Chapter 2

Zwhim

I groaned and rolled over as the now-familiar sound of the alien teleporter cut through my sleep. I rolled over and tried to wrap my arm around my childhood friend-turned-lover, only to come up with empty air. There was no one else in the bed with me. That was enough to earn a second groan, this time of disappointment. So it had all just been a dream after all. Well, that was kind of disappointing. I grabbed the edge of the blanket and pulled it up higher against my chin.

Zwhim.

The sound came again. I ignored it, and snuggled deeper into my pillows. Maybe if I closed my eyes and focused hard enough I could get back into the dream. It had worked for me several times before. I tried to recall the details from the night before. Eve back against me, her hot pussy wrapped around my cock, how hard her nipples had felt as I played my hand over them...

Zwhim

‘Damned detailed for a dream, ‘ I thought as I felt my cock begin to rise. I could have sworn on a stack of Bibles that it had all been real. The mattress wasn’t quite as giving as I had imagined Eve’s body as having been, and I was forced to roll over onto my back to ease the pressure. The soft white light of the room glowed around the edges of my eyelids as I failed to go back to sleep. I cracked them open and stared upwards at the velvet canopy covering the four post bed I was sleeping in. ‘But I don’t own a four post bed... ‘

Zwhim

Any thought of sleep vanished as the sound repeated itself once more. My head whipped back and forth as I bolted upright. Everything from my dream was right where I remembered having left it, from the mismatched furniture right down to the naked sixteen year old girl who was sitting in front of an alien obelisk playing some sort of matching game. Eve had pulled one of the egg shaped chairs in front of the testing machine. Score one for female ingenuity; I, like an idiot, had spent the previous day standing there instead.

I discovered that the cold metal floor had been covered over by a soft, fleecy carpet while I had slept. That made it easy to sneak up on Eve. I was tempted to reach around and grab her breasts, but the more gentlemanly side of myself insisted that was a spectacularly bad idea. So instead I covered her eyes and asked, “Guess who?”

“Gee, do I have a lot of choices?” Eve giggled. She pulled my hands away from her eyes and placed a kiss on my left palm before turning to look at me. A tilt of her head indicated the testing machine. “So, what is this thing? It just asks us questions and then gives us things?”

“Something like that,” I answered with a shrug. My stomach began to rumble, reminding me I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. Or maybe it had been earlier that morning. Or afternoon. Or something. Without any clocks it was impossible to tell how long I had been asleep or even when I had gone to sleep. And there weren’t any windows or anything else I could think of to track the passing of time. I had the feeling that was deliberate. I remembered reading something somewhere that casinos used a similar trick to keep people playing. By making it so that people couldn’t keep track of time, it was easier for them to convince themselves that they could take “just another five minutes”. Probably didn’t work so well if the person was wearing a watch or carrying a cell phone, but then that was what all the pretty blinking lights on the games were for.

Just like the pretty blinking lights on the testing machine.

“Have you eaten yet?” I asked as I headed over to the kitchen.

“I made some toast earlier, but wouldn’t mind something a little more,” Eve replied as she turned back to the testing machine. I kept an eye on her out of the corner of my eye as I started making eggs and bacon. Okay, yes, cooking bacon while naked is not exactly the smartest thing in the world, but horny teenage boy + naked teenage girl =/= rational thought processes. I’d like to say that I was keeping an eye on her because I was concerned she was going to get a yellow button like I had, but that would be crediting myself with more forethought than I was capable of. I was watching her because she has an absolutely fantastic pair of tits and I damned near burned the bacon because of it.

While I cooked us breakfast the testing machine started a game of checkers for Eve. That much was new. The only game I remembered it trying to play with me was tic-tac-toe. Checkers was not only longer than any challenge it had offered me, it was also more complicated. There were standard rules of course, but then there were also the variations on the game that people had worked up. Was wall jumping something that it would allow, or would it punish Eve for trying? I was curious to find out, but finished cooking our breakfast before heading over to watch.

“I hope you like your bacon crispy,” I said as I dragged a nearby table over next to Eve. She reached down without thinking and picked up one of the less burned strips. Now, I’m not going to say that bacon ought to go limp like a well cooked piece of spaghetti, but I’m also fairly sure it’s not supposed to crack the way it did when she bit into it.

“Mmm, just like Daddy always burned,” Eve laughed as she set the rest of the bacon to the side. The computer seemed to be thinking about it’s next move, which gave her a chance to try the eggs next. “Not bad. Could use a little more pepper next time. Or some cheese.”

“Pepper and cheese, got it,” I acknowledged with a nod. I must have been hungrier than I thought, because it only took me a couple of minutes to wolf down my food. Eve took a little bit longer, but the computer seemed to have realized she was distracted or was otherwise extremely confused by its first game of checkers, because it kept drawing its own turns out by several minutes at a time. Once she had finished I scooped up both plates and took them over to the dishwasher.

