Replicant: The Kithran Regenesis, Book 2

by Dani Worth

  I held up my thumb and finger, keeping them about an inch apart.

  “You look good despite the oily makeup job. Face has filled out a little so you don’t look so sickly.”

  I frowned at him. “I didn’t look sickly before, just sort of…” I trailed off because I couldn’t come up with a description other than sickly.

  “Your hair looks pretty, too.”

  I reached up and patted the hair that had grown faster than it normally would have—probably due to all the extra vitamins I was taking in for the baby. The red strands were finally passing my ears and not sticking out all over my head. “How are they?” I finally asked. He didn’t have to ask who. “Fantastic. They moved back into their pod and have spent an extraordinary amount of time embarrassing everyone as they get lost in exploring their new relationship and Maska’s new body.” Egan grinned. “It’s pretty hot, actually. Kol walked in on them in the control room when they thought everyone was asleep and was so turned on, he kept Lux and me up the rest of the night.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t need to hear all that, thank you very much.” The sensual grin that stretched his lips made me warm, but not as warm as imagining what Maska and Erik had been doing together.

  “Jarana, why won’t you come home? They miss you.”

  “Sounds like they’re doing just fine.” I took a sip of the coffee and grimaced. This station had crappy supply packets for the simulator.

  “I miss you. So do the others.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “I can guarantee Kol doesn’t miss me.”

  “He’s slow to warm up. You’ll grow on him if you give him the time. And trust me, he’s worth knowing.”

  Wanting to tease him, I leered. “You guys ready to take on a fourth already?”

  Chuckling, he shook his head, amber eyes sparkling even over the hazy VR screen image. The debris fields around Kithra wreaked havoc with the satellite feeds. “The three of us make a perfect bond—we won’t be adding to our family. But we can always use our friend.”

  My heart ached, and I looked away from the screen for a minute to catch my breath. I fiercely wanted to go home, wanted to have my little one there, wanted to curl up with Maska and Erik every single damned night. Clearing my throat, I hoped he’d attribute the huskiness of my voice to the bad connection. “Think I’ve done enough to those men.”

  “We don’t.”

  I nearly fell out of my chair when the voice came from behind me. I turned to find my imagination had finally tripped a switch and escaped my body. Maska, looking fine in Earth jeans and a brown sweater, stood just inside the doorway to my cargo hold. Erik stepped up behind him, his blond hair longer than it had been two months ago, strands falling into his eyes.

  Looking back at Egan, I caught the huge, naughty smile on his face and shook my head. “Lux isn’t even there, is she?”

  “No, she’s there. With Kol, too. It was his turn to take the trip with her.”

  I craned my neck to see around the two big men taking up serious space on the tiny craft.

  “She and Kol are still on the ship.” Erik stepped around Maska, curling his lip at the lack of space when his shoulder bumped into a support beam. “Bye Egan.” He reached down and flipped off the screen.

  Shock held me still and silent, my fingers feeling bloodless as I stopped the urge to put them over my stomach to hide the small difference they might pick up.

  Erik reached down and slid his hands under my arms so he could yank me from the chair. He pulled me tight to his chest and buried his face in my neck. “I can’t believe you left us like that,” he whispered.

  I started to shake and couldn’t stop no matter how hard I tried. Nor could I stop from squeezing his neck and wrapping my legs around his waist. I stared at Maska over his shoulder.

  Those violet eyes hadn’t left me, but they moved over my hair and he smiled. “Your hair is going to be stunning when it’s fully grown back. It’s the color of ripe gorvo fruit.”

  “Red as blood, as one of my fathers used to say.”

  He tilted his head, his long black braid swinging softly over his chest. “So you can talk about them now?”

  I nodded and Erik hugged me closer. His arms were like vises, and I had the feeling he didn’t plan to let go until he got me back to Kithra. That had to be what they were doing here. “You guys want me to come back?”

  “We didn’t want you to leave,” Erik breathed into my neck.

  I rubbed my cheek over the soft blond hair, probably leaving nice oily streaks, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. “It took some convincing to get Maska’s pardon.”

