“Putting chauvinistic romanticism aside, consciousness is merely a pinprick of light shining through a chink in the curtains.”

The recorded voice, a last ditch attempt by Fyche, my faithful AI, to tempt me to resuscitate my faltering career as a sex reporter, roused me from a deep, satiated sleep. Losing his body to the supernova that atomized Jones’s World had not diminished one iota Fyche’s compulsion to fuss over me. He had insisted that he awaken me with the audio of a lecture given by the celebrated sexologist Professor Simon Bok. It had been Fyche’s idea that I should at least give the illusion of working at the career which had given me fame and fortune. He’d set me a project to write a popular guide to the psychology of sex. Despite all that had been going on these last few months, Fyche insisted I had to keep my publisher happy and maintain some hold, as tenuous as it was, on my day job.

I was lying on the floor, evidence of a good night, and with some effort I focused on the professor’s sententious tone. “Behind the curtain the scene is awash with intense actinic light, a seething cauldron of neural activity. That is the unconscious, controlling the autonomic nervous system, keeping the body alive as well as processing the constant influx of sensation, assessing the salience of the data for any threat, directing flight or fight reactions with lightning speed, distinguishing pleasure from pain, as well as performing the more sedate activities of laying down new memories and overwriting the old. This hidden inferno is the core of your being.”

I turned down the volume on Bok’s lecture. The aged sexologist did go on sometimes. To be honest I was sick to death of his curtain analogy.

The sleeping male beside me stirred. He was good looking in the usual way; square jaw, strong body with hard, rippling muscles under golden skin and, not least of all, a big throbbing cock. Last night his bright eyes, burning with youthful machismo, had been captivated by my split skirt that had strategically fallen open when I’d perched myself on the barstool, exposing my thigh in the classic manner designed to attract any buzzing bees loitering in the vicinity.

I couldn’t remember his name but recalled he was a navy lieutenant from Scalion. He was a fighter pilot, I think. My memory of last night was a tad hazy. I glanced at the uniform strewn across the floor and sighted the embroidered wings on the shoulder patch. Yep, a fighter pilot, one of the brave, one of the few, a pulsating bag of testosterone secure in his cockpit playing with his joystick.

His being a pilot hadn’t interested me as much as his accent.

I’d been sitting alone at Haze Bar and Grill nursing one of their boutique beers. He’d sat next to me, already swaying with a tad too much alcohol.

“Can I buy you a beer?” he said a little too loudly.

The accent, only slightly slurred, stabbed into my consciousness. It was familiar. More than it should have been. I gave him the onceover, liked what I saw.

“I already have one.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “You can always have two.” Perfectly white teeth flashed in a boyish smile.

“That’s very true.”

As I tried to figure out why the accent should strike me as important, he signaled to the arthropod bartender. “Two more.”

He held out his hand. “I’m Kel.”

I took it. “Peri.”

He took my hand to his lips, turned it and kissed the sensitive skin at the wrist. As corny as it was, the gesture sent a tingle through my flesh. My wrist is one of my erogenous zones, as is most of my body, but the wrist is one of the special ones.

“Is that customary on Scalion?” Somehow I knew where his accent originated. How, I had no idea.

His face contorted in an exaggerated frown. “Darn it to hell. I’ve been working on my accent for months.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Why change it? It’s nice.”

He took a swig from his beer. “It’s like a tattoo across my forehead marking me as a provincial. If I want to get ahead, I have to sound civilized.”

I detected a slight tone of bitterness. “Is getting ahead so important you have to change who you are?”

His jaw had set firm and he fixed me with his bright blues. I sensed he’d debated this already in his own head. “I’m only changing my accent.”

I tapped his bottle of beer with mine. “That’s just the beginning.”

“Of what?”

“The slippery slope to mediocrity. If you sound like everyone else, how will you get noticed?”

“By being the best pilot.”

I shrugged. “I know nothing of being a pilot, but I bet there are a lot of good ones around. Unless you possess superhuman reflexes how can you guarantee you’ll be the best?”

He was silent for a moment. He’d battled the same thoughts no doubt. “I’m betting on my ability and dedication,” he said finally.

