Demonic Attraction (3 page)

The cock pounded her, the tongue in her ass pushing in, deep, deep and then—Anya moaned—flicking—

Her world exploded in a violent wave of light and heat, too many hands and mouths driving her trembling body through it and onto another wild, surging release. She screamed into the mouth covering hers and felt the final judder of his hips, filling her, mixing with her. Slowly, slowly, she came to her senses, rough palms easing over her, soothing her, letting her hands fall to strong shoulders as the kiss slowed, softened and melted through her.

A hard body pressed to her breasts, her belly, another to her spine and the two men wrapped around her, warming her, nuzzling her mouth, her shoulders, neck. Anya sighed, sliding her hands over the lithe perfection of the man who kissed her.

“Would you like us again?”

The voices all sounded eerily similar. Already hard cocks pressed against her belly and backside. Anya, her eyes still tightly shut, bit at his lower lip.
“Really?”

The man at her back, whose fingers teased down her spine and had fresh need curling low in her flesh, smiled against her shoulder.
“With us you are more resilient.”
His fingers dipped between her cheeks, teasing over her hole made ready for him by a too-clever tongue.

Anya bucked, driving her hips against the other waiting cock, which slid through to her pussy in one easy thrust. She released a soundless cry and found her mouth filled with hot tongue. The second cock pushed at her hole, demanding entrance, fingers digging into her hips as he drove hard, deep into her resisting flesh.

The overwhelming fullness danced sparks behind her eyes, the mouth covering hers denying her air. And then they started to move in a perfect, unhurried rhythm that had her heart pounding and fire flaring in her blood. They were right. Too right. She needed them again. She was becoming almost as insatiable as they were.

Soft laughter warmed her damp skin and lips brushed her earlobe. “If we could, we’d stay buried in you, fucking you, loving you, sucking you, licking you…”

The growled words a loud, rasping hot breath over the shell of her ear had her chest tight and her body aching for more of them, for a harder, faster pace, for the orgasm that burned tighter, tighter…until it exploded, surging through her body in a blistering wave of joy. They came as one, grabbing at her, pulsing into her, low, satisfied groans searing aftershocks through her body. His mouth met her need, tangling with hers as she fought her way through the wildness.

It ebbed away and tender fingers brushed her cheek before, with a final soft kiss, the mouth left her. Her head fell forward onto a hard shoulder and she breathed in the now-familiar scent of their warm skin. They all smelled the same too, a hint of spices and the lush scent of great sex.

A fast, insistent beeping broke through ragged breathing and the soft splash of water.

“Your supervisor,”
murmured the man behind her, a smile in his voice.
“I think there’s been another event.”

Chapter Three

Anya couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her. “Damn, missed it. I was in the shower.”

“Thank you, Anya.”
Gentle hands lifted her head and placed a tender kiss on her forehead.
“We want you, need you.”

“Need me?”

But they were fading, easing from her flesh as if they were never there. She willed her eyes open and found herself alone in her shower. Her gut tightened, missing the contact of how they’d held her, soothed her. She turned her face to the warm jets of water and quickly soaped her body clean. Her palms followed the paths rougher hands had taken and little quakes rippled through her flesh.

She smiled and rinsed her hair. Only a few hours and they had her as addicted to them as they seemed to be with her.

She stepped out of the shower, the door rushed shut behind her and she grabbed at towels. Wrapping them tight around her body and hair, she padded into her room. The alarm from the communications console had become more rapid, louder. Anya dried her palm against her hip and activated the device.

“Where the hell—?” Stanton glared at her. “You missed the event because you were
in the shower
?”

“You’re wasted as an administrator. Your powers of deduction—”

“Anya.” The fury lacing her name broke her words. He straightened in his seat and his expression slid into a more professional mask. “I’m sending a team in. Direct transport. Whatever this is, it’s unpredictable and more than one engineer can monitor.”

“What? Wait!”

But Stanton had already cut the connection, the long screen flashing black. Panic bubbled through her. More people meant it would be blatantly obvious that the events were beings screwing her—and quite thoroughly. The shallow thought also twisted that with more choice, her lovers would move on to more interesting flesh.

