Interstellar Sex Dreams Pt. 06

"It's so good to see you."

"And you. You look amazing as always," Mike replied.

"The civilian clothes suit you as well," she admired, stepping back to take in his slacks and long-sleeved fitted black top.

"What do you feel like for lunch?" he asked.

"There's a fabulous little café just around the corner, if you're up for some adventurous local food."

"Sounds wonderful."

Amy slipped her arm through his and led him around the corner.

"So what finally prompted you to look me up?" Amy asked after they'd been chatting for a while and as she tucked into a noodle dish filled with spiced vegetables.

"I'm embarrassed to say it's because I thought you might be able to help me out with something."

"If I can, of course I will," Amy replied. Mike gave her a gentle smile.

"Okay, so there's a gala your parents are attending next month."

"The Hasblaach's Children's one?"

"Yeah, that's the one. It's apparently so popular that tickets are impossible to get, and I was wondering if you might happen to have access to some? I'm happy to pay for them, I just wasn't able to find any through official channels."

"Well you're in luck, it just so happens I have my own table and I haven't filled it yet. I was planning on asking a few business associates along, but none of them are going to complain about missing out, and I won't mind having a non-business friendly face or two along for the evening. How many do you need, and who are they for?"

"Four actually and um, they're for my um, girlfriend and her parents."

"Girlfriend?" Amy checked, clearly a little surprised.

"Yeah, it's um, something of a story," Mike replied, not really wanting to go there. Amy checked her watch.

"Well it's a story you're certainly going to have to tell me," Amy grinned. "And I'm totally thrilled to hear that you have someone special enough to bring the parents along to a charity event."

"Well, let's just say that they like to be seen in the right circles," Mike laughed. "They'll die when they find out who they're sitting with. They would have been happy just to be seen in the back corner."

"Well I'm sure we can make it special for them," Amy replied. "And for your girlfriend of course."

"Oh trust me, just having tickets for her parents will make it special for Fang," Mike assured her.

"Fang? She's named after a tooth?"

"Oh, um, yes, she's of Chinese descent. Nothing sinister about the name."

"I bet she's had some fun with that during her life."

"Oh yes, she tells some funny stories about it."

"Well, I look forward to hearing some of them, but unfortunately I really have to get back to work. I'll get the tickets sent to you and catch you on the night, unless there's a chance for another lunch before then?"

"I'm sure we can squeeze in another lunch," Mike promised.

"Fantastic."

