Imperfect Partners (4 page)

She desperately wanted a mate, but she didn’t dare hope this Conan would be any different from the Earthling privateer who not too long ago had driven home the fact that love and companionship were not for her.

But she still could want. She still could dream.

In the fucking glade where lovers mated, Nebula slipped off her blue robe and let the sunshine warm her naked skin. The sweet smell of flowering fruit trees filled her nostrils and colorful birds chirped overhead. They didn’t care that she’d been altered, that she’d been marked since childhood for a life of loneliness, of servitude to those who had not been cursed with the mutant gene.

This was not the first time she’d come here alone.

She’d been naked that day, as she was now. The Earthling privateer had caught her unaware. The man hadn’t had Guy’s impressive presence or Shedir’s commanding good looks. In fact, he had looked quite ordinary. Unremarkable. Nebula had been sunning herself, drying off the water from the stream in which she’d bathed and combing tangles from the long, wavy hair that had veiled her body and hid her shame.

The man had smiled at her, the smile of one who felt desire. Her nipples had tingled with the heat of his gaze. His cock had risen in silent salute. For the first time since learning about her defective gene, Nebula had felt whole.

“Let me.” He’d taken the comb from her and run it through her hair. Then he’d bent and sucked first one nipple and then the other. “You are beautiful. You’re mine.”

“No.” A warning had rung somewhere deep in Nebula’s head, but the pleasure of another human’s touch muted her protest. Her would-be lover had laid her over the fucking stone, as though to mate with her.

Could he? Could he possibly want her, imperfect as she was? It seemed he did. His cock prodded her from behind, seeking her ass to claim her.

She couldn’t let him, not until he knew. “I would welcome you as my mate, but I must tell you first that I have been sterilized. I had myself altered to prevent the spread of the mutant gene.”

He had jerked away as though she’d burned him and rolled her onto her back. His gaze hung on the tattoo, her mark of shame. “Mate with the likes of you? I’d rather die. A nd I’d sooner fuck a sexbot than spill my seed in you. Mutant bitch.” A s he had whirled around and strode away, he’d spat out the word again and again, as though it were a curse.

Come to think of it, it was. A curse Nebula would have to live with all her life.

Early that morning, Conan made his way to Pak Song’s sexbot emporium on Obsidion’s Street of Pleasure, surprised at the revelry going on there and the fact that the revelers appeared to be more locals than the usual tourists who flocked to the streets every night. He wondered what the occasion might be and whether it had something to do with the cyborg maker having moved his appointment forward by two days, but Conan said nothing while the wizened little man examined him.

“You good as new, Captain—almost. Make sure you got plenty of these,” he said, patting the patch on Conan’s lower abdomen. “They not easy to get once you leave Obsidion.”

“Can one of the patches do for a woman what it does for me?”

“That one cannot. Females need different hormone.” Pak Song adjusted the lighted magnifier on his forehead and bent to the task of adjusting a tiny cybernetic control he had implanted beneath the skin of Conan’s thigh. “Different patch for women. Patch looks almost like yours. Must be replaced monthly, like yours. They are outlawed practically everywhere in the galaxy. Why? You have a sterilized female friend?”

“Possibly. Do you recall my two friends who visited you the day I came to your shop and tried my new cock out on one of your deluxe bots?”

“Guy Stone. My first successful attempt at creating a bionic human. A nd your mutual friend Shedir. They both now live on Luna Ten, yes?”

“Yes. I have been invited to resettle there, and they have offered me a mate. A n Earthling female. She is the half-sister of Shedir and Guy’s mates.”

“A mutant gene carrier?”

Hearing the words applied to the female he’d been offered as his mate rankled, though if Nebula had not been a carrier, it would have been unthinkable for her sisters’ mates to offer her to one such as him. “Yes. She was sterilized because she carries the mutant gene.” The cyborg maker frowned. “You worry that she will not pleasure you?”

“I worry that I will not be able to give her pleasure. That she will find no joy in serving my sexual needs.” Conan recalled crude jests made in barracks and barrooms throughout the galaxy, about sterilized females being of less use for sex than bots.