  Maska frowned and tried to pry me out of Erik’s arms, but Erik only let one go so he could pull Maska into the hug. “It took more than convincing. Lux told me you paid them to let me go.” He wrapped himself around my back, solid, warm and so damned welcome.

  Squeezing my eyes tight to stop the stupid tears filling them, I tried to think of excuses not to go back. I’d thought they didn’t need me, but Maska with that empathic spill of emotion told me the opposite, and Erik hadn’t let an inch of space come between his body and mine yet.

  When the masculine body behind me went stiff, I held my breath.

  “There is another’s emotions here.” Maska stepped back. He looked around the room, spotted the purple teddy bear and walked to pick it up.

  Erik set me on my feet, staring down at me as understanding flooded his expression.

  I bit my lip. “We should talk.”

  Frowning, Erik stopped me from moving with a hand on my arm. He moved his gaze down to my belly. “Are you pregnant?”

  “She is.” Maska, bear dangling from one hand, came back and slid his free hand under my sweatshirt, stretching his fingers over the bare skin of my stomach. “There’s a life in there. A strong, beating heart…a sense of warmth and comfort.”

  “You weren’t going to tell us.” Erik didn’t phrase the statement as a question. Face pale, he moved away from me and sat on the bench.

  Maska hadn’t moved his hand. “She.”

  “It’s a girl?” I whispered. “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “She has a lot of emotions, though they aren’t formed the way yours and mine are. All she knows is comfort and small bits of whatever you’re feeling.” He stared at me with dark eyes. “Right now, that’s fear and so much regret.” He slid his hands into the short hair over my ears, cupped my head and put his full lips on mine. “Is that regret for me?”

  Holding my breath, I clutched handfuls of his sweater in my fists. His taste tingled on my lips and I licked them, breathed in his scent. “You spent five years on Bastilleen. I saw the carving on your back, I—” I broke off and sucked a shaky breath into my pain-filled lungs. “That place is the kind of hell no innocent should experience, especially not one who feels as strongly as you do.”

  “And what am I feeling now?” he whispered, kissing me again.

  He let his emotions wash over me and I gasped. “Love. You’re feeling love.” I gazed at him, eyes so wide they hurt. “But how can you love me? You don’t know me, not the real me.”

  “Do you know the real you?”

  I looked around him to find Erik watching us, his expression unreadable. “No, not anymore. Honestly?” I stepped away from him so I could see them both, but I kept going until my back was to a wall. “I honestly can’t tell you who I am or what I want. Everything was taken from me, and to deal with it, I shut down for so long, I’m terrified I won’t find myself again. I don’t know what to do or where to go, and my emotions are wrecked. I can be smiling and crying at the same time.”

  “You’re trying to warn us off.” Erik stood and walked to Maska, touched his shoulder before moving toward me. “You’re saying what…that you’re an emotional wreck and we shouldn’t want you?”

  “Yes, I think that’s what I’m saying.”

  “We do.” He touched my cheek. “We would have been here sooner if you hadn’t covered your tracks so well. And no
w that we found you, we aren’t letting you go.” He lightly touched the material over my stomach.

  “I didn’t mean to get pregnant,” I said softly. “I’m still not sure I understand how it happened. Gwinarians don’t conceive unless they open themselves up to that—unless they are deeply attached and have made a permanent commitment.”

  He grinned. “Then you did?”

  The tension eased. I rolled my eyes then grinned back. “Yeah, guess I did.”

  Rustling noises sounded behind Erik, and we both turned to find Maska pulling off his clothes. “There is one sure way to convince her to come home with us.” As that long, elegant torso was revealed, I felt my heart pick up. I watched Erik’s chest move faster as his breath followed. Maska stepped out of his shoes and pushed his pants down, stepping gracefully out of them before standing tall, proud and wonderfully aroused.

  Erik gasped and I couldn’t stop the blinding joy that spilled into my mind. He fully loved his Maska, male, female—he didn’t care. I pulled my sweatshirt over my head and dropped it to the floor. Then I laughed. “We can’t do anything in here.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Erik stepped back so he could turn and look at me even as he held out his hand to Maska. “Oh,” he breathed, using his free hand to stroke my breast, to lightly touch nipples that were darker with the pregnancy. He caressed my breast, cupped it. “You’ve put on a little weight and it suits you. So much.” He bent, opened his mouth over my nipple and sucked it into the warm cavern of his mouth.

