Authors: Kaitlyn O'Connor
If
she could get the chance to get to the controls, which she couldn’t as things stood because there was always one, and usually two, on the bridge, carefully monitoring the ship’s progress.
In any case, they were closing in on her like stalking predators. Sooner or later, she knew one of the three was going to catch her with her guard down and pounce. The air fairly crackled with sexual desire. It was more a matter of
allowing
it to happen than making it happen.
She gave it a little push anyway. What they didn’t seem to realize as they were watching her was that she was also watching them. It didn’t take long at all to learn their routines. Just like their human counterparts, these males rarely varied.
They prepared meals six times per thirty hour period, which constituted a ‘day’ cycle. When one disappeared from the main area of the ship into the sleeping quarters, he was gone precisely eight hours. They bathed and changed before they returned, however, which meant it was impossible for her to sleep in the bed alone unless she wanted to try to sleep in two or three hour intervals. She tried at first, but she discovered very quickly that her internal clock was still set on earth time. And if she fell asleep any where besides the bed, one or another would scoop her up and take her to bed.
She could either be passive and
not
move away the next time she felt a hand stray over her while she was trying to sleep, or she could be more blatant about it and time her bath so that she was in the right place at the right time.
She opted for the bath. Subtlety was
not
one of their strong suits. If she wanted to
really
piss Gideon off, and she did, she had to make sure he knew she hadn’t been caught in a sneak attack like the one he’d sprung on her. It was still hard to decide which one, besides Gideon, she most wanted to get even with.
Gabriel panted after her as much as the others, or maybe more, and he had been the most outspoken among them with his bigotry over humans.
Jerico, on the other hand, was the one who’d looked at her that first day as if he wanted to devour her and then told her it was a shame she was human and not cyborg! He was just as big a bigot as Gabriel was—and probably Gideon, too.
Finally, she decided to just leave it to fate. Whoever fell into her net was fair game. They were all assholes and if she couldn’t beat them senseless herself, she could at least try to play them against each other and watch the fireworks!
It turned out to be Jerico’s day—which meant it was and it wasn’t—she hoped.
She didn’t know that it would even bother Gideon. After all, it had been Jerico that had started the fight with Gabriel. Gabriel and Jerico were more volatile. Gideon actually seemed fairly laid back—most of the time, anyway.
It wasn’t actually a matter of choice when it came right down to it. She placed herself in ‘harm’s’ way, and control over the situation went right out of her hands.
She had just stepped beneath the shower spray when Jerico came in to bathe. He froze when he saw her, and even though she was at great pains to pretend she had no idea he was there, she felt suddenly weak with fear about what she’d plotted, instantly regretted it, and yet couldn’t think of any way at all to get herself out of the mess of her own creation.
Panicking, she was still trying to decide if she pretended to suddenly notice him and covered herself if he would take that as a rejection and leave when he swarmed into the shower and pinned her to the wall. Her breath left her in a rush as he compressed her body between his and the chilled surface. Before she could catch it back into her lungs, his mouth settled with such savage hunger over hers that she felt as if she was falling into a deep, dark, fiery hot pit. She hadn’t counted on her reaction to him, hadn’t considered that she even
could
fall as deeply under his spell as she had Gideon’s.
She shouldn’t do this, not for any of the reasons that had seemed perfectly sound before, she thought dimly, grasping at the panic that was rapidly vanishing beneath the flames as the last stronghold.
It winked out as Jerico filled his need to explore her mouth and moved on to fresh territory, scouring her flesh with the heat of his mouth and the rough caress of his tongue. She was already aching with need before he reached her breasts. The moment he sucked one turgid tip into his mouth, she inhaled a harsh gasp and nearly passed out at the heated, weakening pleasure that engulfed her.
She was shameless, she thought a little wildly, groaning at the fire that collected in her belly as he traced a path from the breast he’d been tormenting with his tongue and plucked at its twin, because she realized in that moment that she
wouldn’t
have felt anything she was feeling if she hadn’t wanted Jerico as much as she had Gideon.
