His eyes revealed a deep hurt that Braden understood only too well. He clapped a hand on Torque’s shoulder and squeezed before stepping back. “I don’t want to think about it unless the problem actually occurs. I have other problems to worry about right now. Like the Marid mission, the safety of Xylon, and Alexa’s current feelings.”
The truth was he’d already thought too much about the Council’s stand on multi-mating, and the horror that reality might cause for Alexa. Even though he was in charge of the military sector of Xylon, The Lair, he didn’t dictate Xylon Law. The Council, as a whole, controlled their society and its workings.
“If there’s a problem because of Leila’s Initiation, have Erik talk to Alexa. They’re pretty close, from what I hear. He might be able to calm her down and make her understand.” A slow grin spread across Torque’s face, transforming the look of hurt in his eyes to one of mischief.
Braden wasn’t sure if Torque was trying to lighten the conversation or push him further to the edge of his control. “What are you getting at now?”
“Well, I just thought since Erik is a frequent visitor to your bedchamber—”
“Damn it, Torque! You know those rumors of threesomes among us aren’t true. I’ve told you that before.” He wasn’t sure how those stories got started. If he ever found the person who originated the tale, he’d throttle them. The fact that Erik and Alexa were good friends certainly didn’t help stem the rumors. Once things settled down, he needed to do something to change whatever perception existed.
With Alexa’s super breeder status, any rumors of her being fucked by another man just fueled the idea of forcing super breeders to multi-mate, whether their choice or not.
“Are you saying never?”
With a sigh, Braden hit a button, putting The Lair’s emergency personnel on standby status. “I’m saying, take care of what I asked, then get me a report.”
Torque laughed. “Well, that’s one way to avoid answering the question, brother. All right. I’m on it.”
* * * * *
Erik looked out the front portal. A wall of dirt greeted him. Too close. They’d missed hitting a hundred-foot mountain by only twenty feet. “Is everyone all right?” Leila stirred beside him. “Ow. I banged my head a little on the side control panel. But I’ll live. Are you all right? Kam, you?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” Kam said.
“I’m all right.” Erik’s heart pounded in alarm, as he brushed away some blood from Leila’s temple.
When he saw she wasn’t seriously injured, he relaxed. “Doesn’t look too bad. You’ll heal quickly.”
When she blushed, he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips, knowing she was thinking about last night. He smiled. He couldn’t help himself. But also knowing he had to see to his duties, he turned in his seat. “Kam, what’s our status?”
“Communications, weapons, tracking…they’re all offline.”
“Repairable?”
“Yeah, eventually, but not without replacement parts. We have some on the ship, but not everything that we need.”
“We can still take off, right?”
“Sure, but without tracking, it doesn’t do us a lot of good. We’d be navigating blind, with only what we can see out the portals. And we can’t send a distress message.”
“If we have no choice, I’ll take it. Any idea of how far off course we are from where we were supposed to land?” Evidently, they weren’t going to make their meeting with Halah. Not on time anyhow.
“Five hundred miles, as an estimate.”
“Shit.” This didn’t bode well. He hated missions that started this way. They couldn’t walk the distance—too far.
“What do we do?” Leila asked.
“Stay put. Let them think they destroyed us. Halah will do a sweep. That’s standard Warrior procedure.
She may have defected, but I’d bet my ass she still follows her training. If she doesn’t come across us by nightfall, we’ll discuss starting out on foot. Though, I don’t think it’s a good idea, unless we have no other options. It’s definitely too dangerous during the day.” Outside The Dome, their life forms would be picked up by every patrol within tracking distance. After a mountain path and a few hills, the land between here and The Dome lay mostly flat. No cover existed for them to retreat to, if on foot and attacked.
They couldn’t even use their transport-connectors to infiltrate The Dome. They’d need three of The Dome’s connectors and a clear channel. Even if they could get inside with their own transports, alarms would go off everywhere, because they would register as Xylon, and a breach of Marid security. Even if used out here in the open to rendezvous with Halah, the Egesa would zero in on the power source within seconds.
