Stolen Love

NOTE AND ANNOUNCEMENT!! NOTE AND ANNOUNCEMENT!! NOTE AND ANNOUNCEMENT!!

NOTE: My apologies for being late with this week's chapters. I've been sick and am just starting to feel better. Big thank you to those who emailed with concerns.

ANNOUNCEMENT!!

This story got away from me. I've never been satisfied with it, but I didn't know what to do with it. Luckily, some of you readers have helped with your comments. I now know what to do. This story will be REWRITTEN!! The premise will be the same, but the characters will make VERY different decisions. When it's finished, the new story will exist as a parallel reality to this one. Since that story will take a while to write, I will continue to post this one to its conclusion. I hope those of you who stuck with it will continue to enjoy it despite its imperfection. These stories mean a great deal to me and I always try to do my best with them. It frustrates me when my best isn't as good as I'd like it to be. Thank you for your indulgence! On with the story!!

If you're younger than 18 or find these kinds of stories offensive, please close up now and have a great day! If you are of legal age and are interested, by all means keep going. I'll be glad to have you along for the journey. Please donate to Nifty. This is a great resource for great stories and a useful outlet to authors like me and readers like you.

Crown Vic to a Parallel World: Stolen Love The third and final installment of the ongoing adventures of Church Philips

39

Harder and The Beast

We gathered the group from the conference room and went down to the bus with Neb leading the way. She carried a heavy-looking paper bag at the end of her right hand. I assumed it was body armor or a weapon she hadn't put in the duffle bag. When we got to the bus and boarded, Neb took the wheel again. She used a tablet-style screen that was built into the dashboard of the bus to display the grid map she'd created with the distance math from the magic test.

I noticed that the highlighted search area looked like a leaping dog with a small head. The legs and body were the shoreline while a thin spit of area branched off to make a cropped tail and another triangular area branched off to make a head. It appeared our starting point was near the rear haunch of the dog, and we'd be working toward the head.

Neb directed Leah to sit behind her, and Andy to sit in the opposite seat, with me on the aisle between them. She rotated around to face us and explain the method she planned to employ. "The search area is sixty square miles, and we have a maximum search radius of three miles. If the city were set up in a straight line against the ocean, that would make for a single pass, twenty miles long. As we're in the city, we probably won't be able to achieve much more than five-miles-per-hour, so that would mean a four-hour search.

"The city is not set up in a neat row. It follows a fairly even coastline but reaches inland by varying distances according to the features of the land. Our route is roughly thirty miles long. At five miles an hour, that's a six-hour search. Since I don't know the endurance limits of our boosted searchers, I'd like to use one, then the other, alternating every half hour, or more often if necessary. As I said before, you searchers need to pay close attention to your bodies. If either of you feels like you're reaching your limit, speak up immediately. No heroes. Agreed?"

The cousins answered in the affirmative and Leah decided she would go first. Neb told her not to do anything until she was directed to start. We were still a few minutes away from the beginning of the route. Just before Neb steered the bus from the hotel parking lot, she handed the heavy-looking paper bag she'd been carrying over the seat and offered it to me. I looked inside to find three one-pound bags of macadamia nuts.

"What's this for?" I asked.

"They're for you to eat." Neb explained through a condescending glare, like she was anticipating an argument from me. "You're not carrying any weight, not really, and your magic will be active all day. I want you to eat those nuts, so you don't start consuming muscle to make magic."

"I'll be fine." I dismissed her worries and set the bag on the floor at my feet.

"Church!" She scolded me. "You built that body for Shawn, right?"

"Yeah." I agreed.

"And when you find him, you'll want to use it, right?"

"Yeah." I agreed again and felt my face get hot as I thought about what I wanted to do when we found Shawn.

"Then eat the nuts!" Neb demanded.

