Outcast (10 page)

Perhaps with a faster ship, he could even go there. Go
home
.

A light flickered on the console, another message on his own personal channel. It was from Doc, and Prez smiled to himself as he read.
RV u at B pt,
Doc had written.
Job on A pt start soon. Got M for F!
. Sent by a commercial firm that specialized in long-distance communications and which charged by the letter, the message was brief. Doc never spent money unnecessarily.

"Hear that?" Prez said to the spider under his seat. "Doc's found a Malaihan! You'll be back to yourself in no time, and then you can pay me the gees you owe, you dog." He settled into his chair for the long night ahead. Flack scuttled across the console and up his arm, and Prez felt the tickle of spider legs on his scalp. He thought of Lan and sighed. Once Flack was back, he'd have to make some awkward decisions, depending on the size of the new ship he was going to get. But he could think about that another time. He clapped his hands with another mini-thrill at the thought of the new ship, and popped a packet of beans into the microheater. Something a bit more healthy for a change; he was getting tired of Skits.

Lan had left his Tablet on the console. Prez picked it up and frowned. It was in some scrawly language he'd never seen before. He hit translate and chose Common, and the title popped up.
Melohar; a Lover's Gaze Explained
. More interesting than Belaari jump gate technology at least. Curling up on his seat, he began to read.

***

That night, Lan sat in his quarters on the edge of the bed, taking slow, deliberate breaths and trying to calm his mind. He had fabricated a reason to talk to Kai at such a late hour -- something about a recurring problem with an access panel just outside the princess's room -- and buzzed her quarters. No response. Did it mean the herbs had worked? He tried again. Still no response. He had already rigged the computer logs to ignore his late night excursion out of his quarters and taken a repair kit from the engineering section in case he was caught lurking around the corridors. He buzzed Kai a final time and waited. Nothing.

The pressure in his groin was almost unbearable; the skin over his emerging genitalia was stretched hot and tight and starting to split. It hurt more than he'd ever imagined, and he wondered what other Aldorian men did to cope. He rubbed some InstaCalm over the swollen flesh and it took the edge off the pain, although the rubbing caused some other sensations to jolt up his spine, pleasurable ones that made him inhale sharply. Perhaps it would not be so bad after all. But then he was seized by a cramp that left him doubled up on the floor. Time was running out.

He was hot at the center of his body, but as he crept through the corridor toward the guest quarters, he forced his heart to slow and thought of Belaari jump gate technology, the elusive Malaihans, the freezing cold of the oceans around the northern continent of Aldor. Somehow, he managed to will his temperature down to the level of the internal atmospheric controller. As he rounded the corner, he felt his heart start to beat hard with mingled hope and dread. The guards were standing motionless where he expected them to be, outside the quarters of Kai and the princess. Their bodies were smooth white metal, their faces nothing more than electric light under a semi-organic blue skin. They had white helmets and powerful pincer hands that could snap a neck with no difficulty.

Clutching the repair kit in his hands, Lan moved slowly forward, ready to go past the constructs to the faulty panel he and Glitch had worked on before. With each step, his heart beat louder until he was sure they would hear it. One foot in front of the other. They did not move. Closer and closer, until he was almost within touching distance. Still, they did not move.

Then the door to the princess's quarters swished open, and he almost jumped out of his skin. Fear and adrenaline forced his temperature down more. The guards remained motionless. The fault in the locking mechanism was an unbelievable stroke of luck; now he did not have to use his access code. And the guards
did
react to heat, not movement -- he'd been right. He was standing right in front of them and they did not detect his presence at all.

It was almost like...destiny.

There was a spicy scent wafting from the princess's quarters, and a curtain had been draped over the doorway inside. Strains of Belaari opera trickled out into the corridor, the soft lament of a spurned friend. It was now or never.

He stepped past the guards, and the door shut behind him.

