The Fictional Life of Cari Z

Nice Review for Different Spheres!

2012-02-27T15:16:00.000-08:00

What can I say? I feel the need to spread the love. This short story's reception has been particularly good so far. *basks in warm snuggly feeling*

The review was by Lucy at Hearts On Fire Reviews. Four out of five stars, and here's the majority of what she had to say:

What this story shows is the blossoming of a friendship, with no pressure and no expectations. It is a slow build, and a precious glimpse into the lives of a mature (44 year old) man, living with a progressive disease and how that affects perceptions. Warren is 50, and had lost a partner to a heart attack. When he tells Gil about the last words of his lover, Nate, before he died, I cried. It was just so, real life and hurting.

This is a short book that I didn’t want to be any longer than what it was. While I would love a follow up sequel to revisit Warren and Gil, I felt this ended at such a beautiful place that anything else wouldn’t work.

Definitely recommended for those of us who aren’t perfect, who aren’t 18 and who know how difficult opening up can be.

Thanks, Lucy! Sorry I made you cry. Actually, not really:) Several people have let me know a sequel would be good. Any thoughts on that, folks? Because I'm definitely tempted to go there.

Cinders Post #2

2012-02-26T12:56:00.001-08:00

Notes: Here we have the second part of Cinders. This is a tough section of the story to explain, so bear with me. I hope you enjoy it, and so you know, two weeks is the longest I ever plan on going between posts with this story. I am not here to torment you, dahlings, I'm here to make you happy:)

Title: Cinders

Part Two: Alternate Reality or Reality TV?

***

Molding a proper hero…this is aprocess that takes some time.

This particular story’s newprotagonist has potential. He couldn’thave walked through the door without it. But there’s an arrogance inside of him that’s hard to reconcile with thearchetype needed to reach Happily EverAfter, a hardness that just doesn’t mesh with the narrative’s goal. It needs to soften him. It needs to make him feel…suggestible. The new reality must become the only reality, and that transition hasdriven more than a few potential heroes and heroines mad. The story needs to take him back to a timewhen he feels more resigned to his fate, when the way forward is the way thatwas made for him, not the way he forged by himself. A place with no questions, only duties. Possibly it can even blend that with his ownpreconceptions of what the narrative should be. That sort of symbiosis is always handy when you’re breaking in yourhero.

Of course, it just figures that hispreconceptions should revolve around the cartoon version of the fairy tale. So many modern protagonists’ do these days.

***

For the first time in months, Asherdreams of his little sister.

Cassiehad a predictable cycle. Every day ofthe week after school was a different Disney film. She would meet Asher outside; he had to walkto pick her up from the middle school and it took about a half an hour, butshe’d just sit and play with her dolls and wait outside if the weather wasgood. If it was bad she might be anywhere,but usually the library or the gym. They’d walk home together, and she would talk non-stop about her day,what she learned in school and how it all related to her secret identity as afairy princess. It was stupid, but Asherforgave her. Cassie was only six.

They’dget home and Cassie would dump her backpack by the front door and run into theliving room. There were two televisionsin the house, one in the living room and one in the rec room. The rec room TV was the one hooked up to thevideo game system, but usually Howard and Kyle and however many of theirfriends were with them that day laid claim to that one, and Asher and Cassiewould just get kicked off of it if the big kids wanted it when they gothome. Sometimes they’d offer to letAsher play with them, but then Cassie would cry. She hated being left alone.

Sothey took the TV in the living room. Itwas smaller but it had all the VHS tapes next to it, and Cassie would rummagethrough the oversize cases until she found the one she was looking for. Monday was The Little Mermaid, Tuesday wasSleeping Beauty, Wednesday was Aladdin, Thursday was Cinderella and Friday wasBeauty and the Beast. Every day was anew princess, and each new princess had her own ritual. Mondays they had to bring the fishbowl intothe room. Asher would put it down on thecoffee table and Cassie would look from their two goldfish to the screen andback again, like she was trying to make it all work together in her head.

ForCinderella, Cassie had to change into a dress she’d made by cutting holes forher head and arms in one of her old pink pillowcases, and she would clutch herstuffed hamster in her hands, which was the closest stuffed animal analog to amouse that she had. Asher would have topause the movie when the fairy godmother showed up so Cassie could change intoher church dress, which was made of blue velvet and had a white sash around themiddle. She did the same thing everyweek, until Asher knew the movies front to back and could tune them out whilehe did his homework.

“Iwant to go to a ball.”

“Theydon’t have those anymore,” Asher told her.

“Theydo too! Princes have balls. I bet they have them all the time. How else do they meet princesses?”

“Therearen’t any princesses here. We live inOakland.”

“Ibet there are,” she told him, “and you just don’t know ‘cause you don’t seethem around. Because they’re indisguise.”

“Ohyeah?” Asher looked over at his littlesister, five years younger than him and so much more innocent. Their brothers left her alone, mostly, and sodid their dad, even when he was drinking. Their mom looked out for Cassie when she was home from work, and Asherlooked out for her the rest of the time, because Cassie was special.

“Yeah. And I’m gonna be one.”

Thewords “that’s stupid” quivered at the tip of his tongue, a sign of his rapidlydeveloping jerkish streak, but instead Asher said, “Okay.” And Cassie smiled and hugged him, and heforgot for a second about how shitty their house was and how lousy dinner wasgoing to be and what assholes his older brothers were, because Cassie washappy.

Everything is cold.

Asher’s hips ache from lying on hisside on the stone floor. He blinksmuzzily, staring into a pile of gray and black, and tries to push back from it,but his hand just sinks into the stuff. Itcomes away sooty. Ashes…the house. Right.

Well, there’s daylight coming innow, which means Ty is probably at school which means Asher can go home andclean up without having to deal with the third degree. He sits up and looks around. He freezes in place, dumbfounded, and looksagain.

The room has changed. Instead of an empty shell there are tables inhere, and shelves, and pots and pans and baskets of food. There’s an oven beside the fireplace, areally old-fashioned one, the kind you see in stupidly upscale pizzarestaurants. There are old vegetablepeelings here and there, and an ancient broom in the corner.

There’s also a mouse on the floorby one of the table legs. It’s staringat Asher. Apart from some twitchywhiskers, it isn’t moving.

“Dude,” Asher mutters, “notsanitary.” He flicks a cinder towardsit. It startles and runs under one ofthe nearby shelves. Asher watches it go,then shakes his head. “Okay, time towake up.” He closes his eyes, then opensthem again. Everything is the same. He shuts his eyes again, squeezes them shut hard this time, then looks again. Tiny white stars dance at the edge of hisvision, but apart from that the room looks the same.

“What the hell?” He pinches his leg, a pinch with a twist atthe end that leaves him wincing from the burn, but nothing changes. He throws off the ratty blanket and forceshimself to stand. The floor is so coldunder hit feet…wait, feet? He was onlymissing one shoe. Asher looks down andsees that his left foot is wearing not a sneaker, but some kind of strange,thin slipper. It looks like it’s made ofleather, and is tied loosely together on top. His other foot is still bare, and the pressure of the floor against hiscuts stings like fire. His clothes havechanged. What were jeans is now a pairof scratchy woolen pants held up with a string, and his shirt has become somekind of…what, tunic? Is that what thesethings are called? Whatever it is, it’sshapeless and poorly made, and hangs off his shoulders like a sack.

Panic rises. Asher grabs the edge of the nearest table,feels the pain as his fingers press into the rough hardness of it, and hepushes the fear down. Fear just gets youin trouble. Okay. So this seems really, really real. Maybe it is, maybe some sick fuck drugged himlast night and brought all this stuff in. Maybe the owner of the house gets off on watching people struggle withreality. Well, fuck you very much, but Asher knows exactly who he is and where heshould be, and this shit can all go to hell. He peers into the corners of the room, looking for cameras. He can’t see any, but that doesn’t mean theyaren’t there. He stabs his middlefingers into the air, then stalks off towards the exit. He’s through with this.

The floor is smooth under his feetnow, no longer gritty. Someone took thetime to sweep the hall. Distantly Asherhears voices, the murmurs of other people starting to move around, but he’s notinterested in asking questions or demanding answers. He just needs to get out of here. He goes to the big front door, throws it open—

And steps out into a land thatdefies every expectation of his brain. Thisis wrong. He should be seeing fencing,metal fencing, and beyond it pavement and cars and houses. People should be walking dogs, people shouldbe going to work. It shouldn’t be…this. A long gravel avenue stretches away from the door,bracketed on either side by evenly-spaced oak trees and overgrown lawns. Asher takes a step forward, and hissesslightly when the gravel digs into his foot. It definitely feels real. The airis very fresh, cool and crisp on his face. The sky is clear like you never get in San Francisco at this time ofyear.

“Fuck,” Asher mutters. Because it’s one thing to assume he’s beendrugged, it’s another to figure he’s also been kidnapped and transported tosome country chalet that’s surrounded by springtime instead of fall.

There has to be some otherexplanation for this. Some kind ofhallucination, a really vivid one, or maybe he’s in some kind of virtualreality simulator. Because, yeah, whynot? It makes more sense than…thanwhatever this is. Time travel or someshit. SCA freaks gone totallyoverboard. Whatever.

So the thing to do is figure outhow to get out of this. Part of Asher isstill hoping this is all just a dream, but even when his dreams have been attheir worst he’s never felt them like this, so real that he can feel everysquare inch of skin that itches beneath the coarse clothes, so real that he canmake out the smeared drops of his own blood on the stone stairs.

“Boy!” a voice yells, loudly. “Boy!” Heavy footsteps clomp towards him, and amoment later Asher is staring at a huge, round figure of a…a woman? Is it a woman? Her body fills the doorway, and she’s got thecurves to support the female hypothesis, but this person looks strange. Exaggerated. Like someone took a picture of a woman and then put it into one of thoseweird apps, the ones where you can morph the person’s face. Her scowl is so blatant it could be carved,her ears protrude to the side, and her hair is a tight, slicked-back gray bun. Her hands are on her hips, fingers fat likebratwurst, and her stance is hips-forward aggressive. She looks like a cartoon character overlaidwith human skin, real and yet not-real.

Her hand on his wrist as she stalksdown the steps and grabs him is definitely real, though. It’s so real that he knows it’ll leavebruises.

She shakes his arm. “You let the fire go out, stupid boy. Now the ladies’ bread will be late forbreakfast. Idiot!”

Asher pulls back, trying to jerkhis hand from her grip. He should beable to do this, he’s done it with guys twice his size, but she keeps a hold ofhim like it’s nothing at all. “Fuckinglet go of me already!”

She slaps him with her freehand. It feels like he’s been hit with abrick, thankfully on the side of his face that isn’t already swollen, but still. Jesus. He reels to the side, kept on his feet onlyby her iron grip. “Keep a respectfultongue in your head, boy,” the woman sneers. “You lost your privileges when your father died. I thought you’d remember that, by now. Come.” She pulls him back into the house and down the main hall. “You have chores to do.”

They end up in the kitchen, whereshe passes Asher a bucket of scraps that’s a lot heavier than it looks and apair of poorly-made sandals. “These willhave to do for you, Mistress won’t buy you another pair of good shoes if you’rejust going to be careless with them. Nowgo feed the pigs.”

There are other people movingaround in the kitchen, dressed not dissimilar to him, but they studiously avoidmaking eye contact. Apparently Asher isto be ignored. They all have that samelook, too, like their skin doesn’t really fit, like their colors are too brightto be human. Asher looks down at his ownhands numbly, but they look the same as they always have. Real. Normal.

The woman—Asher assumes she’s thecook—aims a kick at him, which he dodges out of habit. “Get on with you! More’s to be done when you get back.”

Asher slips off the single leathershoe and gets into the wooden sandals, which are exactly as comfortable as hethought they’d be, picks up the bucket and follows another servant into thehall. He takes a right, because he’s notgone that way before, and a second later he hits a door which opens onto a wideexpanse of muddy ground. There arechickens—real live chickens—running around, but they look even more bizarrethan the people do. None of theirfeathers are delineated; it’s like watching puffy bits of cloud dart about,clucking and pecking at the ground. Asher looks at them and shudders slightly. Pigs. He should be feeding the pigs.

It isn’t hard to find the pigpen,the smell is as realistic as the breeze in the air. The pigs might look slightly cuboid, all thesame nauseating color of Pepto Bismol pink, but they’re grunting like realpigs, and they’re loud as hell. Hungry,probably. Asher lifts the bucket ofscraps and tosses it into the enclosure, and the pigs are on it immediately.

Asher needs to think. He just has to—to think for a second. He shuts his eyes and runs through what heknows. This just seems too real, evenwith the weird people and animals. Everythingsmells right, it feels authentic. Buthow could it possibly be?

“Ifyou eliminate the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, is thetruth.”

Asherlaughed and threw a handful of popcorn at Ty. “Thanks, trekkie boy, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Tyrolled his eyes and gestured towards the TV, where a fight was just breakingout in a gambling hall. “You know,Sherlock Holmes said it first.”

“Eitherway you’re a geek.”

“Whatever.” Ty picked up a piece of the scattered popcornand ate it, then swiftly grabbed one of the couch cushions and smacked Asher inthe face with it. Popcorn scattered everywhereas the bowl went flying. They got intoan epic pillow beatdown and had to start the movie over, but neither of themcared.

“Okay, fine.” Fine. So it is real. Ish. Real-ish. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a way out of this. Asher just has to find it. He lifts a tentative hand to his throbbingcheek. Preferably a way out that doesn’tinvolve him getting hit anymore, because shitthat hurt. For a second it had made himwant to say, “Sorry, sir,” an impulse he thought died when he left home. No, direct opposition isn’t an option, andneither is curling into a little ball and waiting for it all to go away.

The only thing to do right now islet it play out and see what happens. Unsatisfying, but it’s true. Asher hoiststhe empty bucket over his shoulder and makes his way back into the fray.

Different Spheres is out today!

2012-02-22T07:07:00.000-08:00

Hey there folks

So this should be a Cinders post, but it isn't yet. Soon, leibchen! Instead I'm letting you guys know that Different Spheres is available starting today at Dreamspinner Press. It's a short story that I originally intended to go in an anthology about love in a scholarly setting, but it ended up being something totally other. It takes place in a contemporary setting too, with no magic, no creatures, nothing paranormal. See? I can stretch my skills!

Here, have a link: Different Spheres e-book.

Hey, why not the blurb, too?

Gil Donaldson returned to his hometown of Boulder, Colorado, after a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis cut short his teaching career and his love life on the East Coast. Waking one morning to find that his vision has gone blurry, which makes driving himself to the hospital out of the question, Gil solicits the help of his slightly-reclusive neighbor, Warren Masters, to take him to the ER.

The two men become friends over the course of Gil’s recovery from his latest relapse, and while Gil recognizes he’s attracted to the other man, he refuses to act on it. Gil doesn’t like relying on anyone else to ensure his emotional or physical health, and he’s grown used to being alone, or at least that’s what he tells himself. Warren is a man of few words, but he’s there whenever Gil needs him, and he has only one request for them to be together.

I'd give you the cover too, except it's the generic cover for all Dreamspinner short stories. Oh, but what the hell, some of you might not have seen it before.

Anyway, promo done, so Happy Wednesday!

Oh, and--for those of you who have been to my website and are wondering why this isn't up there yet, the answer is because I don't know how to manuipulate that stuff. Yet. I'm going to get it, though, because I don't want to start falling behind on keeping it updated. Oh, the learning just never ends.

So Much Awesome All At Once!

2012-02-18T09:15:00.000-08:00

Wow...

So I woke up this morning and checked my email and found two things waiting for me. One, I'm getting a contract for the third and possibly final book in the Treasured series--you know, the one with Daniel and Reese and the whole art thief/mistaken identity thing. The title will be Reclaimed and the novella will probably come out in May. If you've read the others, then this one will really make you happy, guys:) So much revelation, so much conclusion. Just so much.

There was also an email from my incredible web designer telling me that my website it, actually, finished. As in done, as in graphics up and all content loaded. As in that sucker even links to this blog. It's almost too cool for me, I'm staring at it going "How in the hell am I going to keep this looking so good?" It's got the complete and definitive list of my current publications on it, BTW, with prices and links and covers and genres and more, so for anyone who'se curious--go there. Go there now. The website is at http://cari-z.net.

What else, what else...the last part of Pandora is in the queue, thank God for that, and I'm working on the next Cinders post this weekend, so it should be up fast. Let's see, Different Spheres comes out with Dreamspinner next Wednesday, I'll do a post for it then...

Just go check the website. It's so cool. I even have an email address associated with it, but I'm not going to share that until I know how to access it. Yes, Luddite, thy name is Cari.

Happy Saturday!

Cinders Post #1

2012-02-12T15:44:00.000-08:00

Notes: So, this is my new story. I'm using the fairytale as more of a reference than anything, so don't expect too much literary fidelity. Depending on this one's reception, I may or may not start up a second one concurrently on the blog. I do have my sanity to keep, after all, but it's a possibility. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the first part of Cinders.

And I know, the new template is really pink, but I figured a change was due after over a year of the same thing. It may end up adjusted.

Title: Cinders

Part One: Round About Midnight

***

Mankind is made up of storytellers, and storytellers very often don’t know their own strength. Words have power, and to use them is to give them will, and breath, and movement. Stories can take on a life of their own. It’s happened many times, with the epic cycles of history repeating themselves despite our best intentions and traditions becoming warped out of all recognition by circumstance, transforming into something completely new. Stories float through homes, cities, cultures and continents and look for fertile ground, and when they find it, they dig in their roots.

Stories, however they come about their imperative to live, do require actors to play the crucial parts. If you fall into a story, you had better hope it’s one of the more benevolent ones, although without some current of strong emotion or trauma a story isn’t likely to endure. The best characters are the ones who can adapt the tale to fit their personal needs, without getting totally swept away by the narrative. If you can’t do that, well, then the story runs roughshod over you and you’ll probably end up dead, cooked in a pot of boiling water at the bottom of a chimney or turned into a deer that is subsequently torn apart by hunting hounds, or some other equally grisly and poetic end.

This particular story decided to settle in a house. It waited patiently for the right person to come by, and when they came…it pounced.

***

It’s nearly midnight.

It’s nearly midnight, and Asher is walking as fast as he can with only one shoe on. His other foot is bare, no sock, nothing. It irritates the fuck out of him but he doesn’t want to stop, because stopping would be acknowledging it and then he’d have to think about it, and right now all he wants is to move, fast enough that the anger doesn’t have a chance to boil over. This is as fast as he can go without breaking into a run. Not for the first time Asher wishes he’d never sold his motorcycle, because fuck it would feel good to slide onto that smooth seat, feel the engine rumble to life between his legs and go, just go, fast as he could to anywhere else. The bike was easy escape, pure and simple, but now he has to make do with his own two legs or, God forbid, the San Francisco public transportation system, and anyone who’s ridden it knows that it isn’t the way to escape from anything.

His face is still swelling; he can feel the sting and pull of the skin, and it’s getting harder to see out of his right eye. Fucking frat boys and their goddamn inability to lose graciously. Not to mention the undertones of sexual repression, but that’s just to be expected. Asher doesn’t typically hustle pool in college bars, but he needed the money and it was close by. Two hundred and fifty bucks in and the guys didn’t want to play anymore, but they were more than ready to beat the shit out of the pretty fag who was holding their cash. Asher got out, he’s good at getting out, but not before he took a shot to the face with a pool cue that rocked his world.

Stupid fucking college boys, think they’re so smart…and Asher should know, he lives with one. Not that Ty is like those guys, really. Asher met Ty when he was sixteen, new to the streets, skinny and shy and so damn green he practically glowed neon. He would have gotten his ass handed to him in under a week if Asher hadn’t shown him how to live, what you had to do to get by if you weren’t gonna get into the system, and nobody wants to be in the system. Asher shared his money and his place, got Ty’s stupid shaggy hair cut, because you never gave a john more to hold onto than you had to. He took Ty out to work with him, helped him stay away from the hard drugs and the guys who wanted more than a blowjob or a quick fuck, because there were always people who wanted more than you should give them. He helped Ty build a fucking life away from his past without asking any questions, and it worked for them, damn it. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.

Except Ty was greedy, and smarter than was good for himself, and as soon as he hit eighteen he enrolled in community college. He got a job in a library shelving books, and now he spends all his time studying shit like Basic Anatomy or American Literature. He’s let his hair grow out again, and after he hit his growth spurt he shot up past Asher, well past six feet, big enough so that even the biggest guy thinks twice before stepping up to him. Now instead of a twink Ty looks like a gangling scarecrow, still skinny, all long limbs and oversized hands and the stupidest big brown puppy dog eyes imaginable, eyes that can make you do things you never had any intention of doing. When he pouts it’s like watching someone poke a baby bunny with a stick, or push a kitten off a countertop. There are whole YouTube channels devoted to this kind of sickly-sweet sadism, and Ty probably subscribes and takes notes.

It would be tolerable if Ty didn’t want Asher to change as well. But he does. And that sucks. Like tonight: he got home okay, he had the money and he hadn’t had to turn any tricks to get it, which was kinda nice. But as soon as he walks in the door, Ty is on him like white on rice.

“Holy shit.” Ty dropped the book he was reading on the couch, his legs folded up beneath him awkwardly, and ran over to the door. “Ash, what the hell?”

“It’s nothing,” Asher replied, giving Ty a half-smile as he kicked off his shoes and slung his leather jacket over the end of their tiny kitchen counter. Their whole place was tiny, basically a living room, a bedroom and a closet of a bathroom. The kitchen was a hot plate, a microwave and a sink. It wasn’t much, but they didn’t need much. “Some assholes in a bar just couldn’t bow out gracefully.”

Ty’s shoulder’s slumped a little, and he dropped his hands off Asher’s shoulders and went to rummage through their mini fridge. “You were hustling pool?” He found the ice pack, actually a bag of corn that had been thawed and refrozen way too many times, and handed it over. It felt like bliss on Asher’s swollen face, and he flopped down onto the couch where Ty had been and stretched his legs out.

“Beer?” he asked hopefully.

“No.” Ty found their latest bottle of generic painkiller and shook out two of the tablets. He brought them over with a glass of water. “Ash, were you hustling pool?”

“Yeah.” Asher grimaced but swallowed the pills, and washed them down with water that tasted slightly like metal. The landlord had warned them when they moved in that they’d probably want to put a filter on the faucet, to take the taste away, but there were so many other things to spend money on besides making water taste the way it should. As long as it didn’t kill them, they were good. “I won a lot of money,” he continued with a grin, and pulled the messy wad of bills out of his pocket. He tossed it in Ty’s direction. “There’s your textbooks, man. Never say I don’t do shit for you.”

Ty stated down at the money, his mouth set in a line of distaste. When he looked up again his eyes were opened wide, big and unhappy and Asher had to bite back a moan of frustration. He knew what that look meant. “Ash…I don’t want you to have to hustle pool to make money.”

“Well, it’s better than the alternatives,” Asher replied. “What, you want me fucking crusty middle-aged douchebags if I can avoid it?”

“No!” Ty pushed his sandy hair out of his face, tucked it behind his ears. Stupid long hair, every time he saw it Asher wanted to touch it, to card his fingers through it and play with it and basically act like a five-year old girl. Scary. “No, I want you to not have to do any of it. There are other options, Ash. You’re twenty-one, man, you could get a real job.”

“What have you been smoking?” Asher muttered.

“I’m serious! You could work in construction, or in a restaurant or something. There are lots of other possibilities out there. Or you could go to school too—”

“Not that again,” Asher cut Ty off mid-sentence. “No thanks, college boy. In case you’re forgetting, I don’t have a high school diploma or a GED.”

“I got mine,” Ty pointed out reasonably. “It’s not that hard, I would help you.”

“Jesus,” Asher said, dropping the frozen corn and glaring at Ty, “Would you just let this go already?”

Except Ty didn’t let it go, and the argument became a fight and then Asher was out of there, so fast that he didn’t take the time to grab his other shoe, fast enough that he wouldn’t be tempted to just fucking punch Ty in the face, because no matter how big Ty got, Asher had the experience, he had been fighting for his place from the moment he could stand. Asher had promised himself when he found Ty that he would never hurt him, and he never had, not even when the annoying shit drove him fucking insane with his fairy-tale fantasies. What kind of world did he think they were living in, huh? Nothing was ever right, things never worked out. Or maybe for people like Ty they did, people so goddamn adorable that they bent the laws of physics, but for the Ashers of the world it was always a struggle.

Not that he wasn’t gorgeous when his face wasn’t black and blue. Asher got his mother’s Chinese features, cat-like and seductive, and his father’s Irish skin and physical proportions. All American and yet decidedly exotic, he was gorgeous and he knew it. His hair was spiky and short, bleach-blond, and he used eyeliner to highlight the sharpness of his eyes, which were blue like his father’s. His mouth had been called “perfect for cocksucking” too many times to count by dumbass johns who didn’t realize or didn’t care that that wasn’t exactly a compliment. He wore skintight clothes to accentuate the cut of his muscles, and radiated a bad-boy air that was irresistible to some. It was only once he started talking that Asher’s luck changed, because he couldn’t hold back when someone was being a shithead. He always spoke his mind, and that more often than not got him into trouble.

Like tonight. He’s been walking and cussing and fuming so hard he doesn’t know where he is, and the sky is about to fucking open up and drench him, he can feel it in the air, and now his foot is really starting to hurt. Asher stops and leans against a brick wall, turns the sole over and takes a look. It’s filthy, almost black, and bleeding in a couple different places.

“Fuck,” he mutters, cradling it uselessly in his hands. The rain starts to fall then, soft for the moment but he knows it’s going to get worse, and he’s stuck in the middle of nowhere, a street of ubiquitous row houses and flex-fuel cars, every one of them probably owned by yuppie hipsters who don’t give a guy like him the time of day until they’re drunk and horny, and even then the bastards manage to be condescending. This is not the place he wants to be, but its dark out and there’s no way he going to be walking much further on this foot. Asher pulls his jacket a little tighter and keeps going, looking for anything that might do for a night. He could call a cab but he doesn’t have any money, he left all that with Ty, and anyway his phone is just about dead.

He walks on for a while, limping and feeling pretty miserable, still angry but sort of sick too, sick of himself and sick of Ty, but damn it he still wishes he were home right now anyway. He walks, slow and searching for a place, and when he sees it he wonders as first if it’s a mirage. Because this isn’t just another quaint house in the row, all girlied up and painted in pastels. This is a three story stone mansion, or it would be a mansion if it were a little nicer. As it is right now, it’s too gloomy to be considered nice. There’s an iron-wrought fence surrounding the thing, which Asher doesn’t get at all, seeing as it has no yard to speak of, and there isn’t a light on anywhere. It looks totally out of place on this street.

Asher tries the gate, curious but not expecting much, and is surprised when it swings open. Huh. Maybe no one lives here, maybe the house is condemned. And if it is, then maybe he can crash here tonight. Asher hobbles his way to the front door and gives it a try. It sticks at first, almost feels like it’s locked but then it gives out under the weight of his hip banging against it, and he topples inside.

Christ, it’s dark in here. Asher feels around for a light switch but there’s nothing on the wall. The floor is gritty under his toes, like the house is shedding it's top layer. He shuts the door behind himself and feels his way along the hallway, past cold, empty room and uninviting corridors. The hall turns and he turns with it, and eventually finds himself in a large room with stone floors and a huge fireplace at the back of it. Against one wall is a grandfather clock, a big old thing that’s pacing out time like a metronome, noisy in the solitude. Someone was here, though, pretty recently too. There are embers glowing faintly in the grate, and laid out on the floor are a few blankets and a musty old pillow.

It’s probably some homeless person’s squat, but Asher doesn’t care right now, all he wants is to lay down and fall asleep and try to forget tonight ever happened, just for a while. God, he hates his life. He sits down, picks at his foot for a second before giving it up as a bad deal. The floor is hard under his ass, cold too, but at least he isn’t still out in the rain. The pillow feels moldy, but he can’t take his jacket off to cover it or he’ll freeze, even with the blankets. He compromises and lays part of one of the blankets on top of it and scoots the whole getup closer to the fire, close enough that he can smell the cinders and feel the silky ashes rub up against his fingertips. Whatever, it’s warmer. Asher settles down onto his side, carefully avoiding the swollen parts of his face. He listens to the ticking of the clock and wonders if he’ll even be able to fall asleep. A few minutes later, he finds out that he can.

The clock strikes midnight. The front door locks. And the house…changes.

What Comes Next...

2012-02-08T08:03:00.001-08:00

So I blame what comes next partially on my darling readerwife, although she doesn't deserve the amount of weird that's going to be coming along for it.

It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do as my next serial here, but I finally decided on a twisted fairytale. Twisted as in an other-realm juxtaposition/magical realism/rentboy kind of twist. Yes, it's going to be very different from Pandora, in other words, but I think you'll enjoy it. I hope so, at least, I haven't actually written more than the outline yet, but I should have the first post up before next week.

I'll still post about other projects and upcoming releases, of course, and hopefully (fingers f*^&ing crossed, arr!) I'll have a beautiful website soon. This stuff always takes longer than I anticipate.

And what fairytale am I twisting? Something unusual with shapeshifting awkwardness, like The White Dove? Something with a wicked witch? Cause don't we all love wicked witches. Um, no. But it is one of the big ones. We'll see how I do.

Maybe I'm the only one finding this funny...

2012-02-03T09:43:00.000-08:00

Hiya, people.

I got Pandora Ch. 3 loaded onto Literotica today. I left it on a cliffhanger, you know, the part with the explosion in the lab. I've gotten a few comments remarking on my evilness, all with love, and it got me to thinking about how cliffhangers do indeed suck (I know, been there reading other people's stories, I just wanted to reach through the computer, grab the author and demand "What NEXT!?!") and how because the thing is already written, they'll suck for a much shorter period of time than could be otherwise. Like, say, if I was writing this story over the span of more than a year on a continent where computers are as often paperweights as writing devices and making my readers wait for weeks and weeks. And fucking weeks. God, you guys are tolerant. Especially the commenters, you darlings who threw me nummy-nums and encouraged me to keep going, but all of you were awesomely patient.

And in defense of the Lit people, I let half a year slip by before finishing Shadows and Light. That story was such a beast.

The question becomes, how will I torment you next? Will I be nice, write something completely out on my home computer and then give you big, satisfying chunks of it all at once? Probably not, this is the blog that forces me to write, so no, likelihood is it will be something drawn out again. Sorry. Still figuring out what to do here next, I thought I had it and then it slipped away from me. But soon.

Also, just, one little Colorado thing to share. Two days ago it was unseasonably warm, like kick the jackets to the curb warm. This morning we have twelve inches of snow. Boulder, you tease:) My PT called me to cancel our appt this morning, she said she didn't want my crutch slipping on the snow and giving me another broken leg. So thoughtful.

Anyway, long rant, oy. Happy Friday!

PS-not me, obviously. originally posted at the Daily Camera website

Hi there! Update and excerpt.

2012-01-30T09:22:00.000-08:00

Happy Monday!

So, I'm off from work this week. Writing is happening. I have to finish the third novella in the Treasured series by next Monday, I'm putting more of Pandora onto Lit (the third part will be posted later this week, probably by Thursday) and I'm finishing up an urban fantasy novel that, astonishingly, has no actual sex in it. I know, why would I write something like that? Weird.

My short story, Different Spheres, comes out with Dreamspinner Press on February 22nd. I have a link now and everything! Different Spheres, check it out! This is a really fun story, clocks in at 47 pages and I think you're going to enjoy it. It's contemporary, so it might be a different taste of things for those of you who prefer my science fiction, fantasy, paranormal romance, etc.

Also, someone asked me about where to find my original post of the first chapter of Changing Worlds, which is the novel-length follow up to my short story Opening Worlds. It is a post here, but I'm having trouble opening it. So I'm going to repost the first chapter below, for the interested. This story won't come out until May, but it's going to be a big one and I'm really excited about it:)

***

Chapter One

A month, Jason Kim reflected, was a very malleable amount of time.

As a child a month had been a near-interminable amount of time, its challenging length compounded by the fact that he lived on one planet, went to school on another, and that neither of those places had months that matched the Federation standard. He’d count down the days until he got to return to his parents’ house, only to realize that because of calculation errors he would be stuck in limbo for three days until the school’s shuttle schedule matched his own internal clock the way it should to get him home.

Once Jason entered the Academy, everything changed. Life revolved around the Federation time standard, a relic from Old Earth, twenty-four hour days and seven day weeks. Seven years of intensive training left him a capable military officer and an absolute adherent to the standard, and that was how Jason lived his life. One month passed the same as every other, and life was dictated by the mission, not by the prospect of leave or the chance to see family and friends. It was easy to let any idea of a personal life slide after his parents died, and he had always been most comfortable in his own company anyway.

Things didn’t change so much after he left the military. Jason immediately went to work for the Shimona cartel, specializing in transferring goods and passengers in a state of elegance. Jason had the kind of appeal they were looking for in a ship captain: he was attractive, he was efficient and he was impersonal. They needed someone who could be polite while maintaining his distance, who wouldn’t get distracted from doing his job. Jason was that person, even after he met Blake, even after they blended their lives together. Time might have passed more pleasurably, but it was still set to a steady, predictable beat.

