Tandem Unit

  She wasn't able to find out anymore about the mysterious bond between them but it was daily in evidence. It was there in the way the two men finished each other's sentences, knew each other's whereabouts at any given time and sometimes seemed to communicate volumes with only a look.

  Sadie had almost given up on understanding whatever it was that bound them so closely together but then something particularly strange happened the night before they reached orbit around Iapetus.

  * * * *

  Sadie had found a small chip repair kit and was sitting in the middle of the couch, working with a light stylus to try and bring her Overlook-Me chip back from the dead. The kit's components were out of date but she thought with just a little tweaking she could make it work. She was concentrating fiercely, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth as she worked, thinking that she was pretty certain she would be able to coax at least a few more hours of life out of the chip when her grip on the slick barrel of the stylus slipped and the micron-thin beam of pure radiance that powered the instrument sliced neatly through the flesh of her palm leaving a deep gash.

  She sucked in a deep breath, almost a gasp as the searing, white-hot pain screamed along her nerve-endings, insisting that her hand was on fire. The injury was so sudden and sharp that she could only stare at the wound, her palm rapidly filling with blood, and think distantly that it looked like she had a handful of her favorite nail polish. The name of the polish, she remembered, was Hot Blooded.

  “Hey, you all right, kid?” Blakely was there immediately, he had been close by in the food prep area and obviously heard the noise she made. He sat down on the couch beside her and took the hurt hand between his own. “Damn, that's nasty,” he commented, looking at the scorched edges of the cut. “Hey, Holt,” he called. “C'mere and bring the…”

  “Got it.” The tall blond man suddenly appeared on her other side with a flat me tal box that had a large red cross on the cover in his hands. Sadie spared a moment to wonder how in the solar system Holt could have known what was happening and what was needed. He had been in the Navicom chamber for the past hour which was at the far end of the ship and soundproof as well. Before she could frame a question, Holt sat on the other side of her on the c-gel couch and opened the box.

  While Blakely held her steady, Holt cleaned and bandaged the wound and wrapped her hand in a flexi-seal designed to reduce movement and promote healing.

  “You'd better be careful with that for a while,” the blond man said, still holding her hand gently. “Bad cut like that will take a while to heal.”

  “I … thank you.” Sadie looked gratefully from one set of blue eyes to the other and realized that, yet again, she was directly between them. They were all sitting so close together on the couch that she could feel their warm breath caressing her cheeks and they both still held her wounded hand, Blakely touching her forearm to steady her and Holt holding her fingertips. They were both touching her.

  As the realization hit Sadie, it was like a switch was thrown somewhere in the region of her solar plexus and a surge of strange, sensual energy poured through her as it had on the two other occasions when she had been making skin-to-skin contact with both of the men at once.

  “Oh…” The sigh was torn from her throat as the comfortable atmosphere between the three of them was suddenly charged with a hot current of need. She became aware that Blakely was kissing her throat while Holt leaned over her and took her mouth with an intensity she had never felt in any kiss before.

  “Goddess, you're sweet,” growled a low voice in her ear that Sadie recognized as Blakely's.

  “Mmm,” Holt affirme d, too busy kissing her to make a more verbal agreement. Sadie felt like she was drowning in the sensations assaulting her and the feeling of four strong hands roaming over her body. She was wearing another one of the men's shirts, Holt's this time, and she was suddenly aware that someone had unbuttoned the front of it to bare her breasts. Fingers were idly twisting her aching nipples and someone's hand was sliding between her unresisting thighs to caress the sudden wetness there.