A long, trembling breath eased from his lungs as he leaned back against the cool metal. The skin of his groin rubbed almost unbearably against the soft robes, and he bit back a moan of pain. No longer able to think clearly, he pushed the curtain to one side and looked ahead, terrified of what he would see.

The room was small and dimly lit. Loud snoring was coming from the adjoining quarters. Lan noticed a tray on the table, a clean plate, the shaker of herbs almost empty. Kai had obviously enjoyed her dinner. Then his eyes focused together on the figure ahead. The princess was sitting upright on the bed, veiled from head to toe in black material. As he stared at her, he felt his vision start to blur.
Melohar
. It was an intoxicating sensation; both a smell and a taste, a swimming in the mind, a slight darkening of the vision.

"I do not wish to harm you," he whispered, clutching the curtain in his fists behind his trembling body. "I just..."

Her voice was quiet and sounded like every beautiful song he had ever heard. "Sit by me," she said and patted the bed. "I've been so bored here, with only Kai to talk to. You're the one who sent me all those nice dreams, aren't you? I hoped you'd come. You're very handsome."

His heart beating hard, Lan crept over to the bed and sat down. The princess shifted to face him, but he could not see through the dark veil. Her words were soft and musical but had a power to them all the same. If she'd asked him to disembowel himself right there and then, he would have done it. Anything for her.

As he sat, there was a sudden feeling of excruciating pressure followed by an overwhelming release in his groin that drew an involuntary groan of relief. He looked down. There was a large lump in his trousers where none had been before. His genitalia had finally emerged, but he'd felt no pain at all, such was the feeling in his head...a light feeling, as if he was suffused with the scent of flowers and warmth of a summer breeze. The princess reached out a hand and placed it on his crotch, and her touch sent every last logical thought out of his head. He could scarcely breathe, and his vision was so dark now he felt faint.

Then he saw that her hand was small and strange; four fingers and one thumb, wrapped in a black glove.

"I hoped you'd come," she said again, and pulled back her veil.

The room faded into the background, dark and irrelevant.

"Am I what you hoped for?" Prez said, and Lan looked into those burnt orange eyes and saw the stars.

Completely lost in the
melohar
, Lan's images of his own denial and panic surged, broke and drained away like waves crashing onto a beach. His entire being bubbled over with a surge of love and happiness; all the sickness and worry was gone. He stroked the side of Prez's face and smiled faintly. "I am sorry," he murmured. "I could not tell you."

"Ssh now." Prez put a finger to his lips and stood up. He slipped the black robe from his body and sat back down. Lan could not stop looking at his eyes. In the dim light, they were almost brown, the pupils big and black. The specks of light in Lan's vision burned and danced like fireflies in the dark. Prez licked his lips and smiled back, that big happy grin that lit up white hot in Lan's mind just like it had done the first time he'd seen it, weeks ago.

Beautiful
. He had forgotten how to speak.

"Kiss me," Prez whispered, cupping Lan's cheek in his hand and edging closer until Lan felt the heat of his breath. He closed his eyes and felt the slight pressure of Prez's mouth against his, and then the delicate touch of the tip of Prez's tongue, parting his lips and sliding into his mouth.

The kiss went on, hot and wet and delicious, until Lan felt the hard bud that his heart had once been start to change and open, an unfurling sensation like petals to the sun. There was a wetness on his cheeks and opened his eyes, just as Prez broke the kiss. Then he realized that he was weeping, warm tears of indescribable happiness. Prez thumbed them away gently then held Lan's head against his chest, stroking his curly hair, rocking a little. Lan hugged him tight, feeling the heat of Prez's skin against his cheek. And something else too, the beginning of a tingling pulse in his groin, a new and unfamiliar sensation of need and frustration and delight all wrapped up together.

He looked down and saw his penis properly for the first time, dark and swollen, the head poking out of the waistband of his trousers. For a second he stared at it, not sure of what to do. Prez chuckled and with deft fingers, untied the drawstrings and eased the trousers down. The material was slightly scratchy on the super-sensitive fresh skin, and Lan's body twitched at the feeling.