Blake left and time became purely professional again, perhaps a little slower than before, but still filled. After a year of solitude, Jason had begun to feel like he had gotten a handle on the rhythm of the rest of his life. And then…then, Ferran had come aboard.

Suddenly a month was nothing, a tiny blip on the radar. Suddenly a month was filled with a whirlwind romance, ridiculously fast-paced from Jason’s perspective. His passion for Ferran was consuming, more so than he’d ever experienced before. Jason had no idea that so many of the emotions he’d been sure he could live without would come barreling back into his mind and body. Because there was a time limit on Ferran. Less than a month, from the time he boarded Jason’s ship, the Silver Star, to the time that he returned to his planet, Perelan, and reintegrated into his home society, so truly alien from a human’s.

Monotonous weeks turned into a conscious measure of minutes, and those minutes were spent memorizing, cataloguing and cherishing every bit of his lover that Jason could get. Ferran had been the first to say it, “love,” that fraught and frightening word, but he had meant it, and so Jason had felt relief when he said it back, even though their affection was destined to end in nothing. How could it not? Ferran was restricted to his home planet after his brief period of interstellar liberty, the fate of all male Perels, and Jason took a leave of absence and returned to his own home, alone, and emptier than he could ever remember being.

A lot could change in a month. Jason had found love like he’d never experienced and lost it all faster than he could get his head around. And now, less than a month after he’d given up hope, Ferran was back, he and Jason were for all intents and purposes married and both of them would be moving back to Perelan in the company of the Federation ambassador tomorrow, to begin training Ferran as a diplomat.

And Jason? He didn’t know what role he was going to play on Perelan, other than husband and resident alien oddity. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t really care. For the first time in a long time Jason was content to live in the moment, not because he had nothing to look forward to, but because he was happy. Really happy. The whole thing still felt slightly surreal.

“What about this?” Ferran asked, looking over at Jason from where he sat, cross-legged, in front of the closet. They were packing up the last of Jason’s belongings that would be brought with them to Perelan, and Ferran was incredibly inquisitive. It was fortunate that Jason didn’t have much of a capacity for embarrassment, because otherwise he’d have been constantly red. He’d had no idea his mother had kept so many of his childhood things. What Ferran was holding up now looked like a plaster imprint of Jason’s five year old hand.

“That can stay,” Jason said, carefully folding one of his favorite sets of casual clothes, made from actual silk and cotton. They wrinkled if he wasn’t careful with them. He set them into the case laid open next to his dresser.

“What is it for?” Ferran asked, setting his own hand curiously against the imprint. His fingers were long and milk-pale, capped with thick, blunt nails that were almost out of place on his otherwise delicate hands.

“It’s just a child’s gift,” Jason replied. “We made them in class one day. I thought my parents had gotten rid of that long ago, where did you find it?”

“In a box in the back,” Ferran said. “There’s a mask as well.” He pulled out a brightly-colored dragon mask, the lines almost perfectly colored in by a young Jason, who had been something of a perfectionist even then. Ferran put the mask in front of his face. “It’s very fierce, but a little hard to see out of.”

“Your eyes are a little bigger than mine,” Jason remarked, amused. Ferran’s eyes were easily twice the size of his own, with amber irises and large, dark pupils evolved to capture the light. Ferran pulled the mask away and grinned, and for a moment it was all Jason could do not to stop what they were doing and take Ferran to bed. Again. But they’d only been given a week for their impromptu honeymoon, and spending too much time absorbed in his lover was what was giving Jason a headache about finishing packing now. It wasn’t like he owned a lot of things. Packing was a task that should have taken half a day, max, but it had stretched out, slowed down and crawled to a halt as Jason let himself get lost in the reality of having Ferran with him again.

Forever, he reminded himself, turning back to the last of his clothing. We have forever now. I don’t have to count every second. But the anxiety in him refused to be soothed, and he abandoned the clothes in favor of joining Ferran in front of the closet. “What else is back there?”

“I haven’t checked yet,” Ferran said, but he looked eager to keep going.

“Let’s find out.” Jason reached back into the cedar-scented depths of the closet and closed his hands around a small cylindrical tube. He pulled it out. “These are mine, actually.” He barely remembered burying it back there only a year ago.

“What’s in it?” Ferran asked curiously.

Jason unscrewed the cap on the cylinder and pulled out a sheaf of thin films. “They’re pictures.”

“Pictures of what?”

“All sorts of things,” Jason said absently as he remembered back to why he had stuffed almost all of the pictures he owned into a tube and shoved them into the back of his closet like a petulant child. It had been an unusually turbulent moment for him, one of the few times when he let emotion carry him away into actions that weren’t logical. Instead of just getting rid of the pictures that bothered him, Jason had completely cleared house. Both his quarters on the ship as well as his home had been cleaned out.

“Do you mind looking at them?” Ferran was an empath, and he doubtless was picking up on the sense of resistance inside of Jason. These weren’t really things that he wanted to look at again, but he didn’t have any choice. He had no idea when he’d get the chance to come back to his childhood home, and apart from that he wasn’t a child any longer. He couldn’t hide from things that made him uncomfortable.

“It’s all right,” Jason said gently. “Let’s look at them.”

The first one was a black and white photograph of his parents. They were in profile, looking out from the balcony of their house at the crashing waves below the small, cliff-top colony of Jacksonville. They both looked stern, a little distant, but that was how his parents had always looked in pictures. You had to be with them to see the grace of his mother’s movements, or really tell that the lines in his father’s face came from smiles. They had been older than most couples when they’d had him, and he’d lost them far sooner than any of them had planned. He shouldn’t have hidden this picture away.

“My parents.” He handed the film over to Ferran, who took it carefully. His lover gazed down at the photograph with lively interest.

“You look like your father.”

Jason smiled. “Thank you.” He had always admired his father’s way with people, his inner strength and his calm demeanor. Any comparisons were, in his mind, favorable.

“What was his name?”

“Gary. My mother was Min-suh, but my father called her Minnie.” The next picture was a portrait of his mother, and Jason handed that one over as well. The one behind that was a candid photo of himself and Blake, and that…that wasn’t quite so easy to look at.

Ferran knew instantly. “This is your last lover?”

“Yes.”

“How long were you together?”

“Just for a year.” Which was still the longest romantic relationship Jason had ever had, actually.

Ferran was quiet for a moment, then asked, “Does it bother you to look at him?”

“A little.” He didn’t want to lie to Ferran, and he suspected that the Perel would know if he’d tried to anyway. “But you should know about Blake. At the least you should know that he existed. He was out of my life for a year by the time you met me.” Jason put that picture, and the two behind it, back into the tube. “These ones can stay. I’ll take the other two, though.”

Ferran held the pictures of Jason’s parents side by side and admired them for a long moment. “We don’t have anything like this on Perelan. It’s considered disrespectful to make images of our loved ones, because it implies that we can’t hold them in our hearts without help. Remembrance of the past is important, but our historians do not like dwelling on specifics. I’ve only ever painted in the abstract.”

“You’re a painter?”

“It was one of the skills my mother thought it important for me to learn.” Ferran handed the pictures back carefully. Jason took them and set them back on the bed, filing this new information about his husband into the “to be explored” category. Jason wasn’t a painter but he had access to courses that Ferran might like, instructional holos and the means to buy any equipment that Ferran might need. Although right now there wasn’t the time to buy anything, and Jason knew for a fact that nothing was shipped to Perelan without express permission.

Jason reached back into the closet. After a moment of searching his hands closed on another cylindrical object, and he felt like groaning for a moment. More pictures? How many of those had he secreted away? But no, this time what he brought out brought a smile to his face. “I thought this was in storage on board the Silver Star.” He partially unsheathed the weapon and looked down at the short, straight blade. Still shining, still sharp. Just like he’d left it.

Ferran’s eyes went a little wide as he took in the sword. “You use this?”

“Not really,” Jason said, turning the sheathe over in his hands. It was painted with a flower pattern and coated with red lacquer, and the metal fittings were engraved with silver that was so tarnished it was almost black. “Swordsmanship went through something of a renaissance while I was going through the Academy. I learned fencing and kendo, and some Indonesian styles. This sword is actually Korean, and a lot shorter than the katanas that samurai used.”

“Who are samurai?” Ferran asked.

Jason smiled. “I forget sometimes how few movies you’ve seen. Why didn’t you go to any theaters while you were travelling around the universe?”

“There were other things to do,” Ferran replied, a mischievous look in his eyes. “Many other things. And alien films are one of the few things we’re occasionally granted access to on Perelan.”

“Well, tonight I’m introducing you to the archetype that is the samurai,” Jason said decisively. “Movies and popcorn, that’s the tradition.”

“I like your traditions,” Ferran smiled, wrapping his arms around Jason’s shoulders. “I liked celebrating your birthday.” It had been Jason’s birthday three days ago, and they had baked a cake, loaded it down with candles and spent the rest of the evening celebrating in a more intimate way. The kitchen was a place they both liked to be and Ferran was an excellent cook, far better than Jason even after so many years of learning it on his own. The white truffle cake was one of the few things Jason could make that Ferran didn’t already know how to improve upon.

“We’ll do the same for you when your birthday rolls around,” Jason promised, but Ferran shook his head.

“My birthday isn’t important,” he said, quietly but with complete assurance. “We never celebrate the birthdays of males on Perelan. Instead, each house celebrates the birthday of their reigning matriarch. It’s a feast day for the entire family. To celebrate my own birth would say to the others in my house that I was putting myself above them, and above where a sterile male should be stationed. I don’t mind it.”

Jason was inclined to insist that Ferran’s birthday was important and that they should celebrate it anyway, but he stopped himself. There was a lot he had to learn about Perel culture, and he didn’t want to make any assumptions before he had a chance to really sit down and talk with Giselle Howards, the Federation ambassador to the planet. She’d be able to give him a crash course in Perelan and its people without the risk of Jason offending his new husband.

“What is it?” Ferran asked, curling in even closer. He tended to cuddle when he thought something might be wrong. It wasn’t a habit that Jason felt like breaking, either. He liked the fact that for the first time in a long time, someone wanted to be close to him. Not just wanted, but needed to be close to him. The intensity of that emotion was something that Jason was still adapting to, but the more they were together the more he grew accustomed to letting himself need his husband back.

“Nothing that can’t wait,” he said after a moment. “Come on. Samurai movie time.”

In the end Jason chose the movie Samurai Fiction, an Old Earth classic and a far less violent example of the genre than some of what he had to pick from. There was plenty of fighting to keep it interesting, and enough discussions of personal honor and the Japanese class system that it would give Ferran a good beginning.

It was definitely violent enough for Ferran. “Is killing really so casual for humans?” he asked a little tentatively at the end of the movie. Jason ran a soothing hand down the feathery, amber-tipped quills that ran the length of Ferran’s spine and over his head. They tended to get sharper when he was upset or confused, and at the moment they were standing nearly on end.

“Not really,” Jason replied. “It’s just a movie. People watching it know it’s just for entertainment.”

“Why is death so entertaining?”

Jason stared at a piece of popcorn that had fallen to the floor and considered the question for a moment before answering. “Death is…mysterious. For some people death is the utter end, for others it’s the beginning of a new way of life. Everyone has a different opinion on death, but the only thing we know for sure is that there’s no definitive explanation for what happens after you die that everyone can agree on.

“The ability to take another person’s life can be seen as a good thing depending on who does the dying, or it can be a skill that makes other people consider you a monster. It all depends on what you decide to do with it. And a person who can face the prospect of death with calm and acceptance…it’s captivating, in its way. Admirable.”

Ferran listened to the explanation with his head cocked, disbelief clear in his eyes. “Perels think of any death other than old age as something shameful, something to be avoided at all costs.” His beautiful, expressive face was somber, and his ears were flared back, a sign of discomfort. “After our civil war, with so many of us dead or wounded, it became clear that we had taken our ability to destroy life too far. It was unsure for a time whether our species would even survive. All lives are to be treasured, even those who have little to offer their houses or society at large. Unnatural deaths are very rare, and suicide is one of the worst things a Perel can do. It brings shame on an entire family.”

“Like what happened with your brother?”

Ferran nodded. “It’s one reason that my petition to be trained as a diplomat was taken so seriously, even though I’m only a sterile male. There’s a flaw in my breeding, and the matriarchs thought it was possible that I might kill myself if they denied my petition.” Ferran took in Jason’s expression and hurried to add, “I didn’t lie when I told you before that I wasn’t going to kill myself, though. I would never do that. It is the ultimate expression of hopelessness, and I was never without hope.”

“Good,” Jason said firmly, leaning in and capturing Ferran’s lips in a kiss. The Perel seemed to melt against his body, warm and lithe and pliable, and Jason pulled him closer, framing Ferran’s smooth, pale face with his hands and opening up to his lover’s rough, questing tongue and the hungry little purrs that accompanied it. Before they had technically gotten married, Ferran had let Jason do all the driving when it came to their sex life. Now that he felt more secure, Ferran was occasionally reaching for control, taking it and giving it back to Jason as they gently dueled for dominance.

“It’s our last night here,” Jason said around their kiss, barely able to spare the breath to get the words out. “What do you want?”

“You.” It was what Ferran always said, and it was so full of truth and need that Jason couldn’t help but hold him a little tighter, and pull him a little closer.

“In our bed?” he whispered, nuzzling the pulse point beneath Ferran’s jaw before he bit it, very lightly. Ferran shivered in his arms.

“Wherever you want me,” Ferran breathed. “Anywhere, any way you want me.”

“The bed, then,” Jason decided, standing up and drawing Ferran up with him. They had already christened every room of the house, including the butterfly pavilion and, during a rare moment of good weather, the balcony. He wanted their last night to be one of comfort and closeness as opposed to fast and furious, or in the case of the garage, practically acrobatic.

They kissed their way back to the bedroom, so absorbed in each other than Jason didn’t remember the photographs he’d left out on the bed. Ferran reached out and moved them to the dresser before they could be crushed, and a moment later they were lying on the bed against each other.

Perels were physically similar enough to humans that it had never been a challenge for Jason, physically or mentally, to be intimate with Ferran. The challenge had come in being emotionally ready to involve himself with a race of people who were renowned for their sexual appetite. That was the most that the majority of people ever learned about the few Perels that were allowed off their planet, and it was initially enough to put Jason off of getting close to Ferran. He hadn’t counted on his second in command conspiring to force him to socialize, and he’d soon learned that there was a lot more to Ferran than simply sexual hunger.

Which wasn’t to say that there was anything wrong with Ferran’s hunger when it was focused on Jason. Ferran twined his slender, strong legs with Jason’s and pulled them tightly against each other, their erections rubbing tantalizingly through the thin cotton pants that they both wore. Jason had a shirt on as well but Ferran was bare-chested, which he always preferred as long as it wasn’t too cold. His skin was so warm…

The urge to strip them out of their clothes and just rut until they came was strong, but Jason wanted more than sex tonight. “Let me touch you,” he said softly, stilling the rhythm of Ferran’s hips with one hand as he caressed the length of his lover’s thigh. Ferran was panting quickly, his chest rising and falling in short bursts, but he nodded his assent.

Jason started at the too, stroking a hand carefully through the quills on his lover’s head, feeling them quiver under his fingers and switch from soft to sharp, soft to sharp. When they were sharp, they were almost edged enough to cut the tender skin of his lips, so Jason left the touching to his toughened hands and winnowed his fingers through the thin, straight strands. Short and blunter at the edges of Ferran’s face, the longest quills along the top of his head and the nape of his neck were almost six inches in length.

Jason trailed his fingers down a cluster of quills just behind Ferran’s ear, pausing there to gently scratch the tight skin. Ferran purred and turned his head into the touch, the rigid focus of his desire relaxing some as he got into the comfort that Jason was offering. Ferran’s ears slanted back against his head, crinkle-edged and tufted with a wisp of amber hair. They were adorable, and incredibly touchable, but Jason knew that Ferran was sensitive about the things that spoke most loudly to the differences between him and Jason, and that sensitivity sometimes made him self-conscious.

For a moment Jason wondered exactly how much his new husband was working to be sensitive to human culture, perhaps to things that even Jason wasn’t noticing, but then Ferran mewled needily and nuzzled against Jason’s throat, redirecting his attention back to the now.

Jason kissed over Ferran’s closed eyelids, so thin they were almost transparent, their lashes long and dark. He kissed his pointed nose and the tip of his sharp chin before losing himself again in Ferran’s mouth. God, his lover could kiss. His tongue was long, and rougher than a human’s, but Jason never came away from Ferran’s embrace feeling raw. Jason’s tongue delved into Ferran’s mouth in turn, cautious over canines that were marginally longer and sharper than a human’s. Perels could be omnivorous but preferred vegetarianism, by and large. One hand cupped Ferran’s neck, fingers burrowing into the quills there while the other kept moving against Ferran’s side, brushing over the edge of his abdomen before skirting back to safer territory.

They broke apart long enough for Ferran to murmur, “Jason.” His voice was dark and throaty, almost a growl.

“Let me,” Jason replied, trying to stay on track with what he had in mind. He wanted, no, he needed to ground himself in Ferran tonight, touch every bit of him, feel the reality of him. Everything else in his life was about to change. Ferran had to be familiar; he had to become the basis of Jason’s sense of home now.

Ferran whined faintly but acquiesced, and Jason continued his steady march down his lover’s body, kissing and licking at his throat, tormenting each new set of nipples as he worked his way down Ferran’s chest. The skin was slightly darker around those, a flush of pink against unrelenting paleness. Even on the tender skin of Ferran’s stomach the tissue was thicker than a human’s, more resistant to scratches and tears. The only place his skin truly softened was over his eyes, and…

Jason undid the tie on Ferran’s pants and pulled them down and away, leaving his lover nude. The head of his erection was bright red and flowing with milky fluid. It glistened against the length of it and pooled at the base, no hair to get caught in. Jason liked being able to see everything. He licked the head once, gently, just enough to get a taste before moving down the bed.

Ferran whined again, louder this time, but he didn’t reach for himself, or reach to redirect Jason back to his cock. He pulled his knees back and shuddered when Jason kissed the insides of his thighs and stroked down over the taut muscles of his calves. Ferran’s toes were long, exceptionally so when compared to a human, and his feet had high, spring-like arches. His toenails were black and thick, protective, and Jason spared a moment to kiss the biggest nail on each foot before he finally began to slide back up Ferran’s body.

God, he was leaking, flowing so much it almost looked like he was coming in slow motion. Perels, Jason had learned, produced a lot more seminal fluid than humans did, and their bodies made use of it. Jason ran his fingers through the liquid that had collected against Ferran’s balls, which were drawn hard and tight against his body, then ran them back underneath his lover until his slick fingers probed at Ferran’s entrance. His lover relaxed immediately, welcoming the press, the rich fluid acting as a perfect lubricant. Gathering a little more, Jason pushed his fingers back inside as he lowered his mouth onto Ferran’s cock.

His husband came quickly, keening, the build-up too much for him to resist. Hot sperm filled Jason’s mouth to overflowing, and he swallowed quickly. It tasted bitterer than a human man’s, musky and thick, but Jason swallowed again and again, addicted to the flavor. When it was clear there would be no more, Jason gently let go of Ferran’s swollen, sensitized organ and moved to pull his fingers out.

“No,” Ferran pleaded, clenching him tight. “Be in me.”

“I will,” Jason promised. “Give me a moment and I will.” As soon as Ferran nodded and relaxed he sat back, pulling off his shirt and pants with more haste than he normally did, even when they were making love, and threw them onto the floor. A second later he was pressed against Ferran again, their bodies perfectly matched, and then Ferran drew his legs back and rolled his hips and suddenly it was impossible not to slide into him.

Hot, so hot, so slicktightperfect…and God, Jason was going to come in a second if he didn’t control himself. He leaned back on his arms a little bit, putting some distance between himself and Ferran. It didn’t help. The low lights made his lover’s eyes look like they were glowing, and Ferran’s hands were everywhere, stroking down his chest and over his shoulders and urging him on. After a moment he gave into the urge, pulling back and then stroking in with more and more force until Jason was gasping for breath, his whole body was burning with tension and he knew that he was on the cusp of exploding, and all it would take was a look, a word, a movement…

“Jason.” One word, one look that he couldn’t even decipher when there was so much there to see and Jason flew apart, burying himself in Ferran and coming so hard that his vision dimmed and his hearing went fuzzy. Everything seemed to be quivering, from his hair to his toes, and it took all that he had left not to black out and collapse on his lover.

Ferran knew, of course. He was an empath, he felt Jason’s emotions, and his ability to feel them was becoming stronger the more intimate they became. He held Jason close, cradling him against his body but not suffocating him, giving him the space he needed to catch his breath. It took minutes, and every minute was a gift, every second was a blessing. He breathed out and Ferran breathed in, drinking in his exhalations and purring with pleasure.

It was frightening, how much Jason was beginning to crave the closeness he had with Ferran, how much he was starting to need him. The love hadn’t been nearly as hard for Jason to reconcile as the growing understanding that he was becoming genuinely dependent on someone else for the first time since he was a child. Jason had been part of a team, he’d been in relationships but all of those had paled in comparison to what was happening to him now, and he was both glad and anxious about that.

Eventually Jason came back to himself enough to get up. He went into the bathroom and got a clean washcloth, wet it and came back to find Ferran curled on his side, his huge eyes at half-mast, gazing in his direction.

“I am also nervous.”

Ferran’s sudden confession took Jason a little by surprise, and he raised an eyebrow as he scooted close enough to begin to wipe his lover clean. “Why are you nervous?”

“I want you to be happy on Perelan.”

“I will be happy,” Jason promised. “I’ll be with you.”

“Yes,” Ferran said, but that was all he said, and Jason was learning to hear his new husband’s silences as well as he did his words.

“I said forever,” Jason told him, smoothing a palm over damp skin. “I meant it. I don’t expect it will all be easy, but we’ll learn how to deal with that.”

“I believe you.”

“As well you should,” Jason said, trying to lighten the mood a little. “Or didn’t you know that I’m always right about these sorts of things?”

“That’s not what Florence told me,” Ferran countered, referring to Jason’s former second in command on board the Silver Star. She had been keeping in touch with both of them, sending brief text messages to their communicators almost daily, perhaps in an effort to make up for the fact that once they reached Perelan, they’d be cut off. No outside communications of any kind would be allowed unless they related to a family emergency, and Jason didn’t have any family left.

It was a shame, because Flo was a lot of fun to talk to, a good listener and an immovable pillar of support. She managed to make them laugh more often than not, very frequently resorting to ancient idioms that Jason had to explain to Ferran, or jovial commentary on what she considered Jason’s many amusing traits. Her last text to Ferran had read, Suggest installing a low-intensity shock button to use when you go out on the town with him. Wished for one many times myself. Might prompt him to use his words.

“Flo is biased against me, you know that. She thinks I have no social skills.”

“She’s wrong about that,” Ferran agreed with a smile. “You’re very sociable with me.”

“You see? You can’t listen to her.” Jason leaned in and kissed Ferran, and let his lover’s insistent hands keep him drawn close instead of getting up to clean the clothes from the floor like he’d intended to. Jason was well and truly exhausted, and it didn’t take much time for him to fall asleep in Ferran’s arms, his lover curled possessively around his head and shoulders.

***

Jason woke up in a cold sweat sometime before dawn, his breathing fast and his heart pounding so hard it felt like it might beat out of his chest. The nightmare that had woken him was dissipating quickly, leeching from his brain like an evaporating mist but leaving behind a dark, sticky residue. The urge to scream, caught by his tight jaw and clenched teeth, slowly receded, and eventually Jason was left exhausted but absolutely unable to get back to sleep. He glanced over at Ferran, still curled close to him, still asleep. Well, that was a mercy. He didn’t want to have to explain to his lover what was going on with him. Not that he knew himself, exactly.

Moving slowly, Jason eased out of the circle of Ferran’s arms and off of the bed, grabbed a robe that hung on the back of his bathroom door and slung it on, then walked quietly into the living room. He stood at the door that led to his balcony and stared out into the darkness, just barely able to detect the violent crashing of the waves far below. Lightning cracked through the sky, streaks of silver and gold in dark indigo clouds. Beautiful. Frightening. Sort of like what was happening here.

In his most ruthlessly practical moments when he was alone, Jason contemplated what he’d gotten himself into with a certain amount of grim resignation. He was going to be the first human being given intimate access to an alien world, an alien world that humans didn’t honestly know very much about. He was going there married to a highly-ranked member of that society, from what Jason could tell, but also a relatively powerless one. Infertile males were used as bargaining chips by their mothers, traded to other families to be caretakers and homemakers. Ferran was the first one ever to be allowed to pursue a different path, but there were probably whole labyrinths of political issues driving that decision that Jason knew nothing about, much less how he fit into the grand scheme of things. There was no doubt in his mind, though, that his presence among the Perels was entirely calculated.

Jason didn’t doubt that Ferran loved him. His new husband was as innocent a creature as Jason had ever seen in some ways, barely old enough to be considered an adult by his own people. He and his cousins had been on the verge of completing their post-adolescent tour of the ‘verse, were actually headed back to Perelan, when he and Jason had met. The depth of deceit that it would take to fool Jason into falling for him was beyond Ferran, not to mention that had snaring a human partner been premeditated, Ferran could have done a hell of a lot better. He could have gone for someone with more money, more power, more connections. Jason was a loner and always had been, and there was no lack of infatuated humans waiting for the first hint of something more with the attractive aliens to catapult them into love.

Instead Ferran had fallen in love with Jason, and he had risked a great deal to be with him. The proposal had come through Ambassador Howards, the Federation’s representative to Perelan, not from Ferran himself, and there had been no assurance that Jason would agree to a marriage. But in the end Jason had agreed, and for the next year at least, he and Ferran were legally bound to each other. There was still a lot to work out about that: how they would need to conduct themselves on the planet, how Jason’s actions would reflect on Ferran, even what Ferran’s duties within his own house would be now that he was no longer a viable bargaining chip. All his worth, all his beauty and gentility and intelligence had been spent on catching Jason, and Jason wasn’t at all sure that he was going to prove a worthwhile investment.

He hadn’t had a nightmare for a long time. As a child they were night terrors, leaving him upright in his bed screaming, unable to see or hear as his mother tried to calm him. His parents had refused drugs and therapy, his father instead opting to teach Jason meditation and other methods of self-control. They had eventually worked, and he’d become very adept over the years at blocking or burying the things that made him uncomfortable. Only occasionally was it so bad that those things manifested as nightmares, but it looked like now was going to be one of those times.

Uncertainty, doubts of his own self-worth, fear of leaving the simplicity and structure of everything he knew for the mystery that was Perelan…Jason had a lot to be afraid of. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply, letting the air circulate through the lowest parts of his lungs before emerging as a faint hiss through his teeth. He needed to handle this. And privately, because the last thing his new husband needed at the moment was insecurity from Jason. Ferran was going to be dealing with a lot once they got back to Perelan. Jason couldn’t add to that stress. Silently he promised himself to take up daily meditation again, to work kata and other exercises that were comfortingly mindless, physical movements that would ground and occupy him. He could handle this on his own. He would have to.

Jason opened his eyes again and sighed. The very edge of the horizon was limned with violet, signaling the beginning of dawn. Ambassador Howards would arrive in less than three hours to take them away in her ship. Jason glanced around his house, his eyes lingering on the hardwood floors and handmade cabinets, the simple, comfortable furnishings and soothing earth tones. There was a neat stack of containers by the door that contained everything he was taking with him to Perelan. Well, almost everything.

Jason turned and headed back into the bedroom. If he couldn’t sleep, the least he could do was finish packing.

Potential Silence, an Explanation For.

2012-01-22T20:29:00.000-08:00

Hi guys!

So lets get the fun stuff out there first. The next big installment of Pandora (the collected editions, haha) will be up on Literotica in a couple of days. It's queued, what can I do after that? Check out www.literotica.com if you want to see the slightly modified version from parts 8 through 15, I believe.

Let's see...I got to look at the header for my soon-to-exist website, and it is super sexy and lovely and makes me happy. The existence of said site is coming ever and ever closer to fruition. Cannot wait.

Different Spheres is in production mode (ie getting a cover) and will have it's own url on the Dreamspinner Press website soon, so I'll pass that along when it happens.

Now the not-so-fun stuff. Tuesday I go in for knee surgery, which means I will be hopped up on the good stuff for a few days and in all likelihood an incoherent mess, so don't expect me to post much beyond "Mhuhwhaaa...?" or to be quick to respond to emails. On the bright side, I get two weeks off of work, which means lots of time to write once I'm sensible again. Also, once recovered I will know better than to try to choke a person with my shin, which is what put me in this situation. It's been a learning experience all around.

Ooh, hey!

2012-01-19T06:37:00.000-08:00

The first collected chapter (1-8 I think) is now up on Literotica. If you're not in a compromising position or, you know, at work or something, please go give it a look! I'm going to try to get the next quarter or so of the story queued up asap.

Am I wasting your time sending you over there? Well, it's been a long time since the first chapters were front and center on this blog, and I did make minor changes to make it more readable as a longer piece, so you might enjoy that if you enjoyed the story. I've been discussing things with my readerwife and I think I know what I'm going to do next, but there are a lot of kinks to work out (possibly literally) and so will take me a little time.

http://www.literotica.com/

then find New Stories!

This is the first place I ever put anything up for public consumption. It's a great site with an awesome number of great free stories (and some incredibly bad stories, but their rating system can help you avoid those). And remember: not at work. Thank God I work out of my car:)

Back To Work, Woman!

2012-01-15T18:48:00.000-08:00

Hi there!

So, I've gotten some distance, made some space, now I can look at my blog rationally and figure out the next step. Yes I'll keep posting excerpts and news of my upcoming publications here, and yes I'll throw in the occasional RL tidbit, but the real thing that this blog motivates me to do is to write. I'm the sort of person who functions better under a deadline, weird but true. If I want to be really productive, I either have to exercise the kind of discipline that comes my way about once every six months and regiment myself, or rely on outside sources to do it for me. Hence the indespensibleness of my readerwife and the other people who follow what I write and then tap me with the "Get Your Ass Back To Work" stick.

It has to be something I can bring myself to focus on, though. I can't write too much of the same thing or my mind starts to melt. I want to do another series on this blog, but genres that are currently off-limits are, in no particular order: science fiction, urban fantasy, anything having to do with shapeshifters, fairies or vampires... I'm juggling several novellas and a novel right now, which will be totally fun once they're done but currently are eating my brain. Anyway. Feel free to suggest a topic, a situation or even just a theme. I love you and your help:)

In other news, I've put the first eight parts of Pandora together and put them into the queue on Literotica. I did end up changing a few bits and pieces, and it reads very nicely in its longer version, so even if you've already finished it you might want to check it out again. Give it a few days. There will probably be four extended parts altogether.

Ding! Next Round...

2012-01-11T11:29:00.000-08:00

So...just let me get this moment out before the really relevant stuff, dahlings.

Hindsight seems to be showing that my man and I should have just gone with public transportation instead of persnal vehicles on our return. 1 inch of snow shouldn't make driving so hard, but I swear people who are awesome in a foot of snow suck in 1 inch of it. This morning going to work, some poor lady's Explorer swung a fishhook and crashed into my little car's front end, driving us both off the road. She had insurance but no drivers license (how does one accomplish that anyway?) and in my compassion (weakness?) I didin't call the cops to officiate our accident. On the plus side, all this has resulted in me missing work today! On the minus side I have to make up all my client visits tomorrow, in what car I don't know, but I have to find one by then. Joy.

Okay, gripe over with. Holy crap, guys, thanks for reading Pandora! I have some work to do before it's ready to post on Lit, but hopefully the first collected installment will be up around the end of the month. I'm writing a sequel to Shadowed, probably the last installment in that series even though I adore Danny and Reese. My follow-up novel to the short story Opening Worlds is written and beginning the editing process. I linked the first chapter a while back. The whole thing came out pretty darn good, I think. I'm going to submit stories for a few anthologies in the coming months, because damn it, I love doing anthologies. So much less stress, so fun to see other people's take on an idea. Oh, and, my short story Different Spheres will be out with Dreamspinner Press sometime in the next month, I believe. I think Jana's the only one who's read that so far, but I think you guys will like it. There are excerpts posted somewhere on this blog:)

In other news, I'm hopefully going to have a website--a real website, all big-girl and everything--up soon. The blog will be coming along for the ride, but gosh, the whole thought of it makes me feel so official. Like now I need something else to strive for, like a cabana boy, and a cabana for him to be a boy at. Or something. Kinda tired and knocked around here.

I hope your new year has gotten off to a safe and successful start. Stick with me, guys, 2012 is going to be an exciting, creatively productive year. Next post: where the hell do I go from here? Or, name that serial story.