  She knew she had to stop what was happening between the three of them but her brain and her body were on two completely different wave-lengths. All she could think as strong hands parted her thighs and two long fingers slid deep into her hot sex was how good, how utterly right it all felt. She was drowning in sweet sensation, no longer sure which man was doing what to her and not caring either. Blakely was kissing her now, having taken over for his partner so that Holt could suck her sensitive nipples into his mouth and nip them, rolling a talented tongue over each aching bud. The strong fingers continued to fuck her, slow and deep. A broad thumb brushed roughly over her swollen clit making her cry out softly. Sadie felt herself building towards a shattering climax. She was gasping and moaning into Blakely's mouth and he swallowed her cries eagerly as she writhed between the two, large masculine bodies on the couch.

  Goddess … going to come. Going to come so hard… Sadie was thinking, arching her hips to meet the thrusting of the fingers within her. She still didn't know whether they belonged to Blakely or Holt but it didn't seem to matter—they were equally welcome in her body, she realized. She only wished she could have more. The image of the three of them naked in bed together, Blakely taking her from the front and Holt from behind swam deliriously before her mind's eye and wouldn't go away. To be sandwiched between them like that … to be filled so utterly and completely … a part of her knew she would regret it, would feel like the solar system's biggest slut if she let that happen but the desire was so strong, burning inside her like a white-hot star that couldn't be quenched in any other way.

  I'm not like this. Not that kind of girl, part of her mind screamed desperately but again, Sadie's body wasn't prepared to notice anything other than the current of desire and the deliciously dizzying sensations the two men were subjecting her to. Sadie had to bite her tongue to keep from begging them to take her … to fuck her. She was close … so close…

  Oddly enough, it was the itching sensation in her wounded hand that brought her back from the edge of no return. It started as a slight tingle that she hardly noticed, mainly because she was tingling everywhere as the two men touched and fondled her but then it grew. The tingling became and itching and the itching became a burning sensation that became impossible to ignore.

  “Wait … wait!” She struggled away from Blakely and Holt, pushing out from between them with some difficulty. As she slithered off the couch, breaking contact with them she saw a look of almost pain pass over both faces, light and dark. Hurt them somehow, she thought vaguely but the pain in her palm was distracting her too much to think of anything else.

  “Sorry.” Holt was the first to find his voice. “Didn't mean to…”

  “Yeah, it's just…” Blakely trailed off, apparently unable or unwilling to finish the sentence. They were both looking at her with a raw hunger, almost a need, still burning in their eyes, both sapphire and indigo alight with it. Sadie shivered at the intensity of emotion that still quivered in the air between the three of them like a volatile charge of static electricity.

  “That's not it.” She blushed and realized the shirt she wore was still hanging open. Snatching it closed with her free hand she backed up a step. “I mean … I'm not happy about … about what just happened but there's something else.” She held out her hurt hand, wincing as another flare of itching pain lanced through it. “I think something's wrong with my hand. It's itching and burning.”

  “Let me see.” Holt was suddenly all business but Sadie stood where she was, looking at him uncertainly. This was how all this had started in the first place. What if he and Blakely pulled her down on the couch between them again? What if she couldn't say no this time? Between her legs her sex was still hot and slippery and her nipples ached from the attention both men had been paying them. What's happening to me? How did I turn into such a slut? she wondered unhappily. Why am I acting this way?

  “He won't hurt ya, kid,”
Blakely saw her hesitation to approach the couch. “We're both real sorry about what happened.”

  “What did happen?” Sadie asked but the dark, curly-haired man just shook his head, a look of pain crossing swiftly over his mobile features.

  “Nothing we need to talk about right now,” Holt said sternly. He had pasted a look of blank concentration over his own chiseled featured and he held out his hand a touch impatiently, waiting for Sadie to let him examine her. Reluctantly, Sadie held out her still tingling palm to the blond man. Quickly but gently he stripped away the flexi-seal. Sadie was afraid to look, the pain was fading now but it had been almost as intense as when she had first been wounded—what could possibly be wrong? She braced herself to see something awful and looked down quickly. What she saw was so surprising that she couldn't comprehend it at first.

  “What the…?” she heard Blakely mutter in a low voice but a look from his blond partner cut him off quickly.