“They’re going to check on us when they spot the orbiter in one piece,” Kam said.
Erik closed their portals and sealed them in. “If anyone comes across us before Halah does, we may have no choice but to kill them. Hopefully, it won’t come to that. But it’ll be easier to defend ourselves from inside here, than out in the open.”
“I’m not so sure about that. Here, we’re just sitting ducks, as my sister calls it. Not a good visual.”
“Agreed,” Leila said. “We should hide in the hills.”
Erik shook his head. “We might miss Halah, or run into worse trouble with whatever lives up in those mountains. We’re not supplied for wilderness survival. We’re staying put for now. Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight. Besides, Braden and I had a little something extra installed for defense before we took off, inspired by Halah herself.”
“And until then?” Kam asked.
“I’ll engage the scrambler, so the orbiter gives us partial protection from tracking devices. They’ll still pick up the ship, but our life forms will register as indeterminate. They might pass us by and send a salvage team instead, or maybe send nobody at all if they consider salvage low priority. Either way, we should be able to buy enough time until Halah gets to us, as long as this isn’t a setup.”
“What if it is a setup?” Leila asked.
“Then we take off and get out of here, navigation online or not. I’d rather take my chances in space.
Once outside their security net, Xylon will pick us up on the main tracker and send help. They know the ship’s private code. They’ll be able to scan the orbiter and link it to us. Down here, we’re totally on our own.”
* * * * *
“Where the hell are they?” Halah stomped around the open ground where she was supposed to rendezvous with the Warriors. She crushed a Mucous Spider under her boot, and green liquid squirted out. Nasty insect. Deadly, too. Once bitten, the venom caused paralysis and eventually death, if untreated, even for someone able to self-heal. The poison worked too fast. In certain areas, Marid was overrun with the ugly, purplish creatures. She looked up at the sky, then checked her handheld tracking device. Nothing.
What if they’d been destroyed? That would put a kink in her plans, to say the least. Braden might not make a second deal so quickly.
Sometimes she felt her search for Josella was useless. She’d been looking for so long now. And nobody seemed willing to help, unless forced into it. She stiffened her spine. Well, she’d always had to rely on herself. She would continue to do so.
Her guard escort approached with a vid-cell in his hand. “There’s been a report of a crashed orbiter about five hundred miles from here. My guess is that it’s them.”
“Xylon?”
“Unmarked. But the odds are good, in my estimation. The timing is too coincidental.”
“Oh, for… Can’t they do anything right? They’re going to get themselves captured and executed, if they haven’t already. Why aren’t I picking up the ship?”
He studied her tracker. “Looks like some electrical interference. You, maybe?”
“Never happened before.” She lowered the power settings in her jacket. Nothing on the monitor changed. “No. I don’t think so.” She looked up. “Sky
is clear. Must be this blasted machine. I’ve heard rumors of various electronic malfunctions lately. Stupid, second-rate equipment, no doubt. Any reports of survivors?”
“Not yet. The orbiter just went down.”
“Well, I think you’re probably right. That has to be them. Dak! Can we get there before the recovery team?” If someone captured them before her, things would get dicey. Without her running interference, their identities would be uncovered a lot sooner. And depending on where they were sent, the whole mission might be jeopardized.
“An Egesa Patrol is already on their way,” the first guard informed her.
Dak turned from the back of their rover, where he’d been checking settings. “No way. We’ve got a tank leak. We’ll have to proceed at half speed or turn back and get another rover.”
Halah hung her head. What else could go wrong? She climbed aboard the open-topped rover. “Let’s go. We’re continuing on. We can’t afford to turn back now. If the Egesa get them, I’ll figure out something once we rendezvous.”