I obediently drew a pound bag from the larger bag, tore the top off it, and floated a nut into my mouth. Neb didn't turn to face front until I chewed it down and swallowed it. I hoped I'd seen the end of those damn nuts when I...uh...destroyed King Pravus at the end of the first mission. I didn't hate them. I just didn't like them because I'd eaten bushels of the damn things during the first mission. Having to eat them again was like being forced to listen to Stairway to Heaven' on a loop. It was the frustrating feeling of been there, done that, got the t-shirt, wore it out.'

`Small price.' I reasoned to myself and crunched another nut. I set up a cloud of the damn things next to my head like my original automatic feeding system from so long ago and started chomping them down one at a time in steady rhythm. Paul commented on the swirling cloud of nuts when he moved up to the seat behind me. I explained and he commiserated.

"Long day ahead of us." Paul commented and stole a nut from the cloud.

"Yeah," I agreed, "I wish I wasn't such a wreck."

Paul clapped a hand against my shoulder over the seat back. "You're doing well."

"I'm not." I admitted, lowering my voice to keep my words away from Neb. "I feel like screaming. Neb is keeping me calm, but it's like a Prozac smile. My rational mind is still panicking inside the straitjacket of projected calm."

Paul's vice-like hand gripped my shoulder hard in a gesture of solidarity. "Don't forget, young man, you have the Lord on your side."

I appreciated his words, even if I didn't fully agree with the sentiment. Both his hand on my shoulder, and his hopeful thoughts, made me feel a very little bit better.

A few minutes went by until Neb announced it was time to start. Leah seemed to center herself in preparation for her first `shift' searching. I put my hand on her shoulder but didn't offer my magic right away. Neb's caution boomed in my brain. I gave my niece my own version of that same caution. "Did you know, in all the years I've known him, I've never landed a hit on your dad? Did you know, I've also never won an argument with your mom?"

My niece glanced curiosity over her shoulder at me. "What are you talking about, Uncle Church?" "If you get hurt, your dad will beat me up and your mom will yell at me, and I won't be able to do anything about it. Don't get hurt, OK? Neb's right. I love you and your cousin, and so does Shawn. Neither of us want anything to happen to you. If you feel anything that doesn't feel right, you say so, and we'll stop. Promise me."

"I promise."

"Good." I said and worried about something else. "Also...also, I'm sorry I can't give you what you need without drowning you in my worry. I wish..."

"It's fine, Uncle Church." Leah interrupted my self-loathing. "Really, it is. It's like I said before, I love Uncle Shawn too. I'm worried about him too."

"Thanks." I said and felt like I wanted to cry in spite of Neb's influence. I didn't hesitate anymore because I knew Leah wanted to get started. I sent magic down my arm, into my hand, and into her shoulder. I felt our magic levels equalize and the emotional feedback started a few seconds after.

What I felt from Leah made me freshly impressed with the results of her training. She felt completely centered and focused. Sharing emotions with her was like sharing emotions with a laser beam. There was no room for worry in her psyche, because she had a job to do. It was a good feeling, a steadying feeling.

Leah faced front and activated her ability to start the search. Neb saw that she'd started and set the bus in motion. The first moment of the first half-hour shift had begun. I focused on the magic to make sure I was metering it out slowly and not pushing it. I focused on the way it felt as the magic energy left my body and was converted by Leah's ability. I felt it broadcast out into the world.

The rings or ripples or waves I'd felt earlier returned and spread themselves out to look for Shawn. I felt the people, the humanity that surrounded us, break down the waves as their presence sapped the energy. I felt my body start to hum with magic. The power plant at my core started one of its smaller dynamos to create the magic Leah needed to conduct the search.

The magic creation felt good, like it always felt good, but the comparatively small flow wasn't enough to provide the euphoria I needed to offset my dread. It was a strange dichotomy I found myself inside. I believed that I'd heard or at least felt Shawn cry out to me that morning. That cry, while I was in my dream, had been a confidence booster that we were on the right track to find him.

Seeing him, being inside him to experience his thoughts about me, all those things made the risk...the risk of losing him, seem more real. It was like falling asleep at the wheel of a car and waking up on the rumble strips, inches from disaster. That heart-pounding realization that serious injury or death had been a hair's breadth away...I felt like I'd been experiencing that feeling since I woke up. I was walking the razor's edge of holding myself together or crumbling like a house of cards left outside in a thunderstorm.

