“A little closer,” Kat urged. “It feels good doesn’t it? Feels right.”
“Of course it does.” Commander Deep turned around and Becca was glad she’d grabbed her blouse and wrapped it around her shoulders again. “The touch of your twin is healing—in every way.”
“I…” Suddenly Truth pulled away and took a step back. “Apologies,” he muttered. “But I…I cannot.”
“What happened?” Becca asked anxiously. “Did it start to feel wrong somehow?”
“No,” Truth said shortly and would say no more.
Far simply stood there, his arms hanging by his sides, making no move to pursue the other male.
“It’s all right,” he said at last. “Truth just needs some time.”
“Time is what we don’t have.” Commander Deep sounded impatient. “Truth, how will you merge your shaft with your brother’s to form a lasting bond with your female if you cannot even bear to hug him?”
“What?” Becca demanded.
“What?” Truth repeated, sounding incredulous. “We must what in order to form a bond with a female?”
“To form a bond you and your twin must merge your shafts into one before you penetrate her—you know this. Every Twin Kindred knows,” Deep snapped.
“Well I didn’t know.” Becca couldn’t stop her voice from shaking. And judging from the look on Truth’s face he hadn’t known either.
“You are joking,” he said flatly. “To touch another male in such a way…it’s depraved.”
“It’s not depraved. It’s not even sexual.” Lock, who had been standing quietly, jumped in, obviously trying to salvage the situation. “I mean, it is with your female but not with your brother. It’s simply the only way to bond her to you completely. You must join—become one.”
“And then you enter her as one,” Deep clarified. “It’s also the only way to conceive a child.”
“I…I cannot…even think of such a thing!” Truth was shaking his head, looking more and more horrified and disgusted.
Becca was feeling pretty horrified herself.
“Wouldn’t that be way too big for a girl to, um, accommodate?” She tried not to look but her eyes were drawn involuntarily to the twin bulges in both Truth and Far’s tight, black uniform trousers. They looked huge and if putting them together doubled their size…
“Don’t worry about that,” Kat said quickly. “There’s this little thing called bonding fruit that helps.”
“There is no help. And no way I will ever do this.” Truth lifted his chin. “I should not have let myself go so far. Should not have allowed myself to be seduced by your talking of bonding and brotherly affection. It’s sick and wrong—all of it!”
“Brother, please…” Far held out a hand to his twin desperately but Truth backed away, shaking his head.
“No. No!” he growled. “Stay away from me.”
Turning, he left as quickly as he could but not before Becca saw the look of horror on his face and the look of anguish on Far’s.
Chapter Nine
Kat turned on her mate.
“Now just look what you did! Why did you have to go and tell him that? And just when we were making progress too!”
Deep shrugged irritably. “How was I supposed to know he was completely ignorant of his own anatomy? Even a child knows what I told him.”
“A child raised on Twin Moons does,” Lock said quietly. “But Truth was raised on Pax among the Rai’ku. They are a savage race with strict ideas about wrong and right. It is probable that the things we have asked him to do here would make him an outcast there.”
“What do you know about their culture?” Far asked, breaking his anguished silence at last. “I couldn’t find out much—only that the Kindred Council had refused a genetic trade with them. But none of the documents said why.”
“It’s because of what Truth said—about being raised in ‘the pack,’” Lock said. “The Rai’ku males have a beast within them—a beast which rises to the surface and overtakes them until it blots out all personality, making them mindless creatures capable of acting only on instinct. When this happens they band together and hunt in a pack.”
“What—like a wolf pack? But what causes that?” Kat demanded. “Are they like…werewolves or something? They get hairy during the full moon?”
“As far as anyone can say the rising beast seems to be tied to some kind of cycle though I do not know if the moons that orbit Pax have anything to do with it,” Lock said. “The change from man to beast may also be tied to emotional instability.”
“How did you find this out?” Far asked hoarsely.
“The Kindred Council sent a warrior to study them,” Lock said. “I was able to gain access to his records for my language studies. They have been locked against casual observers due to some of the graphic content they contain.” He shook his head. “I don’t think you want to read them, Far. Sufficed to say that when the Rai’ku change they are very unpredictable and very dangerous.”
Becca felt sick. “But…we’re not thinking that Truth is some kind of a…a were beast are we?”
“Of course not!” Kat exclaimed. “We’re just saying he was raised by them.” She looked at Lock. “Right?”
“Right.” He nodded. “But even being raised by them has been enough to color his perceptions. The Rai’ku are a very dominant and possessive race and they are also extremely competitive when it comes to mates. They do not share their women under any circumstances. In fact, even seeing another male too near a female who is spoken for would be enough to cause a fight to the death.”
“I suppose they want to be sure their genes are getting passed down and not some other guy’s,” Kat muttered.
“Speaking of that,” Becca said. “Truth mentioned that he had some half brothers from his father’s second marriage. But if what Commander Deep said about the Twin Kindred way of…of fathering children is right…” She felt her cheeks heating up and cleared her throat. “Well, I just don’t see how it’s possible.”
