by Elise Jae
WREN
The drive home is quiet. Fingers twined together, my head on Fault’s shoulder… I know he feels how tired that interaction left me.
It’s why I’m not surprised when he pulls me across the car and carries me inside.
The warmth of his—our home is soothing, but it can’t drive away a question that’s been tumbling through my mind…. “What happens if they find out?”
Fault is quiet for a moment, but I know he’s not confused by the question.
“I don’t know.” He finally says, kissing my forehead. “With the way Drift has handled the information, I don’t think I want to.”
The sickly uncertainty filtering to me is the last thing I want to feel, so I pull his head down to mine. “They can’t all be idiots.”
That gets him to laugh, and when he kisses me, it drives away a different kind of chill.
“I haven’t fed you enough today.” He deposits me on the couch and I turn, watching him move around the kitchen.
“What’s for dinner?”
“I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands, so I have a few tricks up my sleeves… ever had arepas?”
I nod. “My neighbors during high school were from Venezuela.”
“Do you like them?”
“Yeah, they’re pretty great.”
“I fell in love with the food from your Southern American continent a few years ago.”
“And now, you can’t get enough?”
“Might be an understatement.”
Watching him move around the kitchen is an exercise in patience. I knew, of course, that bonding would ratchet up my libido. I just didn’t realize how much.
Everything my big sian man does is sexy.
It borders on ridiculous.
“Keep thinking thoughts like that and we’re both going to starve to death.” His words are quiet, said with a low laugh.
“Alright. You’re just going to have to distract me.”
“Why don’t I let you distract yourself?” He turns to me, setting a bowl of something green on the counter—it looks like avocado, but I don’t think they import that. “I don’t like learning things about you when someone asks.”
“Or when Drift makes me mad enough I admit them without prompting.”
“That too.”
“Okay…. We’ve got a long time to learn about each other, so I’ll give you a cliff notes version and we can get into the details you want to know later.”
“I want to know everything.”
“Well… as you know yesterday was my birthday, twenty-six Earth years ago. I was raised by a single mom and we never lived in one place for very long when I was growing up. “Montana was probably our longest stop and we were only there for two years. But constantly moving around meant I got to deal with bullies at every new school I attended, so… I got in a lot of fights. After high school, I didn’t bother with college—I always knew I’d be coming here. The fighting thing led into self defense courses and then on to random martial arts training until I found Krav Maga and fell in love with it. A friend’s brother needed help at his tactical range and I had a few years before the Agency would clear me for departure, so I took the job. Enjoyed it, but… coming here has been the end goal since I was fourteen.”
“What happened at fourteen?”
“A girl in my freshman class brought in a clip from her sister’s porn stash. It was only about sixty seconds, and we were all probably too young to have seen what you guys look like, but it was enough to pique my interest and send me off on the hunt for more… And let me tell you, Earth boys didn’t measure up.”
He chuckles as he finishes plating up our dinner. “I pity them, in a way.”
“Me too. Anyway, I started learning sianese the next day and doing everything I could to ensure I would be a candidate that met the Agency’s requirements.”
The table is set beside the long window looking out over the caldera and I take the seat across from him. “These look amazing.”
He’s filled the arepas with something that looks like avocado and chicken, but I’m not sure what I’m actually going to get. One bite tells me it doesn’t matter what’s in them, they’re too good.
As we eat, a comfortable silence descends, but it’s his turn. I’m not going to ask about his childhood. I don’t want to force him to relive that trauma.
“What else do you do to fill the time and ward off the infinite boredom?” I haven’t seen any indication of a video game console, but for some reason I still expect it.
“I cook, I work out. On my rare night off I’d go to Margot’s. And when I need to, I disconnect.”
“Disconnect?” It made him sound like a robot. “Funny, I didn’t see a battery pack when I was exploring you.”
He chuckles down at his food and I want to keep that smile on his face forever.
“I do something mindless. I’ve seen almost every movie they’ve sent across the galaxy....”
“Now that’s closer to what I expected.”
“And now, I have something else to pass the time… assuming you want to help.”
Shivering, I bite my tongue and pick up the last piece of my arepa. “I’m not the one who insisted we eat first.”
He stands, pulling me to my feet a moment later and sweeps me up. “The dishes can wait.”
But we don’t make it downstairs.
His kiss is sweet and I want to melt into him, to fuse together and feel nothing but this pleasure—our twining desire—for the rest of eternity.
The pinging sound echoing overhead makes him groan. He pulls back glaring at the ceiling. “I have to go out.”
“Duty calls?”
He nods and I feel every ounce of tension flowing through him. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He disappears downstairs, but is back so quickly… I don’t know how it was possible he changed that fast.
The suit he wears is gray, it conforms to his body in ways that make my mouth water, and I have questions… but those can wait.
He kisses me as he opens a panel in the wall beside the door—it blended in so seamlessly, I likely never would have found it. The weapons there are so foreign….
“Don’t take too long.” I say after one final, lingering kiss. “Remember, you have someone to come home for now.”