More than anything, I was scared, and I hated being scared. For me, fear always meant weakness. I'd long thought that, as a man, if you're afraid, that means you're a coward, and a coward is weak. I hated being weak. Fear and weakness were the two biggest things I fought against. It was the same reason I hated needing help for my emotional turmoil, why I hated that my self-loathing and doubts always hit Shawn first.

The years of therapy taught me that needing help wasn't necessarily a sign of weakness, but it was a difficult thought process to shake. There I was in the middle of an emotional shit storm, surrounded by people who were there to help me, while my insides cowered in fear. It was a nightmare scenario. The only thing that made it marginally better, was that the one person I always wished I could protect from my fear, wasn't there to experience it with me.

I wondered about that, my emotional link with Shawn. It was something that was always there when we were near each other and not there when we weren't. I'd had to learn to live without it more often as Shawn's medical practice required more and more of his time. We'd been linked, literally for years during the beginning of our relationship.

We'd spent so much time together at the beginning. That started as we endured the first mission, and continued when we married and set off on our four-year world tour, then journeyed to Earth, then back to Solum to get my family settled in. During all that time, Shawn and I were far enough apart to break the link only a few times. I got used to his emotional presence just as much as his physical presence. The link was a constant comfort, much more so than the gold band I wore on my left wrist. I missed it, almost as much as I missed him.

I wished the link was a power that could be cultivated, like my telekinesis or energy magic, but it wasn't. It was a freak, an accident, a happy accident, but an accident all the same. The fact that the link rode on the magic that naturally drifted between people whenever they were near each other meant that it was something that couldn't be directed.

Saying it rode on the magic that drifted between people wasn't quite true. The link rode on my constant magic outflow. Shawn benefited from that magic when we were close enough, and the flow carried our emotions and shared our locations. At least that was the simple explanation we used for people that weren't among our inner circle of family and friends. Like most things in life, the actual explanation was somewhat more complex. We also suspected a bit more than we knew.

Shawn had long suspected that, since my magic was created from the conversion of my body mass, it carried my mood when it overflowed my body. For Shawn and I, who were tuned to each other's `magic frequency,' we shared our emotions vividly. For everyone else around me, they received general impressions of how I felt. My mood influenced those close enough to receive my magic, like a cloudy day might cast a pall of depression over everyone under it, or a sunny day might lift everyone's spirits.

Shawn and I, or more accurately Bem and I had discovered that actively sharing my magic would allow me and that person to have an emotional link similar to the one I shared with Shawn, albeit temporarily. When Shawn and I actively shared magic, the experience became an even greater level of sharing, to the extent of allowing us to communicate mind to mind. It was incredibly intimate and could be deeply satisfying. As I recalled those experiences, I wondered when the last time was Shawn and I had done that.

I missed all the acts of intimacy with my husband, but I missed the gentle embrace of his emotions the most. He'd once commented that he took great comfort in my emotions. That was very early in our relationship. He'd said that even though my feelings were usually negative, my emotions were glacial in nature. It was that constancy that Shawn took comfort in.

I wished I could reach out with my emotional link, to search for Shawn the way Leah and Andy could reach out with theirs, but that wasn't my ability. I could move items with telekinetic force or shoot destructive plasma at things. Broadcasting power into the world to search for someone was not one of my talents. More than anything, I wished magic ability could be taught. I figured, if it could, I had enough raw energy available from my `power plant' to locate Shawn wherever he might be, anywhere the world over.

"Fuck." I said aloud to voice the frustration that had welled up inside me. As I did it, I noticed my emotions had shifted. The frustration had overwhelmed both the calm Neb was sending, and the good feelings from the magic generation. It hadn't squelched out the panic. No, it was too much to hope that anything could drive out the panic. "Fuck."

