Dreamspinner Press Year Five Greatest Hits Read online

  Alpha wouldn’t stroke him slowly like that. Oh no, he wouldn’t—but Anderson… Anderson might grin at him, shyly, and stroke him so smooth and so slow that he begged a little and whimpered. Yeah, he’d want Anderson’s hand on his cock, but Alpha… he’d want Alpha’s cock in his….

  C.J. stuck two fingers in his mouth and suckled, imagining Anderson’s soft lips around his cock, imagining the whimpering sounds he’d make against C.J.’s swollen purple cockhead as he took it accommodatingly down his throat.

  Oh, God, Anderson… you’d do it, wouldn’t you. You’d be so beautiful, sucking my cock, and you’d submit and take it and love it and….

  He almost came then but couldn’t. Instead, he took his two fingers, trailing spit, out of his mouth and reached around his taut backside, pulling aside a cheek and shoving them both, without prelude, into his tight asshole as he thrust his cock into his hand. He envisioned them, both of them, Alpha fucking his ass, literally bending him over and pounding him from behind at the same time he imagined Anderson on his knees with C.J.’s cock down his throat.

  He scissored his fingers and pulled hard and fast on his cock and imagined his body, savaged from behind and worshipped from below until he convulsed, hard, his feet battering the coffee table, even as he groaned and spurted white come over his stomach and chest and even his chin.

  The comedown took forever. He panted, still squirming, still aroused, even though his cock was growing limp in his hand. He pulled his fingers from his ass, mostly because they weren’t big enough to do what he really wanted, and wiped them off on the inside of his underwear, and then, feeling drunk and aroused and dirty in a good way, brought up his other hand, the one covered in come, and licked off his thumb, and then his finger, and then the back of the hand, and the webbing between his fingers, and his palm.

  When he was done, he rubbed his dampened, come-scented hand over his face in desperation. Anderson, Alpha, they were so confused in his head, and when he’d tasted his spend, he’d thought of them both.

  With a sigh, he dragged himself up from the couch and into the bathroom. He had a decent water allowance and went for the full water shower this time, spending a few extra credits cranking the heat to practically scalding. He emerged feeling weak and a little hungover, and emotionally naked, only to realize that Anderson had gotten back while he’d been showering, and was sitting on the couch with two bags of clothes next to him, looking….

  Beautiful. Beautiful and hopeful and oh so excited.

  C.J. swallowed and wrapped a towel around his waist and put on his best, brightest, most sober smile. “Looks like someone got some clothes,” he said. This man had just survived… God, it had almost killed C.J. to watch it, and Anderson had survived it. The least C.J. could do was be excited for him.

  “I’ve… we didn’t have anything like this,” Anderson said, standing up and gesturing to his jeans—a lot like C.J.’s, with different holos etched on. He had a tight-fitting cardigan on, and a slim white undershirt. He looked good. Without the jumpsuit or C.J.’s bulkier clothes, he looked slender but not defenseless.

  C.J.’s smile softened a little at the edges and felt more real at the center of it. “You look fantastic,” he said with feeling. “Here, let me go change….” He trailed off—he had to. Anderson kept moving up to him, three steps and he was across the room, where C.J. stood at the washroom entrance.

  C.J. blushed. He was used to nudity. His quarters were damned spacious now, but very often workers had to share on the station. He’d spent his first three years sharing quarters this size with two men and two women, and although not everybody had ended up in bed together—one of the men and one of the women were exclusive to each other—everyone else fucked like bunnies when they had the chance. They’d gotten used to undressing and showering and whatever in all stages of undress. There just wasn’t enough room for modesty, but this was different.

  For one thing, Anderson had just gotten close enough to close his eyes and scent along the hollow of C.J.’s neck.

  For another, C.J. had just jacked off dreaming of that soft, pouty mouth on his prick and of a thick, meaty cock in his ass. He’d jacked off dreaming of Anderson, after seeing the man as a vulnerable child, and here he was, an alluring adult coming close—coming sensually close, barely grazing C.J.’s tender skin with his nose and lips. He stopped for a moment and opened his mouth, touching a tongue to C.J.’s shoulder near his throat.

