Arena 3

by Logan Jacobs

  We paused for a few precious seconds while we each gasped and stared into each other’s eyes. We were joined now, and the feeling of being inside of her wet and velvety pussy was absolutely amazing.

  Another flash of mind-exploding pleasure washed over me as Nova began to grind into me. My hand drifted to her waist and guided her hips as she moved up and down. She threw back her head and moaned in ecstasy. Her pace grew faster, and she brought me almost to the point of no return. Before that happened, I reached up, twisted and flipped her on her back. My hands held her arms at the wrist up near her head as I entered her.

  “Yes, harder, Marc, harder,” she panted and bit my ear.

  Nova’s strong legs wrapped around my waist as I lost myself to the moment and pounded into her. Our hips found a rough rhythm, and her hands grabbed hold of my ass. She pulled me into her harder and faster until we both could hold back no longer.

  Our moans and cries of pure sexual bliss reached a crescendo as my mind lost itself to the power of our orgasm. I filled her as she clenched around me, and for a handful of amazing seconds, there was no Crucible of Carnage.

  It was just us, and I wanted it to last forever.

  But then our climax ended, and I collapsed onto her. She soon nestled up into my chest, and goosebumps tickled our skin as I pulled the sheet up to cover us.

  “You were entirely correct, Marc,” Nova purred as sleep began to take us away. “You do take a lickin and keep on tickin.”

  Chapter Three

  The next morning I awoke to the sight of Nova as she stepped out of the bathroom, her body was glistening in the early morning light from the shower I assumed that she’d just taken. She strode unselfconsciously into the room as she dried her hair with a towel in her right hand and brushed her teeth with her left. Stealthy, Nova was not, and I felt her footfalls as she made her way around the bed. As she passed me, I reached out with my arms suddenly, grabbed her around the waist, and yanked her into the bed.

  “Gah! Haba!” She mumbled through a mouthful of foamy toothpaste.

  “Mm, just how I like my women, minty fresh,” I joked as I tried to kiss her on the lips. She moved her head out the way and swatted me with her right hand that had dropped the towel. A scowl of annoyance flashed across her face but it was stupidly adorable instead of fearsome.

  Before she could get up, I ran my fingers across her bare ribs, and she squealed, squirmed, and spit a giant mouthful of foamy toothpaste. I stopped when I saw it splatter across my neutral color bedroom wall. We just looked at each other for a moment and then burst into laughter.

  Just then the door of my bedroom slid open and Woodhouse motored in. A spray bottle of some kind of cleaning solution was in one of his many robotic arms and a roll of paper towels was in another. I instinctively grabbed the sheet to cover myself but Nova just stood as if she wasn’t totally, completely, mouthwateringly, nude.

  “Toothpaste is bad for the paint, sir,” Woodhouse said as he sprayed the spot with the cleaning bottle then ripped a few paper towels from the roll and wiped it up. “Good morning, Ms. Qwark, you look positively glowing.”

  And now that he mentioned it, she did kind of glow. It wasn’t just a trick of the moon-rise light that poured through my window and played across her orange skin in warm swaths of light and dark as it filtered through my blinds. Everything about her seemed just… brighter.

  “Thank you, Woodhouse,” Nova replied nonplussed. She walked over to the large mirror I had over my dresser and began to fix her hair into the long warrior braid that she typically wore down her right shoulder. Oh, did I mention she was still heart-stoppingly naked?

  “You are welcome,” Woodhouse said, his robotic British accent as crisp as the new sheets I knew he’d put on my bed the second we left for the Hall of Champions. “I shall get the coffee started. Breakfast?”

  “Fruit, oatmeal, and bacon for me, Woodhouse,” I said and sat up in the bed. I wanted something light after the amount of meat product, cheese, and saturated fats I’d consumed the day before.

  “Eggs, sausage, hashbrown, half a Borshoi melon, and side of sliced elphabian elk meat, please Woodhouse,” Nova threw over her shoulder as her fingers quickly and deftly pulled her long, lustrous hair into the braid. Then, she turned to me. “I’m still full from yesterday so just a light breakfast.”

