Take Two

by Evangeline Anderson

  “The wound’s still fresh enough—Holt and I think we can fix it entirely.” Blakely was suddenly at her other side, looking at her hopefully. “I wanted to do it earlier while you were asleep—wanted to spare you havin’ to see that ugly cut at all, but Holt thought it was a bad idea. But now…the whole mess with reconstructive surgery…Why bother when we can make everything better so easily?”

  “But…” Sadie knew what they were saying was true, knew instinctively deep in her bones and in the back of her mind in the place where she was bonded to them that what they were asking her to do was the right thing. The memory of what had happened in front of the fire at Van Heusen’s house came back suddenly in a wave, washing over her with heat and light and wanting, and she was afraid. Afraid that if she started, if she let them start, that all three of them would be utterly incapable of stopping. If only her body didn’t crave them so badly. If only she could trust herself.

  “You don’t have to worry about it going too far, Sadie,” Holt said in a low voice. “We won’t let it. We only want to heal you, to touch you one last time before we take you home and let the bond die forever.”

  “Well, I…” she began, thinking that she wanted it, too. Wanted to feel the warm, golden current flowing through all of them, binding them all together just one more time before she had to give it up forever. It scared her how much she wanted it.

  “The, uh, bond can’t get any stronger at this point unless we…you know, at the same time,” Blakely said, his dark face getting a little red. “And we’re not gonna do that. It just makes sense to use it while we’ve got it.”

  “Just let me…let me think about it, okay?” Sadie asked desperately, feeling their need mixing with her own until it was nearly overpowering. “Why don’t you two let me take a shower—I feel disgusting right now and I just want to clean up.”

  She shooed them out and they left, a little reluctantly, Sadie thought. Trying not to look at the viewer, she stripped off the hateful red dress and stepped into the shower. But she already knew what she was going to do.

  Later, it was that healing that Sadie remembered most, even more than the intense sex at Van Heusen’s. She lay naked between the two muscular male bodies and gave herself up to sensation as Blakely and Holt kissed and caressed her body from top to bottom, summoning the healing energy that flowed between them. It itched along her hurt cheek like fire until the flesh knit together and became whole once more and then everything was pure pleasure.

  Sadie closed her eyes, closed her mind to the nagging little voice of guilt and just let it happen. Hands on her breasts, her thighs, between her legs. Hot, slow kisses along her spine and belly, her hips and throat, and everywhere in between. They brought her to orgasm again and again so softly, so gently that she had barely stopped riding one crest before another one lifted her up and away.

  Through it all was the most profound sense of love and need she had ever felt, flowing from Blakely and Holt into her and back to them, forming a closed connection of emotion and pleasure that blanketed them all in a golden glow. Love you, Sadie, love you forever. Never forget this, the love we shared, the way we are now, together, forever for this moment that can never come again.

  The words seemed to sigh through her mind as first Holt and then Blakely mounted and entered her. One at a time but sweet, so sweet for all of that. Blakely cradled her gently, her back to his chest, whispering love and affection into her ear as Holt rose above her, piercing her sex with his shaft, pouring himself into her, loving her, healing her. When they had rested a little, Holt held her cheek against his chest so that Sadie could hear the steady thunder of his heart while Blakely took her gently from behind, thrusting deep to fill her completely with his hardness and his seed.

  Never forget this, never, never forget this, she thought feeling the love and the need crest within her one last time before she fell into the darkness of an exhausted sleep.

  20

  “No, Gerald, I’m sorry but I’m not free on Sunday either. That’s the day I leave.”

  His narrow, pinched face became tight with anger, a closed fist of emotion on the vid-screen.

  “I get it, Sadie. Now that you’re a big-shot reporter you don’t have time for old friends anymore.”

  “Gerald, it’s not like that and you know it.” Sadie sighed. “Look, I have to go now. I’ll call you later.” She cut the connection before he could protest and sank back in her seat.