I clinked bottles again. “Good luck with that.”

He bristled at that. “What? You don’t think I can be the best?”

“I have no idea, but Marketing 101 says that to compete in a highly competitive market you accentuate your differences. That is called your competitive advantage.”

“What are you? A teacher?”

“Hardly, but tell me, as good as you are, what makes you a unique pilot?”

He looked into his beer for a few moments before his expression clouded slightly and became a little despondent. “I’m working on a new way of fighting pirates. The problem we have is that if we are lucky enough to catch them in the act, as soon as they see us they just jump into quantum space. Tracking their engine’s tachyon signature is next to useless because they have inbuilt randomizers, which are illegal but that’s their game, isn’t it?”

“So what is it, this new strategy?”

“I’m still working out the details, haven’t tried it out yet, but it involves taking them head on and combining their spatial inertia at the instant they make the jump and adding to my own, so they cancel out. Depending on their mass I’ll have to alter my attack speed to compensate. I finished the mathematics of it this afternoon. It should work.”

“So you’re celebrating tonight?”

He clinked my glass. “You got it.”

Of course, he intended for me to be his prize for this youthful endeavor. Not that I was completely averse to the idea.

“What do you call this strategy?”

“Call it?”

“You have to have a name for it.”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead. I haven’t tried it out, you see.”

“You have to have a name. The Kel Maneuver? The Scalion Maneuver? Or something boring like the Spatial Inertia Maneuver?”

“Oh, I see what you mean.” His eyes slid over my face like a caress and settled on my lips. “I could call it the Peri Maneuver.”

My belly gave a little flutter. Oh, he was so cute. “Will my maneuver work?”

His expression became doubtful. “Nothing like it has been tried. Too dangerous, you see. The timing has to be absolutely perfect to the twentieth decimal place and there are a few other variables that need to be controlled.”

I patted his hand in commiseration. It didn’t sound like a profitable idea. “What else makes you unique among pilots?”

He gave a shrug. “The only pilot in the fleet from Scalion?”

Poor diddums. His enthusiasm had suddenly plummeted and it was my fault for being sarcastic. He needed bucking up. “I can’t imagine the barriers you’ve had to clear before getting your wings, being from a poor world on the periphery. I’m not being patronizing when I say that. You obviously worked harder than the ones that come from influential families in the central worlds. If it was me, I’d make the most of the difference. You won’t be as popular with your fellow pilots. They want you to be just like them, part of the tribe. If you’re different, you’re a threat. So, if being one of the guys is enough for you, change your accent. But if you want more, if you want to be a leader, then you have to be more.”

He finished his beer. “So, what do you do?”

I was impressed. Despite the alcohol he showed some skeptical insight. “Do I practice what I preach is what you mean.”

“Something like that.”

“I’m a writer.”

“A unique writer?”

I answered the challenge in his gaze with a smile. “I have been described as different. I’ve won my share of awards, gained a certain notoriety.”

He tilted his head and frowned. “I can’t place your accent.”

I started on the beer he had bought me. “That’s because I don’t have one. I grew up on a lot of worlds. Lost my native tongue before I knew I had one to lose.”

“But you spent time on Scalion,” he said. “That’s how you recognized my accent.”

Now that was the sixty-million-credit question. “When I was young my mother and I were refugees from Nova Town. We ran to a dozen different worlds. Scalion wasn’t on my list of memories, but it’s clear we must have been there. I recognized the accent immediately. Tell me about it.”

“You said it all. A poor provincial world on the periphery. Nothing of note ever came out of Scalion.”

I touched his hand. “Your competitive advantage is all the greater for that.”

He looked at my hand for a moment then raised his eyes to meet mine. “So, what was your competitive advantage?”

“I write what I know.”

“And what’s that?”

The words were out of my mouth before I knew what I was going to say. “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

Fyche didn’t say anything as Kel and I stumbled arm in arm through the Jalapeño’s hatch. I knew he scanned my new beau for weapons and probably did a biographical check by accessing the navy’s database. Always looking out for me was Fyche.

