From SCORPIO by Mel Keegan

Excerpted by NARC #3: Scorpio by Mel Keegan

Stone drained the coffee and passed the mug back to Paul Estevez with one hand, while the other plucked the white metal datacube out of the machine. “Four hours, Kevin. You want to take a look at Dupre’s file?”

“No,” Jarrat said darkly, but he knew they would look at it anyway, at least the overview. The whole document would unfold in a millrace of video and stats after they boarded the Persephone for the thirty-hour flight to Darwin’s. He stepped back to give Stone space. “Take care of yourself, Paul. Stay the hell out of Aurora, you and your better half.”

“Other half,” Estevez corrected glibly. “I’ll watch out for you in the newsvids. You guys always make headlines.”

The crew quarters were below and aft. Jarrat was silent as the lift went down, returning them to the small, cramped accommodations assigned to them for the training tour. They reminded him too strongly of the Army, and he gave the compartment a glare as he stepped inside. The door locked behind him, and a moment later he closed his eyes, smiled, as Stone’s arms slid around him. Stone’s chin rested on his shoulder, and Jarrat forcibly relaxed back into the bigger man’s embrace.

“Don’t let Jack Brogan get to you,” Stone advised. He feathered a kiss around Jarrat’s right ear. “He’s a sonofabitch, but he’s ... mostly harmless. Starfleet’s full of guys like him. The service is a great way for a kid from the burbs to rise very high and do it while he’s still young. Colonel by the age of thirty-five, if he’s any good. Take the rank back into civvy street, score a job that’ll put him in a penthouse on Darwin’s, or right back on Earth. Think about it, Kevin. Leave the gutters of Rio or Saigon or wherever, return to Earth as an executive. I don’t like Brogan, but you have to respect the man.”

“A social-climbing control freak, so you said.” Jarrat turned in Stone’s embrace, slid his arms around his partner’s waist and laced his fingers at Stone’s back. “What’s that make me?” “A survivor,” Stone said without hesitation. “The only thing Brogan ever had to survive before he got out onto the frontier was mediocrity.” He laid his lips on Jarrat’s, kissed him lightly and then frenched him. “Enough about Brogan. If I never saw his face again, I wouldn’t grieve. You, on the other hand ...”

With deft hands, he broke the seals and plucked open the skinsuit, a few microns of kevlex-titanium to hold pressure, lined with thermotex to hoard heat, laminated on the outer surfaces for radiation screening. Under normal cabin pressures the suits were soft as fabric, but much too hot. Jarrat’s skin was sweat-damp and he made hedonistic sounds as Stone stripped him to the structured jockstrap which safeguarded his balls when the G-forces soared. Stone’s eyes were hot on him, head to foot, and not at all mocking.

He heeled off the boots, kicked away the suit, and stepped into the shower stall. As the strap followed the boots he said, husky and not quite teasing, “Feel free to join me.”

“You trying to tell me I stink?” Stone quipped. The seals on his own suit rasped open.

“Not the word I’d have used.” Jarrat gave him a sultry look over his shoulder as he set the water, and watched Stone drop the suit. He was looking good. The ordeal at the hands of Death’s Head was only a bad memory now. Stone was tanned, supple, his muscles well-worked, the inner man at peace with himself. Blue eyes lingered over Jarrat, bone by bone, and with a deep breath Jarrat ‘opened’ himself to the strange pleasures of another’s sensations.

It was so familiar now, and welcome: the storm in the nerve endings, the surge of feeling which had once been confusing, distracting, even frightening. Jarrat’s half-closed eyes rested on the dark nest of Stone’s groin, and the thick root of him, rosy with growing excitement. They had been too cramped, kept too busy and under too much pressure since they came aboard to be intimate.

The stresses of another assignment were due to begin in a matter of hours, and Jarrat was keenly aware of Stone’s desire to make the most of what little time they could get. In these few hours, before the Persephone docked, they were technically on their own time. They had closure on the Oromon mission, they had officially been recalled from the training tour, yet the Aurora assignment was still no more than a file to view, data to digest.

“Take what you can get,” Stone said quietly as he stepped into the show- er stall. Two large bodies in the stall made for close quarters. His arms wound around Jarrat.

“They own us,” Jarrat growled. “I have a habit of forgetting.”

“Not for the next few hours,” Stone argued. “When we go aboard the courier on Dupre’s orders, we’re on his time. Till then ...”

“Take,” Jarrat echoed, “what you can get.”

And he twisted in the small space, slithering down Stone’s warm, wet body to rest his cheek against the flat plane of his Stone’s belly. Abs rippled, crisp hair tickled Jarrat’s ear and then his lips. He smiled as Stoney groaned, low and deep in his chest, and the flood of sensation rolled through both of them like warm honey. Jarrat’s lips parted. He breathed across Stone’s hard, risen shaft and took the gasp as a kudo. The flashfire of Stone’s excitement thrilled through him, bringing him so close to the edge, his teeth clenched and the breath fluttered in his throat.

“Kevin,” Stone groaned. “Damnit, Jarrat!”

It might have been a warning; it was the last coherent sound in the tiny cabin for some time.


Illustrated by Jade. See the new all-digital Jarrat and Stone here!