Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Fifteen, Part Two

 Notes: Still having mushy feelings, So Many FEELINGS, but we'll get back to more plottiness soon.

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Fifteen, Part Two

***

Chapter Fifteen, Part Two

 

It was fascinating to watch the Lizzie’s rescue unfold. Lizzie was an extremely modern ship, on the cutting edge of AI technology, but between the damage from the radiation and the labyrinthine circumstances Kieron had left her in, her computer simply hadn’t been up to bringing her back on its own. If Kieron hadn’t understood how far ahead of the competition Catalina was before this moment, he certainly would after watching things now.

The new programming that Elanus had just barely been able to shove into Lizzie’s AI from a distance wasn’t meant to modify her code to be smarter—it modified her to allow Catalina a backdoor through her numerous firewalls and automatic lockdowns and viral defenses. Essentially, it kept the Lizzie from bricking herself when Catalina exerted outside control over her systems.

Kieron and Elanus watched through Catalina’s own optical array, projected as a hologram for them right there in the hangar, as Catalina brought her sister home.

“Easy there…make sure you’ve calculated in the trajectory of that meteoroid, you don’t want to—”

“I seeeeeeeee iiiiiit.”

“I’m just making sure!”

“I seeeeee, Daddeeeeeee! Beeeee quieeet!”

Elanus huffed and rubbed a hand over his mouth, but Kieron could see he was pleased with how well Catalina was performing. “Haughty little miss,” he muttered, then glanced at Kieron and rolled his eyes. “You’d think she was the one who built me, the way she’s bossing me around.”

“Children do build up their parents,” Kieron replied absently, still staring at the projection. “Or destroy them. The fact that she’s so comfortable pushing back with you says a lot.”

“No mutually assured destruction for us?” Elanus asked, his tone assessing.

“It certainly doesn’t look like it.” Kieron looked over when he felt Elanus’s eyes stay on him. “What?”

“How old were you when you escaped from Hadrian’s Colony again?”

A surge of anger rose up inside of him. “We’re not talking about me right now,” Kieron said coldly. “We’re focusing on getting your ship back. Pay attention.”

“Catalina has it under control.”

“You still need to oversee it. Kids need to feel like their parents give a damn about what they’re doing.”

Elanus raised his hands peaceably. “She knows I do. She also knows I trust her to be able to pull this off.”

“You need to make sure she knows that by not getting distracted with me.” Speaking of distracted… “Where do you want the Lizzie? Because we can’t fit her in here.”

Elanus frowned. “What do you mean, we can’t fit her in here? She’s almost as compact as Catalina; there’s plenty of space.”

“Not if you want Catalina to keep her stage.”

“Her—what?”

“The stage.” Kieron indicated the space in front of them where the holographic rescue was playing out. There was a brief alert on one of the Lizzie’s starboard sensors as Catalina brought her close to a meteoroid, but it dissipated a few seconds later once the coast was clear. “She loves putting up her projections for us here. If you bring the Lizzie into this space, there won’t be room for them anymore.”

“She can do them on a smaller scale,” Elanus suggested, but he already looked like he was recalculating in his head. “Or…internally. Or to the front, if she fabricates a new holographic array that—”

“Just put the Lizzie in Hangar Four,” Kieron said. “It’s close enough that they’ll be able to communicate easily, you’ll be able to go back and forth without a problem, and Catalina can keep her play space. I’ll go prep it—it looks like the Lizzie will be back in another twenty minutes or so.” Kieron got to his feet and walked out, passing through Catalina’s hologram on his way to the door. Elanus didn’t call out after him, and he was grateful for that.

Prepping Hangar Four was easy, rote work, the kind of thing he didn’t have to put a lot of thought into, which was nice, since he didn’t want to think right now. Kieron made most of the adjustments manually, rather than going through the computer—even without his implant he could have made it work with voice commands, but he just wasn’t feeling very talkative right now. There was a weight hanging over him, living within him, bearing down on him more and more the harder he considered it. The best defense against that weight was hard work, labor physical enough to make his mind stop thinking and exist in a state of calm that only came from focused exertion.