  “God, I think I love you,” I blurted out as she stared at me with her gloriously green eyes. Woodhouse puttered out, and a second later I heard the clank and bang of pots and pans in the kitchen. “Oh, and seriously, why does it look like you are glowing?”

  “Huh?” Then she gazed at herself in the mirror. Still naked, just so you know. “Oh, yes. Another byproduct of the reactor accident that gave me my blast power. I tend to glow for several hours after intense sexual pleasure.”

  “Intense, huh?” I asked with a cocky raised eyebrow.

  Nova finished her braid and tied the end off with a small piece of thin leather cord, sauntered over to me, pushed me back down on the bed, and kissed me hard on the mouth. Her breath was crisp and minty from the toothpaste as her tongue danced past mine to lick and then she bit my top lip playfully before she stood back up and walked back into the bathroom.

  “Yes, intense,” she said with a wicked grin before she closed the door.

  “Aw, boo,” I moaned as I scratched my head and glanced at myself in the mirror. My hair stood out in all directions like Cher in the Eighties. “I was enjoying the view.”

  “I know,” Nova said through the closed door. A moment later, she emerged in her normal attire. Black leggings, Paladinian combat boots, and a three-quarter length workout top. “Get a move on, Havak. We need to get to the gym.”

  “But I don’t wanna,” I said in a fake whine as I actually got up and walked to my bathroom.

  “Nice view,” Nova giggled then whacked my bare ass as I passed her.

  “Ow,” I turned on her, but she was already through the bedroom and on her way to the kitchen.

  I took a quick shower in the Spiff-O-Matic 2000, what I called my shower closet that gave me a full shower, shave, and salon style hairdo in about ninety seconds. I pulled on one of my normal dark blue-gray jumpsuits and laced up my own combat boots. By the time I got to the little breakfast nook off of my kitchen that overlooked the early morning hustle and bustle of the city, Nova was already elbow deep in her breakfast. I grabbed a cup of steaming coffee from Woodhouse and took a long sip.

  “Woodhouse,” I said as the hot liquid splashed warmly across my tongue. It was rich and slightly bitter with notes of chicory and tasted like a bit of jet black heaven. “I don’t know what I would do without you. I can’t believe I had to travel a million light years away from home to have the best cup of coffee ever.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Woodhouse chirped, and if he’d had a face, I was pretty sure the little robot would have smiled from transistor to transistor.

  I sat down in front of Nova, and we spent the next few minutes in silence as we both ate our breakfasts. I liked this little spot. I was high enough up floor wise to have a pretty amazing view of Valience City. I didn’t know much about the city’s history other than it had grown up around the Crucible of Carnage, what those of us who competed in the Forge of Heroes called the games, thousands of years ago.

  It reminded me of New York with dashes of Los Angeles, London, and Paris mixed with a healthy dose of Coruscant. Streams of air traffic zoomed through the city and wound around the never-ending expanse of skyscrapers and space needles that filled my view. Hell, I didn’t even know what the name of the planet that we were on was. I kept meaning to ask Artemis but something always managed to come up. Between fighting for my life in the arena, battling overzealous gangsters, and training my ass off there just hadn’t been any time.

  The clatter of utensils on an empty plate brought me out of my thoughts, and I saw that Nova had finished her “light” breakfast and brought her dishes into the kitchen.

  “Let’s go, Marc,” she s
aid and grabbed her jacket.

  “Right behind you,” I mumbled through my last bite of oatmeal and bacon. Then I took my own jacket from Woodhouse’s outstretched arm as we walked out the door.

  The hover-cab ride was uneventful and quick. Nova and I did have enough time to sneak a few quick kisses and a half-way decent snuggle in the back seat. Just before the hover-cab set down on the curb Nova squeezed my hand and turned to look at me.

  “Before you even ask,” she assured, “no. I am not jealous of your relationship with Artemis. As I’m sure she has explained, while jealousy does exist in the known galaxy, it is rare. I know that you do not have with anyone what you and I share. And what you share with anyone else is yours to share with them. They have little to do with each other. Agreed?”

