The Passenger Ch. 02

Not knowing the answer to any of these questions, I did the best I could: I sat there and stroked her hair.

But my hand was shaking so badly as I looked down at her still, unmoving form. What in any of the nine hells was happening? There are certain drugs that induce a condition indistinguishable from death, but only to the naked eye; not to the point of fooling the diagnostic capabilities of a medpack unit. And I couldn't see how Anne could have been exposed to any such drugs in the first place. No, this was definitely something else. If only I knew what.

After about twenty minutes, without warning, she suddenly opened her eyes. Her stare was rigid, unfocused. She shuddered, then took a deep breath. She shivered, then shook as if she'd been hit by a stun bolt.

"Anne?"

Her body relaxed, then her eyes focused. She opened her mouth.

"...How... how... how much I... love... Harvey? What..."

She began to shiver.

I found a smile somewhere and pasted it on, but it never reached my eyes.

"You, ehm... You fainted again, Anne," I said.

I covered her with a blanket and put my arms around her to help her warm up. She was shivering continuously now.

"I guess... this is getting to be... a bad habit," she said, between her chattering teeth.

I stroked her face. I took her hand. Her fingers were like ice.

"You look so worried. I'm sorry, Harvey. You shouldn't be. I feel fine."

I sighed, wishing I could believe that.

"Until we know what's going on, I'm damn right to be worried, Anne. Do you remember it happening?"

She thought for a moment, then slowly shook her head.

"No... I was talking to you after I came out of the shower, and then we were here."

"Nothing at all? Just a total blank?"

She nodded.

"But I feel fine, Harvey. Really, I do. I'm just cold."

"Can I get you something hot to drink?"

She smiled.

"That might help. But what I really want right now is for you to warm me up. Would you?"

She opened the blanket.

"Of course."

I put my arms around her and pulled her close. Her face felt cold against mine.

"Hmm..." she sighed. "Better already. But..."

She ran her finger down the fastener along the front of my flight suit, opening it. I got the idea and helped her to remove it. A few moments later I was undressed, and I pulled the blanket aside, lay down next to her and covered both. I wrapped the blanket around both of us, hugging her tight. Her body was a lump of ice against my skin.

"Yes... Just like that, my love" she whispered.

She raised her face and I kissed her, gently, carefully, as I shared my bodily heat with her. I held her to me, her stone-cold skin against mine, and I shivered. But it wasn't just the chill from her body seeping into my bones. It was also the realization of how cold she actually was, and what that meant.

"Anne..."

"Ssshhh...

I held her even tighter, knowing that this wasn't just about me sharing my warmth with her, but also about her reassuring me; telling me that she was still with me, wanting to care for me as much as I wanted to care for her. We held each other for a long, long time. Eventually the chill left her and she slept, and I felt her chest rise and fall with the slow rhythm of her breath, the soft, smooth curves of her body against mine, the blanket around us both.

* * *

I lay there with my eyes closed when I woke up, careful not to move. I knew I had things to do that day, getting to the end of our trip as we were, but they could wait. I had fallen asleep holding her in my arms, which sounds very romantic but, in this case, meant waking up with a nasty cramp in my shoulders and one arm gone entirely numb, with a promise of pins and needles to come later. I smiled. It was a small price to pay. The soft curls of her hair stroking my face, the feeling of her breasts against my chest, the reassuring warmth of her breath caressing my neck as she slept... It all felt so good, so right. And I realized once again how much I loved her. And how afraid I was to lose her, and how scared I was by what was happening.

She moved against me in her sleep. Her breathing deepened, then she sighed as she snuggled against me.

"Hmm... Harvey..." she muttered, very softly.

"Hey, sleepyhead."

I opened my eyes and gently kissed her hair.

"Good morning, my loyal crew."

She smiled, eyes closed.

"Good morning, captain of my heart."

"How do you feel?" I said, caressing her face.

Her smiled widened.

"Why don't you find out?"

"You know what I mean."

I kissed her forehead. She opened her eyes and touched my face with her fingertips. It felt good.

"I'm fine, Harvey."

"I seriously doubt that. The second we land we're going to have you checked out by a medic."

"Well, I feel fine."

A lazy, happy smile spread across her face.

"And you make me feel even better."