"Uncle Church." Leah interrupted my brooding. I looked up and realized I was still feeding power into my niece. I shut the flow down and pulled my hand away like I'd burned it. "I'M SORRY!" I cried. "Are you OK?"

Leah turned to face me over the seatback. Her face was scrunched with a look of deep concern, and she had unshed tears in both her eyes. I guessed the look of concern was the result of my outburst while the tears were from enduring my emotional turmoil while I pushed my magic into her power. She nodded at me before she answered. "I'm OK. It's been thirty minutes. It's time to switch."

I realized Neb had pulled the bus into a wide spot in the road and stopped while she waited for me to switch searchers. I apologized and crossed the aisle to sit behind Andy. Comet had moved next to him at some point while I'd been distracted and now sat on the outside while Andy was on the aisle. "Go ahead, Uncle Church." My nephew said as I sat. "I'm ready."

I set my hand on his shoulder and offered my power to him. It went right into his ability and out into the world. Neb waited for Andy's signal that he was actively searching, then guided the bus into traffic. We trundled along, far more slowly than I would have liked. As if she could sense the direction of my thoughts, Neb tried to encourage me. "We're doing better than I expected. We averaged almost seven miles an hour for that first shift."

"Woo-fucking-hoo." I grumbled and rested my forehead on the seatback between me and Andy. I stared at the floor and hated everything and everyone. I didn't like pissing on Neb's good news. I was encouraged by what she said, but the nightmare I was trapped in remained the same. Neb's small bright spot of encouragement was swimming upstream in a river of miserable shit. I wanted to apologize for my grumbling but couldn't find the energy. It was then that I realized the calm Neb had been pushing into me had disappeared.

At first, I guessed she'd gotten tired, but I remembered that she'd sent good vibes my way for far longer periods during the first mission. I reasoned that Neb simply forgot to keep it up as we made the switch from Leah to Andy, but that didn't make sense either. In my experience with Neb, she never forgot anything. My last line of thought on the matter was that she'd decided to save her energy for later, when I might need it more.

I guessed that, from her viewpoint on the outside looking in, I seemed to be maintaining on my own. I assumed that, as far as Neb was concerned, as long as I was doing my job, providing the power for the search, and not acting up, there was no reason for her to exhaust herself on making me feel better. I resented the pragmatism behind that decision, if that was the line of thinking she'd used, but not enough to say anything about it. Grumbling like that would have just been me hunting for something to be mad about and I already had enough reasons to be mad.

I felt the vehicle shift as a large mass moved from one side of it to the other. I glanced up to see Paul as he lowered his bulk into the seat behind me. He set Fidum's Bible on the seat next to him and put his attention on me. I noticed the old priest looked better than he had less than a week ago when I'd knocked on the door of the rectory to surprise him. The skin of his face seemed tighter and his posture more erect. `Good for him.' I thought.

Paul clapped his hand on my shoulder again. I crunched a macadamia nut in response. Paul stole one from my cloud and ate it. "These are quite good." He observed, just to be saying something. "They're OK." I grumbled. "Tired of them is all."

"Can you talk?" He asked. "While you are...doing what you're...uhm...doing?"

"Can a wall outlet talk while it's being a wall outlet?" I asked in a poor attempt at humor. I could tell by Paul's expression my lackluster joke had missed its mark, so I skipped it. "I can talk."

"Tell me, then, if you don't mind, what it was like before, when you were here. You and your husband were just married...honeymooners. Beginnings are always so pure. Tell me of your beginning. When you were asked...when Bem asked you about your time here, you blushed...if I am not mistaken that is. Tell me what happened. Tell me the story of the children and the bad people. Tell me how you saved them."

My anger and sadness faded into the background, muted by nostalgia for a better time. It had been a better time, a time when Shawn and I were very much together. It was a time when we wanted nothing but time for ourselves and a place to be alone. It was a time before medical practices and before the estate on the Pravus Plains and before vague promises of `it won't always be like this.' It was a time when neither of us ever turned down the other for intimacy. It was a time I very much missed and would gladly relive as many times as the universe would let me.