“It shouldn’t be,” Lock said thoughtfully. “Although the Rai’ku do possess very dominant genetics. That is one reason the Council voted not to make a trade with them—they determined that the tendency to transition into a mindless beast could not be bred out of them, not even with an infusion of Kindred DNA.”
“So Truth’s other brothers are half Kindred and half savage beast,” Far said, sounding bitter. “And still he prefers them to me.”
Becca felt her heart twist at his expression.
“Far, honey, don’t feel that way,” she protested. “Whoever those other brothers are, he doesn’t have a bond with them.”
“He doesn’t have one with me either,” Far pointed out. “And now he’s never going to.”
“Give him some time,” Lock counseled. “Think of the society he was raised in. Rai’ku males never come into physical contact unless they are fighting. Aggression is like a second language to them. But affection—especially between members of the same sex—is foreign.”
“Yes, remember—he said he had never been hugged, even by his own father.” Kat shook her head. “That’s just sad. I don’t understand how anyone could raise a child without hugging them. I mean, I want to hug my little guys already and they’re not even out yet.” She cupped her rounded belly protectively.
“Probably Truth’s father was trying to fit into the Rai’ku’s repressive society and be certain his son would fit in as well.” Deep sighed.
“He may have also been damaged emotionally. To lose your brother, your mate, and a son all at once…” Lock looked sad. “It must have been devastating. Honestly, I don’t even know how he survived at all—usually the death of one Twin Kindred means the death of his brother too. Maybe Feels Pain was frightened that if he loved Truth too much or showed him too much affection he would lose him as well.”
“So instead he raised him to be a homophobic, touch-phobic, straight-laced, tough son of a bitch,” Deep growled.
“Which means that basica
lly every single thing we’ve been asking Truth to do goes against every principle that was hammered into him as a child,” Becca said quietly. “No wonder he ran.”
“No wonder,” Far echoed. He closed his eyes tightly and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand as though trying to push back a headache. “Gods, this is hopeless.”
“It can’t be hopeless,” Kat objected. “The Goddess doesn’t give out hopeless tasks.”
“Well, then she is going to have to give me greater wisdom than I now possess,” Far said. He let his hand drop to his side and shook his head. “I have no idea what to do now…how to get Truth to come to me.” He looked at Becca. “To us.”
“Don’t look at me—I don’t know either.” Becca held up both hands in a helpless gesture. “Besides, all this about having two…uh, pieces of equipment put together as one…that’s news to me, too. Scary news.”
“Of course it is. You never learned about the mating habits of the Twin Kindred because you never considered it a real possibility,” Far said quietly. “And you still don’t.”
Becca began to feel defensive. “You and Truth told me to choose between you. How did I know I couldn’t choose? Until I found out last night, I mean.”
“But you still don’t plan to bond with us—not completely or permanently, do you?” Far asked. There was no bitterness in his deep voice, just resignation. “Even if Truth was willing to join with me so that we could bond you to us this minute you would refuse.”
“I…Far, I don’t…” Becca shook her head, uncertain what to say.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Your virtue is important to you. Keeping it—keeping yourself chaste—is your primary consideration. I understand, mi’now. That is as things should be.”
“I…guess so.” Becca bit her lip. Everything that Far was saying was true—she had always been desperate to hang on to her virtue. Virtue, not virginity—she did have a past, albeit a very limited one. Still, there were lines she didn’t want to cross. Things that “good girls” just didn’t do. But how could she fulfill her promise to the Kindred Goddess to help Far and Truth bond if she wasn’t willing to bend her own rules? If she wasn’t willing to push back some of those boundaries and open up?
Truth opened up some just now, a little voice whispered in her head. Not very much and he snapped closed again almost right away but it wasn’t easy for him to let his brother touch him…or to touch back in return. How can you expect to heal this rift in the bond between Far and Truth if you aren’t willing to open yourself as well? If you aren’t willing to relax some of the rigid rules and standards you’ve been clinging to for so long?
For a moment Becca allowed herself to imagine it—to remember how it had felt in their mental joinings to be naked and open between the two of them. Truth’s mouth on hers would be hard and demanding. At the same time, Far would be trailing feather-light kisses down her skin, seeking her most secret and forbidden spot…kissing and tasting where no one had ever touched her before…
No, it’s wrong! She shook herself reluctantly out of the fantasy and felt the old guilt flooding her. Just because she wasn’t going to become a nun didn’t mean she should entirely throw all her morals out the window! Being with a man she wasn’t married to—let alone two of them at once—would break her family’s hearts. And it would eventually break her heart as well—just like it had been broken when Kenneth—
Becca pushed the memory away. It was far in the past and she’d reformed herself since then. Repented. Entered a convent. Made plans to become a nun. Plans which she had now broken…
But what about your desires, Rebecca? that treacherous little voice whispered. What about your needs? Would it really be so wrong to give in to them? Just once?
Becca didn’t know but she was afraid she was soon to find out.
* * * * *
Far left the suite of Commanders Deep and Lock with a heavy heart. It was just as he had feared—the bonding was never going to happen.
The cruel thing was that they had come so close.