  “Mmm…,” he said softly. “I’d forgotten the feel of steam, or that skin had a smell. I haven’t smelled a person’s skin since….” Anderson flushed, darkly and hotly, and C.J. could feel the heat radiating through his clothes. “If I’d known how good it smelled, I would have tried harder to add it,” he murmured, and then he took that liberty of tasting C.J.’s lower throat again.

  If I’d known…. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

  C.J. took a deep breath and backed up, looking wistfully into Anderson’s dark brown eyes. “Anderson, this, uh… this isn’t really….”

  Anderson took two steps back and flushed. “I’m sorry. I… I forget. All the men I’ve met… I mean, the ones programmed on the ship, they were programmed to be bisexual. I… I mean, I didn’t mean to make a pass when I didn’t even know if you liked….”

  Oh crap! “No, I like!” C.J. protested. “I told you that! I’m totally bi, and you’re totally hot, but, uh….” Oh, God, he was blushing all over his body, right down to his cock, which was growing longer and thicker under the towel. “Anderson, you haven’t known me for more than a week, and normally that wouldn’t be a problem….” He had to grimace. Total honesty—God, it made him sound cheap!

  He took a deep breath and started over. “Anderson, you’re still in a shitty relationship, and I’m the first guy you’ve gotten to, uh, smell, since you stopped being locked in a little tiny space with your shitty relationship. I, uh….” He closed his eyes and banished all thoughts of that pouty mouth where it didn’t belong but maybe did, to some other part of his brain. “I wouldn’t be a very good friend if I let you, uh… explore my skin before you sort of….”

  Anderson looked away. “How did you know about Alpha?” he asked, probably his entire body about the same color as C.J.’s at this point.

  “For one thing, he sort of laid claim to you today when I was on the ship. For another”—C.J.’s voice grew hard—“we could all see the marks on your neck when you got here.”

  Anderson raised a slender, pale hand to the throat of his new shirt. “He’s not real,” he said weakly. “He’s not real.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

  C.J. shook his head, got a good grip on the towel around his waist, and took the two steps in to Anderson, this time pulling him in for as platonic a hug as he could possibly manage. “He is to you, baby, and there’s not a soul here who isn’t going to treat him like he matters. He’s real, and he’s still hurting you, and until we get rid of that, doing what you’re thinking about could only fuck you up.”

  Anderson shuddered in his arms, leaning against him limply, soft like a child, and all of C.J.’s hot fuck-me thoughts dissipated like shower steam. “That’s not going to stop me from fantasizing,” Anderson confessed with a weak little giggle, and C.J. had to smile.

  “Me neither,” he admitted, backing up. “But here, let me go put on something practical and ugly, and then you can keep your hands off the package.”

  Anderson shook his head. “Put on something pretty and hot and let me dream.”

  C.J. should have blown him off. He really should have. But he didn’t. He put on his tight pants and a tight sage-green T-shirt that looked really good with his light green eyes, and a dark brown overshirt that set off his light brown skin, and brushed his coiled, nappy curls into a little crest running down the center of his head, added a light splat of aftershave on his cheeks, and went into the living room to ask Anderson to model his new clothes.

  It was a bad idea. A really bad idea. Even if they didn�
��t have sex this night, it was a horrible, horrible idea.

  C.J. told himself over and over again that he was stupid, and this was dangerous, and that Anderson was going to get hurt. The problem was he was pretty sure Anderson could survive almost anything. C.J. was starting to think he wasn’t anywhere nearly as strong.

  It didn’t matter. He got back into the living room and fixed them something to eat. It was simple soup from rations, but it was quality and tasty, and Anderson ate it and told him about his day.

  “The current pool felt awesome right up until I got out and everything felt like all wobbly like….” He poked his soup. “Noodles. These are noodles. I haven’t had anything like this since the rations ran out about two years ago. But my muscles felt like noodles, and my bones felt all hollow. Michelle was great, though, and took me to eat. It was a different place than you took me to. I like it. We can eat there, and I’ll show you.”