When I got back, Eve was fidgeting in her seat. The game wasn’t exactly a stalemate; the computer had more pieces, but Eve had more kings, and they seemed to be capable of full on flight. Wall jumps, however, seemed blocked. Where the hell had the computer learned to play checkers that way?

But while I was paying attention to the game (okay, okay, and continuously glancing at Eve’s tits) Eve was paying less attention to the board and spending more time staring at me. Or, more specifically, at my crotch. I wasn’t fully erect at that point, but sort of stuck in a halfway between state. My cock felt heavier than normal, but it wasn’t about to go marching down Main Street any time soon. Still, she couldn’t help looking at it, just like I couldn’t help looking at her chest. And of course we were both so focused on checking out the other person that neither of us realized the other person was busy checking us out.

Finally, the game beeped impatiently.

Eve flinched as if it had reached out and shocked her. I felt my own face heat as she looked up and realized I had been staring. Yes, we had fucked the night before and yes I wanted to fuck her again, which I’m fairly sure running my pole up to half mast had already made obvious, but Jesus Christ that didn’t mean I wanted to get caught staring! I was terrified that she would think I was some sort of desperate pervert or something.

Yes, I realize how stupid that sounds. Yes, I realize that I was sitting next to a naked girl that I had already slept with in the middle of a freaking alien psych experiment and that maybe, just maybe, there might have been slightly more important issues to worry about such as whether or not we were ever going to get home or if the testing machine was going to launch one or both of us into another fight to the death. Yes, I realize now that I was being an idiot.

But I didn’t realize it then, which is why Eve’s next offer caught me off guard.

“Maybe you should come sit here,” she suggested as she patted the edge of her egg chair.

Now, let me describe one of these chairs for you. You ever seen Men in Black? You know those chairs that Will Smith and a whole bunch of extras have to take a test in at the beginning of the movie? Yeah, the egg chairs were a lot like those. They were tall, they were deep, and they were narrow. They were also almost fully enclosed. What I’m trying to get across is that they were really not designed for two people sitting side by side.

“Yeah, sure!” I said happily. I fairly leapt out of my seat and into hers. My lover obligingly slid over, right up against the opposite wall of her chair. I actually had to sort of raise my left leg up and partially cross it over my right leg to squeeze into place, and the curve of the chair meant that my head got pushed over at an angle, closer to Eve’s. There was only one place that my right arm could go, and that was right around her slender waist, leaving my hand resting on the top of her bare thigh, where her leg joined her hip. She was half turned around as well, as if we were trying to cuddle. I’d like to say I was completely ignorant of the way her breast was flattened against the side of my chest, but really I’m not that much of a gentleman.

All that skin to skin contact had gotten my libido’s attention, and it wasn’t long before my penis was doing a passable imitation of the Washington Monument. Well, okay, the way my body was angled made it more like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but really all you need to do is picture the phallic landmark of your choice and the imagery will work out fine. After all, it was working just fine for Eve.

I heard the slight catch of her breath in her throat as Eve leaned into me. Heat rolled off her body as if I were cuddling a living flame. One arm curled around my neck as she tried to remain steady enough to play her game, but the angle was incredibly awkward for it. A faint, spicy aroma hung about her, somewhere between cinnamon and black pepper without ever being close to either one. I didn’t need to slide my hand between her legs to know she was already wetter than a jungle caught in a monsoon. I did it because of the way she gasped as I started to probe her slick folds.

“Maybe ... maybe this would work better if I sat on your lap,” Eve suggested huskily. I didn’t have the chance to reply before she was out of the chair and pushing me into position. The lusty brunette pushed my legs together so that my cock jutted up from between my thighs, then held me in place with one hand as she turned and lowered herself onto my spear.

For the second time in as many days, I found myself buried inside one of the most beautiful girls I had ever had the pleasure of knowing. Eve was incredibly tight, even with her legs spread to properly straddle my lap. A contented sigh passed her lips as the brunette leaned back against my chest. We stayed like that for several moments, just savoring the feel of our bodies once more being joined together. As a sensation, it was almost impossible to describe. She was hot and wet and tight and, and, and... ! It wasn’t pleasure - we weren’t even having sex. The only motion was the gentle rise and fall of our bodies as we sat there breathing. It went past togetherness and straight on to unity.

And I’m sure that our alien captors were busy scribbling all sort of notes. Bastards.

