Ninth Orb

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  She heard his teeth grinding as he caught her hips, but he made no attempt to still her movements. She uttered a throaty groan and began to move faster as her body, already pushed to the limit, swiftly scaled the heights to the peak. “Oh god! You feel so good inside me, baby,” she gasped as her body began to quake in the first hard convulsions of release, pushing him beyond his control so that he began to shake with his own imminent release. “Oh my god,” she groaned as the full force of it rolled over her and she struggled to keep thrusting until she felt his hot seed spilling inside of her, heard him groaning with his own culmination.

  Gasping, shuddering with the tiny aftershocks, she finally collapsed weakly on top of him, trying to catch her breath. He went limp, as well, his arms dropping to the desk on either side of him.

  She didn’t want to move. She wanted to lay draped over him and drift blissfully into oblivion but the hard surface was hell on her knees and after a time couldn’t be ignored anymore. Stirring reluctantly when she felt his flesh slip from her body, she lifted her head and looked down at Baen.

  He was lying perfectly still, his eyes closed, but when he felt her movement, he lifted his eyelids enough to peer at her beneath his lashes. A slow smile curled her lips. Leaning down, she nibbled playfully at his lips. “I think that made the whole trip worthwhile,” she murmured.

  A faint frown appeared between his eyes, but his lips curled in response to her smile.

  She shook her head. “Never mind,” she said softly, kissing him lightly one last time before she began to struggle off of him and the desk. He sat up, looping an arm around her to steady her and then allowing her to slip slowly to the floor.

  He was reluctant to release her even then, but allowed his hand to drop when she pulled away and looked around to see what had become of her clothes. Spying her suit dangling from the back of a chair across the room, she crossed to retrieve it and then headed for her private washroom to bathe off.

  As she bathed the sticky semen from her thighs, a frown marred her brows as a memory surfaced.

  Baen had said he was sterile. Did he know that, she wondered? Or was that what all of the warriors were told? After studying the matter over for a moment, she found a bottle and collected a specimen for testing.

  When she returned to her office, she saw that Baen had dressed himself and was busy collecting the things that had fallen to the floor from her desk during their wild tango.

  He turned when he heard her, holding out the translator.

  Her lips twisted wryly when she saw it. She supposed it would have been too much to hope for that the fragile piece would survive their wild bout of lovemaking.

  Shrugging, she took it from him, moved around the desk and summoned her assistant.

  The place reeked of sex, but then the woman had probably been watching most of what had happened on her monitor, so Eden sincerely doubted she would be shocked.

  It was amazing, Eden reflected later, that sex was such a panacea for tension. Despite the usual aggravations she had to deal with throughout the remainder of the day and the thoughts that niggled at the back of her mind most of the time, she felt more relaxed and less jittery than she had in months.

  The thoughts that niggled at the back of her mind refused to be completely silenced though. As relieved as she was that Baen returned his post, behaving as if nothing had happened, and nothing had changed, she found it a little disconcerting, too.

  It hadn’t just been wild sex between them. Baen had told her in the only way he knew how that he loved her and what they’d done was make love, not merely have sex to assuage each other’s needs. She was as certain of that as she was that Baen had no real conception of love as Earth people knew it. Nothing in his background could have taught him and yet she didn’t doubt for a moment that he’d meant it when he had told her she was everything to him and nothing else mattered.

  The most disturbing part of what he’d said, though, was that nothing would matter to him if she left him.

  She tried to convince herself that it was merely a figure of speech, but where would Baen have learned that as a figure of speech? From what she understood of his culture, and she thought she understood it pretty well now, they didn’t ‘leave’. The men entered into a sort of contract with the females that chose them and there they remained for the rest of their natural life.

  She went cold all over when it occurred to her to wonder if she’d inadvertently spoken of their plans while Baen was near enough to hear and she’d been wearing the translator. She didn’t think she had, but Baen had been trained to be unobtrusive. Sometimes he would stand almost perfectly still for hours without making any sound at all.

  Had she gotten busy, been so distracted by her frazzled nerves and the weigh of her duties that she’d ‘forgotten’ he was in the room?

  She couldn’t remember, no matter how hard she worked at recalling each meeting she’d had on the subject, she simply could not remember any time she’d been wearing the translator. She had, in point of fact, made it a habit to discard the translator as soon as she arrived in her office.

  So had one of the others been wearing theirs and she just hadn’t noticed?

  Or was she building a mountain out of a mole hill?

  Maybe Baen had just been around them enough that he’d figured out that they didn’t consider sex a life commitment to the partner they’d chosen to have sex with?

  Chapter Twenty

  Between her preoccupation with the state of affairs in the colony, the progress with the secret evacuation plan, and her concern that Baen might have overheard something he shouldn’t have, it wasn’t until it came time to retire for the night that it occurred to Eden to wonder if the intimacy she’d allowed Baen might have serious repercussions to all concerned. She’d been well aware at the time that what they were doing was forbidden in his culture. She hadn’t cared--then. The sexual frustrations she’d suffered in the weeks since she had taken her pazaan added to the desire she’d had for Baen from the first had left no consideration for good sense.

