carefully into the sensitive skin at the base of his throat, and the steady touch on his abdomen was making Pat ache and burn, tension ratcheting higher with every torturous, slow swipe of the thumb.

  “Come on.” That wasn’t a whine. Pat didn’t whine, it was only — “Come on, man, don’t tease —”

  The touch vanished. Pat’s eyes flew open — when had he closed them? — in time to catch Nicholas giving him a look heated enough to make his breath catch. “You’re beautiful like this.” His voice was so gravelly he sounded angry. Pat shuddered. The small sound that escaped him wasn’t a squeak, honestly it wasn’t, and even if it was — “I’m going to fuck you so hard.”

  Pat gave an inarticulate, choked sound and had to remind himself to breathe as Nicholas knelt to slide slow hands up his legs, thumbs pressing into the sensitive skin of Pat’s inner thighs. He spread his legs without prompting, and gasped involuntarily when cool fingers stroked lingeringly over his balls before slipping lower to press at his hole. Nicholas’s free fist closed around the base of Pat’s erection in the same instant, and for several chaotic moments, the flood of sensations was too much for Pat to sort out. He moaned and arched mindlessly into the touch, twisting on the bed as a rush of sparking delight tumbled through him.

  “Okay,” Nicholas said.

  Hell yeah, everything about this was okay. He had never been this okay, and might never be again.

  Except that Nicholas stopped touching him, and that — no, that was not okay. Pat rasped an incoherent protest and reared up off the sheets to grab for him, but Nicholas’s hands were on his hip and shoulder again, and —

  Pat wasn’t short or light, whatever Nicholas had claimed, but he almost felt like it when he found himself flipped onto his stomach with ridiculous ease. Before his mind had finished processing the change in position, Nicholas was already lifting Pat’s hips up off the bed and kicking his knees apart. And Pat liked it. It was amazing how much it turned him on to be manhandled like this… arranged just the way Nicholas wanted him.

  Uncoordinated with lust and nerves, it took Pat a moment to get his arms under him and his face off the mattress. Nicholas was warm, solid muscle all along his back, one arm wrapped around Pat’s middle. Nicholas’s erection pressing between his cheeks felt absurdly hot and hard, and way larger than it had looked.

  The mattress shifted as Nicholas leaned over to the bedside table. Pat sucked in several deep, shaky breaths; every sensation seemed exaggeratedly sharp and in focus. The air rasping in his lungs. The high-threadcount sheets against his hands and knees. The crinkly sound of a condom wrapper tearing.

  He wasn’t nervous. Of course he wasn’t. He wanted this; was going a little out of his head with wanting it. It would be ridiculous to be nervous.

  A heavy touch between his shoulder blades pushed him to his elbows, and large hands grasped his hips to tilt them back at the perfect angle. Pat jumped a little when moisture slicked over him, then pressed inside. Pat thought he’d been expecting this — had been expecting it — but somehow, he couldn’t keep in a surprised-sounding gasp, or prevent his arms from trembling.

  “Dude,” he said, helplessly. “Dude.” His mind was blank, filled entirely with the feeling of cool air against his overheated skin. The ache of his cock. The overstretched, near-painful feeling of fingers working into his ass. Nicholas was breathing in near-tandem with Pat, and the sound was harsh and loud in the silence of the room.

  He still hadn’t decided whether he liked the feeling of fingers inside him when they were gone. In their place, something big, blunt and relentless nudged at him. Nicholas gave a low, drawn-out groan that sounded as though it was being dragged from him. And then Pat trembled and gasped as Nicholas spread him open and pressed slowly, inexorably in.

  His cock was hot, hard, and impossibly huge. It wasn’t, of course. Pat knew it wasn’t. It was a totally regular size, but it felt like, it felt —

  That odd little hurt sound couldn’t be Pat, except that it caught in his throat on the way out. He was panting, sweating; he wasn’t sure if he was shivering, but the world was razor-edged and bright and slow, and his heart was beating so wildly it was making him dizzy.