Finally, the testing machine beeped impatiently again, deliberately drawing our attention back to why we were sitting there in the first place. Eve let out a sigh and sort of sat up and sort of leaned forward, which did absolutely amazing things as far as my cock was concerned. It would have been all too easy for me to just grab her, throw her down over the game board, and fuck her, but the thought honestly never occurred to me, at least not then. Instead my hands rested on her hips, less to keep her in position and more because I had nowhere better else to put them as she played. I couldn’t see the board, but I could still tell when it was her turn based on the way she squirmed and shifted on my lap. Movement meant thought, while stillness meant she was waiting for the computer to make up its mind. Every so often my cock would twitch inside of her and her walls would squeeze back in response, or vice versa. There was no risk of climax on either of our parts, just our bodies offering each other a subtle reminder, ‘Yes, I am still here.’

I don’t know how long we stayed like that. Ultimately, Eve let out a satisfied sigh and leaned back against my chest. “There.”

“Did you win?” I murmured. My hands began to unconsciously slide up and down her belly, causing her to shiver slightly.

“Yes,” Eve whispered back. The interior of the egg was intimately cozy. There was no need to speak very loud at all. She turned her head to the side, twisting so that she could kiss me. The tip of my fingers grazed her ribs as they continued upwards until they tripped over the stiff points of her nipples. Desire began to build between us as Eve moaned into my mouth, until it was nearly a palpable thing. Her hands seized my wrist and pulled my hand needfully between her legs. Clit or nipple, it made no difference to me, and instead I delighted in teasing them both at the same time. The weight of her body kept me pinned to the chair, but there was no need for me to try thrusting. Her hips rocked against mine with a mad desire to take me in as deeply as her body would allow. I could feel every shudder, every shake, as my lover pushed herself steadily towards her climax. It finally came as this long, trembling release that left her lying limp in my arms.

Strangely, I wasn’t disappointed by the fact that I hadn’t matched her climax with one of my own. Instead I continued to caress her body, brushing my fingers over her skin with soft, delicate touches that were more loving that titillating. My erection slid free as Eve twisted in my arms to nuzzle against my side. It bobbed in the air as she curled up around me, eventually coming to rest against her thigh as she crossed her leg over mine.

“You know...” Eve’s words trailed off doubtfully.

“Hmmm?” My eyes were closed as I mindlessly played with the hair resting against the back of her neck.

“I don’t know,” she answered hesitantly. “I know I want to go home, but there’s a small part of me that can’t help but think this isn’t so bad.”

I cracked open an eye to look at her. Eve wasn’t able to meet my eyes as she first placed her hand on my chest than rested her head on the back of her hand. The angle I was sitting at made it relatively easy to look down on her face, however, and while the interior of the egg should have been fairly dark, whatever magical property kept the rest of the room lit was lighting the interior of the egg as well. Whatever thoughts were running through her head clearly had her troubled.

“What do you mean?” I pressed.

“Well...” She took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. “I know our families must be missing us and I want to see them again. Really, I do! But then there’s all this, and I know that if we do go home that we’ll be giving this up. Here we have anything we want and we have each other. But if we go home, than that all goes away.”

I couldn’t stop myself from offering up the name of the one person I expected to be the biggest obstacle once we were free. “Jackson?”

“What?” Eve frowned for the shortest moment, then lifted and shook her head. “No, forget about him. I was only ‘with’ him, and I use the word loosely, because you hadn’t made a move!”

I snorted in disbelief, which, in hindsight was not the smartest move.

Eve physically recoiled. “You don’t believe me?”

I let out a sigh of my own before answering. “Eve, why would I have asked you out? We haven’t talked to one another since sixth grade! It’s been the better part of five years, and you may not have noticed that we haven’t exactly been running in the same social circles during that time.”

“Well, whose fault is that?” Eve demanded angrily.

“Why does it have to be anyone’s fault?” I threw my hands up helplessly. “It’s not like I woke up one day and went, ‘Gee, you know what would be really swell? If I stopped talking to my best friend!’ You got tits, you got friends, you got popular. I got left behind. And then I found my own path.”

“So it is my fault!” Eve declared. My mouth worked up and down as I tried to figure just how she had made that particular jump in logic when I could have sworn that I had expressly said it was no one’s fault, but my lack of a speedy answer just seemed to piss her off more. Before I knew what was happening, she had punched me in the chest and climbed out of the egg. That brought her right past the testing machine, which proved to be the perfect target for her ire. “I wish I had never been brought here!”

Her fist slammed down into the sparkling purple button, which immediately conjured a picture of four different weapons for her to pick from. Eve snarled with rage and threw another punch at the hovering hologram, which was enough for the alien device to decide she had made a choice. The hologram immediately vanished, so, since she no longer had a handy floating target to vent at, Eve threw her third strike at the pedestal, right where the buttons were.

Except there was only one button.

And it was glowing yellow.

