A dream that had all the signs of transforming into a fucking nightmare.
He didn't want to think about it. No, he had to believe in success. As Dink kept reminding him, it was the only acceptable outcome. He said it again, whispering the words to himself as he sat there on the deck, his hand tightly clasped in Dink's.
Failure is not an option.
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Cameron Paisley's hand shook so bad he couldn't get the damned brush into the jar of paint thinner. This had never happened before. Not to this extent, not this total loss of self, of time and place and space while painting.
His fantastical landscapes of imaginary worlds had always come to him through dreams, but he'd generally been wide awake while he painted them. The amount of money they brought in certainly kept his eyes wide open, but this massive canvas was something else altogether.
He vaguely recalled finding the huge canvas in the closet with a bunch of smaller ones that were already stretched. He didn't recall getting it out. Didn't remember setting it up, pulling out his paints. Didn't remember a fucking thing.
It wasn't just bigâmeasuring at least six feet wide and four feet highâbut the art itself was haunting. Beautiful. Unbelievable.
Utterly terrifying.
Even more frightening? He couldn't remember painting a single stroke, yet he knew it was his work, done in his style. It was a world he'd never seen, and yet he knew exactly what it was. Where it was. And he knew, without a doubt, that it no longer existed as it once had. As he'd painted it.
He finally managed to drag his gaze away from the mass of dark and fearsome images, focus his attention on the jar of thinner, and jam his brush into the solvent.
As if someone physically forced him, Cam's eyes were drawn back to the painting. His hands were still shaking. Critics had asked over the years if his work was more than his imagination. He'd always said his paintings were the product of dreams.
This was no dream. This hadn't come to him during his shift in the dream shack. No, this had taken him over like a bad drug trip, had caught him up for . . . He glanced at the clock on the wall. Two hours?
Stunned, Cam stared at the canvas. He worked fast, but this painting was huge and filled with such detail that it should have taken him much, much longer.
Days, not hours.
It hurt to look. To realize what he saw in the bold strokes, the splashes of color, the finer details set within an unyielding maelstrom of shapes and images. He'd painted fear and death, abject loss and total destruction.
A world in the agonizing final spasms of existence.
Forcibly turning his back on the art, Cam grabbed a rag and wiped his hands clean. Somehow he had to clear his head; he needed to make sense of this.
Tossing the rag aside, he quickly slipped out of his clothes and left them in a pile on the floor in front of the easel. Naked and shivering in the morning chill, he walked quickly through the bedroom to the bathroom.
He caught a brief glance of himself in the mirror. As always, he averted his eyes and turned on the tap in the shower. So stupid, the way he always reacted to his own image.
Someday he'd probably wish he still looked like an overgrown teenager, but for now, it would be nice to look his age. It was hard enough getting the established art world to take a thirty-year-old man seriously. A guy who looked about seventeen got absolutely no respect.
Did it really matter? Shit, no. If he believed Macâand there was no reason not toâif Mac's project failed, there wouldn't be a fucking art world to worry about.
Cam grabbed a washcloth off the rack beside the shower, stepped beneath the spray, and concentrated on emptying his mind of everything but the welcome heat of the water, the way tension slowly eased out of tired muscles beneath the pounding spray. A more welcome thought intruded, that he'd finally experienced what the other members of the dream team had known all alongâsending sexual fantasies to Nyrians had one hell of a payback.
After two nights of fantasizing about his art and the pending rescue of the aliens, he'd finally gotten on track during last night's shift.
Had he ever. The thought had barely registered when a coil of arousal shocked him into immediate awareness. His balls drew close to his body; his cock throbbed with new blood.
“Down, boy.” At least this part of him looked and acted like a grown-up. Chuckling, he smoothed his hand over his taut shaft, paused a moment to slip his foreskin over the broad head and back again. A shiver raced along his spine. A shiver of pure carnal pleasure. He turned his dick loose and brushed his wet hair out of his eyes. Even without stroking himself, his arousal seemed to be growing, just from remembering his shift last night in the shack.
And to think he was getting paid for this! Being a member of Mac Dugan's dream team definitely had good bennies. Using his imagination to broadcast sexual fantasies to aliens who gained power from his wild thoughts might sound totally impossible, but when those fantasies were combined with Mac's powerful satellite array to boost their energy, the results were beyond amazing.
He thought of the two women who'd come to him during his shift, the last of the twenty-eight surviving Nyrians to make the journey to Earth for the combination of sexual power and visual images necessary to create their own corporeal bodies.
He'd certainly liked the bodies his two visitors had chosen, and he'd definitely loved what they did with them. Once the Nyrians had a solid form, they seemed to delight in the sensual pleasures their new human bodies allowed.
Granted, everything had happened in his headâor at least he thought it hadâbut it had felt like so much more.
Sort of like the painting. He wondered if Mac was awake, if maybe he ought to show it to him. Shit. He let out a huge breath. He could be wrong, but he was positive the damned thing was . . .
Oh. Fuck.
The soft brush of something warm along his inner thigh jerked Cam out of his convoluted thoughts.
Out of his thoughts and right back here, to what could only be a dream. “Mir? Niah? What are you doing here?” He blinked furiously, clearing the water out of his eyes. Both women, his Nyrians from the night before, here? In his shower? He was awake, damn it. He wasn't fantasizing.
“Hello, Cam.” Mir gazed up at him, all bright smile and gorgeous, naked body. She and Niah knelt at his feet, almost mirror images of one another except for coloring. Where Mir was all sultry and dark, with long black hair, dark coffee eyes, and skin the color of polished oak, Niah was her opposite. Platinum hair, eyes of molten silver, and skin so fair and fine as to make her look like a carefully constructed porcelain doll.
