Light Unfolding: A Reverse Harem Science Fiction Romance (Wings of Artemis Book 8)

by Rebecca Royce

  Something obvious hadn’t occurred to me earlier, and I turned to Canyon. We sat close, our legs touching and his hand on my knee. “Could you just talk to their computers?”

  “I don’t want to alert the computer that I’m there. I’m somewhat concerned that the computer may just be set to immediately wake the entire fleet in the event it senses an intruder. The little I’m going to mess with it will be the most I want to touch it at all. I’m not enough tuned into the tech since the operation.”

  I nodded. That made sense in as much as I could understand it at all to begin with. “I don’t want you pushing too hard on your end either. I don’t want you going down whatever rabbit hole you did to get into that situation to begin with. If that is possible. I mean, how can you hear the machines at all anymore?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m not risking losing the ability to see you or speak to you. I can still touch your light. I won’t lose anything. I have… plans.”

  “Which would be what?”

  Canyon leaned over to kiss my cheek. “I want to see you holding a baby in the sunlight on a clear day when it’s not too warm, not too cold. I want to stand there and see that.”

  I gasped. “Canyon.” That imagery was… enticing. I’d never imagined really being married and now here we were. Babies? That had been a dream.

  “Unless you don’t want that. In which case I will alter my plans.”

  I kissed him hard. “I want that.”

  His smile was fast. “Good.”

  The shuttle came to a stop and Canyon raised his eyebrows. “It goes without saying that I am in charge in there and you stay behind me. If I say run, you run. You don’t ask why.”

  I hadn’t let myself feel the anxiety of this. It had been my own idea, after all. I didn’t get to have nerves. Every one of us was risking our lives to get it done. But right then it hit me. We were going on an enemy spaceship filled to the brink with unconscious men who had spent their lives killing for Evander Corporation. They might someday be Canyon, Rohan, or Sterling but they weren’t yet. If one of them woke up from stasis—even one of them—there was every chance life was over for all of us.

  I swallowed and Canyon frowned. “I didn’t say that to make this worse.”

  I rose. “This isn’t on you. This is on me. I’ve clearly not let myself focus on what was about to happen. Not that there has been any time for that.”

  He took my hand. “You will get off this ship and back to Artemis, Waverly. I promise you that.”

  “Don’t leave yourself out of that statement, Canyon.”

  He didn’t respond, which didn’t fill me with a great deal of confidence. He might think he had to protect me but that went both ways. We were all getting home. Rohan and Ari, too. Even if that meant I had to get over to the second lead ship and drag them off myself. No one was going to die because I decided we should give these unconscious men a second chance at life.

  The ship was noise. It clinked. It banged. It groaned. Hissed. Whizzed. Chattered. Every single noise it made caused me to want to turn around and run back for our shuttle. Canyon was as cool as I’d ever seen him. If this bothered him at all I couldn’t tell. Then again, he’d been on these ships, traveled in stasis, woken up and battled. He was probably used to the noises.

  My father’s ships had been loud. They had a constant hum that had driven me crazy, Artemis made her own buzzing that told me she was an old vessel. Tommy’s shuttles were silent, designed to be sleek, quiet, and fast.

  No one had cared about the comfort of these soldiers.

  Canyon wasn’t speaking, but we hadn’t talked about needing to be silent. There were all kinds of things we should have discussed before we did this. He extended his hand behind him and I linked our fingers. He must have known how I was feeling. One of the beautiful things about Canyon was how often he just knew what I needed.

  It didn’t take us long to get to the core computer system. Canyon dropped my hand and cocked his head to the side for a second. “This one.”

  He spoke at a regular volume. “Is it okay for us to talk?”

  “Little bit.” He walked to the left. “I’m going to tell this one that a garbage facility needs to be jettisoned. It’s off schedule, but the program will do it. That shouldn’t trigger any internal alarms. That will take the attention for a minute or two. You upload the message you have in your tablet and then we exit swiftly before anything goes askew.”

  “Right this second?” I was ready.

