One dream merged into another. Hypersleep seemed to last forever.
Ty woke up from a strangely familiar dream about his aunt Pinky. He was twelve again and it was about the time she had given him a real live gerbil in its own habitat.
“It’s really alive? Not just a ’bot with synthi-fur?” he asked excitedly and Aunt Pinky had nodded her cotton-candy swirl of hair and smiled.
“Got it on sale at the port, honey. The man selling them was going out of business. Look, I got you the food and everything.” She held out a box full of green pellets that looked like food replacements but smelled gross.
“Yuck! He likes to eat this stuff?”
“Sure does. That’s choco-dogs and carbo-chug to him.” Choco-dogs were his favorite. Aunt Pinky always knew.
“Can I hold him?”
“Sure can. Here…” She reached into the tiny square habitat and cupped the squirming bundle of fur in her elegant, long-nailed hand.
“Oh, he’s so light and warm! Nothing like a ’bot. I’m gonna call him Mr. Wiggles.”
“That’s right, honey. Now if you sit on the floor and hold Mr. Wiggles in your skirt, he’ll feel safe and get to know you.”
“Okay…” He sat on the floor of his room and spread out the pale green striped synthi-cotton skirt, which had been another birthday present…
No, wait a minute…this wasn’t right.
Tyson opened his eyes at last in time to see the beveled front of his sleep tube sliding open. The robe he wore was slightly damp with perspiration. Hypersleep raised your body temperature a few degrees and it felt a little like having a fever when you first woke up, he remembered. With a shrug of his broad shoulders, he peeled the robe off.
He tried to piece the rapidly deteriorating dream together…something about a gerbil and his aunt Pinky? But he had never had a gerbil or an aunt named Pinky. Choco-dogs made him queasy. And he had certainly never owned or worn a pale green striped skirt….
“I know you didn’t. I did. Loved that skirt…gerbil chewed a hole in it and I caught blue holy hell from my mom.” It took Ty a minute to realize the voice was coming from inside his head. He turned to see the sleep tube next to him slide open and watched as Shaina slowly opened her still-dreamy ocean-green eyes.
“Did you just talk inside my head?” he asked carefully, feeling distinctly strange about asking such a question. It seemed like something you would ask someone in a dream. He remembered some of the dreams he’d been having before the one about Mr. Wiggles and looked closely at Shaina. Was he still dreaming?
“I don’t know. Did I?” Her face was still relaxed from the utter oblivion of hypersleep.
“I think you did,” Ty told her, beginning to feel a bit more awake himself. Her creamy skin was flushed, he noticed, and wisps of her fiery red hair had begun to curl into tiny love-tendrils around her pointed, kittenish face. The white synthi-cotton robe she wore was damp and nearly transparent. He could clearly see the full curves of her breasts outlined in the emerald green of her bra. Her nipples were erect and pressing tantalizingly against the fabric. Suddenly, his cock felt like a bar of lead inside his briefs. Take it easy. Just the aftereffects of hypersleep, he thought, and this time he was reasonably sure the voice in his head was just his own internal monologue.
“What aftereffects?” Shaina looked at him and Tyson shook his head mutely. Had she caught his thought? “I had the strangest dream…” she whispered, still seemingly half to herself. “I was back in Second School and there was this girl in my class…Treena Tist, who I really liked. Only everybody called her…”
“Treena Tits because she had the biggest…wait a minute. That’s my memory, not yours.”
Tyson felt fully awake now and more than a little disturbed. What was going on?
“Ah, I see the symbiotes are becoming active. You have been sharing dreams.” The Glameron’s soft voice broke into Tyson’s agitated thoughts.
“Wait a minute, when we agreed to be injected with these things, nobody said anything about sharing dreams,” Ty pointed out.
“I can see why you liked Treena. She was really pretty.”
“Could you please stop that for a minute?” he snapped irritably, looking at Shaina. Her eyes were still half-lidded and he guessed that she was having a difficult time shaking off the hypersleep. To make matters worse, he was still fiercely aroused and seeing Shaina leaning against the side of her sleep tube with that dreamy expression on her face, like a woman who’d just woken up after a night of hard loving, didn’t help any. God, he just wanted to kiss her, just once. He wanted to taste those soft, pink lips…
“Why don’t you?” she whispered in his mind. She thought she was still dreaming, Ty realized, but he couldn’t help himself. Just one kiss…He stepped forward and pulled her unresisting body into his arms. She was soft and warm and smelled of that feminine musk that drove him crazy with need. He lowered his head and took her mouth the way he’d wanted to from the first time he saw her, burying his large hands in her glorious tumble of flame-colored hair and tilting her face up so that he could explore her lips thoroughly, claim her completely.
“Mmmm,” Ty heard her purr through the symbi-link. She wanted this as much as he did, he suddenly understood. She felt the same fire, the same need whenever they touched. He crushed her against him. She felt so fragile and soft in his arms. He wanted to own her…to possess her completely. Wanted to Bond with her. He knew it was the dominant D’Lonian in him coming out, but he couldn’t help it. Inside his head, he could hear Shaina hoping that this dream would never end.
“It’s no dream, Shaina. It’s real. I want you. I’ve always wanted you. I’ve always known you should belong to me…” His cock throbbed demandingly and he suddenly wanted to rip open her robe, peel down that flimsy little bra, and suck her ripe pink nipples until she screamed. Wanted to take her here and now, to spread her legs, mount her, fill her, fuck her until she moaned and begged for more…until she belonged to him completely and forever.
“Wait a minute…Not a dream?” Shaina suddenly stiffened in his arms and Ty felt a current of fear like a jolt of electricity through their link. Her eyes widened as she came fully awake. She slid out of his arms, although he didn’t want to let her go, and backed carefully away from him, her frightened green eyes never leaving his face. Tyson realized with an inward wince that she must have heard his last thought.
“Oh my Goddess…can’t believe…” Shaina’s thoughts were nearly inarticulate and the air in the small sleep chamber was suddenly charged with nervous tension.
“I…uh, didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” He approached her carefully as she continued to back away. “Look, McCullough, I’m sorry.”
She shook her head mutely. She was thinking that he looked like some kind of a wild animal with his hair sticking up all over the place and his eyes like molten gold in his dark face. His teeth were so white and sharp…she had heard rumors about D’Lonian men and she wondered if they were true.
“What rumors? That we bite our women’s heads off during mating?” Ty thought at her, fiercely sarcastic. He had never pegged Shaina as being racist.
“I’m not racist! Just scared…” she finished to herself but Ty heard it. Of course he did. He heard everything and so did Shaina…
“You,” he roared, turning to the Glameron, who