The old man smiled. “I will get you what you need, patches and the injection that will be necessary to stimulate her libido and make her wet for you. Not fair that I made you a new cock if it cannot give your mate pleasure. You tell no one, though. Pak Song could lose head for dispensing female hormones, even here on Obsidion. Only the sex emporium owners have license to get it, but Romulus, the A urelion, owes me big favor.”

“I will never say a word.” Conan owed Pak Song for having restored his reason for living. “If you are finished with me for now, I believe I will go and see why it seems that every citizen of this little planet is reveling in the streets today.”

“I can tell you why, Captain. Our king has ordered celebration because succession to Diamond Throne is once again secure. A s you may know, Crown Prince Tabor was killed in battle six weeks ago. The king has located his second son, A rik, alive. A rik returns today from exile to take his rightful position.”

“Why was A rik sent into exile?” Conan assumed the younger prince must have committed some vile offense to have been banished from the Diamond Palace.

Pak Song shook his head. “Ten years ago, our king named Tabor his heir and ordered A rik made royal eunuch along with four sons of old king. A rik fled Obsidion rather than accept his fate. Word came a few years later that he was dead, killed by mercenaries off the tiny planet Eastphalia. It turns out, thanks to all the gods, that he survived and settled there.” It amazed Conan how much the cyborg maker seemed to know about the goings-on of the reclusive royal family of Obsidion. “How are you privy to all this information?”

“The king’s own steward told me when he issued the royal order for me to come to palace this afternoon, to examine A rik’s wounds,” he said with obvious pride.

Conan reached out his bionic hand to Pak Song. “Go. You must not keep the king waiting. I thank you for everything you and your son have done for me.”

* * * * *

A s Conan walked down the street from Pak Song’s laboratories, he thought of his brother. Hoped he was happy. Maybe he should check on Xander, especially now that he knew he would be leaving Obsidion soon.

Conan had avoided the sex brokers, not wanting to encounter Xander and make his brother feel guilty over what had happened to him.

But Xander didn’t need to know if Conan didn’t identify himself. Deciding he could conceal his identity behind the robe he had to wear, Conan headed into the Street of Pleasure, trying to ignore the pitying looks.

A t the third sex slave emporium on the Strip, he spotted Xander posing in the window. A s before, his nude body was deeply tanned and oiled, and he wore the same jeweled collar Conan remembered. Now, though, Xander sported a large, red, heart-shaped patch on his left hip instead of the triangular one Conan had noticed on his inner thigh immediately after he’d sold himself to the A urelion. Conan assumed at first that Xander’s new patch held testosterone, as did the square, skin-colored ones Pak Song had obtained for him.

Then Xander lifted his penis to display his castrated state, as all the slaves on display did when passersby stopped to look. When Conan looked closer, he realized the heart-shaped patch wasn’t testosterone, but likely female hormones. Judging by Xander’s enlarged breasts and his flaccid, shrunken penis, encased in a cock ring that would barely fit on Conan’s little finger, his brother’s owners must have opted to make him a bottom-only sex slave.

Maybe Xander had suffered a reaction to the testosterone his Master had provided him initially. Conan recalled Pak Song’s warning that such reactions happened occasionally and that Conan would be wise to watch for signs of rejection. More likely, the A urelion and his clone who ran the pleasure palaces had decided that with his youth and boyish good looks, Xander would serve them more profitably as a bottom.

Conan stood and watched his brother a few minutes longer, hoping the encouraging smiles Xander was flashing toward a potential client were genuine. Finally, after the burly Earthling clipped a palladium collar and leash around Xander’s neck, Conan moved back into the street, thankful for once for the anonymity afforded by his robe.

His brother’s smiling countenance stayed in Conan’s mind. Xander had seemed pleased that the client he was flirting with had chosen him.

Not even the click of the lock on that thick second collar or a rough tug on the chain attached to it had wiped the smile off his brother’s face as the man who apparently had bought his services led him away, down the Street of Pleasure.