  “Give me a few.” He wandered around the computers, and I stopped to look around. This room was different from the front of the ship. We’d broken through the airlock by imitating the codes of the probes the ship sent out on its own. I’d yet to see any people.

  But they were in here. I inhaled sharply, realization hitting me hard. On the sides of the room, lined up like they were in small capsules, were sleeping men. Huge, knocked out, Super Soldiers. They were all naked.

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “If I walk over to them will it wake them?”

  “No.” Canyon shook his head. “Nothing wakes them until the computer releases the wake up gas. Stasis was one of my least favorite things in the world. They’re hearing nothing, feeling nothing, doing nothing but dreaming right now. That doesn’t necessarily imply good dreams. I don’t remember mine, I never do, but sometimes the others woke up screaming. At least this time, they’ll get to hear your message.”

  “Can I walk over there?”

  Canyon nodded. “Yes. The ship’s sensors are not reading us, and I’m not seeing anything to indicate that Ro and Ari are caught. Give me a few more seconds to just make sure I know exactly what I’m doing before I screw anything up.”

  I nodded, walking over to the closest pod to look inside. I almost didn’t look. Was it a violation to stare at this person who was forbidden self-governance? I wasn’t at a zoo gawking at an animal, which sometimes felt bad enough. No, this was something else entirely.

  The man was as big as my husbands. His hair was long, blond like Ari but even closer to white. With his eyes closed, the pupils moving beneath his lids, he was dreaming. His cheekbones were high, his mouth full.

  Every muscle in his body was well defined. Yes, he’d be powerful to meet in battle. I stared up at the label above his head. It read Anders. That must be his name. There was a pod somewhere that had once said Canyon. One that had once said Rohan. I walked away from Anders. I’d spent too much time looking at him. I half expected him to open his eyes and tell me to leave him alone. I’d deliberately not looked anywhere I couldn’t see if he’d worn a bathing suit.

  My eyes found the next label. This guy was dark haired. Blaze.

  I didn’t even stop to look at physicality after that. Not even hair color. Just their names because somehow it helped to remember they had names. They were people. Not just… scary future battles. Corbin. Kellan.

  “Waverly?”

  I jumped at Canyon’s voice and hurried over to him. “You ready?”

  “Yes. Checking out the possible enemy?”

  “Trying to remember their names. Blaze. Anders. Kellan. Corbin.”

  Canyon lifted his eyebrows. “Not surprising they’d be on the lead ship. I know all of them. Group leaders, like Rohan and Sterling. Blaze could probably end your life using just his pinky.”

  That wasn’t a comforting thought. He wasn’t done. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I agreed. I walked to where I’d do the upload and hope that everything continued to go as planned. I held my breath while Canyon tapped on the computer.

  “Upload. Now.”

  I pushed my button.

  9 Smoke and Mirrors

  I stepped onto Artemis in a haze of anxiety. My feet were moving, my legs were taking me where I needed to go. I crossed the ship, heading straight for where Jackson should be, and he was there. He looked up, letting go of Artemis with one arm to let me onto his lap. I ran to him, hugging him tight.

  Canyo
n was right behind me. Two of them were here. Two of my guys. “Anything?”

  “They’re almost back.” Artemis jolted and Jackson nodded. “And that would be them. They’re in the landing dock.” His eyes were on the monitor. “The landing door is closed. We are out of here.” He pulled on the lever hard. Our old ship shook with the movement, but she did as we asked. Artemis had officially gotten me out of several hellish scenarios. I gave into the instinct and let go of the Jackson just to touch the side of the wall.

  “Thank you.”

  If the two guys in the room with me thought I was crazy, they made no indication of it. I slumped down in the closest chair as Ari ran into the room. Rohan was right behind him. We were all okay. We’d done this crazy thing based on my idea and somehow the universe had smiled at us. We’d gotten away with it.

  It hadn’t been the wedding night any of us wanted, but we’d lived through it. That was the best we could hope for given the circumstances. Now if I could only get the rows and rows of pod filled Super Soldiers out of my mind, I’d be fine, but I thought that ship might haunt me forever.

