Imperfect Partners (5 page)

On past visits, he had pleasured a bevy of willing submissives and their eunuch slaves. Now he only had to please his future mate.

Nebula. Pretty name. Conan looked at himself in the mirror.

Yes, he liked how he looked in the uniform.

But damn it, he’d forgotten about his hair. A s much as he would prefer meeting Nebula while wearing the uniform, he slipped the voluminous white robe over it and arranged the hood to conceal the closely shorn hair on his head.

I don’t want to shock her right away.

Maybe he should have stopped by Leander’s and had his head waxed. Now, though, it was too late.

Shedir had told him that he and Guy would be arriving at twelve hundred hours with their mates. A nd his. The plan was for them all to take a short holiday, have Pak Song recheck Guy’s bionics and avail themselves of the exotic wares in Obsidion’s shops, considered the most exclusive in the galaxy. They would enjoy their respective mates in the arousing atmosphere of the hotel’s renowned dungeons before returning home to Luna Ten for the formal mating ceremony between him and Nebula.

Conan laughed, though it certainly wasn’t funny that the ceremony would be a farce because it was supposed to ensure fertility. That wouldn’t be a possibility, not for him and not for Nebula. He had agreed to go through with the public mating because he thought of it as an acknowledgment of their physical limitations before the entire population of Luna Ten. It didn’t please him to know the ritual would be repeated, admittedly with less pomp, every time they returned to the fucking glade and joined the others in the sex ritual that Shedir had described.

Conan recognized the ritual for what it was—a holdover from the Old Order on Earth, before the Fall and before the Federation rulers had seized power and imposed their ironclad rules, supposedly to prevent the spread of the mutant gene introduced by the first wave of alien invaders.

Restless, he strode to the window and discovered it overlooked the hotel entrance. What time was it? Lifting his bionic hand, he checked his chronometer. Guy and Shedir should be coming soon with their women—and Nebula.

Conan saw them conversing with one another as they approached the resort’s open gates. Shedir, he’d have known anywhere from his swarthy skin, and the fine sheen of his freshly shaved, well-oiled skull—but mostly from the swagger that said louder than words that he was a man, an Earthling of the ruling class who bowed to no one. Once Shedir had shown respect to Conan as his superior officer, but Conan had known and respected the young subordinate, too. He had known Shedir was destined for greater things once he gained a degree of experience at Star Command.

Guy looked different. Fearsome. Conan had noticed his former colleague’s scarlet, bionic eyes when they met a month ago in Pak Song’s workroom, but now those eyes glowed as brightly as the large, multifaceted rubies in his nostril and ears. A ll that scarlet glow unnerved him, until Conan remembered he, too, was not as he’d been before.

His glowing neon cock certainly would attract its share of stares when he had occasion to bare it to prying eyes. His unshaved head would attract more astonished comments if he ever went out and about without concealing it within the hood. He tightened his anal sphincter on the titanium plug he’d been wearing at Pak Song’s suggestion, to enhance his sexual performance. A lthough Conan doubted the plug had as much to do with his newly restored libido as the one-inch square testosterone patch stuck to the left side of his lower abdomen, he had to admit that wearing the plug kept him in a constant state of semi-arousal, especially when he was moving about.

Three women trailed behind the two tall men—a delicate-looking blonde, a striking pregnant goddess whose clean-shaven scalp reflected the noonday sun, and another female, his mate, he guessed from the pale blue robe that couldn’t quite disguise her curves. Its hood framed a perfect oval face. A s befitted an unmated female from anywhere in the galaxy, she cast her gaze modestly toward the ground.

Gods, but she was beautiful, a shy beauty dropped onto Obsidion for his personal pleasure. Conan felt his cock rising in salute. He checked the drape of his robe over the newly purchased clothing, lifted the hood once more and hurried downstairs to meet his mate. His Nebula.

* * * * *

Conan. Nebula murmured his name. She would meet him soon. Her heart pounded. What if… “What if he doesn’t want me?”

“Hush, little sister. He’ll want you, all right,” Doreen said. Cassie squeezed her hand, offering silent support.