  I closed my eyes, speared my fingers into his soft hair and cradled him to my breast.

  “You look beautiful.” Maska touched my other breast. “But where is the bed in this crazy small place?”

  “It’s not big enough for all of us.”

  “We’ll make do.” He took my hand and wrapped my fingers around his cock. “I want to be inside you. Now. And I don’t want to be on this floor.”

  Grinning, I led them out of the cargo hold and down one short passage to my bunk room. I hadn’t done anything to it other than cover the bed with sheets and a thin blanket. “They call this bunk a full size.”

  “It’s a lie,” he said, frowning at the bed that took up the entire small, square, bland space.

  I thought about the nights I tried to sleep in here, ones I mostly spent staring at the wall and counting so I didn’t replay the last hours I’d spent with Maska and Erik.

  In the next instant, I wasn’t thinking beyond anything but hanging on to the sensations as both men worked to get me naked. Erik laid me on the bed, and Maska was there to unbutton his shirt and pull it off his arms. He wrapped arms around Erik as Erik touched Maska…everywhere.

  He’d certainly gotten past his hesitation with the man, stroking big hands down Maska’s back to cup his ass. They moved against each other, grinding groins, mouths open in hot, carnal kisses that had my core flooding, my limbs moving restlessly on the bed. The two months since I’d been with them suddenly felt like a year. Watching them was glorious, and I knew I’d spend the rest of my life enjoying the view. But I wanted them with me on this bed, and the small moan of frustration escaped my mouth before I could swallow it back.

  Glittering eyes, dark and light, turned to me. Erik kept stroking Maska’s body even as his gaze moved over me.

  Every nerve zinged with need, and I spread my legs and slid my fingers through wet folds, stroking the pad of my middle finger over my clit. My eyes were on Erik’s hand on Maska’s cock. This was obviously something they’d been practicing, because Erik’s sure grip moved in ways that had Maska breathing hard, had him making these sexy, small and masculine grunts. His violet gaze locked onto my fingers, and his nostrils flared as if he could smell my desire.

  Erik let go and they crawled onto the bed. It dipped on one side, and laughter broke the tension suddenly as both men scrambled to the middle with me before they hit the floor. Somehow, Erik’s dick wound up near my mouth and I realized I’d never tasted him. I didn’t know his flavor even as the memory of Maska’s still burned strong on my tongue. I reached out to grasp Erik’s cock and he went still. “I don’t know how this will work on this bed.”

  “Get on your back,” Maska told him. “Let her show you what she can do with that lovely mouth of hers.”

  Erik stretched out and held his arms to me, his wicked grin making my insides gooey, and knowing exactly what Maska wanted, I knelt between Erik’s knees, bent to his dick and put my ass in the air. The long groan behind me let me know I’d been right.

  “Two months I craved the sight of your body. Two damn months.” Maska rubbed both hands over the cheeks of my butt, slid his fingers under, then up inside me. I gasped and pushed back to take them deeper.

  Erik sat and pulled me up to his mouth. I opened my lips and let him inside. His tongue slid into my mouth as Maska’s fingers glided into my body. Overwhelmed by sensations, I wondered how they stayed inside me, how they didn’t burst in the room in a kaleidoscope of color. Erik stroked my tongue, kissing me, telling me without words that the two months had been hard on him too. There was a desperation to him, a fear that I felt.

  Maska felt it too. He pulled his fingers from me and stroked both hands up Erik’s legs. I heard the rasp of palms over hair, loved the moan that slipped into my mouth. I pulled back and looked at Erik, let my feelings pour from my eyes, hoping he understood that I had left them for my own reasons. “You both are perfect,” I whispered. “I had to leave to come to terms with everything. It was so much to take in while on Kithra.”

  “Where you lost your family,” he whispered back, nodding. He stroked my cheeks, touched his fingers to my wet lips. “Can you come back and make a new family there?”

