Part two:
“I am in desperate need of correction”
Having the toilet on the ass-end of the ship made sense, I guess, but meant I had to stumble through the full length of the Unreliable to piss in the middle of the night. Of course, it was always night in space, but ADA cycled the ship’s lights up and down to help us sleep. I cursed the lack of a captain’s private bathroom for the umpteenth time while I finished my business and washed my hands.
On the way back to bed, I found Max in the kitchen corner of the common room. His unfamiliar outline startled me for a moment, wearing some old worker gear from Edgewater and not his usual vestments.
“Is SAM cleaning your frock?”
He poured himself a drink. “I won’t be wearing it any longer, so I borrowed these clothes from the storage locker. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. Looks good on you.” His hair was damp and he smelled faintly of Mock-apple and Synthamon. Must’ve showered recently. “You’re handsome when your head’s not up your ass.”
He chuckled without mirth. “Even in my youth, mine was not a face granted the Architect’s perfect symmetry or the beauty of the Golden Ratio.”
“Screw the Architect and the Golden Ratio. You’re easy on the eyes. My eyes, anyway, and I don’t think they were damaged in stasis. I’m a crack shot.”
I could see the bitter smile on his shadowy face. “You do so like to fuck with me, captain. I can’t blame you.”
“I’m not fucking with you. I’m as serious as a Mantiqueen.”
“I thought I annoyed you.”
“You do. I said you were easy on the eyes, not easy to live with.”
“I know. I’ve had to live with myself for years.”
He took a drink. I had my suspicions.
“Is that your usual tea with a splash of Lemon Slapp or are you defiling the sacramental wine?”
“Iceberg Aged Whiskey, actually. Care to join me?”
“Sure.” I stepped closer and his arm brushed mine as he grabbed another glass, set it beside his own and filled both with an aggressive slosh that also splashed the countertop.
I took a sip and felt the bitter warmth burn the back of my tongue. Something about the drink and the dark and his personal demons made me feel truthy.
“I took a shine to you that day in Fallbrook, when I discovered you weren’t the pure and noble vicar you pretended to be.”
“You liked me because I lied to you?”
“Well, no. And don’t fucking lie to me ever again.” I jabbed my finger into his arm for emphasis.
“Aye, aye, captain.”
“I liked you for being a rogue like the rest of us.”
“Yet arrogant enough to think I could tell everyone else how to live their lives when I had no idea how to live my own. I clung to the certainty of the Plan and now I am adrift. I don’t know what to do or where to go from here.”
“Do whatever you want. What makes you happy?”
He sighed. “I wish I knew.”
“When you’re not solving the eternal Equation or marveling at the Fibonacci spiral, what do you want? You. Maximillian DeSoto. Here. On the Unreliable. Right now.”
“I want whiskey.” He emptied his glass and poured himself another.
I laughed. “That’s a start. Anything else?”
His voice murmured low, almost lost in the rumble of the ship’s engine. “I want you.”
The words were like a lens that brought everything into focus. I wanted him, too. Every righteous, annoying, intellectual, confused, computer-hacking, ass-kicking inch of him.
I set down my glass, took his face in my hands and kissed him. He reached under my nightshirt and grabbed my ass. We groped each other awhile, until I dragged him to my room and closed the door behind us.
Max had that seething, volcanic look in his eyes that I’d glimpsed before, but now it was all over his face. He peeled off his shirt and mine while I got on my knees, unzipped his pants and sucked his half-hard dick into my mouth. He hardened to full length, gagging me as I slid my lips from tip to base.
“Use your teeth. I like it rough.” I squeezed his balls in my hand and grazed the taut skin of his shaft with my teeth. He gripped my hair in his fists and groaned with each thrust, until he shoved me away with a harsh, “Stop.”
Sweeping his arm across my desk, he sent game pieces, cups, bottles and ammo clattering to the floor and lifted me onto the desktop. Kissing my neck and my tits, he inserted one finger in me, then two. When his hand grazed my clit, every nerve in my body screamed. I dug my nails into his back and begged him to fuck me.
With a deft flick of his fingers, I came fast and hard with an orgasm that seemed to last ages. Just as it began to fade, he rolled me over and pinned me between him and the cold, hard surface. One hand grasped my neck and the other the curve of my hip.
“Do it.” I spread my legs in anticipation.
But he didn’t move, just held me there. We were both breathing hard. I could feel his chest rising and falling against my back, his breath on my shoulder, and the hard length of his dick against my ass.
Suddenly, he let go and backed away.
I stood up and my legs felt a bit like rubber. “Is something wrong?”
He pulled up his pants and wouldn’t look at me. “No, you’re… marvelous, I… I just don’t want to hurt you.”
“I never asked you for undying love and devotion.”
“Still you have them, all the same, and I am happy to go with you to the ends of Halcyon and beyond. That is not what I meant. I don’t want to… physically… hurt you. I should go before I do something I will deeply regret.”
My heart pounded at both the tenderness of his affection and the allure of his forbidden desires. I said, “I don’t want you to go.”
“But you did finish, yes?”
“I had an orgasm. But you’re not done.” I wrapped my arms around him.
Where moments ago he’d raged with passion, he was now tense and withdrawn. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“You are very generous.”
“Help me understand, Max.”
“I… I’m sorry, this isn’t easy for me to talk about…”
I laced my fingers around the back of his neck. “Take your time.”
“I want to do things, things that I shouldn’t want to do. Urges that are not the stuff of serial romances.”
“Things like pinning me down and pulling my hair?”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes and visibly swallowed. I couldn’t tell if he was savoring or regretting the images in his mind. Maybe a little of both.
Placing my cheek against his, I spoke softly into his ear. “But what if I want you to bend me over the desk, spank my ass and fuck me hard because I am a wild, rebellious, unrepentant slut?”
His arms clenched me tight, crushing my tits against his chest. “You do conspire with wanted criminals, vandalize corporate property and blaspheme against the sacred Plan.”
So did he, but that wasn’t the point.
I ground against the bulge in his pants. “I am in desperate need of correction.”
“May I twist your arm behind your back?”
“Yes. Do you want me to cry out?”
“Not so loud that it wakes the crew, but that would be… perfect.”
He held me at arm’s length and fixed me with a piercing look. “How will I know if I’ve gone too far? If I let myself go, I… I don’t know what will happen.”
“If I want you to stop, I’ll say ‘vodka.’”
“Vodka?”
“It’s like a code word. You can do whatever you want to me, unless you hear that word. Does that make you more comfortable?”
He nodded. “It does.”
“Good.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. “Thank you for accepting my darker side. No one ever has.”
“Not even you, I suspect.”
“No, not even me.”
* * *
~ J.L. Hilton
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I wanted someone to love me the way Billy Joel did in “She’s Got a Way.” This song came out the year I was born and I don’t remember what brought it into my life 1n the ’90s. Probably heard it while hanging out with friends at a small bar in the Jolly Roger restaurant, at the Long Beach marina, where we’d go to see the cover band Flyer.