By the time the Lizzie was back to the station and outside the hangar, Kieron had gotten everything prepared for her. He was hardly even sweating, too—a big improvement from just a few days ago. Soon he’d be ready for his implant again, and then he could speak to the station without the clunky intermediary of the tab, check on the calculations to find Zakari without having to stop what he was doing (playing with Catalina, fucking with Elanus, literally fucking Elanus), and talk to Catalina without having to hear her voice…her strange, beautiful voice.

“Are you just gonna stand there, or are you going to let my ship in?” Elanus drawled from over by the door, and how long had he even been standing there? Shit. Kieron hadn’t realized he was that lost in thought.

“Sorry.” He moved back into the safe zone, depressurized the hangar, and opened the main door. He and Elanus watched in uncommon silence as the Lizzie made her way back to safety, finally setting down in the very center of the floor. The ship was dinged up, no question, and Kieron felt a surge of guilt for what he’d let happen to her.

“Let me help fix her up,” he said before he could quite stop himself.

Elanus glanced at him, and Kieron didn’t have to be looking back to know that there was a heap of curiosity in his gaze. He didn’t know what he’d say when Elanus asked “why” other than that he wanted to, which would be an embarrassingly honest admission, but—

“Sure.”

That’s it? That casual acquiescence was all he was going to get? Now it was Kieron’s turn to stare at Elanus. “Are you—really?”

“I am, in fact, really.” Elanus was smirking, the bastard, but it was better than facing down a mouth full of questions. “It’ll be good for you. Therapeutic.” What the… “For your muscles,” he added. “Good for grip strength, good for fine motor work, good for all kinds of things. I know Catalina will feel better with you working on Lizzie, too.”

“She…will?”

“Sure. Of course she’ll be jealous, because she wants you all to herself, but she trusts you to take care of her bestie. After all.” Elanus’s smirk melted into a smile. “You took such good care of her.”

“I…” Kieron couldn’t stop himself—he reached out and clasped Elanus’s face in his hands and pulled him down into a kiss. It was awkward, given that the Ganian man was over a foot taller than him, but it felt perfect all the same. “Thank you,” he said when they finally separated. Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for letting me have more of you than I should.

“You’re welcome,” was all Elanus said in return, which was the perfect amount of reply.

Reckless is out today!

 Yaaaay, the final book in the Luckless series is out today!

Reckless wraps up the arc for our heroes (for now, lol) so if you're into dragonriders and monster fighters and true love and miracles and chases and escapes and revenge (yes I'm quoting The Princess Bride and I have no shame over that) then this one is probably for you ;) And the first book is free today, so...check it out!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09XLN6KKM

Refugees have been streaming into the city of Forge from around the country. Monsters are coming down from the mountains and staking out new hunting grounds. Even as the dragons of Forge grow stronger and more numerous, the challenges they and their riders are facing are only increasing, and there's only one place to look for answers.

Chicago is the strongest remaining city in the Midwest, home to thousands of people and protected by powerful dragons … or at least, it was. By the time Evan Luck and his dragon, Ladon, arrive there, it's clear that something's gone terribly wrong. People are starving, dragons are dying, and nobody knows who’s behind it all.

It’s something they’ve never faced before—something they thought didn’t exist, yet that’s terrifyingly familiar. It's up to Evan and Ladon to stop it … or lose their city, their son, and their lives.

Cloverleaf Station: Chaper Fifteen, Part One

 Notes: Uh-oh, uncomfortable emotional revelations ahoy! Let's hope the ship doesn't sink!