  “Yeah,” Nicholas rasped. He was plastered against Pat’s back, one large hand spread against his stomach, holding him steady, the other stemmed into the mattress right next to where Pat was white-knuckling the sheets. He was everywhere. All around Pat, between his spread thighs, over him and — and inside him, actually inside. It was — “Yeah, that’s it. Give it up for me.”

  He said more than that when he started moving, weaving a rough backdrop of words, cut apart by gasps that echoed the rhythm of his hips. Pat didn’t understand any of it. There were too many other things clamoring for his attention.

  Like the solid weight and heat of another man’s body. The way Pat’s body was moving to the rhythm of someone thrusting into him. The rasp of Nicholas’s breath in Pat’s ear; the low, slightly slurred, drugged-sounding monotone of his voice. The way his thrusts forced Pat to brace himself, made his elbows slide forward when Nicholas pushed inside him. Nicholas’s hand, slipping lower on his belly with every thrust, Pat’s erection brushing it with every movement of their joined bodies.

  The feeling of a man’s cock inside Pat, thrusting into his body in a thick, solid glide that left him weak-kneed and desperate, trembling and gasping for air. The fullness and the stretch and the pleasure-pain intensity of it. Too much; too much of everything. Pat was shivering, moving pliantly under Nicholas’s touch. He suspected he was the one making that whining sound, that desperate drawn-out whimper.

  Overwhelmed, that was the word. It was just — more than he’d expected. More than he knew how to deal with.

  Everything hung suspended for the space of another thrust, two. Pat was panting, and he didn’t want this to stop, except that he did; he was burning up, so hot he felt stifled, ticklish curls of hair sticking damply to his neck and forehead.

  “Come on,” Nicholas whispered, the word gusting hot and greedy against the back of Pat’s neck. “Come on, here we go.”

  Careful teeth set into the juncture of Pat’s neck and shoulder, and Nicholas’s hand finally, finally found his cock. Pat jerked and gasped, arching his back, toes curling. The edge of pain had subsided, but the strange fullness was as intense and confusing as ever — and when Nicholas pushed in this time, a spark caught flame deep inside Pat, rushing outwards in a flash fire of annihilating pleasure.

  The sound Pat made tore at his throat. He’d lost track of things, but he thought that Nicholas was growling into his ear, and that he himself was gasping, real desperation in his voice. His palms slid over the sheets as he climbed up from his elbows. His head hung low and sweat burned in his eyes and none of it mattered, nothing mattered but Nicholas’s hand and cock and body burning him up, taking him apart.

  And then it all came together, igniting into a slow, glorious explosion of pure ecstasy.

  Just. Wow.

  Pat was left limp and dazed and ridiculously pleased with himself. It took him a moment to regain enough of his wits to realize that he was now flat on his face on the bed, sprawled limply with limbs flung randomly about. Nicholas’s hands were clenched around his hips, holding him down, and Nicholas was still fucking him — all short hard driving thr
usts and rough grunts, his harsh breathing sounding oddly funny now that Pat was removed from the urgency of it.

  Nicholas certainly didn’t grunt much like an astronaut. Maybe he had a chance of survival on that hypothetical alien planet after all.

  Pat might have giggled a little, but whatever. He totally got a pass on slightly ungentlemanly behavior right now, given the sheer amount of win he had accumulated here. “Totally a caveman,” Pat mumbled into the hopelessly rumpled sheet.