I moved to free my arm from under her, which was difficult because it had gone completely numb. When she touched my hand, I couldn't feel it.

"Your hand is cold," she said, rubbing it.

"That's because you slept on top of my arm," I said, smiling. "Ow! It's coming back now! Oww!"

She continued to rub my hand and arm, and soon the tingling sensation passed.

"Thank you."

"Any time, my love."

She sat up, reached out and touched my cock.

"Speaking of blood flowing into your extremities..."

"You have a one-track mind, woman," I said, but I could not help smiling.

"Uh-huh. But at least it's the right track."

She began to stroke my cock, which she had come to know quite well by now. She knew just how to touch me and where. I sighed and closed my eyes as her fingers continued to work their magic on my swelling member. It grew longer and thicker under her touch, and her wonderful caresses soon had me fully hard and standing up proudly.

"Hmmm..." she purred. "You've got such a nice cock, Harvey. So nice and hard and straight and just the right size."

She looked at it critically.

"Too bad that there's just one thing wrong with it."

I raised my eyebrows.

"Oh? What's that?"

"It's not inside me."

I chuckled.

"I think we can easily fix that. How would you like it?"

"Just like this," she said, spreading her legs. "I'm in the mood for nice and simple right now."

"Alright. Nice and simple it is. Brace yourself."

As I kissed her deeply, my hand caressed her face, her neck, then played across the soft, smooth curve of her breast. I felt her nipple harden under my touch. She crooned softly, our kiss muffling her voice as our tongues played with each other. My hand moved down across her body, found the swell of her butt. I gently squeezed and kneaded the firm flesh there, then moved my fingertips across the outside of her leg, gently, teasingly.

Down, down... My fingertips stroked her skin, sliding across her knee and back up again along the inside of her thigh. I slowed down, tracing patterns across the skin there, slowly teasing my way closer and closer to the spot where she wanted to feel my touch. I inched my way to the apex of her thighs, to her hot center waited there for me, begging for my touch. She squirmed under me as I held her, our tongues battling with each other, my arm around her shoulders, my hand between her thighs. Then, finally, my fingers found what they sought, and she broke our kiss in a loud moan as I touched the lips of her pussy, feeling her heat and the first of her moisture. I traced the outline of her nether lips, bottom to top, then back down again, but not touching her clit, not yet. With the tip of my finger I probed lightly between those velvety folds, teasing her, touching her just the way I knew she liked it, and I felt her get wetter and wetter until my fingertips slid across her most sensitive spots without effort.

My finger now crept higher and higher in the direction of her clit, slowly homing in on it and, finally, reaching it. She shuddered under my touch, and I gently spread her thick, slick nectar across that hardening pleasure button. The lips of her pussy continued to flower open under my touch, and then my finger slipped into her opening, feeling the heat and the wetness there.

I sat up and knelt between her spread thighs. My cock nodded up and down as my blood pulsed through it. She took it in both hands and pulled me closer until the swollen head touched her entrance and nuzzled its way in between her nether lips.

"Come," she whispered.

I gently pushed, and the head of my cock spread the lips of her pussy, then slipped between them and into her opening. I pushed in a little bit further, then pulled back again. She moaned, her eyes closed. I pushed back in, a little bit further then before, then withdrew. In and out I moved, spreading her wetness across my cock, entering her a little deeper each time, and her inner folds opened up before me. Soon I was inside her all the way, and she put her legs around me, her heels pressing into the small of my back. I moved slightly inside her. She crooned softly and squirmed on the bed. Her hot, creamy insides caressed me like a velvet glove.

She opened her eyes and smiled.

"Much better," she whispered. "Thank you."

"My pleasure. And yours, I hope."

"You know it is," she said, her smile turning into a happy grin. "You fill me up so nicely. I love having you inside me. It feels so good. So hard and warm and deep. And when I feel you cum inside me... Hmmm..."

"I've been meaning to ask you that," I said. "What does it feel like?"

"When you cum? It feels amazing. First, when you start to get close, you get insanely hard, and I swear you get bigger as well. Then, just before you cum, you move more slowly, but more powerfully... I don't really know how to describe it. And then you get even harder and bigger and I can feel the muscles in your cock pump your cum into me, and that's soooo hot..."

