Title: Redstone Chapter 11, Part 1.
“You’ll be here when he gets in, right?”
“Absolutely.” The pause from his husband made Garrett sigh.
“Jonah, I will swear on whatever you want me to swear on that I’ll be back by
the time Cody gets in. I wouldn’t do that to him or to you; you’re going to need help wrangling all of the kids.”
Cody, Ten, Darrell and Grennson were all arriving at Miles Caractacus’ floating
family dwelling today, a brief visit before they headed back to Olympus and the
beginning of their second year at the Academy. “Provided you don’t make me
late,” he added when Jonah seemed to have no inclination to roll off of him.
“We haven’t spent an afternoon in bed together in way too
long,” Jonah said, stretching out against Garrett and rubbing the lengths of
their nude bodies together. Garrett turned into the movement, drawn to his
husband’s warm skin like light to a black hole. “Can’t blame me for wanting to
prolong it.”
“Mmm, no,” Garrett agreed. And quite the afternoon it had
been, too; Jonah had been away for the past three weeks, traveling from Drifter
ship to Drifter ship like a ghost and negotiating small but useful deals for
mutual assistance in the Fringe. Garrett had been stuck in unending debate with
the Senate, while trying to juggle dozens of other projects and potentials at
the same time. One of those potentials, one that could provide invaluable
information for other projects, had finally agreed to meet with him face to
face. It was quite a coup; Garrett would be the first person in over a decade
to speak with Berengaria Alexander face-to-face. Needless to say, they’d both
been busy, so when the opportunity to fall into bed and forget everything else
for a while had come up, neither man had resisted.
Two spectacular orgasms later and Garrett was feeling rather
successfully relaxed. And when Jonah curled his long fingers around Garrett’s
waist again, sliding his hands up his back until they got a good grip on his
shoulders, Garrett gave in. He let his head fall back against the mattress and
wrapped his legs around Jonah’s waist, hitching him closer to where Garrett
wanted him, where he’d already been once. “I’ve got to leave in half an hour,”
he whispered in Jonah’s ear, loving the way he could still make his husband’s
breath shudder in his chest. “So you’ll have to be fast, and focused.”
“I don’t know about fast,” Jonah said with a faint groan as
he found the spot and pushed, and oh
fuck, Garrett hadn’t had Jonah twice in quick succession like this in way too
long. He loved the ache of his body opening for Jonah, the intense pulse of
pleasure it sent quivering through his core and out his limbs. He wanted to
prolong it, preserve it; moments like this were so rare now, times when Garrett
could exist solely in Jonah’s arms with no distractions, nothing pending,
nothing pressing. He almost missed that indolent period of his life when the
only thing on his mind was the next party, the next casual fuck.
There was nothing casual about Jonah, though. He demanded
Garrett’s attention, taking the concept of focus to another level as he moved
with precision, so good at pushing Garrett’s buttons at this point that even
though he’d come twice already, Garrett’s body responded with rapidity. Jonah’s
eyes were open, fixed on Garrett’s face, watching every expression that crossed
it and adjusting accordingly. He fucked him slow but deep, pressing in hard
each time, and Garrett tensed and tightened every muscle in response, his hands
slowly turning into claws that clutched Jonah closer with every thrust.
“That’s it, darlin’,” Jonah murmured. “That’s it, give it to
me. You’re so ready to come again, aren’t you? You’ve been dyin’ for it, all
these weeks.”
“Shut up,” Garrett choked out. “Shut up, you’re cheating.”
“You said fast—”
His hips screwed in hard again, hard and so slow but it wasn’t about Jonah’s
speed, it was about Garrett’s reaction, and that was very quickly spiraling out
of control. “And I just wanna give you what you want.”
Garrett had just the right pithy response on the tip of his
tongue, but it didn’t matter, because he wasn’t going to be able to say it. He
lost the ability to do anything but let Jonah in, take what he gave and wrap
himself tighter and tighter with every second until finally, in what felt like
far too little time for his sated body, the coil of tension inside of him broke
open. Unlike the last two times, which had been more explosive, blinding and
ecstatic, this orgasm spooled across his body like a solar prominence, slow and
expansive and pinging across every nerve in his body. He felt Jonah tense
against him, slow down even further and press in so hard it felt like their
bodies might finally merge. His exhale gusted against Garrett’s ear, echoing
with the sound of Garrett’s name, and when Jonah finally slumped, Garrett was
there to catch him.
