Chapter 11: Shacking up

~~ Delta - Dec/02 - (Earth - June/2095) ~~

I woke to find myself snuggled up to a man.

As I shifted, he tightened his grip, and I had to smile. He was still out of it, and I got the rare chance to look at him sleeping. I couldn’t believe I had been shacking up with this guy for nearly six weeks.

After the party in Clarksville, Kale and I moved into James’ two-bedroom apartment. Kale to his delight and mine had his own room. I had learnt that a new family of faeries had been in Clarksville and were in the process of moving to Rubyvale.

Kale had started courting one of the daughters, and they had been as tight as James and I were. Arnett had moved in with Kale two weeks after we settled in and Kale’s new home was built. She had also joined our staff.

They were great to take caving, as they could get into a lot smaller places than James and I could. They also don’t get lost. Their exceptional eyesight also came in handy, and they were learning the art of excavation.

Their delicate touch and patience were also an asset as far as James and I were concerned. They certainly earned their pay and were valuable team members. I was amazed to watch Kale grow up. He tempered his recklessness and was more diligent in his responsibilities.

Kale also loved Arnett with a passion, and I believed his feelings were reciprocated. James had informed me that Lee’s people had developed special accommodations for faeries living with humans. So, we had gotten the cupboards in the spare room modified for the faeries to use.

They now had their own bedroom, bathroom, sitting room and kitchenette along the top section of the cupboards. It was even fitted with its own lights, airflow, automatic sliding doors, plumbing and windows.

Kale and Arnett loved their new home, which made James and me happy. The spare bed and the bottom of the cupboards could still be used by guests, not that we had many. They were always invited to eat and socialise with us, and they often did, having their own high stools at our table.

We were often amused that the biggest and smallest of the races were living quite happily together. I think all four of us often forgot about the differences in physical sizes. We were friends, colleagues and two couples in love.

Well, I loved James, and I was pretty sure he felt the same, even though he hadn’t said so in words. As far as live-in boyfriends go, I’d not found a lot to complain about.

If we ate in, he didn’t expect me to cook for him, and we often shared the duties and even enjoyed teaching each other our favourite recipes. If anything, he did more housework than I did. He liked a tidy house but wasn’t anal about it. The fact I liked it this way too gave us little conflict.

We had both adopted the disposable jumpsuits for work both in the office and at the site. They were comfortable, cool, and if they got dirty, then we simply replaced them. For slumming, we liked our own clothes, and if either saw the washing basket was full, we did the washing.

We had sorted out our own space for working at home, and I found James loved a lot of the old music I played on the music system. He also enjoyed curling up with me in bed to watch the old movies. The guy had a soppy bent and loved the old love stories.

I found he always made long slow, gentle love to me afterwards, so I had no problem letting him watch them. He liked my sci-fi’s as well, and we’d have some in-depth discussions about humans’ fascination for space and weird science.

At work, we had adopted the two-week system, and Paul and Foxy looked after the second away team. Some of my people still worked the half-week system and some that didn’t need to go to digs or on study expeditions, often worked a regular week, this was all right by me.

They didn’t need over the shoulder supervision, and our regular meetings seemed to get any issues sorted out reasonably quickly. We had been making a lot of progress in many areas of our research. We also happily collaborated with the northern continents.

We were gathering a fantastic picture of the evolution of life on this awesome planet. We still had a hell of a lot to learn, and I believed we would be employed for a very long time to come. There were still several continents we didn’t even know anything about yet.

I had heard the Asian Block were due to arrive in the New Year. The South Americans would still be about two months after them, as they had only just signed and still didn’t have a ship to get here.

I think many of us had given up hope on the other two blocks ever agreeing. Africa had several civil wars in progress, and I think the other nations were getting heartily sick of their infighting. Many countries had even cut off aid to the affected areas.

They believed it was being used to perpetuate the wars, not help solve them and the people who needed the aid never saw it. Some even speculated that if enough men were killed, the country would be populated mostly by women and the fighting would finally stop.

The Middle East was just as bad. They had been fighting for so long now, no one even knew why anymore. Many of the other countries were getting very weary of trying to help them clean up the mess they were making. Many hoped the decimation of the male population would also stop the fighting, here too.

Rubyvale had received another sixty women from Earth and twice that many in single men from Utopia. About half of them had moved when they found the honey, they had met in Clarksville at the party was living here. We had also acquired another forty families of different races.

The population in Rubyvale had increased to over a thousand. Opal City was doing equally well with its population growth. We both had new housing subdivisions, farms being taken up, and support businesses started. Ships in both the sea and the air were making regular trips to and from Clarksville now.

All four of the settled nations from Earth had also acquired new members, and their communities were starting to take shape as well. Justin’s new wife, Adison, whom I was told had actually been his first girlfriend on the ship Fortune on the trip out, was collaborating with me.

She was fascinated with the life cycle of the reptiles we had identified, and we had a lot of interesting discussions. Kim was working under Justin’s tutelage and often came to our new dig site with him.

They were working on mapping the geological changes, and they cross-referenced with our work a lot. Brandon also came with them, and I had noticed James was attentive if he was in camp, when we were there. I had to giggle at his possessiveness. Brandon had taken a fancy to Edith our new geoscientist making James happy.

They had sorted adopted our schedule as it fitted in with their wizards training. I was still learning about what magicians could and couldn’t do. They fascinated me on an intellectual level. They were a puzzle I’d not yet solved.

I was pulled from my thoughts when I felt a slight queasiness in my stomach and frowned. I hadn’t felt sick since I’d been immunised. Also, since Alec had accidentally hit me with his healing magic, my body had never felt so fit and healthy.

My stamina had improved considerably, and I had found I didn’t require as much sleep. Six hours and I was up, even with the longer days. The lovely gravity was also to my advantage as my speed and reaction times were off the chart. I also felt more mentally alert, as well.

The fact that I had the queasy feeling for the two mornings before also entered my head. The story of Lee and Debora falling pregnant, in spite of them both, having been tagged, also surface.

“Oh shit,” I said aloud. It dawned on me that the tag had been in my left shoulder and I wondered if Alec had accidentally done something to it when he healed me.

James’ eyes flicked open, and he looked at me. “What’s wrong, my sweetling?” he mumbled and then yawned. I looked down to see his cock was telling me it was morning and giggled. My hunky man loved morning nookies, and unless I got out of bed before him, he generally got his way.

My hunky man loved sex period, I decided. It was rare for us to go a day without him encouraging me to let him fuck me senseless. I think he only came back to town with me because if he stayed out at the dig, he had to go without.

He had tried it on our second trip out, and I woke to find him between my legs sucking me out in the early hours of the next morning of my return to town. He had fucked me so thoroughly; it was if we had been parted for weeks, not a day and a half.

He had also been very attentive as if me being out of his sight worried him. He wasn’t overbearing about it, so I let it slide. I allowed him to roll me over and soon had that hard, little monster wiggling up inside of me with glee. He liked long strokes in the morning.