Origin

by Dani Worth

  Anders hand tightened on mine, tugging me down until I hovered just over his face. His gasps sent air wafting over my lips and I stuck out my tongue to wet them, loving the coolness of his breaths. He groaned, his entire body clenching and coming up off the bed as he yelled, “Clay!”

  I looked down to catch that naughty, naughty grin right before Clay took Anders to the back of his throat. And then Anders’s neck was beneath my lips as he bowed back on the bed. I couldn’t stop myself from opening my mouth over his pulse, licking it—loving the beat of life against my tongue.

  And this time, Anders yelled my name.

  I gasped, breathing hard and feeling something in me break loose. My fear didn’t entirely go away—I still wasn’t taking off any of my clothes—but I wanted to be a part of this because I knew deep down, they wanted me here.

  I opened my mouth on Anders’s skin, over and over, making my way down his chest until I came upon the hand Clay had clasped on his hip. I put my lips on the back of Clay’s hand, watched those blue eyes open and focus on me even as he slid his mouth up and down Anders’s cock. I lifted his hand, turning it so I could run my fingers over the beautiful tattoos on his arm. They weren’t shapes I recognized, just beautiful swirls of thick black lines with vibrant colors between them. I followed one to his elbow, then locked my gaze with his as I pulled one of his fingers into my mouth.

  He stopped moving, eyes narrowing, nostrils flaring, and before I could think about what had taken over me, I was dropping his hand and leaning over Anders’s body to face Clay. He wrapped his fingers tighter around Anders’s cock, pulled off and locked eyes with me. I gave him a naughty grin of my own, added my hand to his on that slick, wet cock and leaned closer until he could feel my breath on his face.

  “Aw, fuck,” Anders gritted out behind us and the twinkle that lit Clay’s beautiful blue eyes tugged at me until I crawled up to straddle Anders’s stomach and pulled Clay up higher so I could kiss him. He took over, taking both my hands and wrapping my fingers around Anders’s throbbing flesh between us before he slid his hands into my hair, tilted me to the side—probably so Anders could see—and opened my mouth wide with his.

  I moaned when his tongue slid inside, the knowledge that it had just been on Anders making me gasp and open wider, sucking him deeper so I could find all the flavors of both men.

  Anders gasped, cursed, and writhed on the bed under me, his hands coming up to grasp my waist. He moved me back and forth on him, forcing me to spread my legs wider so I could rub on the hard muscles of his chest.

  Clay abruptly pulled back, sucking air into his lungs, mouth open as he stared at me in shock. “Shit, Siri. Shit,” he ground out.

  I laughed, couldn’t help it.

  “Yeah, you’re reducing us both to four-letter words.”

  “I like that.” I moved my hands on Anders as he encouraged my hips on him. “Put him in your mouth again. I really like that.”

  “Oh gods!” Anders said on a groan behind me. “Somebody needs to come on up here and kiss me because I’m not gonna last.”

  Clay gave me another cheeky grin and I decided then and there that I wanted to someday see him all strung out, stretched out on a bed like Anders. Then, instead of accidentally saying that aloud, I opened my mouth and let the words tumble from my lips.

  Both men went still and Clay closed his eyes.

  “Well shit,” Anders muttered before his stillness turned to rippling, coiling muscles as he yelled and came on Clay’s hands, on my clothes.

  “Look what you did with just a few words, sweetheart,” Clay said, gravel in his voice.

  “I’m sure that had a lot more to do with your mouth on him, Captain.”

  “It’s both of you. Fucking both of you. Never felt anything like this and if you don’t turn around and kiss me, Siri—”

  I scrambled off his chest, turned and shut him up with my mouth. I felt him moving and turned just enough to see him holding out his hand to Clay. Clay crawled up his body and I moved back to watch them kiss as Clay languidly ground his still hard cock against Anders.

  “You said something about taking?” Anders whispered.

  Clay’s hips had picked up speed and he bit down on the muscle between Anders neck and shoulder. “Too late, not gonna last,” he gasped out.