I took my young pilot straight to my cabin and pushed him onto the bed. With his unfocused eyes fixed on my cleavage, he started unbuttoning the jacket of his uniform.

“You asked me what I write, and I said I write what I know,” I purred as I closed the hatch and peeled off my dress. “Well, this is what I know.”

Drunk sex is different from sober sex in a surreal kind of way. There is a sense of supreme urgency about it. It is absolutely imperative to devour each other while undressing, swallowing each other’s tongue while undergarments are ripped away and flung about. Clumsiness is ignored and falling off the bed doesn’t put a halt to activities. In fact, one hardly notices. “Was that Earth moving?” you ask into his mouth. “Nah,” he replies into yours. “Just missed the landing pad.” He is a pilot after all.

I remember his hands pawing at my breasts, squeezing them as if they were fruit in a market stall and he was testing them for ripeness. Then he was biting my nipples and sucking hard. I had both hands around his cock. It was thick and very, very hard. That’s another thing about drunk sex: things seem bigger, more powerful, and gripping that solid shaft made me want him inside me without any fucking delay.

It was a wrestle of Olympic proportions to see who was going to end up on top. I let him win because I find alcohol affects balance, and the last thing I want when fucking is a case of vertigo. Better to lie back and let the flyboy do all the piloting. And Kel was the consummate pilot. His aim with his joystick was perfect. He found the welcoming entrance to my pussy first try and he dived in deep.

“Fuck me hard, flyboy!” I shouted, completely oblivious to my cringe-worthy words.

The thing about jocks in the military, they know how to take orders. He well and truly fucked me hard, driving me into the floor with unrestrained youthful vigor. Opening my eyes at one point, I wondered what the hell my feet were doing hovering above my head. I realized he had my legs pushed way back and he was leaning on them as he fucked me, relying on the natural spring of my thighs to propel him back so he could drive into me again.

No one had ever done that to me before. Not one of the hundreds of men I’ve fucked during my journalistic career had used me like a springboard. I took a mental note to record it for my book.

Even through the foggiest alcoholic haze you can still find moments of lucidity. That’s what I mean by surreal.

Being a pilot, his natural instinct was to be in control. Next thing I knew I was kneeling on the floor with my head resting on the bed. He was driving into me from behind with his hands gripped around my waist. I hadn’t noticed the transition. Had I blacked out? Or had my attention been diverted by the orgasm that had ripped through me, making my pussy pulse and my throat scream like a Gorgonian Mist Wraith?

The other thing about drunken sex is that it all seems to happen at once. One moment you are on top, then on the bottom, twisting about while some massive cock drives into you. I’d come a couple of times before he emptied his come sac deep inside me.

“Fuck, you’re hot,” he slurred, gave me a sloppy kiss and then rolled away. His head hadn’t even hit the floor and he was snoring.

I laughed, I think, before the darkness claimed me too.

That was last night, and the recollection had caused my nipples to peak and my pussy to moisten. Luckily I’d taken some anti-hangover tablets before going out and was reasonably compos mentis and therefore randy as usual. Sleeping on the floor, however, had left me with a stiff back.

I gazed at my young pilot and listened to Professor Bok’s quiet pontificating in the background. “Everything we have ever thought and ever felt has already occurred beyond the curtain through which our conscious eyes can never see in its entirety. A half millisecond is how long it takes the light of our subconscious to speed through the tear in the curtain. Do not be fooled. Every decision you consciously make has already been made there. Whatever you are thinking now has already been thought behind the curtain. Conscious free will is an illusion. You are not in the driver’s seat of your life. You, and by that I mean your consciousness, are merely the passenger on a journey through time and space that begins with birth and terminates in death. There is no escaping from inside the vehicle of your skull. The bony hatches are welded shut. So sit back, relax, gaze out the window and enjoy the trip.”

I switched off Professor Bok’s dubious though popular philosophy. Illusion or not, I sure as hell felt I was the driver of my destiny. I ran my life. I was certain of it. I mean, if something walks like a quaddick, quacks like a quaddick, then it’s a fucking quaddick. Am I right? Anyway, that’s what I thought.