Pandora Post #30: Finale

2012-01-07T08:10:00.000-08:00

Title: Pandora

Part Thirty: Climax, Literally

Notes: Long notes section this time, guys, since this is the LAST PART OF PANDORA!!! I know, I kind of thought it would never end, but it has. The final product in it’s current state is 90k words long and took me over a year to write. I’m going to be polishing it up for posting on Literotica, but I doubt I’ll make any major changes. Thank you so much for sticking it out and waiting, through thick and thin, Togo and America, for me to finish this darn thing. I kind of love Garrett and I wish I had more to say about him, but for now his tale is HEA. Special thanks to my readerwife for commenting all the time, which is basically like feeding my brain, and to everyone else who commented and thus made me a happy, happy girl. I wuv you all.

PS, as if it isn’t apparent from the title, this section has dirty scenes. R-rated at least. Don’t go there if you can’t take the heat.

PPS, I will be begging for fic suggestions/preferences in my next post, most likely, so think about it. I already have a request for more in The Captain series, which I will do, but those stories don’t really lend themselves to being written as serials, and I’m going to need something to keep you all visiting my blog.

***

Nervousness, Garrett told himself firmly, was for other people. He didn’t do nervous. Nervous saw him coming and transformed immediately into cockiness, because nervous just didn’t fit Garrett. Especially not when he had almost nothing to be nervous about. Right? It wasn’t like everything wasn’t going exactly the way he wanted it to so far. No, everything was working out perfectly.

Miles had been given the gold star of approval over his health a few days after he was revived. Garrett had tried to stay on the periphery as his father got reacquainted with his younger family, with limited success. It was kind of sweet, actually, the way Miles always had to have an arm around Claudia or Renee in his arms. It was kind of annoying that Garrett was drawn into the gravitational pull of his father’s recovery instead of keeping his distance and making plans to leave, but he didn’t fight it too hard. Miles and Garrett were friends as well as father and son, and had been for most of Garrett’s life, but it had been a long time since his father had reached out to him so casually, or so often. Not since Garrett had gotten out of rehab as a teenager, still aching and confused and afraid, had Miles ruffled his hair or squeezed his shoulder or hugged him like he was now. Annoyingly, it took Wyl to explain it to Garrett.

“He’s not really doing it for you,” Wyl had sighed, saying it like it was the most obvious thing on the face of the planet. “He’s doing it for himself. The man’s been out of the loop for months, he wakes up and has to relearn his whole life, and you’re a big part of that life whether you want to be or not, Gare. Miles is just reassuring himself that you’re really there. Hand me that wrench.”

Garrett had handed over the tool with a frown. “Did you do the same thing with Robbie?”

“What, go through a clingy phase? Yeah, but that’s not all that different from how we are most of the time,” Wyl replied, and Garrett could hear the grin in his voice. “Just give your dad a little more time.”

“I have to head back, Wyl.”

“Back to Pandora?”

“Yes.” Garrett shook his head slightly. “Although I’m really not sure why I’m so eager to get there. I know I love Jonah, I know I’m in love with him, but I’ve got such a fucking miserable track record with relationships. One man has never been enough for me in the long run. How do I know this is going to turn out any different?”

Wyl had crawled out from under the ship and scowled irritably over at Garrett. “You know, you have got to be the most beautiful, most brilliant, most clueless dumbass I’ve ever met.”

Garrett blinked. “Come again?”

“Look, even if you weren’t totally ass-over-teakettle in love with Jonah, which I know you are by the not-so-subtle way you pine for him, you’re not getting one man with this relationship, Gare. You’re getting two. You’re getting a family.”

“Ah.” After that Garrett shut his mouth and just handed Wyl tools for a while.

Garrett left Paradise three days later, just before Miles was set to go back to work. “For fuck’s sake, be careful,” he muttered into his father’s shoulder as they said their goodbyes.

“You too,” Miles said as he pulled back. One hand tapped the spot right between Garrett’s eyes. “No more surgeries without telling us what’s going on.”

Garrett flushed. “How did you know?”

“Your eyes are still a little darker than they should be,” Miles replied. “I called Jezria once I noticed. You’re lucky to be alive, son.”

“I know.” There was a moment of silence, strained in a way it hadn’t been between them for a long time. They were both lucky to be alive.

“Bring your guys along the next time you visit,” Miles said at last, easily changing the subject and giving them both an out. “We all want to meet them.”

“I’d like that.” He really would, too. He wanted to join the two disparate sides of his family together.

Garrett bid the rest of them farewell, saving a kiss for his little sister and getting Therese to unbend far enough to give him a one-armed embrace. Leaving them was hard, but the prospect of returning to Pandora was rapidly overshadowing any angst or sadness he was feeling.

Garrett had finally actually talked to Jonah the night before, to let him know he was coming back. The surprise on Jonah’s face hurt a little bit, but Garrett supposed it was warranted.

“How much time do you reckon it’ll take to get here?”

“A little over three weeks,” Garrett replied. He glanced around Jonah’s living room, where the vid screen was set up. “Where’s Cody?”

“Friend’s house,” Jonah replied automatically, running his hand through his hair. “If I’d known you were gonna call I’d have gotten him, but…”

“Yeah, I know.” Neither of them wanted to raise Cody’s hopes for no reason.

“Your dad’s okay now?” Jonah asked quietly.

“Yes. He woke up healthy and with almost all of his memory intact. It was pretty amazing, honestly.”

“Good, good. Good.”

It was the most awkward conversation Garrett had ever had with Jonah. After a few more exchanges they cut the connection, and Garrett was left feeling more unsettled than ever. Nothing had been decided, no intentions or words of affection had been exchanged. Which was stupid, Garrett reflected sourly, but not incredibly unlike him.

Getting to Paradise had been one long, hyper, hopped-up blur for Garrett, one which had worn him down to nearly nothing, but at the same time at least his mind had been occupied. He’d been filled with purpose. Returning to Pandora didn’t have the same sense of excruciating urgency about it, but it was much more difficult in some ways because of that. There was nothing for Garrett to do but think about the cliff he was about to jump off, if Jonah and Cody agreed to it. Garrett was a fan of doing new things, but most of the new things he’d tried in the past had been well within his comfort zone. This was definitely not.

By the end of the trip Garrett had gotten so sick of his own whiny indecision that he could barely look at himself in a mirror. He was directed to land in the Neptune’s docking bay, which he supposed made sense since his apartment was still on the ship. The first person to meet him as he disembarked was, sadly, not Jonah. It was Jezria. As happy as he was to see her, Garrett couldn’t stop the disappointed frown that flashed across his face.

“Clearly I’m not who you were expecting,” Jezria said dryly as she enfolded him in a motherly hug. Garrett put down his duffel bag so he could hug her back.

“You know I’m glad to see you,” he told her. “Even if you did go behind my back and tell my dad about the incident in the lab.”

“You can’t expect me to lie to one of my oldest friends when’s he’s already seen through you,” she protested, letting him go. “Miles is well, I take it?”

“Very well.”

“And everyone else?”

“Fine, which you already know because I’m sure you’ve talked to them recently.” He glanced around. “Do you have any idea why Jonah isn’t here?”

“He had intended to be, but he was called out at the last minute to pick up one of the research teams that went inland for the day. Their shuttle broke down.”

“You mean they crashed it.”

“They…bumped it.”

“Shit.”

“You could go and pick Cody up from daycare, though,” Jezria suggested with a small smile. “I know he’s looking forward to seeing you.”

“Really?”

“Of course, really,” she said, graciously not adding anything derisive about Garrett’s insecurities. “The daycare is right next to the primary school in Pandora City. Do you know how to find it? It’s just five blocks south of here.”

“I’m sure I can find it.”

“Good. Cody can take you home with him afterwards.”

Home. Right. “Okay.” He hefted his bag over his shoulder again, the edge of a box inside of it digging into his mid-back. “Thanks.”

“Get some rest, my dear. You have a few days to adjust before you’re expected back at the lab.”

“At least they didn’t give away my spot,” Garrett joked as he turned towards the exit.

“Of course not. You’re under contract, after all. The months you were gone have been added to your end-date, by the way.”

“Contracts make allowances for massively extraneous circumstances!” Garrett protested out of habit, even though staying on was exactly what he had in mind.

“Most contracts do. Not this one.” She shook her head and tutted slightly. “You really should have read the entire thing before you signed it, Garrett. Now go on, have a lovely afternoon.”

“Thank you,” he grumbled before leaving the Neptune.

Amazingly, it wasn’t raining outside. The sky was thick with blue-gray clouds, but they weren’t doing more than threatening. Garrett still walked fast in the direction Jezria had given him, and before long he saw the school. It was a bright building, painted in orange and yellow and red. Playground equipment dotted the lawn beside it, and next to that was a smaller building that was bustling with children. Garrett assumed that was the daycare. He looked around the playground for Cody’s curling blonde hair. Cody spotted him first, and Garrett had all of three seconds to prepare himself for the child torpedo that hit him in the midsection.

“Garrett!”

It was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, how relieved holding onto Cody made him feel. How stupidly happy he became when he lifted the child up into his arms and got a kiss on the cheek for his effort. Garrett held the boy close and laid a kiss of his own into his hair, and didn’t let up until Cody started pushing impatiently at his shoulders.

“Look, I lost a tooth, see?” Cody opened his mouth and showed Garrett where the gap was in his lower jaw. “And I lost another one while you were gone, it was on the top and Daddy had to pull it out and it didn’t even hurt, but it did bleed for a while and that tasted kind of nasty.”

“Did you get any money from the tooth fairy?”

Cody’s brow wrinkled. “What’s a tooth fairy?”

“It’s criminal, the things you don’t know,” Garrett sighed, but he was smiling. “I’ll tell you when you lose your next tooth.”

“Okay,” Cody agreed complacently. “Hey, wanna go see our house?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay and play for a while longer?” Garrett asked, eager to see their place but a little unsettled at the prospect as well.

“No, I was just playing with dumb Lacey, I wanna go home.” He wriggled until Garrett put him down, then grabbed his hand and started pulling. Garrett made sure one of the monitors saw him leaving with Cody before he followed the child’s lead.

“Why is Lacey dumb? I thought you guys were friends.”

“We were, but then Lacey’s dad told Lacey that you weren’t really coming back to this God-forsaken place, and I asked Lacey what God was but she told me she didn’t know, but she thought it was maybe a swear word, and her dad swears a lot. Then I told Lacey you were coming back but she didn’t believe me, so I kicked her and then she punched me and I got a black eye but Lacey got into big trouble, so it was okay.”

Garrett tried to follow all of that. “But now you’re friends again?”

“Kind of, but she’s still dumb.” They turned down the third street on the left and Cody broke into a jog, tugging on Garrett to make him go faster. “Ours is at the end! Come on!” They ran up to the front door of a two-story house, cute and quaint with a solid stone facing and sharply-slanted roof. Cody pressed his palm against the identification pad by the door, then opened it up and dragged Garrett inside.

The short front hall let out into an open living room, with a kitchen on one side and a small dining area on the other. One wall was taken up with a big vidscreen, there were chairs and couches and a low table, and of course there were toys scattered all over the floor.

“Come see my room,” Cody said, and Garrett set his bag down and let himself be drawn back into their home. All the furnishings were light-colored, and the whole place was comfortably warm and smelled faintly of mint. Cody’s room was the first on the right, and it looked just like it had when he’d shown it to Garrett in the video they’d sent him.

Cody went straight for his toys. “Remember I told you I got the black Space Ranger? Dallas? Remember his cool move?” Cody sat down and turned the doll on. “Here, watch.”

Garrett sat down cross-legged and watched as Cody gave the commands that made the toy jump and spin and kick. He resisted the urge to pull Cody closer and dutifully took the red Space Ranger when it was handed to him. They went through the fighting gauntlet with all of the dolls, until it was finally down to two. Garrett was so involved in the game that he didn’t even notice that Jonah was home before Cody jumped up and ran past Garrett to the door. “Daddy! Daddy look, Garrett is back!”

“I can see that,” the voice replied, amused. Garrett turned slowly and looked up at the man hugging his son in the hallway. Jonah looked like he always did, in dark worn jeans and a loose green button-up shirt that hung off of his broad shoulders. He was always kind of lanky, but that shirt made him look almost skinny. His feet were bare on the composite floor, and Garrett was seized by the urge to do naughty things to Jonah’s toes. Good thing the man was a few feet away. “Did you show him around?”

“Just to my room, ‘cause I wanted to show him Dallas and we played tournament.”

“We should show him the rest of the house,” Jonah said, and he extended a hand toward Garrett to help him up off the floor. Garrett took it, and had a moment to revel in the feeling of warm fingers and a calloused palm against his own before he was upright, and close enough to Jonah that he could smell him.

“Hi.”

“Hey.” They were both quiet for a moment, just looking their fill. Garrett felt like he could never get enough of looking at Jonah in that moment. His warm brown eyes were wide and eager, darting all over as he kept a grip on Garrett’s hand, tugging him a little closer. “Welcome back,” Jonah said at last.

“It’s good to be here,” Garret replied, totally honest.

“Daddy, can we show him the rest of the house now?” Cody whined, bored, and Jonah started a little.

“Yeah, bucko, sure we can.”

“Cool!” Cody took Garrett’s other hand and he found himself dragged down the hall towards the stairs. “That’s my bathroom and that’s the guest room there. Daddy’s room is up here.” Cody led the way up the narrow stairs. “This is Daddy’s bathroom,” he pushed open a door on the left to reveal a large bathroom with a whirlpool tub. “It’s got a door to his bedroom, see? And this is his real door,” Garrett caught a glimpse of the room beyond it, mostly dark colors and an enormous bed that made him sigh, before Cody turned them again. “And this is the laundry room and this one is your room, Garrett.”

Garrett looked over at Jonah. “My room?”

Jonah blushed and raised a hand like he wanted to run it through his hair before he remembered it was pulled back. “Yeah. Your room.”

“It’s empty now ‘cause you haven’t put your stuff in it yet,” Cody announced, looking around the good-sized room like he was imagining it filled. “But there’s lots of space for all your clothes and stuff, ‘cause it’s not like you need your own bed.” He let go of Garrett’s hand. “So that’s the rest of the house. Daddy, I’m hungry.”

“Go on downstairs, bucko, I’ll be there in a minute to make dinner,” Jonah promised him in a kind of strangled tone.

“’kay, Daddy.” Cody left and the two men just looked at each other for a moment.

“That wasn’t how I intended on askin’ you to move in,” Jonah confessed.

“You really want me to move in with you two?”

“Yeah,” Jonah said, but Garrett could hear the edge of resignation in his voice. “If you want to, of course. I know your contract’s just for a couple more years, but even just a couple more years with you has gotta be better than missin’ you when you’re on the same damn planet as us.” He moved a little closer, his other hand coming up to stroke down Garrett’s arm. “I want whatever I can get of you, Garrett. Missed you like crazy while you were gone, and I’m so damn grateful you’re back. You have no idea.”

“I think I have some idea,” Garrett replied, strangely breathless. “And I was thinking of extending once this contract is over.”

Jonah’s hands tightened on him for a moment. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“How long were you thinkin’ of?”

“How long do you want me here?” Garrett countered. A second later he was wrapped up in Jonah, and it was the most amazing feeling he’d ever experienced. He tightened his own arms around Jonah and absorbed the relief and joy he felt coming off the other man.

“As long as you’re livin’,” Jonah told him, his voice a little rough. “I want you here all the time, Garrett, fuck, you have to know that.”

“Because you love me?” Garrett asked, sure he was right but still a little tentative saying it out loud.

Jonah chuckled. “Yeah, and because you love me. Us. Right?”

“I’m insane for you,” Garrett sighed. “Of course I love you.”

A second later they were kissing and Garrett was thrilled because really, that had gone a lot better than it could have and he was grateful the talking was finally behind them. Also, he was holding his lover for the first time in months, months of taking care of himself and having to make do with the memory of Jonah, and now he was here and real and warm and Garrett got hard so fast that it almost hurt. He ground forward against Jonah and relished the low moan that escaped from his lover’s mouth, and the desperate way he leaned into the touch, gripping Garrett’s hips hard enough to bruise as he jerked him closer.

“Daddy, I’m hungry!”

“Oh, hell,” Jonah groaned, tearing his mouth away from Garrett’s. “We’ve gotta wait. Can’t do this the way I want to while he’s still up.”

One of the many joys of parenthood. Garrett’s hyperactive libido railed against being shut away, but he ignored it and nodded, putting a little space between himself and Jonah. “Right.”

“Even though all I wanna do is throw you down on our bed and have my way with you.”

“Oh, you son of a bitch,” Garrett muttered as he gritted his teeth while Jonah grinned.

“Dad, I’m hungry!”

“I’m coming!” Jonah yelled back. He took a few deep breaths and looked at Garrett, then said, “Take a couple minutes, darlin’, you look like you need it.” Judging from the erection tenting his pants, Garrett agreed.

“You’re going to pay for this,” he warned.

“I sure as fuck hope so,” Jonah said, his voice little more than a growl. Abruptly he turned and left, leaving Garrett alone in his empty room trying to will away a hard-on that just didn’t want to quit.

“Bastard.”

Ten minutes later Garrett joined the guys downstairs. Jonah had made mac and cheese thanks to Cody insisting it was a celebration and so they needed special food. Jonah raised one eyebrow as Garrett sank into a seat at the table.

“Took you a while, darlin’.”

“I was just looking around a little,” Garrett replied breezily. “Getting a handle on the layout, investigating our bedroom a bit. Opening a few drawers.”

Jonah’s blush spread across his cheeks and down his neck. “Yeah?”

“Yes. I think I can work with what you’ve got.”

“Garrett, eat,” Cody interrupted, pushing the dish toward him. “Before it gets cold.”

Garrett took some food and they listened to Cody talk about his day, all the while Garrett making a minor production of every bite he took. Jonah didn’t stop blushing the whole evening, and by the end of dinner he was starting to look desperate.

“What did you bring me from Paradise?” Cody asked after the plates were cleared away.

“That’s not polite,” his dad scolded him. “Garrett didn’t go travelin’ just to buy you things.”

Cody huffed and Garrett said, “Actually, I did bring you something, but I’m not sure you can have it yet. We might have to wait for your birthday, because this is a majorly incredibly good present.”

Cody looked at him with wide eyes. “Really?”

“Yes. Phenomenally good. I can’t even tell you how amazing because it might make your head explode.”

“What is it?” Cody breathed.

“Think I have an idea,” Jonah muttered, but he didn’t look upset. “You’re gonna spoil the pants off our kid, Garrett.”

Our kid. Right, because they were a family now, because Garrett was staying. Speaking about Cody in the possessive made him feel oddly soft, though.

“Please please please don’t make me wait for my birthday,” Cody whined. “That’s like forever away!”

“Less than half a year,” Jonah said implacably, but clearly Cody was the master of breaking his dad down. He opened his big brown eyes even wider than usual and poked his lower lip out just slightly, and tilted his head a little bit to the side. Then he sniffled.

“Oh, hell,” Jonah sighed. “Fine. If Garrett says it’s okay.”

Cody turned the eyes on Garrett, who was more than ready to fall prey to the sudden influx of adorability. “Sure. Let me get it out for you.”

Cody jumped up from the table and ran over to the duffel bag anyway. “Is it in here?”

“Where else could it be?” Garrett asked as he joined him. He opened the lock, unzipped the bag and pulled out the square plastic box that had been resting against his spine on the walk over. “Here you go.”

Cody took the box and put it down on the ground, then said breathlessly, “Open.” The box folded itself out, revealing a figurine dressed in white standing within, with a white falcon on her shoulder.

“You got Sharla.” Cody sounded positively worshipful. He reached around and turned the doll on, and moment later she shook out her long blonde hair and smiled.

“Command me.”

“Oh, that’s just wrong,” Jonah muttered.

“Show me your special move,” Cody demanded.

“She finds a pole to slide down and I’m taking that doll out of here,” Jonah said quietly to Garrett, who just shushed him.

“Go, Star!” The doll raised her arm and the falcon, faintly connected to her by a filament-thin line, flew out into the air, turned a sharp figure eight, then dive-bombed back toward the floor, flicking up at the last moment to land back on the white Space Ranger’s shoulder.

“Oh wow. Wow! Garrett, did you see that? Daddy, did you see? Show me again!” They sat through another five renditions of the special move before Cody was satisfied. “Now we have to make her fight!”

“Not tonight,” Jonah said, to an immediate moan of discontent from his son.

“Daddy!”

“It’s bed time, bucko.”

“But I barely got to see how she works,” he complained.

“You can see tomorrow.”

“But I have school tomorrow, I’ll have to wait all day.” He turned beseeching eyes on Garrett. “Pleeeease…”

Very conscious of both pair of eyes on him, Garrett shook his head. “Sorry, Cody. But I can come and pick you up after school tomorrow, and we can see how she does against the red Ranger then.”

“Yeah, ‘cause she’s got a monkey, so it’s more fair,” Cody immediately agreed, even though he was still frowning. “You can come and get me?”

“For a couple of days, I don’t have to go back to work yet.”

“But even when you do, you’re still going to stay with us?”

“That’s the plan,” Garrett said slowly, glancing over at Jonah for cues. Jonah’s expression was totally blank, though.

“And you’re not going to go away for so long again?”

“No,” Garrett promised. “Not without bringing you guys with me. My dad really wants to meet you, and I have a new little sister who has all sorts of things to learn. I bet you’d be a great teacher.”

“Yeah,” Cody said confidently. “I’d be the best.”

“Bed time,” Jonah reminded him, looking much more relaxed now than he had a few moments ago. “C’mon, you’ve gotta shower too.”

“I’m clean!” Cody protested even as he got out of his chair, picking up the white Space Ranger and holding her close as he walked back toward his room. “I only fell once on the playground and that’s just ‘cause dumb Lacey was chasing me, and all the dirt just got on my clothes, see?” He pointed towards the stains on his knees.

“We’ll make it a short shower,” his dad promised. “Get goin’, bucko.” Cody sighed and moped off to his room, and Jonah turned to Garrett. “I’ve gotta clean up from dinner. You want to put your stuff upstairs?”

“In my room?” Garrett asked with a smile.

“In our room,” Jonah replied. “Your room’s more for the big stuff you can’t live without that’s not clothes, though we’re probably gonna have to use the closet in there for some of it, because there won’t be near enough space for it all otherwise.”

“Well, you’ve got to have the right wardrobe to look this gorgeous all the time,” Garrett said blithely. Jonah just shook his head and turned back to the few dishes, so Garrett grabbed his duffel bag and headed up the stairs. He didn’t even stop at his room, just headed straight back to the bedroom he’d be sharing with Jonah and walked inside.

The bed was familiar and large, but now there were two bedside tables, and after pushing a few buttons Garrett found a second set of drawers extend from the wall, these ones empty. Garrett moved his clothes into the top drawer, hung up the things that needed hanging, then sat down and looked around again. The room had a warm feeling, and when he lay back on the bed he noticed that the comforter smelled like Jonah. He’d almost forgotten how amazing it felt to be surrounded by that scent.

Two pictures glowed on Jonah’s side table. One was of Cody, gap-toothed and smiling wide. A smaller frame beside it held a picture of Garrett that he didn’t even remember being taken, a profile photo. He wasn’t laughing like Cody, but there was the smallest smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

Jonah’s weight suddenly came down over him, pressing him deeper into the mattress, and Garrett exhaled his lover’s name. “Cody’s in bed?”

“Already fell asleep, or he would’ve wanted you to say goodnight,” Jonah said, bracing himself on his forearms so he didn’t completely crush Garrett into the bed.

“So.”

“So…” There was a moment of awkward silence. “I can see where I might be assuming a lot thinkin’ that you’re stayin’ on here for a while, but you are, aren’t you?”

“I told you I am.”

“Yeah.” Jonah’s eyes roved over Garrett’s face, drinking in every detail. “You did say that.”

“You don’t believe me?” It hurt a little, but Garrett didn’t suppose he could blame Jonah for being cautious after he’d been a jerk for so long.

“I really, really want to believe you, darlin’.” Now Jonah was looking kind of miserable. “And I do, pretty much. I just…things weren’t goin’ this way when you left, and now you’re back and suddenly everything’s workin’ out perfect? That just doesn’t happen to me.”

“It should,” Garrett said, irritated a little at himself and a lot at Jonah’s ex and his mother. “You deserve to get what you want, whatever makes you happy. I want to be here, Jonah. I’m happy with you, I didn’t know how happy before I went away. And I love Cody, and I’m completely in love with you and in the end I just want to be where you two are, even if that’s Pandora for the foreseeable future. I’ll get used to it.”

Garrett could see the anxiety die down in Jonah’s eyes. It didn’t vanish, not completely, but that was something that would probably take years to accomplish. Years of his presence, his help and care and participation in being a part of this family. Years of love. Years of sex.

And God, speaking of sex, they were months behind on it. The pressure of Jonah’s body against his made Garrett get hard fast, and fuck it was so much better than any of his toys or his hand or his memories. He stared hungrily at his lover, and he watched with satisfaction as Jonah’s pupils rapidly blew up until they blotted out all traces of color.

“I want to taste you,” Garrett whispered, leaning in and brushing his tongue across Jonah’s mouth, opening it up for him to take control of. Jonah went with it, letting Garrett in, letting his hands roam and peel away clothes, shift their bodies until Jonah was beneath him, naked on the bed, his erection straining so hard it was almost purple. Garrett reached beneath the pillow on his side of the bed and grabbed one of the things he’d found in Jonah’s nightstand. Jonah saw it and blushed hard.

“I haven’t used it yet,” he managed around his stuttering breath.

“I didn’t think so,” Garrett purred. He kissed his lover hard on the mouth, then slowly began to work his way down Jonah’s body, relearning his hot spots with a tender kind of desperation that blew his mind. It was insane, how much he wanted this. Didn’t even want it for himself, really; he just wanted Jonah to keep making those noises, to keep going higher and higher, to keep looking at him like he was the beginning and end of Jonah’s universe right now. Like Garrett was everything, like he was a fucking god.

And he kind of was. At fucking, at least.

Garrett pulled Jonah down the bed until his hips rested at the edge of it, and Garrett himself was on his knees on the floor. He licked a line up Jonah’s cock with his tongue, smiling at the noises that precipitated, then nuzzled lower, between his balls and down the line of his perineum. When he got to his hole Garrett didn’t stop, he just flicked his tongue out and brushed it over the tight, furled muscle.

“Fucking hell…” Jonah jumped reflexively, his bent legs driving him away from the edge of the bed. Garrett reached out and pulled him close again.

“Give me this,” he told Jonah, putting every ounce of longing he felt into his voice. “Let me have you however I want you, tell me I can have you anyway, anywhere. Give yourself to me. You’ll love it, I swear, you won’t know how you lived without me, just let me have you.”

“Was just surprised, darlin’,” Jonah panted, running his hand through Garrett’s short hair. “Do what you want. ‘M yours.”

Garrett grinned ferally. “Good. Don’t come yet.” Then he lowered his mouth to Jonah’s ass and went to town, licking and humming and thrusting his tongue past the slowly-loosening ring until Jonah was wet and shiny and dying for more, careful not to make too much noise for Cody’s sake but shaking with the effort it took.

When he thought Jonah was ready, Garrett grabbed the little toy, made sure it was set correctly, then slowly pushed it inside of his lover, using nothing but his spit to slick the way. The plug vibrated merrily, and after a few seconds Garrett could see it expand, just slightly.

Jonah was moaning audibly now, clenching around the plug and jerking slightly every time it got bigger. Garrett licked a circle around the end of it, then moved forward just far enough to catch Jonah’s gaze. “By the time I get you off, you’ll be ready for me.”

“Darlin’—” Whatever was going to follow the affectionate diminutive was lost to a sudden flurry of swear words as Garrett swallowed Jonah’s cock to the root, only backing off when it was clear that he had to slow things down if he wanted the plug to have time to do its work before Jonah came. Garrett gripped the base of his lover’s cock hard and pulled off, just long enough to catch a breath before sinking his lips back down.

Fuck, Jonah tasted so good. A little salty, a little bitter but still sweet somehow, and all of it surrounded by the scent of his need, hot and strong. Garrett brushed the fingers of his free hand over the base of the plug, felt Jonah jerk in his grasp, as though he didn’t know which sensation he wanted to chase. Garrett decided to give him both, licking and sucking up and down the length of Jonah’s cock as he gently twisted the plug, pulling it a little ways out before pushing it back in even deeper than it had been before, then repeating. Before long Jonah was babbling, and a few moments after that he was begging.

“Fuck, baby, please, please, Garrett, God—”

Garrett didn’t say anything, just releases his tight grip and twisted the plug again, so much bigger now inside of his lover. Jonah came with a wordless cry that was probably a lot louder than he’d meant it to be, his come gushing into Garrett’s mouth almost faster than he could swallow. Hmm. Someone had been saving up. It was the sort of thing he’d make a joke about if he wasn’t so horny he could die.

Garrett pulled off when it was clear that Jonah was spent, reached for the lubricant he’d stashed as well and quickly covered his length with it, then reached down again and slowly pulled the plug free. Jonah groaned as it came out, but the look on his face was anything but pained. “C’mon,” he breathed, and Garrett pulled his lover’s legs up over his shoulders, gripped his thighs and thrust quickly inside of him.

Holy fuck. It was so perfectly tight, just relaxed enough to keep Garrett from worrying that he was hurting Jonah, and Jonah himself looked like a hot fucking mess against the bed, his hair free from its tie and loose against his pillow, sandy brown waves that glistened with sweat, just like every inch of his golden skin. His muscles were slack with pleasure, but his eyes glittered with fervor, desperate for Garrett. “’M yours,” he said again, and everything that went unsaid was still plainly heard by Garrett. I’m yours, love me, fuck me, use me and make me feel you, make me believe that you’re staying forever. Garrett could do that.

God, could he ever do that. Garrett just let himself go, thrusting hard into Jonah, hard enough to move both of them slowly up the bed until Jonah’s outstretched hands hit the wall, stopping them. In him, he was in his lover, this man who had somehow become his family, given him a chance for something he hadn’t even recognized that he wanted, or needed. Garrett was buried inside of Jonah, fucking him like he wanted to push all the way inside of him, and he kind of did. He needed to prove to himself, and to Jonah, that this was perfect. Oh fuck, was it perfect. Jonah tightened his channel and Garrett literally saw flickering stars dart across his vision. He couldn’t look at his debauched lover sprawled across the bed, welcoming him, giving him whatever he wanted because he just wasn’t going to last a second longer if he did, and it had barely been any time at all…

“Love you,” Jonah said quietly, and Garrett immediately surrendered the fight and fell off the cliff, happily abandoning the last vestiges of his vaunted independence for the absolute, consuming love of this man. He came and it felt like dying, as he lost all his breath and his heart skipped in its rhythm. His vision went black and he finally collapsed with a grateful sigh.

When he came to Garrett was in Jonah’s arms, no longer inside of him and feeling more than a little embarrassed. Jonah grinned when he saw Garrett’s expression.

“Never had that happen during sex before.”

“I’m coming off a period of abstinence, so sue me for being a little over-enthusiastic and forgetting to breathe,” Garrett groused. “Wait, are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

“You didn’t hurt me, darlin’. You took good care of me.” There was more than a hint of devotion in Jonah’s voice, and even though Garrett was still embarrassed, he smiled.

“Good.” He kissed Jonah’s shoulder. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

“I think it’s more that we’re amazing together,” Jonah replied. “You’re really stayin’, huh.”

“Why would I leave when I can have that every instant that Cody isn’t within earshot?”

Jonah rolled his eyes. “This is about more than sex.”

“I know. I want more than sex from you, you know that.” Garrett closed his eyes and pressed himself a little closer to Jonah’s body. “I’m still figuring out what all the other things I want are, but they’re there.”

“You know I’ll give you everything I can.”

“I know that.” Garrett shifted, then grinned suddenly as his hip came into contact with a very happy erection. “And it feels like right now you want to give me this.”

Jonah shrugged. “Got hard again while you were inside of me. Now I want to be inside of you.” He kissed Garrett’s lips, his mouth earnest and urgent. “Let me have you, darlin’.”

“However you want me,” Garrett promised, already spreading his legs.

Jonah lasted a long time, but by the end he was just as desperate for it as Garrett, and when he came he shouted, only hastily muffled by Garrett’s kiss. By then Garrett was burning for a second orgasm, and it only took a few strokes of Jonah’s callused hand before he came all over both of them. They fell asleep draped across each other, exhausted and fucked out and utterly content.

The next morning, Cody woke them up. The blankets had fortunately kept them decent, but Cody was still cross.

“I slept bad,” he informed them, pouting relentlessly. “’Cause you guys wouldn’t go to sleep for forever, and now I have to go to school and I don’t wanna ‘cause I’m gonna fall asleep at my desk and my teacher will get mad at me. I think you should let me stay home today.”

“Not gonna happen,” Jonah said, a little hoarsely. “But I tell you what, bucko, give me a minute to get dressed and I’ll make you pancakes for breakfast.”

Cody looked at him speculatively. “With chocolate chips?”

“Yeah.”

“And chocolate syrup?”

“Maybe.”

“And whipped cream with sprinkles?”

Jonah frowned. “No.”

Cody shrugged and grinned. Two out of three apparently was pretty good. “Okay, hurry!” He ran out the door and Jonah groaned.

“We’re gonna have to get some sort of proximity alarm for the bedroom.” He glanced at the clock. “And shit, I’m gonna be late for my shift.”

