Mercury snarled again. His gaze snapped up to Lo. “Hold her hands.”
“No. Please.” She wasn’t above begging at this point.
She would owe Lo some huge favor because he seemed to be on her side.
“She needs it, Merc,” he said.
“Not by her own hand,” Mercury protested.
They were talking over her again. This time it was Samantha who growled. Mercury looked back to her and he must have seen the desperation in her eyes. He lowered his body, wrapped his arms around her and rolled, putting her above him.
He barked-several small noises that seemed to set Lo in motion. Suddenly, he was behind her. Strong, warm hands wrapped around her ribs and he pulled her up to sit astride Mercury’s hips. Mercury was still lodged firmly inside her. The change in position shifted the pressure in a way that made her moan. Lo pressed close behind her, a blazing fire at her back. His fingers stroked across her ribs sending waves of sensation rippling across her skin. Lo banded one arm around her, holding her in place, his other hand dipped down between her legs and—oh. He pressed right where she needed it.
Her pussy clenched around Mercury’s cock, drawing a groan from him. He thrust up and, hands on her hips, pulled her solidly against him. He seemed to be trying to push as far as possible inside her then he retreated, dragging his cock out until only the flared crown stretched her opening. He pulled her down slamming them together again. The strokes were short but intense and every pull moved Lo’s hand on her clit.
“Careful,” said Mercury on a thrust.
“I am,” answered Lo.
She thought they must be talking about his claws, now positioned near her tender flesh. She didn’t feel the claws at all but the small circles he’d started, those she felt to her toes.
Her orgasm broke over her out of nowhere. One moment she was on the raggedy edge the next she was flying apart. Mercury ground their hips together while Lo’s touch drew her pleasure out as long as possible. When her body went limp, he wrapped himself more firmly around her and lifted her off of Mercury’s still hard cock. He edged back and settled her on his thighs. Somehow he rearranged things until they were between Mercury’s spread thighs.
She might have protested the idea of leaving Mercury unfulfilled if her arms and legs weren’t limp as noodles. For a moment she let Lo’s strength support her, but Mercury still lay beneath them, lungs working like bellows, cock looking painfully hard. That didn’t seem right. No, not right at all, but Mercury didn’t seem worried or in a hurry. He looked pretty damn pleased with himself as he watched her, limp in Lo’s arms, Lo licking along her shoulder.
Licking? Yes, he was definitely licking.
About the time control of her limbs seem to be returning, Lo urged her to lean over Mercury, her lips brushing against the damp tip of his engorged cock.
Lo said, “Take him in your mouth.”
She blinked, uncertain. She wouldn’t want to place any bets on her chances of getting him very far past her lips, but Lo added, “No one’s ever done that for him.” She knew then that she’d give it her best try.
The suggestion prompted another groan from Mercury. It hadn’t left her unaffected either. She steadied herself with one hand near his hip. She wrapped her other hand around the base of him and licked up the length. She laved her tongue around the crown and looked up to see him watching her with rapt attention. Her pussy clenched in response as if she hadn’t already had her pleasure.
His hands gripped the blankets under him as if he might be fighting the urge to fist his hands in her hair and she wished he wouldn’t hold back. Or maybe he knew Lo would take care of it for them all. His hands were suddenly there, tight in her hair guiding her to take Mercury inside. His other arm still wrapped around her waist, keeping her ass snugged back against him. The hard length of Lo’s cock slipped between her thighs and pressed to her entrance.
He let her work Mercury into her mouth to a point she could handle, then he slid his cock into her channel in one luxurious thrust. He managed to wrap all of her hair in one hand and trailed the other down her spine. For the first time, his claws brushed her skin, just enough to send prickles spiraling out across her back and tracing along her rib cage. Each thrust of his cock filling her up demanded she take Mercury deeper in her mouth until the velvet swell of the tip worked against the soft, sensitive palate at the back of her throat. She fought her gag reflex. She didn’t want to stop.
What they were doing had all three of them desperate for release.
It didn’t take long.