When his trousers were on the floor, along with the rest of his clothes -- when did that happen? -- Lan lay naked on the bed while Prez pushed his legs apart and nestled in between them. He rubbed his palms slowly over the smooth skin of Lan's inner thighs, down to his knees, up to the edge of his groin, brushing ever so slightly against his balls, down, up. Long strokes of gentle, insistent teasing that was almost like a form of torture. Lan lay there, groaning, unable to define what he wanted, but begging for it all the same in the helpless arching of his hips, the tension in his thighs, the thump of his heart.

And then Prez bent forward and took Lan's aching penis into his mouth.

The sensation was like an explosion in his head, new and thrilling and exquisite. Lan lay back, astonished, as he felt his whole being sucked into that wet mouth. Hands pulling on his balls, the hint of pain just adding to the incredible pressure inside him, and that sucking was nothing he had ever felt before. It tickled, it hurt, it was... Lan sighed and moaned, almost insane with pleasure. Then small, light kisses on the swollen flesh, cool breath on the slick wetness left by that dancing tongue. There seemed to be no oxygen in the air. But then Prez released him, and he heard the slap of his penis against his stomach, felt it throbbing harder than ever but it wasn't pain, it was so close...

Prez leaned to his side and lifted a remote controller. The lights dimmed to almost complete darkness, just leaving his body silhouetted against the glow on the walls as he straddled Lan's body and took Lan's penis into his hand. He pressed it against his ass, and kept the tip there at the hot entrance to his body, almost inviting Lan to push inside. Lan felt his hips straining upwards, trapped under Prez's weight, but he could not get farther. He was breathing heavily now and aching for completion. Just as he thought he was going to die with need, Prez stopped teasing. There was a tightness around the head of Lan's penis, a tight barrier, then a pushing sensation and slowly, slowly, Lan sank inside.

He did not know if his cry was real or just in his mind. All he could feel was that tight ring of muscle slipping down and pulling him inside the heat of Prez's body. In the dark, the stars in Lan's eyes fell like showers of sparks from a stonemason's wheel. He felt his lover's weight settle and hold, giving him some moments to feel not only the tightness around his throbbing penis but the heart that was causing the throb, beating just a fraction ahead. The feelings of adoration and sexual pleasure fused in Lan's mind forever. He felt hairy knees under his palms as his lover began to move on top of him, rocking back and forward, up and down until Lan's hips began to buck helplessly underneath, driving inside harder and harder. His mouth opened in a silent scream and hot pulses of semen tore from his penis, a mind-blowing climax, the first of his life.

When Lan had finally come down the other side of the peak, Prez lay down beside him and pushed his knee between Lan's legs. Hot bodies together, limbs intertwined, until Lan drifted off to sleep, dreams drifting in to his dazzled mind like clouds borne along, floating on the intoxicating wind of
melohar
.

***

Prez was tired of reading and his eyes were starting to ache. He'd been awake for almost a whole day. He put Lan's Tablet down and considered what he'd read.
Melohar
sounded very interesting indeed. Perhaps people would pay a lot to experience that too. But running illegal sex tours to Belaar... well, it was as fantastical as
melohar
itself. They kept the
suho
far from the outside world, and with their advanced planetary defense systems, there was no chance of pulling it off without being caught and probably ejected into space on the spot. No amount of money was worth that risk.

Where was Lan? His scheduled break was over, hours ago. He buzzed Lan's quarters but got no response. A jaw-breaking yawn forced its way out of his mouth and he rubbed at his prickling eyes. He glanced down the navigational chart on the screen and sighed. Nothing doing yet, just open space, a slow but steady progression toward the asteroids.

He yawned again and stretched. Perhaps some roasted
baba
juice would help him stay awake. Ten more minutes, and he'd buzz Lan again. He'd just close his eyes for a couple of seconds, just to rest them, while he waited for the juice to heat up in the microheater. When the machine bleeped, he was already slumped over his console, fast asleep.