Author Notes – First apologies to anyone waiting for the next part of “Do Androids Dream of Electronic Tickles?”, I kind of got sidetracked the last couple of weeks and am currently re-reading the story to get back into the characters.
Second, this is really the prologue to a much longer story I’ve been thinking about for a while. There’s only one tickling scene about a third of the way through, but those of you that make it to the end, I’d love to know if you’d be interested in reading the rest of it (once it’s written of course).
Thanks as always, and hope you enjoy it.
**************************************
Eve of the storm.
The pilot’s lounge was full to bursting as Liz walked through the door. All around her the flight crews of the EFC Phoenix were laughing and joking, some talking about the war game they’d just run, others discussing the latest news from Earth, the rumoured leave at outpost 12, the merits of the latest food shipments and all the other regular, day-to-day operations of life aboard the flagship of the earth force fleet. Everyone was taking advantage of the opportunity to relax and wind down after the long tour of duty they’d just completed. Everyone, that is, save one.
Over in a darkened booth in the far corner of the lounge Liz could make out a figure cloaked in shadow, a glass of clear liquid sitting almost untouched on the table in front of him. Liz slid through the mass of people, ducking the occasional stray elbow or wild hand gesture with ease and dropped into the booth alongside him.
“Hell of a party.” She said, looking out at the people massed in the relatively small space.
“Hmm? Yeah I suppose it is.” The man said, obviously trying to avoid any further conversation.
“Okay, that’s it!” Liz snapped, “What the hell is the matter with you Connor? You’ve been staring photons at anyone that comes near you for the best part of a week now, keep this up and we’re gonna have a breach in the hull.”
Connor stared forward, seemingly not hearing her, or just ignoring the question. As she opened her mouth to demand some sort of answer, he held up a hand. “I heard you, it’s just… Look I really don’t want to talk about this.”
“Too bad, because one way or the other I’m going to get the truth out of you, even if it takes all damn night.”
“Alright, on one condition. This conversation never took place, this makes it any further than here and I’ll make your life hell, deal?”
“Deal.”
“I had a conversation with Admiral Wood recently, a conversation I’ve been trying to avoid for the best part of a year. You know Captain Marsh is leaving active service at the end of this tour, right?”
“Yeah, scuttlebutt’s had the odds on that one at even money since the start of the year. Why do you ask?”
“Fleet command wants me to take over the Phoenix once he’s gone.”
“And this is a problem why? If I’d been offered a chance to head up the best ship and crew Earth Force has, I sure as hell wouldn’t be acting like someone had died.”
“I know, it’s a tremendous opportunity, and I couldn’t ask for a better ship, or crew for that matter, it’s, well, this is going to sound silly.”
“Try me.”
“How long have you been doing this, flying I mean?”
“Ever since I was old enough to enlist, figure seven years give or take.”
“So that’s what, 5 years on the front in active service after training, something like that?”
“I guess so, why?”
“How old do you think I am Liz?”
Liz paused for a moment, sensing an awful lot more behind the question than a simple mid-life crisis. “I’ve never given it much thought, I suppose twenty nine, thirty?”
“Thirty five. I joined up about six months after we encountered the Val, told them I was eighteen rather than sixteen and enlisted. Before that, I’d spent most of my childhood in and out of ships, hovercraft, atmosphere racers, shuttles, anything that could fly. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, what I’m best at.” He trailed off, leaving a lull that Liz felt obligated to fill.
“If it helps, you’re still the best damn pilot I’ve ever seen. Your kill record is so far ahead of everyone else I don’t think it’ll ever be beaten, and you can still smoke anyone on this ship in an exercise nine times out of ten.”
“And that’s the problem lass. The only thing I’ll be flying is a desk, short of a few training flights my stick time’s over in a couple of weeks.”
“Well, surely you’ve thought about this before, what you’d do when the war ended?”
“Honest answer? No not really, never thought I’d make it this far. Always thought I’d die in the cockpit, alone in the dark and cold. And now I’m being given the chance to avoid that, I find I’m reluctant to even consider it.”
