by
Note: This story contains graphic same-sex erotic scenes. If that offends you, please read no further!
I stood at the window of our drafty fifth-floor room, watching the Lantasea crash restlessly against the gray rock that formed the shoreline. The Bay of Bangor was only a dozen paces from the back of the hotel, and the smell of the sea pervaded everything, despite the subfreezing temperature outside.
When I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise in response to some subtle change in the ambient, I turned to look at Digen, who lay on his bed reading a professional journal someone had given him earlier that day.
"What is it?"
"Your dinner, courtesy of a terrified young man with a sore ankle," the channel said dryly.
We were deep in Gen territory, halfway up the coast of the northern peninsula, to attend an educational conference. Digen was there to represent Rialite, and he was the only Sime who'd been invited. The hotel had no nageric shielding built into the walls or floors, but they'd done the best they could for us by putting us on the top story and seeing to it that the adjoining rooms, and the ones below us, were all empty.
I walked over to stand near the door. When the knock came, I swung it open, revealing the diplomatic corps sign that made it legal for Digen to lounge on his bed sans retainers. The boy who'd brought up the food glanced at my bare arms before handing me the tray, then almost dropped it as he tried to sneak a look into the room without being too obvious about it. I got my own hands underneath it just in time. The shifting crockery clinked together as I steadied the tray, and the boy's face flushed. Then he tried one last time to catch a glimpse of Digen. Maybe he'd never seen a Sime up close. Or maybe he had, under ugly and unfortunate circumstances.
I found myself thinking that if I'd suddenly grabbed his wrist, he would have screamed like a young girl. Unacceptable behavior for a Tecton Donor, of course, and my dinner probably would not have survived. But it was an entertaining image. I kept my expression bland as I thanked him and eased the door closed with my foot, but let the amusement show in my nager. I knew this would have a calming effect on Digen, though I wouldn't share the whimsical thought that had prompted the emotion.
I carried the tray over to the small table between the two beds. Still gazing intently at his magazine, Digen reached out and moved his retainers out of the way so I could set the tray down. My stomach rumbled appreciatively at the smell of the stew, and I projected the hunger at Digen, not having to work very hard at it to be convincing.
He took a roll from the tray, bit into it and began to chew. I knew it tasted like sawdust to him, but he ate uncomplainingly, doing his duty as he'd been trained to since earliest childhood. He'd walked around all day without giving the out-Territory Gens the slightest clue that he was in need. These people were not accustomed to being around Simes, but Digen's position as Sectuib in Zeor seemed to have some mystical significance for some of them. Also, he had been to their schools, and spoke their language fluently. Some of the conference participants had avoided coming near him, but many of the others had treated him as if he were one of their own. This attitude was as fundamentally in error as assuming that he was likely to kill one of them at the slightest provocation. But they seemed very comfortable with him—more so, in fact, than with me. My Genlan was not as good as his, for one thing. And I hadn't made any points with the president of the Gen educational association, who kept punching Digen companionably on the shoulder, when I tried to explain (without alarming him too much) why he shouldn't do that.
"Help yourself to more of this bread. I can't finish it all." Tomorrow, Digen would give the presentation he'd traveled all this way to deliver, in the hope that it would increase the number of potential Donors sent to Rialite by the Gen schools. It was my job to make sure he was in top condition, not so much for the talk itself as for the intensive session of informal questions and shoulder-punching that would follow. This meant seeing to it that he ate, among other things.
He shook his head, and I didn't press the matter. The bread would still be there after our transfer, and maybe he would feel more appetite then. After finishing my own meal, I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. The stew had contained only vegetables, but had such a strong flavor of beef that I suspected bits of the stuff had been fished out before it was sent up to us. I had eaten meat before, and had enjoyed the flavor it gave the stew, but didn't want Digen to have to smell it on my breath when he made lip contact.
