There are places where the body travels but the mind does not go. As I walk quietly down dark hallways or crawl through air vents and wiring races, I do not think about where I am going, or why I am going there. My body is headed for a predetermined site, carefully selected to be a place where sensors do not reach, or if they do, excess motion would be regarded as normal. I am hiding my actions from even my closest friends. I don't want to think about it.

I go there for sex. That mind-blowing-secret-sex that all of us have thought about from the time we reach puberty but most of us never have. We tell people we want to fall in love, meet someone special, live happily ever after, and most of us don't do that either. We don't tell our friends about the lust we feel sometimes. We don't share when our groins ache so much that we have to do something with someone right then and there. We discuss how when we finally find someone with the same needs and desires how wonderful it will be for the body and the mind. But that's not true either, for your mind was probably blown into tiny pieces by someone whose name you can't even remember, and now you don't think about it any more. I know that's what happened to me.

He is usually there first, naked and usually a little drunk. He doesn't believe what is happening any more than I do, but I think he might think about it a little more. He is too young to have learned that there some things that you cannot over intellectualize, and way to smart to understand that there are things you just have to feel. You just have to let your body go.

It is easier now than it used to be. More places to hide -- even if the security is tighter. This ship is full of nooks and crannies and his job allows him to explore them all. I love it when I see him crawling out of some long tunnel that he has traversed for the first time with a huge smile on his face. I know he has found another spot -- another secret spot for the two of us to be together. We are so lucky that this is a big ship.

When we are finally together, I give him a big wet kiss, slap him on the tight ass, and run my hands through his hair. Usually I don't even bother to take off my clothes but drop on my knees and take his dick in my mouth. I am one of those women who can cum from giving a man oral pleasure. He cums in my mouth and I am hungry for more.

Sometimes he brings blankets and pillows and we can snuggle down and have traditional sex, lots of foreplay, lots of fucking, and a little sleeping-in-each-other's-arms before we have to return to our respective jobs. Sometimes he just bends me over a box or a pipe or an architectural structure of the ship and takes me from the rear. Quick and dirty. Sometimes we even do it standing up.

I need a lot of sex. It is not something I like to spread around. For a time I think there were plenty of people doing that for me. I never had a problem convincing people -- men or women -- that I was old enough, ready enough, or not going to get pregnant. I was what you'd call a fun girl -- and all my friends, my brother's friends and my father's friends, knew it.

Then I fell in love. I did not live happily ever after. I got a lot of sex, but sometimes the love of my life was gone. That's when I hooked up with him. The man I now meet regularly for hot wanton sex while living with him and treating him like my little brother on a day to day basis.

* * * *

There are places you go where you can't take your freakin' heart. I learned that when I was very young. My life was hell. Sex was my only pleasure and I sure as hell learned how to get it. I learned not to set boundaries. I cringe when I hear people say they would only fuck someone with blue eyes, someone with blond hair, someone their own age, someone of a different sex, or someone of their own species. I'll fuck anyone, and if I can't find a place to stick my cock, I'll let them fuck me. If we can't find a way to actually fuck, sometimes we just rub our bodies together. I'm not picky. You have to get your sex wherever you can find it.

Still I was shocked that night when I met her in the bar. Usually my first choices are sparkly girls, the ones that come over to me and ask if I want to buy them a drink. I usually don't pay, I talk to them and they discover that I am poor and horny and I usually get a freeby. She wasn't sparkly. She wasn't a ho'. She was a real class act. Way out of my league.

I noticed from the way that this hot redhead was sitting on the barstool that something was making her uncomfortable. I could have started guessing at that moment and I don't think I would have gotten to the fact that she was hot for a little Harper action yet -- and that was almost seven years ago. My first guess would have been that she had been waiting for some guy who stood her up. My second that it was some dame. Redheads are like that.

I was standing beside her looking for sparklies when we both reached for our drinks at the same time. One of them spilled. All over her. She looked at me with big eyes and said -- I swear to your god that this is what she said, or a reasonable summation. She said, "If you want your drink I guess you're going to lick it off me."

I thought I had heard her wrong. Women don't come-on to me like that, especially women who aren't for sale. Could I have been mistaken?

"I don't have any money." I figured that I'd better let her know right away.

"That's OK, I do. And I have a hotel room, some wine and a few hits of flash."

"Don't do that."

"Good, more for me."

"You are joking, right?"

"I won't do it if you object, but it does make me enjoy sex more."

I couldn't freakin' believe it. This babe, this classy babe with money and drugs, had not only hit on me but she seemed like she really wanted me.

"Understand. I'm an unemployed engineer. I have no job, no money, nada. Understand."