A few minutes later Jonah rolled away with a grin. “Ten
minutes left,” he said smugly. “You’d better hurry, darlin’.”
“Oh sure, flaunt your ability to have a nap right in front
of me,” Garrett snapped as he forced himself to get out of bed and head for the
sonic shower. “Being a smug bastard isn’t sexy.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jonah said as he tucked his hands behind
his head. Sprawled out on their bed, naked and sweaty and striped with red
lines from where Garrett had dug his fingers in hard, he was almost irresistible.
“It always looks good on you.”
Garrett shook his head. “You’re not making it any easier to
leave right now.”
“You’d better focus
then, darlin’.”
“Smug. Bastard.”
He did make his shuttle in time, if only barely. The window
for his audience was a brief one, and Garrett pulled his mind away from a warm
room and warmer husband and refocused on the task in front of him.
Berengaria Alexander. She’d lived in a secure space dwelling
orbiting Liberty for fourteen years now. Her home was more of a self-sustaining
fortress than a simple home, with carefully managed gardens, solar power for
everything and nuclear backup systems, and a privacy shield that could fry the
control systems of ships as much as ten times as big as her entire
micro-colony. She lived in the company of bots only, and never gave public
appearances. She occasionally gave interviews, but only via holo. She was
independently wealthy, decisively isolated and by in large seemed content to be
forgotten. Garrett was still somewhat surprised that he’d managed to land a
face to face meeting with her.
Then again, if the woman had any soft spot, it was her
brother Kyle. She hadn’t been his guardian for long, but her feud with
President Alexander over Kyle’s custody was legendary among the upper classes,
as was her defeat. She hadn’t stopped pushing until the president sent Kyle off
to boarding school, and then only because her health had taken an unexpected
and suspicious turn for the worse.
She knew something that would help them, Garrett was sure of
it. It didn’t make sense for Raymond Alexander to stuff his brother away and
delay the trial again and again. His poll numbers were down, and petitions
among every special interest group from students to military officers to family
advocates were multiplying by the day, insisting on “Justice For Kyle!” Why delay,
when it should be a simple thing for him to discredit his brother in court?
Kyle had already confessed to killing his classmate, and with the help of an
empath and a few genetic tests, the president would be able to frame Kyle as
delusional and have him locked away without the interest he was generating
right now. And if he was hoping for Kyle to quietly die and diminish the
controversy that way, well, that wasn’t going to happen. Not while Garrett was
on guard.
There was another reason for the president’s machinations,
and Garrett was going to find out what that reason was.
The shuttle pulled up to the glittering privacy shield
outside of Berengaria’s home. “Voice verification, please,” a smooth-toned
voice said over the comm.
“Garrett Helms.”
“Stand by for scan.” Ah yes, the infamous ship scan. The
technology was so invasive that most planetary governments refused to use it,
citing health concerns. Submitting to it was a condition of Garrett’s visit,
though, and he sat still as the specially-calibrated radioactive rays suffused
the ship, getting a three-dimensional picture of everything living or inert
inside of the hull. The AI classified everything it found, comparing it to the
original specs for the shuttle, analyzing life signs and any hint of weaponry,
including chemical and organic.
After a minute of tense silence, the voice finally spoke up
again. “Acknowledged, Garrett Helms. Please wait for touchdown before moving from
your seat.” In other words, no sudden
moves or we’ll blast you to space dust. Garrett sat perfectly still as the
shield opened to admit him, and the shuttle followed its pre-programmed path
down to the landing bay.
Berengaria’s home was large, a shimmering sea of metallic
rainbow colors that shifted depending on the angle. Inside the biodome, every
corner was home to some sort of plant, and beyond the main house Garrett caught
a glimpse of terraced fields before his line of sight was obscured. It was a
beautiful place, and the air, when the shuttle doors finally opened to let him
out, was warm, almost tropical.
He walked down the ramp and onto the dark blue landing pad.
A humanoid bot came out to meet him—shockingly humanoid, actually. If Garrett
hadn’t known better from the identification code glowing subtly across its
forehead, he would have mistaken it for a person.
“Welcome, Mr. Helms.” The bot, shaped masculine but wearing
almost shapeless dark brown clothes, inclined its head. “Please follow me
inside.”
“Lead on.”
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