  “Totes, agreed,” I said and smiled at her. My Earth brain with all its human socialization had a hard time believing it, but so far Artemis and now Nova had been true to their words. I was beginning to believe there was enough Marc Havak to go around.

  “Good,” Nova said and kissed me one more time. “Now, let's go train so that we can crush our enemies.”

  We hopped out of the cab and made our way into the Hall of Champions. I’d been through the massive archway doors almost every day for coming up on three months, but it was still impressive as fuck. The gigantic Apple Magic Mouse shaped building housed all the training gyms for every champion in the Forge of Heroes and was a hive of activity at all hours of the night and day. It had an armory that would have made the Pentagon cream its panties, a huge commissary that harkened back to the golden days of the studio system in Hollywood with its cast of outrageous alien characters, and separate gyms for each champion and their trainers, attaches, and alliance mates.

  Nova and I made our way through the huge lobby greeting various other champions that we had come across and actually liked. I caught a brief glimpse of Tyyraxx and his coterie of sycophantic assholes as they disappeared down a hallway that led to the lower levels of the building. Which was fine by me, the overgrown iguana deserved to be down as close to the sewer as possible. One day I’d get to face him in the arena, and I had vowed that I was going to kill him for what he had done to Grizz.

  “Marc, quit dawdling, let’s go,” Nova urged and pulled me out of my vengeful reverie.

  A few hallways later the door to our own gym opened, and I stepped into eight feet of water.

  With a sputter and more than a bit of splashing, I came back up to the surface and held on to the side of the Olympic sized swimming pool that suddenly made up the entirety of our normal gym.

  “What the-- huh?” I managed to spit out with a mouthful of water.

  Grizz appeared next to the command center, which was now on the side of the pool, and bellowed with laughter so hard that he could hardly stand up straight.

  Artemis stood from behind her computer terminal and I could tell she had a hard time stifling a giggle fit. She wore a very alluring two piece floral bikini that accentuated every curve of her perfectly designed body. Artemis also had on a large floppy sun hat and had a very large smear of blue zinc oxide on her nose. She was sexy and adorable and completely out of place.

  PoLarr appeared next to me as silently as a shark, her long, lithe limbs practically tailor-made for the water. She had on a tight one-piece swimsuit that was similar to the ones swimmers wore in competition but had long sleeves and was made from a kind of neoprene rubber like a wetsuit. Small, compact dive fins covered her feet, and her face was encased in a sleek dive helmet that connected with a thin tube to two slender tanks encased in an aquadynamic backpack that I assumed was a rebreather style aqualung. She splashed me playfully.

  “Ha ha,” I said with more than just a hint of wounded pride.

  “We’re sorry, Marc,” Artemis said as she got her giggles under control.

  “I am not,” Grizz managed to say between his guffaws. “That was glorious.”

  “Yes, we are, Grizz,” Artemis scolded, “There is a little more than twenty-four hours until the next match, and Grizz and I decided that we should do some water sports today.”

  “Artie, that’s not, never mind,” I said as I wiped the unexpectedly salty water out of my eyes and pulled myself out of the pool. “Where can I change into a wetsuit?”

  My jumpsuit hung on me like a floppy second skin. Little streams of water poured from a few of my utility pockets so that I looked like a statue in a fountain.

  Artemis came over and pressed a button on my belt, and my entire jumpsuit shimmered, and I felt a slight tickle as its molecules shifted and before my eyes, it morphed into a skin-tight, futuristic dive suit. Even though it clung to my body like it had been sprayed on, there was no binding or chaffing as I began to stretch and swing my arms to test my mobility.

  I’d tried SCUBA diving once after high school and hated how the wetsuit caught in the most awkward of places. I couldn't help but notice how my body had changed in the last few weeks. While I wasn’t quite ripped, I would have wagered that I’d put on about fifteen pounds of muscle while losing twenty pounds of excess padding. I wasn’t Jason Statham yet, but I was closing in.

  “Oh, I like the way that looks on you, sugar,” I heard Aurora drawl from the other side of the pool. She was splayed out in a lounger and had on the smallest bikini I think I’d ever seen. Her compact, hourglass figure shimmered like a pearl, and I saw more of her geometric tattoos than ever before. They covered just about every inch of her torso and arms, and it was sexy as fuck. She even had a pair of oversized sunglasses and sipped a drink with an umbrella in it.

