The Initiative: Book One of the Jannah Cycle

by D. Brumbley

  She wrinkled her nose as she thought about Liam coming after her, and though the men looked similar, (they were twins, after all) there was nothing about Liam that would have enticed her to be anything but a friend. Even friendship with Liam was difficult for her sometimes, since Liam was annoying to her. “I never would have slept with Liam. I’ve wanted you for too long, and sleeping with Liam would have never done any good. I probably would have lost you as a friend, and our friendship was helping me to survive not having you as anything else.” Anna kissed him several more times. “Since you were eleven, huh? I didn’t even have tits when I was eleven.”

  “I love you for more than your tits, thank you very much.” He finally withdrew from her, but he didn’t move away, relaxing on the bed beneath her with his hands still wandering. “It was around the time when Quentyn and Veronica Stearns got married, threw that massive party out by the Waste. It was the first time I’d really been out anywhere in public since my parents’ accident, and I was just happy to be invited somewhere. I danced with you four times, I think, and I just…you’re my best friend. And I wanted to keep you with me. All the time. That part hasn’t changed.”

  Anna rested her head on his chest and smiled as she remembered the party and the dancing and wanting to keep him with her, too. She was silent awhile but then she turned her head so she could look up at him again. “So we’re a bit late. So what? We have each other now, and unless you were joking, we’re getting married next weekend.”

  “Yeah. I would totally joke about something like that.” He gave her a sarcastic glare and then flipped her onto her back, kissing his way down from her lips to her shoulder and farther still to trace rough kisses over her breasts. “You’re mine, and I’m gonna make sure the world knows it as soon as possible. I only said next weekend because I don’t think I’m gonna be able to convince myself to leave this room anytime before then.”

  Anna smirked at him and writhed under his kisses, but her smirk faded slightly as she thought back to what they had seen and experienced only the day before. “We still have a harvest to take care of. Reality is still waiting for us.”

  “I checked the report when I went to get granola bars. Machines took longer than they should have, but it finished up around two o’clock this morning.” His kisses continued, and he moved back up to look down in her eyes as his free hand wandered. “Liam can see to the rest of the process. Though he’s gonna have to get creative. The warehouse is overflowing.” He smiled, since it had clearly been an excellent year for the harvest.

  “He’s probably cursing us both right now.” She moaned again until he touched a spot on her hip which made her squirm. “Hey, hey. I’m ticklish there.”

  “What, here?” He poked her there again, and then again a few times to set her squirming on the bed.

  “Logan!” She was squirming as he attacked her several more times, and soon she was scrambling to get away. “Sto-ho-hop!”

  He started cackling as he pursued her mercilessly, tickling her into a frenzy against the sheets and pulling her back into him by her hips when she tried to get away. He tackled her face-down on the sheets and pinned her beneath his bulk. He knew she was anything but weak, but he was stronger. “You really shouldn’t have told me that.” He pressed the attack until she was gasping for breath between laughs. He loved hearing her laugh too much to show mercy.

  Her backside was squirming and wiggling against him as he kept her pinned, but she was still struggling to breathe. Anna had tears running down her cheeks, and her stomach hurt from laughing. “Mercy! Please! I’ll do anything!”

  That did get him to stop, but when he did, he just changed the nature of his attack and began kissing over her shoulder, his hand moving up to grip her breasts as he pressed himself against her from behind. She could feel him, amazingly, already starting to get hard again, even though it had only been a few minutes since she’d gotten off him the first time. “Anything, huh?”

  “Anything.” She promised, especially when he grabbed at her like that. It was so sexy. He was so sexy. “Your cock seems excited by that idea. How is that possible? Are you inhuman?”

  “I’ve been called worse.” He didn’t move away from her, and only pressed himself against her more tightly when her ass began to retaliate. “Fastest refractory I’ve ever timed for myself was three minutes and twelve seconds. So if you ever want a break from me once I get going, you’re gonna need to get some distance.”

  “You would time your penis.” She said with a laugh that melted into a moan. “I don’t want a break from you, I want to have you so many times we both physically cannot do it again.” Anna whimpered as he teased her by running the tip of his cock along her backside and then along her core. “I may well leave this room with so much of you that my ovaries can’t help but give us multiple babies at once.” She had fantasized about so much, including a quaint (sex-filled) life with Logan, complete with a brood they couldn’t keep up with. Even if they had no children, though, she would be happy with Logan.

  That made Logan laugh, but he trailed off into a moan just as she had. “Joke about it now, but in a few months when you get the word from Doc that we’ve got five kids inbound, you’re not gonna be laughing about it.” He laid against her to pin her to the bed, and reached between her waist and the mattress to tease her clit directly with a skillful, callused finger. “Laughing or not, though, I’m still gonna do my best to make it happen.”

  “Mmmm…” She moaned as he teased her clit, since that was no laughing matter. “Fuck, babe. You…yoooo-hoo-hoo…know what you’re…doing.” She had slept with men all along the spectrum of knowledge regarding a woman’s anatomy, but most of them still didn’t know what the hell they were doing. Those like Logan, who knew what to do…that was the best.