“Then don’t, turn down the offer and stay as a wing commander, god knows we could use you.”
“Sadly, I don’t have that option. It’s either this or moving to a training role back on Mars.”
“What! You’re kidding me, right? Who told you that?”
“Admiral Wood, about three seconds before telling me flying was a game for the young.”
They sat in silence for a minute, Liz’s mind reeling as she tried to contemplate the sheer rear echelon lunacy that would take one of the best pilots in Earth Force history away from the front line purely because of his age, knowing there was nothing she could say or do to change that decision and searching desperately for a way to ease the pain from what amounted to a slap in the face that Connor had received.
“You know the worst part?” Connor said, staring off at the far wall “I’m beginning to think he’s right.”
“That’s bullshit!” Liz snapped, eyes flaring “you know damn well you can fly rings around any other pilot on this tub, why on earth would you think he’s right?”
“Because I’m tired Liz. I’m tired of fighting, tired of having to count the dead after each mission, tired of wondering why I made it back and not someone else. Tired of asking myself what else I could have done to keep those kids alive, and most of all tired of this war. When was the last time we did anything more than skirmish action? Sure we hit border outposts and supply depots but that’s not going to end this thing any time soon. It’s become comfortable, after a fashion at least, so long as the civilians and those in charge back home are safe, they don’t care about what happens to us, provided the Val’s don’t gain any real ground over us, they’re happy to let things stay status quo.”
Liz stared at Conner for a long moment, wondering who she was looking at, where the confident pilot who could make a fighter dance on a dime had gone. Her mind, raced, looking for something, anything, to help and suddenly an idea formed, crystallising in an instant. She got up, grabbing Conner by the hand as she went and dragging him up behind her.
“Come with me, I think there’s something you need to see.” She said and led him out of the lounge to the nearest drop tube, heading for the hanger bay. As they walked out into the vast expanse of the bay she headed right, towards an access panel leading into the tunnels running alongside the fighter launch tubes. Popping the panel open she crawled inside and was relieved to hear Connor moving into the tube behind her. Moving as fast as she could she headed down the tunnel on her hands and knees until she reached the end and popped the airlock on the observation bubble mounted to the outside of the hull. She curled up inside the transparent dome, her body floating now they were outside of the ships artificial gravity field and Connor squeezed in next to her. She lent back and shut the hatch, effectively isolating them from the rest of the ship.
They were riding on the very front of the ship, the bubble itself was designed to allow maintenance teams to perform close up visual inspections on the ends of the launch tubes without needing to don space suits and the view was staggering. Behind and to the sides, the ship seemed to stretch to infinity, a mass of metal so huge it seemed impossible for any race to have built such a thing. Then the eye was drawn forward, to the star field in front, and suddenly infinity took on a whole new meaning.
“See that?” Liz whispered, watching Connor’s face as he gazed into the blackness. “That’s where we’re going Connor, you, me everyone, we’re going to the stars. That’s why we’re here, that’s why we fight, because there is nothing behind us but our history, what’s out there is the future.”
She paused for a moment, running her next words carefully through her mind, wanting to make sure she got this right.
“Just before I left for the academy, my mother took me out to our garden one night, sat me down and told me to look up at the stars. She was a pilot too, retired before we met the Val’s of course but she was damn good in her day. She said she wanted to say something to me before I left, something she thought might come in useful. “Stare too long into the abyss and the abyss will stare into you. So remember to look away once in a while.” I didn’t understand of course, I was too young and stupid; I hadn’t been out here and seen this for myself. But after a few years I realised what she meant.”
Liz turned, facing Connor as she lifted a hand to his chin and pulled his eyes up to meet hers. “We may live out here, and most of us may die out here, but never forget why we’re here, and what’s waiting for us somewhere else in the universe.” With that she lent forward and kissed him, bracing her legs against the sides of the bubble to stop herself floating away in the zero g environment. For a moment Connor stayed still, shocked by what was happening, then his hands came up to embrace her and he returned the kiss strongly, passionately. After what seemed like a brief eternity they split apart, Liz fighting to hide the desire in her eyes, not wanting to scare him away, Connor searching his memories for any signs he may have missed that this was even a possibility.
