Sex or Suffer [Dark Colony 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

Dark Colony 1

Sex or Suffer

Devastated to discover she harbors the SOS virus, medical researcher, Dr. Penelope Drake hires Captain Gray Wyckoff to take her across the galaxy to the cure on Parsec Five. As Penelope fights for a permanent remedy to cure this monstrous disease, the deplorable question in her mind repeats: How did she contract the virus in the first place?

Captain Gray Wyckoff burns every bridge he's ever built to get Penelope there, only to find she can't deliver the payment she's promised. Serving as her temporary sexual cure along the way only adds to his feelings of betrayal. He thought he loved her. Now he's not sure he can forgive her. Love her? Leave her? The choice between sex or suffering has never been so hard to make.

Especially when he has to watch her have sex with another man.

Sensuality Rating:
SCORCHING
Genre:
Multiple Partners/Science Fiction
Length:
71,300 words

Dark Colony 1

Lara Santiago

MENAGE AMOUR

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

IMPRINT: Ménage Amour Romance

ABOUT THE E-BOOK VERSION:
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SEX OR SUFFER

E-book ISBN: 1-60601-237-1

First E-book Publication: December 2008

Cover design by Jinger Heaston

All cover art and logo copyright © 2008 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED:
This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

PUBLISHER

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

I’d like to dedicate this book to my fabulous husband. He’s my friend, my soul mate and he never makes me suffer for any reason. After twenty amazing years together I look forward with enthusiasm to the next twenty that we’ll share. Thanks for agreeing to play house with me for all these years, honey.

Lara Santiago

December 2008

Dark Colony 1

LARA SANTIAGO

Copyright © 2008

“I just need you to fuck me,” the woman dressed in red screamed. “Don’t you get it? I’m in pain.” She ripped off the silk, scarlet robe she wore revealing her naked body.

Karl, the man who’d volunteered to help alleviate her anguish, scanned her from face to knees. Zeroing in on her lush breasts, he absently began to unbutton his shirt.

The woman launched forward, grasped the lapels from his fingers and ripped his shirt wide open. Buttons flew in four different directions. Karl’s eyes widened as she pressed herself against his body. They widened further when her hips began a seductive gyration up and down, back and forth across his groin. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pushed his button-less shirt off of his frame.

“Okay, I get it. You need sex.” Karl shucked his trousers down where they bunched at his ankles. His fully erect cock sprang free from his loosened pants. He kicked the tangle of fabric at his feet off to one side. The woman grasped his shaft one-handed and stroked his cock up and down vigorously.

“I need you now.” Her body visibly shook only ten minutes after Karl’s scent triggered her need to copulate. A bead of perspiration pooled at her temple and rolled down her face. She panted wildly, her face a contortion of pain-ridden fear. She pulled Karl flush against her body still gripping his cock in one hand as if he might try to get away.

Backing up with him clutched in her arms, she fell to the bed as soon as the mattress brushed the backs of her calves. Her legs fell open and without further coaxing, Karl sank his cock deeply inside her body as she bucked and grabbed his ass with both hands as if to propel him to go faster. He pumped inside for several more steady thrusts before he stiffened and grunted.

The woman mashed her eyes shut still trembling against his stiff body and groaned in audible relief the moment he climaxed. Seconds later, she stopped shaking and slumped against the bed pillow. Karl pulled away with an expression like he wanted to say something tender, but the woman jerked away from the intimate connection, curled into a ball and ignored him.

Disregarding her very obvious desire to be left alone, Karl asked, “Alice, are you—”

“Get out,” she uttered between clenched teeth, cutting off whatever tender question Karl was about to ask.

From the observation booth in the next room, Dr. Penelope Drake watched Karl back away from her patient, Alice. Through the two way mirror, she watched the pain and suffering of the woman carrying the dreaded Sex or Suffer virus.

Penelope wanted to use the intercom to tell Karl to shut up and get out, but figured it would only make an already horrid situation worse. Alice didn’t need to be reminded she was being watched. She’d already suffered tremendously with this abhorrent illness.

Eyes wide, Karl tried again to soothe her with another soft query. “Do you feel better—?”

“I said get out!” She cut off his quiet words as a sob escaped from her throat. Alice clutched the pillow to her chest and buried her face in one corner as tears slipped down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry.” Karl backed away from her, treading on his discarded pants. He scooped them from the floor and hurriedly drew them on, grabbing his ruined shirt in one fist. After a sorrowful look over his shoulder, Karl left the room now filled with the heartbreaking sounds of Alice’s misery.