“I can’t cook chocolate chip pancakes,” Garrett informed his lover as he watched him stumble out of bed with appreciative eyes.

“Can you run him to school after he eats, then?”

Garrett thought about it, and everything else, for just a second. “Yes,” he said, smiling wide and happy. “I can do that.”

Pandora Post #29

2011-12-30T16:53:00.000-08:00

Title: Pandora

Part Twenty-Nine: Goes Around

Notes: This is the next part of a spin-off story of a series I posted on Literotica (titled Bonded, as Carizabeth) and the subject matter is m/m sci fi. OMG, next to last post! I’m hoping my first post of the new year will be the final part of Pandora. This is a very talky, exposition heavy section, I know, but grin and bear it. The last part will be dirtier than you can shake a stick at, I promise.

***

Garrett wasn’t a naturally organized person. It was one of many differences between his own and his father’s personality, and had led to a lot of memorable arguments when he was a teenager, but eventually he’d gotten it into his head that everything and everyone he enjoyed would be a lot easier to handle if he kept things like the names of his various boyfriends straight. He went from a laissez-faire slob to a conscientious planner, and the change stuck. As he took on more responsibility with work and his father’s career, he became more and more grateful that he’d bothered to learn the skills. Garrett could network, reference and crosscheck like a pro, and all of that ability was coming in handy now, because when life got busy naturally it didn’t stop at “busy,” it tried to kick his ass.

He had scores of contacts from his solitary days in the central system, and he tossed two thirds of them immediately when it came to getting help for Isidore. He needed someone patient, compassionate and relatively wealthy to act as a sponsor, and honestly Garrett’s tastes hadn’t run that way for most of that phase of his life. In the end he talked to several different friends before deciding on Symone St. Clair, the daughter of a Federation senator who lived in New Paris on the planet Solaydor. She ran a charitable organization now, but when Garrett had known her she’d been a slutty, outcast aristocrat who could find anything for anybody, good or bad. Since then she’d reformed somewhat, but she was still willing to do a favor for the right price.

“What do I possibly have that you want?” Garrett asked as they chatted via vidscreen.

“Nothing but your company,” she pouted. “And the name of your fucking tailor. You refused to give it to me when you lived here and you always looked so fucking good, and my Jeanine is finally leaving me for New Caledon and I hate to buy without the creation fitting me like a glove.”

“You’ll find him a place to stay?” Garrett pressed. “And help him get whatever professional certifications he needs to work there? Immigration visas, health screenings—”

“I won’t let your little lamb loose on New Parisian society, Garrett, don’t be so fussy,” she sighed. “He’s that good a piece of ass, hmm?”

“No prying, Symone.”

“It’s not prying, it’s gossip!” she exclaimed. “That’s totally different. And word has trickled down that you’re actually living on the Fringe, willingly. And that you’ve had a baby.”

Garrett burst out laughing. “I have absolutely not had a baby. Hell no. I’m dating a guy with a kid.”

“But do you want to have a baby?” She batted her long, violet eyelashes at him. “I bet you’d look super hot all knocked up. Some men really enjoy the experience, and you know, you could just have the uterus and it’s accessories put in without going for the entire changeover to female. Although either way you could always change back afterwards.”

“Thanks for the thought, but I don’t have any desire for swollen feet or awkward cravings,” Garrett replied, remembering some of his conversations with Claudia.

Solaydor was one of the most gender-fluid planets in the central system, and it wasn’t uncommon for people to swap sexes or create their own entirely. Garrett had slept with Symone several times when she went through her Symon phase, and might have stayed for longer if she hadn’t abruptly decided to switch back when she met a straight guy that she wanted to go after. As a result of their mental and physical flexibility, Solaydors had some of the most open immigration policies in the central systems. Incoming immigrants were judged more on their mental fitness and ability to accept other cultures than they were on their health or job set, and Garrett was sure that Isidore could pass the psych exam.

“When’s he going to arrive?” Symone asked, letting go of the pregnancy issue for now.

“In a month. He’s got a few transfers to make, but I’ll give you his Federation ID number and schedule. I’m giving him a com too, so expect him to call you once the distances get a little more manageable.”

“Gotcha. I can’t wait to meet him.”

Garrett hoped Isidore would survive meeting Symone, but she could provide the quickest avenue to an exit for Isidore. The sooner he left Paradise, the better.

The plan was made in one week, getting the equipment and documents Isidore needed took a second week, but the delay was all right since it took that long for Isidore to regain most of the weight he’d lost and learn the basics of interstellar travel. Garrett lent his ship to Thérèse to drop Isidore off at the nearest space station that ran regular trips back to the central system, because even if Thérèse wasn’t crazy about him, she wasn’t going to screw him over either.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Isidore told Garrett as they said goodbye, his mouth muffled against Garrett’s shoulder.

“Don’t thank me. Just go and don’t look back.” Garrett kissed his cheek and then let Isidore go. “And keep in touch with me, all right? I’ve paid for service on your com for six standard months, so don’t let it go to waste.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

Seeing Isidore leave was satisfying and more than a little bit of a relief. One thing down, a seeming thousand others to go. Wyl had regenerated to the point that the doctors had decided to wake him up, and Garrett wanted to be there for that, but he had to deal with some family troubles first. Not with his father, who was still comatose, and not with Claudia or Renee, but with his grandmother, who had decided that she needed to take a larger role in her son’s life now that he could no longer fight her about it. Claudia was afraid of defying Dame Mildred Caractacus, but Garrett, who was more than accustomed to pissing off his grandmother, took point on the issue.

He let his grandmother’s call come through on the video, then muted it before she had a chance to say anything. “Hi, Millie.” He watched her carefully sculpted mouth make a moue of vicious disdain. Mildred Caractacus had seen more surgery than a ward of cardiac patients in her lifetime, and these days she looked like the most brittle twenty-five year old that Garrett had ever seen. After a few centuries not even grafts and Regen could hide the passage of time, and Garrett had the feeling that Mildred was growing herself a transplant shell in some hidden underground bunker. He watched her mouth move for a few seconds, then said, “Oh, sorry, we’ve lost sound capacity. I actually can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

Well, get it back! she mouthed. Garrett tilted his head and frowned like he didn’t know how to read lips. “Wait, is this about your trip? Because there’s really no room for you here, Millie, the mansion is completely full right now and anyway, I can’t approve your temporary visa.” He saw her say something about Claudia but feigned ignorance. “Bother? Oh, it’s no bother for me to pass the information along. Maybe you can come next year, once Dad is up and running again. No change recently with him, by the way, but thanks for asking.”

I wasn’t asking that! he saw her say.

Garrett’s face lost all expression and he leaned in toward the vidscreen. “No, but you should have been,” he said grimly before canceling their link. The com beeped again a few moments later, and Garrett went on to block Mildred’s com signature from getting through.

Claudia covered her mouth with one hand from where she sat off screen. “She’s going to be furious.”

“Furious at me.”

“And at me, Garrett.”

“Yeah, and at Dad, but it’s going to be okay. He’ll be awake soon and he can take care of her from there. I’m just running interference.”

“She’s your family,” Claudia reprimanded him gently. “I don’t know why you and Miles have always been so upset with her.”

“Millie’s something of a perfectionist,” Garrett replied with a twisty little smile. “She hated the bad publicity my mother’s death brought on her family, and she recommended that my father disown me when I went through my own difficult period. Dad disagreed, obviously, and they haven’t been civil to each other ever since.” He held out his arms. “Gimme baby, I need oblivious cuddling.”

Claudia rolled her eyes but moved over to sit next to him and handed him Renee. “She looks bigger,” Garrett said, shifting the sleeping baby in his arms so that she rested more horizontal. “I haven’t even been back a month, but she looks bigger to me.”

“Little babies grow so fast,” Claudia agreed. “Miles is missing it. I feel so bad, like I should be filming her, capturing every moment so that he can relive it later and see what he didn’t get to, but I just don’t have the energy.”

“He’ll see plenty,” Garrett predicted. “I mean, she’s not even crawling or talking yet. All he’s missed is watching her eat and make messes in her diapers, which isn’t exactly compelling.” Claudia smacked the top of his head. “Although she’s so cute that everything she does is special,” he added with a grin.

“Nice try, mister. Have you talked to Jonah and Cody?”

“I heard from them last night,” Garrett replied. “They sent me a vid of their new house. They’re almost all moved in, apparently.” Toys were already littering the floor and getting in Jonah’s way. It hadn’t taken long for Cody to forget the time he used to spend making sure the floor was clear so that Garrett didn’t fall and trip over any of them when he was blind. Cody had held onto the portable projector and taken Garrett all around the house for the message, leaving a few rooms unopened that he described as “just full of Daddy’s stuff.”

His bedroom was pretty large for a small child, and the walls were sunshine yellow and made to look like fields stretching out into the distance. Garrett had no idea why Cody had chosen that simulation for his room, the kid had never lived anywhere with fields, but maybe it was the oddity that appealed to him.

“I got a new Space Ranger,” Cody said, and he set the projector down on the floor and picked up a foot-high doll. “The black Ranger. He’s new, his name is Dallas. He has a really cool special move.” Cody gave a command and the doll jumped into the air and kicked his legs out to the sides, then managed a front flip before landing in a crouch. “Isn’t he cool? There’s another new Ranger out that’s white too, but Daddy says I don’t get to have her until my birthday. But that’s not until forever, but he says I need to learn to be patient but I don’t want to.” Cody sighed massively. “He’s grumpy, so you should come home and we can cheer him up.”

Jonah had looked okay when he came on screen. Tired, but still absolutely gorgeous. “Hey, darlin’. I hope things are looking up for you and your family. We’d love to talk to you, Garrett. Call us when you can.”

Garrett had taken the coward’s way out and sent them a message instead, and then he had been unable to go to sleep for three hours until he finally jerked himself off, picturing Jonah the whole time. Bastard.

Still, he felt relatively alert and fresh the next day when the doctors took Wyl out of Regen. Robbie was there, not pacing but set and still in that watchful way that meant he was tenser than a taut wire.

The Regen tank was drained, Wyl was taken off the respirators and then the top of the tank was opened up. It shouldn’t have been enough to wake Wyl up; he’d been under sedation for weeks and usually it took an injection of strong stimulants to get the subject stirring, but then Wyl always had to be different. Five seconds after the tank was cracked open his eyes were fluttering, and five seconds after that they were wide open and he was speaking. His voice was hoarse, he was still covered with the viscous healing gel of Regen and beneath that he was stark naked, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“Robbie…”

Robbie stepped forward stiffly, reaching a hand in towards Wyl. Wyl got a grip and pulled himself up against his lover, holding him in a brutally tight grip. “Fuck, ‘m sorry, I’m so sorry, I knew you would be upset but I couldn’t wait but I wanted to, Rob, I swear I did but I just couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t...” After a second Robbie’s arms mirrored Wyl’s, coming around to hold him up and close and so tight that you didn’t have to be an empath to know that this was a desperately intimate moment, the kind of moment that didn’t need a lot of outside eyes intruding.

“Come on,” Garrett whispered to Claudia as he gently pulled her back towards the hall. “We’ll come by and say hi later.”

“Right…” Claudia replied, a little dazedly. They left the room but instead of heading back towards the living quarters, Claudia pulled away from him. “I think—I think I need to go see Miles. I need to talk to him for a while.”

“Okay,” Garrett replied. He watched her walk towards his father’s sealed room and gave himself one moment to feel the kind of pity he knew Claudia didn’t want, then went back to their living quarters.

Thérèse was with Renee and didn’t seem to have any intention of handing her over, and so Garrett went to his room and lay down on his bed. After a few minutes he took his journal off the table beside him and opened it up. The little cartoon hopped to brisk attention. “Journal Record Twenty-Three Recording!” it shouted. The tiny machine clicked, and Garrett knew he was supposed to start talking, but he didn’t know how to start. He couldn’t even parse it all out in his mind, how could he possibly make his thoughts intelligible enough to be spoken? Eventually though, words did start come through.

“I think…I might be…an idiot. I think it’s entirely possible that I’m too much of a fool to keep the good things that seem to come my way, which you’d think would indicate that I don’t deserve them, but…I still want them. I want them more and more every day, yet I’m awful at expressing that. But I also think that it’s past time I work through it. And I need to do that fast, because I’m starting to feel hollow and I know that when my dad wakes up it will help, but I know now that what I need most in my life isn’t something I can find here. I’m just afraid I’ve already fucked that it all beyond repair. I do that.

“Miles needs to wake up and he needs to do it fast, because we need him back and then I need to go. I really, really need to go.” He paused for a second, then shut the journal down and rolled back out of bed. Whether she needed it or not, Thérèse was going to get some help with Renee, and Garrett needed to use the house’s off-planet connection to order something anyway.

***

Two weeks later, Miles woke up. His awakening was much more structured than Wyl’s, more gradual and controlled. The doctors had given them a few days to get used to the idea and prepare things back at home for Miles before doing the deed, and Claudia was a nervous wreck the whole time.

“He might not remember us.”

“They can do some restoration therapy if that’s the case,” Garrett said reassuringly as he stirred a pot on the stove under Thérèse’s watchful eye. “But he’ll remember.”

“He might not.”

“He will.”

“He might have changed emotionally,” Claudia continued, her worry unabated. “That can happen sometimes coming out of a long Regen. He might remember us but not love us anymore.”

Good fucking lord, had Garrett ever been this insecure? He dropped the spoon, earning himself a smack on the shoulder from Thérèse, and went over and sat next to Claudia on the couch. “Sweetheart, of course he’s going to love you. Even if he didn’t remember you, he would love you. How could he do anything else? You’re awesome. Your baby is awesome. And hell, I’m obviously awesome, so how can he not remember and adore us?”

“Garrett…”

“You need to calm down. It’s going to be fine. Want a sedative? Maybe a drink to soothe your nerves?”

Claudia huffed an amused sigh. “I’m breastfeeding, Garrett.”

“You have packets and packets of that stuff stored up. You can afford to go out on a limb and have a glass of wine without polluting your baby.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Crass,” Thérèse muttered from the stove.

“Don’t talk about my stepmother that way!” Garrett protested, and got glares from both women for his trouble. “Fine, I see that my attempts at levity are unappreciated. I’ll just sit here quietly and brood with you.” He put a mock-tortured expression on his face. “Oh no, will he remember the color of my hair? Will he remember the time I crashed his official car when I was ten? Will he retroactively punish me for the tree incident?”

“What tree incident?”

“You don’t want to know,” Garrett assured her. “Let’s just say I barely escaped with my life after destroying some very public property and leave it at that. By the time Miles found out it was a little late to ground me, thankfully.”

“You must have been a frightening child,” Thérèse commented.

“The emotionally supportive term is ‘challenging,’” Garrett replied, and changed the topic before she could say anything else. “The doctors want us there in half an hour. Do you want to get gussied up or anything?”

Claudia’s eyes went wife, and she glanced down at herself in horror. “Oh God yes. Oh, I have to hurry.” She checked that Renee was still sleeping in her bassinet before rushing over to her bedroom and shutting the door behind her.

“You don’t need to be adding to her stress,” Thérèse chided.

“Are you kidding me? I’m making her happier. She’ll spend the next twenty-five minutes doing her hair and putting on makeup she doesn’t need instead of worrying about Miles and what he may or may not remember.”

“Still…”

“Still nothing. Stop talking to me and stir.” That got him a dirty look, but Thérèse did keep stirring the pot, which was beginning to smell delicious. Garrett didn’t tell her that, though. She didn’t need the encouragement.

They weren’t allowed in for the process of actually removing Miles from the Regen tank, cleaning him up and getting his first impressions like they had been with Wyl. Miles was a more medically complicated case, but after about ten minutes one of the doctors came out with a smile on his face, looked at Claudia and said, “He’s asking for you.”

“Oh,” she breathed. Her arms were shaking slightly as she held her baby, and Garrett was almost tempted to offer to take Renee, but he knew Claudia wouldn’t give her up now. She wanted them to be reintroduced as a unit, and there was no denying that her daughter was an emotional support Claudia badly needed.

“Get going,” Garrett said. He gave her a little push towards the door. She went, the doctors left and the door shut. Garrett looked around the barren hallway, figured it would be a while before he was needed, and called up Wyl. “Bring cards.”

Wyl came, looking as healthy and normal as he ever did after two weeks out of Regen, and they sat cross-legged on the floor and played poker.

“How’s Robbie?”

“Busy as hell,” Wyl replied, but the smirk on his face was very informative. Garrett groaned.

“Glad your homecoming party has been so vigorous.”

“What can I say, absence makes his heart grow fonder,” Wyl said, and the smirk spread into a grin. “And abstinence makes his—”

“Stop, I already know, and please don’t talk to me about abstinence.”

“Feeling a little pent up?” Wyl asked as he laid down a straight flush. “A little…restricted? A little unfucked?” Garrett sighed and folded.

“No. Maybe.”

“Definitely.”

“Shut up.”

“Whatever,” Wyl said. “You’re so pining for Jonah. You can’t even touch yourself, can you?”

“Of course I can.”

“Not without thinking of him,” Wyl predicted.

“Shut up.”

“You’re just so adorable.”

“Seriously Wyl, I don’t care if you’re fresh out of the tank, I will hurt you.”

“Then Robbie will seek terrible revenge on you.”

“It might just be worth it,” Garrett warned, staring at his cards. Three queens. He had to win. He laid his cards down and Wyl nodded his head for a moment, impressed, before he put down three kings.

“Son of a bitch.”

“I’m a lucky guy,” Wyl said expansively, collecting the cards again. “I’ve got Robbie, I’m alive and fully functioning, I still have a job…thanks for what you did for Izzie, by the way.”

“You call him Izzie?”

“It was that or Door.” Wyl shrugged. “And honestly it was just as much my fault that that dumbass got into the compound, because I was the fucking supervisor and I could have checked the guy out more, but I didn’t.”

“Don’t dwell on it,” Garrett advised him. They both glanced over at the closed door.

“How long do you think they’ll be at it before they remember you?”

“If I’m lucky,” Garrett said, gathering up the cards and shuffling them, “all day.”

In the end it was only about two hours, but that was long enough for Garrett’s ass to get numb and for him to lose ninety percent of the poker games he and Wyl played. Usually Garrett was pretty decent at poker, so he figured Wyl was cheating and informed him of this suspicion. Wyl just laughed, gathered up his cards and left when Claudia came out of the room, looking just disheveled enough and holding a squirming Renee.

“Are you ready to go in?” she asked him, the brilliance of her smile lighting up her entire face.

“Sure,” Garrett replied easily, getting to his feet. “I take it your reunion went well.”

“Yes,” she murmured, her hips swaying back and forth to a gentle , unconscious rhythm as she rocked her baby. “Very well. After you two talk the doctors will check Miles’ blood work again and then he’ll come back to the house. They don’t want him stressing over his duties yet, so he’s going to take another week off just to be with us.”

“Good,” Garrett said. He kissed the top of Claudia’s head, then went into the room that had formerly held his father’s Regen tank. Now there was a bed, and the lights were bright and his father was awake, sitting on the bed in loose pants and a short-sleeved shirt and looking a decade younger than he had the last time Garrett saw him. “Dad.”

Miles smiled. “Son.”

“Nice to see you up and about,” Garrett said. “You took your sweet time,” he added.

“Sorry about that.”

“Yes, well…see that it doesn’t happen again.” After another second of just looking at each other Garrett came over and sat down on the bed, and he tried not to feel too much like a kid again when his father slid an arm around Garrett’s shoulders.

“Where are your boys?”

“They stayed on Pandora, Dad.”

“You’ve been away from them for a while, then.”

Nearly two months. “I have. But I needed to be here.”

“I’m glad you came.” Miles smiled. “Claudia couldn’t praise you enough. Thanks for everything you’ve done for her.”

“I couldn’t do anything else,” Garrett replied seriously.

Miles stared at him for a long time, totally silent, doing that assessing thing that he did that Garrett had hated as a child, because his father could always read him like a book if he could get him to hold still long enough, which was one reason he’d never stopped moving. “But now you can, Gare,” Miles said at last.

“I will,” Garrett said, and it felt so good to have it out there, even if obliquely. His father knew what he meant. “As soon as I’m sure you’re okay.”

“Soon, then.”

“Yes,” he said, finally returning his father’s embrace. They held each other tight, reconnecting with flesh and bone and breath, and Garrett felt lighter than he had for months, maybe years. Soon. Soon he would leave. Soon he would be back where he was needed now, and where he needed to be. He thought maybe he was finally ready for it.

Pandora Post #28

2011-12-14T08:01:00.000-08:00

Title: Pandora

Part Twenty-Eight: Comes Around

Notes: This is the next part of a spin-off story of a series I posted on Literotica (titled Bonded, as Carizabeth) and the subject matter is m/m sci fi. Still not quite dirty, but very plotty. We’re tying up loose ends, people!

***

Therese had become Garrett’s unofficial escort around the base, and she was the one who walked him to Isidore’s cell. The marines guarding the brig didn’t look happy to see either of them, but they opened the door without question.

“Do people around here really want him dead?” Garrett asked sotto-voice as he and Therese walked down the hall toward Isidore’s cell.

“Enough do that Robbie won’t let anyone back here unaccompanied. You’re the only one other than him and the staff cook who’s keyed to get through the door.” She glanced sideways at him. “A lot of marines died in the explosion, and Commander Freeman was very popular. The marines guard in pairs to help prevent any accidents.”

“Accidents,” Garrett repeated with a small, bitter smile on his face. “This man is innocent.”

“So you say.”

“So I know. But you certainly don’t have to take my word for it,” he allowed. He looked more closely at Therese. “Are you looking for revenge too?”

“It’s not my place, sir.”

“That was a very nice and almost reassuring non-answer.”

Therese stopped outside of an opaque white door and turned to face Garrett. “I’m not going to do anything to harm the prisoner, sir.” She indicated the security pad. “He’s in here. I’ll be back for you in an hour.”

“Thanks.” Garrett watched Therese walk away, then turned back to the door. He was actually a little nervous. It was one thing to proclaim to all and sundry that Isidore was innocent, but when it came right down to it, Garrett didn’t really know the man all that well. He had been a lover, a fling, a few pleasurable moments in the timeline of Garrett’s life. But Garrett had always been a good judge of character, and he didn’t think he was wrong about Isidore.

“One way to find out,” he muttered to himself, then pressed his hand to the pad. After a moment it blinked an affirmative and opened, and Garrett stepped inside.

The cell was fairly typical, bare floor and bare walls, recessed lighting in the ceiling, a sink, a toilet and a cot. There were also a few atypical touches: a bedside table, and a tablet on it that probably held a lot of books, knowing Robbie. The cot had a blanket and a pillow, both of them mussed, and lying on his side but on top of the blanket was Isidore. As soon as Garrett saw him his heart clenched.

Isidore had changed. Not just an “oh, has it really been so long?” kind of changing, but truly physically altered. Isidore had been slim before, but he was pathetically skinny now, no more sweet, kissable tummy or rounded cheeks. He was even skinnier than Wyl, and Wyl had the highest metabolism Garrett had ever seen. Isidore’s dark hair fell lank across his face, way too long for him, and the silver insets were gone from his eyes, leaving them simple black pools of misery. His lips looked dry and chapped, and he barely seemed to register it when Garrett walked in.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Garrett breathed softly.

Those sad dark eyes suddenly seemed to revive, and Garrett could tell after a second that Isidore was really looking at him now. Instead of being happy though, he looked pained, and made a whimpering noise deep in his throat. Garrett moved forward but Isidore scrambled back, tucking his knees to his chest.

“Please, no,” he whispered, and his voice was broken. “Nonono, I can’t…you can’t…you can’t be here.”

Garrett knew better than to run on in, but he took a small step forward. “Why can’t I be here?”

“Because you must hate me,” Isidore replied earnestly, his lips stumbling over the words, “and I can’t take it if you hate me, I can’t hear you say that because…please, just don’t be here.”

“I don’t hate you,” Garrett promised him, scooting forward another few inches. “I know this wasn’t your fault.”

Isidore was already shaking his head. “It was, though, it is, because I let Jayce in. He’s my cousin and I vouched for him, it wasn’t the first time he had dropped off a part for us, but I should have been more careful. I knew he thought…I knew how he thought.” Isidore shrugged helplessly. “I just didn’t think he would do that. Who would do that?”

“You can’t predict insanity,” Garrett said with a sigh. “Not even the most highly trained doctors can always predict insanity, so how could you expect to? I don’t blame you for what happened, sweetheart.” He got close enough to the bed to gesture to it. “May I sit? I’ll stay on this side if you want.”

Isidore looked at Garrett for a long moment before shaking his head despairingly. “This can’t be real. You can’t really be saying this. I must…I must finally be crazy too. I’ve gone mad.”

Garrett snorted and sat down. “No you haven’t. You’re just being selectively deaf. Isidore, your cousin was definitely to blame for the damage he caused, but all you were to this whole situation was an avenue of attack. You were a way in. You’re a victim, not a violator. Now for fuck’s sake, stop cringing and give me a hug before I develop a complex.” He held out his arms towards the younger man.

Isidore stared at him blankly, like it was too much to take in, and Garrett thought for a second that he had pushed too hard, been too blunt, but then Isidore was hurling himself across the cot, jamming his head beneath Garrett’s chin and digging into his chest with his sharp chin. He couldn’t hold on very tight but Garrett took care of the holding for him, ignoring the discomfort of bony edges and enfolding Isidore in the hug he’d been dying to give him from the moment he saw him. For the second time in under twenty-four hours he had his arms full of traumatized ex, and even though the men couldn’t have been more different, the situation was similar enough that Garrett had to smile a little, just to himself. He felt like a fucking shrink.

The nice thing about Isidore as compared to Robbie, though, was he welcomed the affection. Not that Garrett could blame him, the kid was clearly starved of touch and attention, although he didn’t believe for a moment that Robbie would mistreat him. Still… “Have you been eating anything at all? Seriously, sweetheart, a few more missed meals and you’re going to be nothing but skin and bones.”

“I can’t keep anything down,” Isidore confessed in a small voice.

“Are you sick?” Garrett asked seriously.

“No, I just…”

Feel so guilty you can’t keep yourself fed. For fuck’s sake. Garrett sighed, part exasperation and part resignation. “You know, Robbie’s going to put in a feeding tube if you keep this up.”

“He already said that was a possibility.”

“Good. You know he doesn’t think you’re guilty either, right?”

Isidore actually laughed, but it was a dark, choked sound. “But he can’t let me go, because everyone wants to kill me.” His hands clenched unconsciously in Garrett’s shirt, and Garrett stroked a hand through his hair and down his neck. “My mother came to see me, but it was just to tell me that she couldn’t have me back in her home. My cousin’s family is threatening her; they told her to get me out, but she told them she couldn’t. She’s just trying to protect me too, but she can’t. Eventually they’ll have to let me go or charge me with a crime, and Commander Sinclair doesn’t want to do that. So he keeps me here, but the marines…” He sniffed wetly into Garrett’s shoulder. “I knew a lot of them. Some of them were my friends, the ones in the motor pool, but most of them died in the blast. The ones who bring me my meals, sometimes they talk to me. It’s usually not good.”

“That’s just them being assholes,” Garrett said hotly. “If you can identify them we can go to Robbie and bring them up on charges of misconduct.”

Isidore was shaking his head before Garrett even finished the sentence. “No, that would just make things worse. Besides, it’s not like I blame them. They have a right to be angry.” He lifted his face and stared into Garrett’s eyes. “So do you. Why aren’t you? I carry some of the blame for this, I do. I let him in, I helped kill Commander Freeman and put Wyl into Regen and hurt so many other people, and your father was hurt by the same people, fuck, Garrett…why aren’t you angry?”

Garrett framed Isidore’s face in his hands. “Because I’m not,” he said softly. “Not at you. I’m not angry at you. I don’t blame you. I’m not angry. It’s okay.”

He didn’t have a chance to say anything else, because a second later Isidore’s mouth was attached to his, heads tilted and their lips locked like lovers. Isidore moaned into Garrett, clutched at him with heat and desperation and Garrett…

It felt good. God, it felt so good, the sudden need and passion, this feeling that the man he was kissing would suddenly die without him. It felt like something Garrett wanted, or that he should have wanted, but as good as it felt…it just didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like Jonah, and that was what would have made it right.

Fuck me, I am fucking ruined for life. He was ruined for anyone other than Jonah, he actually was. Garrett was more than in love, he was living in a state of voluntary monogamy. Motherfucker.

There was no way that Garrett could push Isidore away, but he didn’t let himself go with him either. He waited for the kiss to end, holding Isidore but not really responding, and after a few more seconds Isidore fell back. His eyes were wet, but there was a wobbly, self-deprecating smile on his face. “Too little, too late, huh?”

“It’s not you,” Garrett assured him.

“Sure it isn’t.”

Isidore’s tear-damp eyes went wide a second later when Garrett smacked the back of his head.

“I understand the compulsion to wallow, sweetheart, but you’ve done more than enough of that. Seriously, it isn’t you. I just happened to fall for someone far far away, and as it turns out I seem to be incapable of falling, however briefly, with anyone else. It’s not you, but we do need to figure you out.”

Isidore leaned back, not quite far enough to leave Garrett’s arms but far enough to give them both some breathing space. His hands trembled slightly where they rested against Garrett’s hips, another place to stay connected. He still needed that connection, even if it couldn’t be intimate, and Garrett didn’t begrudge him that. “What is there to figure out?”

“What you’re going to do. You can’t stay here, that’s obvious.”

“Commander Sinclair looked into extradition procedures, but there are too many legal loopholes for me to be sent to another planet, and I can’t afford to send myself.”

“I’ll send you.”

Isidore blinked, somehow opening his wide eyes even wider. “You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because…because you can’t! Interstellar travel is incredibly expensive, Garrett, and you can’t afford to…” He paused, and Garrett grinned at him.

“Yeah, actually I can,” he confirmed. “I have to admit, my first thought was just to bring you back to Pandora with me, but I don’t think that’s going to work.”

“No,” Isidore agreed with a slow, sad shake of his head. His hands tightened for a second on Garrett’s hips before he forced himself to let go, wrapping his arms tight around his own waist. “It wouldn’t. But,” he laughed a little, mostly to himself, “I really don’t have any idea…I mean, I’ve never been off of this planet. I’ve barely even been outside of this city. I have no idea how to live out there.”

“I have friends who can help you out,” Garrett promised him. He did, too. He had lots of friends from the occasionally-misbegotten days of his youth, friends with means and opportunity and who also owed him favors, and he was more than prepared to cash some of them to set Isidore up. “You’ve got skills, and there are plenty of people who would pay for them. You’d have to head to a planet in the central system because I know more people there, but the basics would be taken care of long enough for you to get on your feet. We’ll get you released, and the next step you take will be onto a freighter headed away from here.”

“Why?” Isidore whispered. “Why are you going to all this trouble? We never really spent much time together, and clearly there isn’t—I mean—” He gestured back and forth between the two of them. “So…”

Garrett shrugged. In truth he felt more than a little responsible for Isidore, seeing as he was the one who had introduced him to Wyl in the first place and set this chain of events in motion. That wasn’t what Isidore needed to hear, however. “It’s the right thing to do. And I always liked you, and Wyl likes you, and you’re a good person, so please stop looking for ways in which this isn’t going to be a good thing for you, because I’m determined that it will be.” Garrett smiled broadly, eventually coaxing an answering smile from Isidore. “You got it?”

“Yeah,” Isidore said after a moment. “I got it.”

Um...Seriously?

2011-12-13T12:37:00.000-08:00

Hi there!

So, thanks to my conscientious readerwife I will definitely be posting the next part of Pandora before Friday, but this post isn't really about that. This is a Real Life mini-rant, solely cathartic for myself since I know the person I'm mad at will never, ever read this blog. I'm gonna give it a go anyway.

*ahem*

To the thieving douchebag who stole our 4-Runner's catalytic converter:

Are you fucking serious? Do you not have anything better to do with your life than crouch beneath our twenty-two year old Toyota in the wee hours of the night, lying on your back in the darkness on cold and ice and trying to be sneaky while you hacksaw through the part of the car that keeps us from sounding like a motorcycle gang on the road? Is the incredible after-market price of $40-150 really so enticing that you would go to that trouble and stick us with a huge bill right before Christmas? Also, do you believe in karma? Because I tend to lean that way, and given the way your life seems to be going I'm going to bet that eventually you're going to get pneumonia from lying on the cold cold ground, or cut yourself with your damn hacksaw and get sepsis or lockjaw, or get into a car accident and end up with me for a PT, at which point I will "accidentally" kick your crutches out from underneath you. You suck.

Sincerely, me.

I had no idea people even went after that kind of thing. Stereos maybe, in a big city, but we live in Boulder! Granola-friendly college town. WTF? Anyway, done now! I'm going to go write about something I like instead.

Pandora Pt. 27: 2 of 2

2011-12-04T18:08:00.000-08:00

Title: Pandora

Part Twenty-Seven, 2 of 2: Action

Notes: This is the next part of a spin-off story of a series I posted on Literotica (titled Bonded, as Carizabeth) and the subject matter is m/m sci fi. This part is especially for my readerwife, who informed me that my lack of posting punctuality resulted in her battling the plague. Poor darling! Have some story and a nice hot cup of tea.