Mike walked Amy back to the entrance to her building and promised the next time he'd come up and take a look at some of the work she'd been doing. He spent the ride back to his surgery musing about what might have been. The thing that possibly saved his sanity was the fact that while they were aboard the Stellar Reach Amy had been the one to gently let him know that nothing serious could happen between them. But then there was the way she'd looked at him when he'd told her he had a girlfriend. Was it disappointment? She'd certainly been happy to see him. Had her situation changed? Had he missed out on an opportunity he'd never expected to materialise? He told himself that regardless of his earlier hopes, he had to move on. He was damn lucky to have Fang, regardless of how it had come about. Spending the rest of his life with her certainly wasn't settling, and the feelings he'd developed for her were real.

~~~~~~~

"So I do I get to hear all about Fang this time?" Amy asked him when they met again a week later.

"Given that you and these tickets have just made her very happy with me, you certainly do," Mike replied with a smile. "She was on the Stellar Reach and came to see me as a patient. She had a hard time coming out of stasis and I helped her through it. We came across each other socially after that and hit it off. Um, well, I guess there's no other way to say this, I got her pregnant."

"Oh!" Amy exclaimed, clearly surprised.

"Yeah, pretty clever huh?" Mike laughed. "But no credit to me, she's fantastic. We talked through all the options and she was completely okay with my just flying away and leaving her to make her own life and decisions, but as I thought through the situation, I came to realise that the idea of settling down and raising a child with her was a good one. It was a path I hadn't foreseen, but one that I became excited to set off on."

"Wow, I can't say that was what I expected, when you told me you had a girlfriend."

"No kidding."

"When you came to see me last week, it came back to me just how easy things had been with you aboard the Stellar Reach. You seemed to want more from me, then."

"I most certainly did," Mike agreed. "But you made it pretty clear it wasn't going to work. I don't think I hid my disappointment very well."

"I did and you didn't," Amy sighed. "And my situation hasn't changed, so I'm glad you've found something worth staying for. Does she know about me? Are we going to be able to be friends, Mike?"

"She doesn't know about you yet, but I am going to be completely honest with her, Amy. With her, but maybe not so much with her parents."

"Oh?" Amy checked.

"How do I put this? They're wonderful people, but like they want to be at this gala mostly so they can be seen in the right circles. They enjoy the whole schmoozing with the right people thing. I'm going to tell them I met you at one of the social gatherings as part of the crew. If they think I know you better than that, there's a fair chance they'll be in my ear about your getting them into all sorts of things."

"Well if that's the way you want to play it, I'll go along with it," Amy replied, not appearing completely convinced it was the right thing to be doing.

They finished lunch and Mike headed back to his surgery again, wondering how he was going to manage to keep his stories straight. He was definitely going to tell Fang everything, because he didn't want to keep any secrets from her, but he didn't want her parents to know the extent of his relationship, or to call it what it was, his infatuation with Amy. It was going to be bad enough telling Fang what had gone on.

He went home to the apartment they now shared and waited until after dinner to tell her.

"Hey gorgeous, look what I managed to get today," he told her, revealing the tickets to the gala.

"Oh my God, you actually did it?"

"Indeed I did."

"Mother is going to love you even more! Lucky for me I've got your baby in my belly or she might try and steal you from me! How on earth did you get them?"

"Well, that's something of a story. I happen to know someone very influential, and she gave me the tickets."

"She? Who is this she?"

"Amy Berloo, the daughter of the First Ward."

"Seriously? You know the daughter of the First Ward? How the hell do you know her?"

"Okay, this is the difficult bit of the tale. I'm going to be completely and utterly honest with you here Fang, because we're going to raise a kid together and we should have no secrets."

"You're not exactly exciting me with that line, Mike. Should I be worried?"

"Just let me tell the tale, okay?"

"Alright," she said cautiously.

"Okay, so your stasis pod didn't actually malfunction. I pulled you out of stasis on purpose."

Fang was about to launch but Mike begged her to let him finish.

"If you want me to leave me when I'm done, then so be it, but please know that regardless of how we got here I love you, Fang. I really truly love you."

He was met with a silent, steely gaze. He rushed on.

He told her of his infatuation with Amy, the unbridled lust she had inspired in him and his unsuccessful attempts to seduce her when he'd pulled her from stasis. Then he poured out his insecurities, his desire and included the fact that Fang wasn't the first or even the last woman he'd successfully bedded after pulling her from stasis. He didn't share all the details, not yet, but he did give her a thumbnail sketch of everything.

"I should castrate you," she said frankly when he finished. "But you have one, maybe two things saving you at the moment. Since you found out about my pregnancy and during all the time we've been on Entarch, you've been amazing. The other is that you've told me. You could have waited to see if it was even an issue and then confessed, but you told me now while I had no way of finding you out. I don't quite know what to say other than that. It's a lot to process."

"I understand," Mike replied quietly," And I have to thank you for at least giving me that much consideration. You let me know what you need, and I'll be here to provide it. Or not here, if that's what you need. I have to say again though that I love you Fang." He reached for her hand and took it. He squeezed gently, conscious not to over-commit or ask too much of her.

"I think I need a little space to think on it, Mike. Not get out of the house space, just... I don't know, space."

"Should I go somewhere, give you a couple of hours?"

"No, I think I'm going to go out, Mike. I'll find my space and do some thinking."

"I'm here when you need me, Fang."

"I know, Mike. If it gets late, don't wait up for me. Thanks."

Mike stayed as inconspicuous as he could while Fang gathered a coat and handbag and left the apartment. He sat alone with his thoughts, waiting and hoping. He found the passage of time excruciating. He watched minutes roll slowly by, each one of them seeming closer to an hour than a small component of one. As the night wore on, he contemplated and discarded the idea of going to bed like Fang had said, wanting to be there for her whether she felt she still needed him or not.

The door to the apartment opening snapped him back to attention. His heart skipped a beat when Fang appeared in the doorway. He wasn't quite sure what to do. He stood up and just waited.

"Okay, sit down," Fang said bluntly.

Mike sat.

Fang pulled a chair up opposite him and sat, her legs spreading to accommodate her bulging belly.

Mike waited patiently for her to tell him what she had to say, not knowing whether it would be marching orders or wedding bells or something in between.

"I want you to tell me everything that happened with every one of those women you pulled from Stasis. Every fucking detail."

"What? Really?" Mike asked. He didn't know what he should have expected, but that hadn't been it.

"I want to know exactly what you did and with whom. Indulge me."

"Okay," he said, drawing a deep breath, "here goes..."

For the next several hours Mike relayed to his pregnant girlfriend everything he'd done aboard the Stellar Reach. The only narrative that was omitted, by agreement, was his interactions with Amy. He'd assured her they'd never slept together and she'd believed him because he was willing to bare his soul and tell her what he'd done to get over being unable to conquer the initial object of his desire.

"Tell me Mike, how much did you record?" Fang asked.

"What?"

"Come on, don't pretend you didn't record all this stuff as it happened. I've yet to meet a man who didn't, especially one with an ocular implant."

"Well, in the interests of honesty, I recorded a lot."

"Well, sometime you're going to show me all of it," Fang said. "Right now though, I'm exhausted; the sun's coming up. I need sleep. Come with me. I should probably kick you in the nuts first, but I don't have the energy. You're fucking lucky I fell in love with you before you told me all this."

They retired to bed, Mike grateful he was still there and marvelling at his luck in having found Fang at all.

