She slid her legs off his shoulders and looked down at the bulge in his trousers. Feeling bold, she ran her tongue along her lips and said, “You’re next.”
His chest expanded, and his eyes flared with even more desire.
Cortez stiffened behind her. Would he object? She reached back and found his cock through his pants, squeezing him and meeting his gaze over her shoulder, trying to impart that she wanted to be fair, that Jerick seemed to need this, needed to be loved even more than he did.
Cortez loosened his grip, letting her drop to the deck, but putting his shirt down for her so her knees wouldn’t be cold. Jerick stood, tugging off his orange pants so quickly, he tipped against the counter.
“Don’t knock any grenades on the floor, Mr. Agile,” Cortez said.
Jerick must have been too intent on Skylar's offer to respond. Maybe he didn’t even hear. As soon as he was naked, he stood before her, his erect penis mere inches from her face.
She smiled, admiring his powerful body as she grasped him, running her hand along his length. He watched her, his eyes ravenous, but that hint of appreciation, of caring, lingered behind his hunger, and she found herself aching to give him some pleasure, to make his life better, if only for a few minutes.
She slid her tongue out, tasting him with teasing slowness, and his enthused groan sent a tingle through her, her own core tightening again. After she sated Jerick, she would let Cortez have his turn. The thought of him taking her, thrusting deep into her, made her even more excited. She could feel him behind her, close enough for the heat of his body to be palpable, and knew he was still hard, probably flexing every muscle in his body as he watched her licking Jerick’s cock.
She glanced back, wanting to see, needing to know he was interested. She looked right at his big hard penis. He’d also stripped naked, waiting his turn right behind her. For a moment, she was tempted to grip him, too, one man in each hand, and alternate sucking on them. But she didn’t want to make their torment last longer. And Jerick had been so thorough and amazing with his tongue. She wanted to reward him.
She turned back to him, eliciting a groan as she wrapped her hand around his base and drew him into her mouth.
Strong fingers gripped her shoulders from behind, and she thought Cortez might have run out of patience, that he would insist she turn back to him. But he’d knelt too. His chest warmed her back as he rubbed his face against the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her shampoo, or of her.
Fresh, hot excitement coursed through her at this interested nuzzling. His hands slid from her shoulders around to her chest, cupping her breasts even as she slid Jerick in and out of her mouth, sucking him, laving him with her tongue, breathing in his heady scent.
He clearly enjoyed it, his hips pushing toward her now, his entire body trembling. But she was hyper aware of Cortez’s body, too, of his chest pressing against her back. He found her ear again, licking and nibbling, hardly seeming to care that his face was close to Jerick’s cock. Having him against her back and Jerick in front of her made her ache with desire all over again.
“I need you,” Cortez whispered, his voice hoarse.
His hands slid from her breasts to her hips, his calloused fingers stirring such fiery sensations within her, and she realized what he had in mind. She rose on her knees, spreading her legs, throbbing in anticipation.
He stroked her as he positioned himself behind her, fingers sliding around to brush her clit, rubbing the mouth of her passage. His touch sent blasts of pleasure through her as he checked to see if she was ready for him. She’d never been so ready in her life. The idea of him plunging into her at the same time as she sucked on Jerick roused primal lust and desire within her such as she’d never known.
Cortez kept stroking her with his fingers as he touched the tip of his shaft to her passage. She arched back, eagerly opening for him even as she drew Jerick more fully into her mouth. He groaned, his fingers threading through her hair, rubbing her scalp, his hard cock throbbing against her tongue.
“Skylar,” Jerick whispered. “I waited so long for… for you.”
She took him in and out, deeper, longing to give Jerick pleasure after he’d had nothing but loneliness for years, but enjoying her own pleasure, too, as Cortez eased into her, slowly, deliciously. With their hands and thick shafts all around her, sensation streaked through her from all directions. Cortez drew back, and even though she knew he would come again, the idea of him leaving her had her thrusting back toward him. He came in swiftly the second time, whispering her name, teasing her clit with his fingers as his cock rubbed deep within her.
She trembled, struggling to keep her focus on Jerick. He was breathing heavily, hips twitching as she sucked at him, and she knew he wasn’t far from coming. She stroked him with her hand as she sucked him with her mouth, though her own breaths were coming quickly now as she shifted and pushed, matching Cortez’s rhythm. His pace grew quicker, the expert strokes of his fingers faster.
He rumbled a need-filled, “Skylar” from behind her as Jerick panted the same from above. Hearing her name from both their mouths thrilled her and made her body pound for them. She rocked back into Cortez as Jerick rocked into her, their motions perfectly in sync.
Jerick touched her head and started to turn his hips away, but she tightened her grip, demanding he stay right where he was, that he come inside of her, just as Cortez would. He groaned and did as she asked. He was magnificent as his release came, his powerful chest and the corded muscles of his arms gleaming with sweat as he stood above her. He looked down at her, the air charged as their eyes met, and she welcomed him eagerly as he poured himself into her.
Then she bent her head and curled a hand behind his calf as Cortez’s pace grew frenzied. She rocked back, her core throbbing as she neared her own release. He came first, his hands shifting to her hips, clasping her, claiming her, as he drove into her for a final time. She enjoyed the fullness of his cock deep within her, but she’d already been sated once and needed more. She pulled his hand back to her groin, silently begging him to keep touching her.
Jerick chuckled and dropped to his knees before her. “Demanding, isn’t she?”
“She’s amazing,” Cortez growled, kissing the side of her neck. His fingers slipped into her again, and she leaned into him, dropping her head back, spreading herself so he could touch her everywhere.
“Not disagreeing there.” Jerick kissed her on the mouth, his lips full of gratitude and contentment and emotions he might never speak of with words.
