Ingenious #1

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

T he morning whistle jolted Quiggs from a deep sleep. He jackknifed up. burying his nose into the hairy ass over his face. He gagged and slapped a muscular cheek. “Don’t fart, Miller. I don’t want to die before I drill your ass in the clinic.” Which was four weeks away and counting.

The actives crowded around the bunk, howling, as Miller wiped his hairy ass with the bushy tail of the braid, then tickled Quiggs’s nose with it.

Quiggs had escaped the pranks of baby cadets, only to fall prey to these endless revolting jokes on the new guy. He batted his braid away. “Thanks. My hair smells like ass for my first meet-and-greet.”

Miller swung a leg over to sit on the side of the bunk, dragging his heavy sac across Quiggs’s chin. Quiggs wanted his private room back to escape the constant smells of ass, sweat, and cum permeating the floor.

Yet despite his complaints, male plumbing did it for Quiggs. His cock strained its greased sleeve. He moaned from the ache, and Miller’s smirk said he knew why.

Another unpleasant surprise living with the actives was the shorter shower schedule to inhibit sex play. Actives had two minutes from wet down to suds, followed by a two-minute rinse under a hot stinging spray washing away dirt as well as erections. Cadets who engaged in furtive sex failed inspection. There were worse punishments for infractions than skipped meals and the dean’s heavy arm. Cheating cadets wore cock cages.

Because the law forbade cadets from visiting other bunks during lights out, they rubbed off alone and weren’t shy about who watched or listened. The only approved place for shared sex was the clinic. At night cadets whispered back and forth to schedule appointments with each other. They had ten minutes inside a curtained cubicle in the clinic to reach orgasm. Failure to ejaculate left a cadet with blue balls until he was back in his bunk after lights out.

The restrictions conditioned cadets into having perfunctory sex by the time they graduated. Tenderness belonged with a wife in their marriage bed.

The joke played out, the cadets shuffled off before the second whistle sounded. Quiggs found himself alone with Miller and braced for another ribald jab at their approaching appointment. Quiggs had never dreamed he’d have a chance to top the Athletic Champion. Miller, with his blue eyes and cropped black hair, cut jaw, and great body, represented Quiggs’s ultimate fantasy. He longed for some… well… some flirting before they fucked. He couldn’t admit this without drawing ridicule.

Miller punched his shoulder for attention. “You thinking of ogling all those breasts today?”

“I had my stitches out yesterday. I can’t ogle anything.” Quiggs sat up and eased his legs off the bed. Today, when all he wanted to do was sit on a cushion in the library, he had several meet-and-greets lined up.

Yesterday he’d come across a design for a furnace. The combustion valve confused him. It used a brown paste, presumably fuel. If he could figure out how to manufacture the paste, he’d build furnaces and engines to take the Triangle out of its choking sameness. He envisioned powered mowing blades replacing goats and steam-powered vessels hauling cargo around the canal.

The sputternuts were the key. How could he experiment with them when the moment their hard shell cracked, the insides flared? The oily residue from the charred kernel was nonreactive to his tests. The kernel crumbled to brown dust when touched.

Miller’s softened voice interrupted Quiggs’s fog. “Being courted for marriage is an honor. You’re lucky you have choices. I’m enlisting to avoid the lottery.”

“You enlist for three years. Marriage is forever. How do I know who’s right for me?”

“When you meet a deb who’s gorgeous with big tits and dainty ankles and a plump pink mouth, and your cock starts leaking.” Miller stood and palmed his erection. “Now I’ve worked myself up over big tits. Gotta go see if Colby can meet me this afternoon.”

Quiggs shaved and dressed. His roomy black tee and pants hid his belly, and the sleeve on his healing cock was greased and tight to withstand the parade of shapely bosoms. He laced up his polished black boots and tied off his braid with a black leather cord sewn with weights to hold the wiggly thing straight down his back. Last was his black cap with the visor positioned precisely midway between eyebrows and hairline. He loved his cap. It symbolized his manhood.