  This thing going on now, being fucked while all limp and loose and still sparking with sensory overload — this wasn’t unpleasant, either. Pat would have thought it would be, if anyone had asked him ahead of time. But instead, everything was awesome… and then everything drifted off into soft, unfocused warmth.

  ~~~~~

  The shower in Nicholas Andersen’s billionaire laboratory apartment bathroom probably doubled as some kind of high-powered space capsule that could bring you to Mars and back in half an hour, and get you sparkling clean while you were in transit.

  Like, seriously: Pat had to get the AI to operate the thing. It was like a stylish glass and metal room with jets everywhere. Jets that followed Pat’s movements and automatically adjusted to whatever water temperature and pressure and flow intensity he wanted, basically by reading his mind.

  There was also a steam option, and a hot air option to dry off, complete with a blow-drier thingie that descended from the ceiling and dried Pat’s hair before he could stop gaping at it for long enough to tell the AI to knock it off (reckless blow-drying made his curls unmanageable). And lastly — get this — there was a little foof of sound and a final mist from the jets, and Pat’s skin was moisturized to baby softness from neck to toe.

  When he emerged from the movie theater-sized bathroom, Pat’s hair was a mess, but he was grinning so much his cheeks were beginning to hurt. He might also, possibly, have been giggling a little madly from the sheer coolness of it all. Best night ever or what?

  The owner of the astronaut shower was rolled up in a bundle of sheets and blanket, looking like a white sausage. He stirred while Pat collected his clothes from the floor, finally sitting up just as Pat was trying to flatten his hair enough to settle his baseball cap at the optimal angle of coolness.

  When Pat came up to the side of the bed, Nicholas blinked at him with a kind of bleary puzzlement, almost as though he had no clue who Pat was, or where he had come from. Yet another mark in the guy’s ‘how do I fail at hooking up with someone? let me count the ways’ column. He was running up quite a score… but whatever. The dude had a hilarious pillow crease along one cheek and was clearly still more than half asleep. Not to mention that Pat was feeling so content he’d have had to expend real effort to be annoyed at anyone or anything, let alone the guy responsible for the best orgasm of Pat’s life.

  “Gotta run, dude, time is money.” Sure, Nicholas himself had been too busy to make extra work for the night manager, but there was a bunch of other stuff Pat should have been doing. He’d have to hurry to get everything finished before the end of his shift. He wouldn’t get any studying done tonight, that was for sure.

  So worth it, though. It wasn’t like Pat hadn’t had plenty of orgasms before, because duh. But this one? This one had been like submerging in the sound of a high-tech stereo system with space-going amplifiers after only ever having heard music through the wall of your apartment when the neighbor turned up his ancient, tinny radio.

  “Hrmph,” Nicholas said, flopping back down and burying his face in the pillow in what Pat interpreted as the politest goodbye he was capable of right now.

  Pat had already reached the door to the lab when he hesitated, turning back. His sisters would never let him hear the end of it if he let this poor schmuck continue to bumble through life in the failtastic way he evidently had been… and in all truth, Pat felt sympathy for the guy’s total incompetence. He knew all about the trials and tribulations of having no game. Bottom line: it sucked.

  “Hey Nicky, there’s something I gotta tell you.”

  Nicholas raised his face again slowly, still all bleary and sleepy, but now also with an annoyed vertical crease carved between his brows. Chances were he didn’t like being called Nicky. Tough luck, Pat had earned it. “You’re hot enough to make up for a multitude of sins, and you’re definitely a good kisser. But I won’t lie, your dirty talk is the pits, man. Like, absolutely subterranean. Tunneling to the center of the earth territory, if you catch my drift.” Pat paused briefly to think over what he’d said, and nodded to himself in satisfaction. His father always said that if you were going to criticize someone, you should lead with a compliment. You should also be encouraging and show concrete ways the suggested change would improve the situation, so Pat went on to explain. “I mean, I have no standards to speak of, so it was fine. But if you ever want to get laid again you have got to shape up, bro. Do yourself a favor here.”

  Nicholas blinked. Then he opened his mouth, and closed it again. Then, he blinked again. He kind of looked like an android caught in a fatal feedback loop. At least he looked like what Pat imagined that would look like, because of course he hadn’t ever actually seen an android caught in a feedback loop. Any android at all for that matter, what with technology not being far enough advanced to build a truly realistic one yet. Except for the dolphin ones, those were wicked cool. Not that Pat had ever seen an android dolphin yet, either, but he lived in hope.