Yet her lips were redâdeep red, slightly parted, and at this moment approaching . . . no. Oh, crap. They were sliding deliciously over the head of his wide-awake, please-play-with-me dick.
Groaning, he braced his hands against the slick walls of the shower and prayed his knees wouldn't buckle. There was no thought of stopping herâlast night he'd quickly learned that Mir and Niah did exactly as they pleased.
Except, that had just been fantasy, right? Holy shit. What did it matter when they were here, now, in his shower? Mir stood. Rising gracefully as a sylph, she slipped around behind him, lightly tugged the wet washcloth from his nerveless fingers, and slowly swept it across his shoulders. She stroked his back, his buttocks, and the backs of his thighs while Niah slowly took him deeper and then deeper still, sucking his full length into her mouth, down her throat.
Oh. Fuck.
He tightened everythingâhis buttocks, his thighs, the muscles across his stomach. Tightened and prayed for control, but he could feel it slipping, even as Mir dropped the washcloth and pressed against his back.
She was tall enough that her breasts hit just below his shoulder blades, her nipples beaded up so tight he felt them, twin little bullet points of sensation. Then she was sliding, sliding down, slowly dragging her breasts down his back, running her fingers over his flanks, dropping to her knees behind him.
This was so much more intense than last night when he'd slipped between fantasy and reality, and he'd wondered then if he'd survive their curious explorations. Now, Niah knelt in front, sucking his cock. Mir had gone to her knees behind him, pushing his legs apart, licking the sensitive curve of his butt and then wrapping long fingers around his sac.
He might have whimpered. Knew he was cursing steadily, though if he'd been asked exactly what words he used, Cam doubted he could have given an intelligent answer. Mir forced his legs farther apart, somehow twisting around so that she had her mouth on his balls and her tongue doing something that had to be illegal in most states.
Probably on the planet.
Did it matter? Hell no. Hell. No. No . . . shit.
He tried to stop it. Honestly, he'd never fought so hard for control in his life, but there was no way. Not any way at all to stop what these two women had so quickly set into motion.
Lips and tongues everywhere; fingers on his balls; a hot, tight mouth and throat taking control of his dick. A finger teasing his ass, pressing, entering, sliding deep, pressing . . .
He cried out. Cursed. Shouted.
Climaxed.
Cam struggled to stay upright, but gravity won and he slowly gave in. His knees buckled and his hands slipped along the wet tiles until he was half sitting, half lying on the floor of the shower with the water beating him in the face.
Mir and Niah giggled with utter delight.
He opened his eyes and stared at the women. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going back to finish your shift.”
“Nattoch wanted us to gather more energy.” Niah licked her lips. “You weren't fantasizing enough to provide energy. We decided to help you along.”
“You were sad,” Mir said. She stood and offered him a hand. He wrapped his fingers around hers and she tugged him to his feet. “Your sadness distresses us. Come. Let's dry off and do it again. This time with laughter.”
Cam thought of the painting in the other room. Thought of what it might be, what it meant. Then he looked at the womenâtwo absolutely beautiful, wet, naked womenâwaiting impatiently for him to make up his mind.
He shut off the water, grabbed a towel off the rack, and ran it over Mir first, and then Niah. They preened like glossy, well-loved cats.
Cam dried himself. His legs had stopped trembling. His erection hadn't subsided a bit, and it was still awfully early in the morning. The painting could wait. He'd talk to Mac later. Tossing the wet towel over the shower door, he followed the women into the bedroom.
He glanced out the window as first Mir and then Niah crawled into the middle of his big bed. The sun was barely up. Mac was probably still asleep. Cam turned his attention to the bed.
To the women on his bed.
It was still made up from yesterday. He'd never gone to sleep at all last night. Not that he intended to sleep now.
At least, not for a while. Mir held out her hand. He took it, let her tug him close, but instead of her slim fingers and the look of pure devilment in her eyes, for some reason he thought of the painting in the other room.
The dark, angry red landscape with its familiar pattern of canals and lines, only he realized, now that he'd actually painted them, they weren't canals at all. Astronomers had been totally off base. Those Martian canals had been highways. He'd painted cities and farms, forests and parks and big factories, all in the midst of terrible upheaval. A once-living planet under attack.
Dead and desolate now, and the image of its change had come from someone aboard the Gar vessel. That had to be the source of this vision. He felt a terrible pain in his chest and thought again of waking Mac, of telling him what he'd seen.
Then he caught the scent of vanilla and honey, and the painting slipped from his mind, his thoughts filled now with the women he'd literally conjured out of fantasy. Gently, he pressed Mir back against the pillows and parted her thighs with both hands. Her skin was like silk, her smile filled with so many promises, so much hope. He sent a quick smile to Niah. “You next,” he said. Then he winked as Niah settled beside them to watch.
He knelt between Mir's legs with his palms beneath her firm, round buttocks, lifted her for his pleasure, and discovered that, yes, she did taste exactly like vanilla and honey.
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Morgan Black lay beside Rodie Bishop and watched the first rays of morning sun cut across the tumbled blankets. The bed seemed almost empty with just the two of them, but Bolt, their Nyrian lover, had returned to the ship at some point during the night. Morgan had slept through his departure.
Still so hard to believe that in the past few days he had not only interacted with aliens, he'd had some pretty mind-blowing sex with them. His thoughts drifted to the five Nyrian women he'd called with his fantasiesâwomen who now had the human forms they'd need when the DEO-MAP team put their rescue into action.