Warm hands gripped her shoulders and she yelped, hastily shutting her eyes.

“We came here for you, Anya. No one else.”
Warm lips brushed her neck, lightly nipping at sensitive skin. A sigh had her shivering.
“We’d be insane to give you up.”

“What’s your name? What can I call you?”

At her words, the hands faded from her skin, the voice distant as he said,
“Call us Damianos.”

“Damianos.” Anya rolled the word around her tongue and found she liked it.

She willed herself away from the console. Stanton had sent a direct transport—or was about to—and that a small, ultra-high-speed craft held a team of three. Glancing at the time glowing against one of the consoles, she rubbed the towel over her head. 0500. The transport could dock in under four hours. She had to make herself and her platform look presentable. They weren’t packing her off because she was inefficient.

The full gleam of the moon shone into her circular bedroom, and for a moment she allowed its delicate beauty to wash over her. Damianos came from its gray-cratered surface and she would be damned if they dragged her from it.

“Computer, crew manifest.” Now they were practically in her front room, her platform had access to the transport’s data core.

“Nathan Croft, pilot. Doctor Thain Alder, physicist, and Doctor Keve Blayne, xenoarchaeologist.”

The last one caught her breath. They’d been no evidence of alien civilization in the Alpha-Volantis system. Did they now suspect life forms from the energy readings? Had the platform revealed evidence of them with her? Her checks before their arrival had been hurried, only surface level. Nothing had shown, but had her stupid computer system happily rattled off the data to Earth, revealing Damianos’ existence?

Anya forced herself to be calm and she would happily let the arriving crew think it was her two months of isolation that had her so jittery.

The final slow shunt of the transport into the clamps rippled though the platform and Anya shifted her feet to keep her balance. “Docking complete,” murmured the computer.

The clear doors slid back and chilled air prickled against her skin. A door formed in the smooth skin of the ship, flowing back against the hull to reveal a black interior. Anya stood at ease, wanting to give the impression of a calm and slightly bored platform engineer.

“Anya Sigurdson.” A tall, dark man with the flight insignia of a senior pilot strode toward her, meaty hand outstretched. “Nathan Croft.”

His hand, warm, hard, enveloped hers and the physical contact ran shivers under her skin. Croft’s gaze narrowed on her, but she met it with a polite smile. “You made good time, Mr Croft.”

He dropped her hand and glanced back to his ship. “I would’ve been here earlier, but my passengers wanted a little detour.”

“A detour?” Two men stepped down from the transport, both wearing the florid insignia of the Academy under the right shoulders of their black service suits. One man with dark golden hair twitched a smile, the other one darker with a stern face and sharp green eyes fixed his gaze on her. Anya felt his look down to her toes and fought the need to step back, hide from him. Her gaze darted to the name below the insignia. Keve Blayne. Shit. He knew something.

Anya willed herself to speak. “Find anything interesting on your detour?”

“Me, not so much.” Thain Alder held out his hand and a boyish smile curved his mouth. “Keve there,” he nodded back to the man who hadn’t moved out of the shadow of the transport, “may have just made his career.”

“Really?” Anya strained over the word, stopping herself from cringing. “What did you find, Dr Blayne?” She dredged up the role of the put-upon lackey. “My supervisor’s been vid-ing on the hour, wanting updates on the events.”

Thain blinked. “More have occurred?”

“No.” She rushed on. “Well, no I don’t think so. I’ve yet to experience one.”

“Stanton said you were in the shower.”

Keve’s slow, doubting drawl cut through her babble and forced a flush to rise into her cheeks. She swallowed and tried to deny the sudden and unexpected pebbling of her nipples. What the hell…? She reacted to him as quickly as she did to Damianos.

Her stomach hollowed. Was it them? She pulled in a steadying breath and caught no gritty taste of coal in her mouth. Damianos hadn’t decided to put on a show for their guests. Anya turned on her heel, her cheeks flaming at the thought of so many invisible creatures fucking her in front of her colleagues.