I pulled back the sheet that had somehow fallen over my pilot’s body and gazed admiringly at his semi-erect cock. Lying across his belly like a recumbent slug, it moved slightly with his gentle breathing. I set about coaxing it alive with my fingers, working those sensitive spots until he stood hard and strong.

The male genitals are a patchwork quilt of erogenous zones. Starting from the back and working my way forward, first there’s the asshole. That puckered ring, and — dare I say it — the flesh inside that tight circle, is alive with nerve endings which will set off fireworks in any man. Then there is the little patch between asshole and ball sac. If you run your fingers or tongue across that little alleyway, you’ll send hot shivers cascading across quivering flesh. Simmering within the rice paper thin ball bag lay strange and delicate eggs. Tease these and he will beg to fuck you. Next there’s the shaft, a steel rod sheathed in tissue thin flesh. Grip it hard, or stroke the flesh with tongue or fingernail and you’ll have him squirming in ecstasy. The ridge that separates head from shaft, oh, trace that circle with the tip of your tongue and he’ll cry out for more. At the summit sits the spongy flesh of the engorged head. This was made for kissing and sucking, but strangely not for biting except in only a few cases. To top it off, there is the single eye. Tease it with your tongue, probe the eye softly, caress the inner flesh and taste the silky soft liquid that heralds his climax.

“Oh, yeah, baby,” he sighed as if in a dream.

“Shhh,” I whispered and climbed into the driver’s seat. Now to tease my own erogenous zones. Poised on straining thighs, I slid the head of his cock along the moist slit of my pussy. From back to front, starting between pussy and asshole and ending just below my clit, then back again, just teasing my own sensitive path toward my ass. Then back to my clit, more pressure now, letting the silky folds of my pussy lips enshroud the head. Deeper now, slowly, letting every millimeter of inner flesh savor the incoming rod. With only an inch inside me, I used my thighs to move up and down, tiny motions that seem amplified within my sultry sheath.

Each downward movement buried a little more of the shaft inside me. I threw back my head, groaning in sheer pleasure and relishing the control. Being the submissive partner has joys of its own, but being in control, taking my pleasure from the body of a willing, though in this case slumbering, male is the ultimate. To hell with Bok and his fucking curtain, I’m at one with the moment, in the here and now, consciously controlling my own pleasure.

Moving my hips just a tad, I adjusted the angle of attack ever so slightly and… ah… there, there it is. That patch of nerve endings which, when caressed, sends waves of prickly heat straight to my belly. Deeper and now it’s the ridge around the head of his cock rubbing that glorious patch. I rose and fell over his cock, again and again, deeper and deeper, until I was seated on his pelvis. A gentle lean forward and my clit met the hard flesh above the root of his shaft.

Oh. That’s it.

No more rise and fall for a moment. Now I’m moving back and forth, rubbing my clit against his pelvic bone in a determined and forceful grinding motion. My cunt has become a mill wheel grinding against the stone. Inside me, his shaft is being caressed by my tight sheath, bathed with wet heat, his entire organ enveloped by eager flesh.

It’s become too much for him. With a groan coming from deep inside his chest he grips my hips and begins to use my body. He’s awakened completely now, but I was unaware exactly when my ministrations had roused him from sleep. He begins to move, to buck, as if he could thrust his cock deeper within me when we are already locked in extremis.

With soft words I try to calm him but it is too late. I’ve played his cock too far to turn his passion aside. With a cry, his grip on my hips intensifies. He holds me still and beneath me he arches, as the shaft within expands and stretches my flesh with a glorious gush of heat.

I’m grinding faster now, not wanting to be left behind. His face is contorted by his climax. I read, in his twisted lips, the agony of regret. Sorry that this act is over, that this exquisite manipulation of the senses is finished and he is disappointed in himself for not lasting longer.

It’s not over for me. I’m at the summit of pleasure. I slow deliberately, savoring the moment before the frisson, delaying the inevitable for just a few more moments.

“Fuck you, Bok,” I hiss. I’m in control of my destiny, not my subconscious.

Of course I am.

And then the moment my body will put off no longer.