Bright Star (17 page)

“Soon,” he whispers, panting. “We’ll keep cuddling and foreplay for later. We have all the time. But now I want you inside.”

Oh, shit, this is so fine with me. I crawl between his legs and kiss his shoulder as he turns to search for something in a piece of furniture next to the bed. This bed is as large as my entire old cubicle.

Prince lies down again with something in his hand. It seems to be a little ration package. When he squeezes it, a clear, scented gel escapes from the top.

Prince uses the liquid to smear my cock. I close my eyes and bite my lip at the pleasure of his fingers running along my shaft. Kissing my closed eyelids, he hooks my narrow hips with his legs and pulls me in the right position between his thighs.

“Push, but slowly,” he stammers, the need making him a little incoherent. “I haven’t done it for at least ten years.”

I push, and my hips know what to do. My body knows him. He’s my Prince, the only one in my life, and he opens for me. I slip all the way inside and I sigh, and he sighs too, almost in unison.

Yes. Simply perfect.

Something incoherent and wild and needy comes over me. I pin his wrists to the mattress and fuck him. He shouts at me to do it. I say something, I stammer—oh shit, I’m already coming.

Prince opens his eyes wide and time seems to stop for some seconds when our gazes lock.

“Come inside of me, Phae. Now,” Prince orders.

I obey.

I come screaming his name. I yell to this strange, colorful, dazzling, bright Outside that he’s my Prince, and he’s mine. He squirms under me and pulses around me, and the moment he follows me in the oblivion, I think I’m going to die.

I
LIE
in a daze.

My spent cock is still inside of him. Prince’s legs are intertwined with mine; his arms are around me, as mine are around him, my face in the soft hollow of his neck. The alien ball pulses quietly on the pillow, close to us. My eyes are shut, but I can feel its glow throbbing in my head with the slow rhythm of our heartbeats, perfectly in sync. It’s as if the sphere can capture you, connect to your body, and deeply regenerate you. I feel the energy within me. A tingling through my skin like electricity.

Is the sphere a thing the aliens have produced or something that occurs naturally on their water planet? Probably we’ll never know.

Not that it matters.

“I’m dreaming all of this,” I mumble against Prince’s neck. “Maybe I’ve been recycled.”

“You haven’t been,” Prince says, in his voice an unusual hardness unfamiliar to me. “You won’t be. You are safe.” He takes my chin and lifts my head to look me in the eyes. “You remember what happened before ending up in that sarcophagus, right?”

I nod. “Yes. I thought they were taking me in a recycling capsule. I thought it was the end.”

Prince studies my eyes and I see in his determined look the man he has become after our separation. A surprisingly strong, charismatic man I watch with awe and wonder, no matter that I’m still inside him. “That day, I could have started a war against the senator,” Prince says. “The clones were on my side. But I couldn’t jeopardize the fragile balance between the terraforming reactors and the survival of the last members of the human race. Now the terraforming is still going on, but the domes are no longer necessary, and within ten years, the atmosphere will be completely converted. But when we arrived the situation was quite different. The senator could destroy the entire colony just by pressing a button. So I decided to go along with him and marry him.”

“You
what
?”

He laughs, but then turns serious at once. “Listen to me, Phae, because I don’t want to lie to you. The senator had my body, it’s true, but in my heart I have been faithful only to you. And then,” he adds with a wry smile, “I knew how to make things less interesting. He was aroused if I was rebellious and wild, but I was docile and boring and soon he grew tired of me.” He narrows his eyes. “Reinhold was tough, I admit it, but I was tougher. And patient.”

He’s talking about the senator in the past, and I like that. But I haven’t the courage to ask what happened to the man. “How long has it been?” I wonder instead. Prince said he’s my age, but I can’t process the information properly.

He smiles, his eyes suddenly wet. “I took care of you for fifteen years, Phae.”

Oh, shit. “F-fifteen….”