She swallowed, her throat tight. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your quarters.” She found control and flashed a smile back over her shoulder. “It’s not the largest platform ever constructed, but there’s just about room for us all.” Keve’s sharp eyes held her and worry skittered down her spine. She had to know what he thought he’d found and if she had a right to worry. “So, Dr Blayne, what did you find?”

He increased his pace to match hers. “On the moon?”

They followed the outer curve of the platform, shields stretching clear over them, giving a vast, open view of the moon they orbited and the deep blackness of space. Anya let her eyes drift over the rugged surface. “Is that where you went?”

“We skimmed the surface, testing for Thain’s energies and found this.” He swung around the bag strapped to his back and yanked open the clips. He pulled out a small silver pyramid, still gritty with gray moon dust. It sat on his palm, catching light from the glow bands pressed into the metal walls of the corridor. Tiny pictographs covered its surface. Keve held up a finger. A slight tremor shook it before he pressed the tip against its apex. The soft hum threaded through the drum of their boots against the metal floor, the tips of the pyramid hinged back and a swirl of glowing light gushed from its interior.

Anya blinked. “What is it?”

Keve pinched the hinges back into place, sealing the pyramid and the curve of the corridor seemed suddenly dull, lifeless. “From what I’ve been able to decipher, it’s a repository.”

“For what?”

A smile pulled at his mouth and Anya’s stomach hollowed. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

Fuck
. Anya leaned over and peered at the pyramid, the tiny writing teasing her senses. “My guess? Very,
very
small aliens.”

“Small?”

Her gaze flicked up to his and a dark shadow passed through his eyes. Anya shivered and increased her pace, pulling away from her sudden closeness to Keve. The man unnerved her. “Here we are,” she declared, slapping her palm against the door plate. Metal doors clanked, grated and slid back into the walls. “Basic staff quarters.” Anya took steps back away from the three men. “I’m sure you’ve all been on a platform before so…enjoy.”

Anya strode away, feeling the stiffness in her back, her odd gait, and hoping they weren’t watching her escape. Especially Keve Blayne. How the hell could he find that tiny pyramid on the vast expanse of a cratered moon, decipher some of it, and seem to…know…about Damianos?

She slammed her palm against her office door and strode inside. The clear door slid shut behind her. Anya flopped into her deep chair and for the first time in two months hated the fact that her workspace had completely transparent walls. The beauty of open space curved over one half, but the other half stood open to the interior of the platform. If she tilted her head to the left, the door to the staff quarters glared at her.

Irritated, Anya swung her chair away to stare at the curve of the moon.

The night before, she would’ve been overjoyed to have people—men—join her on her back-of-beyond science platform. But now they, and especially Keve, threatened her. She’d lied to her supervisor, hidden a new life form, hell, she’d had sex with several of them and that would make her a very interesting experiment to another set of lab rats back on Earth.

She shivered. No. That couldn’t happen.

Focus on her work, pretend the men didn’t exist. That had to be her plan. She’d realigned the array that morning as instructed, so she scrolled up her worksheet. Time for her to lose herself in the platform’s biomass filtration chambers. Three extra breathers would be a strain. A smile pulled at her mouth. Nice place to hide out for the afternoon.

“Anya…”

Or not. She fixed a smile on her face and sat back into the padded comfort of her chair. Her gaze remained steady on the man standing in her open doorway, but her gut twisted. Something about him had alarms droning and she couldn’t explain it. He was a tall, lean, she would even admit, very attractive man. Keve had been polite, professional and she had the uncomfortable feeling she was projecting her nervousness onto him. She straightened and her smile eased into something more natural. “How can I help you, Dr. Blayne?”

“Keve.” And the smooth, easy way he said his name had her crossing her legs.

Who the hell was this man? “Keve,” she repeated.

“I’ve been sent on a mission,” he said, his expression serious.

Anya’s heart clenched before she caught the amused glint in his dark eyes. She fought down the urge to thump him. “Your mission?”

“Lunch.” A smile twitched across his lush mouth. “Stanton had us dragged from our beds and thrown onto the transport with a mug of coffee and the promise of food here.” He ran a hand over his dark hair. “And the others voted me as spokesman.”

Her smile grew. Yes, she had to have imagined her earlier suspicion about the man. “Am I so terrifying?”

