Chapter 1: Cate's Time

"OK, everyone out," Cate insisted, ushering the women from her brother's room, despite their still struggling to get dressed. "It was nice meeting you all and I'm glad Alex could spend time with you, but we've got to get an early start in the morning so Alex needs his rest. He's weak enough as it is, and after today he's going to be exhausted."

This time, after Patricia's final concert in Los Angeles, Alex had taken three women to bed with him. He'd only boosted two of them. He'd brought the other back to talk about filling a role in his organization and had hoped he might accidentally boost her, but it hadn't happened. Instead she'd taken part in the festivities, though Gail had been kind enough to take her off Alex's plate, but now Cate was calling an end to it.

"Thanks every so much," Kathy said effervescently, giving Alex a quick kiss before she rushed out, fastening her belt as she ran past Cate. "You'll never know just what this meant to me."

"Me too," said Maggie, the Seeker who'd joined the festivities. "I'd have joined if you'd been playing Solitaire, but getting to watch Alex work his magic not once, but twice, is simply—"

"Yeah, yeah, we appreciate the sentiment, but unfortunately, we do know just how much this means to each of you," Cate told them as they made their exit. "After all, this is hardly the first time we've done it. I'll be in touch with each of you." Cate herded them towards the door, making sure they had all their possessions so they'd have no excuse to double back. "Our plans are a little uncertain at the moment, so we may be staying in town for another couple of days, so if we need you we'll be sure to call."

Cate hated acting like a bitch, chasing these lovesick women out when all they wanted was to cuddle up with Alex for the night. But she knew a couple of things they didn't which necessitated getting them out.

"You too, Gail and Gini," Cate insisted, referring to his two bodyguards. Although they'd do anything for him and would easily sacrifice themselves to protect him, sometimes they could be a little dense when it came to certain things. "Alex needs a chance to recover if he's going to be ready for tomorrow."

"Ah, couldn't I just stay and relax?" Gail pleaded. Although she hadn't worked as hard as Alex, she was also suffering from post-coital lethargy. "After all, you're not the only one who likes to soak up Alex's energy."

"Look Gail, you know what we discussed," Cate insisted. "Alex needs his sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a full day, and you staying here will only distract him. If you want, you can set up a defensive perimeter on the couch in the outer room, but Alex needs quiet for a change in order to recharge."

"Look, I don't know what you have planned for me," Alex said, always annoyed to only learn things at the last possible moment, "but if it's so important, shouldn't we at least discuss it?"

"Alex, right now what you need is rest," Cate announced, facing him with her arms folded like an old-time school marm as she glared at him. "Discussing what we have planned for the next several days won't help you recover. We'll discuss it in the morning, but right now, I want all distractions out of here. You're running on fumes, and we need you ready for tomorrow."

"You'll get no arguments from me," Gini announced as she headed out the door. "Although I don't mind keeping watch while Gail plays, listening to the rest of you fool around has me distracted enough. I plan on heading to my own room, rubbing one out and getting some sleep of my own."

"Ha!" Gail scoffed as she followed her out, heading for the outer room. "Like you could ignore all those telepathic orgasms he transmits during his little mini-orgies. It's not bad when one of us Seers has an orgasm, as they're easy enough to ignore. When Alex has one it strikes home hard, giving us all a nice buzz. But when he boosts someone, the effect is multiplied and it's like getting an unexpected orgasm of your own. What's more, it triggers mini-orgasms in each of the Seers, which cascades over you like a waterfall of bliss, keeping you seeing stars for several minutes. That's impossible to ignore."

For once, they'd talked Alex into getting a larger hotel suite. Normally he hated lavishing money on himself, afraid it would go to his head—although it hadn't yet. But it was a deep seated fear of his; that being treated as an angel would eventually corrupt him, transforming him into a demon. He'd seen it happen enough to otherwise decent people, and he didn't know how long he could resist the siren's call to decadence.