  That’s when I saw the beautiful tattoo of a dagger on his back. The handle had intricate swirls of black, the blade pointing down to the nicest backside I’d ever seen. I leaned over to kiss the tattoo, letting my hair fall all over his skin and felt the noise he made low in my gut. I ran my tongue down his spine and he bowed up as he came, letting out this hoarse yell.

  “Yeah, Claybourne, let it go.” Anders grabbed him and kissed him, opening his mouth wide.

  I watched, then looked back at Clay’s backside, biting my lip, then just doing what I wanted. I put both hands on those taut globes and squeezed.

  “You two are going to kill me,” Clay muttered before collapsing entirely on top of Anders.

  I crawled up to lie beside them. Both men turned to look at me and I gave them my real smile because I was finding it easier and easier every day to let it loose.

  Clay growled and pulled me in close to them, kissed my nose, my cheeks. “Have I told you I love these freckles?” He lifted up. “Someone didn’t get to finish here.”

  I shook my head. “I’d rather just lie here with you both for a while, if that’s okay. That was…” I smiled again. “That was the best time I’ve ever had.”

  Anders wrapped one arm around Clay and tugged him down, tucking him along his entire left side. He slid his other arm under my neck and cupped my shoulder to plaster me to his right side. Both men were sticky and slightly sweaty, and I was sweaty in my long-sleeved shirt and long pants, but I didn’t care. Clay grabbed Anders’s discarded T-shirt and wiped Anders’s stomach.

  “I like the smell in this room,” I said, then blushed.

  Clay’s hand was on Anders’s chest but he lifted it so I could thread my fingers with his. He rested our hands back on Anders’s chest. His heart beat hard against the back of my hand.

  “I like it too, Siri,” he said. “Even though we should get up and shower.”

  “Too sleepy,” Anders muttered.

  I grinned, glanced up to find his green eyes nothing but slits. “I don’t mind sleeping like this,” I said then looked up at the window above us. “But I’d love the lights off so I can really see the stars.”

  “Lights off,” Clay said and the room went dark. Really dark because we weren’t in an area with a lot of stars. But the ones I could see looked bright and beautiful and they reminded me I was free to go anywhere or do anything I wanted. And I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more right that moment than to be lying in this bed with these two men. Clay kissed Anders’s chest.

  The bigger man tightened his arms around us both as he gazed out the window. “‘Second to the right…’”

  His hushed, nearly asleep voice partially quoting Peter Pan’s directions to Neverland made my heart clench. Hard. I stared at the stars a long time, listening to their breaths deepen, to the slight snores out of Clay, and realized I’d never felt anything in my entire life like this. I felt a sense of belonging to these two and a longing to know more about them. To explore them, to make them laugh. It was just quite possible I wouldn’t be able to let them go.

  Chapter Nine

  My nerves felt like someone had hooked them up to the ship’s electrical system. They zinged and zapped along my limbs until my restlessness grew so big, it felt like launching myself into space was the only option. I prowled the passageways like a caged animal, one who’d spent her entire life behind bars, who’d been freed to live…to possibly love. And I couldn’t. Part of it anyway.

  The love part was already in play. And it scared me to death.

  It had been no coincidence that I’d known where the men were at different intervals during every day I’d been on this ship. Even on the days I got lost in
the books, I’d make it a point to find them, to peek into their world and watch them interact with it. I watched the others and loved the affection between Lia and Bucho and how Namito always stopped to show me how something worked. But with Clay and Anders, it was different.

  I wanted them. I wanted to crawl into that bed with them again—only I wanted all my fear to be gone so I could be naked too. I wanted to feel like a normal, healthy female, discovering the joy of consensual touch. Watching the men together the night before had opened up something in me I didn’t think existed. I had hated anything sexual most of my life, had hated watching it, feeling it…smelling it. The sweat from unwashed bodies, the pungent odor of semen—usually mixed with blood. One of the men my owner had loaned me to had liked to spit on me and let it dry. He’d been one of the sickest ones.