“Not that I’m complaining, but what was that for?” he asked.
“You know, for the fleet champ in situational awareness, you can be blind as a bat to anything not visible from a cockpit.” She replied. “I’ve wanted to do that since, oh, about half a second after a first saw you, I just never had the courage to do anything about it.”
“Why, I didn’t think I was that scary?” Connor said, a smile twitching the corner of his mouth upwards.
“Well, you can be.” Liz said, “I mean, you’re this near mythical figure to everyone that goes through the academy, it seems like half the final flight exams are based on missions you flew, and I know your real life scores on at least six of those sims are still higher than any graduation class has managed. You’re always the one we can rely on when we’re out there, someone to save us if possible, avenge us if not, it’s kind of hard to see beyond that image at times.”
Connor looked straight at her, finally reaching a decision. “Liz, tell me something straight, okay? What do you think I should do? Command the Phoenix or go to Mars?”
“Oh no.” Liz replied, raising her hands defensively “you’re not getting me to make this decision, this should be your call.”
“I’ve already made it, I just want to see what you think?”
“Like I’m falling for that trick.”
“Come on, tell me.” Connor said, bringing his feet up behind him so that his soles were planted against the side of the bubble, knees bent underneath him.
”No, no and thrice no. Work this one out on your own.”
“I can always make you tell me you know…” Connor said, throwing a playful, challenging note into his voice that, he hoped, would go straight to the stubborn pride that all fighter pilots seemed to carry with them.
“Oh really? There’s nothing you can do to me that will make me tell you anything, sir.” She replied, throwing in her own challenge with the ‘sir’. Connor simply smiled and shoved off the side of the bubble, shooting across the small space like a rocket, his arms wrapping around her body and sending them both tumbling. He hung on to her waist, wrapping his legs around her thighs and back around to lock his feet behind her shins. Once he had a good grip he relaxed his hold with his right hand and brought his fingers up to the hollow of Liz’s right armpit.
“What the? What are you.. hey, hey that’s, no, no, narggghh, not fair, nooooooo.” Liz yelled, twisting and thrashing in his grip as his fingers explored her sensitive skin, the thin material of her flight suit offering little protection from his questing fingers.
“As I said, I can get an answer out of you one way or the other my dear…” Connor whispered into her ear, and despite her predicament Liz found her body shivering in anticipation at his words. Still holding her tightly his fingers started to move slowly, teasingly over her side, more a teasing touch than a tickling one and Liz found herself relaxing in his grip.
As she did so Connor shifted his body slightly and moved his hand from her hip across to her stomach and started poking and prodding her belly. Liz was caught by surprise and doubled over with sudden, unexpected laughter, the motion sending them tumbling slowly head over heels. She shrieked and twisted hard to the right, reaching her arms out to the wall as she did so as a brace. Now it was Connor who was caught off guard, the extra spin dislodging his grip and sending him bouncing softly off the far side of the bubble. Looking up he barely had time to blink in surprise as Liz launched herself towards him, landing astride him with her arms and legs spread-eagled to absorb her momentum.
Grinning she shoved off the side with her arms, flipping backwards, her legs locking around Connor’s waist, using him as a pivot point so that she ended up with their legs entwined, her feet at the small of his back, his feet sitting on her stomach. Reaching down she tugged his boots free and raked her fingers over the exposed soles. She expected a howl, a burst of laughter, hell even a giggle would have been better than the silence she received.
Curious she glanced up and saw Connor’s face covered in a mask of concentration, his eyes closed, muscles relaxed as if he were meditating on the secrets of the universe. Watching carefully she raked her fingers across both feet, and thought she detected a slight twitch of his cheek. Encouraged she set to work, using every ounce of skill and dexterity she possessed against her target. Her hands flew over his feet, constantly varying their pattern and intensity. One moment she’d be trying light strokes the length of his soles, the next intense scratching on the balls of his feet, and then flicking her fingertips between his toes.