  C.J. nodded, knowing the kiosk Michelle preferred but willing to let Anderson lead since he was so excited about it. “We can go for dinner tomorrow,” was what he said, and Anderson beamed. C.J.’s heart flipped over, and that terrible, implacable attraction to Alpha became less than a memory.

  “So I came back and took a nap, and then Michelle took me shopping.” He flushed. “I spent a lot of your money, but I wanted to go back for more.”

  C.J. chuckled. “No worries, Anderson. Money I’ve got. Or, well, Marshall’s got. We can go back tomorrow. Meet up here, go out and eat, hit the shops. Find you something you can wear in the hub and get down to the clubs one of these days. What do you say?”

  Anderson looked at him with shining eyes. “Really? The hub? With the rides and the dancing and the… the people? It sounds almost as good as an amusement park!”

  C.J. laughed outright. “Yeah. We should probably wait a while. You’re getting tired already. We want you to have your strength all built up for dancing, right?”

  Instead of smiling back, Anderson narrowed his eyes. “I’m not a child, Cyril.”

  Wince. “Oh Christ, where’d you hear my full name?”

  “Your sister uses it all the time. So does Michelle. Why do you hate it?”

  “Because it sounds like a grown-up, and I still feel your age.”

  Anderson looked at him gravely. “But you’re going to be the second in command at the station, C.J. That’s a grown-up job, isn’t it?”

  “Oh God.” C.J. shook his head and stood up, taking Anderson’s bowl from him and washing it up in the tiny sink. “That’s it. You have got to stop talking to other people.”

  “Why do you hate the idea so much?” Anderson asked curiously. C.J. looked up and Anderson was, oh holy shit, taking off his new pants and putting on another pair, this one skin-tight and black and coming up about three inches below Anderson’s navel. Anderson hadn’t groomed or shaved, and the peek of curly pubic hair coming up above the line of the pants themselves sent a little laser bolt of longing right to C.J.’s groin.

  He breathed out hard from his nose. “When did you stop wanting to change in the other room?” he asked thinly.

  Anderson looked up and his smile was not sweet in the least. “When you came out of the shower.”

  Oh. Well, hell. C.J. turned back to the four dishes that he needed to wash with extreme concentration and answered Anderson’s question, trying not to see the long, pale torso that Anderson was revealing as he pulled out more clothes.

  C.J. shrugged as he said it, because the answer to that question sounded like such a copout. “Cassie was always so much better at being a leader than I was, you know? I didn’t need to prove myself or do anything spectacular because Cassidy? She wrote the book on being perfect. I figured I’d just write another sort of book, you know?”

  Anderson was staring at him. “If that’s true, how’d you end up here?”

  “See! That’s exactly it! I had two other jobs planetside, right? Both of them were analyzing space data to improve our interplanetary travel policies, and the thing is? I rocked at those jobs. I loved them. I could have done them forever.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  C.J. frowned. “Because the dumbest fucking people get put in charge of places like that. I’m not kidding. One guy took a look at my work and said, ‘Well, yes, it would cost us some money to increase trade five hundred percent. Nice work. But we’re going to go another way because I hired my wife’s nephew and he’ll become a bazillionaire if we use a different idea that won’t last three years.’ That company is now out of business by the way. The other guy looked at my work and said, ‘Well, I understand your concerns about product safety. I’ll talk to my engineers.’ Well, I knew the guy’s engineers, so I talked to them, and he was never planning to talk to them, so when the engineers went on strike because they didn’t want to fucking die, guess who got blamed? I’ll give you three guesses, but you only know four people on the station, so I’m betting you can get it in one!”

  Anderson laughed as C.J. went off, and C.J. realized that his voice had gotten loud and he’d stopped doing dishes and started talking with his hands. He put his hands deliberately on the counter and sighed. “I just didn’t want to be the guy in charge because the guy in charge always seemed like an asshole, and I didn’t want to be that guy.”

  Anderson’s face suddenly went very still. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I can see how it would suck to be the guy in charge.”