* * * * *
Kam woke to a mewling noise. He’d lain down in the back to nap on a pullout table that doubled as a cot of sorts, if one wasn’t particular. He hoped the time would move faster if he slept. He hated to wait around. Cringing, he stretched out his back. The makeshift bed felt harder than a rock against his spine. He wiped the sweat from his brow. With each passing minute, the orbiter grew hotter inside. They’d turned off the coolant, as well as most of the other systems, to appear un-operational and dead.
So far, only one patrol had come across them.
When the Egesa had tried to pry open the door, they’d been struck with a large, electrical current, charring them to bits. Their bodies, or what remained of them, now littered the ground.
When the Egesa team didn’t check in, more would arrive. Halah had better find them soon, and approach the orbiter cautiously, or she’d be cooked meat, too.
From the information he’d read about her in the file Braden had provided, she was a smart woman and trained to control electrical currents. He knew a little about her power from personal experience. She’d zapped him good on Earth.
As long as she didn’t get careless, she should be all right. Besides, he’d be watching for her. He checked his wrist sensor. Still, all clear.
Damn lucky for them the electrical system even worked after the hits they had sustained. And it worked correctly. They all could have ended up burnt to a crisp, if it had malfunctioned, or they could have wound up enslaved by those disgusting creatures if the current hadn’t engaged at all.
Too many Egesa for them to fight off by hand had surrounded the ship. Luckily, all of them lingered near enough to the outer hull to get fried. If another patrol came along, he wasn’t so certain of their fate.
Only limited electrical current remained. The automatic regeneration system had sustained damage during the attack in orbit. They needed to conserve enough power to take off and blast their way back out of the shielded atmosphere. Lasers still worked from what he could tell. But their more powerful weapons were useless. The odds of them surviving with Egesa patrols everywhere seemed slim to him. But he trusted Erik’s judgment. The man usually kept a trick or two in reserve to use in desperate situations.
A groan drew his attention toward the front of the craft. Damn. Leila stood with her back toward him, her long hair cascading down her naked body, ending just above her nicely rounded ass. Her hands grasped a low-hanging pipe above her head. No, wait. Her wrists were tied to the pipe. Double damn.
Near her feet, clothing littered the deck.
Shirtless, Erik stood in front of her.
Kam couldn’t see anything else from his angle until Erik stepped to the side and turned Leila, unknowingly exposing her profile to him. Her tits jutted forward, and her hard nipples captured his attention.
Erik’s hand slowly trailed down the front of her body. “Will you submit?”
“Y-yes.”
“Good.” He smiled, his hand moving back up her body. “Do you have any idea how really beautiful you are?”
She looked down, not responding.
“Look at me, Leila.” He lifted her chin with his finger, until her eyes rose and met his. “Do you feel beautiful?”
Kam barely heard her whispered response.
“When you look at me, I do.”
He couldn’t imagine what she’d endured all these years with her scars. Relief swept through him, and he felt so glad they had helped her heal, because he found her a beautiful woman. Inside and out.
Erik’s hands eased up to massage her raised arms. “Are you all right tied like this?”
“Yes. It’s…sexy.”
“Yes, it is. And so are you.” His hand glided under her hair and down her back to smack her ass. Once, twice. The sharp sound echoed in the orbiter.
“Oh!”
Kam bit the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning. Why did they have to torture him like this? He’d lived too long without a woman of his own.
“You like that?”
“Yes, Erik, yes.”
“Very good. I plan to do it to you often.”
Kam couldn’t drag his eyes from her as Erik spanked her again. Her ass jiggled, and he could see her skin growing pink even from his vantage point.
Leila moaned. “Erik?”
“Hmm?” He caressed her ass.
“Why do males like to spank?”
A grin tugged at his lips. “Why do females like to be spanked?”
Kam swallowed the laugh that threatened to spill from his mouth. The perfect way to avoid answering one question was to ask another. He waited for Leila’s response.
“Not all like it,” she said.
“And not all males spank.”
“But you do…and the others.”