***

Garrett got Therese to help him find the parts and pieces he needed to get the maximum effect out of his upcoming confrontation. Putting body armor on felt strange—Garrett hadn’t worn it since he’d worked a job in a war zone almost twenty years earlier, and before that he hadn’t touched the stuff since his teens. But Miles had insisted that his son get combat mods and learn how to use them right, and that had meant practicing with the unsympathetic marine drill instructor that his father ordered to teach him and surviving several months’ worth of daily private lessons. By the end of it Garrett was screwing his instructor after every class, which made learning much more fun, but he wasn’t sad to say goodbye once the class’ tenure was over.

Learning how to fight as a kid didn’t mean that Garrett had any chance of lasting very long against Robbie, but he didn’t really have to last; that was the beauty of the armor. He just had to be there and moving around long enough to get the other man to open up. If he could have fucked the sadness and guilt right out of him Garrett would have considered it, but both of them had other commitments now and he knew that Robbie would never be with anyone but Wyl as long as Wyl was his, whether he was in Regen or not. It was just the way the man was wired.

Therese passed the word that Robbie was back just as Garrett got the last piece of armor locked into place. He put his cheat code into the programming, felt the locks between the joints strengthen and then looked over at her. “Thanks. Don’t let him leave, okay?”

“He said he would be in for several hours,” Therese replied.

“Even better.” Garrett twisted from side to side, testing the fit and flexibility of the armor before heading out of his father’s home and into the rest of the compound, the military section. The place was crawling with marines, and he got more than a few confused or disdainful looks as he walked along, but Garrett calmly ignored them. Just outside of Robbie’s office he was stopped by two guards.

“Commander Sinclair isn’t seeing civilians right now, sir.”

“That’s nice, but I’m not a civilian,” Garrett explained with a languid smile. “I’m the new political liaison for the governor’s wife, and there have been a few concerns raised over the legality of some of the action that Commander Sinclair is taking in his laudable and never-ending quest for the truth. My questions won’t take more than a few minutes of his time.”

“Your name, sir?”

The second marine rolled his eyes. “It’s Governor Caractacus’ son.” Moron, he added unspoken, but Garrett could read it in his body language. “Sir, I’m sure he’d be happy to meet with you at any other time, but Commander Sinclair specifically ordered that he remain undisturbed right now.”

“I appreciate that, but this matter really can’t wait for your commander’s next free minute, which I have the feeling won’t be until sometime next week,” Garrett replied. “He won’t be mad at you for letting me in, Corporal. I guarantee your safety.”

“I don’t think you can do that, sir.”

“Try me,” Garrett suggested winsomely. “If I’m wrong I’ll owe you a bottle of whiskey. The real stuff.”

“Great,” the corporal deadpanned. “That would give me something to drink when I get stuck with KP duty.”

“It’ll certainly make the time go faster,” Garrett promised him. The marine sighed and cast his eyes towards the sky, but he went ahead and opened the door. His fellow guard looked shocked and anxious, but Garrett just ignored them both and strode inside of Robbie’s office.

Well, what was now his office. It used to be Jane’s, and Garrett could tell. The walls were fuschia and the ceiling was cornflower blue, and neither of them were the sort of personal touches that Robbie had ever felt compelled to put into his work or living spaces. It was a big office, with a circular table surrounded by chairs, a desk and a large operational command projection laid out on one of the walls. Robbie was behind the desk, and when he looked up from his files and saw Garrett, his neutral expression didn’t change at all.

Well, it didn’t change to someone who wasn’t a connoisseur of everything Robbie, but Garrett had spent years learning to read the man. That tightening of the mouth meant anger, the barely-discernable squinch of the eyebrows was guilt, and the sudden relaxation of his fingers signified happiness, which Garrett was gratified to see. It didn’t show up in Robbie’s voice, however.

“Shouldn’t you be with Claudia?”

“She can live without me for a little while,” Garrett replied, sitting down in the chair across from his ex. Fuck, but Robbie looked tired. He even looked a little grayer through the temples, and that wasn’t supposed to happen with Regen charging your battery. “I thought I’d come by and say hello to you instead, since you seem to be avoiding the world.”

“I have work to do, Gare.”

“I know. I’m sorry about Jane,” Garrett said sincerely. “She was a brilliant person.”

“Yeah, she was,” Robbie agreed. He let his shoulders sag for a moment, showcasing how tired he really was. Robbie never let his guard down with people he didn’t implicitly trust, but even then it was rare.

“When’s the last time you slept?”

“I catch cat-naps,” Robbie said with a shrug.

“You should catch a real rest, in your own bed.”

Robbie’s jaw clenched for a moment. “I’d rather not.”

Garrett could see why he wouldn’t want to play shack up in his own place if it meant being alone. It was the same reason Garrett was reluctant to go back to his own apartment on board the Neptune. “Maybe when Wyl is up and running again.”

“Whenever that is,” Robbie said tonelessly, as though he didn’t know down to the minute when Wyl was expected to wake up. Liar. “What do you want, Gare? Because you’re not doing as good a job of mothering me as Claudia would, so if that was the purpose of this visit then she would be here instead of you.”

“I can’t just want to see you?” Garrett protested.

“Not under the circumstances.”

There was no beating around the bush with Robbie. “I want to talk about Isidore Cain.”

It wasn’t at all surprising that Robbie immediately sat back and shut down, the friend evaporating in the face of the military persona. “There’s nothing to discuss. Mr. Cain is being held as a matter of national security.”

“Robbie…”

“He has proven links to a terrorist organization, Garrett.”

“So what? I have proven links to suicidal psychopaths too, but that doesn’t make me one of them.”

“We’re still actively investigating all leads concerning the series of attacks on our forces,” Robbie continued as though Garrett hadn’t said anything. “Mr. Cain might not be a terrorist, but his connection to them is undeniable. He could be in danger from those connections if we were to release him into the general populace, or even into the larger prison system.”

Garrett gritted his teeth. “I get the protective custody idea, but Isidore shouldn’t be in prison at all. You know he had nothing to do with what happened here, or you’d have drawn and quartered him by now. He at least should have access to legal counsel.”

“No.” Robbie’s voice was implacable. “He stays where he is.”

“You’re being a real dick about this.”

“You can go now,” Robbie said calmly. “Give Claudia my regards.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No I’m not.”

Robbie’s eyes narrowed. “Yes. You. Are.”

Garrett pretended to consider it. “Ah, no. I really don’t think I am.”

“This is why you wore the armor, isn’t it.”

“I had been hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” Garrett said honestly. “But I’m not going to just let it go, either.”

“You’re asking to get hurt.”

“Oh, please,” Garrett scoffed. “You won’t really hurt me.”

“I could put you in the brig instead.”

“Good! Then I could talk to Isidore.”

Robbie sighed audibly. “You’re being a child.”

“No, you.” The cheat code that Garrett had put into his armor had given it more-than-human strength and resilience, and when he kicked the edge of Robbie’s desk, it slid back two feet and pinned Robbie to the wall. Wow. Garrett wondered for a second whether he should have turned the power down some, but after a second he didn’t have any time to consider it because Robbie was shoving the desk away, and his neutral expression had become furious. He was on Garrett in a second, picked him up and slammed him against the circular table a few feet away. Garrett heard the joints around his chest plate whine a little at the force, but they held. Good.

Garrett grabbed a chair off the ground beside the table and smashed it into Robbie’s back. Robbie barely even shivered, but it was enough space for Garrett to wrangle a little more distance for himself and to get a knee up between them. He used it to shove Robbie back and sprung up to his feet, then directed a fast thrusting kick towards Robbie’s midsection.

Robbie caught the kick and used it to throw Garrett onto the ground again. His hands automatically moved to break the ankle, and Garrett was glad he hadn’t neglected to attach any of the pieces of armor when he heard the ankle joint fixture snap into its furthest allowable configuration. Garrett grabbed one of Robbie’s feet and yanked, pulling him down to the floor. He punched him in the stomach and kicked towards his face, and when Robbie dropped his leg Garrett rolled off his back and didn’t hesitate, he just piledrove Robbie back into the table. Robbie managed to reverse them mid-throw and this time when Garrett hit the table, it broke beneath the force of his impact.

They beat on each other hard—not with abandon, because neither of them really wanted the other person to get hurt, but with intent. The chairs surrounding the table were splintered after a couple of minutes, but even when the two of them hit the door the guards didn’t come in. Garrett really did owe the one a bottle of good whiskey for going along with this.

It was hard, though. Robbie didn’t have on any armor but that just made him tougher to fight, because Garrett had to be careful while still not letting Robbie beat the ever-living fuck out of him. He had to push him just hard enough to start to break, but not to break entirely. He couldn’t let Robbie just work him over, though; if he did Garrett would just get thrown out and he’d be further than ever from reaching Robbie or talking to Isidore.

It was a fine line to walk, and Garrett was struggling to maintain it as the pair of them proceeded to trash Robbie’s office. The only thing they managed to stay away from was the tactical projection, and by the time Robbie was breathing hard Garrett was almost willing to take that out too, if it meant he’d survive another couple of seconds.

But then as fast as it had started, it stopped. One second Robbie’s hand was poised above Garrett’s face, ready to provide him with another black eye to match the one Garrett had already collected. The next second he was kind of collapsing, trying to fall in on himself and not being allowed to. Garrett fell down with him and a few seconds later they settled against the wall, Robbie with his eyes shut and Garrett sitting next to him, holding Robbie’s head against his chest. Robbie wasn’t the type of man who even knew how to cry, but Garrett could feel the tension releasing jerkily inside of him, resulting in sudden twitches and hitched breath.

“I only saw him once before he went under,” Robbie said after a moment. “I found Wyl in the motorcade and he was bleeding, there was blood everywhere and I had already seen what had happened to Jane. I went crazy looking for Wyl. I ignored people that I should have helped trying to find him and when I did, he wasn’t awake. And I had work to do, your father had been attacked and there were civilian casualties piling up out in the city… By the time I got back Wyl was in Regen. He didn’t wait for me.”

“It must have been really bad,” Garrett murmured, stroking back Robbie’s short hair.

“Bad enough. And I know Wyl didn’t mean it personally, I know that he can’t handle that kind of sensory stimulation without freaking out, but…well. You know.” Garrett just nodded, still stroking. “No Jane, no Miles, no Wyl. No one.”

“I’m here,” Garrett told him.

“For now,” Robbie sighed. “And it helps. Thanks, Gare. I think I needed this.”

“I’d say so,” Garrett agreed wryly, but he didn’t stop petting Robbie until Robbie finally pulled away, leaning his head back against the wall.

“I wasn’t joking about the protective custody thing,” Robbie said after a second. “People know who Isidore is and what his connections are. He’s gotten threats from both sides, Garrett. I’ve got a lot of marines here who are feeling vengeful, and none of his family members will come forward and claim him because they’re afraid of being targeted in the city, either by their neighbors or by the terrorists themselves. If I let him go he’ll end up dead, and if I let him into the legal system the first thing they’re going to do is get his status changed and have him transferred. I have a lot of things to deal with right now, but I’m not going to send this kid to his grave just because I don’t have time to work out a solution.”

“Then give him to me,” Garrett suggested. “Let me have him, as a pet project. I’ll get him taken care of and you won’t have to worry.”

“I always worry when you’re involved, Gare.”

“Well, you shouldn’t,” he retorted, “because I’m always perfect.”

“Liar. Why haven’t you talked to Jonah and Cody yet?”

Garrett scowled at the pointed non-sequiter. “Have you been gossiping with my stepmother?”

Robbie chuckled. “I know it’s hard to remember when she’s changing diapers, but Therese is still a marine, which means she debriefs me on what’s happening.” He turned calm if tired eyes on Garrett. “So what’s going on?”

“I just can’t talk to them right now,” Garrett said.

“That’s a dick move, Gare.”

“I’m not doing it to hurt them,” he insisted. “I’m doing it to keep myself from hurting, Robbie, which is exactly what will happen to me if I talk to Jonah and Cody right now. I need to be here, not there.”

It wasn’t the total truth, and the way Robbie was looking at him right now, Garrett knew that he knew that. Stupid ex-lovers and their stupid ability to read his stupid thoughts. But Robbie didn’t call him on it; he just shrugged after a second. “I’ll get you keyed in to see Isidore.”

“Thank you,” Garrett said earnestly. He kissed Robbie’s forehead, eliciting a smile from his friend.

“Whatever. Get out of here, Gare, and tell my marines they’re going to be on KP duty for the next week because of this.”

“Don’t be so mean,” Garrett scolded him. He groaned as he got to his feet, then reached down and helped Robbie up. “Go get some sleep, then come have dinner with us. Claudia is worried about you.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“be careful, don’t strain yourself with that.”

A final smack on the shoulder propelled Garrett towards the door with a smile on his face, even though it stung.

Writing Update, Story Excerpt

2011-11-29T15:04:00.000-08:00

Hey there, darlins.

So clearly this isn't the next part of Pandora yet. What can I say, its got Garrett and Robbie fighting in it and I have to get the mood just right or they stay angry at each other, which I just can't be having. Instead, knowing that you all are a deserving and awesome group, I thought I'd share some of what's been consuming my writing time over the month of November. Freaking NaNoWriMo.

Earlier this year I got a contract to continue the story I started with Opening Worlds, which was published by Storm Moon Press. It's got to be a genuine novel, and so far I'm at 65k words and still going. It features Jason and Ferran on Ferran's home planet and is going to be very cool once it's been beta's and edited and so on. However, I'm going to give you a taste anyway. Please keep in mind that this could totally change by the time the book is published.

And also, ps--there are times I wish I had a writing wife. Someone to kick my tail into working on cool stuff who is not me and is not my husband, because he only reads what I give him. He's good at it, but he doesn't solicit., poke, prod or trade stories. My last writing wife left me when RL got tough, and I can't blame her. Fortunately I have some very encouraging readers (and Tiffany, I think I will do a revisit on The Captain's world next, even if it's just an interlude. They've been neglected for too long. Good idea.)

Okay. Explanations and whining over. Here's the first chapter of Changing Worlds.

Very much R-rated, people. Don't like m/m lovin', don't read.

***

A month, Jason Kim reflected, was a very malleable amount of time.

As a child a month had been a near-interminable amount of time, it’s challenging length compounded by the fact that he lived on one planet, went to school on another, and that neither of those places had months that matched the Federation standard. He’d count down the days until he got to return to his parents’ house, only to realize that because of calculation errors he would be stuck in limbo for three days until the school’s shuttle schedule matched the way it should to get him home.

Once Jason entered the Academy, everything changed. Life revolved around the Federation time standard, a relic from Old Earth, twenty-four hour days and seven day weeks. Seven years of intensive training left him a capable military officer and an absolute adherent to the standard, and that was how he lived his life. One month passed the same as every other, and life was dictated by the mission, not by the prospect of leave or the chance to see family and friends. It was easy to let any idea of a personal life slide after his parents died, and he had always been most comfortable in his own company anyway.

Things didn’t change so much after he left the military. Jason immediately went to work for the Shimona cartel, specializing in transferring goods and passengers in a state of elegance. Jason had the kind of appeal they were looking for in a ship captain: he was attractive, he was efficient and he was impersonal. They needed someone who could be polite while maintaining his distance, who wouldn’t get distracted from doing his job. Jason was that person, even after he met Blake, even after they blended their lives together. Time might have passed more pleasurably, but it was still set to a steady, predictable beat.

Blake left and time became purely professional again, perhaps a little slower than before, but still filled. After a year, Jason had begun to feel like he had gotten a handle on the rhythm of the rest of his life. And then…then, Ferran had come aboard.

Suddenly a month was nothing, a tiny blip in the radar. Suddenly a month was filled with a whirlwind romance, ridiculously fast from Jason’s perspective. His passion for Ferran was consuming, moreso than he’d ever experienced before. Jason had no idea that so many of the emotions he’d been sure he could live without would come barreling back into his mind and body. Because there was a time limit on Ferran. Less than a month, from the time he boarded Jason’s ship, the Silver Star, to the time that he returned to his planet, Perelan, and reintegrated into his home society, so truly alien from a human’s.

Monotonous weeks turned into a conscious measure of minutes, and those minutes were spent memorizing, cataloguing and cherishing every bit of his lover that Jason could get. Ferran had been the first to say it, “love,” that fraught and frightening word, but he had meant it, and so Jason had felt relief when he said it back, even though their affection was destined to end in nothing. How could it not? Ferran was restricted to his home planet after his brief period of interstellar liberty, the fate of all male Perels, and Jason took a leave of absence and returned to his own home, alone, and emptier than he could ever remember being.

A lot could change in a month. Jason had found love like he’d never experienced and lost it all in less than a month. And now, less than a month after he’d given up hope, Ferran was back, he and Jason were for all intents and purposes married and both of them would be moving back to Perelan in the company of the Federation ambassador tomorrow, to begin training Ferran as a diplomat.

And Jason? He didn’t know what role he was going to play on Perelan, other than husband and resident alien oddity. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t really care. For the first time in a long time Jason was content to live in the moment, not because he had nothing to look forward to, but because he was happy. Really happy. The whole thing still felt slightly surreal.

“What about this?” Ferran asked, looking over at Jason from where he sat, cross-legged, in front of the closet. They were packing up the last of Jason’s belongings that would be brought with them to Perelan, and Ferran was incredibly inquisitive. It was fortunate that Jason didn’t have much of a capacity for embarrassment, because otherwise he’d have been constantly red. He’d had no idea his mother had kept so many of his childhood things. What Ferran was holding up now looked like a plaster imprint of Jason’s five year old hand.

“That can stay,” Jason said, carefully folding one of his favorite sets of casual clothes, made from actual silk and cotton. They wrinkled if he wasn’t careful with them. He set them into the case laid open next to his dresser.

“What is it for?” Ferran asked, setting his own hand curiously against the imprint. His fingers were long and milk-pale, capped with thick, blunt nails that were almost out of place on his otherwise delicate hands.

“It’s just a child’s gift,” Jason replied. “We made them in class one day. I thought my parents had gotten rid of that long ago, where did you find it?”

“In a box in the back,” Ferran said. “There’s a mask as well.” He pulled out a brightly-colored dragon mask, the lines almost perfectly colored in by a young Jason, who had been something of a perfectionist even then. Ferran put the mask in front of his face. “It’s very fierce, but a little hard to see out of.”

“Your eyes are a little bigger than mine,” Jason remarked, amused. Ferran’s eyes were easily twice the size of his own, with amber irises and large, dark pupils evolved to capture the light. Ferran pulled the mask away and grinned, and for a moment it was all Jason could do not to stop what they were doing and take Ferran to bed. Again. But they’d only been given a week for their impromptu honeymoon, and spending too much time lost in his lover was what was giving Jason a headache about finishing packing now. It wasn’t like he owned a lot of things. Packing was a task that should have taken half a day, max, but it had stretched out, slowed down and crawled to a halt as Jason let himself get lost in the reality of having Ferran with him again.

Forever, he reminded himself, turning back to the last of his clothing. We have forever now. I don’t have to count every second. But the anxiety in him refused to be soothed, and he abandoned the clothes in favor of joining Ferran in front of the closet. “What else is back there?”

“I haven’t checked yet,” Ferran said, but he looked eager to keep going.

“Let’s find out.” Jason reached back into the cedar-scented depths of the closet and closed his hands around a small cylindrical tube. He pulled it out. “These are mine, actually.” He barely remembered burying it back there only a year ago.

“What’s in it?” Ferran asked curiously.

Jason unscrewed the cap on the cylinder and pulled out a sheaf of thin films. “They’re pictures.”

“Pictures of what?”

“All sorts of things,” Jason said absently as he remembered back to why he had stuffed almost all of the pictures he owned into a tube and shoved them into the back of his closet like a petulant child. It had been an unusually turbulent moment for him, one of the few times when he let emotion carry him away into actions that weren’t logical. Instead of just getting rid of the pictures that bothered him, Jason had completely cleared house. Both his quarters on the ship as well as his home had been cleaned out.

“Do you mind looking at them?” Ferran was an empath, and he doubtless was picking up on the sense of resistance inside of Jason. These weren’t really things that he wanted to look at again, but he didn’t have any choice. He had no idea when he’d get the chance to come back to his childhood home, and apart from that he wasn’t a child any longer. He couldn’t hide from things that made him uncomfortable.

“It’s all right,” Jason said gently. “Let’s look at them.”

The first one was a black and white photograph of his parents. They were in profile, looking out from the balcony of their house at the crashing waves below the small, cliff-top colony of Jacksonville. They both looked stern, a little distant, but that was how his parents had always looked in pictures. You had to be with them to see the grace of his mother’s movements, or really tell that the lines in his father’s face came from smiles. They had been older than most couples when they’d had him, and he’d lost them far sooner than any of them had planned. He shouldn’t have hidden this picture away.

“My parents.” He handed the film over to Ferran, who took it carefully. His lover gazed down at the photograph with lively interest.

“You look like your father.”

Jason smiled. “Thank you.” He had always admired his father’s way with people, his inner strength and his calm demeanor. Any comparisons were, in his mind, favorable.

“What was his name?”

“Gary. My mother was Min-suh, but my father called her Minnie.” The next picture was a portrait of his mother, and Jason handed that one over as well. The one behind that was a candid photo of himself and Blake, and that…that wasn’t quite so easy to look at.

Ferran knew instantly. “This is your last lover?”

“Yes.”

“How long were you together?”

“Just for a year.” Which was still the longest romantic relationship Jason had ever had, actually.

Ferran was quiet for a moment, then asked, “Does it bother you to look at him?”

“A little.” He didn’t want to lie to Ferran, and he suspected that the Perel would know if he’d tried to anyway. “But you should know about Blake. At the least you should know that he existed. He was out of my life for a year by the time you met me.” Jason put that picture, and the two behind it, back into the tube. “These ones can stay. I’ll take the other two, though.”

Ferran held the pictures of Jason’s parents side by side and admired them for a long moment. “We don’t have anything like this on Perelan. It’s considered disrespectful to make images of our loved ones, because it implies that we can’t hold them in our hearts without help. Remembrance of the past is important, but our historians do not like dwelling on specifics. I’ve only ever painted in the abstract.”

“You’re a painter?”

“It was one of the skills my mother thought it important for me to learn.” Ferran handed the pictures back carefully. Jason took them and set them back on the bed, filing this new information about his husband into the “to be explored” category. Jason wasn’t a painter but he had access to courses that Ferran might like, instructional holos and the means to buy any equipment that Ferran might need. Although right now there wasn’t the time to buy anything, and Jason knew for a fact that nothing was shipped to Perelan without express permission.

Jason reached back into the closet. After a moment of searching his hands closed on another cylindrical object, and he felt like groaning for a moment. More pictures? How many of those had he secreted away? But no, this time what he brought out brought a smile to his face. “I thought this was in storage on board the Silver Star.” He partially unsheathed the weapon and looked down at the short, straight blade. Still shining, still sharp. Just like he’d left it.

Ferran’s eyes went a little wide as he took in the sword. “You use this?”

“Not really,” Jason said, turning the sheathe over in his hands. It was painted with a flower pattern and coated with red lacquer, and the metal fittings were engraved with silver that was so tarnished it was almost black. “Swordsmanship went through something of a renaissance while I was going through the Academy. I learned fencing and kendo, and some Indonesian styles. This sword is actually Korean, and a lot shorter than the katanas that samurai used.”

“Who are samurai?” Ferran asked.

Jason smiled. “I forget sometimes how few movies you’ve seen. Why didn’t you go to any theaters while you were travelling around the universe?”

“There were other things to do,” Ferran replied, a mischievous look in his eyes. “Many other things. And alien films are one of the few things we’re occasionally granted access to on Perelan.”

“Well, tonight I’m introducing you to the archetype that is the samurai,” Jason said decisively. “Movies and popcorn, that’s the tradition.”

“I like your traditions,” Ferran smiled, wrapping his arms around Jason’s shoulders. “I liked celebrating your birthday.” It had been Jason’s birthday three days ago, and they had baked a cake, loaded it down with candles and spent the rest of the evening celebrating in a more intimate way. The kitchen was a place they both liked to be and Ferran was an excellent cook, far better than Jason even after so many years of learning it on his own. The white truffle cake was one of the few things Jason could make that Ferran didn’t already know how to improve upon.

“We’ll do the same for you when your birthday rolls around,” Jason promised, but Ferran shook his head.

“My birthday isn’t important,” he said, quietly but with complete assurance. “We never celebrate the birthdays of males on Perelan. Instead, each house celebrates the birthday of their reigning matriarch. It’s a feast day for the entire family. To celebrate my own birth would say to the others in my house that I was putting myself above them, and above where a sterile male should be stationed. I don’t mind it.”

Jason was inclined to insist that Ferran’s birthday was important and that they should celebrate it anyway, but he stopped himself. There was a lot he had to learn about Perel culture, and he didn’t want to make any assumptions before he had a chance to really sit down and talk with Giselle Howards, the Federation ambassador to the planet. She’d be able to give him a crash course in Perelan and its people without the risk of Jason offending his new husband.

“What is it?” Ferran asked, curling in even closer. He tended to cuddle when he thought something might be wrong. It wasn’t a habit that Jason felt like breaking, either. He liked the fact that for the first time in a long time, someone wanted to be close to him. Not just wanted, but needed to be close to him. The intensity of that emotion was something that Jason was still adapting to, but the more they were together the more he grew accustomed to letting himself need his husband back.

“Nothing that can’t wait,” he said after a moment. “Come on. Samurai movie time.”

In the end Jason chose the movie Samurai Fiction, an Old Earth classic and a far less violent example of the genre than some of what he had to pick from. There was plenty of fighting to keep it interesting, and enough discussions of personal honor and the Japanese class system that it would give Ferran a good beginning.

It was definitely violent enough for Ferran. “Is killing really so casual for humans?” he asked a little tentatively at the end of the movie. Jason ran a soothing hand down the feathery, amber-tipped quills that ran the length of Ferran’s spine and over his head. They tended to get sharper when he was upset or confused, and at the moment they were standing nearly on end.

“Not really,” Jason replied. “It’s just a movie. People watching it know it’s just for entertainment.”

“Why is death so entertaining?”

Jason stared at a piece of popcorn that had fallen to the floor and considered the question for a moment before answering. “Death is…mysterious. For some people death is the utter end, for others it’s the beginning of a new way of life. Everyone has a different opinion on death, but the one thing we know for sure is that there’s no definitive explanation for what happens after you die that everyone agrees on.

“The ability to kill another person can be seen as a good thing depending on who does the dying, or it can be a skill that makes other people consider you a monster. It all depends on what you decide to do with that ability. And a person who can face the prospect of death with calm and acceptance…it’s captivating, in its way. Admirable.”

Ferran listened to the explanation with his head cocked, disbelief clear in his eyes. “Perels think of any death other than old age as something shameful, something to be avoided at all costs.” His beautiful, expressive face was somber, and his ears were flared back, a sign of discomfort. “After our civil war, with so many of us dead or wounded, it became clear that we had taken our ability to destroy life too far. It was unsure for a time whether our species would even survive. All lives are to be treasured, even those who have little to offer their houses or society at large. Unnatural deaths are very rare, and suicide is one of the worst things a Perel can do. It brings shame on an entire family.”

“Like your brother?”

Ferran nodded. “It’s one reason that my petition to be trained as a diplomat was taken so seriously, even though I’m only a sterile male. There’s a flaw in my breeding, and the matriarchs thought it was possible that I might kill myself if they denied my petition.” Ferran took in Jason’s expression and hurried to add, “I didn’t lie when I told you before that I wasn’t going to kill myself, though. I would never do that. It is the ultimate expression of hopelessness, and I was never without hope.”

“Good,” Jason said firmly, leaning in and capturing Ferran’s lips in a kiss. The Perel seemed to melt against his body, warm and lithe and pliable, and Jason pulled him closer, framing Ferran’s smooth, pale face with his hands and opening up to his lover’s rough, questing tongue and the hungry little purrs that accompanied it. Before they had technically gotten married, Ferran had let Jason do all the driving when it came to their sex life. Now that he felt more secure, Ferran was occasionally reaching for control, taking it and giving it back to Jason as they gently dueled for dominance.

“It’s our last night here,” Jason said around their kiss, barely able to spare the breath to get the words out. “What do you want?”

“You.” It was what Ferran always said, and it was so full of truth and need that Jason couldn’t help but hold him a little tighter, and pull him a little closer.

“In our bed?” he whispered, nuzzling the pulse point beneath Ferran’s jaw before he bit it, very lightly. Ferran shivered in his arms.

“Wherever you want me,” Ferran breathed. “Anywhere, any way you want me.”

“The bed, then,” Jason decided, standing up and drawing Ferran up with him. They had already christened every room of the house, including the butterfly pavilion and, during a rare moment of good weather, the balcony. He wanted their last night to be one of comfort and closeness as opposed to fast and furious, or in the case of the garage, practically acrobatic.

They kissed their way back to the bedroom, so absorbed in each other than Jason didn’t remember the photographs he’d left out on the bed. Ferran reached out and moved them to the dresser before they could be crushed, and a moment later they were lying on the bed against each other.

Perels were physically similar enough to humans that it had never been a challenge for Jason, physically or mentally, to be intimate with Ferran. The challenge had come in being emotionally ready to involve himself with a race of people who were renowned for their sexual appetite. That was the most that the majority of people ever learned about the few Perels that were allowed off their planet, and it was initially enough to put Jason off of getting close to Ferran. He hadn’t counted on his second in command conspiring to force him to socialize, and he’d soon learned that there was a lot more to Ferran than simply sexual hunger.

Which wasn’t to say that there was anything wrong with Ferran’s hunger when it was focused on Jason. Ferran twined his slender, strong legs with Jason’s and pulled them tightly against each other, their erections rubbing tantalizingly through the thin cotton pants that they both wore. Jason had a shirt on as well but Ferran was bare-chested, which he always preferred as long as it wasn’t too cold. His skin was so warm…

The urge to strip them out of their clothes and just rut until they came was strong, but Jason wanted more than sex tonight. “Let me touch you,” he said softly, stilling the rhythm of Ferran’s hips with one hand as he caressed the length of his lover’s thigh. Ferran was panting quickly, his chest rising and falling in short bursts, but he nodded his assent.

Jason started at the too, stroking a hand carefully through the quills on his lover’s head, feeling them quiver under his fingers and switch from soft to sharp, soft to sharp. When they were sharp, they were almost edged enough to cut the tender skin of his lips, so Jason left the touch to his toughened hands and winnowed his fingers through the thin, straight strands. Short and blunter at the edges of Ferran’s face, the longest quills along the top of his head and the nape of his neck were almost six inches in length.

Jason trailed his fingers down a cluster of quills just behind Ferran’s ear, pausing there to gently scratch the tight skin. Ferran purred and turned his head into the touch, the rigidness of his desire relaxing some as he got into the comfort that Jason was offering. Ferran’s ears slanted back against his head, crinkle-edged and tufted with a wisp of amber hair. They were adorable, and incredibly sensitive, but Jason knew that Ferran was sensitive about the things that spoke most loudly to the differences between him and Jason, and that sensitivity sometimes made him self-conscious. For a moment Jason wondered exactly how much his new husband was working to be sensitive to human culture, perhaps to things that even Jason wasn’t noticing, but then Ferran mewled needily and nuzzled against Jason’s throat, redirecting his attention back to the now.

Jason kissed over Ferran’s closed eyelids, so thin they were almost transparent, their lashes long and dark. He kissed his pointed nose and the tip of his sharp chin before losing himself again in Ferran’s mouth. God, his lover could kiss. His tongue was long, and rougher than a human’s, but Jason never came away from Ferran’s embrace feeling raw. Jason’s tongue delved into Ferran’s mouth in turn, cautious over canines that were marginally longer and sharper than a human’s. Perels could be omnivorous but preferred vegetarianism, by and large. One hand cupped Ferran’s neck, fingers burrowing into the quills there while the other kept moving against Ferran’s side, brushing over the edge of his abdomen before skirting back to safer territory.

They broke apart long enough for Ferran to murmur, “Jason.” His voice was dark and throaty, almost a growl.

“Let me,” Jason replied, trying to stay on track with what he had in mind. He wanted, no, he needed to ground himself in Ferran tonight, touch every bit of him, feel the reality of him. Everything else was about to change. Ferran had to be familiar, he had to become the basis of Jason’s sense of home now.

Ferran whined faintly but acquiesced, and Jason continued his steady march down his lover’s body, kissing and licking at his throat, tormenting each new set of nipples as he worked his way down Ferran’s chest. The skin was slightly darker around those, a flush of pink against unrelenting paleness. Even on the tender skin of Ferran’s stomach the tissue was thicker than a human’s, more resistant to scratches and tears. The only place his skin truly softened was over his eyes, and…

Jason undid the tie on Ferran’s pants and pulled them down and away, leaving his lover nude. The head of his erection was bright red and flowing with milky fluid. It glistened against the length of it and pooled at the base, no hair to get caught in. Jason liked being able to see everything. He licked the head once, gently, just enough to get a taste before moving down the bed.