As I stood in front of the sink, I did a series of warm-up exercises with my nager, stretching my field and opening and closing barriers. I'd closed the bathroom door out of habit, though I knew I might as well have left it open as far as privacy was concerned. The exercises were not something I would have done in front of just any client. But it had been almost a decade since I'd served anyone but Digen in transfer, and I knew he wouldn't be disturbed by what I was doing, as some channels might have been. In fact, it would probably increase his intil. Digen needed to know that I was fully in control of myself, and could control him if that became necessary. This was vital because of what was delicately referred to, in-Territory, as his 'medical condition'.
When I came out of the bathroom, he had set down the journal. I walked over and sat next to him on the bed.
"We don't have to go all-out this time, Im'. I can wait another month. It might be better if I stay on more of an even keel for the conference."
"Therapist's call, Digen. We had agreed on a full transfer this month, and I think it would destabilize you more if you don't give your system what you've been promising it for the last few weeks."
"That was before we knew about the timing of the conference... all right, I give. Therapist's call." I could feel that he was not as reluctant as he was trying to sound, but I also knew he had deep conflicts over the matter of our junct-style transfers. His attitude about that had changed over the years. He'd tried to force such a transfer from me when our orhuen was first established, and had tried persuasion when he'd realized that was not going to work. I hadn't given in until it became clear that it was the only way to save his life—and quite possibly my own.
But as his heart had returned more fully to the Tecton and its ideals, Digen had begun to hate these transfers. They marked him as forever different from his fellow-channels. Damaged, and unfit for most of the work he'd been trained to do, though he was already barred from much of that by his lateral injury. Still, there were functionals he could have done better than any other channel alive, had he not been technically junct and thus forbidden from contaminating other Simes with his touch.
The exact nature of his condition was a kind of open secret, like the Gen-pens that were maintained for some years after Unity. The out-Territory Gens knew Digen's health was considered delicate, but the word junct was carefully avoided when the matter was discussed in-T—in public, anyway. The assumption out-T seemed to be that his problems were due to complications from the lateral scarring.
I took Digen's arms, running my hands over the swollen ronaplin glands. It was my professional judgement that he was more than ready. A thrill of familiar excitement ran through my nerves. I wondered, not for the first time, if it bothered him to know how much I enjoyed these transfers. We rarely discussed the subject at all, except to agree on when we would do the transfer this way. The only other time the subject came up was when Digen began fantasizing out loud about disjuncting. There was solid documentation to show that it was no more possible for him than it would have been for a Sime his age who'd become junct through killing, but he seemed to believe he would somehow manage it anyway. I'd given up arguing with him about it.
He completed the transfer contact with augmented speed. Over the years, he'd learned to do this without bruising my mouth, which I appreciated. He began his draw with equal suddenness, and such practical thoughts were driven from my mind by the onslaught of sensation. I offered him a little resistance, for as long as it was safe to do so, then surrendered myself completely as he reached his peak draw speed. For his benefit and my own, I maintained the illusion that there was nothing I could have done to stop him from taking me this way.
A junct-style transfer is very intense, but does not last long. When it was over, I could feel in the texture if Digen's nager that my job was not done. He was very prone to depressions after these transfers. And I could feel one building up in him. I ran my hands up his arms to his shoulders, careful to maintain physical contact. If I broke off that contact and then tried to touch his bare skin again, it would be difficult to avoid the static shock known as orhuen repulsion. In all the literature I've ever read on the subject, this phenomenon is readily accepted as proof that it is impossible for orhuen to have a sexual component. I'd heard a rumor or two that contradicted this, but it was a subject about which the Tecton's researchers had absolutely no interest in learning the truth, except perhaps as a route to improve their conditioning techniques to make it impossible in fact. Most people who knew anything about it believed that this had already been accomplished.
I worked to rub some of the tension from Digen's back, using the physical part of what I was doing as a focus for the deeper nageric treatment. He sighed and lay down on the bed, muscles going soft under my hands, but I could still sense the underlying tension. As I moved lower on his back, the tension increased. I kept going, until finally I was kneading his buttocks. He wasn't even bothering to feign relaxation anymore.