Lo shifted his hands to her hips just as Mercury howled and filled her mouth. Lo changed the angle of his thrusts, pushing her off the edge to follow Mercury—her second orgasm a warm wave rolling through her. As her pussy clenched around Lo’s cock, he groaned, a throaty sound of satisfaction. Howling in perfect harmony with Mercury, he pulled out of her then coated her thigh with the sticky evidence of his pleasure.
Together they collapsed on the bed in a pile of tangled limbs. It took a while for Samantha’s pulse to slow. Her mind was blank as if all the other parts of her body had taken all the oxygen and left her brainless—and for the moment, that was fine. On a purely instinctual level she knew she was safe. Someone passed her water and she drank. The lamps flickered off and she was wrapped up by two strong bodies. Nothing in her life had ever been so right. A tiny voice in the back of her mind whispered that it wouldn’t last. That it wasn’t real. But the voice was small and far away—a small stone beneath the overstuffed mattress, easily ignored.
Haverlee Refugee Camp, Krena
Gollerra Sector
2210.171
Samantha jolted awake as Lo launched out of her arms and Mercury pushed her behind him. Lo took the man at the door to the ground. Carn had joined them to sleep sometime in the night. He leapt over Lo to dart into the main room.
Samantha peeked around Mercury to see Lo snarling and snapping at a man in the drab gray of independent spacers and wearing freighter boots with silver toned straps—Knock.
“Wait!” Samantha tugged at Mercury’s shoulder. He snarled in response. She wrapped one of the blankets around her body and struggled to get to her feet. She tripped over a pair of trouser that had been thrown off last night. One of the guys’, not hers, unfortunately. Mercury caught her.
The volume of Lo’s snarling dimmed. Knock had finally smartened up, freezing stiff.
Samantha resisted Mercury’s efforts to again push her behind him. “I know him,” she explained. “He’s not a threat.”
Mercury released her and made a barking sound she hadn’t heard him make before. Lo responded, easing back then off his chosen prey.
“Uh, can I move now?” Knock, with his familiar spiked white hair and narrow features, spoke without moving an extra muscle.
“Sammie!” She recognized the desperate shriek as a stressed version of Mikal’s voice. He’d apparently waited in the next room.
“Oh dear.” Moira’s voice trailed in. She appeared in the doorway her eyes wide. “I’ll, ah, put out some food, but you should tell Carn to let Mikal go. I’ve never seen him so pale.”
Mercury let out another bark and an answering bay came from the other room. Her mother disappeared as quickly as she’d appeared.
Knock sat up, but stayed on the floor. “I can see now why I wasn’t man enough for you, Sammie. Three men? I’m sure one of the guys would’ve been willing for a threesome but I can’t say I’d be willing to go farther than that.”
Lo launched himself at him again.
“Knock, you idiot.” Samantha scrambled over the pile of bedding to put a fist in Lo’s hair. She pulled his head back. Red fire danced in his eyes. “He’s not a threat and you’re not going to kill him for being an ass.”
Lo growled a wordless response that communicated frustration.
She grinned at him. “You know...” She spoke softly, not wanting Mikal or her mother to overhear. “Your eyes looked just like that the first time you were inside me.” Lo’s snarl died away and his features softened. She let go of his hair and stroked his head. “Let him up, please.”
Lo eased back and was on his feet in another blur of motion. He put an arm around her and pulled her to his side. Samantha glanced back to Mercury. His look was approving. He was still alert and wary of Knock as the man held his hands up and muttered an apology.
“Joking,” he said. “Just joking.”
“Mercury, Lo, meet Knock, a member of my father’s crew. The man in the other room is Mikal, the tool slinger on the
Bucket
.” She started to introduce Mercury and her throat tightened. She knew what he wanted her to say, but she couldn’t. She swallowed hard and took a steadying breath. “Knock, this is Mercury and his pack brothers Lo and, in the other room, Carn.”
Mercury pressed along her back, a quiver of emotion rippling through his body.
Knock held his hands out in a show of surrender. “Sure, sure, whatever, but can you tell them to put something on, or at least cover up those monster dicks.” He made a shivering motion. “All that meat swinging around gives a man the willies.”
Samantha chuckled. “Jealous?”
“Hell yes. After this I may develop a complex or something.”
Samantha remembered that Carn had actually been wearing something as he’d flashed by on his way out of the room. That was some consolation, since her mother was out there with him.