  “I … I don't understand.” She flexed her hand experimentally. The evil-looking wound that Holt had bandaged so carefully not ten minutes before was almost entirely gone, leaving only a thin, white line in its place. As she watched, even that disappeared leaving her palm as smooth and whole as though she had never been injured at all. “It's gone,” Sadie breathed softly, opening and closing her hand gently at first and then with more force. “The pain and the cut too. Both gone. But that's not possible.”

  “No, it shouldn't be.” Holt looked grim. “Come on.” He grabbed Blakely by the shoulder and pulled him away to the bedroom, slamming the door behind them. Sadie could hear them muttering in there but she couldn't make out anything they were saying. She sank back onto the c-gel couch, everything but her newly healed hand forgotten.

  What was going on?

  Chapter 8

  “We healed her, Holt. Do you realize what that means?” Blakely demanded in an excited tone which Holt hoped Sadie couldn't hear from her spot on the couch.

  “It doesn't have to mean anything,” he answered, frowning. “And keep your voice down, damn it!”

  “All right, all right,” Blakely muttered. “It's just that … I never saw anything like that before. And I never felt the T-link open so wide. It was almost like…”

  “Like having three bodies at once. Like merging into each other,” Holt finished for him. It had been stronger than anything he had ever felt before … a melting into each other that was different from any other time he and Blakely had shared a woman. So intense and yet they had only been touching Sadie, not even actually making love with her. How could the T-link be so strong without the double penetration it usually required to come to life at all? What would it be like if they actually did make love? Holt wondered if any of their nervous systems could withstand the intensity.

  The strange sensation had reminded Holt of when he and Blakely were first linked. It had taken a while to get used to feeling his best friend's emotions and occasionally catching his thoughts. It was jarring, at first, having someone else inside your head and hooked into your nervous system. Knowing that nothing you ever did or felt would ever be completely private again.

  But he and Blakely had gotten used to it in time and now the tall blond man couldn't imagine what life would be like without the constant feed-back and support from his dark-haired partner. Without Blakely he would feel like only half a man and he knew his partner felt the same. But they had never expected to add another person to that equation.

  Holt looked carefully at the excitement shining from his partner's indigo eyes and corrected himself. He had never expected to add another person to the equation. Had never expected to find the perfect match for both of them—the woman who could not only handle the physical and emotional aspects of the T-link but could also join in it and bond with them, becoming a part of it as much as he and Blakely were. Someone they could form a Life-bond with.

  “She's the one—she has to be. We healed her, Holt. It's like the Professor said—if we ever found a woman with the exact right brain chemistry to complement us both the T-chips could have all kinds of hidden benefits. If we form a Life-bond with her…” Blakely said excitedly, echoing his thoughts.

  “You can forget about that right now,” Holt said, more harshly than he had intended. “You've seen the way she acts every time we touch her. She might be physically able to handle the link, might even have the exact right brain chemistry although Goddess knows the chances against that are astronomical, but she's not up to it emotionally, Blake. Not a lot of nice girls are.”

  “But Holt, we healed her. We could be on the edge of something big—huge. Remember Professor Klinefelder said…”

  “Will you stop talking about him?” Holt snapped. It had taken a long time to get over his anger at the professor of neuro-biology who had invented the T-chips they both wore and there were still a lot of latent feelings that he kept buried. “What did he know? He's the one who screwed us up in the first place.”

  “That's not fair and you know it, Holt. How many times has bein' linked saved our asses? I think a little emotional trauma is a small price to pay for our lives,” Blakely said, frowning. “Now I like Sadie—like her a lot and you're lyin' if you say you don't feel the same. She's smart and funny and she's got a lotta spunk. I know we haven't known her long but I think we should take a chance and tell her about us—let her make up her own mind.”

