"That's nice, lover," she whispered.
The lights had failed in his section of the big dormitory. Since the vid cameras weren't infrascanners, he was fairly confident their lovemaking wasn't being witnessed and recorded.
His right hand cupped her breast, the nipple wriggling into hardness against his palm. Ryan nibbled at the back of Krysty's neck, nipping with his front teeth. The girl drew in a slow breath, pushing harder against him. Her sentient red hair shifted against Ryan's face, touching his skin with an electrifying arousal.
Knowing what she most liked, Ryan slid slowly down the bed, until his cheek was pressed against the muscular curve of her hip. He reached over with his hand and touched the coils of hair between her thighs. She opened to him, warm and moist, as his fingers found the trigger to her own deep arousal.
By shifting a little he was able to bring his penis against her ankles. Krysty felt him, laughed very quietly, then took him between her feet, rubbing him gently.
He probed at her with two and then three fingers, readying her. The girl tangled her own strong fingers in the long hair at the back of his head, pulling insistently at him, making him know what she wanted.
What she needed.
Her thighs clamped on either side of his face, drawing him into her body, and his tongue flicked out, tasting her, lapping at her softness. Krysty locked her heels together between her lover's shoulder blades, keeping him in place, pumping her hips against his lips and tongue. She felt the familiar, delicious fluttering of her stomach muscles as her orgasm rushed forward.
Ryan could judge how far she'd gone along the road, licking and sucking at her, centering on the core of her love, feeling her finally gasp and shudder, her thighs so tight around him he could hardly breathe.
At last she relaxed, and he was free.
"One day I'll break your neck doing that, lover," she sighed.
"I can't think of a better way to go," he replied, grinning up at her in the darkness.
"Your turn," she said, sliding down the bed, kneeling over him, her hair brushing now over his groin and lower stomach. The fiery tendrils actually curled around his cock, bringing him instantly to the edge of losing control.
"No," he managed to gasp. "Be too fucking quick."
"Can't have that," she teased.
Her head lowered over him, and he felt himself swallowed, sucked into her mouth. Krysty was the best Ryan Cawdor had ever known. He'd once, many years back, spent too much jack on a gaudy whore out Missouri way. She'd had ways with ice and with a length of knotted, waxed twine that had made his head spin.
But Krysty was undeniably the very, very best ever.
After she'd brought him moaning to the edge of a shattering orgasm, she withdrew her mouth, knelt astride him and lowered herself on the thrusting erection. Ryan pushed up to meet her, his eyes tightly shut, mouth sagging open. The gaudy whore used to promise two ups for every down, but it hadn't been like this.
When he came, he felt as though his entire body were gushing out through his penis. His back arched, and he cried out, pulling her down on him, his fingers digging so hard into her shoulders that they left vivid bruises for days. Krysty collapsed on him, kissing him tenderly around the face, her lips brushing him with the softness of a moth's wings.
"That was good, lover," she whispered.
"Yeah," Ryan said. "It was."
They made love twice more during that long night. They did it the second time with infinite slowness during the quiet hours of early morning when normally the blood flows at its most sluggish and the elderly and ailing are nearest to death.
The third time was around Din the red. Ryan woke, nestled against Krysty, and he was immediately possessed of a desperate need for her body. He rolled on her and took her quickly, almost brutally, while she was still barely awake.
Afterward, they held each other tightly, slipping back into sleep until they'd had their fill of sleep and were ready for another day.
Ryan went alone to visit Jak Lauren.
The corridors were patrolled by the helmeted sec men, marching in clumsy unison in pairs, none of them even turning to watch the stranger walk by. Ryan tucked his scarf into the neck of his coveralls, pausing at a corner with an attack of painful gas from the turgid food they'd been given. There had been no word from any of the scientists on what they should do that day.
"Go where you can and find out what you can," he'd told the others.
The security units were at the end of one of the corridors farthest away from the center of the Wizard Island complex. Once upon a time they might have been considered unbreakable, but now some of the comp bolts and locks had ceased to work, and there were ordinary bolts rusting on a couple of the doors. One single guard stood outside the main cell where the albino was being kept.
Ryan stopped in front of the sec mutie. "Can I go on through?"
The vid camera above their heads turned and whirred. After a delay of several seconds, Ryan heard a human voice answering him.
"Permission granted, visitwise."
But the sec man didn't move. He stood foursquare, blocking the doorway. Ryan looked up at the camera again, hoping for intervention, but nothing happened. He took a half step forward, and the sec man's blaster shifted, its narrow muzzlecentering on his stomach.
"Fireblast! Move out of the fucking way, you stupe bastard!"
The speaker crackled again. "Regret signals not being received. Please go away and return in one-half letter. May the peace of Central go with you."
"Thanks," Ryan muttered.
When he returned, he found Dr. Ethel Tardy waiting for him, pacing up and down the narrow passage outside the security section.
"Apologies for delay," she snapped. "We are most busy and normal operational repairs have been put on the back burners for too many years. Soon, it will all change. You and your companions may work with us, involvementwise, and share Central's rewards."
"Sure. Can I see the kid?"
The tiny woman nodded, waving her withered arm in a sort of salute. The sec man had disappeared, and all Ryan had to do was slide the bolt at the top and bottom of the door and pull it open. Jak was sitting on a narrow bunk bed. As the door opened, he stood up, his body tensing, but he relaxed as soon as he saw Ryan.
"Hi," he said.
Ryan glanced around and saw Dr. Tardy waddling off. But the dark figure of the sec man had mysteriously reappeared and now stood with his back to them. Ryan pushed the door closed and glanced around the cell. Then he looked closely at the boy's face for any sign of ill treatment. But Jak looked just as he always did — a narrow foxy face devoid of color, the eyes like distant rubies in sockets of wind-scoured bone, the familiar scar across the left cheek that tugged the mouth up into a simulacrum of a smile.
"How ya doing?" he asked.
"Not good. Not bad. Food's terrible. Bread and milk'd be better. How the others?"
"All fine. We found out the truth about Doc Tanner. Where he came from. How old he is. That kind of stuff."
"Yeah. How come?"
Ryan told him quickly, knowing it didn't matter much if the room was bugged. What they knew was already known to the scientists anyway.
Jak sat silent, occasionally asking a question. He wanted to know whether the date of Doc's trawling was linked with the date of the deaths of his two children and was puzzled about Doc's real age. But he never questioned the truthfulness of the story.
"So we could go time traveling? Yeah?"
Ryan nodded. "That's the theory, kid. All we have to do is find a redoubt with the right controls. And find someone who knows how to operate it."