The story sprang to my lips with no mental calisthenics required to recall it. "I'd only ever seen the capital and the mountain. I'd been here, on Solum for two years, but had never seen the ocean. We took a commercial flight, just like regular people, and landed at the airport. I was excited and apprehensive. I still couldn't believe Shawn had married me. It was like floating on a pink cloud of happiness.

"You have to understand, the life I had before, and then the uncertainty of the mission, and the struggle of my recovery, then the whirlwind of getting married, I'd been either miserable or frazzled for so long, the prospect of free time and love felt incredible. I was also still ignorant enough to think that Ars had recommended this vacation spot to help us. I'll warn you now, Paul," I pulled myself from my story long enough to offer my friend some good advice, "that man is a ruthless psychopath. If he can use you, he will."

Paul made noises in the affirmative, that he understood and appreciated my advice, and I returned to my memory.

"Anyway," I said as I tried to find my happy place in the past again, "I couldn't believe this place. I thought it was so beautiful. It was so hot, absolutely sweltering. The weather usually breaks at the end of August, but the break was late coming that year, so it was a sauna. We landed and took a cab to the hotel.

"It was a four-story building, in pastel blue right on the water. Its name is Latin for seashell,' or the seashell,' but I forget what the word is. Our suite was on the top floor and was the entire side of the building facing the ocean. Just about the whole wall of the suite opened up to let the air blow through. They don't much believe in air conditioning here, so even the best hotels often have big windows to open when it's hot.

"We got into the room and dropped our bags. I looked around while Shawn disappeared into a bathroom or closet or something for a few minutes. I decided to check the view from each of the open windows. They were more like French doors, big glass panels that opened onto a deep balcony surrounded by a waist-high solid railing. I thought the railing blocked a lot of the view and was in the middle of griping about it when Shawn appeared next to me. His appearance physically explained why the railings were solid and not transparent or latticed. You see, he was completely nude."

I realized what I'd just said and who I'd said it to. I worried I was getting ready to go too far with my tale. I glanced at Paul's face to check his reaction. His expression was one of keen interest. That told me to tell the whole story as I lived it and not to worry about Paul's delicate sensibilities. I doubted his sensibilities were all that delicate.

"Shawn walked all the way out to the edge of the balcony and spread his arms wide into the wind, his raven hair tossed behind him and made him look like a model in a cologne ad. We had one of those moments, one of those silly puppy-love moments where Shawn looked out over the ocean and said something like it's beautiful,' and I looked at him and agreed that it was. He realized I was talking about him and turned to smile at me and lean his back against the railing. He gathered his blowing hair into his left hand and held it away from his face. See something you like?' he asked me with this up from under look that drives me wild."

I paused the story to look back at Paul, to try to explain how I'd felt in that moment. "Something about the way he looked at me then, something about that precise spot in time, I felt my love for him more than I ever had before. It was like a flame in my soul that seared me inside out.

"I felt like metal in a torch flame being heated red, then orange, then white, and that second, that fraction of an instant right before a cutting torch blows through the metal with a shower of sparks, the color the metal looks just then. That's how I felt when he looked at me with that silly seductive grin on his face; that grin he uses that says he knows I belong to him and no one else. I felt like, like...not like I'd burst into flames, it was hotter than that...like I was the sun, and I was consuming myself to shine for him."

I got lost in the memory and stopped talking. I think I was looking into the distance, through the windshield of the bus, passed the head of my nephew while magic coursed down my arm and into his body, searching for the husband I burned for. Paul uttered my name a few times before I heard it. I think he worried I'd shorted out my brain or something. When my mind restarted, Paul had such a look of concern on his face, that I worried. "And then?" He asked.

"What?"

"Shawn grinned at you, and you felt like the sun, and then?" Paul pressed.

"We had sex." I replied.