  “You are what I’m doing.” He said as he stroked her, his hips still moving against her backside to start driving himself into her slowly. She had gone crazy on him first, but he didn’t want her to think that he was going to lie back and make her do all the work in their new relationship. He had always been a hard worker, and he planned to go to work on her as often as possible.

  * * * * *

  By the time several hours had passed and they had showered (once together, once apart to actually get clean) they decided to emerge from his room. They could hear people talking when they walked toward one of the kitchens, though the rest of the house had been quiet. Larissa, Liam, and Brianne were sitting at the table eating dinner. Anna’s stomach growled, which caused Brianne to look up.

  “Well, well, well, look who finally emerged from their sex marathon! We heard the last one, sounded like a winner. Good job, Logan!” Brianne smirked as she clapped, since she’d been trying to get Liam to hook Logan up with someone for a few months. Logan had desperately needed to get laid.

  Liam was smiling as Brianne clapped, even if he didn’t join in the applause himself. That felt like it would have been too weird for comfort. “Is there an actual threshold for ‘marathon’ when it comes to sex?” He took a sip of the beer by his dish and winked at the most recent acquisition to his girlfriend collection. “What is it, just over twenty-six miles for an actual marathon? So I’d say you’d have to have sex at least that many times for it to be a marathon. Plus maybe a blowjob to finish off the spare change. That’d be a workout, even for the best of us.”

  “I think my brain is too busy drowning in endorphins to count anything.” Anna said as she went to sit down, since she had already been a member of the family even before recent developments with Logan. She reached out for a plate and then looked back at Logan as she set the plate down in his spot. “And I’ve already covered the blowjob, right, babe?”

  “Oh, come on.” Larissa said with her eyes covered by her hand. “I’m not going to be able to sit at this table if you guys are going to talk like this the whole time. Some of us are just trying to eat, please?”

  Brianne giggled as she looked over at Liam. Larissa didn’t know the half of
it. She’d given Liam a blowjob in that kitchen, been fucked right on the table in front of them. She was an adventurous and curious lover, to say the least. “You could throw in your own stories if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “No, no, she couldn’t.” Both Liam and Logan said nearly at the same time, sharing a laugh with each other afterward as they shook their heads. It was Liam who actually commented, though, while Logan filled up his plate along with Anna. “So far as I know, she doesn’t have any stories, and if she does, I don’t want to know about them. Nor would the guys involved in said stories want me to know about them, since they’d soon wake up and find themselves without genitalia.”

  Larissa turned a bright red and turned her eyes to her food once she removed her hand from covering her eyes. “That’s my problem. No one wants to chase after the younger sister of the Bickford twins.” She muttered as she forced herself to take a bite from her plate. “At this rate I’m going to end up alone on this farm because you jerks scared everyone away.”

  “I actually want to talk to you about that later.” Logan chimed in through half a mouthful of food, reaching out to rest a hand on his sister’s arm to reassure her before he looked over at Anna. “No, I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet. Been a little preoccupied.”

  Anna leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Brianne replied to Anna’s kiss with an ‘awww’ across the table, and Anna sat back down before Larissa could reply. “We have news, actually.” She looked at Logan again with a smile. “We’re going to get married next weekend.”

  Brianne choked on her drink and then stared at Anna and then Logan. “Wait, what? Next weekend?” She looked at Liam in shock, since Liam was the twin with three girlfriends and prior to now, Logan had been single. “How did he beat you to it?”

  Liam looked just as shocked, but he turned defensive quickly. “Hey, in my defense, Logan’s been hot for her way longer than I’ve been hot for anybody currently in my life. Besides, it’s not about who’s beating anybody to anything. Right?”

  “It’s a little bit about that.” Logan hit back from the other side of the table with a smile at Brianne. “But if you want, you can partly blame me instead of that guy. I’m the one who’s supposed to be arranging matches for the two of you. No way am I leaving that idiot to his own devices.”

  “Hey, my devices work just fine!” Liam shot a kick at Logan under the table that Logan easily dodged.

  “Good luck trying to pick one of us.” Brianne laughed and then took another bite from her plate, looking at Logan with the full force of her considerable talent for sarcasm. “Even he can’t do it and he knows us a lot better than you do. He hasn’t said, but I think he’s playing a new version of Russian Roulette to make the decision for him.” She smirked and grabbed her glass of wine in front of her plate. “But it’s okay. I like his version.”

  Liam had the decency to look the tiniest bit found-out at that, but he still didn’t look guilty about it, exactly. All three of his present girlfriends knew that he wasn’t being exclusive with them, so it wasn’t like he was trying to be sneaky or making them promises of exclusivity without keeping them.

  “Liam,” Logan asked once he was finished with the bite of meatloaf in his mouth, “dear brother, are you in a hurry to get married?”

  Liam gave his brother a look of both anger and terror at the same time, as all three women in the room turned their gaze on him at once. “I wouldn’t call it a hurry, but I’m not opposed to the idea.”