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Fifteen, Part One

***

Chapter Fifteen Part One

 

Getting the Lizzie back turned into a protracted event, thanks to the time it took for Kieron to heal. She’d ended up wedged into a precarious position between two meteors, and instead of being able to go in and tow her out directly with Catalina, Elanus decided to create an entirely new AI-drive connection between his ships and force-upload the program to Lizzie. That way, Catalina could maneuver the other ship out on her own without either of them needing to be in the driver’s seat, so to speak.

“This is a big add,” Kieron commented after the third straight day of Elanus’s almost nonstop programming spree. Even with Catalina’s help, creating a custom program like this required a lot of work, not to mention testing—he ran thousands of simulations of different variables to increase the Lizzie’s chances of coming back in one piece. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I just spacewalked to her again? Kidding!” he added quickly when Elanus turned bloodshot, incredibly irritated eyes on him. “I’m just kidding.”

“I will tie you to the bed and sit on you, don’t fucking think I won’t,” Elanus warned him. “Spacewalk, blackest night, what the everloving fuck…” His insults and threats deteriorated into mumbles at that point. Kieron, realizing that the best thing he could do was stay out of the way, went back to his own simulations. The challenge of finding Zakari, for the first time since he set the goal, now seemed like a rather daunting prospect. Almost impossibly so.

Honestly, what were the chances that their old ship was still out there after three years, and not crushed between meteors or hit in just the right way to send it on a path straight into the quasar, or so pummeled by radiation that there was simply nothing left of it—of him—to bring back? None of those things were assured—the last two weren’t even likely—but Kieron still felt an unaccustomed sense of hopelessness as he looked at his data.

It was strange. Why should he feel this way? Things were good for him, better on a personal level than they’d ever been before. Elanus, for all that he was a jackass, was also fun, attentive, and an excellent lover. He was working his ass off to bring his other ship back to the station, but Kieron didn’t begrudge him that—he understood the impulse all too well. Yet he still spent every break with Kieron, dragging him into conversations with Catalina, telling them stories and soliciting information in return. It didn’t feel like an interrogation, like it had at first—now it just felt…like interest. Like Elanus wanted to know for the sake of getting to know Kieron better, rather than as a tool that he could use to lever Kieron into the position he wanted.

Kieron was happy for the first time in years. So why was he suddenly becoming so depressed about the singular goal that was keeping him here on Cloverleaf Station?

Maybe because you know you don’t deserve to be this happy. If you confirm it, if you find that you’ve really lost him for good and failed his family and done everything wrong, then you won’t be able to keep this. How could you? Failure deserves punishment, not reward.

Kieron closed his eyes and breathed in slowly, trying to exorcise his mother’s voice from his head. Failure, failure, nothing but a miserable failure. You don’t deserve to stay here. You don’t deserve to be a part of this. You’re the worst of me, I never wanted you, I would have taken you to the tundra and left you there the minute after you were born if it were up to me.

Mother was particularly strong today. He opened his eyes and sighed. Time for a session in the gym. Maybe a workout would help him drown out the sound of her voice.

It didn’t, and the situation wasn’t helped by the fact that Kieron couldn’t run as far or as fast as he was used to, or lift as much weight, or swim as far. His usual two-hour workout had to be cut down to an hour and forty-three minutes, which was disgraceful. His body was back, it was healed, all the tests confirmed it. Maybe it was his mind that was the problem. Maybe so much joy was making him soft, unable to do his duty toward his best friend. Maybe it was time to start distancing himself from Elanus again.

After all, he was going to leave as soon as it was safe, go back to Gania and resume his position as one of their most elite inventors and corporate titans, while Kieron was going to be…here. Unless he found Zakari, which he wasn’t no closer to doing now than he had been at the beginning of the shut-down season. Why punish himself by getting used to pleasure, when it wasn’t going to last?

It was almost enough to convince him to resume the casual dismissiveness and cruelty he was so good at, except…then he’d have to be cruel to Catalina too. Ignore her, reject the pictures she created out of light and sound for him, spurn her childish attempts to communicate which were getting better all the time. He would have to take the trust she’d put in him and turn it on its head, which would make him no better than Deysan. He would have to break a piece of her, perhaps permanently. She might never trust a person outside of Elanus again.