"I certainly hope you're in a better mood in the morning," Gail complained, shouting so Cate could hear her as she collapsed on the couch.

"You know, for a big tough security guard, you can certainly whine when you don't get your way," Cate replied, closing the door.

"Cate, you really didn't need to—"

"Here, eat this." Cate shoved a banana and a cookie in his hand, shutting him up. "After that marathon session of the last two days, you need to get your strength up. You know you can only go so long running around like that. Since we got to LA for the conclusion of Patty's tour, you've been running yourself ragged. There's plenty we need to accomplish tomorrow. We'll discuss it then, but right now I want you to eat something to restore your strength, and then get some decent sleep for a few hours. OK? I'll be in to check on you in a while, and you'd better be asleep."

Alex merely nodded as he ate the snacks Cate provided. Truth be known, he was exhausted and would appreciate some sleep. As much as he wanted to object, he was glad Cate chased everyone out as the activity of the last couple days was even more hectic than usual. And normal wasn't something Alex got nearly enough of.

Since they'd left Vegas almost a week ago, they'd stopped several places in California. Each one had been busy simply because there were so many more people here than elsewhere in his travels. Besides the locals at each stop, there was the constant stream of tourists too, both domestic and foreign. Then Patricia and her band had been so busy preparing for their last show, with Patricia herself demanding her night with Alex and Gail taking her own night the evening before, and Alex trying to boost as many people as he could. Seriously, there were only so many people you could screw before you got to the point of not being able to continue.

"Alex! I don't hear you sleeping," Cate called through the door. "Don't make me come in and tie you down."

Despite not liking being told what to do, Alex smiled as he settled down. If nothing else, Cate knew what he needed like no one else did, and she was right, he was really ... The rest of his thought was forgotten, as Alex was already asleep.

Cate settled down in the adjacent room and reflected on recent events and the reasons why Alex was so exhausted. It was hard to come to grips that such a long story had occurred over the course of a few short months, and she reviewed the events one by one.

Alex discovered his unique talent during a weeklong vacation in New Orleans. 'Unique' being the operative word because he was the only one in the history of humanity who had this trait. They didn't understand it at first, assuming he simply drew people and somehow 'activated' them so they could read people's auras. His followers described the auras as glimmering lights which revealed people's health, emotions and personality traits.

Returning home, Alex tried to ignore his new abilities as he tried to blend in long enough to finish school. He wanted to remain a 'normal' teenager for that long. However, he couldn't escape his new role for long. It seemed he now drew not only these Seers (women who could see these auras) and Seekers (those who couldn't see these auras but still felt the energy which produced them), but also a whole slew of other women who found his new sense of confidence and power over others enticing.

But these abilities also brought problems. Aside from worrying about people discovering them, Alex also set certain people off. Several people—all men—tried to either hurt or kill him. The worst was his girlfriend's father and brother arranging to have him assassinated. That attempt ended with Alex incapacitating the man, but not before he shot Alex in the throat, with Alex only escaping death by the thinnest of margins.

Once he graduated, Alex left the normal world behind as he, Cate and Gail set out on a cross country trip. His objective was to provide for his follower's future survival. Traveling from one city to another, he did so by 'activating' and 'boosting' everyone he could. But that turned out to be interesting as well. The activations were easy, even if they were awkward. He'd simply encounter someone who sought him out, look into their eyes, and they'd suddenly have new abilities. Aside from detecting and seeing this new form of energy—which they called BCM after his three sisters—these abilities also included telepathy between Alex and the Seers, and through him, with each other.

He also discovered he could 'boost' those abilities by having sex with the women. The combination of mutual orgasms, opening up to people, building trust and sharing emotions somehow managed to open a door in the person's mind. It allowed the Seekers to become the equivalent of an unactivated Seer, and the activated Seers the ability to telepathically communicate without having to go through Alex, giving them a higher degree of autonomy. However, since it was sexually based, Alex ended up having sex with a stream of women entering and exiting his life.