  She supposed she should be grateful that Gerald wanted to talk to her at all. More than one old friend and neighbor had stopped speaking with her since she had shocked conservative Goshen with her eyewitness report of the prostie scandal. Even Aunt Minnie had disowned her after hearing where she had been and what she had been up to for the two-and-a-half months she’d been gone. Sadie had never been really close to her aunt, but the old lady was the nearest thing Sadie had to a parent and her rejection hurt more than she cared to think about. Hurt even more than the snide remarks and half-heard whispers behind her back when she walked down the streets of her old neighborhood.

  It did no good whatsoever to explain that she had only gone undercover to get the story and had not actually serviced any clients in her role as a prostie-borg. People in Goshen were narrow-minded and disposed to believe the worst. Everywhere she went, Sadie felt like she ought to be wearing a scarlet letter tattooed on her forehead. It was funny, actually, that her fellow Goshenites were condemning her just for doing her job when she had done much worse things on her “two-and-a-half-month mission of depravity,” as Aunt Minnie had called it, than wearing the skimpy prostie-outfits and spending time in a brothel. If only they knew what I really did, I’d probably be run right out of the colony, she thought more than once.

  Despite rejection at home, her career was really taking off. As Holt had promised, she had the only eyewitness account of the whole scandal, and the news-vids had fallen all over each other to buy her story. It seemed like a dream, but she actually had been nominated for a Solar Pulitzer in journalism. Sadie had found out only the week before and she had wanted to tell someone. Calling Gerald, however, had turned out to be a bad mistake. He had somehow gotten it into his head that she wanted to get back together and all his talk of “old friends” aside, Sadie knew he was really angling for a date. In the past she might have gone out with him and given the relationship another shot, but not now. Not after all that had happened to her while she had been away.

  It was ironic, Sadie thought, that all her professional dreams were coming true while her personal life crumbled away. She even had a job offer on the table to be a correspondent for the New New York Times. Because the NNYT was the most prestigious and respected news vid-mag in the System, Sadie felt extremely lucky. Accepting the job would mean leaving Io and relocating to Old Earth, of course, but she had decided to take it anyway. After all, what did she have to hold her to this narrow-minded, Goddess-forsaken moon anymore? Nothing, not a thing, Sadie told herself. And Old Earth was where all the power and money and opportunity was. That was where her future was now.

  Of course, her decision had nothing to do with the fact that Blakely and Holt were stationed there. Nothing at all. In fact, she barely ever thought of them anymore and she was sure they never thought of her because they never bothered to call…

  Don’t think about it, she commanded herself. It was months ago and now it’s over—completely, irrevocably over. The bond was gone, she was sure of that. She no longer felt any emotions but her own inside her head. No one else’s pain hurt her, no one else’s need filled her with longing, no one else’s love surrounded her and made her feel safe and wanted…Sadie sighed and dragged herself out of the chair to finish packing her things. She had never thought she could be so damn lonely inside her own skin. Had never thought she could miss feeling someone else’s emotions in the back of her mind.

  She didn’t have any romantic notions that she would “run into” Blakely or Holt when she moved to Old Earth. After all, it was a huge
place, not a little backwater nothing of a colony like Goshen. She could probably live there in the big, dirty city of New New York and never see them once for the rest of her life. If one or both of them had called her, even once, she might have at least let them know she was coming. She had heard nothing from them in six months, not since they had dropped her off on Io with a final hug from each, so Sadie was forced to conclude that they considered the brief love affair to be over, too.

  Of course, she had made no move to contact them either, but then, it was the man’s, or in this case the men’s, job to make contact; at least to her way of thinking. The ball was in their court and they had done nothing with it. It hurt her pride to admit it, but Sadie had begun to think that maybe she was just one of many. Maybe they picked up women everywhere they went. Maybe the whole story about having to have the right brain chemistry was just that—just a big story to make her feel special so she’d agree to be with them the way they wanted.

