In fact, he forgot how to breathe.
New as he may have been to deep-throat contact, Liam dove into the experience with undeniable exuberance. He played his mouth and lips along Mike’s shaft. He sucked, but also withdrew to play along the glans with lips and flicks of his tongue.
Mike shuddered. He grabbed Liam’s head and urged it back down to the place that urged his balls to climb out their sac and nestle inside Liam’s mouth.
Liam complied with the urging with a chuckle and returned to the task…only to shift away again after brief moments and a relaxing of Mike’s grip. Maddening.
::Suck me, damn it!::
With a soft sound of amusement, Liam went back to the task.
However, by the third—or fourth?—time he played his pull-away-to-tease game, Mike lost his patience. A harsh sound ripped from his throat, and he pulled himself free of Liam’s mouth and hands.
Before Liam could do anything more than offer a low sound of protest, Mike had dropped to his knees, pushed Liam backward onto his elbows, and took his rampant cock into his own mouth.
Liam gasped, whimpered, and bucked. “Ah, God, yes.”
Mike drew his mouth along the shaft—short, fast forays across the glans and top section; languorous, long explorations along the prominent pathway of the veins to the base—until it was Liam grabbing for a grip in his short-cropped hair and begging for more…harder…yes…right there…right…there…
::Jesus, yes…so good. Ah, fuck!::
He felt the lurch of Liam’s cock against his tongue and the hot flash that sizzled through his balls as he played them in his palm.
Liam’s body stilled. A hard gasp tore from his chest the same moment ejaculate leapt from his dick. The salt-touched cream filled Mike’s mouth with each pulse.
He swallowed it with a throaty sound. His dick knocked against his belly as lightning sizzled along the pathway between shaft and ball sac. He—
* * *
Mike jerked free of the dream and rolled off his bed. His dick was a lance of hot metal between his legs; his balls like hot coals.
Climax threatened to blow his control between one heartbeat and the next.
“Dammit, no.”
He hadn’t spilled from a dream since his first foray into space and wasn’t about to do it now. Mike bit the inside of his cheek and lurched for the bathroom. There he stood under a waterfall of liquid ice…
And burned.
CHAPTER 6
“What is the status of the volunteers?”
“Mike has that report. Mike?”
At the sound of his name, Mike jerked his mind back to the ready room. Everyone around the table stared in his direction, even the High Commander from the flagship now parked in the Cassini division between Saturn’s ring A and ring B. Like an E’ssennet lurking among the rocks, it waited for its prey. At the Targolt ship’s arrival to Earth, it would spring from its concealed position and strike.
It dawned on Mike that he’d missed a question.
“Sorry, sirs.” He thought of a reasonable explanation. “I was considering the status of our liquid teams. We do have that huge river nearby and…”
High Commander’s eyebrows rose across his forehead.
Busted! “Uh, what did you ask, sir?”
Covert glances shifted back and forth across the table.
Someone in the room coughed to cover a laugh. The image in the holograph wore an expression that could have been either humor or irritation. He wasn’t sure which. Irked might be a better description.
“I need for to you stay focused,” said his cabal’s commander from his position at the table, a chill to his tone. “No more daydreams.”
::No more steamy night dreams either.:: Amusement radiated through Steve’s mind-link.
Damn it! Mike had been asleep when he’d joined Liam’s wet dream. Unlike him, however, Liam didn’t have the necessary control. And Mike, asleep, hadn’t shifted them into a lucid dreamscape to be controlled. As such, their sensual communication had, once again, been cabal-wide. What a piece of fuck-all stupidity that had been.
::Oh, bullshit. You liked it. We all did. It was tactile video porn.::
::Fuck off,:: he snapped.
“I asked, Sergeant”—High Commander emphasized the word, even leaning on Steve’s presence as he did so to alert them both to his annoyance with the side discussion— “how goes the embedment project?”
In the face of displeasure from the higher ranks, Steve realized Mike was in the hot seat and backed away from the conversation.
In the face of his pod-kin’s departure, that craven fuck, Mike could do nothing but clear his throat and make his report.
“Things progress well, sir,” he said. “We learned a lot about the individual volunteers at the orientation dinner, a very casual event. Medical and Intelligence worked the crowd, checking minds, emotions, and physical compatibility without inducing alarm. The sleeper spies and those uncomfortable with close contact with our people have been identified, as well as those who are physiologically incapable of the necessary psychosomatic adaptations.”
“And?”
“We thanked them, fed them, and sent them home.”
“I meant, what were the results?”
“Oh.” Mike suddenly felt an inch high. “One-third of the volunteers remain as viable possibilities. Of those, we expect more attrition as immersion progresses.” He shrugged. “It’s inevitable.”
“Why ‘inevitable’?”
Mike looked at the soldier on his left, one of the medical corps who’d shifted through minds at the meet-and-greet last night. “You got this?”
“I’d better.”
The doctor, called David on this planet, shifted forward a bit to indicate his insertion into the discussion. He raised the palm-sized data unit he held in his hand to his face as he did so. The doctor brushed his finger across the display a time or two, as if locating data, then raised his gaze.
“The problem we face, sir,” he said, “is that this species doesn’t utilize mental contact between either individuals or groups. They, oddly enough, exist in a self-contained, individual bubble.”
High Commander’s forehead furrowed above his eyes, now narrowed in confusion. “How is that possible? How do they manage social structures and collective betterment?”
David shook