Dean Cagney intercepted Quiggs in the barracks before he stained his uniform eating breakfast in the dining hall. The dean’s shaved pate showed a nick from his razor. His gray-streaked beard was precisely trimmed. The starched folds of his black robe rustled as he circled Quiggs, inspecting him head to toe. His pompous voice hammered home how important these introductions were.

Quiggs felt as if he were a plucked rooster inspected for pinfeathers before the cook shoved it inside the pot.

The dean spritzed him with a light grassy cologne. “Back straight. Head high. Follow me.” He led Quiggs down the maze of corridors to the curved staircase of the main entry. The armed guards on the second-floor landing stepped aside to let them downstairs. Access to outsiders was restricted to the first floor. Inactives weren’t permitted below the second-floor landing, as if the academy housed a band of ferals preying on succulent female flesh.

Quiggs remembered climbing these stairs sniffling with his first-year classmates, the dean barking at them: Back straight, head high, follow me.

He limped down the stone steps as the dean reminded him, “The families will press you to commit. Do not sign anything. Though you may gaze upon a deb as if she were a cake frosted with buttercream and sprinkled with sugared berries, do not touch her person. Touch her, and the family will construe the moment as a consensual marriage contract.”

Quiggs’s stomach growled. “I’d rather eat cake, sir.” His mouth twisted down. His shoulders drooped.

“There will be cake served. Good. Keep the smile.”

The unadorned entry hall hadn’t changed in ten years. Same beige walls and floor, unscratched despite the centuries of traffic. Same portraits of past deans hanging along the staircase, all alike with their shaved pates, full beards, and stern eyes following visitors. Same bespectacled monitor at the door checking visitors’ passes against a slate.

When he reached the bottom, his cock ached, and not in a good way. The dean turned around impatiently once Quiggs lagged behind. “Lose the waddle, cadet.”

“Sir, it hurts.”

“Suck it up. Stride into the room like a confident man. Confidence attracts a deb’s romantic interest.”

“I don’t want to encourage her, sir. I’m sore.”

“You’ll understand the importance of romantic interest when you meet your first deb.”

“You never married,” Quiggs mumbled. He followed the dean down a short hallway off the entry, where there were four visitation rooms. He would start with the first one on the right and move up and down the hall until his last meet-and-greet. How long were pleasantries exchanged before he could graze the sideboards?

The dean opened the first door, and the effusive greeting on his lips broke off. He stood as if he clenched an egg between his buttocks.

Who besides Quiggs could clench the dean’s buttocks?

He peered over the dean’s shoulder. His hostess wasn’t the congenial landowner the dean had arranged for him. Standing in the middle of the room smiling at him was Governor Anne Lyre. Her daughter Rosamunde, who was nineteen and should have already been married with a baby on the way, stood beside her with her eyes lowered until properly introduced. Rosamunde’s three fathers, clad in tailored brown jackets and striped pants, lined up protectively beside her.

“Stay close beside me after you’re introduced,” the dean whispered. Beguiling a cadet into touching a deb was a trick used to snare a husband with land, connections, or fortunes. Quiggs owned all three.

The dean stepped aside for them to see Quiggs. “Your honor, may I present Cadet Quiggs Fallon, our Academic Champion.”

This was Quiggs’s public unveiling to outsiders. He stepped forward but remained close beside the dean. Rosamunde lifted her eyes for a quick peek. Her hopeful expression flattened. She lowered her gaze and pasted on a smile.

Ouch. Five seconds inside the room, and she loathed his appearance. Where was the food? A glance to his right showed a sideboard loaded with an elegant tea service, a decorated tiered cake, and triangular nibbles. Beside the sideboard was a bar with a variety of alcoholic beverages. His stomach rumbled loudly, and he heard Third Husband Palmer snicker. Palmer would have told the First Family all about Quiggs’s extended stay with the inactives.

Using the warm buttery voice that mesmerized voters, Governor Lyre greeted him. “A pleasure to meet you, Cadet Quiggs.” She wore the outfit from her official portrait, a fitted yellow jacket over a full skirt trimmed with bows. Her finery showed off her elegant figure but contradicted the frugal budget she encouraged her citizens to embrace.

