Her forehead dropped to Vadim’s shoulder as her breath returned in pants and gasps. He petted her head with tender strokes of his palm, and she marveled at this other side of him. He rarely showed tenderness; so when he did, she appreciated it all the more.
When she raised her eyes, she found Marco kneeling on the bed in front of her above Vadim’s head. A wave of guilt passed through her as she’d practically forgotten about him during her moments of ecstasy.
She reached out a hand and stroked his hip as she smiled up at him. He grinned back at her as they shared a memory of the last time she took him in her mouth.
“We are ready.” Vadim’s words sounded gruff, almost as if he was choking back emotion.
She glanced down at him and swore she saw a softness in his eyes that had never been there before. Did this mating mean so much to him? Before she could devise a hypothesis and formulate any questions, he slipped his fingers into her channel, and she moaned with the pleasure.
“Let us begin.” Vadim guided his rod into her core as Kojo breached her back hole with his erection.
“Ahhh,” she groaned with appreciation.
Marco summoned her attention by lifting her chin with his finger.
She licked her lips before sucking in his curved length.
And she’d done it. She’d officially mated with her three assigned males, and it had been a lot less difficult than she’d ever imagined.
Then all rational thoughts fled from her brain as the three men moved in sync, entering and exiting her openings at a slow, tantalizing pace.
Kojo and Vadim rubbed up and down her interior passages, giving her a sense of fullness, of completion, as she satisfied her oral needs with Marco in her mouth. Her body temperature rose, as she grew more aroused by the men surrounding her, over and under and in front of her.
She was theirs. They were hers. She belonged to them and them to her. She was no longer alone on this planet. With her heart opening to take in this cozy feeling of belonging, she reached the crest of her highest climax yet and spun out of control through wave after wave of pleasure coursing through her body.
As she returned to her senses, Marco grunted then spent in her mouth. She licked greedily at him to capture all of his essence. With a special smile for her, he sat back on his heels and stroked her cheek as Kojo and Vadim increased their pace in her.
“Oh, yes,” she gasped as her body reacted by clenching them tighter with her internal muscles. She was shocked to feel herself ramping up for another orgasm.
“Oh, hellitude. I’m coming,” Kojo grunted and jerked into her backside, pushing her closer to her own orgasm.
Vadim’s grip on her hips tightened, giving her that edge of pain that her body responded to so well. He thrust up into her, lifting her knees off the mattress as he took both their bodies up, up to another climax.
She came with a scream and a flash of lights behind her eyelids before everything went dark.
When she returned to herself, she found herself sandwiched between the three men on the mattress. Her body lay sprawled across Vadim, as Kojo crowded her right side and Marco her left. Three hands stroked her back and petted her hair.
“Mmmm, I could grow to really like this,” she murmured against Vadim’s chest.
“Don’t you think you should do an experiment and test your hypothesis, Doctor Anna?” Kojo teased.
“An experiment?” she asked, not seeing where he was leading her.
“To determine if you
really
could grow to like this,” he explained. “I believe that would require at least another round of us joining with you.”
“Now, Kojo, didn’t you ever take a scientific course?” Marco chided. “You can’t base a hypothesis on only two sets of data. This is going to require
many
more experiments.”
“At least a lifetime’s worth,” Vadim said gruffly, surprising her with a statement that echoed some ancient promise of commitment. And the roughness of his voice seemed to indicate some deep emotion behind his words.
“So, what do you say, Doctor Anna?” Kojo asked. “Are you prepared to test your hypothesis?”
“Oh, stars. You don’t mean right this very minute, do you?” she groaned, hoping they’d understand her exhaustion. Not only had the past few days and this final event been physically exhausting, but she was mentally and emotionally drained as well.
All three men chuckled around her.
“No, mate,” Vadim spoke first. “We all need sleep first. Now, close your eyes and relax.”
She snuggled against his warm skin and felt her muscles loosen as a light bed covering was draped over her. With the heat radiating off the men on every side, she certainly wouldn’t need the heavy coverings she used in her own pod.
And that was her last lucid thought until morning.
Chapter Nine
Sitting on a bench in the main room next to Marco, Anna relaxed with her evening meal while her three mates ate and discussed some recent developments in the relation talks between the Council and the Open Air Society.
Over the past four weeks, Anna had settled into her new life in Fourth Quadrant relatively easily. That first morning after her mating, she’d been relieved to find Bella and ascertain for herself that her best friend was unharmed. Anna had looked forward to having her friend also living in the Fourth Quadrant. But within a few days, Bella had announced her refusal of the invitation to remain and had returned to First Quadrant in the accompaniment of three bodyguards. Anna worried constantly for her friend and made sure to facetalk on the datapad with her at least twice a day.
Anna had returned to her research after Vadim arranged supplies for a lab in a newly appointed scientific wing of sector forty. Her assistant Eddie had been able to rescue some of their research from their destroyed lab, and he’d brought it with him when he’d come to Fourth Quadrant to continue working with her.
She was growing more attached to her three mates each day. Kojo and Marco had been reassigned to Fourth Quadrant so they didn’t have to ever be away, and the four of them had fallen into a comfortable routine of domesticity.
All of this contributed to her beginning to think of the Fourth Quadrant as her second home. In some ways, it was even superior to First Quadrant.
She was enjoying her explorations of the food systems in the various sectors of the quadrant, and had been delighted to find sector thirty-seven was completely devoted to a dairy farm. She spent more time there than was scientifically justified, admiring the large, gentle-eyed animals.