  But nothing about the night before had sickened me. No, it had been quite the opposite. Even today, there was a constant throbbing between my legs every time I remembered the way Clay had looked at Anders’s body. Like he’d just been shown the passage to Neverland and had to explore every part of it.

  Limbs quaking, I made my way to the observation deck, carrying the blanket, the vidscreen and warming tubes of fragrant herbal tea Namito had showed me how to make. It had a strong, hot flavor with something faintly sour and acidic like the lemon juice Anders had shared, only not as strong and sweet this time. I liked it in this drink.

  I planned to read, but I had a feeling I’d be reliving last night again. The way the men looked at each other, the enjoyment of fingers on flesh, mouth on mouth—the look on Anders’s face when he’d truly accepted that Clay was willing and even eager to touch him.

  My chest tightened as I palmed open the door.

  The room wasn’t empty.

  “Greetings,” Lia said as she quickly dropped something onto the seat on the other side of her leg.

  I hesitated in the doorway, not wanting to barge in on her. I could read in my bunk today. I didn’t need the wall of stars and space as company every day.

  “Come in. I’m not staying long. I knew you’d be coming here eventually—just thought it would be later.”

  “It’s not my room so I assumed everyone used it. It’s just been that everyone is so busy lately.”

  She nodded, waved me in. “We have been. You’d think a group of pirates would be living it up, wouldn’t you?” She leaned back against the wall, sitting where Clay had a few days before, and brushed her now empty hands on the pants of her flight suit. Hers was bright orange, and if the light in here were better, I bet it would match her strange, big eyes.

  I had decided to venture forth more, so I walked to my usual spot, dropped my warming tubes in the wall holder and sat in the corner against the window. Movement caught my eye and I squinted, just barely able to make out another ship in the distance.

  “Yeah, we’re coming up on Burga One. We’ll see more freighters the closer we get. It’s a nasty shit-hole mining planet I hoped never to see again.” She shuddered. “Though, there is a great bar in the mining community. They want to keep the miners happy, so they ship in liquor from all the galaxies and a lot of the obscure planets—even my own.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s not even pronounceable in your language.”

  “Gwinarian? I don’t even remember how to speak it.” Most everyone spoke the standard language adopted by multi-governments in most galaxies. On the ship, I’d heard different languages occasionally, but it had been a long, long time since I’d heard actual Gwinarian words—not even as a child on Kithra.

  “They still taught it in schools on Kithra when you were there, but from what Anders told me, you were taken young.”

  I nodded. “I was nine.”

  Lia grimaced. “I can’t imagine. Don’t want to. I’d make a terrible slave because I’m mouthy and temperamental and well, most races won’t sleep with us.”

  “Why not?” I covered my mouth with my hand, surprised I kept blurting out personal questions.

  She laughed, and with her low, husky voice, it sounded slightly grating. “I’m humanoid, but there are a few differences.”

  Questions burned on my tongue so hard, I winced.

  Lia’s sudden huge grin made my eyes widen. She laughed again. “The teeth are a problem.” She lifted whatever she’d hidden from me before. “We don’t let on to most that we can file them unless we’re with someone we trust or we aren’t going out into an area heavily populated by different aliens.” She put the file into her mouth and started sawing.

  Frowning and kind of shivering with the noise, I leaned forward, trying to get a better look at teeth that had looked normal just yesterday and today were long, sharp with the top overlapping the bottoms.

  She pulled the file back out and pointed. “See? I can make them look similar to yours and they’ll stay like that a good week or so before they grow back to normal.”

  “Why do you file them if that’s the way they’re supposed to be?”

  “I have a human boyfriend and I trust him enough to let him know I can do this. Trust this entire crew enough, and now I’m putting you into that mix. You see, it’s our teeth that keep our race from being desirable slaves. That and we mate for life when we have sex. If we’re forced against our will, then we turn our teeth onto them. Take them out of the picture completely. Oh, there’s also the fact that some humans are squeamish about extra holes we have in other places.”

  My eyes widened, my mouth fell open.

  She started laughing again as she plopped the file back in her mouth.