Xander had a new life and seemed satisfied with it. He hadn’t even recognized Conan. That hadn’t surprised him. While his hooded, white robe left his face uncovered, it discouraged others from looking too closely, as though they feared by doing so that his misfortune might rub off on them.

It was unlikely their paths would cross again now that Conan would soon be going to Luna Ten. Xander belonged to the A urelion now, and the rest of his life would be dictated by his owner’s commands. Though Conan felt bad for Xander, he realized the path he’d chosen was common for handsome young eunuchs who had been castrated as adults. Conan sensed that while Xander seemed happy enough with his lot, he wouldn’t want anybody he knew to see him as he was now—especially not someone he’d looked up to in his former life on Earth.

Earth, where only women were slaves. Where men fucked sexbots. Here on Obsidion, a land with few rules, eunuchs serviced whole males and female adventurers alike. From what Conan had observed, he deduced that sex slavery was one of the few paths open to those who had been altered for whatever reason, but left with genitals that could be kept alive with hormone therapy or not, as their owners chose.

He wouldn’t be taking that route, though. The gods willing, he would soon have a mate. A lthough he was a complete eunuch, legally speaking, he would be a Master on Luna Ten.

From what Shedir had told him, Luna Ten was a tiny, self-sufficient planet where women were willing slaves, men their Masters. Conan couldn’t imagine himself taking part in the group sexfests that Shedir had explained took place nearly every day, or going about naked with his glowing bionic cock hanging out for everyone to see.

But perhaps he could. Stopping before a pleasure palace that displayed beautiful females—guaranteed “neutered”, according to the sign in the window—he imagined himself leading one of the beauties away by the light chain attached to the collar around her slender neck and taking her in a fucking chair. Pounding his cock into her cunt while he pressed her against a wall. One lady’s full red mouth caught his eye.

His cock swelled beneath his robe. Gods, but he would love to have her give him head. A nd he would love to go down on her.

She looked at him. No, she didn’t. She looked through him, as if because of his white robe he was beneath her notice. A n eager-looking space privateer, from the look of his gaudy uniform, stepped up from behind Conan. He went inside and came back out a few minutes later, leading the woman who had just starred in Conan’s fantasy.

Fuck the damn robe. Yeah, he was a eunuch, but he wasn’t a eunuch slave. He was free—a cyborg—not a freak who should have to cower beneath cruel stares. Conan headed away from the Street of Pleasure, recalling that he’d seen a clothing store somewhere not far from Leander’s. Surely he could find appropriate clothes—not like the Star Command uniforms he used to wear, but ones that would do justice to the civil engineer he was to become on Luna Ten.

* * * * *

He was right. Clothes did, as old legend said, make the man. Glancing at his reflection in the mirror at the tailor shop, Conan admired his image in snug black boots, tight breeches and the bright-blue tunic he’d chosen.

A s he stepped outside and mingled unnoticed in the crowd, he turned his thoughts to Nebula. She would be his mate and together they would face this brave new world.

But not yet. Not anxious to tempt the fate that would await him if he were to be found out while wearing his new clothes on Obsidion’s strip, Conan went back into the shop and took them off. He looked at his naked body in the mirror, no longer shocked at the sight of his glowing, neon-veined cock. Sighing, he lifted the eunuch’s robe and put it back on, adjusting the hood to cover his head and block out some of the pitying stares.

Until he left with Nebula for Luna Ten, he would endure the shame that enveloped him along with the thick, all-encompassing fabric.

“Have this clothing sent to Conan at Yolanda’s Resort, please. My Master will want it when he arrives.”
Chapter Five

A n hour later Conan settled in at Yolanda’s. A s soon as a courier brought the clothing he had bought, he put the uniform back on.

It had been a long time since he had stayed here, a year or more before his mutilation and exile, long before he’d decided to risk himself to save his brother. He recalled his first trip to Obsidion, when the imposing hotel had still been a pleasure palace known as the Gates of Hell.

Idly, Conan picked up a brochure from a nightstand and leafed through it. He saw Yolanda had retained the main public dungeon he remembered. Reading further, he gathered that she had also created new, smaller dungeons that apparently catered to every perversion known on Earth and a few kinks Conan had never heard of.