  I sought out my husbands. They’d all been through so much in their lives. I’d had my hell, but I was hardly alone in it. We’d all slugged through so much pain it was amazing Artemis could carry us, considering how much filth we’d brought along with us.

  “Tell me the truth. We just risked our lives. That was scary as anything. Do you think it’ll work?”

  Rohan shook his head. “No.”

  Ari sighed. “No.”

  Canyon rubbed his face. “I’m sorry, Waverly. No.”

  Jackson looked up from what he was doing, and I knew from the sorrow radiating from his gaze that the answer would be no even before he said it. “I’m sorry, lady. No.”

  I nodded. “Then why did you do it? All of you? I mean, I know you’re my husbands. But if you really all think that it’s no, then why put yourselves at risk? Why not just tell me no?”

  Jackson answered. “Because we want it to be true. We want to be proven wrong. The only way that happened was by doing this. So we did it.”

  I sighed. “Don’t humor me in life risking situations again. Just tell me no.”

  “Well,” Ari spun in his seat, “consider it a wedding present.”

  This had to have been the strangest day on record, and I’d had a ton of them. I’d gotten proposed to, married, and broken onto a Super Soldier ship to upload my voice in a last ditch attempt to save things.

  I face planted onto the bed and was asleep before my head hit the pillow. When the adrenaline left my body it went in a big way. Someone crawled in with me. It was my wedding night. The world went black.

  In my dreams, those pods were opening. Anders raised a gun at me. “Boom.”

  I sat up straight. The room was dark and everyone was asleep. All four of them. The tablet that we could sometimes use to fly if we didn’t stay in the control room was on the table next to the bed, Rohan lying next to it. He must have trusted himself to hear it, which I didn’t doubt. If he didn’t Canyon would. There were benefits to their extra sharp senses.

  As it was, they were all out cold. Jackson and Ari were on either side of me while the Super Soldiers took the edges of the bed. Whoever had furnished Artemis designed these rooms with the kind of relationships we had in mind. It had been a rebellion ship. Having lived on Orion, I could speak with certainty that the rebels had plural relationships. We all fit on the bed.

  Jackson’s eyes opened, and he reached out for me. “Lady? What’s wrong?”

  I loved how he said lady like I was the only one in the universe. “Bad dream.” I almost apologized then didn’t. There was no reason for me to be sorry for my nightmares. Both my Super Soldiers stirred, and Ari reached out to touch me.

  “Great honeymoon night I’m giving you all. Can’t even let you sleep.”

  Jackson’s mouth met mine, his body weight pinning me down on the bed when he did. There was something so comforting about that, something so right about feeling the sheer protectiveness of his size over mine. The world wasn’t getting through Jackson. His lips were a claiming. He was my husband, and we were connected now, forever.

  I loved it.

  It wasn’t lost on me as I moaned against him that we never did this. We didn’t make love, any of us, altogether. They all took their turns with me separately. But that didn’t seem to be bothering them tonight.

  Lots of shifting on the bed took place with Ari scooting up behind me, Canyon dropping down to the end of the bed, and Rohan coming up to my head. We hadn’t discussed this, but maybe it was just one of those moments when it was understood what was happening unless one of us objected. I wasn’t going to do that.

  And it would seem neither were they.

  “Honeymoon isn’t over yet,” Jackson whispered against my lips. “And as far as I’m concerned, we can be on our honeymoon forever. It never has to stop.”

  His words brought tears to my eyes. Jackson didn’t just say these sweet things. He meant them. I breathed him in.

  “I don’t want to put a stop to this, not at all. But how would everyone feel about me turning my fertility chip off right this second?”

  If I’d thought that was going to be a big downer that stopped the mood, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Ari pressed his lips to the back of my neck. He was impossibly hard, and I could feel it pressed against my rear end. Rohan took Jackson’s place at my mouth, his tongue surging deep inside, a claiming of his own.

  Canyon kissed the top of my knee, the heat in his eyes all the answer I needed.

  I reached over and turned off the chip.