For someone as reclusive as Alex, this provided a real conflict. He really wanted nothing more than to run home and cuddle up with his two girlfriends, though he'd have been just as happy with only one. But the relationship between him and his followers was complex. Even though Alex activated these abilities in others, he possessed none of these abilities himself. While he could use his BCM energy to heal people, being unable to detect it himself he had little control over it. The Seers therefore were dependent on him to gain their abilities, and he was dependent on them to guide him in how to use them. What's more, they were all dependent on the work he and Cate did in determining how those abilities operated.

During their cross-country trip they learned a great deal more about these mysterious abilities. Rather than directly gifting women with special visions, he instead created portals between dimensions. Cate theorized when he'd first done it as a child, he'd created a link to a high concentration of BCM—a form of energy all living things share—in another dimension which was much stronger than anything on Earth possessed. The end result was that he now possessed more than the human body could cope with, and it was threatening to drastically shorten his lifespan.

The Seers were incredibly responsive to this energy and when exposed to a source as strong as Alex's not only healed quickly, but adapted existing areas of their brains to utilize it. It got fairly complicated, but it seems that when Alex created his first portal, he permanently linked his brain with a 'quantum mind'—a completely theoretical physics concept where multiple creatures can share the same brain. When Alex created a similar link in the Seers' minds, linking their brains to his, they used this shared quantum mind to communicate, which functioned just like the telepathy science fiction writers had been inventing for decades.

This all came to a head when Alex asked Cate to explore how he activated people. It seemed whenever Alex faced a major crisis, his abilities increased. When someone tried to shoot him during a concert, he'd gained the ability to 'spontaneously boost' people. That is, he could boost their abilities without sleeping with them. Unable to uncover how to do it consciously, Alex was driven to discover exactly how the entire activation process worked. If he could understand that, he could aid his followers without having to sleep with people he barely knew. They also hoped to understand what it was about the BCM that drove some men to violence.

Cate had a hunch and arranged for others to do the research she'd always wanted to do. They surprised him with a grand experiment to demonstrate their results: that his choices of who to activate was determined by looking into their eyes and noticing how they reacted to his BCM energy. For those most receptive to it, he created a permanent link in their brains and they developed the mechanisms to process it. For those less receptive, he created a smaller 'boost', allowing them to not only 'sense' emotions, but to relate to Alex on a much deeper level. Finally, they learned that the people who reacted negatively to Alex were actually reacting to the same BCM energy. They'd take an immediate dislike to him, and then struggle to justify their hated. As their anger grew, they became more and more willing to do anything to eliminate both Alex and the source of their irritation. Now that they'd learned how to recognize that response, they hoped to avoid such troubles in the future by watching how individuals reacted upon meeting him.

Finally, there was the matter of what came next. If Alex was essentially creating a new race of humans, a sub-species with an increased ability to read and understand people, he had to deal with what would happen after he was gone. If all these abilities were tied into his quantum mind, then would those abilities remain if he died? Either everyone would instantly lose their abilities, or if it lasted beyond his death, then they'd be the last generation of people with these abilities.

Thus Alex was in a race against time, trying to activate and boost enough people to create a biologically diverse enough community to allow the women's traits to continue, but he also had to impregnate as many women as he could—Seers, Seekers and normal women—if he was to ensure there would be someone who could carry on his role after he was gone, whether that happened in weeks or years.

Alex tried to meet, activate and then have sex with as many women as he could in each city he visited. A task made easier as his friend Patricia, herself a Seer, was involved in a cross-country rock concert tour they used to attract new followers. As a result, he was always preoccupied, exhausted and driven to do as much as he could. However, Patricia's participation in the tour ended when she quit to record her album. That meant Alex's effort would be less productive, but hopefully not quite as stressful and wearing as it had been.

Luckily, his efforts to produce an heir were borne out when they reached a remote Native American community of Piute tribesmen in Utah. While he stopped to help cure their cancers—another side benefit of his increased BCM levels—they recounted a series of 'visions' they'd had which revealed one of them would bear his heir, a child who'd inherit his abilities, allowing this new race of people to continue after him.

