Free Event Horizon (Hellgate) by Mel Keegan

plunged into companionable dimness, where the brightest object was the threedee opposite the bed. Data continued to scroll through it but for the moment was ignored as Travers settled beside him, his torso and face picked out in the surreal colors, blue, green, mauve, cast by the display. “Could be twenty,” he said like the rough-silk purr of a big cat as Marin’s hands slid inside the pale blue cotton of his shirt.
    The adrenaline rush was still tingling in Marin’s extremities, making his heart fast and his nerve endings prickle. His fingers left transient marks as he pulled Travers against him, wrestling with him for a moment, though Neil had put on a lot of muscle in recent weeks and Marin was under no illusions. Blood pulsed through him, an affirmation of life, health, strength, and he wanted Neil more fiercely than usual. Travers knew; the adrenaline must have burned through him just the same, leaving him shaking slightly with the age-old fight or flight reflex for which there was no outlet –
    Or, no outlet save for sex. Marin knew what had prompted the sudden storm of desire, and if it was artificial, he did not care. His fingers clenched into Travers’s hair, his legs seized him around the hips, hard enough to make him yelp, and then they were humping together, rolling across the deep bronze quilt, hunting for release, pleasure, a celebration of survival and freedom.
    Part of Marin was tempted to use the ancient skills of the Resalq martial arts and flip Travers over into the passive role, show him that muscle, bulk, stature, were not nearly as important as most humans thought they were. Part of him took a delight in Neil’s strength, the breadth of the muscular torso, the life burning through him like a wildfire. He slipped, slithered, in Travers’s hands, evading him, defying him, making him work for it; and when the moment came, made the gift of surrender when Neil had come to appreciate it.
    Sweat shone on Travers’s face as he poised on hands and knees over Marin, holding him down on the rumpled bed. His breath was short, his voice a growl. “Hey, if you’ve changed your mind –”
    “If I do,” Marin panted, “it’ll be all about who gets on top, and when, and how.” He caught Travers’s head and pulled it down to kiss.
    It did not last nearly as long as ten minutes, and they mocked each other as they sprawled across the mattress, cooling down, still panting. Marin’s head rested on the hard pillow of Neil’s shoulder; Travers’s clothes were tangled on the foot of the bed, and Curtis mocked himself with a throaty laugh as he groped blindly for a wad of tissues from the nightstand.
    A little service drone popped out of its nook and then vanished again as it correctly identified the human behavior. It would return to the job when they left and tidy the bed, cycle the air, dump the discarded clothes into the laundry chute.
    “We,” Travers said with rueful humor as Marin swabbed sketchily across his belly, “are just dead lucky.”
    “Lucky to be handfasted? To ever have found each other in the first place?” Marin yawned deeply, scratched his ribs and sat up in the dim, companionable light. He lobbed the tissues in the direction of the bathroom, but they fell short. The housekeeper drone would take care of them.
    “Both of the above … and dead lucky to be alive right here, right now, with the option of screwing our brains out on a whim,” Travers added.
    “Not quite on a whim!” Marin set his flat palms on Travers’s broad chest, thumbed his nipples, felt the heavy beat of his heart, which had just begun to slow. “For what it’s worth, I doubt we’ll blunder into this kind of engagement again. Not where we’re going.”
    “Don’t remind me of where we’re going,” Travers groaned.
    “You don’t like to think about Elarne?” Marin was not surprised.
    “It makes me dizzy.” Travers’s hands charted Marin’s lean arms, his shoulders. “I just let Barb and Mark