Ferran whined again, louder this time, but he didn’t reach for himself, or reach to redirect Jason back to his cock. He pulled his knees back and shuddered when Jason kissed the insides of his thighs, stroked down over the long, taut muscles of his calves. Ferran’s toes were long, exceptionally so as compared to a human, and his feet had high, spring-like arches. His toenails were black and thick, protective, and Jason spared a moment to kiss the biggest nail on each foot before he finally began to slide back up Ferran’s body.

God, he was leaking, flowing so much it almost looked like he was coming in slow motion. Perels, Jason had learned, produced a lot more seminal fluid than humans did, and their bodies made use of it. Jason ran his fingers through the liquid that had collected against Ferran’s balls, which were drawn hard and tight against his body, then ran them back underneath his lover until his slick fingers probed at Ferran’s entrance. His lover relaxed immediately, welcoming the press, the rich fluid acting as a perfect lubricant. Gathering a little more, Jason pushed his fingers back inside as he lowered his mouth onto Ferran’s cock.

His husband came quickly, keening, the build-up too much for him to resist. Hot sperm filled Jason’s mouth to overflowing, and he swallowed quickly. It tasted more bitter than a human man’s, musky and thick, but Jason swallowed again and again, addicted to the flavor. When it was clear there would be no more, Jason gently let go of Ferran’s swollen, sensitized organ and moved to pull his fingers out.

“No,” Ferran pleaded, clenching him tight. “Be in me.”

“I will,” Jason promised. “Give me a moment and I will.” As soon as Ferran nodded and relaxed he sat back, pulling off his shirt and pants with more haste than he normally did, even if they were making love, and threw them onto the floor. A second later he was pressed against Ferran again, their bodies perfectly matched, and then Ferran drew his legs back and rolled his hips and suddenly it was impossible not to slide into him.

Hot, so hot, so slicktightperfect…and God, Jason was going to come in a second if he didn’t control himself. He leaned back on his arms a little bit, putting some distance between himself and Ferran. It didn’t help. The low lights made his lover’s eyes look like they were glowing, and Ferran’s hands were everywhere, stroking down his chest and over his shoulders and urging him on. After a moment he gave into the urge, pulling back and then stroking in with more and more force until Jason was gasping for breath, his whole body was burning with tension and he knew that he was on the cusp of exploding, and all it would take was a look, a word, a movement…

“Jason.” One word, one look that he couldn’t even understand when there was so much there to see, and Jason flew apart, burying himself in Ferran and coming so hard that his vision dimmed and his hearing went fuzzy. Everything seemed to be quivering, from his hair to his toes, and it took everything he had left not to black out and collapse on his lover.

Ferran knew, of course. He was an empath, he felt Jason’s emotions, and his ability to feel them was becoming stronger the closer they became. He held Jason close, cradling him against his body but not suffocating him, giving him the space he needed to catch his breath. It took minutes, and every minute was a gift, every second was a blessing. He breathed out and Ferran breathed in, drinking in his exhalations and purring with pleasure.

It was frightening, how much Jason was beginning to crave the closeness he had with Ferran, how much he was starting to need him. The love hadn’t been nearly as hard for Jason to reconcile as the growing understanding that he was becoming genuinely dependent on someone else for the first time since he was a child. He’d been part of a team, he’d been in relationships but all of those had paled in comparison to what was happening to him now, and he was both glad and anxious about that.

Eventually Jason came back to himself enough to get up. He went into the bathroom and got a clean washcloth, wet it and came back to find Ferran curled on his side, his huge eyes at half-mast, gazing in his direction.

“I am also nervous.”

Ferran’s sudden confession took Jason a little by surprise, and he raised an eyebrow as he scooted close enough to begin to wipe his lover clean. “Why are you nervous?”

“I want you to be happy on Perelan.”

“I will be happy,” Jason promised. “I’ll be with you.”

“Yes,” Ferran said, but that was all he said, and Jason was learning to hear his new husband’s silences as well as he did his words.

“I said forever,” Jason told him, smoothing a palm over damp skin. “I meant it. I don’t expect it will all be easy, but we’ll learn how to deal with that.”

“I believe you.”

“As well you should,” Jason said, trying to lighten the mood a little. “Or didn’t you know that I’m always right about these sorts of things?”

“That’s not what Florence told me,” Ferran countered, referring to Jason’s former second in command on board the Silver Star. She had been keeping in touch with both of them, sending brief text messages to their communicators almost daily. She managed to make them laugh more often than not, very frequently resorting to ancient idioms that Jason had to explain to Ferran, or jovial commentary on what she considered Jason’s many amusing traits. Her last text to Ferran had read, Suggest installing a low-intensity shock button to use when you go out on the town with him. Wished for one many times myself. Might prompt him to use his words.

“Flo is biased against me, you know that. She thinks I have no social skills.”

“She’s wrong about that,” Ferran agreed with a smile. “You’re very sociable with me.”

“You see? You can’t listen to her.” Jason leaned in and kissed Ferran, and let his lover’s insistent hands keep him drawn close instead of getting up to clean the clothes from the floor like he’d intended to. Jason was well and truly exhausted, and it didn’t take much time for him to fall asleep in Ferran’s arms, his lover curled possessively around his head and shoulders.

Jason woke up in a cold sweat sometime before dawn, his breathing fast and his heart pounding so hard it felt like it might beat out of his chest. The nightmare that had woken him was dissipating quickly, leeching from his brain like an evaporating mist but leaving behind a dark, sticky residue. The urge to scream, caught by his tight jaw and clenched teeth, slowly receded, and eventually Jason was left exhausted but absolutely unable to get back to sleep. He glanced over at Ferran, still curled close to him, still asleep. Well, that was a mercy. He didn’t want to have to explain to his lover what was going on with him. Not that he knew himself, exactly.

Moving slowly, Jason eased out of the circle of Ferran’s arms and off of the bed, grabbed a robe that hung on the back of his bathroom door and slung it on, then walked quietly into the living room. He stood at the door that led to his balcony and stared out into the darkness, just barely able to detect the violent crashing of the waves far below. Lightning cracked through the sky, streaks of silver and gold in dark indigo clouds. Beautiful. Frightening. Sort of like what was happening here.

In his most ruthlessly practical moments, when he was alone, Jason contemplated what he’d gotten himself into with a certain amount of grim resignation. He was going to be the first human being given intimate access to an alien world, an alien world that humans didn’t honestly know very much about. He was going there married to a highly-ranked member of that society, from what Jason could tell, but also a relatively powerless one. Infertile males were used as bargaining chips by their mothers, traded to other families to be caretakers and homemakers. Ferran was the first one to be allowed to pursue a different path, but there were probably whole labyrinths of political issues driving that decision that Jason knew nothing about, much less how he fit into the grand scheme of things. There was no doubt in his mind, though, that his presence among the Perels was entirely calculated.

Jason didn’t doubt that Ferran loved him. His new husband was as innocent a creature as Jason had ever seen in some ways, barely old enough to be considered an adult by his own people. He and his cousins had been on the verge of completing their post-adolescent tour of the ‘verse, were actually headed back to Perelan, when he and Jason had met. The depth of deceit that it would take to fool Jason into falling for him was beyond Ferran, not to mention that had snaring a human partner been premeditated, Ferran could have done a hell of a lot better. Gone for someone with more money, more power, more connections. Jason was a loner and always had been, and there was no lack of infatuated humans waiting for the first hint of something more with the attractive aliens to catapult them into love.

Instead Ferran had fallen in love with Jason, and he had risked a great deal to be with him. The proposal had come through Ambassador Howards, the Federation’s representative to Perelan, not from Ferran himself, and there had been no assurance that Jason would agree to a marriage. But in the end Jason had agreed, and for the next year at least, he and Ferran were legally bound to each other. There was still a lot to work out about that: how they would need to conduct themselves on the planet, how Jason’s actions would reflect on Ferran, even what Ferran’s duties within his own house would be now that he was no longer a viable bargaining chip. All his worth, all his beauty and gentility and intelligence had been spent on catching Jason, and Jason wasn’t at all sure that he was going to prove a worthwhile investment.

He hadn’t had a nightmare for a long time. As a child they were night terrors, leaving him upright and screaming, unable to see or hear as his mother tried to calm him. His parents had refused drugs and therapy, his father instead opting to teach Jason meditation and other methods of self-control. They had eventually worked, and he’d become very adept over the years at blocking or burying the things that made him uncomfortable. Only occasionally was it so bad that those things manifested as nightmares, but it looked like now was going to be one of those times.

Uncertainty, doubts of his own self-worth, fear of leaving the simplicity and structure of everything he knew for the mystery that was Perelan…Jason had a lot to be afraid of. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply, letting the air circulate through the lowest parts of his lungs before emerging as a faint hiss through his teeth. He needed to handle this. And privately, because the last thing his new husband needed at the moment was insecurity from Jason. Ferran was going to be dealing with a lot once they got back to Perelan. Jason couldn’t add to that stress. Silently he promised himself to take up daily meditation again, to work kata and other exercises that were comfortingly mindless, physical movements that would ground and occupy him. He could handle this on his own. He would have to.

Jason opened his eyes again and sighed. The very edge of the horizon was limned with violet, signaling the beginning of dawn. Ambassador Howards would arrive in less than three hours to take them away in her ship. Jason glanced around his house, his eyes lingering on the hardwood floors and handmade cabinets, the simple, comfortable furnishings and soothing earth tones. There was a neat stack of containers by the door that contained everything he was taking with him to Perelan. Well, almost everything.

Jason turned and headed back into the bedroom. If he couldn’t sleep, the least he could do was finish packing.

Pandora Post # 27, 1 of 2

2011-11-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

Title: Pandora

Part Twenty-Seven, 1 of 2: Reactionary

Notes: This is the next part of a spin-off story of a series I posted on Literotica (titled Bonded, as Carizabeth) and the subject matter is m/m sci fi. I know this is a short post, but I had to get something up before Thanksgiving or feel like a total bum. The second half of this part is almost done and will be up shortly. Longer too, I’m thinkin’.

PS-Happy Thanksgiving! Wait…what will I do without turkey cooked in a dutch oven?

***

Garrett tended to take most things in stride following his lengthy stay in a rehabilitation clinic as a teenager. The part of him that responded with the strongest emotions, the part that was responsible for real outrage and unspeakable joy, that part had been dulled to calm his brain and level his mood. Garrett still enjoyed a good fight and recent events had shown that he could still be depressed when the tragic or the unexpected hit, but for the most part he considered himself remarkably even-keeled. So experiencing real shock and surprise wasn’t something that happened very often, and after the last few weeks he’d had he didn’t expect to experience any more unless something miraculous happened.

It didn’t end u being miraculous, but what Garrett found out was a hell of a surprise.

He was eating breakfast with Claudia when he got the news. Therese was cutting up fresh fruit at the counter, Claudia was sipping tea and watching with amused eyes as Garrett tried to feed Renee from a bottle.

“She’s squirmy,” he muttered, trying to get the nipple to her mouth but missing and hitting her cheek instead as she wiggled in the cradle of his arm.

“She’s hungry,” Claudia corrected with a grin. “She feeds from a bottle all the time, Gare, you can do this.”

“It’s not the feeding, it’s the holding and feeding simultaneously,” Garrett said, trying and missing Renee’s mouth again. She wailed and waved her arms. “You’ve either got to hold still for this, honey, or we’ve got to get some tie-downs.” Finally he got the nipple to her mouth and relaxed as Renee started to suck voraciously. “Damn, you are an eating machine, aren’t you?”

“Garrett,” Claudia chided him gently. “Come on, it can’t be that surprising. Don’t you feed Cody?”

“Cody is six. I can call up a meal for him and sit by and watch him eat it and yeah, he too is an eating machine but I don’t have to do the feeding. Except for cutting things up into bites, sometimes.”

“He sounds like a good kid.”

“He’s a great kid,” Garrett agreed. The last time he and Cody had had breakfast it had been just the two of them; Jonah had been on shift, flying shuttles inland. They’d eaten waffles delivered from the ship’s kitchen and tried to balance their forks together over the top of a bottle. Things had been strained between the adults but Cody was happily oblivious, and the ease that Garrett had interacting with him was a palpable relief. Cody was so easy. So happy.

“You miss him? You could call them,” Claudia offered.

“Not right now,” Garrett said. “Later.” Later.

“Are you sure? I bet it would do you good to see a friendly face.”

“It would,” Garrett said. Then, just to be an ass, he continued, “Like Isidore. Does he still work here? I haven’t heard any mention of him for a few months.”

When he looked up from Renee, Garrett was surprised to see Claudia’s complexion draining to a pallid white. “Oh…oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you…I thought you knew, but I shouldn’t have assumed that.”

“Tell me what?” Garrett’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. He wasn’t in love with Isidore, but he did like him. “Is he dead?”

“No…no, Gare, he…Isidore is a suspect.”

This time Garrett’s stomach dropped clean out of his body with shock. Isidore Cain was a suspect in a terrorist attack? Adorable, gentle, ridiculously appealing Isidore? Whom Garrett had recommended to Wyl as a mechanic? No fucking way. Apart from all the other reasons, Garrett’s ability to judge people could not possibly be that bad. “He’s a suspect? Claudia, Isidore is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. He is not the kind of person to smuggle explosives into the governor’s military base and blow up his fucking motor pool!”

“Language,” Therese said severely, and came over and took Renee and the bottle out of his arms. She left the kitchen and left Claudia shifting in her seat, not really meeting Garrett’s eyes.

“No, it’s not that he did the blowing-up himself, but he let the person in who did,” she continued. “The cameras showed that it was his cousin. Isidore let him into the compound because he said he was delivering parts for a custom bike that Isidore and Wyl were putting together in their spare time. But instead he had a bomb, concealed in the machinery so the surface scans at the gate didn’t see it, and he set it next to the generator. He was killed in the explosion.”

“I do remember that.” Claudia had left him a message detailing that part while Garrett was engaged in his mad dash back to Paradise. “But that doesn’t mean that Isidore had anything to do with his cousin’s insanity. I can’t believe it.”

“I know.” Well, huh. Garrett had been expecting a bit of a fight about that. “I mean, I know Isidore, Gare, and I don’t think he had any involvement other than letting his cousin inside. But his father’s half of the family has a lot of ties to the resistance, it was one of the things that bothered Jane about hiring him in the first place but Wyl talked her into it.

“Once Robbie made the connection, he put Isidore into a holding cell. I know that he’s talked to him several times, but Isidore hadn’t been released yet. Robbie wanted to hold him as an enemy combatant.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Garrett pushed to his feet, anger surging through him. “If Robbie questioned him, then he’s already gotten everything he possibly can out of him. Robbie’s interrogations could make a robot beg for its maker and Isidore isn’t a criminal, he wouldn’t try to lie. He wouldn’t want to. He should be let go. He should at least be given legal counsel.” Garrett paced back and forth for a moment, then whirled to look at Claudia again. “I need to speak to him.”

“The guards won’t let you in, Gare,” Claudia said with a sigh. “They’re under orders not to.”

“Then I need to talk to Robbie. He gets back in today, right?”

“Garrett…” Claudia sighed, stood up and came over to him, placing a hand on his arm. “It was chaos. Robbie had to take control and fast, and Wyl had been injured and he was put almost immediately into a Regen chamber, you know how much harder he experiences everything and he just couldn’t take it. They barely had a chance to speak before Wyl went under, and everything was just…it was very hard, Gare, and it’s still so hard for Robbie.”

“I get that, Claudia, but that isn’t an excuse for him being an idiot.”

“You have to be kind, Garrett.”

“I plan on being kind, honey.” Garrett squeezed her shoulder gently before turning and heading towards his room. With Robbie, though, kind could mean giving him a swift kick in the ass, literally. To get away with that, Garrett had to be prepared.

Visiting Lisabet

2011-11-16T08:33:00.000-08:00

Hi guys!

I'm guest blogging on Lisabet Sarai's website today, and I would love for you to visit me there. Odds are I could even respond to comments on her blog, unlike mine (#@%$*&). I talk a little about Africa and irony and circular living, which I just made up. Other people may call it karma:)

Check it out here: http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2011/11/wow-thats-ironic.html

More Pandora will be up soon, promise. I'm finally bringing Robbie back into the mix, so that should be fun.

A Few Small Things...

2011-11-08T21:30:00.000-08:00

Just so you know...

Cat and Karen, email me! Don't you want your contest schwag? Mmm, delicious schwag. So tasty.

For those who have asked, Pandora has about 5 parts left to go. Not entirely sure about that number, but it's somewhere in there. I hope it'll be done before the end of the year. After I can stomach reading the entire thing again and get it edited, I'll post it in much larger parts on Literotica.

And speaking of that...what the hell will I post on this blog next?

I have no idea which of the many ideas I've got that I'll go with. New genre? Another spinoff? Something different entirely? Less of a lengthy and agonizing WIP? I know there are people out there who would appreciate that. Whatever I end up going with, I have no plans to stop posting free stories, here or on Lit. That's how I got my start, after all, and it's where I try out the new things that interest me. Plus I'm full of love for my readers;)

Anyway, time for bed. Sweet dreams.

PS--someday, I will have a real website with my own domain, where I don't have to lose wrestling matches with blogger over answering comments on my own darn blog. I can already feel the air of "grown-up" waiting to descend upon me.

Pandora Post #26

2011-11-07T07:29:00.000-08:00

Title: Pandora

Part Twenty-Six: An Insomniac’s R&R

Notes: This is the next part of a spin-off story of a series I posted on Literotica (titled Bonded, as Carizabeth) and the subject matter is m/m sci fi. And this chapter is R, semi-superfluous R all the way. Did this chapter really need to be? I say yes, and to hell with furthering the plot:)

***

It was some crazy combination of luck, overall good or bad Garrett couldn’t tell, when he found out that Robbie was in the city and wouldn’t be back until the next day. He left a note on Robbie’s door, a message on his com and instructions for his adjutant to let Robbie know the instant he was back that Garrett wanted to talk to him.

His main plan sidelined, Garrett considered going and visiting Wyl, but Wyl probably didn’t have a microphone in the side of his Regen chamber. Besides, the thought of even pretending to converse with Wyl when he couldn’t talk back was just…wrong, somehow. Wyl never wanted for words, and Garrett didn’t want to sit there and stew in silence about how close his friend had come to losing his life entirely. Garrett would have checked in on Claudia again, but Therese very firmly told him that both Claudia and Renee were sleeping, and wouldn’t he like to get some sleep himself?

“Claudia had the guest room readied for you,” Therese added, trying to look conciliatory and failing miserably while wearing fatigues and fingering the hilt of a long-bladed shedskin knife. It was the kind of specialty close-combat knife that left a thin layer of the blade itself behind in a wound when you stuck someone with it so the wound didn’t close, and it looked completely incongruous on a woman with a cup of china cup of bright pink tea in her other hand.

“Is there anyone around for you to use that thing on?” Garrett asked, gesturing towards the weapon.

“You never know,” Therese replied with all seriousness.

“Right…” Garrett decided that a retreat was called for and made his way back into the guest room. Miles and Claudia would have given it to him when he was living on Paradise before, but Garrett had always preferred sleeping on his ship. That wasn’t going to be an option for a while, though, and he took a few minutes to get the room, more of a suite really, the way he liked it. The walls became a kaleidoscope of color, the corners darkening to an indigo that spread out across the ceiling and floor. The bed was soft and incredibly inviting, and once Garrett lay down he found that it was impossible to even contemplate getting up. He stared up at the indigo ceiling, unmoving, for a long moment before exerting himself enough to reach over to the computer terminal next to the bed and switch it to voice activation.

“Yes, sir?”

“Project a star chart of the Castellus region of the Fringe on the ceiling.”

A moment later the star chart popped up, Pandora and a dozen other planets springing into view as they circled a red giant sun. Only two of the other planets were remotely hospitable to humans, and neither had been settled yet. Neither of them were Garrett’s concern.

“Zoom in.”

The chart obediently became larger.

“Zoom in.”

It bloomed larger still.

“Center on Pandora.”

The swirling blue planet came to life, the clouds moving across it as though it was a true picture of Pandora itself and not just a representation. Garrett stared for a long time at the picture before he whispered, “Zoom in.”

The planet loomed larger above the bed, taking up more than half of his ceiling. It was a holographic projection, and from this angle Garrett felt like he could almost reach out and brush his fingers through the trailing clouds. He almost tried it, just to imagine the coolness, but he stopped himself at the last second.

He shouldn’t do this. He shouldn’t think about them. This dry desert planet was his world right now, fucking Paradise and the heap of trouble it had made for his family. That other world, a world of rain and cold and the most addictive comfort Garrett had ever known, was in his past, at least for now. He really, really shouldn’t think about them.

He shouldn’t because it was shameful. Every second he had slept on his way back to his family, his father and stepmother and brand new baby sister, Garrett had dreamed not of the people he was heading towards, but of the ones he was leaving behind. Jonah, tall, drawling, handsome when you first met him and captivating when you studied him, fearfully protective and welcoming all at once. And Cody, Jonah’s son, his beautiful damaged child. Born to die young. Bright eyes, bright hair, open heart…Cody had never been afraid to tell Garrett what he thought, even when it meant saying that he loved him. That was the last think Cody had said to Garrett before he left Pandora, that he loved him. The kid was braver than both his father or his father’s lover, that was for sure.

Fuck, Garrett didn’t want to think about them, but he couldn’t not think about them when he didn’t have control of his own mind, when he let himself sleep. It felt like a betrayal to his family here that he couldn’t give his all to them when they needed him. He could give his body and his will, but his mind and heart were hopelessly divided. Hopelessly. Hopeless. Kind of like how he felt right now.

Don’t say that, darlin’.

Garrett groaned and rolled over on the bed, resolutely shutting his eyes. “Don’t tell me what to think, jerk,” he muttered. “I want to wallow.”

Too bad. You’re tired, Garrett. Go to sleep.

“No. You’re always there when I sleep.”

Hate to break it to you like this, darlin’, but I’m always there anyway. Awake, asleep…love doesn’t let go. You can’t let it go either.

“I can get over you eventually,” Garrett insisted to himself, but the words were literally painful to force out of his mouth. “Fuck,” he hissed into the pillow. “Fuuuuck.”

Garrett knew that his Shoulder-Jonah, whether modeled after an angel or a devil, was right either way. He couldn’t just make himself stop thinking about them. It was too soon, he was too raw, and he was so tired right now, so incredibly tired…but now that he was in bed and thinking about Jonah he couldn’t stop, and surprisingly his libido didn’t seem to be nearly as tired as the rest of him. Garrett kept his face turned resolutely against the cool fabric of the pillow, but his hips pressed closer to the bed when he thought about the last time he and Jonah were together. Intimately together, at least.

Jonah was, and had always been, a top. His ex husband must have loved getting fucked because Jack had never even broached the subject with Jonah, if the man’s nervous reaction when Garrett first asked was anything to go by. Garrett had dropped it for the time being, happy just to be getting laid by Jonah as often as he was, which wasn’t nearly often enough with Cody around, but that was the way it had to be. After he lost his eyes Garrett took comfort in letting Jonah into him, in letting himself be touched and loved and cared for so intimately. He didn’t even think about asking for things to go the other way. Once he was whole again though, and once the tension started to rise as Jonah and Cody got ready to move, the idea came back to him. Garrett wanted to be the giver for once, not the taker. He wanted to make Jonah fall apart beneath him instead of falling for the other man. He wanted to fuck him.

Garrett hadn’t planned on bringing it up, though. Doing so would have smacked too much of resentful, last hurrah sex, of angry-ending sex, for him to broach it while things were so awkward between them. He didn’t want things to end, damn it, he didn’t want them to change at all, but Jonah and his son were moving on and moving out just like they’d always intended, and Garrett felt like all he could do was scramble to keep pace and try not to trip. So he left everything else the way it was as much as he could, despite wanting more. Funny enough, it was just when he was at his most accepting, just a few nights before Claudia called about the accident, that Jonah decided he wanted it.

In retrospect, Garrett should have known that something more was bothering his lover than this final aspect of his virginity. Garrett probably had known, subconsciously, but he hadn’t wanted to think about what Jonah was trying to tell him with subtext while they were lying naked in bed and all of a sudden Jonah was handing over the lube.

Garrett had raised one eyebrow. “Really?” he asked, delight edging his words.

“Been thinkin’ about it for a while,” Jonah replied. The lights were low but Garrett could feel the heat in his lover’s face, and the increasingly rapid beat of his heart. “I think I want it. With you.”

“Jonah…” Garrett straddled his lover’s hips and devoured his mouth, whispering in between kisses how good he was going to make it, how wonderful it would feel. He stroked over Jonah’s chest and arms and rubbed against the heat of his groin until all the nervous tension was gone, and only the needy tension, the kind that drew muscles so taut until they trembled for release, was left.

Garrett started with a finger. With other lovers he would have turned them onto their stomachs and lifted their hips, rimmed them until they were screaming for his cock, but Jonah needed different handling. You didn’t start with exotic with him, you didn’t leap for the new. The more they made love, the more Jonah wanted a connection to Garrett, until he almost never took him from behind unless Garrett specifically asked, because Jonah always wanted to see his face, wanted to kiss him and watch him and own every inch of him as they moved together. It was a desire that Garrett never got tired of, this feeling that if they had the time Jonah would be happy just being there with him, holding him and looking at him and delighting in the fact that they were together. It was a desire so frightening that Garrett had to try not to think about it, for fear that he’d start wanting it too.

One finger, one slippery finger moved in slow circles around Jonah’s hole, not penetrating, just stroking. Garrett stopped kissing him and just focused on his lover’s reactions, timing every movement of his hand to Jonah’s breathing and the minute quivers that rocked him. “Do you like this?” he asked. Garrett never had to ask to know, but he wanted to share that control with Jonah.

“I like it,” Jonah whispered, and Garrett eased his finger inside, pausing to savor the so-tight heat and watch thoughts flutter across Jonah’s face. They weren’t all comfortable ones. Garrett could have distracted his lover with a blowjob and stretched him on the sly, but for some reason he wanted them both to be completely present for this. He moved his finger gently, feeling the ring of muscle cling stubbornly, and he kissed Jonah’s cheek. “Relax, sweetheart.”

A few deep breaths later and Jonah did, prompting a grin from Garrett. He worked his single finger in and out, in, out, penetrating over and over until it was easy before adding a second one. Jonah’s hole clenched again, tugging him inside, and Garrett had to bite his lip and moan through his teeth at the feel of it. Slowly Jonah relaxed, slowly Garrett began to move and then he asked, “Do you like this?”

“I like it,” Jonah replied, a little breathless but more genuine now, almost eager for it. “Don’t stop.”

“I couldn’t stop,” Garrett told him honestly. He worked his two fingers with shallow thrusts, curling just enough to touch Jonah’s prostate and smiling when Jonah’s eyes went wide, and his breath stuttered in his chest.

“Holy shit,” Jonah muttered.

“Glad to hear it,” Garrett said. He added more lubricant and then a third finger, and this time Jonah didn’t wince, didn’t even hesitate as he began to move, tentatively, against Garrett’s hand. His eyes fluttered closed as Garrett stroked over and over that sweet spot inside of him, and once he started moaning Garrett’s patience was just about gone. He pulled his fingers out one at a time, watching as startlement flashed to regret and then understanding. Garrett slicked his cock, then asked, “How do you want it? It can be easier if you’re on your knees.”

Jonah laughed a little. “What do you think?”

“I think you want it just like this, you little attention slut” Garrett teased him. “So you can watch me make you go insane.”

“Might be nice too,” Jonah admitted, and then his grin went slack as Garrett eased his legs up and open and pressed in close against him. Close, but not penetrating him. Not yet. Garrett rubbed the head of his cock against Jonah’s crease, coming so close to slipping inside but not letting himself. God, he could come just like this, shoot all over Jonah’s ass and embarrass the hell out of himself, and it was so tempting because he knew it would feel so good. Being inside Jonah, though…that would feel incredible.

“C’mon, darlin’,” Jonah urged, rocking up against him. That was all the extra incentive he needed and Garrett pushed forward, slowly, past clinging muscles and into the pulsing reality that was being inside of Jonah. Fuck, he could feel Jonah’s heartbeat, feel it match the pulse point jumping in his neck. Garrett laid one of his hands against that pulse point, cupping Jonah’s face while supporting them with the other one, so he wouldn’t bend his lover in half.

“Garrett,” Jonah said, but it was all he managed before Garrett moved and his voice broke into pieces. A few thrusts and Jonah was reduced to mere syllables, simple sounds like “ah” and “mmm” and Garrett’s favorite, a wondrous, shocked kind of “ohh” that reassured Garrett with the pure pleasure it represented.

Garrett thrust deeper into Jonah’s heat, harder and faster as he realized just how close to the edge he was. Jonah would come the second Garrett touched him, he knew it, he just had to draw it out a little more, a little more…but he felt his own climax coming on fast. Leaning forward, he kissed Jonah’s swollen lips, then whispered, “Do you like this?”

“Love it,” Jonah groaned, “Fuck, I love it, Garrett, please, ohh…” He lost his words and Garrett lost his control. He slid his hand from Jonah’s face to his cock and stroked it once just before he thrust one last time and came, his orgasm streaming out of him and into his lover, pouring all of his hidden love and want and need with it. He barely noticed when Jonah came as well, gasping and saying his name. They hung there for a long, slow moment, both of them aching with the shared onslaught of pleasure, before Garrett finally came down and pulled out.

He curled up next to Jonah and buried his face in his lover’s neck, his throat suddenly stopped up with the intensity of too many unspoken words. So good and perfect and more and the leviathan, I love you, beat at Garrett’s vocal cords, trying to force their way past his stubborn tongue. He beat them all back, breathing slowly and deeply, soothing himself with the scent of his lover until he was back under control. Garrett cleared his throat.

“So. Do you think you’ll want that again?”

Jonah laughed weakly. “Only about as often as I’m layin’ down, darlin’.”

This bed smelled nothing like Jonah. It didn’t feel like their bed, it didn’t carry Jonah’s heat or imprint, and the room didn’t echo with his voice. But the memory of a bed that did, and everything they had done in it, sent Garrett’s reeling mind into a tailspin, and he came with a gasp and a shudder into the soft coldness beneath him. He would have moved, he might have screamed, but sly exhaustion finally won and before Garrett could do anything else, he was unconscious.

Contest Results (and a word on Pandora)

2011-11-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

8 am Colorado time is here. Contest over! And did you guys ever know how to work it! Five commenters means five winners. Tiffany, Jana, Irina, Cat and Karen, you guys are the best. Thanks for playing, thanks for commenting, now I need you to email me your pick. Any one of my ebooks, a paperback book (either Wild Passions, Myths and Magic or Making Contact) or beta rights. carizabeth@hotmail.com, ladies. I can't wait to hear from you.

And for the people who read my blog for the writing (I know you're out there), the next post I make will be the next piece of Pandora. (Thanks for all the lovely words about that, by the way. I'm glad so many people like it.) We'e nearing the end. I can smell the finish line:)

Thanks to all of you who visit. You make me smile. More importantly, you make me write.

Release Day Contest

2011-11-02T07:17:00.000-07:00

Ha, I didn't forget! Today is the release of A Blinded Mind from Dreamspinner Press, yay!

So cool...it's the longest thing I've ever published, not including Literotica stuff.

Below is a link to my new release page on Dreampsinner.

A Blinded Mind

Note that I'm not asking you to rush off and buy it in order to play this contest, although if you like my work you're probably going to enjoy this book. All you have to do to play is comment on this blog post. That's it. Show willingness. Indicate interest. Introduce yourself, for those of you who read but never comment, which I get. If there are five or fewer commenters, then you all win! You can pick an ebook of mine for me to send you, pick from the paperback books of mine that I have on hand (all anthologies, so they might broaden your horizons) or be a beta for one of my in progress or near future works, which includes the one I posted snippets of earlier, Different Spheres. Yep. Cheat time and read it before it's published. If there are more than five commenters, then I get a number generator to randomly select two of you and offer you the same deal. Capische? Is that how you spell that? Anyway, the contest ends at 8am Colorado time tomorrow, so you get a full 24 hours to post a comment.

So many choices! What can I say, I'm a giver and this is my first contest ever, so I just want to see who's out there. Happy Tuesday, guys.

And btw, it's snowing again. Way to kick a drought, Colorado. I've moved up in the world though, I now have a fleecy jacket. Still no gloves and hat, but they're on my To Do list..

A Blinded Mind snippet

2011-11-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

From Chapter Six. It's a fun chapter, what can I say. The book comes out tomorrow, woot!

And by the way, ps, before I go...thanks a lot to the people who follow the blog, and those of you who've commented recently, be it on the snow (which is almost all gone now, I love Colorado) or the stories. I still can't quite reply via comment yet, but I really appreciate your support and your friendship.