  When Cal took her hand to lead her to her room to prepare for bed, however, it dawned on her forcefully to wonder if he would be jealous of her. He had never been with a woman and he had indicated that he felt more than simple lust.

  He hadn’t shown jealousy or possessiveness before, but had she broken a barrier that should never have been broken? Would it come spilling forth now in a tide that could no longer be contained?

  It made her uneasy thinking it might.

  One thing she certainly couldn’t afford--or any of them--was to start a war within their own pazaans, not when they still had many weeks of preparation before there was even any hope of leaving with a minimal chance of surviving relocation.

  Hind sight was always twenty/twenty, she thought wryly, wondering if it would be better to refuse her favors to any of the men for a few days until she was more certain of where she stood with Baen.

  She hadn’t done so before, but it was her pazaan, after all. Obviously, since they’d split into three groups instead of four, they expected some down time for her cycle if nothing else.

  She was sated from her gymnastics with Baen earlier and she didn’t particularly care whether she had sex or not, especially since there was no real passion to it when she ‘performed’ with her pazaan--actually, no passion at all.

  The question was, would Baen’s ability to feel and express passion be expressed in rage and violence toward the others if she did what she knew she had to do, which was to keep them all pacified until she was in a position where she no longer needed to concern herself with how to keep the peace?

  She could read nothing in his expression as Cal led her from the gathering room, but how much faith, she wondered, could she place in his expression when she knew now the depths of passion he hid behind that wall of cold distance most of the time?

  Was it the same with all of them? Had they just been conditioned to hide those deep emotions? Or had they been conditioned not t
o feel them as they’d first believed?

  She didn’t know, but she realized even as they reached her bed room that if Baen was jealous, putting the other men in her pazaan off for a few days wasn’t going to change that.

  She might only succeed in riling them all up.

  Baen was intelligent enough, she knew, and disciplined enough, to contain his feelings, however he might feel about it. And since he was the one who always went with her into the city, she could try to reason with him, if necessary, when the others weren’t around.

  Truthfully, she couldn’t see a lot of reason for jealously, even if he was so inclined, because what happened between her and the men of her pazaan was mechanical at best.

  As far as she’d been able to see, there wasn’t a great deal of difference between the consummation ceremony that had begun her official claiming of her pazaan and any other time. The men had been carefully divided into groups, one week with a group and then a rotation to the next--she supposed so that if she did conceive, then they would have a clearer idea of who’d successfully fathered her offspring--sort of like the firing squads of ancient times, she supposed, where all the men in the squad fired, but only one had a real bullet. Except in this case, only one made the goal, but all of them had the possibility and could think they might have been the one.

  Unless, of course, they believed that the group had fathered the offspring, which wasn’t really that farfetched considering their mating practices and the fact that their women had litters. Maybe their women were able to produce a multitude of eggs at once and each could be fertilized by a different donor?

  Without research, which they weren’t likely to get a chance at, they would probably never know.

  And even if that was the case, it didn’t change the fact that nothing like that was going to happen to her.

  She just hoped it was going to take the men a while to figure out that the Earth women they’d taken as their queens were not the fertility goddesses their own women were.

  Preoccupied as she was with her thoughts and anxieties, Eden still hadn’t made up her mind whether to beg off for the night or not when she discovered that they’d reached the bath room.

  As with the first time, Cal helped her to undress and handed her over to the others before removing his own clothing.

  It was only as they led Eden into the pool to bathe her that she made a startling discovery. Baen had joined the men in the pool. Stunned that he’d so boldly broken with tradition, Eden’s gaze flew from one man to the next, trying to see how they felt about what must seem odd behavior to them at the very least.

  Surprise and confusion filled her when she saw nothing in a single expression to give her cause to worry, nothing beyond the gleam of anticipation she’d come to expect in their eyes. But something did strike her as odd, and when she had made the rounds, she looked at each man again, more carefully and finally lifted her head to look at the two guards who stood by the door.

  Unlike each time before, she saw that this was no random selection. It was Trar and Vladiv who escorted her to the bench and began to lather her body in the seductively soothing and infinitely arousing bathing ritual. Baen, Adri, and Pizan had joined them in the pool and stood watching the proceedings. Cal stood at the edge of the pool, and beyond him, guarding the room, were Pael and Miccan.

  To a man, every one of them was Baen’s brother, his brood.

  More puzzled than alarmed, Eden glanced at Baen questioningly as Trar and Vladiv finished bathing her. He met her gaze, held it for a long moment and moved toward her as Trar and Vladiv helped her to her feet and rinsed the foam from her and then stepped back to allow him to pass. Lifting a hand, he caressed her cheek. Murmuring something to her in his own tongue that she couldn’t understand, though she found the tone soothing, he moved behind her. Placing a hand on either shoulder, he pulled her back until she was resting against his chest and then slipped his hands downward along her arms slowly and grasped her hands. Just as slowly, he lifted her arms, draped them around his neck and then skimmed his hands lightly down the underside of her arms, touching off waves of sensation as he brought the sensitive skin to tingling awareness.

