A Solid Core of Alpha (40 page)

“You can keep going… please, Anderson!”

“Not yet!”

“Please… oh, God, Anderson….”

“Just… fucking… wait…
now!
”

“
Auuuuuughhhhhhhh!
”
C.J. was pretty sure he blacked out for a moment—and he was
really
sure he missed the come-rag. His entire body flashed hot and cold, and his eyes felt like they were going to pop out of his skull. His body shuddered, convulsed around Anderson’s cock, and expelled it in a rush of seed while C.J.’s spend spat in sticky spurts over his stomach, thighs, and hand.

It didn’t matter. The mess didn’t matter. Anderson collapsed against his back, and C.J. snuggled backward willingly into his arms. Together, the two of them pitched sideways, facing the back of the couch, and just sat for a few moments, catching their breath.

“You okay?” Anderson asked, and C.J. tilted his head. Anderson met him halfway, propping himself up on an elbow so they could meet eyes.

“I’m better off than my couch,” he muttered dryly, and Anderson smacked his hand to his forehead.

“I’m so sorry….”

“God, don’t be. The couch I can clean. What we just did there? I couldn’t recreate that with a butt plug and a cock-pump for any amount of money!”

“Or a holodeck,” Anderson said soberly, and C.J.’s exuberance quieted to absolute contentment.

“Or a holodeck.”

“My seed is in your body,” Anderson said quietly, like he was savoring the words. “You have no idea how damned sexy that is.”

C.J. clenched his bottom, felt the hot mass of it sliding down his crease, over his balls, down his thighs. “I do,” he said softly. It was solid and real—it was animal and base and tender and sublime all at once. Of course C.J. knew.

“So, I’ve got one question,” Anderson said, kissing C.J.’s shoulder, and C.J. smiled a little, feeling loopy.

“Yeah?”

“You’ve got a month of leave. What do we do now?”

Part 7: Anderson

Chapter 20

Dawn

T
HE
question should have been, “What are we
not
going to do?”

There were limitations, of course. Anderson had swimming—now because he liked it—and therapy
every day
without cessation. He was the first to admit that it was necessary.

“Jensen and Molly help me keep track of what’s real and what’s not, and they’re good at figuring out the difference when I don’t feel like I’m doing a very good job.”

“They’re the best,” C.J. had conceded as they’d eaten dinner that first night. “They’ll take care of you.” They had showered first, and then made love again, and
then
finally gotten around to dinner.

“They’re not taking care of me because they’re the best,” Anderson said dryly. “They’re taking care of me because they love you.”

C.J. flushed. “Well, uhm, yeah. There’s that.”

“You and Jensen…?” Anderson inquired delicately, wanting the matter out of the way.

“Were terribly in love during university,” C.J. confessed without flinching. “But he’s way too brilliant for me, and I’m way too flaky for him, and so I broke it off before we could hate each other. He didn’t talk to me for two years, and then I ended up on the station, and we just kept meeting up planetside. It didn’t matter who we were with, we always ended up at the same place for dinner or a video or to swim or whatever, and, well, you’ve seen him.”

Anderson could concede that yes, given the chance to dance with Dr. Jensen Cherry, it would be a stupid man—or woman—who turned him down. “And Molly?” Anderson had to ask.

C.J. had shrugged, grinned, and blushed. “Well, I’m bi, so’s she, and she and Jensen… hell, Anderson, their bed is—was—famous. Getting invited to their house was like getting invited to an all-you-can-eat sex buffet. Can’t deny I didn’t get stuffed on occasion.”

“Or stuffed yourself,” Anderson smirked. C.J. had topped the second (or third?) time that afternoon, and yes, it had been awesome.

“That too.”

“So, it
was
famous?”

C.J. shrugged, reaching for another helping of tubers and mammal-bird eggs. “They’re exclusive now. They sort of… let’s just say that for once I got to be a good example. They don’t want anybody else in the middle of them. It’s about time.”

And that had been that.

But after their workout—C.J. would come swimming with Anderson and then sit in the shade with a book during Anderson’s therapy session—the sky was the limit.