“Maybe?” He stepped back as she pushed herself to her feet and matched her pace as she walked back to the staff quarters. “Though maybe it’s more the rumor getting back of our scrounging. Transports are supposed to arrive with supplies.”

“You think I’ll ruin your reputation? That other platforms will refuse docking?”

“All we have is our reputation…”

Anya bit back a smile and palmed open the door to the quarters. Too little sleep stretched her nerves and she was relieved to know Keve wasn’t the danger she first thought. That had her grinning at Nathan and Thain as they looked up from storing their gear in the narrow lockers lining one wall of the cramped space. “Lunch?”

Thain let out a relieved breath and his tight shoulders dropped. They
had
been worried. The Academy gave her finite supplies, after all. “If it’s not too much trouble?”

“That door through there,” she said, pointing to the lighter panel behind them. “A small refectory.”

Nathan palmed it and the door rolled back, the metal following the curve of the room. “After you, Anya,” he said, standing back.

She led the way down the stairs into the circular room, bubbled in a clear shield. Tables bolted to the metal platform set into the floor. The small kitchen unit stretched out behind the stairs, leaving the view free of deep space and the shallow curve of the moon and its distant planet. Anya dialed up her usual spiced vegetable soup and waited while the tech hummed. Biomatter from her filtration chambers fed a fair proportion of her diet, but with three men on her orbiting platform, it would put a strain on her supplies and her air.

A soft beep and a hatch shot back. The bowl of steaming soup and soft bread filled the room with the warm scent of vegetables. Anya grabbed her tray and pushed herself onto the bench ringing the table. Breaking the bread, she dipped a piece into the thick soup.

“So you missed these events?” Thain sat next to her with one of the three choices of stew. He picked out a too-square lump of meat with a fork, examining it before he ate. He chewed thoughtfully and waved his fork at her. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The energy signatures, they seemed almost…” He blushed and looked back to his plate. Yes, if he voiced anything close to the truth, the Academy would probably have his doctorate. Crackpots could theorize energy-based life forms, but for a respected scientist to openly admit it… It could cost him his job. “They seemed very interesting.”

Keve didn’t seem to hold Thain’s reservations. “This is a container for something living.” He planted the pyramid in the center of the clear tabletop and sat to Anya’s right. With a light press of his fingertip, the apex opened and a soft glow shrouded the peak.

Anya shifted on her bench. Through the rich scents of food, the distinctive and bitter taste of coal itched against her tongue. The scent connected the device to Damianos. Keve called it a repository. Did they need it to exist? Her stomach twisted and the bread tasted sour in her mouth as another thought hit her. Or was it their prison?

“Anya… Did we feel like felons to you?”

She almost choked and fought to chew the bread still in her mouth.
“Not fair.”

“We never promised to be fair. We promised to fuck you. Would now be good?”

“Anya?” Nathan’s dark eyes narrowed on her and the flush deepened in her cheeks. He sounded genuinely concerned. “You all right?”

She chewed and swallowed, her gut tight at the thought of her lovers’ hands sliding over her body and her being unable to resist them. She hadn’t missed the smirk that came with Damianos’ words. They might not be criminals, but they were evil. Silent male laughter skittered down her spine. “Went down the wrong way.”

Anya focused on her soup, stirring her spoon through and over the thick chunks of vegetable. Her heart pounded and—damn them to whatever dimension of hell they called home—her pussy ached. “So…” She drew in a calming breath and kept her voice light. “What’s the plan?” She glanced at Thain and forced herself to smile. “I stay out of your way and you sit on the array waiting for another event?”

“They’re not regular. We’ve measured them at roughly every three hours. Though the last two came really close together.”

Keve snorted. “You can’t say it, Thain, but I can. They’re life forms and they’re trying to make contact with us through this array.”

Nathan snorted and jabbed his fork at the xenoarchaeologist. “I’ve piloted for the Academy for ten years and I’ve seen weird phenomena.” He smirked and stabbed his fork into layered pasta. “Far too much. But nothing that could have the director dropping me into an ice tube for serious mental reconditioning.”