  Her eyes slid closed as he cupped her breasts, massaged them, and then flicked his index fingers over her nipples until they stood erect, hard, pulsing with the blood that had engorged them. Heat curled in her belly as he released her breasts and skimmed his hands down her body, her breath catching in her throat as he slipped both hands between her thighs and parted the fleshy lips of her sex, pulling them back to expose her clitoris and then flicking a finger over the tiny, exquisitely sensitive bud until she began to struggle to breathe, sinking more heavily against him as the intoxicating euphoria of passion burgeoned inside of her from a seductive warmth to a breathless sense of anticipation.

  Disappointment filled her when he stopped, but her breath hitched a little more tightly in her chest when he brought his hands upward again in the same feather light caress as before, stirring more warmth within her as he paused to massage her breasts once more and finally lifted one hand to her cheek and nudged her head upwards until she was looking up at him.

  She met his gaze with a look of both arousal and confusion, but what she saw in his eyes, or thought she saw, only sent her into more chaos. The warmth in his eyes seemed to go beyond desire.

  Dipping his head, he brushed his lips lightly, almost teasingly over hers, making them prickle with keen sensation even before he nipped at them, intensifying the sensations and causing her heart to slam against her ribcage as he sucked first her lower lip and then the upper, traced the point where they met with the tip of his tongue. He lifted his head slightly, met her gaze for a heartbeat and then covered her mouth, thrusting his tongue boldly inside and stroking it hungrily along her own. Her knees seemed to turn to water. She would’ve turned to face him then but he held her, one hand on her cheek, his arm tightening across the upper slope of her breasts, supporting her and imprisoning her at the same time.

  As focused as she was on the sensations Baen was creating inside of her, she was also aware that the others watched and the feel of their heated gazes hitched her heart rate upward another notch.

  The heat that filled her and pulsed through her veins seemed to drain the strength from her entire body. Uttering a moan, she kissed him back as he broke the kiss, lifted his mouth a fraction from hers and then covered her mouth again, over and over until desire had become an intoxicant in her blood.

  Caught up as she was in the sensations he was creating within her, she jerked when she felt a hand cup first one breast and then the other, massaging it. Dragging her lips from his, she looked down in bemusement even as Trar and Vladiv lowered their heads and each sucked a nipple into his mouth. Knee weakening sensation shot through her as she felt the heat of their mouths close over the painfully taut buds. Her breath seemed to seize in her chest.

  She uttered a moan even as Baen nudged her jaw upward again and covered her mouth, inhaling the soft sound. Her mind and body were instantly at war with the sensations that pounded at her from three directions at once. At one moment her mind focused completely on the mouths sucking and tugging at her nipples and sending jolts of hard sensation arrowing through her body to pool like molten lava in her lower belly. In the next, she was totally focused on the stroke of Baen’s tongue along hers, the pull of his mouth as he sucked her tongue.

  If they hadn’t been holding her up, she would’ve melted into a sizzling puddle in the pool long before she felt fingers grasping her legs just above her knees. Baen lifted his head as she shifted when they tugged her feet out from under her. Almost reluctantly, Trar and Vladiv released her nipples and lifted their heads, as well, slipping a hand beneath her shoulders as she was lifted higher, her legs parted until she could feel the lips of her sex part. Dizzy, drunk with the pleasure already pounding through her, it took an effort to lift her lids to look down the length of her body as she felt yet another hand settle on her buttocks, pushing upward
on her hips until her nether lips opened wide and cool air traced a chill finger over her cleft.

  Cal stood between her legs, his gaze focused on her sex. She felt the heat of his breath as he leaned closer, settling one hand on her mound and using his fingers to spread her nether lips wider still. Her breath caught in her chest as she felt the tip of his tongue as he flicked it out and traced her cleft almost experimentally. She held the breath expectantly as he seemed to hesitate, expelling it in a sharp gasp when he thrust his tongue out and dragged it over her cleft. Goose bumps erupted all over her as she felt the faintly rough texture of his tongue raking over her clit. The heat of his mouth invaded her even before he covered her clit with his mouth and sucked on tiny the nub.

  She panted in short, sharp breaths as she watched Cal feed on her greedily, felt hard jolts traveling upward into her belly with each sucking tug of his mouth and each teasing flick of his tongue.

  Baen, Trar, and Vladiv watched him as well for many moments before one by one, they returned to their own piece of flesh. Eden let out a sharp cry as Trar caught her nipple between his teeth, nipping at it sharply and then sucking on it. Before she’d even caught her breath, Vladiv sucked her other nipple into his mouth, teasing it with his tongue and sending another keen rush of sensation through her.

  She was nearly sobbing for breath as Baen dipped his head to cover her mouth again. Her body tensed, jerked as one hard wave of delicious sensation after another went through her, one upon the other until she could no longer tell which mouth caused her more torment.

  It was delicious torment, though, and she struggled to hold still and savor it to the fullest. Within a disappointingly short time, her body peaked, hovering at the brink of exploding with the building rapture. She fought the culmination, wanting nothing more than to feel the wonderfully torturous sensations on and on. Her struggle kept her teetering on the edge for so long that when she pitched over it, her body convulsed shatteringly, almost painfully in ecstasy, dragging a raw, keening cry from her throat.