To touch him at all this soon after transfer, I had to work around the sexual conditioning that prevented channels from feeling same-sex attraction. Ordinarily, this conditioning did not cause a problem with normal post-transfer therapy work. But in the case of orhuen, the potential for such attraction was greater, even between two people who are basically heterosexual. The conditioning, as a result of this, is triggered more strongly in cases like ours. This month, I had decided to see how far I could go with temporarily suppressing these conditioned responses in him.
I could feel his arousal through our nageric link. It was the one time in our cycle that I could read his field better than he could read mine. It was a fine ethical line to walk, but I wasn't forcing him to feel that way. Just holding back the artificially imposed reflex that would otherwise have made it impossible. I had the advantage of knowing a great deal about the conditioning technique, because I'd been trained to do that for female channels. It had been one of my areas of specialization. The conditioning had to be applied by a Donor of the opposite sex, preferably higher-order than the channel and not too closely related by blood, because of the infatuation that often resulted from the treatment. Not that people were allowed to act on such feelings, of course, but having them at all toward a close relative could be uncomfortable.
For Digen, it had not been possible to use a Donor with a higher-order rating than his own, because he'd been a First from the day of his changeover. They might have achieved a similar result by using a four-plus Donor, because it did take him awhile to work his way up to that level. But it would have been difficult to find such a Donor outside his immediate family, and inconvenient to divert her services and possibly transport her halfway across the globe. It must have seemed like more trouble than it was worth, given that he'd been evaluated as a low risk for deviant sexual behavior. So he'd gotten the conditioning from a young woman only a few percentage points above his own proficiency rating. That was one of the reasons I thought this could work.
I wondered if he had any idea how excited I was getting. My erection had gotten all tangled up with the leg-hole of my underwear, and I would have been much more comfortable if I'd adjusted that, but I didn't want to take either of my hands off Digen's ass.
"I think you should stop that now, Im'ran." The strain in his voice matched the tension in the muscles I was kneading.
"I'm the therapist here. I'll decide when it's time to stop."
He didn't offer any further objection, even when I eased his pants down over his hips. He even cooperated a little, shifting his weight a little to make it possible for me to do so. I pushed at his waist to wordlessly urge him to roll over onto his side, and he did so, facing away from me and holding one hand over his eyes as if to disavow his participation in what was happening. I could tell he had mixed feelings about this, too. I was too horny to care very much about that. But I hadn't completely forgotten my professional responsibilities.
It had been almost a year since Digen had gotten laid. He was starting to need this almost as much as he needed his transfers every month, but the appetite was easier to ignore. I probably could have found a woman for myself here at the conference, if I had any interest in any woman besides Mora, which I rarely did. But even if we could find one who would welcome a Sime into her bed, Digen had a lot of hang-ups. When it became medically necessary for him to have sex, he generally preferred another channel, or failing that, a renSime. He'd told me once that sex with a Gen was more personal for him, too much so for him to accept it as a clinical post-transfer assignment. I suspected that being with a Gen woman reminded him too much of his lost love—Ilyana.
Even if we could have found him a suitable female partner, I didn't want that. I wanted to do this for him myself. I'd been thinking about it for awhile now. A Donor has to be in touch with his feelings, even though he can't always afford to act on them or even to allow them to show in his nager.
I slid my hand around to touch Digen's cock, confirming that it was as hard as my own. He endured this indignity without any reaction except for a slight shudder. Then I had to take one hand away to undo my own pants. While I was at it, I reached over to the bedside table to get the tube of RonAssist that we hadn't needed to use for our transfer. I somehow managed to get the cap off the tube one-handed, and squirted a generous stream of the stuff down the length of the only tentacle I have. It hit the sensitive flesh like cold fire, but served to heighten rather than diminish my arousal.
