by Aubrey Cara
I paint circles around his smooth chest with my finger, shoring up my courage. “Do you think—maybe someday—you could ever love me back?” It’s painful to ask. I cringe saying the words, like I am begging for affection, which, in a way, I guess I am.
He sighs. “I do not understand the scope of human love, or the things you make me feel, but the thought of not having you—of you being taken from me—makes me want to destroy everything in the known universe. If that is love, then, yes.”
Melting over him, my breath hitches in my chest.
He may not understand it, but it warms me just the same.
He’s still large inside me, and my bottom hole tingles in awareness like never before. “Your finger…why did you put it there?” I ask, changing the subject.
I peek up to see his eyes closed, but a smile spreads across his face. “Many sensory nerve endings are in your anus and rectum. I wanted to give you pleasure.”
“Oh,” is all I can say. It certainly did that.
“It also stretches.” He pats my bottom, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Maybe, one day, you will be able to take both your mates?” It’s a hopeful question.
“At the same time?” The thought of both men pushing into me, filling me, making love to me at the same time, my sex clenches on his length, even as I experience some serious trepidation. They’re both huge men. Neither of them could possible fit…
He opens one eye and glances down at me.
Blushing, I hide my face in his chest. His chuckle rumbles under my cheek. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him laugh. It’s a little rumble of joy, over in seconds, but it sends warmth spreading through my chest to infuse my entire body.
I’ve pleased Situs.
Gruff, staid Situs.
“Of course you please me,” he says, as if he read my thoughts. “Never doubt it, little one.”
His arms grow heavy at my back, and I know he’s fallen asleep, but I do not move to get off him. There are chores just outside the shuttle to be done. The garden needs to be watered. But that all can wait.
I am content, and I believe, for the first time, Situs is, too.
CHAPTER TEN
JUAL
Beli’s jab makes a solid connection to my face. My head snaps back, my cybernetics clearing my vision. The hit was more like a tap to wake me up, and I barely miss his next blow.
I try to focus, but there must be something wrong with my cybernetic functions. I keep hearing Hannah’s voice. Seeing images in my mind of her and Situs rutting. I try to shake it loose, but it keeps coming at me.
Hearing her cries of pleasure echo through my mind makes my cock thicken, but then I hear her voice proclaiming her affection for Situs. All the air is knocked out of me. Pain radiates from a blow to the chest as I fly back twenty feet because of the distraction.
My cybernetics are already preparing me for more as I skid to a halt, but I do not snap back up with my usual vigor.
“You are fighting like you are ready for death, today,” Beli grumbles as I stand. “Maybe you should find your head before you lose it.”
I grunt in reply and wander off the field. I have no business training like this. But I am not prepared to go back to the shuttle. I do not want to find Hannah and Situs there, so I hunt the morning away, trying to shake free from this strange weakness gripping me.
Her words eat at me like a festering wound.
It could not possibly be real, and I have to wonder at the reason for this madness. I scan my internal data, coming up with no answers. I have become attached to our female in unexpected ways. Something cracks open inside me and lets out a rush of emotions when I think of her.
Maybe Monrok were not meant to experience affection at this level, and my cybernetics are glitching.
Against my better judgment, I head back to our home site.
Home. What an innocuous word. We Monrok discovered this word when we discovered there was place called Earth, our home of organic origin. Yet, now, we fight to create a home for ourselves.
Hannah’s sweet form is the first thing to greet my eyes as I come over the ridge. She works in her garden, wearing an amusing grass hat she made to protect herself from the sun. A smile pulls at my lips. She does this to me, makes me smile for no logical reason. My little mate is an intelligent and resourceful human. Her knowledge of growing food and ingenuity when making things fills me with pride. The desire to feel the clench of her cunt never leaves me.
There has never been a female more perfectly made than she.
If home were a sentient being, she would be mine.
Halfway down the hill, the scent of Situs’s essence stops me. My rising good humor drops like a stone at my feet, and for a moment I’m poleaxed. All the images that assaulted me this morning come rushing back.
My mating partner finally rutted our mate.
I am half relieved. It is what I had been waiting for. I should be more than pleased. Hannah will once again allow me to claim her the way a mate is meant to be claimed, but an unknown emotion twists in my gut, and I again hear her sweet voice uttering words of affection that were never given to me.
I love you, Situs.
It burns through my chest and makes me want to shout my rage.
All morning, I have been telling myself it was a lie. A fabrication of my mind. But, I can smell him on her. I experienced the same sensation when I thought she was lusting after Kein. Unexpected and irrational as it may be, it consumes me.
Did she really offer her devotion to Situs before me? I expected to be there when Situs finally rutted our mate for the first time. Thought she would need me there.
Her cheeks glow pink and becoming when she lifts her face to me, and I curse not being the one to make her so. She raises a hand in greeting, a smile playing on her lips.
She’s in high spirits. I usually love this part of the day. Seeing her welcoming face. For so long, I could not touch her. Kiss her. When Situs left, and Hannah told me we could not rut again until after the stupid aheh got his head out of his own ass, I feared she would push me away.