Something soft and warm flutters through the bond.
And then he’s gone. And for the first time since Margot’s I’m actually alone. I stand in the middle of the space for a moment. The outpost doesn’t feel like my home yet, but we’ll change that.
I pull the tablet from where it’s fallen between the couch cushions and tap through a dozen screens and input four passwords before I can check the status of my belongings. They’ll be here soon.
Until then, I back out and access the book I’d been reading at Mary’s. It’s interesting enough to fill my time, and sexy enough I’ll be ready for Fault when he gets home—not, that I’ve needed any external stimulus before...
I’m sitting on the couch when I feel him come back, though he didn’t come through the front door. He’s in downstairs, but he’s thinking about me… thinking about what he wants to do to me tonight.
I slip from the couch and follow the feeling of him. I find him in our bedroom putting away his newly cleaned cold suit.
“We don’t have to wait.”
He looks at me over his shoulder. “You could feel that much?”
I nod as I slip my sweater off. “There’s no reason we can’t spend the next week naked in this bed if you want.”
“I don’t know how any of this works.”
“It’s pretty simple…. I want you, Fault. I wanted you when I first saw you at Margot’s and I haven’t stopped wanting you since. I know you can feel that. So why not give me what I want. I know it’s what you want too.” I pull off my shirt and hook a finger in my pants. They’re loose enough, it only takes a tug and a wiggle of my hips to get them off. I step out of them, leaving my slippers on the ground, and go
to him.
My big man who’s afraid he’s going to break me with his enormous cock has no idea.
“I have a little idea.” He ghosts a palm over my breast and I shiver at the sensation. He scowls at the bruises on my shoulder, but I like them. Like the constant reminder that he’s had my body and will have it again.
“Should I stop wearing underwear?” I ask as his fingers slip over the cups, dragging them down to bear my breasts to him. “That way, the next time we’re in the kitchen, I can lean over the counter and all you’ll have to do is slide my pants down so you can eat me as an appetizer.”
He groans and I pull his shirt from his pants shoving it up his body until he takes it from me. I think I hear fabric tear as he rips it over his head and tosses it aside. But my focus is on his pants. On getting them off and getting that big cock inside me once again.
But once we’re naked, he hesitates.
“You didn’t break me last time. You’re not going to this time.” I pull him to me once more, kissing him as roughly as I can manage. “You can feel how much I want it. I can feel how much you love it.”
His hand grips the back of my neck and I shiver at the pressure. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him to toss me around like a rag doll, but I don’t want to scare him any more than I already do.
I take hold of his hips and he lets me steer him back to the bed.
“Lie back.” I push his chest, and he falls with no real force. “If you’re scared, I’ll be the one in charge this time.”
Interest piqued, he does as I say, pressing his hands, palm down, into the mattress. Laid out in front of me like this, I have to pause, to just take a minute to appreciate him in all of his enormous glory. His shoulders seem to fill half the bed. His chest, tight with muscles that run all the way down his abdomen to….
I shiver at the idea of having it inside of me again. As if I haven’t done this before, as if there is some possibility that it won’t fit.
“I don’t like those thoughts,” He’s watching me, and I know he doesn’t know exactly what I’m thinking… just how it makes me feel.
“What if I told you,” I ask, leaning forward and dragging my tongue along the ridges at the base of him, “that I was thinking about how big you are, and how wet it makes me?”
His jaw tenses, and he takes hold of my hips.
“Just so we’re clear, I love sex. I expect you to be at my beck and call. Are you going to be okay with getting naked whenever I ask?”
“Saints, yes.” His fingers dig at my hips as I drag myself along him, already impossibly wet. “I’ll agree to anything, Wren. You’re my miracle, how could I refuse you anything?”
It only takes a tiny adjustment to the angle of my hips, and the next time I move on him, I sheathe the tip of him. The way his eyes close, the way his head tips back and his muscles tense…. I could get use to this.
I don’t know if my body will ever get used to him. As I work my way down, each time I rock on him, the tension of his task out in the snow seeps away and by the time I’m fully on him, he’s not thinking about anything other than me and the pleasure we share.
It’s no surprise when that pleasure builds and I cry out a moment before his hands pull me down on him in a brutal grip and he grunts as he fills me up again.
“Saints, Wren.” He shivers in the aftermath of our combined orgasm, and I follow suit as his palms brush over the gooseflesh sprouting on my legs. “You’re going to ruin me. How am I supposed to do my job when all I want to do is live inside of you.”
Swiveling my hips on his still hard cock, I can’t stop myself from chuckling. “I wouldn’t object.”
This little break between loads is something I’ve started to relish. That tiny calm like we’re in the eye of a storm. But it can’t last. I won’t let it.
“Fault?”
He meets my eyes and his smile twitches up at the corner. “I want you to take me from behind.”
He barely nods before he’s shifting us, moving me to where he needs me to be. When he pushes back in, I feel his previous come slide from me, making a mess down the back of my legs.