“Thank you, your honor.” He clicked his heels together and bowed before her as rehearsed with two fingers over his heart.

The governor smiled indulgently. “Your mother Linnea was my classmate, quite brilliant in her botanical studies. You owe your accomplishments to her.”

How like a Ruling Mother to belittle a father by insinuating a son’s intelligence passed through the mother’s bloodline.

“May I present my husbands, William, Cyrus, and Palmer.” Each husband inclined his head as his name was spoken.

“Honored, Sirs.” Quiggs bowed low with a click to each man, feeling a little woozy after Palmer.

Each husband assessed him differently. William, friendly. Cyrus, calculating. Palmer… resentful.

Quiggs gritted his teeth as the men dropped their gazes to his crotch. Yeah, they knew he wore a tight sheath. The governor and Rosamunde knew. The whole Triangle knew after word had leaked to the heralds.

Maternal pride filled the governor’s voice. “And now, Cadet Quiggs, it pleases me to present my oldest daughter Rosamunde. She won four Academic Championships before graduating last year.”

Debs received an accelerated education and graduated earlier than cadets. Rosamunde should have already been married with a baby on the way. Postponing childbearing was unpatriotic.

The governor gushed on as if nothing was amiss. “My Rosamunde holds a degree in advanced botanicals and manages the family’s farm. She was your mother’s favorite student.”

Really? Quiggs perked up. Had his mother considered her a potential match? He stopped checking out the sideboard and assessed the first mature deb he’d encountered in his sheltered life.

The official portrait failed to capture Rosamunde’s exquisite beauty. She wore the pale pink dress of a virginal deb, with dark blue ribbons gathered beneath full breasts easily meeting Miller’s approval. Her wide-brimmed straw hat symbolized her graduation, and soft golden ringlets framed her oval face. He was more fascinated to hear his mother had taught her. To ease the ache of losing her only child, she’d taken young girls with exceptional promise under her wing.

And here he’d worried over what to talk about during his first meet-and-greet. He bounded over, careful to keep at arm’s length. “You knew my mother?”

Rosamunde wet her lips and lifted her cool blue eyes to his. She was tall, her head reaching his chin. Her voice held a sweet musicality, a youthful version of her mother’s. “Indeed, quite well over four years. Professor Linnea was absolutely brilliant. She dedicated herself to converting the sputternut into fuel. She taught me persistence produces results. Experiments require documented preparation, then analysis. Each failure closes the distance to success.”

His mother had preached those words to him when he’d sat on a stool in her workshop watching her. He wished he’d paid attention to her experiments, but botanical studies bored him. Then, as now, he loved mechanical puzzles.

Rosamunde’s face lit up with memories. “Your mother performed hundreds of trials before I enrolled, then hundreds with me assisting her. The tests weren’t complicated but required attention and patience.”

“Linnea doted on her,” the governor said. “She often remarked how Rosamunde’s inquisitive brain reminded her of you. Your mother loaned her journals to the library at the Ladies’ Academy until you showed an interest in pursuing her work.”

“No one told me I inherited her journals,” he pointed out with an edge to his voice bordering on insolence.

“Rosamunde, dear, it’s time to explain.”

Rosamunde drew a deep quivery breath. “After Linnea’s unfortunate… disappearance, I continued her work. I stole sputternuts from her trees and planted a secret orchard on my mother’s farm. Planting a nonessential crop without a permit accrues substantial fines. And th en there is the charge of theft you can file against me. And years of falsifying reasons for missed quotas for the acreage devoted to the orchard.” Her breasts heaved from distress. “My family helped me when I convinced them I was close to creating a new fuel. We can’t repay you.” She spread her arms wide, offering herself. “I am at your… mercy.”

Quiggs held his hands stiffly at his sides, resisting the urge to console her. “Thank you for continuing my mother’s work. You don’t owe me marriage. I’ll gladly pay the fines and absolve you of wrongdoing.” He turned to the governor. “Rest assured I am perfectly willing to collaborate, but I insist on reading the journals. Draw up a reasonable financial agreement. I’ll sign it today and submit it to my trustees.”