It was this last avenue that caused a reaction, a slight tremor that passed through Connor’s whole body, and she grinned triumphantly as she attacked his helpless toes full force. She jammed a finger in between each toe and set to work, wiggling and scratching the skin hidden there for all she was worth. Within minutes Connor was shaking from the effort of controlling his reaction, a red heat passing up his face as his resistance slowly crumbled. It needed only one thing to take him over the edge and she had just the thing.
Moving quickly she pushed gently off the side of the bubble, sliding down his body, using her own booted feet as a brake until his feet rested just below her face. She bent her head forward, fully intending to take those helpless toes one at a time into the wet depths of her mouth and lap each twitching digit into submission. She never got the chance.
Connor exploded into action, hands bracing off the wall to flip them over, and now it was Liz caught unawares. She found herself face down on the Plexiglas dome, felt Connor pull his legs up and away from her grasp as she instinctively put her hands out to absorb the impact. A weight settled onto her back and she suddenly found her ankles being pulled up and heard a ripping noise from behind her. Then something was wrapped around her ankles and tied tight, a hand played at her waist for a moment and she found her ankles effectively hogtied to one of the equipment loops on her flight suit. All this happened in the space of a second or two and once she’d recovered from the initial shock she found she had no leverage on the surface of the dome, no way to force Connor off her, no way to stop him doing whatever he wanted.
As the thought entered her mind she felt a pair of hands slide down her legs and start to tickle at about the midpoint of her thigh, the lowest easily available portion of her legs with her ankles bound like this. She buried her face against the cool wall of the dome and let the laughter come. The hands moved slowly up her thighs, teasing and tickling their way higher and higher, always moving as her laughter gradually increased in both pitch and volume. Finally the hands hovered at the very top of her inner thigh, bestowing a tickle upon her that, though light and masked by her flight suit, was enough to have her howling and thrashing as best she could in her compromised position. A hand brushed a fraction higher, a touch as light as the solar winds across her mound and she arched her back, her hips bucking upwards.
Second, this is really the prologue to a much longer story I’ve been thinking about for a while. There’s only one tickling scene about a third of the way through, but those of you that make it to the end, I’d love to know if you’d be interested in reading the rest of it (once it’s written of course).
Thanks as always, and hope you enjoy it.
**************************************
Eve of the storm.
The pilot’s lounge was full to bursting as Liz walked through the door. All around her the flight crews of the EFC Phoenix were laughing and joking, some talking about the war game they’d just run, others discussing the latest news from Earth, the rumoured leave at outpost 12, the merits of the latest food shipments and all the other regular, day-to-day operations of life aboard the flagship of the earth force fleet. Everyone was taking advantage of the opportunity to relax and wind down after the long tour of duty they’d just completed. Everyone, that is, save one.
Over in a darkened booth in the far corner of the lounge Liz could make out a figure cloaked in shadow, a glass of clear liquid sitting almost untouched on the table in front of him. Liz slid through the mass of people, ducking the occasional stray elbow or wild hand gesture with ease and dropped into the booth alongside him.
“Hell of a party.” She said, looking out at the people massed in the relatively small space.
“Hmm? Yeah I suppose it is.” The man said, obviously trying to avoid any further conversation.
“Okay, that’s it!” Liz snapped, “What the hell is the matter with you Connor? You’ve been staring photons at anyone that comes near you for the best part of a week now, keep this up and we’re gonna have a breach in the hull.”
Connor stared forward, seemingly not hearing her, or just ignoring the question. As she opened her mouth to demand some sort of answer, he held up a hand. “I heard you, it’s just… Look I really don’t want to talk about this.”
“Too bad, because one way or the other I’m going to get the truth out of you, even if it takes all damn night.”
“Alright, on one condition. This conversation never took place, this makes it any further than here and I’ll make your life hell, deal?”
“Deal.”