The warm reminder of how eager his body is to mate with me….
In the reflection, I can see his face, see the concentration I feel through the bond. This angle makes those ridges into the perfect stimulation. But I want more. He always makes me want more.
I push myself up so I’m pressed, back to his chest, and I reach for his hand.
It moves without any resistance, but he freezes when I wrap it around my neck.
“Wren….”
I should have known it would be too much too soon. “It’s okay… if that scares you, just… pull my hair.” I barely get the words out between panted breaths.
It takes a moment of hesitation, but he wraps his hand in my hair and twists it in a gentle tug.
Even with his rough thrusts, and the marks I know his other hand will leave on my skin, it’s not enough.
“Tighter.”
“Wren…”
“I know you can feel that I want it. You know you’ll feel it if I don’t. Please, Fault.”
He considers it, and then...he pulls my head back, the pressure of my hair in his grip shooting through me in a way that makes him grunt. His teeth rake against my unbruised shoulder.
He mutters the names of three different Saints and I let a moan slip free as I clench down on him. He bites, teeth sharp against my skin.
As all of the pleasure mixes with those points of pain, and my eyes fly wide when he explodes inside of me. The force is strong enough I know, if it weren’t for those ridges, it would have torn him out of me.
And then, I can’t think anymore as his orgasm makes him tighten his grip, as it forces my own, and I am glad there’s no one around for miles. The sound I make….
I’m still shaking when Fault loosens his grip, when he wraps his arms around me and pulls out, letting what feels like a gallon of come slide out with him.
He picks me up immediately and holds me steady as he lets me find my footing.
“Good lord, we made a mess.” I’m too weak to laugh, but I stumble to the bathroom, and when I come back out, he’s changed the sheets and is stuffing the messy ones down the chute.
My legs aren’t jelly anymore, but I don’t argue when he picks me up and takes me back to bed.
“I didn’t know Earth women were… into that.”
Slinging my leg over him so I can curl even closer, I yawn before I can say, “I know you feel how much I like it. We’ll work you into it.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” His thumb ghosts over the marks he left behind.
“You won’t. Aside from the fact that I know you’ll feel it if you start to hurt me… I’ll teach you what to do.”
He hugs me close. “I did promise you anything.”
“Exactly. Speaking of which… we need to get lube. I want you in my ass again.”
Which is, of course, when the sensor sounds, letting us know someone’s come through the front door.
“I’m instating a new rule. That hatch has to be fully locked down if we’re home alone. I don’t like that Drift can just come in whenever he wants.”
He’s already pulling his pants on—he doesn’t bother with his shirt. “I’ll change the lock code as soon as he leaves.”
“Good.”
Slipping into the bathroom, I clean up, fix my hair and take off the makeup he’s messed up, and when I’m dressed again—if Drifts here, I want to be wearing actual pants—I follow him upstairs.
But it’s not just Drift.
Core and Trench are looking around the living room and I’m reminded that Drift has kept them all away thus far.
“Hey guys,” I say, going to Fault’s side and wrapping my arm around his waist.
If we were alone, I’d melt into that warm skin again.
“Sorry we interrupted.” Core says with a smile that makes me think he’s not the least bit sorry. He might be a
sadist.
“No you’re not.”
“She’s blunt. I like that.” Core says it in their language, so I respond in kind, reminding them they can’t get away with trying to cut me out of a conversation.
“Since all three of you have bondmates, I shouldn’t have to ask what was important enough you chose to disturb us.” Two of them—at least—have the decency to look embarrassed.
“They didn’t like my report from tonight’s outing.”
“And that required a visit?” I don’t even know when he had a chance to write a report.
“Not really. Your appearance at the meeting just got us thinking we’d never been here before, and since we were at Drift’s, he came as chaperone.”
“And have you sorted out your confusion with the report?”
I feel Fault’s answer before Core says “yeah.”
Before I can tell them they should be going then… a tone chimes.
I didn’t know we had—or would ever need—a doorbell.
Under his breath, I hear Fault say “the more the merrier,” as he goes to the hatch.
But when he opens it, it’s not another member of the Brotherhood here out of curiosity.
He looks, if anything, like an accountant.
“Yes?” I ask after they’ve stared at each other for a moment too long.
The man swallows, tearing his gaze away. Looking first at me, and the other three behind. He returns to Fault with a wince that makes me think he hopes the answer is no. “Mr. Fault?”
“Just Fault.”
“Yes, of course. I’m here about your father’s estate. Now that all other legal formalities have been dealt with, the matter of your inheritance….”
“What kind of legal matters take decades to flesh out?” Trench asks it with a snort and a shake of his head.
“We should go,” Drift says, shifting too sharply to look natural.
The accountant look-alike doesn’t notice the change in the atmosphere. “I do of course mean the legal matters due to his recent death and his crimes against the state. I’m sure you will all understand. With what the Maker did, more than a few people wanted their pound of flesh. Your connection has been buried as deeply as we could.”
“Fault?” Core asked from behind us. “What’s he talking about?”