The relationship between Alex and his followers was indeed complex, so much that Alex had seemingly developed a 'savior complex' where he felt compelled to help as many people as he could, often to his own detriment. That too was something Cate wished to rectify. The way he was going, he would end up killing himself. They already knew the heightened BCM levels were killing him, but he seemed determined to advance his demise by doing too much, too soon. In fact, he'd already started suffering reactions where his BCM levels would fluctuate wildly, spiking one minute only to falter the next, altering his mood and his health. He would swing from feeling energized to being too weak to stand, speak or even eat the nutrients needed to recover. It was a complex codependent relationship which meant that Alex could never become too cocky, and the women were forever tied, not only to Alex, but also to each other.

All these thoughts ran through Cate's mind as she carried out her tasks; showering, cleaning, freshening up and applying makeup. It was easy to see why Alex was so exhausted. Luckily Cate had a way of thanking him, and hopefully of getting Alex to relax and cut back on how much he was doing, before he did himself irreparable harm.

Cate was putting on the finishing touches when she reflected that, even given how much Alex had been through, he'd been especially stressed lately. Rather than easing up on his stress level once he'd solved his heir problem, he ratcheted it up even farther. No, there must be something else going on. And if she couldn't figure it out, he'd keep pushing himself. She really needed to get a handle on this whole problem.

"Alex, it's time to rise," Cate whispered in a sweet cooing voice that contrasted from the strict one she'd used earlier.

"Huh?" he mumbled. The glare in the room irritated his eyes and he tried to block it out by laying his arm over his face. But then he detected the intoxicating scent of honeysuckle and vanilla. "It can't be, it's too soon."

Removing his arm and glancing out the window, he saw it was still pitch black outside. It was then he noted it was brighter inside than out. Glancing back, he saw Cate reflected in the shimmering glow of candles smiling at him, the sounds of a saxophone wafted over him as romantic music played in the background.

"Cate?"

"Sorry, I had to chase everyone out, not because of what we're doing tomorrow but because we haven't spent any time together. It's about time I got a little romancing. Now I realize you've been too busy to do it yourself, so while you rested I took the opportunity to set up a little atmosphere. The rest is up to you."

Alex leaned forward and kissed her. "I should have known you had something planned. I know how difficult things have been lately, and I apologize for that. The fact you'd do this not only for me, but for us means the world to me. I'm just glad you didn't try this when we were traveling in the camper. I can see these candles sliding off the counters setting fire to your lab mice. Somehow I don't think that would have been quite as romantic." He kissed her again to prevent her getting upset about his teasing. "Have I told you lately just how precious you are?"

"I can always stand to hear it again," she answered, drawing him back onto the bed. "Now, as much as I like hearing how wonderful I am, you do have to be up in the morning and you still need sleep, so less talking and more kissing, though you are allowed to tell me how much you love me."

Alex didn't bother answering her verbally, instead lavishing his attention on her with his tongue, though he held her still, allowing her to feel safe in his arms.

"Just how long are the candles supposed to last?" he asked, glancing askance at the scattered flames. "After all, I need to know how long I have to describe your beauty."

"They're supposed to last for half an hour. Normally I'd say just let them burn out, but seeing as they're all resting on hotel property, I'm not sure they'd appreciate burn marks"

Alex appreciated seeing her enjoying herself. He'd been pushing everyone so hard that she hadn't been smiling much lately. Seeing that all it took to restore it was simply spending some well-deserved time with her, he couldn't understand why he hadn't made the investment more often.

"Well, seeing as how I've already come several times today, I'd best get started, as I'm sure it's going to take a long time and it looks like we're on a different kind of clock now." With that he pecked her one last time on the lips before kissing down her throat, along her collarbone to her chest where he spent some time working on her breast.