Kieron couldn’t bear to do it. He just couldn’t. If the price of keeping himself as sharp as he knew he needed to be was damaging Catalina’s mind in the process, then he would have to resign himself to dullness. He wasn’t going to be that person, the one who made Catalina doubt herself, who stole her sense of self-worth and the comforting shield of love and affection she was wrapped in. If he did, he’d be no better than his own mother.

All you can do is your best. And if his best wasn’t good enough, Kieron would pay that price for the rest of his life, but he wouldn’t push his fear of failure onto Catalina. He just couldn’t.

He washed off and walked slowly back to the hangar where Elanus and Catalina were working. Or, well, Elanus was working—Catalina was humming songs with fifteen layers of harmony, each one accompanied by a hologram of a dancer spinning across a stage.

The dancers were dinosaurs in tutus. They were officially her favorite thing now.

“Keeeeeerooon!” She’d been working hard at upgrading her vocalizations. Elanus had explained over and over that it “isn’t necessary, we can read, you know, you can project right into our implants and we can just read it there and don’t look at me like that, Kieron will have his implant back in soon and you won’t have to use his tab, I know you think it’s clunky and—did you just sass me? Sassing your father? Have we skipped from five to fifteen all of a sudden?”

Needless to say, Catalina wasn’t willing to wait for Kieron to get his implant back to talk to him. She sounded like nothing he’d ever heard before, neither feminine nor masculine nor anything inbetween. Her voice was totally unique, just like her.

“Hi Catie,” he said, ignoring Elanus’s groan at his use of the nickname that Catalina was becoming fond of that Elanus loathed. “I liked that song, did you make it up on your own?”

“With Baaaaa—aaa—ack!”

“She used an ancient earth concerto by a composer named Bach as the basis for it,” Elanus translated. “I don’t know why she went so far back, there are hundreds of years’ worth of Ganian composers to pull from.”

“I liiiiike Baaaaaaa-aaack!”

“I do too, but you don’t see me limiting myself to music that didn’t even have the simplest synthesizers to help it along!” Elanus retorted.

Kieron sat down next to Catalina and watched the dinosaurs dance across their insubstantial stages, feeling…content. Still sad, still angry at himself for not doing more, but right now, in the company of two people he loved, he could handle those feelings without letting them sweep him away. It was nice, he—

Wait.

What?

He what?

He couldn’t. No. That was…love? Impossible. Kieron started to sweat, his mind carrying him down a dangerously emotional spiral as his heart began to race. Love them? How could he? He barely knew them! They were transitory, not going to stick around, little more than phantoms in the gray void of his existence! He couldn’t fall in love with them, that was the height of self-destructiveness. He might be pathetic by his mother’s standards, but he wasn’t that undisciplined…was he?

“Ha! Got it!”

Elanus’s self-congratulations broke through the painful monologue happening in Kieron’s head. “Lizzie has accepted the code!” he continued, looking done-in but satisfied as he stared at the screens he’d laid out in a semicircle around him. “It’s working, the connection is up, it’s time to bring her home. Catalina!” He turned to look at his child. “How do you feel about bringing Lizzie back now?”

“Lizzzzzzeeeeee,” Catalina hummed. “Miss herrrrrr.”

“Me too. Let’s go get her, huh?” Elanus turned to Kieron and winked. “Want to stick around and watch my baby being awesome?”

Kieron nodded helplessly, because of course he did. Elanus’s eyes narrowed for a moment, but he didn’t ask Kieron anything else, just patted the seat beside him. “Then let’s get this show going.”

Kieron sat down beside him, looked out over the code that was a tiny fraction of the complexity of Catalina’s brilliant mind, and fell a little deeper into the abyss of affection he felt for them.

Too deep, and he knew he’d never be able to climb out again.