Paul's exaggerated head shake told me he thought my answer was the biggest anti-climax he'd ever heard. I shook my head back at him. "You don't understand. We had sex all over that suite, for hours we ravaged each other. Shawn was insatiable. You might not think it to look at him, but when he feels a certain way...it's like he becomes someone else, but it's even better because it's him. He gets so turned on he loses control. He fell on me like some kind of predator...like a lion taking down one of those African deer things...you know, with the horns." I mimed a set of horns on top of my head with my free hand and looked to Paul for help with the name of the animal.

"An antelope?" Paul asked.

"Yes!" I agreed, thrilled that he knew what I was talking about. "He was the lion, and I was the antelope."

"An antelope willingly consumed, I suppose." Paul smirked mischievously at me.

I smirked back. "Very willing. We were hungry for each other, and we feasted on love and passion, with no regard to where we were or how loud we were being." I felt the heat of embarrassment in my face as something I'd alluded to the previous night rose up in my memory and demanded to be shared. "That's why I blushed before, when Bem asked if the locals would remember me. We didn't realize the hotel had a restaurant on the ground floor, on the ocean side, three floors down from our room...and our wide-open windows. When Shawn and I broke apart after going at it for a good couple-hours, we went out on the balcony for a breath of air. The diners at the outdoor tables below applauded for us when we came into view. Since I stand out because of my size and Shawn isn't inconspicuous either, it became a running joke among the hotel staff and several of the guests for our entire stay."

"Oh my," Paul's teasing smirk stretched his face farther than I thought possible, "what did they do?" I rubbed the back of my neck with my free hand and felt the color rise in my face again. "They quoted me...us."

"Quoted?" Paul asked, his confusion obvious.

"Oh shit." I muttered and wondered exactly how much honesty the old priest could handle. I quickly remembered I'd already mentally shared the experience with him of me swapping rim jobs with Shawn, so admitting a few other proclivities was hardly likely to push the man over the edge. `Hell with it.' I thought.

"You see, I...I...I can't believe I'm telling you this. I like to bottom...a lot...I mean not a lot as in often...I mean...yeah, often, but I meant...a great deal. Do you understand?"

Paul nodded shallowly and his eyes narrowed with what I took to be voyeuristic curiosity. I lowered my eyes from his, unable to stand up to the scrutiny as I told him the rest. "OK, so anyway..." I rubbed my neck again, "I also found out...or I guess Shawn found out...or we found out together, that I like to be slapped, when Shawn is...uh...when I'm doing what I like."

"Slapped?" Paul asked.

`He can't be this obtuse.' I thought and forced myself to meet Paul's eyes. His eyes twinkled with delight, and I challenged him. "You're LOVING this aren't you?"

"More than you could know!" He gasped and shook with convulsive laughter.

Repeated harsh noises tore my attention from Paul and brought it around to the seat in front of me, where my nephew's boyfriend sat. He was holding both hands over his mouth and snorting hysterics through his nose while he turned the color of a pickled beat. "Oh, go ahead." I said to give him permission to enjoy himself.

Comet roared with merriment. The only people near me who weren't in stitches were Andy, who was laser focused on searching for Shawn, and Neb, who was laser focused on driving the bus. Leah, who I'd forgotten about, was doubled over in silent hysterics. Her convulsive laughter couldn't match Comet's or Paul's in volume, but it more than made up in violence. She even went so far as to pound her hand on the seatback while she laughed.

I decided to cut to the chase for the three hyenas who were sharing the front seats with me. "For an entire month, Shawn and I lost the use of our first names and were referred to exclusively as Harder' and The Beast.'"

"Which was which?" Paul choked through continued laughter.

I explained, again to the floor of the vehicle, because there was nowhere to look that didn't meet my eyes with glee at my mortification. "At some point, during the...uhm...proceedings, I said something like, harder,' and when Shawn...uh...complied with my request, I called him a beast. A label, I might add, that he seemed to enjoy at the time, because he repeated it by saying something like, I'm a beast...I'm a sex beast.' To compound the problem, I'm told I agreed with Shawn at the top of my lungs by saying something like `harder, hit me harder, sex beast.'"