Zwhim

My bare ass bounced off broken concrete before I even had time to realize we were getting teleported. The ground around me might have once been a road, but was now a shattered wreck. If I had landed just two feet to my left, then I would have ended up losing my anal virginity to a piece of rusted piping. The burnt out, skeletal remains of skyscrapers framed the scene around us, while overhead a bright red sky was scarred by trails of black smoke. Laying next to me was some sort of rifle. It was a gun, obviously, stock, barrel, trigger. Only the stock was some sort of silvery metal, the barrel was a glass tube lit internally by blue lighting and wrapped externally in copper coils, and the trigger was a big red button marked, “Do Not Press Until Ready to Fire”.

Eve had landed about five feet away from me, almost the same distance that had separated us inside the Skinner Box. She had enjoyed the ability to land on her feet, fist punching down into the broken asphalt as if she were some sort of superhero. There was another rifle laying next to her, but other than that she was just as naked as I was. Even strange as the situation was, I couldn’t help but file the image away for later personal use, because damn.

Eve looked around in panic as she realized we were no longer in our cozy little trap. She snatched up the gun that was laying next to her and fell into a crouch. “Adam, what the fuck?!”

I paused to grab my rifle before answering. When I stood up I could feel my cock bouncing between my legs. You know how fear can get your heart racing? Less than a minute ago I had had a beautiful, naked girl squirming in my lap. My body was still in full Go mode, and the sudden burst of adrenaline from the teleport was not helping settle matters back down. I’d just been dumped in the middle of what looked like World War III and all the blood I needed to think was currently being hogged by my erection. Would it have been too much to ask for a pair of shorts?

“It’s part of the Skinner Box,” I explained as I cautiously approached her. While I didn’t think she would shoot me, she was pissed off, scared, and now heavily armed. Luckily for me, Eve didn’t seem all that inclined to actually push the button. I stood up a little straighter. “The last challenge I faced before you appeared was some sort of duel. I had to fight this alien. He had a sword, I had an axe. The good news is, I won. The bad news is, I won.”

Eve frowned. “Why is that bad news?”

“Because it means I don’t know what happens if we lose.” I sighed and shook my head. “During the fight I hurt my foot and it was fine when I got back, but it was obvious where I had gotten hit. So this is definitely us and not just some game that we’re playing. If we get hurt and win, then we’ll be fine. But if we get hurt and lose, or worse, die...”

Eve shuddered. “Then we could really be dead.”

I nodded. “And I don’t see any respawn points. Or a save and quit option for that matter. So the only real option is to play the game.”

Slender shoulders visibly sagged as Eve’s face crumbled. “This is my fault, isn’t it? If I just hadn’t hit that stupid button!”

“Hey, hey, no!” I pulled her close in for a hug. It wasn’t the most tactically sound move in the world, but it was the right move. My free arm wrapped possessively around her as I kissed her forehead. “Look, this entire situation is outside of our control. Everything we have at the moment is at the mercy of that damned pedestal. If we stopped pressing the button, if we stopped doing what our captors want us to do, how long do you think it would take them to start applying pressure? What do you think they would zap away first? The television? The bed? Our food? But I bet that pedestal would stay. It would just stand there the entire time, those little buttons blinking until we finally give in and press one.”

“But what if we never pressed them?”

I took a step back so that I could look Eve in the eye. “Do you know what scientists do when their lab rats are no longer viable for their experiments?”

Eve shook her head.

“They kill them. Then they just get new rats.”

Eve snorted. There was a second of silence, followed by a fit of giggles. When that finally passed, she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Well. Fuck.”

“We can do that after we figure out what we’re supposed to do here,” I answered with a snort of my own.

Eve shuddered. “I still can’t believe you thought I’d prefer Jackson.”

Luckily, she couldn’t see it as I rolled my eyes. This time, however, I was going to try to avoid tasting my toes. “I’m sorry. It was stupid of me.”

Eve took a deep hoisted her gun up into a classic action hero pose. “Okay. We can put the drama to the side for now. What exactly are we supposed to do here? Are we going to have to kill something?”

“That would be my guess,” I answered. “I just don’t kn-”

My sentence was interrupted by a loud buzzing that was coming from right around my wrist. Strapped to my arm was a black watch-like device that hadn’t been there a moment ago. As I pulled it closer the device beeped and began to glow. A purple holographic map materialized in the space between me and Eve. A blue circle hovered on one spot of the map, connected by a dotted line to a throbbing green dot on the far side of the city. The dots didn’t follow a straight path, but zigged and zagged around what should have been the shortest path. The first curve was about three blocks down from where we seemed to be standing, and, sure enough, when I looked in that direction I saw that one of the ruined buildings had crashed into its neighbor, leaving a mountain of rubble blocking the road depicted on the map.