The Open Air Society hadn’t targeted any locations in Fourth Quadrant, and Anna had caught rumors that a large part of the military sympathized with the protestors, which is how they were regarded here instead of as terrorists. She supposed it might make sense for the military to support space exploration. It would give them the opportunity to keep their skills relevant. On a relatively peaceful planet, there wasn’t much need for a full military, but the potential to encounter other life forms would give them a raison d’être.
The attacks in the other quadrants appeared to be subsiding for now, but a heightened sense of awareness was evident in the Council’s desire to keep Anna and a majority of the other scientists in the Fourth Quadrant, which worked well for her and her mates, since Vadim needed to remain here.
So, life was good, but something still nagged at her. Even though she felt guilty for wanting more when she’d already gotten more than she’d ever imagined possible from her three men, she still felt like their mating was incomplete. She’d like some sort of ceremony to mark their bond, something in addition to the required physical process of the mating, which she was always more than willing to repeat in their leisure time together.
On Profortuna, they no longer had old-fashioned, ancient-style weddings, no public ceremonies at all for assigned matings, but she couldn’t stop her romantic thoughts from imagining the four of them standing up before their friends and pledging a devotion to each other.
After wrestling with the idea in her head for several weeks and finding she just couldn’t ignore it anymore, she decided to broach the subject with her three mates once their discussion of politics subsided.
Poking at the crumbs on her plate, she tried to make her voice sound nonchalant. “I was thinking maybe we could do something to mark our new mating. Perhaps some sort of public pledge ceremony?” She swept her gaze over the three men.
They groaned practically in unison.
“What’s wrong with that idea?” she protested.
Kojo spoke first. “Do you know how that will injure our reputations?”
“I don’t see how.”
“We’re already your assigned mates, Anna,” Kojo said. “We don’t need to pledge our allegiance to you.”
“We would never dishonor you by not fulfilling our roles,” Vadim said.
“I’m not talking about pledging your allegiance as my mates.”
“Then what do you want us to pledge?” Kojo asked.
“Never mind.” She shrugged as if it weren’t really a big deal. “Bella’s right.”
“About what?” Marco asked.
“My ridiculous old-fashioned notions about…” She couldn’t say the word and make herself out to be an even bigger fool.
Marco cupped her chin with his palm and forced her to lift her face to look at him. “I’ve seen those ancient movie files, too.”
“Then tell us what the hellitude she wants?” Kojo demanded. “I don’t like seeing her unhappy this way.”
But instead of answering Kojo, Marco stared down into Anna’s eyes. “I do, you know. I do feel that here,” he pressed his free hand over his heart, “for you.”
Anna’s breath caught in her throat. “You do?”
He nodded. “You are a brilliant scientist, a strong woman, and the best mate a man could ever hope for.”
She smiled at him, then reached up and placed a kiss on his mouth. “I do, too,” she whispered before let him go. “Now, can we do that same thing in a pledge ceremony?” She glanced around the room at the three men.
Marco shook his head, disappointing her with his reluctance. “Why do you need to make a public spectacle of us? Why can’t we keep this private between us?”
Frustrated, Anna turned away from him and stood from the bench they were sharing. “Forget I said anything.”
Marco caught her by the upper arm and forced her back down. “Wait, Anna. If it means this much to you, we’ll do it.”
She shook her head. “It’s no big deal. Just forget about it.”
“No lies between us. This mating will run much smoother if there are no lies between us.”
She faced him. “Okay, it does mean something to me, but I wouldn’t do anything to injure any one of you. So, can we forget it now?”
Marco glanced over at the other two men. “How about we take a few days to consider it?”
She leaned up and gave him another kiss. “Thanks.”
* * * *
When the men didn’t bring up the subject of the pledge ceremony over the next few days, Anna figured they’d dismissed the idea. She pushed her silly idea into a corner of her brain and submerged herself in analyzing some of the DNA differences she’d observed between the Fourth Quadrant and First Quadrant population, spending many evenings in her lab instead of coming home for the shared meal with her mates.
Perhaps that was why she didn’t pick up on any clues about the men’s plans.
At the end of the following week, Anna received a message on her datapad from her new friend Crystal. The Specialist was an incredible resource for Anna’s research into the possible connection between nutrition and fertility, as Crystal knew more about food than anyone Anna had ever met.
Crystal’s message invited Anna to the mess hall after work to sample a variety of berry that had just matured. Anna couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate the discovery she’d made recently regarding the relationship between body weight and fertility.
The Fourth Quadrant population was more robust, carrying more weight on their frames, due to their increased intake of calories from their food resources. They also had a higher fertility rate than any of the other quadrants. From interviewing women in this quadrant, Anna had discovered their menses were much more frequent than women in the other three quadrants.
Anna’s datapad on her hip beeped. Checking it, she saw Crystal’s name displayed. Glancing at the chronometer, she sighed.
Yeah, she was late.
She tapped the answer button, saying “Coming!” as she rushed out of her lab, making sure the door locked behind her.
After hurrying through the maze of sector hallways, she entered the mess hall, and her heart stopped in her chest. White cloth draped the ceiling and walls, and everywhere it was secured, flowers—flowers!—like she’d never seen before were arranged in bunches. The room was completely transformed into something magical from an ancient film.
Finally, she registered the people standing around the room watching her. She glanced at each face and realized she knew every one of them. There were fellow scientists she’d known in First Quadrant who’d been relocated to Fourth, and new friends she’d made who worked in the food growth industry.