  I leaned back, strangely touched that she was sharing this knowledge with me but also confused because I couldn’t see how this would have remained a secret if her people could merely file their teeth. And if she had extra…holes—I felt the heat on my neck with just the thought—why make her mouth one of the accessible ones? And why not just pull the teeth? I’d seen worse done to slaves.

  “I can see the questions flitting over your face. I like all of my Bucho and don’t want to hurt him. These babies are razor sharp—I can take a finger or something bigger off without any effort.”

  “Ouch. Bucho must be brave.”

  The smile that came over her face changed her looks completely. She went from slightly fierce and scary to glowing. “I’ve been in love with that big, silent man for two years.”

  “And you just got together?”

  She nodded. “He had to make the first move. Had to be willing enough to brave our first time together because that’s always the hardest one. My people tend to lose it in that first bond.”

  I tried to remember if Bucho was missing any fingers.

  Chuckling, she cradled the file in her lap. “He muzzled me. It was hot.”

  Fire scorched my cheeks and her laughs grew louder.

  “Plus, I made sure he understood that once we were together, it was for always. I wanted that, but he had to choose.” She shrugged, a sad smile taking away some of her glow. “We aren’t compatible when it comes to reproduction. He gave up ever having children to be with me.”

  “Then he must care for you very much. You’re lucky.”

  “Seems to me you might be getting lucky yourself when it comes to that. The captain doesn’t take on free passengers. Or any really, outside of us snatching those two other Gwinarians he took to his brother.”

  “To his brother?”

  “Can I have a tube of that tea? Love that stuff Namito brews.”

  I nodded, didn’t tell her I’d made it, but gave her a tube of it anyway.

  She sipped and sighed. “I hate that lemon stuff in every other way. This is the only time my system can even tolerate it.” She lifted her knee and propped her wrist on it so the tube dangled from her fingers as she eyed me. “Clay’s brother is the reason we’re a crew on this ship. He was partially responsible for what happened on Kithra, only he had been an unknowing pawn in something we’re all beginning to suspect is huge and intergalactic. But you saw
him on the vidscreen with your friend, Bastian. The captain knew his brother already loved the Gwinarian woman and that he embraced the Kithran lifestyle of multiple partners…and that he liked pretty men.”

  “Bastian is that. Too pretty.”

  “Why do you say too pretty?”

  I couldn’t answer. It wasn’t my place and I couldn’t bring myself to voice the utter horror of his life on that entertainment ship with my owner.

  “You’re surprisingly compassionate for someone who suffered the same treatment that boy probably did, but much longer.”

  “Bastian was the only friend I was ever allowed. I loved him.”

  “He’ll end up on Kithra with you after we make this Burga run. You’ll get to see him whenever you want.”

  “I hope so.”

  Lia finished her tube of the tea, chatted in between filing her teeth, then took off with her huge human when he showed up at the door and gave her a shy smile. The top of the female’s head came to the middle of his chest and her form was so small, she disappeared completely when he stood in front of her. I wondered at the logistics of their mating for a time after they left. Bucho had to really love her to risk being with her—especially when he knew he’d be mating for life. But from the look on his face, he was perfectly content.

  When the captain’s voice came over the speakers, I jumped.

  “We’ll be landing on Burga One in less than two hours. The Tracker got us an official warrant, so we’re going in as prisoner transfer officers. Speero, that means you stay in hiding on the ship. Don’t want that face of yours setting off alarms. I remember what you told me you did here.”

  I grinned. I’d gotten to know the strange man a little and as far as I could tell, there wasn’t much he hadn’t done. Couldn’t imagine what would send up flags on what Lia called a shit-hole. My smile faded to a grimace. I’d been glad Anders had explained the word shit to me, but now I wasn’t looking forward to the place at all.

  When Anders came to my door, I’d showered but hadn’t used the auto-drier on my hair so it hung in a dark red wet sheet to my waist. It would be shorter as it dried into curls. I’d slicked it off my face but hadn’t yet used any of the makeup Anders had purchased for me. I had, however, used one of the skin softeners—one that smelled of some floral scent I didn’t recognize.