It wasn't the first time I'd used a ronaplin substitute as a lubricant, but as I pushed my way into Digen, I began to wish I'd had something else on hand. The RonAssist was making it very intense for me, and Digen was tight, almost too tight. I knew I wasn't going to last long. I wanted this to be good for him, too. In a way, that was more important than my own satisfaction. I wasn't the one who was hovering at the brink of coital deprivation. I tried to tell myself to start out slow, but I couldn't. I thrust into him with the same savage urgency he'd shown in our transfer, and he took it passively, not moving with me or against me. I began to feel as if I were committing a rape.
I paused long enough to reach around and take hold of him again, and was glad to feel that he was still as hard as the stone beach beneath our window. Stimulating him with one hand as I moved in and out of him, I tried to bring him to orgasm before I had to finish myself. I found myself licking and sucking at the back of his neck. He finally moved, gripping my wrist with fingers and tentacles almost like a transfer grip, though the feeling was completely different. I thought at first that he meant to remove my hand from his erect cock, but instead, he held it there. I could feel a few drops of left-over ronaplin trickle from his laterals and run down my hand. A little bit went between my fingers and onto his engorged flesh, and I heard him inhale sharply through his clenched teeth.
When I came, I found myself thinking of Mora. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me. This was the first time I'd reached orgasm with anyone but her in many years. Though there had been times, in bed with my wife, when I'd enhanced my excitement by thinking about Digen. Thinking about the fact that he had been with her too, although not for many years now. It had not taken very many tries for her to conceive with him, and after that, Digen had never touched her again in a sexual way.
It was an intense, deeply satisfying orgasm for me, and yet I felt kind of bereft. I'd wanted Digen to come first, while I was still inside him. Actually, I had not withdrawn yet. I was still in him, though my erection had mostly diminished, which must have been somewhat of a relief to Digen's anal sphincter. Holding him tight, I began to move my hand up and down his erect organ purposefully. He was trembling, at the verge of release, but this time he did stop me, holding my hand immobile and then pulling it away from him. I was momentarily paralyzed with disbelief. He'd let me take it this far. Surely he didn't want me to stop now!
He pulled his ass away from my groin in a deft motion, uncoupling us without causing me any physical discomfort, then rolled over to face me. In a barely audible voice, he said, "Use your mouth, Im'."
He took me by the shoulders and began pushing me down where he wanted me, and I could feel that incredible strength Simes can summon at will. Not that there was any need for him to force me. I had fantasized, in the privacy of my heavily insulated shower cubicle, about doing this for him. But I hadn't thought he would permit it.
Taking him into my mouth, I savored the alkaline taste of Sime sweat, subtly different from the way Mora tasted because he was male—and because he was himself, Digen, with a unique flavor to his skin. I didn't get to enjoy it for long before he convulsed and went limp, filling my mouth with a taste like the smell of the ocean.
Pulling away, I was relieved to see him looking at me directly and without any sign of anguish over what we had done. I moved to the far end of the narrow bed, careful not to brush up against him now that we had lost physical contact.
He just sat there staring at me, and the main thing I was picking up from his expression and through our nageric link was curiosity. Apparently he had been too distracted to follow the technical details of what I had done to overcome his conditioning. I was more than willing to explain it to him, if he asked. Though there were limits to how much communication about such things can occur between the larities.
Perhaps I would even provide another demonstration, if a good opportunity presented itself.
He didn't ask any questions then, however. Instead, he said, "Im'ran, we can never let anyone know about this."
"No kidding, Hajene. I don't believe it's an 'approved therapeutic methodology'... though I can't imagine why not." He was looking much better. It had been a gamble, carrying the risk of plunging him into a deep despair and damaging his trust in me. I had passed up other chances to make this happen out of fear that he might grow to hate me for it, and I can't think of many things worse than being caught in a selyur-nager lock with someone who felt that way. But the gamble had paid off, even though my reasons for finally taking that risk had been partly selfish.
Now, if I could get him to eat another piece of bread and get an hour or so of sleep, he'd be ready for anything.
"And this can never happen again," he added. Then he smiled, and I didn't realize until then how much I had wanted to see that. "At least, not anyplace where there is the slightest chance that someone will find out!"
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