She sent Knock out to wait with Mikal and Carn, then pulled on her own indie-gray pants and paired them with a soft yellow top that clung to her curves. She fingered the soft material. One of the perks of coming home was a vast improvement in her wardrobe. She tugged on her freighter boots and smoothed the trim that matched Knock’s. Her father had bought his whole crew new boots as a celebration a week before his death. Knock and Mikal’s visit meant the
Bucket
was at the port. She couldn’t help but wonder if Shred still wore the same boots.
Samantha helped Mercury and Lo with the unfamiliar clothes her Mother had secured for them. They looked almost normal in the full length trousers and loose shirts. Mercury pulled his hair back with a small tie. The effect was startling. He looked more civilized and less human. Without the fall of hair around his face all the angles of his face appeared sharper and more pronounced.
Civilized or savage, he became more a part of her every day. What would be left when he ripped those parts away?
“Why are you here?” Samantha put her hands on her hips and stared Knock down. He sat at her mother’s table, stuffing a biscuit into his mouth. He had to work it down and chase it with fruit-water before he could answer.
“Moira, I never understood how you always seem to have the best foodstuffs from Serona.” Knock wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
His comment struck her as funny, considering it was her father’s connections that ensured her mother’s regular shipments from Haverlee’s sister city—an Eden nestled on the planet’s most verdant continent.
He shifted his focus to Samantha and stopped eating. “Sammie, I came to say I was wrong. Wrong to let Shred leave you behind. Wrong not to tell you so sooner.” He smoothed his hands along the table, until he realized what he was doing, then he stopped and held still. “Aren’t you going to say something?”
She straightened. “Sure. I’m going to say, if that’s all, you’re done and you can go. ”
“You’re skeptical.” He put a hand to his heart. “I’m hurt.”
“You’re a soft spined letch with a hard head and no common sense, Knock. I doubt I could hurt you if I dropped a skipdrive on your head.”
“Now that’s mean, Sammie. I’d have thought you’d be in a better mood after...” He waved a hand at Mercury and Lo who flanked her.
“I want a serious answer, Knock.”
He leaned so far forward he almost landed in his plate. “I mean it, Samantha. I tried to talk Shred out of it before and I tried to talk him into going back after. I left the ship at the next port.”
“I didn’t,” said Mikal. He looked much the same as she remembered, tall and rangy with a face that had seen too many bar brawls. The streaks of gray had nearly taken over his once auburn hair—that was new. “Sorry Sammie, but work is work. But you should believe him.” He nodded to Knock. The idiot even spent his own credits to go after you. Leastways, he said he was going to. He did leave the ship for a few months. That much I know.”
Samantha sat in one of the chairs and reached for the sugared grain and nut mix her mother had set out. “Is that true, Knock?”
He frowned, drawing his browse together and puffing out his slender cheeks. “For all the good it did me. You’d already gotten off planet by the time I got there. We were friends, Sammie. Real friends. You know I never had anybody give a damn about me before your dad and you.”
Mikal cleared his throat, but left a ring of sugar around his mouth. “Chief told us you might be looking for a ride off this ball of sand.”
“He had no business telling you anything.” She poured cream over the grain and nut mix and passed it to Mercury who’d taken a seat between her and Mikal.
“Look at you—” Mikal snickered. “Feeding your man. I didn’t know you had any of your mom’s domestic, man-pleaser genes.”
Samantha froze. His words had a chilling effect on the entire room. She met Moira’s gaze where she hovered next to a storage chest. “Be careful how you talk about my mother. I’d be damn proud to be half as strong and wise as Moira.” She wouldn’t admit aloud that she saw her mother’s relationship with her father as weak. It had been her only weakness. And Samantha wouldn’t explain that she peeled the fruit or poured cream over the grain because the food at her mother’s table was unfamiliar to Mercury and his pack brothers.
“We were talking about helping Sammie.” Knock piped up. “In case anyone wanted to get back on topic.”
“Right,” said Mikal. “So we heard you scuttled one of Roma’s ships and stole a Raptor class transport.”
“Chief didn’t tell you that.”
“No,” said Knock. “That’s in all the latest Alliance bulletins.”