A ruthless note hardened the governor’s buttery voice. “We seek a permanent collaboration. Sealed by a marriage contract. Today.”

Today? Like now? Quiggs suddenly found himself standing on a bridge of cracking toothpicks. How did he say no to the most powerful Ruling Mother in the Triangle? What if she damaged his mother’s journals before giving them to him?

Rosamunde’s tongue licked her pink lips. Her fingers toyed with the blue ribbon beneath her breasts. Her heavy-lidded eyes beckoned as she tilted her chin up. The flirting should have inflamed an inexperienced cadet. Knocked out his wits and had him burying his face in her bosom, begging her in front of witnesses to marry him.

“Don’t be shy,” she whispered. She’d mistaken his terror for nerves. She held out her right hand and rotated her palm up. A chaste kiss on her palm would commit him to marriage.

A cold sweat broke out over his face. He froze, afraid any movement would be construed as a marriage proposal. What if he fainted and Rosamunde caught him in her arms, and they collapsed on the floor with him sprawled on top of her?

He must have swayed because the dean jerked him back by his braid and held him tightly against his chest until he steadied.

The dean managed an affable tone. The governor had the power to remove him from the academy. “With all due respect, your honor, the boy is not interested in a marriage contract until his senior year.”

The idea of a refusal amused the governor. “Every cadet aspires to marriage if the academy trains him properly. Cadet Quiggs is eighteen. He doesn’t need your consent. If he refuses a good match, the Assembly will replace you for failing his training.” Her blue eyes glinted with icy determination. “Step aside and let Cadet Quiggs speak for himself, or I will summon my guards to arrest you.”

The dean rolled up his sleeves. “Bring them on. You can see Cadet Quiggs hasn’t cut his braid. By law, a cadet who has sex with a woman before he graduates is executed, even if the woman is his legal wife. For that matter, if married, he can’t visit the sex clinic. He’d be executed for infidelity. Forcing him into a marriage contract today is a cruelty your Assembly will condemn.”

“Perhaps my Assembly will condemn you for letting a cadet turn eighteen with his braid intact. Cyrus, call the guards.”

Quiggs held his breath, his gaze bouncing back and forth.

“Please do. Then explain to your Assembly why you can’t pay the fines.” The dean stepped aside. “Cadet Quiggs, speak your mind.”

He did. Baldly. “No fucking way I’m waiting two years to cut my braid.”

The dean closed his eyes at the profanity.

William poked an elbow into Palmer’s ribs to stop the guffaws. Rosamunde’s blue eyes held a spark of genuine interest in Quiggs for the first time. The governor and Cyrus shared a determined look.

Quiggs went to the sideboard and sliced a huge wedge of cake onto a plate. Spice cake studded with currants, his favorite. “Sorry, Rosamunde. I’ll pay the fines if your family signs a business collaboration. But I’ll never sign a marriage contract before I cut my braid.”

The governor joined Quiggs at the sideboard. A stiff smile deepened the faint lines around her mouth. “Let’s start over with the understanding that the end justifies the means.” She pulled a round purple object from the side pocket of her skirt. “Recognize it?”

Around a mouthful of cake, he said, “A sputternut.” He pointed his fork at it. “What are those brown speckles?” The nut’s hull was impermeable. It resisted moisture and blight and required a vise to crack it, and then it flared and sputtered out.

“The speckles form during a curing process Rosamunde perfected.” She set the nut on the table and pressed it with her finger, denting the hull. “Watch.”

He gasped as she smashed the softened nut with the heel of her hand. A thick goop squirted but didn’t flare. Why not? He rubbed a finger in it. The stuff was drab brown, sticky, apparently inert. When he circled his finger in the air, he got a whiff like spoiled meat and sneezed. On contact with the sprayed air, the brown stuff emitted a brief, warm florescence.