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. “Shit,” C.J. said succinctly. “Yeah, Anderson, let’s cut the crap, okay? I know you’ve been making decisions and hard decisions and harder decisions since you were… Christ. How old were you again?”

  “Twelve,” Anderson said, his mouth twisting a little in response to C.J.’s no-nonsense tone. “I was twelve.”

  “Yeah,” C.J. sighed. “You were a baby. Hell, Chips was older than that when I got him, okay?”

  In the corner, Chips said, “C.J. stop fucking around!”

  C.J. rolled his eyes. “The thing is….” For a moment C.J. floundered for his words. “The thing is, were you the kind of person who would have wanted to do that at the beginning, or did you have to really fuck yourself up to become that person?”

  To his surprise and relief, Anderson burst out laughing. “My vote is on fucked myself up, you think?”

  C.J. nodded and laughed a little himself. Then he sobered, and he allowed himself to look at Anderson in the new outfit. He looked… God. Hot. Sweet. Spicy. Beautiful. His appreciation must have showed in his eyes, because Anderson blushed and ducked his head.

  “You like?” he asked, doing that thing again where he looked at C.J. from under his lowered lashes. C.J. couldn’t help himself. He did the same thing.

  “Yeah, I like,” he said softly. “I like a whole lot.”

  Anderson’s smile widened, and he tilted his chin back so that he was looking at C.J. straight on, and C.J. was the one pulling back. “Good. It’s good to be liked.

  C.J. didn’t resist the shiver of awareness and desire that raced through his bloodstream. He’d acknowledged it, right? He’d beat off to it, right? So it was there, and he knew about it, and if he knew about it, he could control it, right?

  He looked at Anderson again, whose expression had gone faintly predatory as he started to strip off his new holo-decorated jeans to the plain white cotton briefs beneath. He saw C.J. watching, and C.J. cursed himself, especially when that predatory grin widened and Anderson reached unselfconsciously into his bag of purchases. What had happened to the kid who had run into C.J.’s room to change? C.J. didn’t know, but he almost wanted that Anderson back.

  “So, Mr. I-don’t-like-authority, how do you like me now?” Anderson stood there in his underwear alone, looking at C.J. over his shoulder with such wicked humor that C.J. was completely sucked in.

  C.J. tightened his stomach like he was fighting off a punch to the gut and shook his head, backing up. “Better with clothes on, my man, better with clothes.”

  Anderson obeyed and tried
on his next purchase, but his laugh was low and a little dirty, and C.J. wanted to know which hologram had taught him bad-boy, because he had that down pat.

  That night, C.J. skipped the part where Anderson went to sleep on the couch and put the kid in his bed instead. Cliché? Yes. But necessary too. Anderson hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before, and C.J. was tired of sleeping sitting up on the couch. This way would cut out the middleman, and C.J. hoped it would make him more aware than ever of his role as Anderson’s caretaker.

  It helped that Anderson wanted to talk as they drifted off. He asked C.J. questions about his friends.

  “How was Bobby today? And Kate? Do they miss me?”

  “Very much,” C.J. told him truthfully. “We can take you to visit tomorrow, after you go work out with Michelle. How’s that?”

  Anderson made a satisfied sound, and C.J. smiled, feeling warm and fuzzy as they sank into the bed. “That’s great. Thanks, C.J.”

  “It’s not just me,” C.J. felt compelled to protest. “We all want you to be happy, Anderson. I mean… you just lived through something huge. The fact that you’re not a raving maniac sort of speaks well of the whole damned human race, you know? People want to reward that. They’re sort of hoping that all of that good human-ness will rub off on them.”

  Anderson was tired. He’d stumbled into his night clothes—he was still wearing C.J.’s old shorts and a T-shirt for that—and practically fallen into bed, but suddenly his shoulders twitched, and he pushed himself upright in agitation.

  “I’m nothing to admire, C.J.,” he said unhappily. “I’m… I’m so flawed. I… you can’t let them think I’m good, you understand? I did bad things on that trip. I….”

  C.J. knew what he was talking about. “I met him, Anderson,” C.J. said softly. “I’ve met him. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. The world doesn’t have to know about Alpha.”