C.J. took him to every video theatre within an hour’s travel, and every restaurant too. They spent three days in a row at the nearest amusement park, and Anderson got to scream for real at the stomach-dropping happy fear of the roller coaster or the water ride, and he got to see a haunted house for the first time ever. (“That mirror thing was too close to the inside of my own head for comfort,” he’d confessed with a shudder, and they’d both agreed to stay the hell away from that attraction.) They’d played in the anti-gravity chamber and the skid room, where the floors were slippery against the poly-skids on their feet and all of the obstacles were softly padded, and Anderson had gone on the whirly rides, the kind that pressed you back against a wall with centrifugal force, until he’d nearly thrown up.

But that hadn’t been the best part.

The best part had been C.J.’s hard-wrung permission from Jensen and Molly to take Anderson on an overnight trip to the beach.

The beach itself was not far away—an hour, by a windy road with the hovercraft, to a little stand of cabins that stood with their front doors in the woods and their back doors on the sand.

That had been the best part.

When they’d arrived, C.J. had opened that back door, and Anderson looked out onto… the world. A vast beach, with sand dunes at its back, covered in pungent, yellow-and-purple flowered plants with leaves so green they were almost turquoise. The sand itself was a blinding white, and the ocean… damn. Wow. Holy hells.

It started out clear, cerulean blue, but as the horizon retreated, it darkened to a true blue-green-turquoise. The kelp stands as it grew deeper were fuchsia in color, and the peerless blue of the horizon—the sight literally stopped Anderson’s breath in his chest.

All those years he’d been afraid to look beyond the confines of his imaginary walls because reality was so much smaller… and here was reality, achingly beautiful and so, so bright, and it stretched beyond his fingertips, his for the taking.

He’d taken five steps out of the cabin, sat down abruptly on the sand, and simply wept, soundlessly, at the sight of it, while C.J. sat behind him, arms around his shoulders, and held him until he was done.

They’d stayed there for an hour, quiet in the moment, until the sun started to fall behind the horizon. In front of them, the sky blazed red and orange, and the water flooded with fire. Above them, the night was darkest purple, and the stars were so clear and white they could draw blood. Two of the moons waxed fat and gold, one full and one at three quarters, both of them beautiful.

Anderson had caught his breath and simply watched, and when the last fractals of sunlight had finally dispersed across the dark water, he’d collapsed in C.J.’s arms and breathed for what felt like the first time in years.

C.J. nuzzled his ear and spoken. “Hungry?”

“For sex or food?”

“Food first. Then sex. Then sleep.”

“I like a man with his priorities straight.”

Their lovemaking that night had been exquisite and tender, a kiss that never ended. They had simply taken each other in hand and stroked as they kissed lips, cheeks, chins, and finally succumbed, mouth to mouth, bodies heaving and straining, foreskins sliding furiously over the crowns of their cocks as they came on each other, scalding and sticky in the dark.

Two days later, C.J. had boarded the shuttle back to the space station and left.

This time Anderson had cried, and dented one of C.J.’s cabinets with his foot, and broken a chair. He’d confessed to C.J. rather shamefacedly over the video that night, and C.J. had grimaced.

“I’ll start leaving shit for you to throw at the wall or something, baby. Carpentry’s expensive!”

“You’re not mad?”

C.J.’s smile across the monitor had been partly forgiving, partly bitter. “It’s a hell of a lot better than the send-off you gave me last time,” he said quietly, and abruptly, Anderson hadn’t felt so bad for breaking things. C.J. was right. It was a hell of a lot better than helpless desperation.

The next three months had flown by.

Since C.J.’s stay had gone so well, Jensen let Anderson stay in C.J.’s bungalow. C.J. had given him the guest bedroom, and while it was true he put a desk in there and gradually found prints for the walls—including a shifting picture frame with pictures from C.J.’s first leave—and decorated it with stuff he liked, the truth was that Anderson slept in C.J.’s bed every night, dreaming about C.J.’s return.

Anderson’s therapy sessions had become shorter and less frequent. While he still swam every day (because he had come to love it by now), he only saw Jensen or Molly every other day, and that was about the time he started wondering what to do with himself.

That was the day C.J.’s dad came to him with a proposition.