She didn’t
feel
shameless, even though she thought she should.
She felt … desperate with need, feverish with it, burning up with it as he traced a path from her breasts downward across her belly. Her flesh quivered beneath his open mouthed kisses. The muscles along her channel contracted, as well. Moist heat flooded her nether regions. Pushing her legs apart as he knelt before her, he parted her nether lips with his thumb and forefinger and sucked her clit into his mouth as he had her nipples.
“Jerico!” she gasped, catching his head, trying to thrust him away. He caught her wrists, holding them while he continued to lap and suck at her until she felt as if her knees would give out and she was gasping hoarsely with every breath as if she was dying.
She was going to come if he didn’t stop. She wanted to. It beckoned her seductively, tempting her to yield to the quivers radiating through her sex. She resisted, fought it with every ounce of willpower she could muster.
Clamping her hands on his shoulders, she pulled at him. “Now!” she demanded breathlessly. “Jerico!”
He straightened abruptly, covering her mouth again as he caught her buttocks and shifted her up the wall. She looped her legs around his waist as he lifted her, locking her ankles together. Guiding his cock into the mouth of her sex, he allowed her to slip downward, engulfing him. She groaned with a mixture of frustration and pleasure as her body fought his girth. He pressed her more tightly against the wall and thrust again, sheathing his member more deeply, driving her wild with the need to feel him fully inside of her. With his third thrust, he sank home, burying himself so deeply inside of her she cried out, biting down on his shoulder as she fought to keep from coming instantly.
It was a losing battle. As soon as he shifted her and began driving into her, she came with screaming intensity, gasping and shuddering at the hard quakes that went through her. He uttered a long, low growl as her body fisted around his sex, milking him.
Gasping, still shuddering with his own release, he leaned heavily against her for several moments and finally pulled his cock from her, allowing her to slide down the wall until her feet touched the floor. They sagged weakly against one another while they struggled to catch their breath.
He settled a hand along her cheek. Hooking his thumb beneath her chin and tipping her face up to his, he searched her eyes worriedly. “I did not hurt you?” he asked gruffly.
Bronte felt her throat close. His emerald gaze was earnest. She didn’t know why it seemed to matter to him, if he was more concerned that he might have hurt her because he had been ordered not to, or if he was genuinely concerned about her. It didn’t matter at the moment. The only thing that did matter was he seemed to care.
She shook head, unable to find her voice, drowning in guilt.
He’d defended her before, tried to knock Gabriel’s head off because he thought Gabriel had made her cry.
Why hadn’t she thought about that when she had been so busy working herself up to hate them back because she knew they hated what she was?
She averted her gaze. “How could you want me when you hate humans so much?”
He said nothing for several moments. “We do not hate humans. They hate us. They have hunted and killed us for years,” he said finally. “From the moment they realized that we were no longer theirs to control, puppets, they began to fear and, when they began to fear, they began to hate.”
She glanced up at him in disbelief. “You gave a good impression of it.”
He smiled faintly, stroking his fingers along her cheek. “Not just now.”
She shivered at the memory. Frowning, he reached to turn the water off and then drew her from the bathing cubicle and handed her a cloth to dry off with. She frowned thoughtfully as she patted the water from her skin and rubbed as much as she could from her hair.
“It was not much of a bath,” he commented wryly. “No soap.”
Bronte bit her lip, feeling another twinge of guilt. She couldn’t think of any way to ask him if he thought Gideon would be angry with him about having sex with her, though. He didn’t seem concerned at all, and he knew Gideon far better than she did. She had to wonder if she had been suffering delusions to have thought Gideon would feel the least bit possessive about her.
It occurred to her, with a touch of relief, that she probably had been. Obviously, Gideon’s only concern was being cut off from the only supply of pussy available. If there were no actual feelings involved beyond that, he wouldn’t have any reason to be angry about it.