Prince strokes my cheek with his knuckles, his eyes sweet with affection. “They were difficult years, and I’ve thought many times to awaken you—I missed you so much—but then I tried to be as strong as you and wait for better times. You were without code and if I had awakened you, you risked recycling.” He laughs. “Physically, your sarcophagus was under my bed. We can say I was your guardian angel, in this period.”

I really don’t know what to say. I’m too stunned.

Prince sighs. “For fifteen years I have been patient. I waited for the time to ripen, for the awareness of clones and also of humans to increase. During the day, I was the silly husband of the senator of Otherworld, but at night I wrote subversive programs and I sent messages in the clandestine network. I have formed a resistance movement. I worked to isolate the senator from his supporters. And yes, Reinhold Coburn is the only victim on my conscience, because in the end I ordered the attack that killed him.”

“You did all of this?” I ask in surprise.

Prince chuckles. “Yes, and as far as freedom and emancipation are important values, the funny thing is that I did it just for the two of us.”

Prince laughs at my stupor. He makes sure I rest my head back on his shoulder. He moves slightly, snuggling deep down in my embrace, and kisses my temple. “The senator was killed two months ago during a commemorating parade,” Prince continues. “When he died, I dealt with my opponents and, with the support of the clones, I claimed the throne.”

I startle. “You mean you are the King?”

“Senator is the right title,” Prince says with a chuckle. “But yes. Actually I am the king of the Otherworld colony.”

I blink, confused. I have no words. I didn’t imagine my Prince would become King, but I think… I think I like the idea. It swells my heart with—I have to struggle for the right word—with
pride
.

“I would like to begin a new era of peace and prosperity,” Prince continues, “avoid all the mistakes of the Old World, proclaim peace and equality, and establish a democratic government of the people. My staff and I—Alina Rais, Souldancer, Solartrance, who helped me to gain control of the orbiting base, and many other humans and clones—look to the Old Earth as a model for all that has been wrong with the human race, and this is a good start, I think.”

I untangle myself from his embrace just enough to lift on one elbow and search for his eyes. “My Prince is a King…. I can’t believe it.”

Prince narrows his eyes and follows the line of my chin with a finger. “Perhaps you might like to know that I have eliminated forever the abomination of cloning. First thing I did as a senator, I proclaimed the total abolition of clone slavery. I have outlawed the production of new clones, and I emancipated the remaining clones. Now clones and humans can live together. And I did this avoiding bloody wars. What do you think?”

I grope in search of words, but I can’t find a single one.

He twists his mouth in a cheeky smile. “Now I think I’ll delegate to my staff the task of forming a democratic government, because I, Senator of Otherworld, want to take a little time off to be with you.”

Finally—barely—the awareness makes its way into me, and an uncertain, stupid grin widens in my face.

Prince did it. He kept his promise and has found a way for us to be together. We have a life to live. No more loneliness, no more spaceships, no more sarcophagi or crappy rations, and no more cycles, but a whole new life in this world so similar to the one in my dreams. With my Prince.

Oh, Corp.

I want to scream.

I swallow the lump in my throat and move the single strand of gray in the gold of his hair. “You have been incredible. You have done more than find a way to be with me. You gave me a new life and a new world, saving the whole human race in the process!” I state, hoarsely.

Prince smiles, resting his forehead against mine. “Can you say that special thing for me, Phae?”

“I love you more than my life, Prince,” I say without thinking about it for a moment.

His eyes sparkle. He sinks his nails into my shoulders, dragging me toward his mouth. “Now I am finally free to say it. I love you too, Phae.”

So, in this nice new world, in this room surrounded by vegetable life forms and softened by the fragrant sigh of that bright Outside, we start to make love.

Again.

T
ALIA
R. B
LACKWOOD
loves being able to lose herself into the worlds she creates. When she isn’t writing, she is a distracted—but talented—graphic designer. She spent part of her life in Scotland, but now her place is in Italy where she lives with two cats and two daughters. She can be contacted at [email protected]

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