Slowly, ever so slowly, I withdrew my cock from her warm, wet pussy until it was out almost all the way. Then, even slower, I entered her again, and she crooned softly.

"That feels so good..."

Once I was inside her all the way again I held still, and we both shared the feelings, the closeness, the warmth for a few long moments.

"Can you feel anything when I cum?" she asked after a while.

"Are you kidding? Why do you think I can't hold back half the time when you do?"

"I've never really thought about it. I just think it's awesome when we cum at the same time."

"Well, when you come, you usually push me over the edge as well. When you start to cum, you get very tight around me, and that feels incredible. Then your muscle contractions do the rest. You squeeze me, you hold me... That's when I usually lose it. And then you get so incredibly hot inside, and you get so wet..."

She licked her lips suggestively.

"I know you like sticking it into wet places."

"And don't you forget it."

I smiled.

"But why are we talking about it when we could be doing it?"

And so we did. My hardness invaded her softness again and again, and it felt as wonderful as ever. We moved slowly, and she met my thrusts with her own as my long, deep, languid strokes into the hot, wet core of her body slowly pushed us both closer and closer to that wonderful peak. As our pleasure rose and rose, our movements became faster, more passionate, and her soft moans grew louder.

Although we had enjoyed sex together in many different ways and many different positions, we kept getting back to this. Some might think of good old missionary sex as dull and boring, but we both liked it. It's a very intimate and very relaxed way of making love slowly and tenderly, with lots of room for kissing, hugging, caressing, eye contact and whispering sweet nothings into each others' ear. And this morning we were in the mood for exactly that.

As we got closer to that wonderful peak of pleasure I slowed down, trying to make the moment last. I reached out and touched her breast, caressed it with my fingertips, played with the stiff, engorged nipple that felt so hard under my touch. I loved the way her nipples grew hard when I stroked them, and often they darkened slightly when they began to swell.

She reached down between her spread thighs and found her clit. She gently stroked it, her moans growing louder and louder. She closed her eyes and threw back her head as her moans became cries of pleasure. I lengthened my strokes, pulling out of her slowly and then plunging back into her hot wet core with a more forceful thrust, Again, and again...

Her cries turned into a scream and I felt her insides grip my cock as I forced my way into her spasming depths with one last thrust. Her hips bucked against me as she came, and I felt her wetness between our bodies. I continued to fuck her, using short, quick strokes now, prolonging her climax, while I toppled on the brink myself. I was close, so close...

Then I felt her relax, and she lay there, under me, with her eyes closed.

She lay very still. An icy cold hand reached into my chest and squeezed.

"Anne?"

Then she took a slow, deep breath and smiled.

"Hmmm..."

I sighed, both with concern and relief. I reached out and caressed her face. She opened her eyes, saw the look on my face.

"What's wrong?"

"For a moment I thought... I was worried about you."

She smiled, her face glowing with that relaxed, happy, utterly satisfied expression that was like nothing else.

"Why?"

"You looked like... Like you'd... passed out again."

"Oh, Harvey. You worry too much."

I shook my head.

"I don't think so."

"Well, stop worrying. You didn't cum, did you?"

I shook my head.

"Well, you're still hard, my love, so what are you waiting for? Let me help you. Hold still."

She put her hands on my hips and pulled her legs up, then lifted them. She put the heel of one foot on my shoulder, then the other, which put both her legs straight into the air, her calves against my chest. Then she clasped her thighs together.

"Do it," was all she said.

With some effort I pulled out of her. Gods, she was so tight in this position! Then, slowly and deliberately, I pushed my hard cock back into her, feeling her inner flesh part before me, savoring the delicious friction as I inched my way into her. Anne moaned softly.

"Yes, just like that..." she crooned.

The further I slid into her, the hotter her insides became, until I felt the almost searing heat of her recent orgasm. When I pulled out again my cock made a slurping sound, and I felt her juices run down my balls. Back into her hot core I pushed, her legs clamping her pussy closed around me, and the firm, velvet caress of her inner flesh sliding across the head of my cock felt more intense than ever. The familiar pressure began to build at the base of my cock and I knew that I only had a few more strokes left in me before I would blast off inside her.