"Need some light to see what you're doing? I think we could rest a candle on the other one since you're not using it at the moment," Cate teased, since he hadn't even reached her nipple yet.

"Nope, I know this area well enough. I can find what I need by feel. After all, it's about all I see when I'm dreaming," he replied.

"Now that I find hard to believe," she replied skeptically. "Out of all the women you go through, all the breasts you're exposed to, all you dream about are these two little titties?"

"I've always been most impressed by your little itty bitty titty," he responded, finally getting to the object in question as he quickly bit down on her nipple, generating a low moan of appreciation from her.

"You don't dream of ... say, some delectable young breasts, maybe some black and white variants? It seems to me there were two people you said you were impressed with before. What were their names again?"

Alex growled at her in response, gently biting her nipple again and shaking it like a dog does a stick, demonstrating he was trying to wrestle her attention back to where he wanted it. "They both have little itty bitty titties like you," he replied before settling into sucking on her breast again, finally moving one of his hands to the other one to keep it busy as well.

"No one has itty bitty ones quite like mine," Cate pointed out, enjoying how the rhyming words rolled off her tongue, "and I'm not sure they'd appreciate hearing you denigrate theirs like that."

"You should know by now I always focus on the ones in front of me at any given time, but just as people pick out partners like their siblings because they have a similar build to their own, I've always been attracted to your small size because it's so similar to mine."

"The only reason why your breasts aren't bigger than mine is because you keep burning energy so fast, otherwise with all you eat you'd have bigger breasts than Gail."

Alex growled again, but instead of taking it out on her nipple, he leaned forward and kissed her again, which she responded to, then he punctuated it by biting her lower lip.

"Hey!"

"Don't go belittling my favorite breasteses. I happen to like them. If you want some bigger ones, go grab some. There are plenty around here on an ongoing basis."

"Um, I do enjoy borrowing them for a few minutes, but you're right, I like my own. They don't get in the way when I do stuff, and there's nothing at all to distract the nipples from getting all the attention."

"Well, they do get a little competition from these," Alex reminded her, running his finger along her slit, slipping it between her nether lips.

"Yeah, but you only think about those after my breasteses have already gotten your attention," she corrected him. "As long as they know their place, and keep working like they are now, I think I'll keep them."

"I thought you wanted me to get busy so we can finish in time?"

"Hey, I've got no objections to moving this discussion into the bathtub after we blow out all the candles," she pointed out. "But part of what I love about you is your mind, and the best way to appreciate that is to get you to talk. Call it part of my foreplay. If all I wanted was a dick, I could find that anywhere. What I'm interested in, is you."

"Good point, but I hope you don't mind if I attempt to disprove your point by putting my two lips to other uses?"

"Ah, two lips on my blooming tulips," she sighed as he settled in between her spread thighs. "I'm not about to complain when you're doing something like that."

"Really?" he asked, lifting his face long enough to speak. "You don't think Gail and the others do a better job than I do?"

"No, you've done an excellent job of learning from her. Your technique might not be as precise as hers, but knowing it's you doing it makes all the difference. In that regard, you just have to be good enough for me not to focus on how badly you're screwing up. So anything beyond that is wasted."

"Sort of like 'more than a handful'?" he asked, his smile glittering from the reflection of candle light in her secretions coating his face.

"Speaking of which, you seem to have a couple missing," she reminded him, sighing deeply as he complied and settled back into his task.

"I wonder if Mom ever got it this good?" Cate asked absently, after several minutes of quiet slurping sounds accentuating the music in the background.

"Well, I'm not sure Dad ever got hands-on training by some helpful lesbians."

"Oh? What makes you think that? Mom and Dad may very well have some lesbian lovers hidden away somewhere."

"If he did, I think he'd have mentioned them when I first connected with Gail."

"Still, I wouldn't discount Mom and Dad's playful spirit just because they haven't included us."

"Hey, do you want to talk about our parents, or do you want me to finish what I started here?" Alex asked pointedly, finding discussions about his parents' sex lives more than a bit distracting.