***

It was the work of years for Jonathan to develop the patience he has now. The last time he was in PsyCo’s clutches, he spent so much of it furious, lashing out and being punished in return, that now sometimes he almost manages to forget where he is without that fury to support him. Now he’s so patient he might be a Zen monk, or a hunter stalking his prey. Hunter. Jonathan learned to hunt all sorts of game when he was alone, and becoming patient was the least painful part of that learning curve. Now it serves him well, and surprises his handlers, especially Cagney. Surprise is good. Jonathan wants to keep Cagney off balance. Maybe that way he can wring a little more information from him in the moments when his guard is down. It’s been three days, and Jonathan still doesn’t know anything concrete about Sam.

His patience frustrates the hell out of Patience. As a boy, he could only ignore her for so long before her words broke through his shield and he snapped back, spit acid on acid and settled in to a long, terrible fight. Now his patience is immense, and his personal control much better. Patience is forever pushing, prying, working for that rise, but he only gives in when he senses she’ll turn on Tai next.

Patience is one thing, but boredom is another. Jonathan has patience, but he doesn’t care for boredom, so to help keep himself amused he conjures up old friends and companions in his mind, like he did before Sam came into his life in London. They have conversations, not out loud here because he doesn’t need anyone thinking he’s crazy, but internal conversations. It fills the silences and drowns out the noise nicely.

Before, Caroline had always been his favorite person to call up. He hadn’t seen her since she was nine, but she’d already had the acerbic wit of a much older person, and she was smart, brilliant in her own way. When he pictured her, he usually saw her in a red dress of crushed velvet with a wide lace collar, black patent shoes, with her hair tied back and a grumpy frown that indicated that she didn’t care for any of their mother’s fashion choices and wouldn’t put up with this shit a second time. They had the same color hair, the same eyes. Jonathan and Caroline might have been twins for all their similarities. It was strangely like looking in a mirror when he envisioned her.

Neither of his parents ever got conjured up, nor did Sarah. When Jonathan was living in the basement of Madame Tussaud’s in London, sometimes he’d take his inspiration from the shattered remains of wax figures and speak with famous people long past. For intelligent conversation he chose Rousseau or Franklin. For a laugh he would occasionally animate the remains of simpering socialites whose names he’d forgotten, or never known at all. None of the wax models were whole after the war and the looting, but he’d collected the best pieces and stowed them down in his bunker. He can only imagine what Sam thought when he woke up that first time, surrounded by severed limbs and death masks.

Sam… that’s who he’d really like to talk to right now. Not Caroline, not any other long-dead apparition, but Sam. In the flesh, by preference, but a virtual companion would be better than nothing. Lunch has just ended, so Jonathan has approximately three thousand five hundred heartbeats before Cagney shows up, if the pattern holds for today. He can’t imagine why it wouldn’t. The denizens of PsyCo live by patterns. About an hour… plenty of time to put together a Sam.

Jonathan constructs the physical first: the heavy, hard body, the smooth skin and the lips and that smile and everything else he loved—no, loves about Sam. His expressive eyes, the way they say so much without him having to make a sound. Not that it isn’t good when Sam makes a sound, because his voice is wonderful. It’s deep, which is to be expected given his size, but he has a surprisingly casual, yet still polite way of speaking.

Jonathan and Sam spent hours every day for over a month talking, and Jonathan thinks he knows him pretty well. He thinks he can conjure up an accurate facial expression even if words fail him, and after a few more minutes of preparation, he feels pretty good about the Sam he’s got. The hardest thing is deciding what to dress him in. Jonathan doesn’t need to be popping a boner in his cell right now. He finally decides on loose sweats.

“Seriously?” Sam asks, peeling the bottom of the sweatshirt away from his waist. “You think I need XXXL-sized clothing?”

“No, I think I need you in XXXL-sized clothing,” Jonathan replies, a smile splitting his face as he watches Sam toying with the fabric. “Too tempting otherwise.”

“Ah yes.” Sam nods. “My notorious temptingness. I’m a modern-day siren, that’s me.”

“There’s a similar legend about a spot not too far from where I am now, actually,” Jonathan says. “Except in this case the girls luring men to their deaths were called the Lorelei, or Rhine Maidens.”

“Lorelei, huh? That tears it, man, next Halloween I’m dressing up as a water-logged hooker and prancing around playing Beyoncé.”

“Who’s Beyoncé?” Inherently Jonathan knows, otherwise he wouldn’t have made his illusory Sam mention her, but he likes Sam’s take on Americana.

“An incredibly fine singer from before the war. Woman was built like a brick shithouse.”

“That’s a rather disgusting description, you know. I’ve no idea how it could ever be construed to mean something sexually appealing.”

“I’m not a linguist.” Sam shrugs, sitting down next to Jonathan on his bunk. “I don’t know how these things get started. I just know how to use them. The older sayings have less bite sometimes, you know.”

“Yeah.” Most of the post-war slang revolves around food, shelter, and depression.

“You been okay, Jonnie?”

Jonathan hesitates before replying. “It’s not being here in and of itself that’s so bad, honestly. I mean, I don’t like it, and I’d really rather not be here, and if I didn’t have you to worry about I’d probably be going out of my skin, but as it is, I’m too worried about you to think about how bad I have it.”

Sam shakes his head. “I’m sorry I’m worrying you.”

“Well, it’s hardly your fault, is it?”

“You should have just left me there.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“They would have taken me with them.”

“I don’t know that they took you with us now,” Jonathan snaps. “Look, exactly what mood are you going for here, mate? Because me being pissy isn’t conducive to my health in a fucking psych prison.”

Sam gives him a long stare, and Jonathan drops his eyes after a moment. “I know. You wouldn’t be bringing it up if I didn’t think it was important. I’m just….” He shuts his eyes and swallows. “Just worried about you.”

“I’m sure I’m freaking out about you too, if that helps any. I’m looking for you, Jonnie. I’m going to find you.”

“How can you possibly say that?” Jonathan argues. “How can you do that? You’re critically injured, fighting for your life. You’re being dosed with more drugs right now than I am, probably, and for all I know when you recover, you won’t even remember me. I’m sure they’d prefer it that way.”

“How are they gonna make me forget?” Sam asks.

“Well, not the typical way, obviously, but there are drugs… perhaps hypnosis… I don’t really know. I just know that the odds aren’t good that I’m going to get my happily ever after with you, Sam.”

Sam’s eyes soften a little. “You wanted a happily ever after with me? You didn’t really just want me to stay because I was the only choice?”

“Well, no.”

“Huh. Wish I’d known that earlier.”

“Yes, well, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride.”

“Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first,” Sam agrees.

“Eww. I prefer the British version of the proverb.”

“So do I. I was just trying to get a rise out of you,” Sam says with a grin. Jonathan smiles back, feeling a little bit better despite himself.

Cutest. Holiday. EVER! Oh, and a story.

2011-10-31T19:47:00.000-07:00

I can see why people have kids. It all makes sense to me now. It's so they can parade them around in adorable costumes and listen to us ooh and ahh over how incredibly cute their little princesses/supermans/ninjas/frogs are. Good reason, I say. Kudos to the girl who came as a crazy cat lady.

I wish I had a really Halloween-centric story or snippet to give you guys, but it's already late into the holiday and in all likelihood you won't read this on the 31st anyway. I still want to give you a treat though, so you get the short story posted below, vaguely Halloween-themed. I originally wrote it for a contest but it got rejected, so please don't expect my best work here. It is fun, though, and M/F/M, which is a genre I don't often write. And R rated. Very R rated, so if there are any virgin eyes out there, cover them or prepare to be violated.

Tomorrow a snippet of A Blinded Mind, and Wednesday is the contest. I am all about posting lately, huh?

Enjoy:)

***

Within and Without

By Cari Z

Run.

He fell through the metal doors and out into the snow, stumbling to his feet and fleeing down the alley. The command reverberated through his whole body, erasing conscious thought and emotion, erasing everything except the need to obey.

Run.

He ran, sliding on the slick, icy pavement, colliding first with a wall, then a trash can. His breaths froze in his lungs, becoming sharper with every step. He was still charged with the adrenaline the command engendered, but gradually he was becoming aware of the cold, and the fact that he had on little more than a black net shirt and leather pants. His boots thudded against the hard-packed snow, arms pumping, lungs forcing breath through a body that cried out against it. Vaguely he was aware of wanting warmth, craving the comforting heat of an embrace. Of several embraces.

Run…

The strength of the command began to die in his mind. He became more aware of his surroundings, of the deserted street and the ghostly yellow light of the streetlamps illuminating brief patches through the gray, misty night. His body began to slow, pain and exhaustion slowly creeping back into his consciousness. Why was he running? From what? He remembered strobe lights and the coppery undertone that always accompanied a vampire’s club. He remembered the press of gyrating bodies and the sudden, shocking realization that he and Liam had been separated, and that the target knew what he was. What they were.

Cal’s breath sobbed in his throat as he fought to stop moving. Run. That had been the last thing Liam had been able to transmit to him, their eyes linking across the room as they realized what was happening. Cal had been separated from his partner, his lover, his master; the owner of the club and his nest turned on them when they realized the building was being surrounded by federal agents, and there was only time for the briefest communication between them. Cal wasn’t like Hailey; he hadn’t been with Liam long enough to hear his thoughts without making eye contact. Even as the master vampire who owned the place had closed on Liam, Liam had ignored him long enough to send his final command to Cal.

Run. It had come with a shower of dark blood as the other vampire struck at Liam’s throat. Cal didn’t know what happened afterwards. He had immediately turned and sprinted towards the nearest door, evading the clutches of a dozen grasping thralls sprinkled through the press. He’d taken several hits, and when he raised a shaking hand to his face, Cal realized his nose was tender and bleeding. Maybe broken; he couldn’t tell. He was too numb to know. He turned around and looked back the way he had come. Cal was alone, the only sign of his passage the scrape of his footsteps in the snow. Liam wasn’t here. He wasn’t coming.

Cal fought down a wave of panic. He hadn’t planned on being separated from Liam; neither of them had. This was supposed to be a relatively simply operation: infiltrate, ingratiate, choose the best time to strike and then do so, fast and hard so the master vampire who ran the club, aptly called Agony, couldn’t secret away his newest batch of human bait, people who weren’t members of his nest that were kidnapped and used like cattle. Hailey was monitoring them both from a secure location nearby, in the company of other feds. She and Liam could maintain telepathic touch, but Cal was on his own. It wouldn’t have mattered if they’d managed to stay together, but they hadn’t.

There was still the locator. Hailey was freaking out, Cal knew it, and as long as Liam was all right she’d be sending someone after Cal right now. He could retrace his steps, but Cal was alone and unarmed. All he had going for him was the locator beacon in his right boot’s sole and the knowledge that Hailey was looking for him. He had no idea what was going on at the club right now, and it was very possible that if he went back as he was he would only end up making things worse. He got out of the circle of light he’d come to a stop under, choosing the shadows of a store awning off the main route. It wouldn’t stop someone from finding him, but it might give him the time to determine whether they were friend or foe.

Hailey would find him, and Liam would come. Liam was okay. Cal had only been a member of Liam’s very small nest for six months, but still he thought he would know if something truly dire had happened to the vampire. Cal was in the very beginning stages of thralldom, a willing partnership that some people termed slavery between vampires and their human families. He hadn’t gained very many abilities yet, not like Hailey, who was both telepathic with Liam and highly empathic with everyone she came into contact with. It made her an excellent interrogator, but in large groups it was a weakness, which was why Cal had been chosen to partner with Liam for the operation.

Cal tasted blood in his throat and grimaced. He spat a mouthful of it into the snow to his right, then froze as he watched more splotches of blood join his own, drip-drip-dripping from above him. Cal slowly lifted his head, forcing himself to stay calm as his eyes found his new and unwanted companion.

A creature grinned down at him from the fire escape overhead, clenching a severed hand between its teeth. The hand was humanoid, masculine and pale. Cal refused to look at it. It wasn’t Liam’s; Liam was too strong for something like this to destroy him.

There was more than one vampire in that club, though, and some of the master’s thralls were very powerful. Like this one. A master vampire could shape a thrall to some extent, enhancing certain characteristics while diminishing others. This one had clearly abandoned the appearance of humanity long ago. It was slinky and lean, and its hairless form was naked except for a loincloth. The tiny shriveled buds of breasts indicated that it used to be a woman, or possibly a female child, before it had been added to the master vampire’s menagerie. Now it was something other, something twisted.

It dropped the hand to the ground. “Tastes good.” Her voice sounded like glass scraped over concrete.

“Stay away from me,” Cal said, starting to back away. He glanced around, looking for anything he could use as a weapon. Damn it, where was Liam? Where was Hailey?

“But you’re fresh,” the creature purred, dropping down from the fire escape. “A fresh taste of an old, old bloodline. My master has tasted your master’s blood, and it is dangerously sweet. How do you taste, newborn?”

“I said stay away. I’m a federal agent.” Cal’s fingers found a loose piece of siding on the building. He gripped it and prepared to yank it off.

“But your blood sings to me,” the creature said, stalking on all fours across the sidewalk. She moved lightly, her spine arched like a grotesquely misshapen cat. “Sing inside of me, newborn.”

“Don’t—” That was all Cal had time for before she lunged, her fingers splayed like talons. Cal wrenched the siding free and dodged to the side, but she moved with him and leapt forward, crashing against his chest and driving him onto his back. She snapped at his throat but Cal got a hand around her skinny neck, and held her off long enough to drive the hard plastic siding into her chest. He was strong enough now that he managed it with relative ease, pushing the rigid sliver into her torso just beneath her diaphragm. She screamed hoarsely, wrenched free of him long enough to rip the siding out and then plunged back down onto him in a frenzy, clawing and biting.

Cal wrapped his arms around his head to protect it from her blows, wincing as she sank her too-sharp teeth into his forearm. Flesh ripped and it was his turn to scream with pain, to feel the brief heat of pulsing blood pour down his arm before he took a hit to the temple, and his world went from gray to black.

~*~

He woke up surrounded by softness and warmth, especially against his chest and face. His head moved with gentle breaths, and slender fingers stroked through his dark blonde hair. He felt sore but not broken, and wondered how that was possible.

“Cal?”

The faint scent of vanilla teased him, comfortingly familiar, and he nuzzled into the softness beneath his cheek.

“Cal.” Lips pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Welcome back, sweetheart.”

“Hailey?” he mumbled.

“Hey, baby.” She kissed his forehead again, then his nose. Cal opened his eyes and realized that his head was cradled on Hailey’s soft breasts, her arms holding him close to her body. They were lying in the bed that the three of them shared, only Liam wasn’t with them.

“Liam—”

“He’s healing,” Hailey soothed gently. “He had a hell of a fight, but he made it out in time to find you. He killed Arin’s thrall and started repairing you immediately.”

Cal glanced at his arm. There was a scar but it looked surprisingly whole given what he remembered feeling. He looked up at Hailey’s face. Her usually rosy cheeks were pallid, and there were grainy semicircles beneath her eyes. “He had to feed from you.”

“He could hardly feed from you,” Hailey said with a smile. “You needed it, Cal, and I’ve pulled double duty before. You’re my guys, I’ve gotta take care of you.” She leaned in now and kissed his mouth, and Cal felt the sudden tremble in her body. All of a sudden he was holding her, not the other way around, and her kisses were tinged with desperation.

“God, Cal,” she murmured against his lips. “I was so afraid we had lost you! Liam got you out of the club but then he completely lost contact, and I had to try and find you but I didn’t know what had happened or even if Liam was going to get out alive for awhile, and then when he did find you you were so hurt, and Liam tried to feed you but he didn’t have any more blood to spare and I almost didn’t make it to him in time and…Cal!” She buried her face in his shoulder, spilling her jet black hair over his neck. Cal just held on, let her shiver and sniffle as she tried to rein in her tears. Hailey didn’t cry often, but when she did it usually turned into a storm, and he knew she hated that.

“You can’t die!” Hailey wailed. “You and Liam have to be more careful! We only just found you, Cal! It would kill me to lose you, and Liam would never get over it.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Cal promised. It was all he could do, even if it was a lie. “And I think you’d survive as long as you and Liam had each other.”

“No, Cal.” She pulled back, her eyes puffy and red and Cal remembered for the first time in a long time just how old Hailey really was, and how much she had been through already. “We can’t. We tried, remember? Liam can only feed from his nest, and I just can’t give him everything he needs. And if I keep breaking my heart I wouldn’t want to. I love you, Cal. We love you so much.” She leaned into him and kissed him with need this time, hard and hungry.

Cal was suddenly, pointedly aware of Hailey’s glorious nudity, her body warm and inviting. The vanilla scent grew stronger, and her nipples peaked as their chests rubbed together. “Cal,” Hailey murmured, “fuck me.”

Whoa. Hailey didn’t use that word often; she’d been raised during a time when it was highly improper for a woman to swear. Saying fuck meant she didn’t want seduction or romancing; she just needed him inside of her, and Cal was more than happy to do that. Except…

“Liam—”

“Is here.” The vampire’s voice was low, almost inaudible. Cal started to twist around but Hailey held him tight. “Eyes on our girl,” Liam said. “I won’t be pretty again for a while, Cal. You don’t need to see this side of me yet.”

“When were you ever pretty?” Cal joked, but he still felt uncomfortable, like one of his limbs was asleep. After a second the bed behind him dipped, and then Liam’s cool body was nestled behind his, and his arm came around Cal’s waist.

“You need to take care of our girl,” Liam told him, his voice rough and husky. “And I’ll take care of you.”

“Oh God, I love that!” Hailey laughed breathlessly. “He gets this look in his eyes when we both have him, it’s just amazing. I come so hard seeing the two of you like that.”

Liam entwined his hand with Cal’s, then trailed them both down Hailey’s abdomen, through her nest of soft, damp curls and into the slick crevice between her thighs. Hailey moaned and drew her knees back, cradling Cal with her hips, encouraging him to enter her.

“Feel how wet her pussy is,” Liam murmured, his lips right beside Cal’s ear. “How hot and sweet she is.” He pushed several of their fingers inside of her at once and Hailey gasped, clenching around them. “Think of how good that will feel around your cock.” He lowered their hands to Cal’s throbbing dick and stroked it, coating him with her juices.

“Now,” Hailey begged. “Now, please!”

“You heard our girl,” Liam chuckled, and then he settled his own cock against Cal’s ass and pushed forward, not entering him, just guiding. Cal slipped inside of Hailey, who arched and sighed with contentment. Liam let go of Cal’s hand, then reached his own hand around and pressed the tips of his fingers against Cal’s tight ring. Liam rested his chin on Cal’s shoulder, covering every inch of his back like Hailey now covered his front. “You want more of this?”

“God, yes,” Cal groaned, thrusting erratically into Hailey as he grappled with the urge to both push forward and press back. “Touch me, god, Liam, anything!”

Liam moved just long enough to slick his fingers and then he was back, and not one but two of them slid steadily into Cal’s ass, pushing him deeper into Hailey’s pussy. The burn was more sudden than he was used to but Cal didn’t care. He wanted, he craved the physical connection. He needed every reminder that his lovers were with him and touching him and fucking him.

Liam pulled his fingers back and Cal followed, withdrawing from Hailey just to plunge back in when Liam pushed inside again. Liam played both of them, manipulating the speed and intensity of their pleasure, drawing it out and heightening it. Cal could come just like this, fucking Hailey who looked like she was higher than the moon, coming against his vampire’s fingers. He could come right now and it would be amazing. In fact, there was only one way that it could be better.

“Fuck me,” Cal gasped, fast and desperate. “I want you inside of me, Liam, all of you inside of me. I need to feel all of you, everywhere. Please, please.”

“I’ll give you anything you want,” Liam told him, and his voice was a snarling promise, dark and guttural with the evidence of his change. “Everything you want.” His fingers jerked free and Cal cried out in denial, but a second later Liam’s cockhead pushed through Cal’s loosened ring, burning anew as it stretched him even further. It was hard and fast and exactly what Cal needed, and he braced himself on his forearms and dropped his head against Hailey’s neck and just let himself be a vessel, a conduit between his lovers, both of them using him for their pleasure.

Hailey suddenly came hard, her voice a quavering scream as her pussy spasmed around Cal’s cock. It was almost enough to push him over the edge, but he knew Liam would make restraint worth his while, and Cal loved fucking Hailey when she was happy and pliant in the aftermath of an orgasm. He thrust into her harder, bearing Liam’s weight, groaning with the thickness of his cock plunging in and out of him over and over. Cal’s balls tightened, his groin ached and he knew he was going to come any second.

Liam shifted minutely, just an inch to the left and then it wasn’t his chin on Cal’s shoulder, it was his mouth, and he sank his fangs into the base of Cal’s neck. Cal gasped with pain and pleasure as his orgasm exploded forth, his cock flexing as he filled Hailey’s pussy with his release. He felt the sudden surge of heat in his own ass and distantly recognized it as Liam coming before his mind went dazed. All he felt were the embraces of his family, their love and the intimacy that they shared. Liam gradually stopped drinking and licked the wound he’d made closed, then press a tender kiss to the spot.

“Cal,” Liam whispered, and it was the soft voice of the lover that almost no one ever heard.

“Love you,” Hailey sighed, rife with satisfaction and adoration and sheer relief.

There was too much to say, and it stopped up his throat. But fortunately Cal didn’t have to say it. They both knew it all anyway.

Snow. Who is prepared for this?

2011-10-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

Actually, I'm probably the only Coloradan who isn't prepared for the snow that's falling, but c'mon people, it's the first one I've been exposed to in over two years where I was expected to do more than sit comfortably in front of a fire, basking in the amenities of a first world country. The last 2 Christmases, I was in Germany visiting my folks in between Togo stretches. This year, I'm back in Colorado, and we just got 8 inches overnight, and it's still falling. Beautiful. Novel, yes. Cold as fuck, too. And me?

Brilliant me is borrowing my husband's hat, going without gloves until I runs to a thrift store later and wearing a down vest over my only sweater, because I don't rock the preparedness scale today. I'm like a two out of ten right now. If my father were dead he'd be rolling over in his grave. As it is, it's all to the good that he doesn't know this blog exists.

Anyway, I just randomly felt like sharing that while I sit in my car, with the heater blowing, trying to work up the will to brave the sloppy stretch of pavement between me and my place of work. Vive le people who are little boy scouts in the winter. Come and find me and let me partake of your wisdom, and maybe your snow tires.

Upcoming Contest...totally serious here

2011-10-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

So, the art of self promotion is something that I’ve yet to fully conquer. I realize that I’m supposed to push my work and let you know when something is coming up, when it’s getting a good review, and give you bits and pieces of it that will tantalize your curiosity. Ok, I can go there…it’s the contest thing that’s still bugging me. I haven’t done any contests yet, but the standard of giving something out one of the bunches of people who comment on your blog feels like overreaching to me, because I don’t get that kind of traffic. Yet! Not yet! Feeling confident, but still…

I’m going to hold a contest on November 2nd, when my novella A Blinded Mind comes out from Dreamspinner Press. All you have to do is leave me a comment that includes, hopefully, something nice to say. If there are five or fewer comments left on that post, I’ll contact every one of you lucky people (one comment apiece, please) and either send you an ebook of mine you haven’t read yet, one of the paperback books with my work in them that accumulated while I was in Africa (includes several anthologies) or something new and exciting to beta read (providing I adore you, which is always possible:). If there are more than five comments, then a random number generator will help me give the same offer to two people.

I’ll do a big and flashy post on the 2nd and remind you about the contest. In the meantime, here are some nice reviews. I’ll do a snippet later this week for my upcoming release. Huzzah!

An excerpt from www.freshfiction.com, for I Like To Watch (found here)
I LIKE TO WATCH is a collection of seventeen gay erotic short stories edited by Christopher Pierce. Although the stories all revolve around voyeurism and exhibitionism, they are very diverse in content. From solo shows to hook- ups to falling in love, from vanilla sex to fetishes to BDSM, there is something for everyone in this steamy anthology.

Other noteworthy entries include Good Boy by well-know author Jeff Mann and Table Topped by Cari Z. Both of these stories are about office romances, and I found them to be perhaps the most erotic in the collection.

From www.threedollarbillreviews.com, for Wild Passions (found here)

Anthologies for me are not always a great experience. I am always disappointed in a few stories, and wish others were a bit longer. This anthology had the disappointment, but with some good news. I am totally in love with the last two stories in this book; it’s as if they saved the best for last. The whole book deals with interspecies hook-ups, animal/human hybrids, and if I am not stretching too far some social and political issues. It all could just be my interpretation. Therefore, I will break down my review in terms of each story.

Opening Worlds by Cari Z

This was one of my favourite stories in the entire anthology. It just felt right and complete, and made me happy with its conclusion. A captain of a passenger freighter, and the alien from another planet. A human and alien love story in the greatest form. Jason Kim the captain swore never get involved with his passengers, but there is something about Ferran that calls to him. He is willing to break all the rules at a chance at happiness, but there is more to Ferran and will Jason be able to live with losing him. Just really adored this one.

Thanks to both those reviewers for having nice things to say! For those who are interested, my story in the Wild Passions anthology will be released as an individual ebook in December, so just in case you were waiting because you aren’t an anthology person, fear not. It’s on it’s way.

Pandora Post #25

2011-10-16T21:56:00.000-07:00

Title: Pandora

Part Twenty-Five: First Separate, Then Recombine

Notes: This is the next part of a spin-off story of a series I posted on Literotica (titled Bonded, as Carizabeth) and the subject matter is m/m sci fi. But where’s the R-rated stuff?!? It’s coming back soon, promise.

***

In the three weeks his trip took, Garrett almost burned his engines out pushing them to get to Paradise. It was easier not to sleep and have to deal with the dreams that inevitably came with it, so he stuffed himself with all the stimulants the autodoc would give him and spaced forty-hour periods of wakefulness with five hour stretches of sleep, over and over until he finally got the proximity alert for Paradise. An extremely thorough check with the tower got him access to the private landing pad for the governor’s mansion, and Garrett didn’t care that his ship’s landing probably looked like a drunkard slumping to the ground, he was just ready to be out of there.

He raced out of his ship and into the safe zone, where Claudia was waiting for him. A second later they were in each other’s arms, and Garrett couldn’t tell who was clutching who harder. She smelled different than she used to, warm and somehow fresh, but overlaying that was the slightly sour scent of fatigue, and she was trembling just a little bit. They didn’t speak for a long time, didn’t even move until one of the marines on protective detail cleared her throat and gently touched Claudia’s shoulder. “Ma’am, we should move back indoors.”

Claudia pulled back a little bit and wiped her eyes with the edge of the long white shawl wrapped around her shoulders and neck, then nodded wearily. “I know, Therese.” She kept her arm around Garrett’s waist and he kept her tucked close to his side, and they walked into the mansion flanked by eight wary, gun-toting marines.

The marines left them alone once they were in the private family wing, except for the woman, who after a nod from Claudia set down her rifle and moved softly into one of the back rooms. Garrett kissed his stepmother’s dark hair and gave her a squeeze. “Are you okay, honey?”

“No,” she whispered, her breath hitching in her chest. “But I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Is Renee okay?”

“Oh, God, yes,” Claudia replied, actually managing a chuckle, “Renee’s fine. She’s in perfect health, she’s noisy, she’s so beautiful…Renee is the one good thing I’ve got right now.”

“I take it Miles is still being difficult, then?” Garrett teased her.

“Don’t make jokes,” Claudia begged. “Not about Miles. I’m going out of my mind worrying about him, and the doctors still don’t have a good idea of when he’ll come out of the coma.”

Garrett couldn’t say he was sorry because he wasn’t, really. Jokes were how he dealt with his father. Thinking serious thoughts right now, when he was sleep deprived and skirting the edge of overdose on stimulants, wasn’t something he could handle yet. “He’ll come out of it sooner than anyone thinks. Miles is impossible to keep down.”

“That rocket did a pretty good job of keeping him down,” Claudia said bitterly, moving out of Garrett’s arms and towards the kitchen. She started making tea, the old-fashioned way, with a kettle and everything. Garrett sat on a bar stool and watched her move. Claudia had changed a little with her pregnancy, become a little softer, a little more curvaceous. To him she looked absolutely gorgeous, and he could only imagine how his father had looked at her. Claudia had gone from an environment of love, comfort and security to pain and panic overnight, and she wasn’t dealing well with the changes. Not that anyone could really deal well with something like this, Garrett allowed, but he was suddenly extremely glad he’d come, because Claudia looked like she was headed for a breakdown, and he needed to help her release some of that pressure.

“The doctors didn’t think Miles was going to survive at first. He was badly burned over most of his body, and then there was a lot of shrapnel.” Claudia’s hands shook a little as she poured the hot water into small white cups. “His head was mostly uninjured, but there was significant swelling in his brain before the doctors managed to get everything stabilized. He’s not healing as quickly as they thought he would. They don’t know when he’ll wake up, and even when he does they aren’t sure what he’ll remember.” Or if he’ll remember anything, her body language screamed.

“He’s in the barracks medical bay, in a separate room from the others who are being treated. Wyl’s there too—did I mention that?”

“You did,” Garrett said quietly. “Why is Wyl in a coma?”

“It’s just until the Regen is done working. You remember what a hard time he had watching Robbie go through the regrowth process on his leg…Wyl couldn’t handle watching it happen to himself, he was having panic attacks. He asked to go under until the process was finished.” Claudia glanced over at Garrett. “Do you want milk? Sugar?”

“Sure.” Not that he ever drank tea, or really cared what went into it, but she needed something to do right now. “So Miles is in a separate room?”

“Yes, it’s more secure, there’s a DNA scan to get you in. It’s only keyed to allow the doctors, Robbie, and Renee and I in so far. And you,” she added. “I put you on the list even though you weren’t here, because I knew you’d come as soon as you could.” She came over to Garrett and handed him the steaming cup of tea. “He’s locked in a Regen chamber, of course, but the doctors set it up with a microphone system that lets out voices get transmitted through the walls so that Miles can hear us if we want. They thought it might be good for him to be able to listen to the sound of our voices.”

“Right.” More likely they thought it would be good therapy for Claudia. “What’s Robbie up to?”

“Oh, poor man,” Claudia sighed, sitting down on a stool next to Garrett but not touching her tea. “Well, the parliament never got around to electing a lieutenant governor, so after the attacks a de facto martial law went into place, and Robbie is the highest-ranked military official, so he’s taken over almost all of Miles’ responsibilities. Of course the parliament is taking up a lot of his time, and he’s still running all of the security operations.” She shut her eyes for a moment. “If only Jane was still here, this would be a lot easier on him.”

“How did she die?” Garrett asked gently, taking one of Claudia’s cold hands in his.

“Jane was close to the epicenter of the blast in the barracks. Doctors determined that she died instantly, but it took a while to find the body.” Tears slipped down Claudia’s cheeks. “Robbie was frantic, you know, because Jane and Wyl were both missing and we didn’t have enough emergency responders who had security clearance to get survivors out quickly. Robbie found Jane first, and with her being the way she was when he found her, he got kind of…he was…”

“It’s okay.” Garrett put his tea down and pulled her in for another hug. “It’s okay, I get it. I know how Robbie can be.”

“Would you talk to him when he gets in?” Claudia sniffed. “I think he needs help, but he said he doesn’t have time for anything but working right now and that I shouldn’t worry, but you know me, I always worry.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Garrett promised. He knew what was probably going on with Robbie, and the answer right now wasn’t going to be pity or commiseration. Tough love could wait, though.

Just then the marine came into the kitchen. She’d taken off her armor and was carrying a squirming bundle in her arms. “She’s getting a little fussy, I thought you might want to feed her.”

“Renee’s always fussy after naps,” Claudia sighed, but a genuine pleasure seemed to light up her eyes. “Thank you, Therese.” She held out her arms and the other woman carefully handed the baby over.

“You’re a bodyguard and a nanny?” Garrett asked curiously.

Therese blushed slightly. “Bodyguard first, but I have three younger brothers that I helped bring up, and Claudia needed the help.”

“Therese is from Kalmia, like me. The same city, even,” Claudia said as she lifted the infant to her breast. The baby latched on quickly and began to nurse, and Claudia sighed.

“You should go lie down,” Garrett told her. “Get some rest. You look exhausted.”

“I’m fine,” she assured him. “I can stay up with you.” She tilted her head suddenly and stared at him with curiosity. “Did you change your hair again?”

If only you knew. “Not since I cut it short. And you don’t have to play hostess with me, Claudia, we’re family.” He reached out and stroked his little sister’s forehead, his fingers lingering on the tips of the downy-soft fuzz covering her head. “I want to go look in on Miles anyway.”

“If you’re sure…” she wavered, glancing longingly towards her bedroom.

“Completely sure.”

“Well, at least let Therese show you the way,” Claudia insisted. “And let me know as soon as you need something. I’m happy to get up and keep you company.”

Clearly she was determined to be helpful. Garrett decided trickery was the best way to go. “I’ll do that,” he lied courteously. “Go on, go lie down. Snuggle your baby for a while. Get her ready to deal with me.”

“Oh, she’s going to love you.”

“How could she not?” Garrett agreed. “Now get.”

Once Claudia was gone, Garrett turned to Therese. He could see a marked resemblance between the two women: both slender and fine boned, both dark haired and pretty. Probably distantly related, like everyone on the tiny moon of Kalmia was. The original settlers had been insular but very prolific. “I have no intention of waking her, just so you know.”