  “What if I can’t?” I was scared. Of course I was still scared.

  “Then we’ll stay with you. Here.” He kissed me.

  “Not here,” Maska grumbled as he came up on the bed and grasped my hips in his big hands. “This planet sucks. And we’ll have to find a much bigger ship with a decent bed and one of those big tubs, because I like both of you wet.” He slid his dick inside me with one long, deep thrust.

  Sucking in a breath, gaze locked with Erik’s beautiful blue eyes, I tried to remember what we were talking about and Erik grinned, knowing full well why I’d lost my train of thought. I pushed his chest until he lay back, and Maska pulled my hips to him, my body moving back enough so I could bend over Erik’s cock. I lifted him to my mouth, finding him as satiny and hard as Maska, and stuck out my tongue to taste. Heady, feminine power filled me when his eyes closed and his mouth fell open. I gave him one long, firm lick before sucking him down to the root. Took me a few tries, but when I was able to find Maska’s rhythm, Erik started releasing noises that spurred me on.

  I missed that big bed on Kithra for an instant before all coherent thought fled my mind and I focused only on the pleasure of them. The hoarse whispers of love as Maska leaned over my back and asked me to never leave them again.

  I pulled off Erik to turn my head and meet Maska’s mouth. “I won’t. I promise.”

  Erik shouted and shot all over his belly and my hand as my tongue met Maska’s.

  “You taste of him,” he whispered into my mouth. “I love that taste.” He slowed his movements, one hand braced beside me so he could explore the blended flavors of me and Erik. Groaning, his lips slid down my chin, over the side of my neck and to my back so he could get a better angle as he pushed into me faster and faster.

  Erik sat up and reached under us to stroke my clit, and I came hard and fast along with Maska. I gasped, fell over Erik’s body and tried to get my breath back even as I couldn’t wait to speak.

  “We are so going home. This bed is ridiculous, and I want our daughter growing up on Kithran food.”

  Erik clasped me to him as Maska crawled beside him. I draped one arm over the Replicant. “I miss the sky, miss the trees, the leetos.”

  “The windstorms,” Erik murmured.

  “Maybe she misses Lux
a little.” Maska’s sudden laughter shook the bed. “Egan told me our Jarana slept with Lux when they were in flight school.”

  Erik lifted both eyebrows. “Really?” he breathed. “Oh man, I would have loved to see that.”

  “Don’t get any ideas.” I frowned and propped my chin on my arm on Erik’s chest. Curly blond hair tickled my skin. “I mean it. I want to go home. I will probably have wicked mood swings, will probably be sad sometimes when I think of my sisters and my parents, and I’ll probably fight with Lux.”

  “Yeah, but now that fighting will come with mental images.” Erik waggled his eyebrows.

  “That would make it worth it,” Maska agreed. “Or physical wrestling, after our daughter is born, of course…in mud. I saw women mud wrestling in a vid once.”

  I looked back and forth between my two men. “You’re both picturing it now, aren’t you?”

  Erik wiggled his hip, and I felt the slide of his hard dick against me. “What do you think?”

  I thought I might try and make that fantasy come true for them. I wouldn’t mind a chance to put Lux down, so it would be a bonus on my end.

  Maska touched my hair, ran his fingers through it as he yawned. “He’s getting it up again and I just want to sleep and hold you both. Do you really want to go home?”

  I nodded, turned my face so I could kiss his palm and cradle my cheek against it. “I do.” I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the feel of them against me. Erik’s skin was hot beneath my body, and Maska had lifted one leg to slide it between ours. If I held my breath, I could almost hear the sounds of our hearts beating. I was going to wake to that sound for the rest of my life. “I want to make a life with you both on my home planet. And besides, that’s where Lux lives, and if I’m to make this fantasy you guys share come true, we’ll have to be there.” I winked.

  Maska groaned. “You and Lux in mud with those long limbs of hers and your lush breasts.” He sat up. “I’m not sleepy anymore.”

  Erik turned, kissed Maska, then leaned up to kiss me. “I doubt we sleep at all until Lux and Kol come to take us back to the ship.”