  “Thanks, Aurora,” I said and tried to cover the little crack in my voice as I did. “It does fit well.”

  “I guess this is as good a time as any to bring up the fact that my people don’t do well in water,” Nova said as she carefully skirted the side of the pool. “I meant to mention that yesterday but then we all got distracted by the America, Fuck Yeah! Platter.”

  “God, that was good,” Artemis said wistfully before she got back to her business voice. “Point well taken, Nova. Your overly dense molecules will sink like a rock. This is going to be a three-member team match, so Aurora, it looks like you are going to have to get wet.”

  “Oh, honey, I at least need you to buy me dinner first,” Aurora teased as she stood up from her chair, whipped her sunglasses off, and did a perfect swan dive into the pool with barely any splash. She stayed under the water for almost the entire length before popping up next to PoLarr like Ariel from Little Mermaid, only adult, and very incredibly sexy. And Adult.

  And incredibly sexy.

  “Your weapons and gear should be back from Darry’s soon,” Grizz said as he strode over to the side of the pool. “Until then, we will do some swim conditioning and practice coordinated movement.”

  “Synchronized, if you will,” I couldn’t help myself from throwing out.

  “Yes, precisely, Marc,” Grizz said and looked at me as if I was being redundant. “Now give me ten laps!”

  I dove back into the pool as if on instinct. Every summer from fourth grade until my sophomore year of high school I did extracurricular swim team at the local YMCA, and my body jumped on command, and I started an overzealous freestyle stroke that petered out halfway through my first lap. While my conditioning had gotten about a thousand times better than what it had been when I spent eight to ten hours a day in the cab of a truck, swimming was a whole different beast. They weren’t kidding when they said it was a whole body workout, and there was a reason Michael Phelps ate seven thousand calories a day while training. My lungs screamed, and my arms felt like they were filled with cement as I finished lap one and hung on to the side of the pool for dear life as I sucked in gasps of air.

  PoLarr fared much better, but she was aided by her dive fins. They seemed to propel her with little jets of concentric water cones each time she kicked her feet. Aurora, on the other hand, had just as much difficulty with it as I did. Maybe more. She had just a bit more drag. Okay,
a lot more drag.

  PoLarr surfaced and flipped the front of her helmet-facemask up like the visor on a motorcycle helmet.

  “We had extensive training for zero atmospheric pressure missions,” she said as she took her equipment off. “Being under the water is very similar although much more difficult. Without the aid of the jet-fins, I fear I would be as winded as you two. Well, maybe not quite as winded.”

  “I guess we know what skill upgrade we’re all going to pick,” I said while I tried to catch my breath.

  “Yes, aquatics and swimming,” Grizz acknowledged.

  “Coming right up, guys,” Artemis chirped from behind the command center. A moment later, I felt the buzz at the base of my skull as the tiny nanochip that had affixed itself to the base of my cerebral cortex the day I arrived fired up. A burst of electricity shot through my nerve endings like a thousand little static shocks and then it was done.

  “Let’s go again,” Grizz commanded and Aurora, PoLarr, and I took off again.

  This time my body sliced through the water as if I had magically become streamlined. My arms reached just a bit farther, and my body mechanics became more fluid, like the surrounding water. I found myself breaking away from the typical strokes I’d been taught as a kid and using a strange combination of dolphin kicks, butterfly kicks, and explosive breaststroke motions with my arms. But it was all timed weirdly.

  I had no idea what I actually looked like, but it must have been really weird. Before I knew it, I was at the other end of the pool, did a quick underwater front flip and kicked the wall with all my might while I pushed water back in a corkscrew motion with my arms. This sent me into a tight spin that I kept going with tiny, but powerful kicks.

  As I came out of the spin, I realized I was halfway back down the length of the pool when I broke the surface and powered into a fast overhead stroke that was like freestyle mixed with breaststroke. I reached my starting point in record time and dove to the bottom of the pool before hitting the wall.