“And you like it. It makes you hot.” His fingers grazed her pussy. “And wet.”
She blushed, but didn’t lower her gaze.
Kam was curious to hear Erik’s answer. He, personally, had never spanked a woman during sex. He had swatted a butt or two in his time, but only in fun. He preferred to do other things to a female’s ass for sexual gratification. But he knew Erik and Torque liked to spank. Braden, he wasn’t sure about. Leila was the only woman he had ever seen Braden spank. If Braden spanked Alexa, he didn’t know.
Erik simply chuckled. “Let’s just leave the explanations alone for now. All that matters is your pleasure.”
He stepped in front of her and tugged open his uniform pants.
Kam noticed that Leila’s breathing increased. She moistened her lips, and opened and closed her fingers around the pipe she was tied to.
Erik stepped forward and his mouth came down on hers. He kissed her deeply.
Pulling back, he tugged off his boots, and lowered his pants. He kicked his uniform and boots aside, then stood in front of her, stroking his dick. “You ready?” When she nodded, he grabbed one of her legs, draped it over his hip, and eased into her pussy.
“Oh, Erik!”
His hips pumped forward, softly and slowly.
“More, Erik.”
He increased his thrusts a little at a time, until he was plunging into her with quick and determined force.
“Like this?”
“Yes!”
Kam rolled onto his back, and threw his arm across his eyes. He rubbed himself lightly through his uniform. Their sexual escapade made his dick feel harder than steel, but no way was he jacking off here.
He felt like telling them to give it a rest, but he knew how they felt about each other. Neither of them had ever fully admitted the depths of their feelings aloud, but his mood sensor picked up their emotions with no problems. As if he needed a machine to tell him what he saw with his own eyes.
Leila moaned. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
Lowering his arm, Kam turned his head to see her body shaking in Erik’s embrace. She looked so gorgeous when she came—her skin flushed, her eyes sparkled. He loved t
o watch a woman climax. Erik whispered something in her ear, thrusting into her gently now, pumping, and then rotating his hips.
“Yes, yes,” she said in response.
Erik groaned deep in his throat, and he came, too. “Oh, Leila! Yeah, baby!” His body trembled, then relaxed.
They both stood silently in each other’s arms. Erik reached up and untied her from the pipe. “From now on you have sex with nobody but me. Understand?”
“Hmm.” She practically purred, her nails grazing his chest.
At the sensual sound, Kam’s dick hardened even more. He needed a woman and some good, sloppy sex. Leila sucking him off had been great, but he needed his cock inside a warm and wet pussy, and hers was no longer available.
Leila clung to Erik, her arms heavy and her body sated. She couldn’t bring herself to admit to him how much she cared. Not yet. This wasn’t the time or the place to discuss intimate things, though she wasn’t opposed to a quick joining…or two.
Erik was a fantastic lover. He still hadn’t told her his most carnal need. She’d asked after Kam had moved to the back of the orbiter. But Erik had just said, when we’re alone . She’d thought he might tell her while they fucked. Instead, he’d whispered hot, erotic things to her while stroking her pussy. She’d never climaxed so quickly. She glanced to the side.
She figured, by now, Kam must be awake. Even knowing he’d probably seen them didn’t sway her.
She couldn’t move away from Erik. His hands felt too good roaming her body. Besides, something about being watched excited her. She kissed Erik’s throat, eliciting a moan from him.
He sat on the edge of the control panel and pulled her close. His thumb rubbed her nipple, getting it hard. He tugged on the bud. “You like that?”
“You know I do. Suck it.” She loved the touch of his mouth on her skin.
His lips closed around the nipple, and he drew gently on her flesh.
She stroked his hair. “That feels so good.” While holding him close, his sucking seemed more tender than erotic. Also calming, in a strange way. She caressed his cheek, and her eyes closed, enjoying the moment.
His Carnal Need (Xylon Warriors 2) Page 16