“That was really fast.” Penelope closed the view of the window to the observation room. With the press of a button, the opaque cover slid closed. Still a little embarrassed to have watched the violent sex, Penelope sighed and wished she had a better plan to help Alice conquer this disease.

“She grabbed his ass. He couldn’t help it. Still, if it had been me, I’d have taken much longer to come.” Damon Kaslan smacked a hand to his chest likely to enforce his foolish point and turned from the now hidden window.

Penelope resisted the strident urge to thump him in the head. “Well, now taking your time to climax would be cruel, wouldn’t it? Besides I wasn’t referring to Karl’s performance. I was talking about how fast the virus acted. Alice suffered serious pain after only a few minutes of exposure to a man fitting her personal criteria for arousal.”

Damon shrugged. “It’s not a surprise. The other chick was the same way.”

Penelope turned sharply and strode towards him. “Yes, until she killed herself.”

“I still don’t get why she did that.” Cocking his head to one side, Damon’s eyes narrowed as if in speculation as to why a woman wouldn’t love to beg for sex twenty-four hours a day.

“Quit being such a prick,” Penelope snapped. “You can’t seriously be so dense. A virus that makes a woman burn in pain until she has a man fuck her until ‘he’ climaxes? This isn’t some laughable sex story to be shared in locker room. It’s depraved. And certainly not a positive step for humanity regardless of the attitude to the contrary in this society.”

Two days after being assigned the case, Penelope was already out of bright ideas as to how to cure this vile disease. Yesterday, they’d tried to administer a shot of semen into Alice’s vaginal tract to sooth the virus, but it hadn’t worked.

Apparently, the SOS virus tapped into complex cerebral functions associated with the sexual act. As a consequence, the friction of a penis thrusting inside the vagina was required for temporary suppression of the pain and even that method only lasted a few hours. How many hours depended on the individual patient suffering.

Damon’s expression became instantly contrite. “I’m just saying the one who killed herself should have waited until we tried the cure. She’d only been here a day.”

His ignoring the fact that the first victim, Cora, had suffered for six weeks prior to her arrival on Bravura pissed Penelope off. She turned away to hide her disgust. “I did try the cure on Cora. It didn’t work. Apparently, it was too late. The virus had incubated in her system for too long. She killed herself because she didn’t think a permanent non-sexual cure was possible. I find it hard to blame her.”

“You used the last of the cure on the crazy woman who killed herself?” Damon crossed the room and grabbed her shoulder.

“Her name was Cora. Try saying it once.” Penelope leveled a look that said he better watch what words he uttered next.

Wheeling her to face him he asked a question instead. “Did you get authorization to give ‘Cora’ the cure?”

Penelope heaved a deep sigh and shifted her gaze. “No. I didn’t. Besides, it wasn’t the last of it. There’s one more dose left. I plan to use it on Alice. I want to hurry and test the existing cure before it’s too late for her too.”

“You can’t do that!” Damon’s shock propelled him closer. He breached the arm’s length gap between them, crossing dangerously into her personal space, his open jacket brushing her sleeve.

“I’m not asking for permission.” Penelope did her best to ignore his close proximity. “I’m in charge.”

“The Science Group will never approve it. Not if we only have one dose left. They’re already going to fry your ass for using the second to the last dose on the first hopeless case.”

“Well, I didn’t know it was hopeless, did I? At least I tried.” Penelope backed away from him. “If the cure works on Alice, then we can contact the lab on the Parsec Colony and have them begin manufacturing more.”

“Parsec Colony is on the other side of the galaxy, for Christ’s sake. Who’s going to pay for more to be made? The SOS virus cure was expensive shit three hundred years ago. Not to mention the cost of a minimum three week round-trip transport to get to the Parsec Colony. That’s expensive too.”

Penelope crossed her arms and glared. “Are you asking me to do nothing? Dr. Ledreder gave me this case the day before yesterday with instructions to try and find an alternative cure.”

Damon pursed his lips in an unattractive moue. “It’s an isolated case of two women. The labs on the Parsec Colony won’t manufacture more of this ancient cure unless there is an epidemic. Bureaucratic red tape is the only reason we had the few doses of cure to begin with. They only keep any cure in inventory at all because they weren’t sure what impact the SOS virus had on men. They wanted to be prepared to cure any males afflicted.”

Penelope snorted. “Or all men are already permanently infected and the reason why most of them are such revolting swine.”