"That's it," she whispered. "You suddenly got so hard. Cum for me, Harvey... Cum inside me. I want to feel you cum..."

I tried to stifle a moan, but it came out as a grunt.

Abandoning all control, I pulled out of her, plunged back in. Again, again, faster now... My pleasure rose, peaked... I pulled out one more time, then, with a last, powerful thrust I drove my cock into her as deep as it would go, the now super-sensitive head dipping into the well of her inner heat deeper than ever...

And with a huge roar I came, a thunderclap of intense pleasure bursting out of the head of my cock, and it was as if my climax deep within her hot center set off a supernova of bliss, our joined bodies fusing into a single white-hot explosion of sexual release as my final thrusts triggered another orgasm for her.

It was one of those moments when time seemed to slow down. The only thing I knew was our mutual, shared pleasure, and for a timeless, infinite moment we were truly one.

I don't know how long it took before reality reasserted itself, and we held each other, feeling the wetness spread between us. I was acutely aware of the softness of her skin, the fragrance of her hair, the warmth of her body, the slowing rhythm of her breath. And I knew that I loved her, and that if she was ever going to be hurt, it would be over my dead body.

* * *

I suppose that being a space pilot is every young boy's dream. I know it was mine. But in reality the job isn't all that exciting. Space travel is much like watching a 3D drama in three parts: it's always the middle one you struggle with. It has no real beginning, no real end, and while interesting and occasionally exciting things may happen, there's rarely anything conclusive going on. It's all either a follow-up of what happened in the first part, or setting the scene for the final chapter.

Commercial space flight is much the same. You trade, you service, you refuel, you load (even on passenger liners the boarding of passengers is referred to as "loading") and you do whatever frantic on-the-clock legwork you need to get done before take-off. Then there's the STL acceleration and maneuvering, with little or no let-up before you make the jump to hyperspace.

But once you make the jump, you just sit there. There's nothing to see and little to do. You kill time in whatever way you can, productively if possible, idly if not. For the first day or two you relax and catch up on the sleep you missed while in port, but after that the days tend to get longer and longer.

But this trip had been totally different. Anne had turned my life upside down and I found that I liked looking at the universe from that new perspective. We talked for hours on end, getting to know each other, sharing our lives, our memories, our likes and dislikes with each other, growing closer all the while. And we made love, often, long and intensely. We got to know each others' bodies better and better, found new and exciting ways to make each other feel good, and as we practiced our new-found skills together our pleasure reached heights we had never known before.

Yet, in spite of all that, it was good to be nearing the end of the trip. It always is. There is often something special about sitting down in the pilot's seat for the preliminary check list. Somehow, in a very obscure and roundabout way, it always reminds me of going on a vacation trip. Which is ridiculous, of course, because it's quite the opposite: it is the first step toward another period of frantic, pressure-filled and often backbreaking work. But that's the way it is. There's this excitement of reaching a new destination, a place that you either haven't seen before or that surely has changed since the last time you were there.

This time it was even better, because Anne was sitting next to me. As time went by, she would learn more and more about what it took to fly this rustbucket. And regardless of whether or not she would be piloting it one day, I was going to teach her whatever I could.

"One of the most important things you do when you revert to realspace is a set of scans," I explained. "You can't maneuver in hyperspace, because technically there is no time and no space there, so there's no room to move at all. And technically you're not moving, either, while you're in hyperspace. Except you do need time to get wherever it is that you're going. Which is just as screwy as it sounds, but that's hyperspace for you. I won't bore you with the math."

"You mean you don't understand it either, right?" she asked with a smile.

"Be grateful. You have to be properly screwy before you can wrap your head around hyperdimensional mathematics. But what it boils down to is that when you enter hyperspace, you're flying in a given direction at a given speed, and that's how you come out of hyperspace at the other end. If there is such a thing as the other end of hyperspace. Anyway, the jump has been precalculated, so in theory you should revert to realspace at a point where there's lots of room, with the chances of fling into something immediately upon reversal being negligible. But negligible is not zero, which is why do you do a scan. First a quick, short range scan, then mid-range, and finally a long-range scan. That was the 'Ready for Scan' item on the check list that we just ticked off. The computer is essentially waiting for us to revert to realspace, and when that happens it sends out the first scan pulse within a few milliseconds."