  Logan rolled his eyes. “You need to run for public fucking office someday. That was a politician’s answer if I ever heard one.” He chuckled and put an arm around Anna’s back before turning his look over to Larissa. His expression when looking at his sister was a good deal more serious, but there were a lot of reasons for that. He could beat the shit out of Liam one moment and know the man still had his back the next. Larissa he needed to take care of. He needed to be her caretaker ever since she was seven years old and his responsibility. Never mind the fact that he had only been ten at the time. “What about you, Sis? If I were to hand you the right guy, would you be in a hurry to get married?”

  “Hand me the right guy?” Larissa looked at her brother curiously. “I’d like to get married, yes. If I thought the man was acceptable.” She glanced over at Liam and when Liam gave her a shrug to indicate he had no idea what Logan was talking about, so she looked back at Logan. “We haven’t gotten a chance yet to yell at you for being an idiot, running off to the Reeves’ without help. Don’t try to butter me up.”

  “It’s pretty good butter, I think.” Logan took a sip of the beer he’d gotten from the fridge with a shrug. “But, you know, if you’d rather yell at me than talk about the possibility of marital bliss, then fine. Yell away.”

  Larissa glared at him in silence. “Are you being serious? Did you really arrange something? Or are you just trying to tease me? When did you even have time?”

  “I haven’t arranged anything yet. You know I wouldn’t do that without talking to you first.” He looked hurt that she apparently hadn’t thought so, but then he continued. “So far it’s just an idea, but the guy is on board to give it a try if you are.” He let her stew about it awhile, then nodded over at Anna. “I’d like you to think about Anna’s brother. He…”

  Larissa had heard rumors that Ben was looking for a second wife, and while she didn’t want to be a second wife, she would consider it if Logan was asking her to. She didn’t look excited at the idea, though. “So it’s true? Ben wants a second wife?”

  “No, no, not that brother.” He shook his head, and caught Liam looking confused out of the corner of his eye. “What do you think of Cory?”

  “Cory?” Obviously Larissa hadn’t even considered Cory, since she thought that Cory would never consider her. “I thought he was pursuing someone else? Some girl across the world?”

  “That was unreasonable in the first place, and it didn’t work out.” Anna said gently in response on her brother’s behalf. “Cory already said he’s interested, because he knows you’re smart and beautiful. He couldn’t do better than you.”

  Larissa was incredibly quiet after that, and it was several minutes before she responded. In a world like theirs, a marriage proposition before pregnancy was not frequent. And most women didn’t take long to consider their options. Time was on no one’s side. “What do you think, Logan? Liam?”

  Liam looked at Logan, but Logan nodded at him to speak first, since Logan had been the one to suggest it in the first place. “I don’t know. Seems like a nice enough kid, I just worry about him having a spine to him. Seems like he does whatever Ben yells at him to do. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him put up a fight.” He turned and looked at Brianne and narrowed his eyes slightly, tightening his arm around her shoulders. “You’re closer to his age and I saw you chatting with him at the last party we were at all together, I think. You haven’t slept with him before, have you?” It was clear there wouldn’t be any judgment to come from any answer she would give, only curiosity on Liam’s part, since they were talking about his sister’s welfare, after all.

  Brianne shook her head. “Cory isn’t my type. But he has more of a spine than you think. He just has to feel passionate about something first.” She opened her mouth to say something else but she looked over at Anna first, considered it, and apparently decided to say it anyway. “I’ve heard he’s a virgin, actually. I think someone said he was waiting for that girl, the one across the world. Didn’t want the chance of knocking up and getting stuck with anyone else.”

  Liam wrinkled his nose and turned back to look at Larissa, since she was the one who would be dealing with the consequences of that fact, if it were true. “You really want to break a guy in? We’re slow learners, as a general rule.”

  “It’s not like I would know the difference.” Larissa admitted softly. “I told you, no one wants to take the chance to cause trouble with me. They want to keep their genitalia.” She turned her glare to Liam bu
t then she looked at Logan. “If you think it will be a good match, then I’ll do it.” She knew Cory was a good man, hardworking and kind, and the Prince family was obviously a good family and close with theirs. Cory was cute too, in a boy-next-door kind of way. She wasn’t going to wait around for another chance, because she might never find someone better at this rate. It took long enough for Logan to mention anyone at all in the first place. The world was a barren place, and the pickings for partners or friends got slimmer every generation. “He’s a good man. That’s all I care about.”

  “I’m not going to set a wedding date or talk about going to find rings until you two decide it’s what you want.” Logan said gently, since it was a serious matter, and he wanted Larissa to know how seriously he took her well-being. “I do think it would be a good match, though, from what I know about Cory. In the next couple weeks, I’m hoping we can get the Prince harvest finished and stored away. Anna’s gonna stay with me in the wing I’ve already got to myself, Liam and his harem will stay in the northwest, and we’ll talk to Cory about coming up here so you two can take the middle southwest wing, with the overlook.” It was a big house, and much more of it was empty and unused than was even furnished at any given time. It took some planning and usually a good deal of work to open or close any part of the house, for visitors or moves or other reasons.