“Good,” Therese replied bluntly. “I’m glad I won’t have to lock her door to keep you out, then.”

“Ouch,” Garrett said, but he was smiling. “Feeling a little protective, are we?”

“Claudia has been through a lot. I was a little worried that you coming here would sap her resources further, but I’m pleasantly surprised to find you reasonable.” She motioned towards the door. “The infirmary is this way.”

They left the family wing and headed towards the barracks. “How did you pull guard detail?”

“It was left in Governor Caractacus’ instructions to staff in case of emergency,” Therese said, opening another door. “He wanted to make sure Claudia was looked after. He left instructions about you as well, but they were a moot point after you left.”

“You sound almost accusatory,” Garrett noted as they entered the infirmary.

“I don’t mean to be accusatory, sir.” Her tone was perfectly even and formal.

“It’s all right if you do, I don’t mind.” Honestly, Garrett didn’t mind; it was actually kind of funny to him. He couldn’t seem to do the right thing whether he chose to go or stay, on either Paradise or Pandora. Story of his life, and right now he was too wired to feel either affronted by the marine’s presumption or self-pitying over her insight.

They walked in silence through the infirmary, pausing only so that Therese could point out Wyl’s Regen chamber. His was the third in four rows of fourteen, almost all of them occupied. “Mr. Leyton is enclosed right over there.”

“Good to know.”

At the end of the main hall was a small, securely sealed door marked PRIVATE. To the right of the handle was a medical gauntlet. “Just let that take your reading and you’ll be let in.”

“Thank you.” Garrett watched Therese walk briskly away, then put his hand into the gauntlet. A tiny prick and a few seconds of whirring, and then the security system acknowledged him and let him in. Garrett shut the door behind him and walked slowly into his father’s private room.

It was cold in there, the faint light emanating from the walls and ceiling hardly enough to illuminate the chair beside the Regen chamber. Garrett walked over to the cylindrical healing unit and inspected the top. There was no window to look in at the patient, but there was a readout showing the current state of regeneration. Fuck, Claudia hadn’t been kidding when she’d said Miles had lost a lot of skin…he was only at sixty percent across his legs, eighty percent on his chest and back.

The chair next to the chamber was hard. It felt quite fitting, considering the mausoleum-like atmosphere in this damn place. Garrett sighed, then flicked the microphone on.

“So.” He felt like his voice should be echoing in such an empty place, but the room was too small for that. “Here I am. And there you are. You know, I really prefer being the one in the box. It’s a lot less work, none of the emotional baggage that comes with waiting for the other person to wake up. You could drown in the sentiment floating around here, and I’ve only spoken with two women and a baby so far. Not that Renee had much to say, but I’m sure she’ll be a stunning conversationalist given time.

“Claudia’s holding it together. This is probably more difficult than anything she’s ever gone through before, and she’s been doing pretty well from what I can see, but the cracks are there, and they’re getting wider and wider. I’m going to do my best for her, but my best isn’t you. She needs you, Dad, as fast as possible. If you could come back with your memory completely intact so we don’t have to go through any awkward explanations and additional emotional anguish, that would be infinitely preferable.

“Speaking of angsty subjects, thought, I’m perfectly fine with appealing to the lesser parts of your nature to get you to wake the hell up,” Garrett continued, letting a little of the anger and worry he felt creep into his voice. “You are an incredibly lucky son of a bitch, you know that? You have a gorgeous wife and a beautiful baby girl and, last but not least, me. You’re loved and respected by everyone on this planet who isn’t a terrorist. You’re in a position of power on a world in chaos. These aren’t the kind of responsibilities that benefit from time away from you while you mosey your way back to health. You’re fucking all kinds of shit up by taking your goddamn time in this fucking chamber, so get your mojo going and speed up your goddamn engine already!”

Garrett rubbed a hand through his hair tiredly. “I have to get some sleep, I’ve been up for a few days…maybe a week. I’ve lost track. I’ll be back later, though. Don’t think you’re getting out of this by ignoring me.” After a moment’s hesitation, Garrett laid one hand on the chamber, let the feel of its quiet thrumming soothe him. “I love you, Dad.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually said those words out loud to his father. It made him a little uncomfortable, even though he was sure that Miles couldn’t actually hear him. “Wake up soon.”

It was somehow both a relief and wrenching for Garrett to leave Miles, but that was characteristic for them. There were other people who needed his attention right now, though. With that in mind, Garrett went to look for Robbie.

I feel like Christmas!!!

2011-10-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

Why do I feel like Christmas, you might ask?

Because my longest individually-authored publication to date, A Blinded Mind, not only has a release date (November 2nd) and a url where you can find it (A Blinded Mind with Dreamspinner Press), it also has a blurb and, more importantly, cover art! It's like being given the gift I most longed for two months early. I've been on pins and needles waiting to see this cover art and I love it!

Let me share the joy.

I mean, yum, right? Captures the dystopian feel of the subject matter (the story occurs post-WW3) while being totally hot. Thank you, Anne Cain, for being awesome, and thank you Dreamspinner Press for letting me pick her and not just saying, "You take what you get, suck it!"

Not that that's ever happened to me, exactly.

Nooooo...

Anyway, how about we round this post out with a blurb? I'll put a snippet up later this week to give you a feel for things.

PS--I wrote this story in Togo during the dryest, dustiest season of the year, and some of that bleakness comes through in the writing, but you all know I love romance and happy endings and I would never torture you. Not unless you asked for it :)

Blurb:

Jonathan Hatcher has led an interesting life. Once the psychic protégé of Dr. Nelson Cagney of the Bureau of Psychological Corrections, he escaped and went on the run through post-World War Three Europe, scraping a living out of the ruins of civilization and avoiding the mindless vics: humans turned berserker by exposure to biological and chemical weapons.

Once again at Cagney's mercy, Jonathan is stuck in PsyCo's high-security wing with no idea whether Sam, the man he thinks he may love, is alive or dead by his hand. Though at first he only plays along for news of Sam, soon Jonathan sees the conditions in the warring European Coalition are desperate. Sam and Jonathan must make a choice: make for France and a life together… or team up with their captors against a devastating new threat.

A few "make my day" cool things:)

2011-10-05T11:26:00.000-07:00

One, thanks a lot to the people who commented, emailed me and overall persevered (despite Blogger making things difficult) about Pandora. I'm so glad you're enjoying it and never fear, all shall be resolved. I'm sorry Jane had to go, but look a the silver lining: it wasn't Wyl.

Two, my short story Different Spheres got accepted for publication by Dreamspinner Press and will probably be coming out in February/March with them. I'll let you know more as I do, like what the cover will be etc., but thanks a lot for the kind words about the snippets I posted. I'll throw you a few more before it's published. Maybe even do a contest; I'm back in America, I have contest capacity now. I totally need to get with it as an author/promoter and make you yearn for more, yeah? Yeah. I'll work on that.

Happy Wednesday, guys. Keep your chins up:)

Pandora Post #24

2011-10-03T20:26:00.000-07:00

Title: Pandora

Part Twenty-Four: Tipping Point

Notes: This is the next part of a spin-off story of a series I posted on Literotica (titled Bonded, as Carizabeth) and the subject matter is m/m sci fi. I know, I know…how can I leave it like this? Don’t worry, I can’t, not for long.

***

The day started with a fight. Not the kind of fight that Garrett preferred if one was inevitable, full of angry declarations, wild claims and drama that was resolved either with brutal makeup sex or a badly needed break from each other. It wasn’t the kind Robbie preferred either, which was purely physical, any interpersonal conflict resolved with fists and feet, knees and elbows, and perhaps a shock baton if you were feeling vindictive. No, this kind of fight was the kind that Jonah seemed to lean towards, which was to say that it wasn’t really a fight at all, more like a mass of unresolved feelings that tainted everything you did and said but maintained deniability.

Garrett had been expecting a fight. Truth be told, he would have welcomed a fight at this point, in the way that a child welcomes the sting of a needle because it means the shot will be over soon. It was time to stop living in a fantasy world where he could stay with Jonah and Cody without having to stay here, on Pandora, forever. Yes, he’d finish out the contract here, and if things went the best way Garrett thought they possibly could, Jonah would accept his lover’s decision and decide that they could still be together for the remainder of Garrett’s time here. If things didn’t work out, well, at least then they both would know and could move on, instead of being trapped in the limbo that was “maybe”.

Garrett had had his new eyes for close to a week, and in two days Jonah and Cody were moving into their new house. Cody talked on and on about how great it was and how much Garrett was going to like it, and both of the adults had been indulging his fantasy, but the issue remained, well, an issue between them. Jonah wanted Garrett to move with them; Garrett wanted to keep his apartment on board. Garrett had suggested splitting his time in an effort to compromise, but Jonah had been pretty adamant that he wanted Cody to be able to depend on Garrett. “We’re not part-time people,” Jonah had said, almost angrily as they went to bed last night. “I told you that from the start. Cody doesn’t need you around some of the time, he needs you to be there for him all the time. So do I.”

Garrett had rounded on that, ready to argue his side, but by then Jonah had sighed, apologized and gone to shower. By the time he came out he was mostly silent, not angry, and he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. “Not my place to tell you what to do,” he’d said before kissing Garrett firmly on the mouth.

It honestly wasn’t surprising that Jonah was a passive-aggressive arguer. He’d been raised a Drifter, and Drifters had to be charming as hell if they were going to make berth at any place in the central system, but once they docked they had to be prepared to bargain hard for the best deals they could in the time they had. Also, most likely the last time Jonah had had a huge fight with a lover was when he’d split with Jack, and that had resulted in a tacit exile from his family. No wonder he was cautious now with Garrett.

Especially because he loves you. Garrett knew Jonah loved him. They hadn’t exchanged those words but it was there in his movements, in the way he touched Garrett when they were together, the way he held him at night, the way he smiled. He hadn’t said it yet because Garrett hadn’t, and Garrett wasn’t going to, either. It was bad enough that he’d already admitted it privately to himself.

Which means you’re giving up on any possible future with the man you love, and his wonderful child, because you’re a selfish bastard. Yeah,well, of course it sounded bad when he put it like that.

The day didn’t improve with work. Garrett’s climate modeling unit crashed during the first hour, and the technical support staff were all busy out in Pandora City doing custom power and appliance installations for new homeowners. That left Garrett with trying to repair it himself, and while he was an excellent climatologist, he was a terrible mechanical engineer.

“Fuck.”

“That’s the fifth fuck this hour,” Lila commented from her workstation. “Don’t you want to just leave this for a professional.”

“I am a—fuck it—a professional. I can do this. I just don’t have the right tools, I had to jury rig the right soldering tip and the welds aren’t sticking.”

“You can’t use a soldering iron in one of those,” Shekar objected. “The backing is a non-conductive alloy, it won’t bond with typical solders. Let me see the module.” He wiggled his fingers imperiously.

“Fine.” Garrett gave the piece up reluctantly and watched sullenly as Shekar immediately discarded the soldering iron and began rummaging through his station for tools of his own.

“Someone’s being Mister Grumpy,” Lila said quietly.

“You’ve been spending too much time with your kindergarten teacher lately,” Garrett replied. “And how is Mr. Hugelin-Padin?”

“He’s fine, and don’t change the subject. What’s the problem?”

“Not one I want to share in any form or flavor, thanks.”

“Is it about Jonah?” she asked. “Did you guys have a fight?”

“What part of ‘not going to share’ don’t you comprehend?”

“Oh, you did,” she cooed sympathetically. “You know, it might help to talk about it.”

Garrett shut his eyes for a moment. “Lila…you are not Glinda the Good Psychiatrist. You don’t get to psychoanalyze me or encourage me to talk about my feelings, not if you want to maintain a decent working relationship with me.”

“I thought we were friends as well,” she said with a frown. “Friends share things that are bothering them with each other.”

“I have nothing to share. I’m not bothered, Lila, this isn’t my bothered face.”

“You shouldn’t lie to yourself like this, Garrett.”

It was becoming perilously easy for Garrett to picture himself bopping Lila upside the head with the soil sample she was currently analyzing. The sounding of his com saved him from too much temptation. “Yes?”

“Sir, you have an message coming through marked urgent.”

“Where is it from?”

“Planet designation Paradise.”

An urgent message from Paradise could only be bad. Garrett hadn’t heard from anyone there since his father introduced him to Renee. “I’ll take audio now.”

“Connecting you, one moment please.”

A second later Garrett heard Claudia, and a second after that he was glad he was sitting down.

“Gare, it’s me.” Her voice was nothing like he was used to hearing, husky with exhaustion and something else. It sounded like…pain. “There’s been an attack—well, there were a couple really, but they all happened at the same time. Terrorists launched rockets at your father’s motorcade yesterday while he was heading to the Parliament building and two of the vehicles were destroyed. Six people were killed…not Miles, thank god, but he was very badly wounded. He’s in an artificial coma for the Regen work and probably will be for weeks.” Her voice hitched and he could almost see her passing her hand in front of her eyes, trying to keep it together. She went on after a moment. “A bomb went off in the motorcade next to the barracks and blew up most of our troop transports, too. Wyl was injured, and Jane Freeman is dead. Robbie was out on patrol though, and he’s fine, he’s just fine.” Claudia sounded like she was reassuring herself as much as Garrett.

“Gare…I need you to come home, please. Just come home, for now, please. I need you here, Miles needs you, and Robbie is…Gare, come home to us. We’re your family, and we need you.” A pause, then she said, “I have to go. Come as fast as you can.” The message ended.

Vaguely Garrett could hear other people’s voices, a hand on his shoulder, overtones and gestures of concern, but for a few moments none of it really registered. Every fuse in his mind had blown, and it took several seconds for reality to seep back in through the haze of anxiety that Claudia’s voice had left him with.

“I have to go.”

“What?” He could hear Lila clearly now, and see her beside him, looking at him inquisitively.

“Never mind.” Garrett stood up, relieved his legs were steady, and headed out of the lab without another word. He ignored the shouted questions and forwarded the message to Jezria, walking fast along the hallway towards the nearest lift. By the time he reached her office, she was ready for him. Steven opened the door at Garrett’s first knock and got quickly out of the way.

Jezria was standing in the foyer, her face serious and sympathetic. Her voice, fortunately, was nothing but professional. Garrett couldn’t deal with comfort at the moment.

“When do you want to leave?” she asked.

“As soon as possible,” he replied.

“I’ll tell the control tower to be ready to open the environmental shield on your signal. Does your ship need fuel?”

“I’m not sure. Probably.” Garrett hadn’t been on his ship in months, he barely remembered the last diagnostics he’d run.

“I’ll have the technicians see to it. It will take as much as an hour for them to remove the locks and ensure it’s ready to fly, though.”

“That’s all right, I have to pack.” Reality flooded back into his brain and he groaned under his breath. “And I have to tell Jonah and Cody I’m leaving.”

“And a little more, maybe.”

“Yes,” Garrett sighed. “And a little more.”

“You’ve never shared very much with him about your family, have you?”

“He’s talked to them,” Garrett said defensively. “He knows where they live, he knows my dad is a politician, he knows I have a little sister.”

“That’s it?”

“What else does he need to know?”

“Oh, Garrett.” Jezria sounded disappointed. “Well, now’s not the time to be worrying about those sorts of things. Go and pack up, I’ll make sure everything is ready with your ship and call you when it’s done. Do you want to send a message to Claudia from here? I can give it priority.”

“No, I’ll call her once I’m underway.” Garrett began to turn, but then Jezria opened her arms and gently pulled him into a hug. He tensed, stiff in her grasp, until she sighed with exasperation and let him go.

“Get there safely,” she told him. “No pushing the engines too hard, because the last thing you need is to break down in the middle of nowhere without anyone there to help you.”

“Yes, Mother,” he said sarcastically.

“I wish I was, sometimes,” Jezria replied. “Give your family my love, please.”

Garrett flushed, feeling inexplicably embarrassed. “I will.” This time when he turned to leave she didn’t do anything to stop him.

Garrett had been planning on calling Jonah and Cody once he was all packed and ready to go, but someone had beaten him to the punch and they were waiting for him when he got home. Cody launched off the stool by the counter as soon as Garrett walked through the door and latched around his waist. “Garrett! Where are you going? Why are you leaving?”

Oh, wonderful. Garrett could have killed Jezria. The urge to snap and snarl was almost overwhelming, but he knew he couldn’t afford to give into that temptation, not with Cody. Once he was thinking straight he’d never forgive himself, and neither would Jonah.

“I have to leave,” Garrett said, and he thought his voice sounded pretty calm, all things considered. “My family was in an accident, and they need me.”

“Are you going back to Olympus?”

“No…my family lives on a planet called Paradise. It’s a little closer than Olympus.” Garrett slowly detached Cody and pushed him back a few steps. “I have to get ready to go, okay?”

Cody looked distressed, but he nodded and didn’t try to cling again. Finally Garrett raised his eyes to Jonah, and the flat, expressionless look on his lover’s face made his chest ache sharply. “I’ll help you pack.”

There was going to be no avoiding this. “Fine.”

“Stay here, bucko, we’ll be out soon,” Jonah told his son, ruffling his curls before heading back into the master bedroom. Garrett followed him, feet dragging a little, not looking forward to what was coming, not wanting to talk, or think, or do anything but fly into the black of space and leave everyone and everything behind for a while.

Jonah had stopped next to the bed but Garrett continued to the closet, pulling out a storage kit and laying it open, then turning to contemplate his clothes. Funny…they took up nearly two-thirds of the space in there, smooth and shining next to Jonah’s simpler things. Had it always been this way? The closet would be practically empty once his stuff came out, and that would just be…odd. What to bring…Garrett reached for his favorite blue suit.

“So. Your dad’s a governor.”

“Yes.” The blue suit went into the kit, followed by a dark gray pinstripe that looked fabulous on Garrett but that he hadn’t worn for months.

“The governor of an entire planet.”

“He had to do something after his military career.” Purple suit…no, kind of ostentatious, not the image he wanted to project when he got to Paradise, which would be…what, grieving son, stalwart friend, support staff? All of the above?

“Is all your family that illustrious?”

“Or infamous, take your pick.” The white, definitely, both of them.

“So you were never even considering staying here,” Jonah said, his voice hard in a way Garrett had never heard before. “Why stay here when you’ve got all that wealth and power waiting for you back there?”

“Yeah, and look at what that wealth and power is getting me right now!” Garrett rounded on Jonah furiously. “My father almost died, he’s in a coma. My stepmother is taking care of an infant and an insurrection on her own. One of my friends is in all likelihood running the entire military operation on that planet, another is injured and a third is dead. I get that you’re upset at me, but the last thing I’m going to do right now is let my family down because I’m wasting time trying to soothe your hurt feelings.”

There was a long moment of complete silence, with the two of them just staring at each other. “Got it,” Jonah said at last. “I’ll clear your things outta the bathroom.” He disappeared into the small side room and Garrett pressed a hand to his eyes, trying to control the sudden burning feeling. He couldn’t cry now, he couldn’t, this was not fucking happening…

“Hey, no, I’m sorry.” Arms came around him a second later and Garrett tensed like he had before, but it felt too good. He turned into Jonah’s chest and squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t do that, I’m sorry, darlin’.” Jonah rubbed Garrett’s back slowly and rhythmically.

“My father gave up everything for me…” That was all Garrett managed before his throat closed off.

“I understand. He’s your dad, of course you’ve gotta go. I didn’t mean to start a fight.” Jonah kissed Garrett’s temple. “Better finish packin’.” He drew back from Garrett and squeezed his shoulders briefly before letting go. “Y’all right?”

Garrett cleared his throat, with some difficulty. “Close enough.”

“Good.” Jonah glanced over at the storage kit. “You want help in here?”

“Please.”

They packed the rest of Garrett’s things in silence, exchanging brief touches here and there, but they were friendly touches, not particularly warm ones. They were comforting but not really loving. Garrett felt the distance but there wasn’t anything he could do to bridge it, not when this was Jonah’s chosen way of dealing with Garrett leaving. Almost immediately after they were done packing Garrett’s com signaled him.

“Your ship is prepped and ready, sir.”

“Thank you.” He took the communicator off and set it on the bedside table. “I won’t need that until I get back. Will you hold onto it for me?”

“Sure.” Jonah glanced down at it, then back at Garrett. “Until then.”

“Right.”

“Hope your family pulls through this okay, darlin’.”

“Me too.”

“Let us know how you are, all right?”

“I will,” Garrett promised, his arms shaking with the urge to pull Jonah into his grasp and never let him go. He didn’t want to face this alone, he really didn’t, but there was no way he could ask Jonah and Cody to come with him. He filled his arms with his belongings instead and walked out into the living room.

The goodbye with Cody was long and loud, and by the time Garrett got to his ship his shirt was damp with a child’s tears and he felt so low that the autodoc on his ship insisted on giving him a mood enhancer before allowing him to pilot it. It was raining as he pulled out of the Neptune’s hangar, pouring down in hard sheets, and outside of the environmental shields the rain fell twice as hard. Garrett accelerated into the upper atmosphere and watched the water peel away, the final few droplets freezing against the hull as he emerged into space. The dark blue and purple of Pandora drew back, and as he accelerated away Garrett numbly mused that the planet was actually quite beautiful, much more so than he remembered it being when he first arrived.

Very beautiful. But gone in minutes.

So...

2011-09-25T10:51:00.000-07:00

*cough cough*

So, Cari... *twiddles fingers* What's up? And, um, why aren't we reading new and exciting things on your blog?

Ah. Yeah. I could blame life, but mostly I blame myself. I haven't finished the next part of Pandora and I don't have any new information on story acceptances or cover art or anything, but several of you seemed to enjoy the snippet of Different Spheres I posted last time, so how about I give you some more? (Thanks for the comments, ladies) I haven't heard one way or the other about this story yet, but if I keep on posting it here I'll invalidate its publishing mojo, so perhaps that will spur me into getting my tail in gear.

This snippet is a direct continuation of the previous one, which might be a little confusing if you didn't read the other. Just sayin'.

***

Shortly afterwards Warren came back, his footstep soft but still audible on the hardwood floors. “Not your style, huh?”

“Not…really.”

“Here, let me finish it off and we’ll go.” Warren gently took the mug and a moment later Gil could hear it being drained. How long did it take to develop a natural equivalent to asbestos in one’s digestive tract? It had to be the work of a lifetime.

The mug was set down on a small table, and then Warren’s hands were on Gil’s arm again and he was leading him out the front door. They walked slowly down the steps and over to the garage, which Warren keyed open. He had a big garage, and half of it was filled with a 1984 Nissan truck that, for some reason, still drew mechanical breath. The other half Gil had never seen before, and it looked like his perfect record wasn’t going to be broken today. The metal smell was stronger in here, rawer, if that made any sense in the context of something like metal. It reminded Gil of the scent of lightning.

Warren opened the passenger door. “Can you make it in all right?”

“I’m sure I can.” Let’s see, there was the frame, he could see the closest edge of that, which meant the seat was…yes, right where it should be. Gil got a grip on the doorframe and pulled himself carefully into the car, wincing as he felt the weakness in his lower legs. That was a recurring problem, but one he could have totally done without today. He settled with a sigh into the seat, closed his eyes and laid his head back against the torn plastic cushion.

Suddenly a strong arm was looping around his waist. Gil’s eyes flashed open immediately and he turned to look at—look towards, at least—Warren. “What…”

Click. “Seatbelt.”

“Oh.” How disappointingly sensible of him. The door shut and Gil endured the silence for a moment before Warren got in on the other side. The truck started with a rumbling purr. In a few seconds they were down the driveway and headed toward the main road. Their houses were part of a small, wooded subdivision in the northern part of Boulder, but the hospital was still only a ten minute drive. Gil searched for a way to pass the time without silence, which Warren seemed to have a thing for but which Gil himself never liked getting too intimate with.

“I appreciate the ride. Usually if it isn’t so bad I drive myself, but today I certainly qualify as a hazard on the road.”

“Who takes you if it is bad?”

“My sister, who before you ask is off celebrating her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in high style on the seven seas, and is unsummonable for another week.”

“You don’t want to give her a heads up?”

“Absolutely not, Peter would never forgive me. Her husband,” Gil added. “I think this is the first time they’ve been on a trip that wasn’t either work-related or included their children in the whole of their marriage. They deserve their peace of mind.”

“She’ll probably be ticked when she gets back.”

“Have you met her?” Gil asked brightly. “It sounds like you know her. And I can handle ticked from my sister better than I can handle ruining her vacation. Noble cause and all that.” He stared at his hands again, spreading his fingers wide. Too many to count, and he couldn’t really count them when they were all blurry anyway.

“She live close?”

“She’s a Boulder native, just like me. She and Peter have a house a little ways up Four Mile Canyon. Mine’s the ancestral homestead.”

“Folks are gone, huh?”

“For the past twelve years,” Gil sighed. He was tired of talking about himself, and wanted to take advantage of having Warren at his mercy while he could. “Whereas you’ve only been in the neighborhood for six months. Where were you before that?”

“South Dakota.”

“I feel you’ve traded up, but that’s just me. What did you do in South Dakota?”

“Firefighter.”

“Good lord.” Mentally Gil slotted Warren’s body in with the paraphernalia of a firefighter. Nearly six feet tall, wiry strength in his deceptively slim build, just put a fireman’s helmet on over that short salt-and-pepper hair and an axe in those hard, capable hands and you had—yes—instant mental pornography the likes of which Gil hadn’t looked at in far too long. A firefighter. Heaven preserve him. “Are you doing that here too?”

“Retired now. I volunteer for the local department, though. You?”

“Oh, I doubt I’d be much use volunteering with a fire department.”

“I meant what do you do,” Warren replied patiently.

Gil knew he was blushing, and he hoped Warren was keeping his eyes on the road. “Oh, right. I’m a professor of Writing and Poetics at Naropa University.”

“You Buddhist?” Gil registered actual surprise in Warren’s normally taciturn voice.

“No, fortunately you don’t have to be much of anything spiritually to work there, which is good as I’m an avowed agnostic who delights in taking the name of the Lord and all his environs in vain. I moonlight as a graduate thesis advisor with a few other universities.” Such as Harvard, Princeton…places he used to work at instead of moonlight for. Places that reluctantly gave you the shaft when it was clear that you couldn’t handle the requisite course load any longer.

“Shoulda guessed.”

“Guessed what?”

“That you’re a writer. You love words.”

Gil hadn’t thought that he had Warren had exchanged enough words up to this point in their relationship for Warren to know that he loved them, but he wasn’t surprised the man was insightful. “I don’t write words so much as assault them these days in the name of improving the writers of tomorrow, but I do enjoy my work.”

This was nice, this back and forth. Gil had another question all ready to go, but then the car stopped. “We’re here,” Warren said. He got out and came around to help Gil down. The brief rush of adrenaline that had pumped him up this morning had evaporated, and Gil felt out on his feet. He closed his eyes, but the world didn’t stop spinning.

“You need a wheelchair?” Warren asked quietly.

“I’d like to say no, but at this point I’m afraid the answer is yes,” Gil replied. Without letting him go, Warren somehow signaled to someone that help was needed and a few minutes later a nurse was there with a chair. Gil sank into it and sighed. Fear licked at the edges of his mind, but he staunchly pushed it back. Breakdowns were for home only, where he could be both alone and ready to comfort himself with literature. Although if he didn’t get his vision back, he was going to have to buy a hell of a lot of audio books.

Upcoming projects and a snippet...because why not?

2011-09-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

Hi there!

I've been a little preoccupied lately with getting back a sense of my own Americanness. Americanosity? Americanishism? You know: finding a job, drinking beer without formaldehyde overwhelming the subtle tast of...well, beer, getting a car, enjoying the wide and fulsome variety of food available to us, breaking tiny bones in my foot doing jiu jitsu...which won't stop me from doing more! Because that's the American Dream, darling. Doing all sorts of crazy shit to yourself and then having the opportunity to do more of it without dire repercussions.

Just kidding! Kind of. I'm trying to be a responsible adult at least 90% of the time. I'm working, I'm writing, I'm watching my husband construct exotic CNC machines that can carve in three dimensions...yes, he too is happy to be back in the land of easily-findable bits and pieces of high-tech equipment. As far as the writing goes, which I know is what you're all really interested in, I have the following coming up:

--more Pandora (part 24 or 25 I think...coming this weekend)
--A Blinded Mind, a novella coming out with Dreamspinner in October
--a novel continuation of Opening Worlds (in the Wild Passions antho) due in December
--a follow-up for Shadowed, which I'm still working out the details of with Pink Petal Books
--a couple of short stories thatI've submitted to a few different presses... in fact, let me give you a taste of one of them. It's not contracted yet, and if it doesn't get a contract in the next month or so I'll just post it here. I have several things in my archives that will probably be going up here in the next while, stuff that I can't continue revising.

Anyway, here's a snippet from Different Spheres.

***

Gil Donaldson woke up, rolled over in his chilly bed, looked at his bedside clock and blinked. He looked again, blinked again, then looked at his hands. Then, in a move entirely atypical for him, he engaged in some cathartic profanity. “Fucking goddamn it.”

Every time, every single time this happened—and it was happening more frequently these days—Gil rued the day he had decided to date a statistician. The relationship had ended years ago, but the man’s interminable reliance on numbers and percentages had somehow rubbed off on Gil, to the point that when he had a relapse the first thing he did (after visiting the hospital, getting pumped up on steroids and going through the circus act that was assessing his new place on the EDSS; after all Gil did have a modicum of sense) was to check the online research compendiums for the newest findings about multiple sclerosis. He had tables that compared numbers from the professional journals Lancet, Neurology and, he was ashamed to admit it and never would unless viciously tortured, Wikipedia. He had the National Institute of Health’s website bookmarked several times on his laptop. His library was filled with books, and they multiplied along with Gil’s scleroses with every relapse.

He had sort of felt this coming on, but he’d been holding out hope it wasn’t what he thought. Gil had spent all of yesterday nursing a growing headache, thinking he was coming down with a sinus infection or, if he was lucky, just a cold. He had taken some pills and gone to bed early, hoping that he would be better in the morning. Instead he woke up and saw double of everything.

After allowing himself a brief moment of justifiable panic, Gil had stumbled out of bed, put himself together as best he could and called Tally. Then he had mentally smacked himself for forgetting where she was, hung up his phone and, after assessing his options, walked very carefully one house down and knocked on his neighbor’s front door.

The door opened after a half a minute or so, letting out the scent of strong coffee, metal and sawdust. It was a very masculine smell, and perfectly suited Gil’s neighbor. It was a shame Gil’s vision was blurry as well as doubled, because he wouldn’t have minded seeing two of Warren Masters clearly.

“Gil?” He could practically hear the appearance of those two questioning lines between Warren’s eyebrows. The two of them were courteous neighbors, but they had never gone out of their way to hang out before. “What’s up?”

“Hi, good morning.” Pleasantries out of the way, Gil plunged right in. “I need you to drive me to the hospital. Please.”

“What’s wrong?” Mmm, you could build a ship out of the timbres of this man’s voice. A terse interrogative that nevertheless resonated with concern, heightened awareness and an increased sense of camaraderie all at once. God, he sounded delicious. Gil forced himself to focus.

“I’m having trouble seeing this morning.”

All of a sudden there was a strong hand under his right elbow, supporting him. Under other circumstances that sort of touch would have been really nice. As it was, it was kind of sad that Gil needed it, because he actually did feel more than a little dizzy at this point. “You think it’s a stroke?”

A stroke? “Oh no,” Gil reassured his neighbor. “No, it’s nothing like that. No, I have…” Wait, didn’t Warren know about his condition? It seemed like Gil must have told the man at some point, he’d been living in the house next door for almost six months, but maybe he had never gotten around to it. Maybe he had wanted to see how long he could fool someone who didn’t know him.

“I have MS. Multiple sclerosis,” Gil clarified finally. “I’m just having a relapse, that’s all. A few shots and I’ll be fine, but I do need to go to the hospital. The one on 4th Street would be perfect, that’s where my regular doctor works.”

Warren, man of few words that he was, nevertheless made an effort. “Give me three minutes. I’ve just gotta finish getting dressed.”

He wasn’t dressed yet? Seriously? Gil squinted, but that didn’t improve the blur by much. He sighed. “I can wait here.”

“Not gonna leave you on the porch, Gil,” Warren said exasperatedly. “There’s a chair right inside the door. Six inch step up to get in, don’t trip.”

Honestly, with Warren’s hands guiding him Gil didn’t think there was much chance of him tripping, but he was careful anyway. The last thing he needed right now was a broken whatever on top of temporary near-blindness. Hopefully temporary near-blindness.

This house wasn’t cold like Gil’s but his hands still felt clammy. Strange. A second later Warren pressed a mug of coffee into them. “Help yourself. It’s fresh brewed, black. I’ll be out in a minute.” Then he was gone and Gil was left with his hands warming around a cup of coffee that, if he was lucky, had had Warren Masters’ lips on it this morning. He sampled the coffee. God, strong. Ugh, no, God wasn’t enough deity to properly encapsulate the strength that was this coffee. This coffee was Olympic, Titanic and Chthonic all at once, and just as hard to swallow. Gil choked back his single sip and felt it burn the whole way down. Well, now at least he knew his sinuses would stay clear.