Free Incursion by Aleksandr Voinov

in again. Right now, that seemed like the best he could ever hope for, and if that meant delivering a thought-sucking morph to the authorities, it was a small price to pay.
    He punched the water out and reached for a towel. He pressed the cloth to his face first, then dried the skin around the prostheses, not scrubbing any of the unfeeling flesh, just as the nurses had instructed him, and checking for sores and bruises, trying to ignore that odd mix of emotions that always surfaced when he had to focus on the dead meat. Part compassion, part self-pity, and a great fucking deal of resentment. He considered wrapping a towel around his hips, but that modesty didn't really figure. There was no way he could get hard.
    When he returned to the room, Grimm was sitting on the bed, stripped down to his underwear, that whole impressive body— not his, it's not his —ready for inspection. Kyle needed to remind himself he was looking at the breathing mockery of a dead man, but it wasn't easy. The attraction hadn't just gone away because he knew Grimm was Kshar. In any case, the next half hour or so would decide everything. Whether he got his prize to exchange for cyberlegs, or whether Kshar killed him and took his face. Attraction or no, it wasn't about sex.
    Grimm stood and smiled at him. "Get comfortable. With you in ten."
    "Take fifteen if that means you're clean." Kyle sat down on the bed. He pulled a bottle of massage oil from his duffel bag and set it on the nightstand. The nurses had given it to him to rub on his skin, but he was less than religious about keeping that unfeeling flesh in perfect condition. Now, of course, it would serve a different purpose. Or rather, that was what the morph would expect. Anything to keep up appearances.
    And yet, thinking of Grimm's powerful body, arousal washed through him. He had to check visually to see if it did anything. It didn't. Too bad he couldn't just get a cyber dick when they installed the legs. Fucking morph disruptor tech had ruined that forever.
    He listened to the water run in the bathroom, sympathetic to the pleasure it would bring, even to an alien, after a long trip in space.
     He lay back on the bed, rubbed a smudge from one of the metal pieces holding his legs, counted his breaths. And gazed down his body, his stomach, his groin, his quads and knees, his skin dark against the sheets.
    The water stopped. He closed his eyes, straining to listen to Grimm's movements.
    The door opened, and he kept his eyes closed for a while longer, indulging in the thought that he was normal again, and that Grimm wasn't Kshar and wouldn't kill him.
    Maybe I should let him do it, too.
    Grimm was completely naked. Breathtakingly so.
    If it only were true. Any of this.
    Grimm paused in the middle of the room and turned the tattooed side of his face to Kyle. "All yours if you want it."
    I do. Kyle waved him over. "This is going to be really boring for you."
    "I doubt it," Grimm said and moved closer to the bed. He was getting hard, and Kyle itched to touch him, revel in another's arousal that he himself couldn't express anymore.
    Grimm smiled at him and got on the bed, one knee on the mattress, hands left and right of Kyle's head. His face came closer, then so close it blurred. The kiss hit him like an acceleration jolt. Despite their first kiss on the ship, it felt like forever since anybody had touched his lips like that. At all. It raced over Kyle's skin, sank deeper and rushed along his veins like a living creature. Unreal. Was that a Glyrinny thing? Kyle groaned and laced his fingers behind Grimm's neck, re-focusing on his plan.
    Grimm didn't shake him off, seemed unaware of the danger he was in, that Kyle could wrench his skull from his spine. Kyle considered it, wondered if he still had the core strength to kill a man like that, or whether he should just put him into a headlock and knock him out. One was a kill, the other a capture. But damn him, that kiss felt nice, that powerful body