Be careful. If you give too much, you’ll lose too much when they leave.

Kieron worried that he’d already given more than he could afford.

New Release: Mutable

 Hi Darlins!

I'm as surprised by this as you are, but apparently KISS, the people I sold right to Mutable to, have made it available on Amazon! So if you've missed this old blog favorite, you can find it here:

Mutable on Amazon

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Fourteen, Part Two

 Notes: So...sexy times ahead! Don't read if you're not into it, the plot will pick up with no problems next week ;)

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Fourteen, Part Two

***

Chapter Fourteen, Part Two

 

Sex didn’t have to be good. Kieron knew that. He wanted it to be, though. He wasn’t bold enough to shoot for “great,” but he was pretty sure he could do better than outright “bad.” Elanus had already told him the grand scope of what he wanted. Now Kieron needed to suss out the details, to find the heart within the body of their mutual desire. He could try a dozen, a hundred things out, go slower than the atomic decay rate of uranium, or…

Or he could just ask for guidance. Elanus fucking loved to talk, so it stood to reason he loved to talk about fucking. And once Kieron had made it clear that he was into getting guidance, he wouldn’t shut up.

“Tighter with your hand,” Elanus said, sounding almost normal except for the little hitch of breath at the end of it when Kieron anticipated his direction. “Fuck, like that, that’s perfect. Feels so good.”

Elanus was laid out on Kieron’s bed, head on the pillow, knees bent—if he didn’t bend them, his feet would hang well over the bottom edge. Kieron knelt between those thin, knobby knees, bracketed by legs long enough to wrap him up two times over. He was naked, but he wasn’t concerned with his own body right now. He was watching Elanus—specifically his cock, which was as long and lean as the rest of his body. He stroked him from the tip all the way down to the base, the trip smoothed by lubricant and precome, especially once he began brushing his thumb over the head on every up-stroke.

“That’s—yeah, and the thing with your other hand, when you—fuck yes!” Elanus shut his eyes, the muscles in his stomach going taut as Kieron stroked the smooth stretch of skin between the base of his testicles and his anus.

“Harder here?” he asked, pressing in against where he figured Elanus’s prostate was from the outside. He knew where it was on himself, but everything was longer on his lover’s body, and the rote motions Kieron was used to performing for himself couldn’t be replicated for Elanus. Not exactly. Yet another reason why guidance was so welcome.

“Mm, a little farther forward…yeah, there, mmmmm.” His voice trailed off on a moan. “You need to get your hand inside me, like now.”

“Why don’t we start with a finger and see how it goes?” Kieron asked as he slicked his hand with more lubricant.

“Your hands aren’t that big,” Elanus assured him. “I’ve had bigger. I could take it—I like it, I really like it.”

“I’d like to try it,” Kieron said, circling Elanus’s hole with the pad of his middle finger before sliding it inside of him. The glide was smooth, easy—there was barely any resistance. Elanus laughed when he saw Kieron’s surprised face.

“What, you think I haven’t been practicing a lot on my own lately? It’s stress relief,” he emphasized, “which I needed because I was plenty stressed, and that always makes me horny, and—fuck you, son of a—fuck!”

“You did just tell me where to find it,” Kieron said as he stroked his fingertip over the bump of Elanus’s prostate. His strokes along his lover’s cock suddenly became a lot smoother—he was leaking so much it was almost like he’d come already.

“So you could play with it, not send me over the edge before you’re even inside of me!” Elanus complained even as he lifted his hips off the bed a little to chase the sensation. “Oh, fuck, can I—another finger, I’m ready, I’m fine.”

Kieron added another finger as he kissed the inside of Elanus’s right knee. “You are,” he murmured, closing his own eyes for a moment as he focused on the sensations that threatened to swamp him right now. Smooth heat, wetness, tightness, the pulse of Elanus’s blood through his body—a pulse Kieron could ready in three separate places, now that his lips were on his lover’s skin as well. He was so vital; he made Kieron feel more alive just being next to him Like this it was as though he’d forgotten he could feel this much until he was already inside of Elanus. “I want to be in you,” he said.