That left her in the position of being the supplier, though, to keep the peace. She didn’t particular care for that. On the other hand, if satisfying their needs would make her own life less fraught with danger, maybe even make them more inclined to feel kindly toward her on a personal level rather than merely because they were under orders to protect her, it seemed a small price to pay for a little security, particularly when it was no great hardship. They were all very handsome, very desirable, and certainly gifted when it came to pleasuring her.
Maybe, she thought, she had looked at the picture all wrong? She was afraid because she was a captive, and her feelings had been hurt, and she hadn’t been thinking clearly. If it was possible to be on friendly terms with her captors, wasn’t that a lot wiser than being on
un
friendly terms with them?
It wasn’t as if it was going to be any real trial to have sex with them … as long as she had the option of saying no … and she felt that she did. Gideon had seduced her, but he certainly hadn’t forced her. She had set out to seduce Jerico and become the seduced, but despite the way they had watched her almost from the first, none of the three had assaulted her and
taken
what he wanted. It distressed her that they didn’t actually like her, or rather, saw her as an enemy not to be trusted because they knew humans hated and distrusted them, but she didn’t trust them either.
She had to admit, as scary as it was to think in those terms, she was completely at their mercy. Orders or not, they were a long way from their commanding officer. They could have done whatever they pleased … even killed her if they were concerned about her complaining about her treatment and no one would’ve been the wiser.
And if they really hated humans, couldn’t she have expected them to behave that way? After all, they were soldiers. They made no bones about the fact that brutality and discipline were all they had ever known, all they really understood beyond the flip side of that that had been programmed into them … they could kill and fuck with the best—
were
the best, but they didn’t have social skills because they hadn’t been given them, didn’t understand them.
It made her feel a good deal better to think she understood them and the situation she’d found herself in. It made her feel far less threatened to think that she wasn’t completely powerless, that she understood how to behave to protect herself.
Since it was meal time and she was suddenly hungry, had more appetite than she’d felt since she’d been captured, when they’d dressed she led the way as they left the bathroom and crossed the cabin. As he opened the door for her, she tipped her head and smiled at Jerico tentatively. She hadn’t gotten through the doorway, however, when a hand clamped around her arm and she was snatched from the room and shoved roughly to one side.
Stunned, she gaped at Gideon’s set profile as he met Jerico at the door with a fist to the face. The thunderous, meaty thud of a very large body hitting the deck followed, and then a roar of rage and pounding footsteps as Jerico regained his feet and charged, slamming in to Gideon full tilt. Bronte screamed as both men shot through the doorway and landed in the middle of the floor in front of her, skidding several feet on the slick floor before they came to halt. Their hands locked around each other’s throats, they rolled, almost knocking her feet from under her. Uttering another shriek, Bronte leapt over their thrashing legs and looked around wildly for a place to hide. Gabriel, watching the fray from the other side of the galley, leapt over the two men on the floor, landing within a few feet of her and scaring her silly. Before she could decide what his intentions were, he hooked an arm around her waist, swung her through the cabin door, and closed it behind her.
Shaking, covering her ears with her hands to try to block out the crashing noises from the mid-section, Bronte scurried into one corner, more than half expecting the fight to join her as someone slammed against the panel on the other side of the door.
The crashing and growling and grunting of effort, meaty thuds of fists to flesh, and duller thuds when someone swung and missed, connecting with the wall or floor instead, seemed to go on forever and Bronte had begun to worry that they were actually going to kill each other. Finally, though, the fight began to die down to an occasional smack of flying fists or the crash of something being turned over or broken.
And then there was silence.
Chapter Eight
Bronte was afraid to find out what the end result of the fight had been. The longer she sat with her ears pricked trying to figure it out by the little she could hear, though, the more anxious she became to know. Finally, when she thought she heard sounds indicting clean up, she got up and went to listen with her ear against the door panel.