  Sadie sighed again as she threw clothing haphazardly into a standard-sized compression cube that gobbled up whatever she gave it and compressed the article into a square-inch–sized parcel that could be easily packed. The cube had been expensive to rent, but it would save her money on transport fares in the long run. Sadie figured she could probably bring her entire wardrobe along in one small suit-pack. Her pictures and other personal items would be shipped on a carrier, which was cheaper than taking them along on the expensive star-freighter she herself was riding. The NNYT was paying for her passage, but her relocation costs were up to her.

  Sure wish I had somebody to meet me at the port… Sadie nipped that thought in the bud. Despite their failure to call her, she had considered calling Blakely and Holt on the vid-screen and just letting them know that she would be in town. Seeing if they wanted to remain friends at least. A hundred times in the last six months she had punched in their number and then hit the cancel button. Because what if she placed the call and a woman answered the phone? What if they had only been using her to get what they wanted and now they had moved on? Sadie couldn’t bear the thought.

  Besides, even if there is no new girl and they did agree to be friends, I could never be just friends with those two. Not while she remembered so well the warm, electrical current, the golden fire that had flowed between the three of them. How could she ever be around Blakely and Holt and not long for that? Not wish for the utter total completion that had been so close each time she made love to one of them? There was no way she could withstand the temptation to form a Life-bond with them if they spent any significant amount of time together. And that would be so bad, why? She quashed the thought firmly as she did whenever it occurred to her, but it had been coming back more and more lately.

  Once upon a time she had thought she was too moral, too purely Goshen, to think of the kind of lifestyle a Life-bond with Blakely and Holt would involve. It wasn’t like she’d ever be able to take them home and show them off as her husbands. If she tried a thing like that…well, they still had stoning laws on the books in Goshen for extreme cases of immorality. Sadie had a feeling that flaunting a polygamous marriage might fall under that heading pretty easily. At the very least she knew they wouldn’t be welcome in Aunt Minnie’s house, the house where she had grown up from the age of twelve.

  She was already a social outcast in Goshen. Aunt Minnie already wasn’t talking to her. And Sadie was having a harder and harder time remembering why she had felt so shocked and horrified at what Blakely and Holt had proposed to her in the first place. Because I’m not that kind of girl. The little voice mocked her now. She obviously was that kind of girl or she wouldn’t keep thinking about it.

  It’s been six months and you’re moving to Old Earth to start an exciting new career, Sadie told herself sternly. It’s time to put the past behind you and move onward and upward. She threw the last article of clothing into the compression cube and watched it shrink into an impossibly small shape. New life, here I come! And she was almost happy.

  21

  “Yes, dahling, your first assignment will be the trial. You’ve missed most of it I’m afraid, but the sentencing is today so you won’t miss that at least.”

  Sadie looked at her new senior editor. Prissy De Tangelen was a wasp-waisted fortyish bleached blond with an old-fashioned pair of real glass spectacles perched on her knife-blade of a nose. She was wearing a tight, flesh-colored dress that became completely see-through at some angles. The daring dress made Sadie feel frumpy in her brand new cobalt-blue working-girl suit that she had purchased specially for her first day at the Times. But the see-through dress wasn’t the most startling characteristic of her new editor. Behind the spectacles were a pair of poison green eyes, and her long blond hair rose three feet off her head and stood straight up on end, trembling gently in the passing air currents like seaweed under the ocean, making her look like a parody of a woman who’d had a terrible fright. It had taken Sadie a few minutes to realize that the jeweled choker Prissy wore was actually an anti-gravity collar. The senior editor told her they were all the rage in New New York at the moment.

  “Better than a face-lift any day, dahling.” She’d patted Sadie’s cheek. “Not that you need to worry about such things yet.”

  Now she was looking at Sadie with an air of expectation. “I, um, where is the trial being held?” Sadie felt like an idiot. “I’m sorry it’s just that I haven’t been in the city for twenty-four hours yet so…”

  “Not to worry, my sweet,” Prissy De Tangelen said serenely.