When he had held Truth in his arms and the other male had stayed, even when Becca left, Far had almost begun to hope. He could feel the emptiness in his twin’s soul—could feel it because it mirrored the aching need within his own. They were two halves—neither one whole. Neither one complete without the other.
Far had stood there, his arms clasped lightly—so lightly—around his twin’s waist and had felt a cautious kind of joy. A hope that maybe they might mend the rift between them. He had felt certain if he could get Truth to open up—just a little—he could show him what both of them had been missing their entire lives.
For to a Twin Kindred his brother was more than sibling—he was a constant friend, a close advisor, the one person he could always count on to tell the truth, comfort, and understand. A source of unconditional love and caring. And once they added the right female to that mix—one they both could love and pleasure together—it became one of the most perfect symbiotic relationships in the universe.
It was something that Far had longed for as long as he could remember. Something everyone growing up on Twin Moons seemed to have but him. Far remembered walking to school by himself every day, seeing all the other twins talking and laughing. Feeling so lonely because he had no one to play with after classes were over, no one to study with, to talk to.
His adopted family was kind and the older twin brothers that were his adopted siblings had tried to make him feel welcome but Far had always had the sense of being an outsider. Being only half of what he could be. Being alone.
Far let himself into the suite. He didn’t bother with the lights—he simply went to his bedroom and lay down on the sleeping platform in the dark. He stared up into the blackness, wishing for Truth, wishing for Becca. But what good did it do to wish? Neither of them truly wanted this bonding. Neither one of them felt the empty need like Far did.
It was never going to happen.
* * * * *
Truth walked swiftly down the corridor that led to his suite. He was situated right beside the Unmated Males area—the place the Kindred warriors who lived on the Mother Ship stayed until they called a mate.
There were no females there at all—well, unless you counted the Pairing Puppets, which Truth didn’t. They were mindless, pretty automans. Oh, their flesh was soft enough, their bodies curved and their hair silky and lush. But their brains were robotic and they had no souls—nothing a male could really bond with. The vacant look on their pretty faces was enough to tell you that.
Still, they were a good outlet for the sex-starved males who had yet to start dream sharing with a female on Earth. They were available night and day to any unmated male and their presence kept the fierce Kindred warriors mostly peaceful.
Truth had thought of calling a Pairing Puppet before. Rebecca had kept him waiting for six solar months now—well, kept him and Far waiting, he acknowledged grudgingly—and a male had needs. But somehow he hadn’t been able to do it. Even mating with a brainless sex robot felt too much like cheating. And besides, how would he feel if the situation was reversed and he had to watch Rebecca with another male?
It was reversed—just now, whispered a caustic little voice in his brain. You watched her kiss another male and you stood by and did nothing. Nothing!
But that was because it was Far, who was kissing her. As he had watched them, Truth had kept waiting for the possessive rage to rise in him, for the urge to kill any other male near his female to take over his mind as he had often seen happen with Rai’ku males back on Pax. But it hadn’t come. Because somehow seeing Rebecca kiss Far hadn’t been bad. In fact watching the female he loved kissing his brother felt almost…good.
Good is a fucking understatement. It made you hard as a rock, taunted the little voice. You liked watching him with her—you even wanted to join in. Admit it!
Truth reached the door of his suite and swiftly keyed in the opening sequence. No, damn it! He didn’t really want to share Rebe
cca with Far. That would be wrong…unnatural.
But if that was true, then why had seeing them kiss and afterwards, holding Rebecca between himself and Far, affected him so deeply?
Infected is more like it, the little voice snarled. Watching that little display gave you a sickness. And what happened next? You actually let yourself be talked into holding another male.
But he’s my brother, Truth protested, trying to still the little voice.
The brother who wants to bond with you in more ways than one, the little voice sneered. Who wants you to place your naked shaft next to his and fuse them together before entering your female. A female who should, by rights, be yours alone. What’s wrong with you, Truth? Has half a year spent among the Kindred completely blotted out everything you learned on your home world? Do you care nothing for decency and propriety anymore? Do you care nothing for the ways of your people—for the Rai’ku?
Of course he cared! Truth wanted to bang his head against the metal wall. He was willing to bash his skull in, if it would only get rid of the guilty voice that haunted him. But it wouldn’t go and he knew why—because it had some valid points. He had gotten pleasure from watching as Far kissed Rebecca, and from holding her between himself and his brother. If he was honest—and it seemed the little voice would allow nothing else—he had even gotten pleasure from holding his brother.
Not a sexual pleasure, he hastened to reassure himself. But it had felt…good. Right. Comforting. It was as though some long dead part of him was awakening—a part that craved companionship and brotherly affection. The part of his soul which was a twin.
Truth remembered feeling that part as a child, before he had hidden it away so deep inside even he could barely find it. Sometimes when his father, Feels Pain, was in a tranquil mood, he would speak of Twin Moons and how everyone there had a twin brother. Rai’ku females never gave birth to more than one child at a time so the idea was foreign, even bizarre to Truth. But it was also fascinating. Feels Pain had even told Truth a bit about his own twin—the male who would have been Truth’s other father if he hadn’t lost his life trying to defend Truth and his laboring mother from the pirates.