The governor wiped off his finger with a napkin. Though it seemed sticky, the goop peeled smoothly away from his skin. “Rosamunde’s curing process breaks down the hard shell and reduces the oily kernel to a harmless brown pulp. It’s fuel, but it can’t flame without an infused, regulated airflow, like your sneeze. You’re a wealthy inventor. Rosamunde needs an invention.”

The pieces snapped into place, and Quiggs could have trilled like Beau. “I studied a combustion chamber for infused air in a tome yesterday which described a brown paste.” As he moved about the room, he babbled off possible schematics, and pages rolled across his mind’s eye. He lifted fragments and assembled them. He assessed, scrapped, or added to the design until it appeared functional. When it functioned without shooting him out of his boots into the sky upon ignition, he surfaced from his fog, yelling at the top of his lungs, “I know how to make that shit burn!”

The dean started to reprimand his language, then broke into a laugh. “Well done, cadet.”

The First Family hugged each other.

Rosamunde gazed at Quiggs as if he were a cake frosted with buttercream.

Quiggs kept his distance. “Can we agree there’s no need for marriage? Rosamunde will supply the fuel for my furnaces, and I’ll finance the entire project from my trust fund.”

Cyrus broke away from hugging Palmer. “Your trustees must approve any request to tap into your trust fund.”

Quiggs laughed. “It’s for fuel. They can’t object.” Fogs stoked his appetite. He went to the sideboard and saw the food was gone. His face fell. “How long was I out of it?”

“It’s almost noon,” Cyrus answered. “We need the funds this afternoon.”

Quiggs shook his head. “It’ll take my trustees a week to bicker over the contract.”

“By this afternoon, or there is no contract,” Cyrus said quietly.

Quiggs sighed at the First Family’s persistence. “Then there’s no contract. My trustees live in Port Lourdes.”

The governor spoke up, her voice subdued. “Dean Cagney, please step outside while Cyrus and I speak to Cadet Quiggs.”

The dean looked at Quiggs. “I’ll take Rosamunde with me. Don’t sign anything before I return.”

With William and Palmer her chaperones, Rosamunde swayed past Quiggs, swishing her skirt again his leg. “I’d love to unravel your hair and spread it across my pillow.”

The governor caught his shocked gaze following her giggling daughter out the door. “Yes, she’s worth the wait.”

Not what Quiggs was thinking. A woman’s figure was pleasing, but his survival instinct warned him Rosamunde wasn’t frosted with buttercream and sprinkled with sugared berries. If he bit into her, he’d crack his teeth.

Cyrus poured himself a cup of tea. Unlike his husbands, Cyrus dressed simply. No ruffles adorned his white shirt. He wore a simple necktie with a brown jacket and striped trousers and combed his dull reddish hair straight back to hide his thinning scalp. William brought money to the marriage; Cyrus brought cunning; Palmer furnished entertainment .

Cyrus sipped a minute, wetting his throat. “It’s time we speak frankly.”

“Can a politician speak frankly?” Quiggs shot back.

“Good. He has the balls for our Rosamunde.” Governor Lyre skipped the teapot and filled a painted ceramic cup with gin from the bar. She drank the contents in a long swallow, then mopped her mouth with the back of her hand and turned to Quiggs. “I borrowed from the treasury for Rosamunde’s experiments and my campaign. I must replace the loan before an unexpected audit this afternoon. Your inheritance is yours to spend freely the moment you’re married. Marry Rosamunde now, and you can sign a draft immediately covering the loan. Cyrus will smooth the transaction. Is that frank enough for you?”

His jaw dropped. Centuries ago, the Assembly abolished prisons as a burden on the people. A serious crime like embezzlement earned an immediate death penalty for all involved—the governor, her husbands, and Rosamunde.

Cyrus placed his teacup on the sideboard. “If Rosamunde dies, twenty years of research dies with her. She has hidden the journals. You’ll never find them. Oh, eventually, you’ll rediscover the curing process. You’re ingenious. A true throwback to our ancestors. But why waste another twenty years of experiments when you could begin tomorrow? Think it over.”