Bizarre noises behind me got my eyes off the bus floor and onto Paul. He was holding his stomach as tears streamed down his face, and he struggled to breathe. It seemed that any air he managed to pull into his lungs was immediately laughed out. As much as their laughter was at my expense, the merriment that my friends and family enjoyed did more to lift my spirits than anything had in days. I was still embarrassed beyond belief, but I wasn't miserable.

Telling the story also passed the time much faster than brooding. Paul was starting to breathe normally, and I was getting ready to continue my story, when Neb announced the next thirty minutes were up and it was time to switch searchers again. The way she announced it let me in on the fact that she'd heard every word of my story, despite not reacting to it. "Harder," she called to me as she guided the bus into the road's shoulder, "shift change."

I took my hand from Andy's shoulder and shut down the magic as I did so. The boy shook himself out of the trance-like state he'd gone into while actively searching. He looked around to see everyone freshly amused at Neb's use of my old nickname and asked what he'd missed. Comet drew Andy in close and related the story as fast as he could in hushed tones. I gathered he wanted to update my nephew quickly, so he wouldn't miss anything when I restarted the story after Leah was established on her search shift. Andy's occasional guffaws let me know Comet was doing an excellent job with the retelling.

I did a quick check in with Leah to make sure she still felt OK and was ready to search some more. She said she was fine and was more than ready. I put my hand on her shoulder, started the magic, and waited for her signal. I felt the magic go through her and out into the world. Leah signaled Neb, and we set off again.

As the bus lurched into motion, Paul switched his seat. This time, instead of sitting behind me, he slid in beside me and forced me to slide in against the side of the bus. He held Fidum's Bible in his lap. Andy, now completely caught up on the story and grinning with malicious delight, crossed the aisle and took up position behind me with Comet beside him. With my audience in place, I went on with the tale.

"We learned a lot about each other during our time here, especially in that first week. It was like, by being married, and getting away from everything, we'd been given permission to be ourselves. We barely left the room for several days, and each time we did, we were confronted with knowing smiles and our new names. It got so bad, even the ma"tre de at the restaurant used our nicknames."

I recalled that particularly embarrassing moment. "The second night when Shawn and I took a break from trying to crawl inside each other, we went to the first-floor place to eat. The guy at the podium saw us coming, called a waiter over and actually said, table four for Harder and The Beast.' Shawn thought it was great. He liked the attention. I think it helped that he got to be The Beast.' He's so mild, considerate, always looks out for everyone else, I think he gets...not overlooked but, you know."

"Thought of as dispassionate?" Paul offered.

"Something like that." I said, though I wasn't sold on Paul's characterization. "Straitlaced maybe." I added and was happier with that term. "Anyway, he's anything but and he proved it that week. We did all kinds of childish, naughty things. We even had sex on the balcony, standing up at the railing, while we watched the sun rise. I learned, to my delight, that as hot as I burned for him, that was as hot as he burned for me. It was one of the best times."

The wave of emotional nostalgia that I rode while I told the story crashed against the brutal rocks of the reality of my current situation, and I almost broke down. It was one of those moments when I needed to touch him so badly, and when I couldn't...I almost sank into black despair. Tears welled in my eyes. I tried to blink them away, but they wouldn't go. They streamed down my face, and I wiped at them with my free hand.

"Young man?" Paul asked, worried at my sudden mood swing.

I cleared my throat and refused to address my tears or to succumb to the sadness. I plowed forward with the story as quickly as I could. "AHEM...anyway, uh...where was I? Nicknames...oh, I was so embarrassed. It got so bad that I swear my face would stay red anytime we left the room. Shawn made it OK, though. Whenever someone would make fun, he'd do something sweet, or lewd to distract me."

Thoughts of the sweet things Shawn had done made me smile, but only for a second. Those memories made me need to touch him again, and since I couldn't, I was almost swallowed by my misery. I knew I had to back away from the dangerous ground of those tender memories if I wanted to have a chance at getting through the day in one piece. I cleared my throat again and reset the story. "But that's not what you asked me about." I reminded Paul, and the rest of the group at the same time. "You asked how we rescued the kids."