“I had a conversation with Admiral Wood recently, a conversation I’ve been trying to avoid for the best part of a year. You know Captain Marsh is leaving active service at the end of this tour, right?”
“Yeah, scuttlebutt’s had the odds on that one at even money since the start of the year. Why do you ask?”
“Fleet command wants me to take over the Phoenix once he’s gone.”
“And this is a problem why? If I’d been offered a chance to head up the best ship and crew Earth Force has, I sure as hell wouldn’t be acting like someone had died.”
“I know, it’s a tremendous opportunity, and I couldn’t ask for a better ship, or crew for that matter, it’s, well, this is going to sound silly.”
“Try me.”
“How long have you been doing this, flying I mean?”
“Ever since I was old enough to enlist, figure seven years give or take.”
“So that’s what, 5 years on the front in active service after training, something like that?”
“I guess so, why?”
“How old do you think I am Liz?”
Liz paused for a moment, sensing an awful lot more behind the question than a simple mid-life crisis. “I’ve never given it much thought, I suppose twenty nine, thirty?”
“Thirty five. I joined up about six months after we encountered the Val, told them I was eighteen rather than sixteen and enlisted. Before that, I’d spent most of my childhood in and out of ships, hovercraft, atmosphere racers, shuttles, anything that could fly. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, what I’m best at.” He trailed off, leaving a lull that Liz felt obligated to fill.
“If it helps, you’re still the best damn pilot I’ve ever seen. Your kill record is so far ahead of everyone else I don’t think it’ll ever be beaten, and you can still smoke anyone on this ship in an exercise nine times out of ten.”
“And that’s the problem lass. The only thing I’ll be flying is a desk, short of a few training flights my stick time’s over in a couple of weeks.”
“Well, surely you’ve thought about this before, what you’d do when the war ended?”
“Honest answer? No not really, never thought I’d make it this far. Always thought I’d die in the cockpit, alone in the dark and cold. And now I’m being given the chance to avoid that, I find I’m reluctant to even consider it.”
“Then don’t, turn down the offer and stay as a wing commander, god knows we could use you.”
“Sadly, I don’t have that option. It’s either this or moving to a training role back on Mars.”
“What! You’re kidding me, right? Who told you that?”
“Admiral Wood, about three seconds before telling me flying was a game for the young.”
They sat in silence for a minute, Liz’s mind reeling as she tried to contemplate the sheer rear echelon lunacy that would take one of the best pilots in Earth Force history away from the front line purely because of his age, knowing there was nothing she could say or do to change that decision and searching desperately for a way to ease the pain from what amounted to a slap in the face that Connor had received.
“You know the worst part?” Connor said, staring off at the far wall “I’m beginning to think he’s right.”
“That’s bullshit!” Liz snapped, eyes flaring “you know damn well you can fly rings around any other pilot on this tub, why on earth would you think he’s right?”
“Because I’m tired Liz. I’m tired of fighting, tired of having to count the dead after each mission, tired of wondering why I made it back and not someone else. Tired of asking myself what else I could have done to keep those kids alive, and most of all tired of this war. When was the last time we did anything more than skirmish action? Sure we hit border outposts and supply depots but that’s not going to end this thing any time soon. It’s become comfortable, after a fashion at least, so long as the civilians and those in charge back home are safe, they don’t care about what happens to us, provided the Val’s don’t gain any real ground over us, they’re happy to let things stay status quo.”
Liz stared at Conner for a long moment, wondering who she was looking at, where the confident pilot who could make a fighter dance on a dime had gone. Her mind, raced, looking for something, anything, to help and suddenly an idea formed, crystallising in an instant. She got up, grabbing Conner by the hand as she went and dragging him up behind her.
“Come with me, I think there’s something you need to see.” She said and led him out of the lounge to the nearest drop tube, heading for the hanger bay. As they walked out into the vast expanse of the bay she headed right, towards an access panel leading into the tunnels running alongside the fighter launch tubes. Popping the panel open she crawled inside and was relieved to hear Connor moving into the tube behind her. Moving as fast as she could she headed down the tunnel on her hands and knees until she reached the end and popped the airlock on the observation bubble mounted to the outside of the hull. She curled up inside the transparent dome, her body floating now they were outside of the ships artificial gravity field and Connor squeezed in next to her. She lent back and shut the hatch, effectively isolating them from the rest of the ship.