"Oh, you can finish at your own pace, but the longer I keep you talking, the more intense it is when you resume, producing higher sexual tensions and prolonging how long I can listen to your voice."

Alex didn't bother responding, choosing to concentrate on his assumed task.

"You know, speaking of sharing things with the 'rents, Mom says she's gotten more mileage out of Dad in the bedroom than she'd gotten before your powers first revealed themselves."

"Yeah, Dad's said something similar," Alex agreed. "It seems when Mom finishes gossiping with the girls about my sexual prowess, she comes home and wants to try it out with Dad."

"They're not the only ones," Cate suggested.

"Ur werr goir brir subir fup gaim," Alex replied.

"Although I'm not going to complain when you answer like that, since it feels so delicious, you really can't expect me to answer until I can understand you."

Alex finally lifted his face this time, speaking a little more clearly. "I said 'Oh, you're going to bring that subject up again'. It seems you and Melinda had a huge fight about that a while back."

"Oh, don't worry. A lot has happened since then. I was pissed at her because she jumped line, trying to grab you for herself before I had a chance to do anything. I didn't really object to the two of you getting together, just the way in which she did it. Though, to be honest, I don't think I would have allowed either of them to try anything at that point in our relationship."

This time, Alex didn't bother to respond. Despite Cate's eloquent response, he could tell by the timbre of her voice, her increased breathiness and the way her thighs were wrapped around his head that she was close, so he kept working until she tried to pull his hair out, then once she allowed him the freedom to do so by removing her tight thigh lock, he responded.

"So if they were here, you wouldn't object to me doing this with them?" Alex asked as he crawled up her body, slowing working his jaw to get it working properly again. "Strange you never suggested something like that for Las Vegas."

"If you'll remember, they were both too busy doing work for you to attend," Cate pointed out as Alex kissed her, before he started rubbing his cockhead in her channel.

"Oh, I remember," he said, sliding his dick into her pussy, generating an appreciative moan from her. "But it just seems a bit too convenient to me. After all, what would you do if I did this to Becky?" he asked, sinking another inch into her. "Or maybe this to Melinda?"

"Lover, you could do it to Mom as long as you give me the rest of it. When are you going to figure out that I'm not jealous of who you spend time with. As long as you don't forget about ... me, you can even do Dad for all I care," she responded, pausing only when he finally sank his full length into her.

"Really? So it wouldn't bother you if I talked about Melinda's breasts while I'm humping you?" he asked, just to get a rise out of her.

"Ha, like you even remember her breasts. You've only seen her naked that one time."

"Oh really, it seems to me they were just about this big," he replied, grasping two imaginary objects in space between them as he shoved especially hard into her.

"Who, her or Dad?" Cate teased, showing she could give as well as take.

"Oh yeah, and what if we wanted to do something you and I haven't tried yet? Like maybe anal?"

"You need to remember that we talk a lot," Cate pointed out. "Frankly, I think she'd be delighted by the idea. Although she hasn't tried it yet, she'd like to, and she thinks she might like it too."

"Melinda?" Alex asked, completely stopping in surprise at that news.

"Yeah, why do you think I never asked to experiment, testing out that anal sex hypothesis of yours, that an anal orgasm might trigger some unknown new ability? I'm just not that sensitive back there, but Mel, she just might like that particular challenge."

"Well, it's hardly much of a serious experiment," Alex responded, getting back into his stride, thrusting steadily into her. He knew he had to work for some time before he'd be anywhere near an orgasm again. "I figure it's the orgasm itself that's the key. How you get the orgasm doesn't really matter."

"Oh really? Then pray tell, how come you never boosted anyone back when we all used to jerk off and do oral on each other?"

"You know what I mean," he replied with a shrug. "It's a sharing thing, and frankly, it's mostly my own limitation. I need to know we've reached a certain spiritual plateau before I can let go. I figure the girl could probably fake an orgasm and achieve the exact same thing."