~~~~~~~

"You need to take me shopping, Mike. It's time for a new dress," Fang said to him a couple days before the gala.

"Seriously? I thought you'd sorted that out a couple weeks ago."

"I was going to, but I want it to be perfect and was worried that by the time the day came, I'd be too fat.

"Not fat sweetie, sexy and pregnant," Mike corrected her, sweeping her into his arms, her swollen belly between them.

"Same difference," she giggled. "I still need something to stretch around the little one."

"Okay, shopping it is then. I can't risk my beloved meeting the First Ward in rags."

"Not to mention with my parents looking on."

"I can only imagine what your mother would say if you weren't at your absolute finest as you curtsey or bow or whatever to the First Ward!"

Hours later Mike collapsed exhausted on their bed, a smiling Fang standing at the foot.

"Hey, I'm the one in the delicate condition, I'm supposed to be the one who drops dead on her feet!"

"Yeah, but there's some crazy ass shopping gene you're working with isn't there? Put a credit card in your hand and walk you into a high-end fashion store and it's like the cares and fatigues of the world just drop away."

"True, but my feet still hurt like a bitch," she informed him, clambering onto the bed next to him.

"Well, I can do something about that." He rolled around on the bed until he was able to sit with her feet in his lap. He pulled her shoes off and dropped them on the floor before gently massaging the soles of her feet.

"Oh, now that my love, is going to get you credits," Fang moaned pleasurably. Mike was pleased that after a couple of emotional weeks as they'd worked through his revelations about his stasis antics that things had returned to normal. He felt guilty it had happened so quickly.

He spent ten minutes working her feet before moving his hands up to her calves. Fang only stopped him at the point where his hands started to wander further up her legs. "Nope, that's for later."

"Damn," Mike groaned, his groin aching with the desire that had built as he'd touched her. He knew better than to complain though, and he worked his way up the bed to lay beside her. He rolled toward her and held her, enjoying the intimacy of simply being close.

"Huh, no wonder your hands were wandering," Fang giggled as his erection pressed against her round belly.

"Can't help it when you're so sexy."

"Flattery will get you everywhere... eventually," Fang added, crushing the infant spark of hope the first portion of her sentence had ignited.

"I can't wait to see you in that dress, you're going to be magnificent."

"I'd better be, can't go around meeting a past flame of yours looking dowdy."

"Something tells me you couldn't look dowdy if you tried."

"Well, how about I just let that challenge slide?"