The Governor poured herself another gin with a steady hand. “My dear Cadet Quiggs, what is it you want most from your life the next two years?”

Before his meet-and-greet, he’d have answered lots of ten-minute appointments in the sex clinic as soon as he healed.

Now he chose between lots of meaningless sex for two years or spending the next twenty years experimenting on boring sputternuts.

Cyrus produced a marriage contract. “Read it. We understand what you will sacrifice for two years. In atonement, the terms are generous.”

“This could have been prevented had you asked for my help in the beginning.” Quiggs hated being manipulated instead of doing the manipulation.

“You were a sheltered inactive, and the dean screened your correspondence. If not for this totally unexpected audit, we would have asked for help.” The gentle reproof in Cyrus’s tone made Quiggs feel at fault. He squelched the feeling. He wasn’t signing his life away. If he focused, he might develop a curing process on his own, but he’d rather spend twenty years inventing machines to use the fuel.

He carried the contract to the negotiating table at the back of the windowless room and pulled out a chair with a checked cushioned seat. Sighing, he eased down and propped his feet on the table. He would read the contract, then tear it in half. He would still offer to pay the fines and the loan. Maybe, if the First Family surrendered their rights to the fuel paste to the government, the Assembly would sentence them to manufacturing it for free the rest of their lives.

The governor and Cyrus chatted amiably at the sideboard, as if they weren’t wearing a noose around their necks.

He rattled the pages defiantly. Heh. What could they offer him?

The contract he read was as straightforward and without frills as Cyrus. It was so damn generous he suspected a trick.

Cyrus patted his hunched shoulder. “If you have doubts, ask Dean Cagney to review the terms.”

Once back into the room, the dean snatched the contract from Quiggs and sat beside him. He calmed by the second page, the one allowing Quiggs to choose his second and his third husbands after he graduated to compensate him for his loss of experience in the academy. Wives always chose the additional husbands. The concession was unheard of but legally sound, worded to prevent Rosamunde from contesting it later.

When the dean questioned aloud what he’d read, Rosamunde lost her flirty smile. Apparently, her parents hadn’t warned her about the husbands. She demanded to see the contract and flushed when her mother told her to shut up because it was a fair trade.

Without the special clause, Rosamunde could marry a second husband, even a third, and start a family without Quiggs. He’d be a father of two before he graduated. Yet if he was caught swapping blow jobs out of desperation, he dissolved his marriage and forfeited everything, including his life, if his betrayed wife insisted. The contract stated she would not seek his execution.

The same fate awaited Rosamunde if she cheated on him. Her body ripe for a husband’s attentions, Rosamunde was forced to abstain from sex and live a chaperoned life while she concentrated on building a supply of the fuel paste.

Heh. Bet she hadn’t seen that coming.

The contract covered everything to keep Quiggs alive and married. To resolve the danger of temptation, he’d be moved away from the barracks and into a comfortable apartment in the faculty’s residential wing. All male visitors were prohibited from his apartment unless a certified chaperone was present. Otherwise, political enemies could accuse him of illegal sex play.

“It is an exceptionally generous contract,” Dean Cagney admitted. “Think carefully, Quiggs. It’s permanent. Until death do you part or one of you cheats.”

Quiggs understood the terms. If he married Rosamunde, he lost the sex clinic and kept growing his braid. Meanwhile, he had a private apartment to rub one off without making an appointment. He had full control of his inheritance. He could rent a warehouse as soon as tomorrow and start work on a furnace for a flying balloon. He could even begin searching for two husbands! He couldn’t touch, but he could meet-and-greet candidates with a chaperone.

Cyrus handed him a marker. Quiggs twirled it, hesitating to sign. “If you’re lying about the paste—”

“Rosamunde will prove it within twenty-four hours, or the contract is voided,” Cyrus replied.

“Put that in writing.”

Cyrus added it, and Quiggs signed, satisfied that he gained much more than he lost—providing he kept his dick in his pants.