“Mmm, you are,” Elanus replied with a cheeky smile on his face. Kieron gave him two more fingers in retribution, and he moaned. “Be more in me, c’mon, I’m ready and I want it, fuck me.”

Kieron could draw it out a bit more, but…why bother? When Elanus said it was what he wanted, and Kieron’s own body felt a need and urgency that he hadn’t experienced in…he couldn’t even remember. He released Elanus, who sighed with something that sounded like relief but was probably disappointment, then slicked himself up and slid Elanus’s legs over his shoulders.

Hmm. His legs were so long this didn’t do a thing to lift his body up.

“We could—whoa!” Kieron hauled Elanus’s ass up into his lap instead, one hand holding him in place as he used the other for support as he leaned forward. He pushed in, slow and steady, thicker than all four of his fingers and just the right length to nudge against Elanus’s prostate at the peak of his thrust.

“Oh…god…” Elanus’s eyes were hazy, his face almost as flushed as his cock. “That’s…really, um, good.”

Kieron smirked. “Wait until I get going.”

“You’re not going to be able to hold me up for long, we should—”

All right, talking over. Kieron pulled away, then pushed inside again. He started slow, both to test his grip and make sure he could handle thrusting like this. He didn’t want to come yet—it felt so good, being this far inside of another person, inside this person, who he actually liked and wanted. Elanus clenched around him, holding him tight, and Kieron turned his face again, this time to bite the inside of Elanus’s thigh as he slowly fucked in and out. “Don’t rush me.”

“Don’t tease me,” Elanus begged. “I want—you should be—how are you not desperate yet?”

“Why would I be desperate?” The heat, the tightness, the way Elanus was looking at him—it felt so good. “Why would I want to rush the best thing I’ve ever felt?”

His lover’s face did something complicated, eventually settling into “soft but snarky.” “I’ll feel even better if you put your back into it. C’mon, I’m not going to break, and we can do this again.” He reached up and stroked Kieron’s face. “I promise, we can do this again.”

Kieron thought he understood. “You want to come?”

“Don’t you?”

“I want to watch you come more. Here.” He sat back to free his hand and began stroking Elanus’s cock again as he hammered into him harder, making sure to hit that spot every single time. He watched as Elanus’s face contorted with pleasure, leaving behind the artifice that was so much a part of him until nothing but raw human emotion was left. It was gorgeous. He was so beautiful, so honest. How could he bear to let himself be so open?

“Perfect,” Kieron murmured, and suddenly Elanus reached down, grabbed Kieron’s knees to steady himself, and slammed their bodies tight together as he began to come.

Sticky jets of white coated his stomach and Kieron’s fingers, and it was a mess but it was also somehow hot, triggering a strange reaction in Kieron. He didn’t wait to watch Elanus calm down, didn’t keep holding his own desires back, just bent forward so both his hands were on the bed and lost himself to the chase. When he came, he was buried as deep inside of Elanus as he could go—yet he still felt untethered, as though his heart would fly right out of his chest if he wasn’t careful.

When Elanus’s long-fingered hands cupped his face, Kieron shuddered. The touch grounded him, pulled him back to reality the way the fucking hadn’t.

The afterglow was spent panting with the exhaustion that had finally caught up with him, and getting cleaned up by Elanus, who went about it without the brisk efficiency Kieron had expected. Instead, he touched Kieron like he was savoring him.

“Was it good?” Kieron asked once Elanus was finally under the covers with him, curled up to fit. He put his head in the crux of Kieron’s shoulder without asking, and Kieron was surprised by how good the weight felt.

“So good,” Elanus confirmed. “And for you?”

It really had been one of the best things Kieron had ever felt in his entire life. That was probably too much to say twice, though. “So good.”