"Yes, and I said, I have money, a space ship, a big bed, and a . . . . "

She just looked at me and smiled and took my hand and ran it over her leather-clad body. I would have been classified as brain dead, or at least in need of serious mental treatment, if I hadn't gone with her.

* * * * * *

I remember lying there stone cold sober. I hadn't had a drink; he'd spilled that. I hadn't done flash because he convinced me that he didn't like women who used hard drugs. For some reason I was convinced that this skinny kid could do what all the big men in my life couldn't do, make me relax and enjoy my body in the act of sex. I have to admit that his cock was as big as his smile. He gave me some line about nerds and sex that I thought I remembered from some old movie, but damn if it wasn't true. I lay there and ran my fingers over his face, down to his cute little chin and into those deep dimples. He didn't stop smiling, not once, even though now he had finally stopped talking.

"You got a regular guy, right? One that didn't show tonight. That's why you invited me here?"

I nodded my head. I couldn't lie to him, even if it hurt.

"So it's another one night stand for the Harper. At least I don't have to worry about catching diseases from a classy dame like you."

I was silent. God knew whom Bobby was fucking and what he might bring home to me. Nanobot therapy usually came through prophylactically, and I had been clean at my last test. See I was still thinking then. Thinking when I couldn't lie to him. Thinking about it not being a one-night-stand.

"Doesn't have to be. I've got a ship. I'm looking for crew. Is there anything you can remotely claim that you can do to make yourself useful on a salvage ship."

"And you've got a boyfriend. The one that didn't show up tonight. I'm sure he's not going to let a hot babe like you go bye-bye just like that. Especially with some mudfoot engineer. It's been good, but I've got things to do on Earth. Maybe we'll meet again, but we won't remember this, will we?"

He continued talking, I stopped listening. I ran my mouth down his stomach and took his cock into my mouth and held it there until he got hard and pulled me to him. I wondered if this was how he got all his jobs.

* * * * * *

I frankly never expected to see her again. How was I to know that Bobby Jensen who came to me on one sweet deal on some stolen missiles was the missing boyfriend? Beka and I spent a few days acting as if we had never met, I'd never been away from Earth, we'd never. . . . well you get the freakin' idea.

I didn't expect to stay. Quite honestly, I kind of liked just being a crewmember. As much as I love sex, I also really love engineering. I certainly wasn't going to step in to an area where Bobby Jensen had laid claim. He hit me enough as it was.

I was totally unprepared when one night she went to her quarters and came back with a pair of small copper cuff bracelets.

"What are these? Slave bracelets? Isn't it enough that you have my body and mind at your beck and call? Where'm I going to run to out here?"

"I don't want that kind of slave. You work for pay. But you have other talents."

"I didn't think you remembered."

"Sure do, Mr. Harper and that's what these are for. No one can ever know about our relationship. NO ONE. Not our friends, not our enemies, not our other lovers. You wear copper bracelets to stop the pain. When you see me wearing this bracelet, it is a sign that I need you."

I stand agog at what she is saying.

"Same thing for you. When you need me? We won't ask questions. Just pick a place and let me know. Same with me -- though I'm sure you will find the best places."

"I've found a couple, I like to explore."

"You're insatiable. I like that."

"Me, too."

* * * * *

There are places the body goes that the soul cannot follow. It has been this way for the past seven years. It was fun playing the game of Hide from Bobby. But the night he left, I took of my bracelet and put it under my pillow in my bunk. I think I was afraid of where it might go -- the combination of our bodies, minds and souls. I swore that I would never ask her for sex, again, but that I would always be there when she needed me. Maybe I am her slave. But I like it better this way.

She also told me that she realized that someday I might meet someone to whom I felt love and loyalty. There might come a time when she did the same. At that time she would return the bracelet to me, or me to her, and that would be our sign. Say, "I think you lost this" and it would be over. I haven't lost mine yet.

Some nights I lie in bed and think about the others on this ship. I think about Dylan and his High Guard protocol that makes a lowly crewmember like me off limits for his sexual thoughts. Not that he doesn't whip it out for visiting females and lost souls he encounters on his travels. How about this lost soul, Dylan? I think about Tyr and his Nietzschean courting rituals and genetic testing. If he'd try me, he wouldn't have to worry about anything genetic. I have no idea what Trance thinks, at least his golden woman who replaced my purple fun girl. Rommie only thinks what she has been programmed, or at least that is what I have been led to believe.

I don't have to worry because I have Beka. She has managed to forego all those rituals and protocols and will wake up some mornings and slip on that bracelet. I always notice right away. There is someone who needs me. Someone who needs Seamus Z. Harper.

March 30, 2003

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