  “No, absolutely not.” Holt couldn't imagine a worse idea. “Blake, we're on a mission here or have you forgotten? We can't afford to get involved in an emotional mess with this girl when we're supposed to be concentrating on doing our jobs. Besides, we hardly know her.”

  “I've known her long enough to know I really like her … to know that I could love her if I gave myself a chance. And you could too, Holt, don't try to deny it.” Blakely's voice was quiet but his indigo eyes snapped with intensity.

  He really means it, Holt thought sadly. He's falling in love with this girl and he wants me to join him.

  “Blake,” he said with rough tenderness, laying a hand on his partner's shoulder and squeezing tightly to convey his emotion. “You've got to stop thinking like this. I know you want happily ever after and the fairy tale ending but just think about it—have you ever read a fairy tale where the beautiful princess goes off with two Prince Charmings in the end? Face facts, partner, every time we touch her and the T-link does its thing she gets more and more freaked out. Didn't you look at her eyes a couple of minutes ago? She was scared to death to come near enough for me to look at her hand again even though it was really hurting her.”

  “She was just in shock,” Blakely protested, shrugging Holt's hand off his shoulder impatiently.

  “No, Blake—she was upset about what almost happened between the three of us. She was raised in Goshen, for Goddess's sake, and you know how conservative they are there. I know why you like her; she's a genuinely nice girl. Not like the ones who usually agree to try what we have to offer. And that's precisely why she's not going to be interested if you start proposing three-way matrimony.”

  “I'm just sayin' we should give her a chance,” Blakely muttered, black brows drawn low over his deep blue eyes. He crossed his arms restlessly and looked at Holt. “I think you're underestimating her, Holt. Forget 'three-way matrimony', what are we gonna tell her about what just happened to her hand? She's a reporter; she's gonna want to know.”

  “We don't tell her anything right now. We'll be entering orbit around Iapetus in a couple of hours and we've got to keep our focus on this mission. After we wrap this one up we can make a joint decision on what to tell her and what to ask her. But right now the mission has got to take precedence over everything.” Holt looked at Blakely whose arms were still wrapped tight around his compact frame and ached for the man who was so much more than his partner—more even than his best friend. David Blakely was the other half of his soul and the darker man completed him as much as was possible despite the aching need in both of them for a third to fill the void in their lives
.

  “Blake,” he said, cupping the dark, brooding face in one palm and looking earnestly into his partner's troubled indigo eyes. “I'm not saying we'll never tell her. I'm just asking you to wait for a while until we get everything settled. Can you do that for me?”

  Blakely sighed deeply and relaxed, letting the tension leak out of his posture as he looked up into the familiar sapphire eyes of his partner. “Okay,” he said at last. “We'll keep her in the dark for now, Holt. But I want your word that once this is all over and done with we'll tell her the truth and at least see how she feels about the idea.”

  “Done,” Holt said, breathing a private sigh of relief. Blakely was usually even tempered enough to agree with him in most things but he could be stubborn when he felt strongly about something. Or someone. You really like her, don't you, partner? Well what's not to like? She's intelligent, funny and gorgeous. Okay, I admit it, I like her too.

  He wondered if he could fall in love with Sadie, the way Blakely seemed to be doing, if only he didn't guard his heart so closely. But they had been disappointed so many times in the past. And the hurt from Gillian was still so fresh in his mind. It was almost impossible to believe there could ever be a fairy tale ending for their partnership.

  Oh, Blake, Holt thought sadly, watching as his dark-haired partner got ready for bed. I want happily ever after too but I'm afraid it just isn't in the cards for us…

  * * * *

  “What do you mean I can't come with you?” Sadie looked angrily from one set of blue eyes to another. Holt kept his cold and Blakely's looked tired as though he hadn't gotten much sleep but both sapphire and indigo eyes were utterly impenetrable— presenting a united front. They were sitting in the tiny food prep area with Sadie between them, and Blakely was bitching good-naturedly about the quality of the concentrates they were eating for breakfast when the argument started.