“You’re sure?” By the gods, she would die if he rejected her, too.

Doreen shook her head. “He knows. He has known since Shedir first talked about you to him, that you carry the mutant gene. A nd that you’re sterile. He doesn’t care.”

Please let that be true. Nebula doubted she could take another rejection as painful as the one she recalled so vividly.

When Shedir opened the door to the resort hotel where they were staying, Nebula spied a tall eunuch hurrying toward them. His white robe proclaimed his altered status but did little to mitigate the aura of masculine power that surrounded him.

Conan. She repeated the name in her mind, envisioned herself serving her Master’s needs, whatever they might be. When he came close and paused as though for her obeisance, Nebula sank to her knees. A s she’d been taught a slave must do, she lowered her head to the cool tile floor of the hotel lobby and then raised his flowing robe enough so she could kiss his feet. A shock went through her when she saw that he was wearing gleaming black knee-high boots instead of eunuchs’ sandals.

“Conan, this is Nebula.” Shedir shook hands with Conan and then introduced Doreen and Cassie.

Nebula didn’t expect her sisters and their mates to stay for long, as they had been talking about the pleasures that awaited them in the dungeons since long before the transporter had set down.

She knew she was right when she noticed Shedir clamp his hand around Doreen’s wrist and pull her hard against his side as he spoke to Conan. “We will leave you to your own devices, old friend. Our mates are weary from their journey.” When Shedir dragged Doreen away and Guy scooped Cassie into his arms and bounded down the corridor toward the dungeons, a tremor went through Nebula. She was alone with Conan now and the thought terrified her, but she managed to maintain the illusion of calm acceptance by staying as still as one of the erotic sculptures that decorated the lobby. It was all she could do to keep from shaking from the chill of the cold tile floor against her forehead.

“Get up, Nebula. I want to look at your face, not the back of a hood like the one with which I have recently grown quite familiar.” Unlike most other castrated males Nebula had met, Conan possessed a booming voice resounding with masculine command. It sent a practically forgotten twinge of something—desire?—to swirling around her lower belly before it slowly made its way all through her body. “Shedir tells me you have visited Obsidion before. Is there anything in particular you would like to visit while we’re here?” Nebula smiled. “Well, perhaps I would enjoy joining in the celebration that’s going on out in the streets. A nd if it pleases you, I would enjoy shopping for a bit. I would like to buy a few items to enhance your enjoyment of me.”

“You please me just as you are. Come, I’m sure that, like your sisters and their mates, you are weary from your journey.” When Conan took her hand, she felt a twinge of the lost passion that still lived in her mind. It began deep in her belly and curled around, warming her blood as it flowed through her body. “I want to see you naked and let you see me. In private, not in the public dungeon for everybody to witness. We may dispense with these robes once we reach my rooms. Later we will go out to shop and join the locals in their celebration that their crown prince has returned.”

She rose as gracefully as one could rise from her position. “A s you wish, Master.” Though she was half afraid to look at him and was terrified that she would not please him once she took off the concealing robe, Nebula looked forward to having his big, rough hands on her.

She longed to feel the heat of another human body on her, in her. For a moment she mourned the loss of her libido, but she quickly squelched her sadness.

A fter all, her own pleasure was immaterial as long as she was able to please her mate. She should be grateful that he was rescuing her from a life of drudgery, of nonentity. Hopefully, he would bring her the friendship and emotional closeness she wanted so much but had thought was forever beyond her reach.

She would do whatever she must to please this big eunuch with the booming voice, to serve and service him as was his pleasure. She’d do anything to keep him.

* * * * *

For the first time since losing his manhood, Conan thought he must have pleased the gods somehow.

They had blessed him with a beautiful mate. Her auburn hair, long and silky and hanging halfway down her back, contrasted with satiny skin the color of rich cream—except for her cheeks. They flushed prettily when she shed the robe and stood before him, her eyes downcast.

Her firm, ripe breasts were just the right size to fill his hands, and the rosy tips beckoned his mouth. When his gaze moved lower, his cock rose to full attention. She had the prettiest belly, slightly convex, and a plump, delectable-looking mound. His mouth went dry at the sight of her little clit poking impudently out from between her creamy white labia. Gods save him, he could barely wait to feel her long, sexy legs wrapped around his waist, his neck.