They were riding on the very front of the ship, the bubble itself was designed to allow maintenance teams to perform close up visual inspections on the ends of the launch tubes without needing to don space suits and the view was staggering. Behind and to the sides, the ship seemed to stretch to infinity, a mass of metal so huge it seemed impossible for any race to have built such a thing. Then the eye was drawn forward, to the star field in front, and suddenly infinity took on a whole new meaning.
“See that?” Liz whispered, watching Connor’s face as he gazed into the blackness. “That’s where we’re going Connor, you, me everyone, we’re going to the stars. That’s why we’re here, that’s why we fight, because there is nothing behind us but our history, what’s out there is the future.”
She paused for a moment, running her next words carefully through her mind, wanting to make sure she got this right.
“Just before I left for the academy, my mother took me out to our garden one night, sat me down and told me to look up at the stars. She was a pilot too, retired before we met the Val’s of course but she was damn good in her day. She said she wanted to say something to me before I left, something she thought might come in useful. “Stare too long into the abyss and the abyss will stare into you. So remember to look away once in a while.” I didn’t understand of course, I was too young and stupid; I hadn’t been out here and seen this for myself. But after a few years I realised what she meant.”
Liz turned, facing Connor as she lifted a hand to his chin and pulled his eyes up to meet hers. “We may live out here, and most of us may die out here, but never forget why we’re here, and what’s waiting for us somewhere else in the universe.” With that she lent forward and kissed him, bracing her legs against the sides of the bubble to stop herself floating away in the zero g environment. For a moment Connor stayed still, shocked by what was happening, then his hands came up to embrace her and he returned the kiss strongly, passionately. After what seemed like a brief eternity they split apart, Liz fighting to hide the desire in her eyes, not wanting to scare him away, Connor searching his memories for any signs he may have missed that this was even a possibility.
“Not that I’m complaining, but what was that for?” he asked.
“You know, for the fleet champ in situational awareness, you can be blind as a bat to anything not visible from a cockpit.” She replied. “I’ve wanted to do that since, oh, about half a second after a first saw you, I just never had the courage to do anything about it.”
“Why, I didn’t think I was that scary?” Connor said, a smile twitching the corner of his mouth upwards.
“Well, you can be.” Liz said, “I mean, you’re this near mythical figure to everyone that goes through the academy, it seems like half the final flight exams are based on missions you flew, and I know your real life scores on at least six of those sims are still higher than any graduation class has managed. You’re always the one we can rely on when we’re out there, someone to save us if possible, avenge us if not, it’s kind of hard to see beyond that image at times.”
Connor looked straight at her, finally reaching a decision. “Liz, tell me something straight, okay? What do you think I should do? Command the Phoenix or go to Mars?”
“Oh no.” Liz replied, raising her hands defensively “you’re not getting me to make this decision, this should be your call.”
“I’ve already made it, I just want to see what you think?”
“Like I’m falling for that trick.”
“Come on, tell me.” Connor said, bringing his feet up behind him so that his soles were planted against the side of the bubble, knees bent underneath him.
”No, no and thrice no. Work this one out on your own.”
“I can always make you tell me you know…” Connor said, throwing a playful, challenging note into his voice that, he hoped, would go straight to the stubborn pride that all fighter pilots seemed to carry with them.
“Oh really? There’s nothing you can do to me that will make me tell you anything, sir.” She replied, throwing in her own challenge with the ‘sir’. Connor simply smiled and shoved off the side of the bubble, shooting across the small space like a rocket, his arms wrapping around her body and sending them both tumbling. He hung on to her waist, wrapping his legs around her thighs and back around to lock his feet behind her shins. Once he had a good grip he relaxed his hold with his right hand and brought his fingers up to the hollow of Liz’s right armpit.