  Anyway. “Just a friendly hint. No worries, right?”

  The way the vertical crease on Nicholas’s face deepened begged to differ, but Pat shrugged and stepped backwards out of the room, letting the door fall shut behind him. Whatever. Nicholas might not want to hear it now, but in the long run he’d be grateful someone had told him.

  Chapter Two

  Pretend it’s all part of your plan.

  “Urgent — immediate action required,” the AI spoke-shouted, nicely complemented by a backdrop of the throbbing alarm noise blaring out at roughly the volume of an illegal rave with particularly good speakers. “All necessary information must be provided immediately. I repeat, action is urgently required.”

  Pat heard the racket the minute he got off the elevator. In the kitchen itself, it was near-deafening, and he held protective hands over his ears as he rushed over to the interface to see what on earth was going on.

  “Service provider details and payment information not available,” the AI rebuked him sternly, though thankfully deigning to turn down the volume to a slightly less eardrum-busting level, now that it had gotten Pat to pay attention. “Please update all relevant files and complete all required paperwork. I repeat —”

  “Oh for god’s sake, shut up already!” Pat fumbled to find the option to temporarily silence the AI so he could hear himself think. A waterfall of alerts and prompts popped up in his way, and he was a little panicky by the time he finally got past them all. Why was the AI going nuts? Nothing like this had ever happened before. Clearly the mansion wasn’t burning down around their ears, so what gave?

  Blessed silence at last — thank you, gods — and Pat took a moment to close his eyes and center himself, scrambling after the remains of the golden glow of satisfaction he’d been reveling in since waking from his nap. He’d had his first real hook-up, and it had been awesome. He wasn’t going to let a hysterical virtual micro-manager ruin his afterglow because it had gotten its bytes in a bunch over an accounting issue.

  Once he’d regained his calm, Pat turned to the interface to puzzle his way through the AI’s demands. Service provider details, fine. Pat would get the AI all the info its mechanical little heart yearned for, and be rewarded with peace and quiet (and hopefully a couple hours to finish his work before the shift ended).

  Aha, there was the problem: A payment order had been issued for an external service provider, but there was no bank account or other payment info in the system that would have allowed the AI to send out the money. Cue the AI freaking its shit all over the place. Plus, for extr
a freak-out-the-anal-AI value, all basic info on the service provider in question was missing, too.

  Which would have made perfect sense, except: What the fuck, which service provider was the AI babbling about? Pat hadn’t called in any external help tonight. The only thing Nicholas had wanted was a pizza, and the chefs had prepared everything for that ahead of time. In fact, in the two months he’d been working as Nicholas’s night manager, Pat had only had to call in outside help once, for the inexplicable mousse au chocolat request. One call to the emergency French cuisine number, and the best restaurant in town had delivered the coveted dessert right to the mansion’s door — in the middle of the night, long after closing time.

  Money was like magic, in a way. Wave it around dramatically enough, and everything you wanted would appear, as though conjured from thin air.

  Anyway. As night manager, Pat was the one who should have been arranging any outsourcing. If someone else — meaning mansion security, because there wasn’t anybody else on duty at this hour — had been forced to break protocol, Pat would at the very least have been notified… and besides, then the AI would have been flashing its forms at the security guys, not at Pat. So again, what the fuck?

  Maybe this mysterious external service was an older service that got stuck in the system? Maybe someone had misfiled it or tagged it with the wrong date, or some mechanical neuron in the AI’s brain had misfired, making the order pop up like a virtual gerbil?

  Pat struggled through various demandingly flashing forms until he found the information he was looking for: the date and specifications of the service request all the drama was about. The request was marked as a ‘direct unclassified request by principal’, aka Nicholas himself. There was even an audio file attached. And the time stamp was roughly two hours ago.

  Hang on. What the —

  Okay. Just a sec.

  When Pat tapped on the audio file, he already half suspected what he would hear. “So, send up a guy,” said the familiar recording of Nicholas’s voice.