But she did not. She did not, but she could have, and it would yet again have been his fault.
I am the one who got her to this point. The point where she could willingly, joyfully take us as real mates. Rutting her was transcendent, but then Situs ruined it.
Now he has reaped the rewards of my efforts. He claimed he did not deserve to be her real mate, and I must agree.
Before I know my intentions, I have my shirt off over my head and cast aside. Hannah’s smile falters. Her wide-eyed gaze scans over my body with heated interest the closer I get. With each step, I rip off another piece of clothing. One boot. When the other boot hits the ground with a dull thud, I’m already shucking my pants.
Naked, I stand in front of her and enjoy the way her cheeks have gone from rosy to scarlet I know it’s from more than just the heat of the day. My ego is soothed by the racing patter of her heart and her shallow breathing as she appreciatively takes in my form.
The past two cycles of being close to her, but not allowed to intimately touch her, I’ve experienced something of her religion’s hell. I thought I was tortured before, but I did not know what agony awaited me. I could feast my eyes but not my body.
And my body aches.
Even now, I’m hard and ready to bury myself inside her heat. I need to once again experience the clutch of her willing cunt.
With a feral growl, I sweep her up into my arms. Her peal of laughter hits me in the solar plexus and breaks unexplainable things open inside me. The joy radiating off her glows through me.
“Situs,” she squeals.
I look around, not seeing him before I realize she has unintentionally called me by his name. I scent her guilt, but even if I had not, I know her well enough now that her red-cheeked contrition would give her away.
A blast of sick emotion rocks through me, hazing my mind and choking me with its intensity. With deadly calm, I ask, “What did yo
u call me?”
“Jual…I’m sorry.”
It is bad enough I return to find her covered in his stench, but now she calls me by his name?
“It was a simple mistake.” She struggles, and I realize I am holding her too tight and release my arms, letting her fall to the ground. She scrambles up and steps in front of me before I can walk away. “Jual, why are you angry with me?”
“Are you choosing him over me?”
She shakes her head in confusion. “I’m not choosing. Why would I choose?”
“Do you care for him more than me?’
Her mouth opens and closes in failed speech.
“It is a simple question.”
“I don’t.” She shakes her head. “I care for you the same,” she answers in a small voice, her arms falling to her sides.
“Prove it.”
“What do you mean?” she asks edging back.
“Strip.”
“Jual, you’re scaring me.”
All my patience has been eaten up. Any understanding I once had has deserted me. “I said, strip.” Grabbing fistfuls of the Monrok-issued black shirt she wears, I rip it down the center and shove it off her shoulders. “Little females who cannot remember their mate’s name will be punished.” Jerking her around, I march her to the side of the shuttle mound as she struggles against me.
“Jual, stop.”
I tear at the bindings of her skirt until it falls to the ground, and give her ass a swat and then another. She yelps with each strike. “Who am I?”
“Jual,” she cries.
“Who do you belong to?”
“You! Now please stop this.”
“I may have to share you, but you are mine. Mine. Do not forget it.” Incensed, I spank her pale globes until they’re bright with my handprint, while she cries into the grassy hill.
When I scent her arousal, I flip her around and push her back against the mound, pinning her with my body. “Am I welcome back between your legs, now that you have had Situs?”
She shakes her head. “Jual, stop.” She fights, pushing against me. “Get off me.”
“He nearly destroyed you, and now you want him more than me.”
“N-no.” She shakes her head. “That’s not true.”
“Should I take what I want the way he did?” I want to punish her for all the anguish consuming me. I reach between us, spearing her folds. She groans and begins to tremble.
She grabs my wrists, trying to push my hand away. “Please, Jual, please don’t do this,” she sobs. “Not like this.”
I slam a fist into the grass beside her head. “You love him!” I am broken inside and detest saying it out loud. “I heard you tell him, you love him.” I hate this weakness eating at me. Her affection for Situs should not affect me.
Her body deflates under mine. “Oh, Jual.” She wraps her arms around me and presses her wet face to my chest, shuddering. “I’m sorry, Jual. So sorry.”
Slowly, the haze recedes, and I take in her tearstained face. Sobs shake her body. I feel her terror and her sorrow. And under it all is intense waves of affection.
“I’m sorry, so sorry,” she says on repeat.
My gut gives a sick twist.
What have I done?
I am the one who has dishonored himself, yet she grovels. Shame, hot and thick like I have never known, chokes me.
Outside of myself, I pull at her arms and step back. I do not deserve her affection. What have I done?
Moisture silently spills over and tracks down her pale cheeks. Her beautiful eyes are red and swollen as she stares at me with a wounded expression. Her chin wobbles, and she opens her mouth to say something, probably she’s “sorry,” but Situs steps out of the shuttle.
Confusion and rage twist his features as he takes in the scene. He has to scent all the emotions pouring off her.
With a roar, Situs flies at me, fist drawn. I do not even brace for impact. I took my frustrations out on our sweet mate. I deserve to be beaten.
My jaw breaks. Blinding pain explodes in my face before my cybernetics numb me. There is no pain as my back hits the hard ground. I feel nothing as his fist slams into me again and again. If I could turn off my cybernetics and experience the full brunt of his fury, I would.