  “It’s being held at the downtown courthouse and it’s a complete circus. Any hover-taxi can get you there so you don’t have to worry about that. Now, as you may know we already have people covering the trial, have had from the moment they brought that old pimp Van Heusen in.” Prissy paused for breath and patted her shimmering tower of hair absently. The writing stylus she’d been holding was caught in the anti-grav field and began orbiting her hair like a small, elliptical satellite.

  “What the Times wants from you, is an eyewitness account written in the same style as your Pulitzer piece. It should have a start-to-finish kind of feeling. You saw the beginning and now you’re seeing the end. You see? We’re looking for a sense of closure, here, dahling. Can you do it?” Sadie opened her mouth but Prissy De Tangelen didn’t give her a chance to answer. “What am I asking? Of course you can,” she answered her own question with an expansive wave of her hand that sent her brassy blond hair into slow-motion ripples and caused the orbiting stylus to twirl lazily end over end. “So get to it, they’re starting at nine.”

  “Thank you,” Sadie said uncertainly, standing and gathering her things. She hadn’t expected to be sent out on assignment quite so quickly; she didn’t even have a desk yet. Or an apartment. She supposed she could stand to live in the cramped five by five mini-sleep cube a little longer. “You’ve been more than kind.”

  “And what else would I be to our newest Pulitzer nominee?” Prissy smiled a wide, white predatory grin bracketed by blood red lips that made Sadie distinctly nervous. “We at the Times just loved your little story, dahling. Positively ate it up. All the intrigue and danger and especially the sex angle. Sex sells like nobody’s business. And it takes a real artist to get a Pulitzer nod out of tabloid material like prostie-borgs. Just keep up that level of writing and we’ll keep you around. Remember, at the Times if you don’t produce, you’re out. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Sadie replied faintly through numb lips.

  “Well then you’d better run, dahling. You don’t want to miss the show. I’ll expect the article on my desk before we go to press tomorrow. Oh, and here’s your press pass. Try not to lose it.” The editor tossed a small, leather wallet in Sadie’s direction and she fumbled awkwardly, nearly dropping it before she could tuck it into the pocket of her cobalt suit.

  “Absolutely, of course. I’ll just…I’ll let myself out.” Sadie headed for the door and Prissy De Tangelen nodded absently, bending to look over some work scrolling across
the front of her fiberoptic desk. Her hair seemed to be waving goodbye.

  Van Heusen’s trial, the very place Sadie had been hoping to avoid! She cursed under her breath as she settled carefully into the smoothly humming hover-taxi after typing in her destination. The blinking read-out informed her that her ride would cost three hundred credits and take thirty minutes. Sadie winced as she pressed her thumb over the red credit indicator and watched it read her print and deduct the credit from her account. The light turned green and the hover-taxi whooshed silently up into the air. She hoped the Times would give her some kind of expense account to cover this kind of thing in the future or she was going to be very broke very fast.

  As the taxi ate up the miles, Sadie stared out of the window, wishing she was heading anywhere but the trial. She supposed she was lucky she hadn’t had to be there for the whole thing. She had narrowly missed being subpoenaed as a witness, but apparently her tell-all article had branded her as prejudicial in the eyes of Van Heusen’s attorneys and they had worked hard to keep her from being called. Sadie had breathed a sigh of relief at the time, thinking that she surely would have run into Blakely and Holt if she showed at Van Heusen’s trial. It would have been unavoidable. Now she was going there anyway and she just bet one or both of them would be there.

  Sadie lifted her chin, feeling defiant. Well, if it happened, it happened. She would just put on her most professional manner and explain that she didn’t have much time to talk because she had a deadline to meet.

  Sooner than she would have liked the hover-taxi coasted down to a huge granite building that pierced the dirty sky of New New York like a gray, accusing finger. Sadie knew that Old Earth natives were proud that they lived on the only planet in the System that didn’t need an atmosphere dome, but the polluted brown air currents that swept past her as she disembarked made her wonder what was so great about going domeless. The air on Goshen had smelled dry and processed, but at least it didn’t stink. Squaring her shoulders, she marched up the endless granite steps to the front of the courthouse. She supposed she’d get used to the stink along with everything else after a while.