"A fine idea." They lay on the bed together and drifted off to sleep.

~~~~~~~

"How long until we need to leave, Mike?" Fang called out from the bathroom.

"An hour," he replied, moving to stand in the doorway and admire her as she undressed to shower.

"Hmm, not as much time as I'd like, but I can make that work."

"You could go like that. You'd be a sensation."

"Yeah, but not quite the sensation I'd like for an occasion like this, and I'm pretty sure Mother finally would disown me," Fang laughed.

"Good point. Did you want me to wash your back?"

"Just my back? As if you could wash only my back."

"I'd give it a go."

"I know what you'd give a go, and I'm too horny to let you near me or we'll be late."

"Shit, that's not exactly deterring me, you know."

"Later sweetie, later you can do all sorts of undeterred things to me," Fang promised.

Mike sighed. "Well I'll get out of your way then, so that neither of us are too distracted.

"Sadly, that's probably wise," Fang agreed and blew him a kiss.

"I'm holding you to that later thing, though."

"You'd better!"

Mike retreated to the living area, poured himself a scotch and sat down to watch some sports until it was his turn to get ready for the evening. He gave Fang half an hour to have progressed far enough that he might get access to the shower, then levered himself out of the chair and headed in that direction.

"Hey, no peeking!" Fang cried out and closed the bathroom door on him as soon as she knew he was likely to enter.

"How am I supposed to shower if I can't get in there?"

"Just use the guest bathroom," Fang instructed him.

"Okay, okay," Mike replied, sighing. He grabbed his shirt, suit, tie, socks and shoes and headed to the guest bathroom. He showered quickly then dressed, finishing well before the end of the hour he'd told Fang they needed to be ready by.

"How's progress, sexy?" he called out from a distance that was safe enough to avoid accusations of espionage and pre-emptive viewing of the gown even though he'd been there when it was purchased.

"Five minutes," Fang replied. Mike glanced at the time on his ocular and realised she'd be perfectly on time. Based on previous occasions when they'd been going out, he was impressed. He thought about pouring another drink but decided against it, instead sending through a request for a transport pod to arrive in ten minutes.

When he heard the bedroom door open he turned eagerly to see what vision Fang would present. He wasn't disappointed. She gave him a slow turn as he drank in the sight.

Her almost sheer, white gown clung to her pregnant curves like a second skin, and if anything highlighted how lucky she was with her pregnancy. Any weight she'd gained appeared to be confined in her belly, (which still was focused almost totally in front of her) and in her breasts. The gown had a scooped neckline that showed off the cleavage she hadn't had before becoming pregnant and an even deeper plunging scooped back that dipped almost to the crack of her bum. Glistening white stilettoes capped off the vision.

"Wow doesn't seem like enough of a compliment for how amazing you look," Mike drawled, his eyes sweeping up and down her body.

"I'll take that, plus the honest look of lechery in your eyes," Fang replied. They came together and Mike kissed her hard, his hands roaming over her body, caressing the curves of her bum and belly.

A chime sounded to announce the arrival of their transport pod and they broke apart reluctantly.

"After you, gorgeous," Mike offered, his gesture inviting Fang to precede him through the doorway.

They arrived at the gala without incident and walked the silver carpet into the mammoth banquet room, mingling with the other arriving guests. They'd agreed to meet Lan and Hong inside, so they hovered close to the entrance where they'd be able to see them enter. Mike grabbed a glass of red wine and snagged a sparkling water for Fang. They sipped on their drinks and mingled with the arriving guests while keeping an eye out for her parents.

"There they are," Mike announced when he spotted them. "You look amazing Lan," he greeted Fang's mother as they all came together.

"Look at this vision," Hong said to his daughter as he hugged and kissed her.

"There's no way I could ever have pulled that off when I was pregnant!" her mother exclaimed.

"Well you clearly passed along some pretty good genes, so I doubt that," Fang replied with a blush.

"Maybe those Gweilo genes have something going for them after all," Lan teased Mike nonsensically.

"Right, well why don't we find our table?" Mike suggested rather than taking the bait the comment offered.

The foursome wove their way through the happily chatting crowd, greeting those they knew along the way, occasionally stopping momentarily to exchange pleasantries with those they knew well.

"Aiyee, how close to the front are we?" Lan asked excitedly when Mike continued to lead them closer and closer to the stage where the speakers would stand.

"Just here," Mike announced, stopping at a table only a single row back from the front of the room.