I let him fall on me, pummeling me.
At some point, my sensors take over, and I fight back. My fist connects with his face, but he does not register the strike.
We grapple back and forth, covering each other in blood.
Like a buzzing in my ears, I hear screaming. Cries for us to stop.
Water drenches us, and we freeze. Fists drawn back, our gazes jerk to Hannah. She is panting, holding a bucket.
“No. More. Fighting!” she screams.
Situs and I stare at each other. Our cybernetics assess the situation, slowing our heart rates and evening the adrenaline pumping through our systems.
I shove away from Situs and we stand.
Situs, Hannah, and I share a tense moment where we eye each other. He and I are both covered in blood, and we are all naked. My cybernetic left eye is glitching, so everything weaves in and out of focus. My right eye is swollen shut. I snap my broken jaw back into place and spit out a tooth. I feel another already moving in to take its place. There is a moment of pain as I pop my shoulder into its socket and notice Situs does the same to his nose and some fingers, but he’s much better off than me. It may take a full cycle or two for my cybernetics to heal me, and I’m well aware I deserve any discomfort I may experience.
Hannah is trembling as she tosses down the bucket. Her human body cannot handle an adrenaline drop, and she wraps her arms around herself. I step forward to embrace her, but she raises a hand to ward me off, and my footsteps falter.
Situs doesn’t move to comfort our mate, and I want to punch him all over again. I look to the flat plane of Hannah’s abdomen where his child grows. The first time we mated, I could taste it on her cunt. It made me that much more determined to claim her. To plant my own essence inside her.
But there is no escaping the fact his essence has already taken root...
A hollow ache blooms where the fiery burn of jealousy raged out of control only moments before.
“Does he know you carry his lifeforce inside you?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HANNAH
“Does he know you carry his lifeforce inside you?”
The desolation in his eyes nearly breaks me.
“How do you know?” My hand goes protectively to my stomach. I don’t know how he’s figured out I’m pregnant. I wasn’t sure myself.
“I could taste it,” he says, and my cheeks heat as understanding of how he tasted it dawns.
Situs shakes his head. “It is too soon to know…”
Jual gives him a patronizing look.
“If she’s been breeding since the first time on the ship, how did we not taste it when she was induced into a mating fever?” Situs tries to reason.
“I asked myself the same thing. It must have been the accelerant the Zapex gave her. It likely changed her pheromones.”
Situs’s face registers shock. Disbelief. “No…we scanned her before coming here. She was not carrying our young.”
“No, just yours.” My heart aches at the hurt in Jual’s voice.
Situs appears momentarily as confused and troubled by Jual’s statement as I feel, before his features smooth into his usual stony mask.
All my worries in telling either of the men about the baby are coming true. It’s obvious Jual is devastated it is not his child I carry, and Situs…he’s gone rather pale, his normally tan skin taking on a sickly sheen.
Years. Years I’ve prayed for a baby and dreamt of what it would be like to have someone who loved me to share it with. Now I have two husbands, and neither of them is happy with their impending fatherhood.
“I’m happy,” I tell them, but I’m not.
My eyes fill and tears spill over on my cheeks. I’m crushed and scared of what thi
s means for our future. Foolishly, I thought making love with my mates would solve all our problems, but it seems to have made them worse. There’s a gulf yawning wide open between me and my two feudal men.
“I thought I couldn’t get pregnant,” I tell them. “But I always wanted a baby. A child of my own. My old husband and I tried for year and years…it was devastating. Never getting pregnant. And now, now I’m going to finally get to have a child of my own. And I’m terrified it’s not real. Or something will go wrong. But I’m also excited because maybe everything will go right. If neither of you is going to be excited with me, I would like to leave.”
Both men seem shocked and perplexed.
“You are not leaving,” Jual says at the same time Situs asks, “Where would you go?”
“I will live in the cabin Situs is building. Or…” I shrug with forced ease. “I will go to Cal and Kein and ask them to find me new mates.” I don’t mean it. My words are all bluster. My heart breaks, and my stomach twists at the mere thought of being with other men.
Would any other Monrok be as patient and considerate with me? I doubt it. I know for certain no other men would make my heart race the way these two do. As disappointed and hurt as I am, just being near Jual and Situs makes all my anxieties fade away. We’ve only been together a few months, but I already care for them more deeply than I have ever loved anyone.
“You are our mate,” Jual says, his hands fisted at his side, and a vein bulging at his neck.
Situs crosses his arms over his chest, calmer than Jual, but his face is still set in stubborn lines. “You carry our child.”
Situs and I both turn to Jual, daring him to deny claim of the baby. With a grim expression, Jual nods. “You stay with us.”
Neither of them mention they love me or care for me. I try to remind myself they don’t understand the emotion of love, but it’s difficult when everything inside me hungers for a declaration from them.
“Both of you? Together?” I challenge. I want so much for them to love me the way I do them, and for us to be a family. I need that.
Jual’s jaw clenches as he breaks eye contact with me and looks to Situs. They share a tense moment before they nod.