“What the? What are you.. hey, hey that’s, no, no, narggghh, not fair, nooooooo.” Liz yelled, twisting and thrashing in his grip as his fingers explored her sensitive skin, the thin material of her flight suit offering little protection from his questing fingers.
“As I said, I can get an answer out of you one way or the other my dear…” Connor whispered into her ear, and despite her predicament Liz found her body shivering in anticipation at his words. Still holding her tightly his fingers started to move slowly, teasingly over her side, more a teasing touch than a tickling one and Liz found herself relaxing in his grip.
As she did so Connor shifted his body slightly and moved his hand from her hip across to her stomach and started poking and prodding her belly. Liz was caught by surprise and doubled over with sudden, unexpected laughter, the motion sending them tumbling slowly head over heels. She shrieked and twisted hard to the right, reaching her arms out to the wall as she did so as a brace. Now it was Connor who was caught off guard, the extra spin dislodging his grip and sending him bouncing softly off the far side of the bubble. Looking up he barely had time to blink in surprise as Liz launched herself towards him, landing astride him with her arms and legs spread-eagled to absorb her momentum.
Grinning she shoved off the side with her arms, flipping backwards, her legs locking around Connor’s waist, using him as a pivot point so that she ended up with their legs entwined, her feet at the small of his back, his feet sitting on her stomach. Reaching down she tugged his boots free and raked her fingers over the exposed soles. She expected a howl, a burst of laughter, hell even a giggle would have been better than the silence she received.
Curious she glanced up and saw Connor’s face covered in a mask of concentration, his eyes closed, muscles relaxed as if he were meditating on the secrets of the universe. Watching carefully she raked her fingers across both feet, and thought she detected a slight twitch of his cheek. Encouraged she set to work, using every ounce of skill and dexterity she possessed against her target. Her hands flew over his feet, constantly varying their pattern and intensity. One moment she’d be trying light strokes the length of his soles, the next intense scratching on the balls of his feet, and then flicking her fingertips between his toes.
It was this last avenue that caused a reaction, a slight tremor that passed through Connor’s whole body, and she grinned triumphantly as she attacked his helpless toes full force. She jammed a finger in between each toe and set to work, wiggling and scratching the skin hidden there for all she was worth. Within minutes Connor was shaking from the effort of controlling his reaction, a red heat passing up his face as his resistance slowly crumbled. It needed only one thing to take him over the edge and she had just the thing.
Moving quickly she pushed gently off the side of the bubble, sliding down his body, using her own booted feet as a brake until his feet rested just below her face. She bent her head forward, fully intending to take those helpless toes one at a time into the wet depths of her mouth and lap each twitching digit into submission. She never got the chance.
Connor exploded into action, hands bracing off the wall to flip them over, and now it was Liz caught unawares. She found herself face down on the Plexiglas dome, felt Connor pull his legs up and away from her grasp as she instinctively put her hands out to absorb the impact. A weight settled onto her back and she suddenly found her ankles being pulled up and heard a ripping noise from behind her. Then something was wrapped around her ankles and tied tight, a hand played at her waist for a moment and she found her ankles effectively hogtied to one of the equipment loops on her flight suit. All this happened in the space of a second or two and once she’d recovered from the initial shock she found she had no leverage on the surface of the dome, no way to force Connor off her, no way to stop him doing whatever he wanted.
As the thought entered her mind she felt a pair of hands slide down her legs and start to tickle at about the midpoint of her thigh, the lowest easily available portion of her legs with her ankles bound like this. She buried her face against the cool wall of the dome and let the laughter come. The hands moved slowly up her thighs, teasing and tickling their way higher and higher, always moving as her laughter gradually increased in both pitch and volume. Finally the hands hovered at the very top of her inner thigh, bestowing a tickle upon her that, though light and masked by her flight suit, was enough to have her howling and thrashing as best she could in her compromised position. A hand brushed a fraction higher, a touch as light as the solar winds across her mound and she arched her back, her hips bucking upwards.