An officiate was brought in to conduct the simple marriage oaths and file copies of the contract. Toasts were exchanged. On an empty stomach, the alcohol went straight to Quiggs’s head. The formal marriage ceremony would occur in two years, the evening he graduated. There was no way around the law to grant him an early graduation to consummate his vows.

Since he’d fulfilled his academic studies, Quiggs was free to explore the city alone as long as he remained in the public eye—no sneaking into alleys for hookups with soldiers—and obeyed the curfew. Cadets could visit his apartment day or night, provided he arranged for a chaperone every minute of their stay. Less than a minute of unchaperoned male company violated his marriage contract. Not a problem. Except if he was restricted from having unchaperoned male company in his apartment, then—

He stared at Dean Cagney. “What about Beau, sir? He’ll want to move in with me.”

Dean Cagney scrubbed his face with his hands.

Cyrus’s brows snapped together. “Out of the question.”

“Everyone knows he’s harmless,” Quiggs pleaded.

Cyrus said, “No unchaperoned male company inside your apartment. Beau’s presence raises questions of sex play.”

Quiggs laughed until tears streamed. He wiped his eyes to find everyone staring grimly at him. Were they serious?

“It’s time you set aside your disgusting little pet.” The governor’s voice was overloud from bolting a few more gins. “Beau can’t live with you. Laws regarding the marriage contract are rigid.”

“He won’t understand. He’ll yowl for me.”

The dean rolled up his sleeves again, eager for an excuse to annul the rushed marriage. “The contract gives you twenty-four hours to change your mind.”

“Nonsense.” Cyrus regarded Quiggs with fatherly concern. “Security guards will confine your little friend to a jail cell where the herders will discipline him until he accepts the change.”

Quiggs protested, “I don’t want anyone hurting him.”

“They’ll place him on a diet of water and plain boiled grains to wear him down. They’ll brag how happy you are. He can’t yowl forever.”

“Promise you won’t hurt him.”

“You have my promise,” the governor slurred.

Quiggs thought of a quiet, clean apartment all to himself that didn’t smell like a barn when Beau skipped a shower. That didn’t have sucker-toes skittering about leaving pellets. He could jerk off in bed without Beau peering upside down at him from the upper bunk. He could hump his fist in the middle of his living room in broad daylight if the mood struck. Or spend an hour wanking in the shower.

Eventually—even if it took a month—Beau would yowl himself hoarse and accept the change.

Quiggs returned to his barracks before curfew with six guards: one to help him move his footlocker, the other five to subdue Beau.

The actives had heard the news. He braced himself for jokes about his braid reaching his ankles when he graduated. Instead, they slammed him with pillows and cheered him for winning what they all dreamed of when jerking off—an untouched deb for a wife.

Miller wrapped an arm around his shoulder, “Congratulations, Quiggs. Too bad you lost your chance to nail my ass.”

Quiggs leered up at him. “Maybe not. I get to choose both husbands.”

“Uh-uh. No way. The wife always picks.”

“Nope. My reward for giving up the clinic.”

Miller’s arm tightened. He licked his lips. “I saw Rosamunde at a rally once. Dammmmn . I’d like me some.”

Uh-uh. No way. The second husband would like him some Quiggs, not Rosamunde.

Beau slipped between them, pushing Miller away. He bared his small sharp teeth. “No touching. My friend Quiggs married.” He tugged on Quiggs’s arm. “We go move now. ”

“Uh… Beau… married means I can’t share a room with another male. It’s a special law.”

“Law says you no make babies with wife yet. You got to grad-u-ate first. So okay if we share a room.” He rubbed his face on Quiggs’s arm.

Miller backed away, his hands raised in surrender. The cadets gave them a wide circle.

Quiggs watched the guards inch closer. “Not okay. It’s a bad, bad thing if you live with me.”

Beau dropped to his knees. His lips quivered. The tendons in his neck tightened.

The cadets widened the circle.

The guards dropped a net over Beau, then wrapped a rope around him before he wriggled free. He hissed at being trapped and yowled pitifully as they dragged him away. Quiggs gritted his teeth. Whether now or after graduation, a separate living arrangement was inevitable.