  Nothing was guaranteed to happen, but from that moment on it was possible. These were the guys who made impossible possible.

  We’d never coordinated this, but they seemed to know what they were doing. They kissed me… everywhere. There were places on my body I’d never imagined having caressed by the human lip—the back of my knees, my elbows, my shoulder blade—and yet they were everywhere. One set of lips would meet my own to be replaced by another. I could hardly breathe, but I didn’t need air.

  I just needed them.

  We scooted around until I could reach everybody. What had to happen became clear to me all of a sudden. Everyone had to get off and at some point they all had to be inside of me. I needed that. But first they all had to be ready and so did I.

  “Rohan,” I spoke around his mouth. “I can take you in my mouth.”

  His eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Canyon inside of me for now. Ari, you and Jackson come closer please so I can touch you.”

  Everyone scooted. I was wet, ready, and so impossibly turned on that even the littlest touch made me moan. Canyon touched my entrance with the tip of his cock. I called out his name while he filled me to the core. I turned my head enough to take Ro deep down my throat while I reached out to stroke their cocks in my hands. I closed my eyes. The guys had to be in charge of this. I could hardly move and yet what flexibility I had I used.

  They moaned and groaned, practically in sync. Yes, they were mine. I knew them by sound alone. The way that Jackson got breathy, Canyon groaned low in his throat, Ari whispered my name, and Rohan moaned. I loved it all.

  Canyon didn’t take long to come inside of me. It was fast, it was raw. It was everything. I cried out his name, my body jerking just as Ari took my nipple in his mouth and bit down. The movement pushed me further up Rohan’s cock. We both cried out. Precum leaked down my throat, and I drunk him down. Pleasure and pain mixed. Was there anything sweeter? I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. By the universe, I loved this. I loved them. They switched places, Rohan pulling out from my mouth. He was hugely hard and my throat was raw.

  He was next inside of me. Rohan filled me in the space Canyon had left. Jackson stepped back. “I’m too close. I’m just going to watch. Seeing you get pleasure, it makes me hard enough as it is.” His voice was low, and I listened while Rohan moved. I didn’t let go of A
ri. He wasn’t close. I knew how hard he could get, and he wasn’t there yet. I squeezed the top of his cock and his breathing increased. There but not quite yet.

  “You’re so hot, Wavey.” Rohan clenched his teeth, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “I’m not going to last.”

  That was okay. I wasn’t going to either. I shuddered as my second orgasm moved through me. He wasn’t done. Rohan gripped the bed, keeping himself above me. This wouldn’t do. With my free hand, I stroked his chest, letting my fingernails dig into him. He loved that. His hips jerked, and he spilled himself inside of me. His head fell forward, and he kissed between my breasts. “I love you. So fucking much.”

  I could hardly breathe, but I knew I wasn’t done. Not nearly. Jackson was on me almost immediately. His cock stretched out in front of him, long, thick, erect. He hadn’t been kidding. He was ready for me and then some.

  He brushed my clit, twice, which told me it was purposeful on his way inside of me. Every nerve in my body was on alert. I cried out. I had thought Jackson was close, but he wasn’t. Or at least he was holding on as long as possible. Canyon leaned over me, kissing my lips gently while Jackson moved in and out of me. I closed my eyes. Light unfolded under my lids. This was love, this was everything.

  Every swipe Jackson made brushed my clit. I bent my knees back, taking him further inside of me while I continued to run my hand over Ari’s cock. Rohan leaned against my side, his eyes watching my face. “You’re right, Jackson, watching her is so hot.”

  He jerked one more time, coming deep inside of me with a sigh.

  Ari took my hand off him. “My turn, baby. Not too much longer. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  He nodded at me, pushing inside of me gently. I kept my gaze locked to his while Rohan kissed the top of my breast. Jackson lay on the bed. Ari moved slowly, like he knew I’d had a lot. It was so sweet. Tears came to my eyes. This was just what I’d needed even though I’d never imagined it. Ari squeezed my breasts. They tingled. My back arched off the bed. I was close, and he scrunched up his face, his hips jerking fast in and out of me.