Anderson had been proud that he could greet Christopher James Poulson with fruit juice and fresh baked bread, a hobby he’d developed after ten years of synth food. They’d sat on chairs at a table in C.J.’s small backyard, which was mostly lawn with some flowering shrubs around for shade, and Chris, as he asked to be called, had talked of inconsequential things—the weather, what parts of the planet Anderson had seen, when he wanted a tour of the eastern quadrant of the northern hemisphere, and so on.

Then Chris had gotten to the point.

Anderson had sat for a few moments, a little stunned, and very interested, and very much afraid, after Chris had very sweetly offered to see himself out and give Anderson a chance to mull it over.

Anderson had sat until the fruit juice had grown warm and the late fall sunshine had grown a little bit uncomfortable before cleaning off the table and going inside to C.J.’s bright, airy home away from the station. He’d washed up in a daze and then gone into “his” room and looked around. On the end table by the bed he never slept in, he’d set the school tablet that C.J. had so carefully preserved from the shuttle, the one with his family on it that he hardly recalled was his.

The one that he had only looked at when the demands of therapy required it.

That afternoon he sat down on the bed and looked at every picture and re-read every letter. Of course he cried through it—again. Of course it was painful, aching like the world was ending in his chest for every goddamned minute—again. When C.J. called that evening, he was still a mess—a weeping, slobbering, snotty mess—but when he told C.J. what he’d been doing and why, C.J. had smiled, that cocky, carefree C.J. smile that had let Anderson know it was all going to be okay in the first place, and Anderson wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Of course you’ve got to, baby. Of course. It’s perfect. You’ll do a wonderful job. I have no doubt.”

“But….” Anderson grimaced. He had jobs—more than one offer—up at the station, with the assurance that all he had to do was choose his venue and take his time. He’d made friends there, and his work on the holodeck had impressed
everybody
. He’d told C.J. during his visit that what he wanted was to be with
C.J.
—to work the same schedule, to come home and play together during leave and live together on the station and… to just
be
together, because Anderson, of all people, knew that there might not ever be enough time in the world for that to happen.

C.J. finished the sentence for him. “But you wouldn’t be able to come up with me after my next leave.”

“No.” Anderson bit his lips and willed C.J. to understand—and because he was C.J., he did.

“This’ll be good,” he said with a decided nod to his head. “I mean, it’ll suck, but it’ll be good.”

“Good?” Anderson asked with a small smile.

“You’ll get to work with people. Meet people.” C.J. blushed and looked haunted and frightened and sad. “People who aren’t me.”

“Aw, hell, not that shit again!” Anderson smacked his desk in exasperation.

“It’s a real consideration.”

“Not for me!”

Hell. Why couldn’t they ever hash these things out when C.J. was downplanet and Anderson could
touch
C.J. and reassure him that Anderson was totally and completely sincere? “C.J., you know I read my family’s letters, right?”

“Right.”

“My sister had a boyfriend, and I’m damned sure that if the universe hadn’t dropped a pile of rocks on that damned pile of rock, they would have been married and happy.”

“Well, your sister had a mining colony to choose from!” C.J. snapped.

“And I had a space station and… and… and a mental institution!”

They both stopped there and met each other’s eyes and giggled.

“Not to mention my own head!” Anderson finished with dignity, and that made C.J. out and out guffaw.

“Okay, okay, I’ll believe you. I have no choice. But here’s the deal. You stay down there and you take that money you hate so much and build that amazing idea my father came up with. And if you meet any people, any… you know… interesting people, while I’m off-planet, no hard feelings, okay?”

Anderson had scowled, and for a moment Alpha surfaced so forcefully that Anderson had no choice but to let him. “If you meet anybody interesting up there, you’d better tell them to keep their hands the hell off your body,” he growled. “That’s mine!”

C.J.’s laughter turned shy and pleased. “That’s a deal,” he mumbled.

“Good.”

The conversation had ended, and Anderson had talked to Jensen and Molly and worked out a flexible therapy schedule the next morning.

Then he’d called C.J.’s father, who seemed to love him already, and the work began.

Anderson put things in motion, hired people, dealt with financiers and bankers (whom he didn’t understand at all), and basically was
the boss
for the memorial foundation that would commemorate his home, his family, the world he’d known as a child.