She had lost her fertility, but her lack of perfection didn’t show on the outside except for the distinctive tattoo on her mound. “You please me, slave,” he said, forcing a smile he hoped masked his insecurities.

If only she would be as happy with him as he was with her. Taking a deep breath and steeling himself for the less-than-happy reaction he expected, he tossed back the hood of his own robe and loosened the ties that held it closed.

“Y-you have hair,” she stammered, her sober gaze fixed on the bristly crop of dark hair he’d insisted be left to grow on his scalp. “I never

—”

“You never saw a man with hair growing on his head? I doubt very much that you’ve ever seen one with a glowing, neon-veined cock and no balls, either. Or one who could take off one of his hands and put it back on again.” A fter shrugging out of the robe, he unbuttoned the row of shining fasteners on his tunic and shed it.

Gods, but Conan had massive shoulders and a smooth, tanned chest that tapered to a trim, narrow waist. Nebula couldn’t help watching the unusual-looking rings swing from his taut, brownish nipples. Then she remembered what he’d just said, and she turned her attention to his hard-muscled arms. They both looked fine to her. “What do you mean, you can take off your hand?”

“Will this bother you?” He rolled back a flap of skin, revealing some sort of electronic circuitry embedded in his flesh.

For a moment she looked at the circuits and finally the prosthesis itself. “No, it doesn’t bother me. How does it work? A nd how did you happen to lose the hand?”

The smile he shot her this time seemed genuine. “The hand is bionic. Sensors embedded in the stump translate my mind’s commands to it. Occasionally the mechanism requires adjustment, so Pak Song decided to make the entire unit detachable. A s for how I lost the original part, it was hacked from my body by order of the Federation rulers.”

“Why?” Nebula would rather have heard that Conan lost his hand honorably, in battle. Or in an accident. A ny way other than as punishment. But he didn’t seem to be the type of person to steal, like the unfortunate thieves she remembered having seen on display in the marketplace back home. “What did you do?” she asked, not entirely certain she wanted to know.

“I helped my half-brother escape from Earth before the rulers had time to turn him into a drone. Nothing I wouldn’t do over again. If you think the hand is shocking, brace yourself for a real surprise. You haven’t seen anything yet,” he muttered as his hands went to his belt.

His lower abdomen was ridged with muscle. Nebula had to restrain herself from reaching out and touching the satiny skin, exploring the neat indentation of his navel and sliding her hand lower to explore the impressive bulge beneath the fabric of his tight pants. He sighed then shucked the rest of his clothes and straightened, his gaze defiant.

“Go ahead. Say whatever it is that you’re thinking.”

Nebula was speechless. Her voice caught in her throat. She couldn’t drag her gaze away from the biggest, brightest cock she’d ever seen.

“It…it glows,” she stammered when she finally found her voice. “A nd it’s huge.” Oh no! It was growing bigger and harder before her eyes. “It’s…bright pink. No. Red. The veins are glowing neon green. What—”

“Fiber-optics. When I get aroused, they give off energy.” He grinned, but then his expression sobered. “Want to feel it in your cunt?” he asked, then smiled when she reached out to touch him.

She stopped, her hand inches from his cock, as though suddenly afraid. “I— It’s so big. A nd it looks sort of like…a sexbot’s.” The grin on his handsome face was positively feral. “The better to fuck you with, sweet slave.” Conan thought Nebula looked dubious when she asked, “Does it feel like a real cock?”

“Yes, it feels like the real thing.” With only a second’s hesitation, he took her hand and wrapped it around the glowing appendage.

“Mmmm. Yes, it does. It’s warm, and it feels alive.” She slid her palm along his shaft, making him wish she’d pay equal attention to his tingling cockhead.

“You look surprised,” he said, teasing her. “Did you imagine it would be shrunken and useless?”

“Well, not exactly. But I didn’t realize— That is, I didn’t realize it would…ummm…work so well.” Her cheeks, already rosy, turned an even deeper pink as she stared at his colorful erection.