It excited her to know he felt that way, and she pushed into Cortez’s fingers as she wrapped her hand around the back of Jerick’s neck, returning his kiss. She was so close that she couldn’t keep hers from being demanding and full of need. He chuckled and cupped her breast, then broke the kiss, but only so he could bend lower and take her breast in his mouth. He laved her nipple with his tongue, then sucked it as she’d sucked him. Cortez’s fingers found the perfect spot between her legs, and an explosion of sensation came from all sides, her body tightening and then releasing with such fierce pleasure that she couldn’t keep from gasping and crying out.
Then she collapsed between them, supported on all sides, their gentle hands a contrast to the hard masculinity of their bodies. She turned her face to find Cortez’s close to hers, and she reached up to kiss him, wanting to let him know that she’d appreciated him even though he’d been behind her. At the same time, she stroked Jerick’s chest, basking in having their arms around her. In having both of them.
“You want more, Skylar?” Jerick asked, rubbing the inside of her thigh, and eyeing her naked body suggestively.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, her mouth parting from Cortez’s only for a moment. “You called me demanding.”
“I like demanding women. Cortez does too.”
“Yeah, I do.” Cortez trailed his fingers across her belly, and her core tightened again, greedily wanting those fingers to drift lower once more.
“How much time do we have?” she asked.
“Enough.”
14
“I wonder if I’d get a medal if I crashed this shuttle spectacularly into an asteroid,” Keiko, their recalcitrant pilot, announced.
Cortez stood behind her, doing his best to loom intimidatingly lest she actually consider it.
Jerick, who sat in the co-pilot’s seat with his bare feet propped up on the control panel, appeared far less intimidating. He’d stashed all his weapons and planned to address Captain Falconer in his basic bare-chested prisoner outfit when the inevitable comm call came in. They had just cleared the shuttle bay of the asteroid, and Cortez expected the warship’s commander would have their craft scanned and contemplate it thoughtfully for several minutes before reaching out.
“I suspect it would be a posthumous medal,” Cortez said.
“Definitely,” Jerick agreed. “You don’t walk away from mangling a shuttle against the side of an asteroid. Do your parents have a nice fireplace mantel they can hang your medal from and admire it while thinking nostalgic thoughts of you?”
Cortez frowned at him and made a cutting motion with his hand. Even though Keiko had made it clear she would never help them willingly, especially after being tied up in sickbay for hours, he didn’t want to see her goaded. She truly might start thinking she needed to do something heroic and suicidal to slay the evil cyborgs that had apprehended her.
“My parents are dead,” Keiko said flatly.
“No husband or kids?” Jerick asked.
“No.”
“You definitely shouldn’t go kamikaze then. Not if there’s nobody with a fireplace mantel to hold your medal.”
“Jerick,” Cortez said, putting a clear warning in his voice since Jerick apparently hadn’t noticed the subtler warning.
“I don’t know why you doorknobs think this is going to work.” Keiko glanced back, past Cortez and past Skylar—she sat in a seat behind Jerick—to where Cortez’s strike team stood.
Some of them wore battered combat armor they had taken from the fleet soldiers they’d captured, and others wore the same black guard uniforms from the original ride out to the asteroid. Some were prisoners his team had let out of their cells and still wore their original orange pajamas. Everybody was armed with stunners and rifles, weapons scrounged from around the prison facility.
Only those in armor had independent oxygen supplies, so Cortez couldn’t, unfortunately, just run out into the shuttle bay, flinging sleeping gas. Not that he expected that to work. Jerick had mentioned the idea, but Cortez suspected Falconer would send armored men down to the bay to take him prisoner and search the shuttle.
“They’re going to know you’re coming,” Keiko added. “They’ll scan the shuttle and see that there are hundreds of cyborgs stuffed into it.”
“Dozens, merely,” Cortez murmured. Only eighteen, technically. “And Tek Tek put in a few modifications to make those scans less effective.”
Keiko leaned to the side to look at where Tek Tek lay on the floor, his head on a pack, his mouth open as he snored. She grunted and turned back to the control panel.
She had been imprisoned, either in a cell or sickbay most of the time, and she had no idea how much work Tek Tek had done. It was no wonder he was exhausted. Cortez wished he had the power to put in a recommendation for a medal for his old lieutenant. Alas, the vacuum-repair shop where Tek Tek worked—had worked—didn’t likely award medals to its employees.
Skylar noticed him looking back and met his gaze. A zing of awareness went through Cortez, and his body tightened as he thought of their all-too-brief time together.
He had been careful not to give her some gooey-eyed lover’s look, not with Keiko close enough to observe, and not with all of his men looking on, but he longed to stand next to her instead of by the pilot, to wrap an arm around her and pull her close.
She had tried to volunteer again to be the one to talk to Falconer, to play the role of escaped captive. Cortez had no idea what he’d done to engender such loyalty from her—well, he’d certainly tried to make their evening together memorable—but it touched him. Now more than ever, he felt he didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve loyalty or anyone who would smile at him and make the future something he looked forward to visiting. When he’d come on this mission, he’d believed he was making a tremendous sacrifice, that he would either die doing this or he would head off on a self-imposed exile from which he could never return. But the idea of having Skylar at his side along with Jerick made it seem like they were flying off into adventure and to start a new life together, rather than going into exile.
Cortez shifted his gaze to Jerick and found him looking back at him and at Skylar. She smiled, he smiled, and Cortez wagered they were all thinking of the future. Or of sex. Or both.
Keiko stirred, grumbling something, and Cortez forced himself to look away.
The shuttle cleared the asteroid base and followed its rocky surface until the Black Star came into view. An ache that Cortez thought he had forgotten returned to him as he saw his old ship and knew it was no longer his.
After the war, he had been invited to stay in the fleet, almost begged to do so, but he’d been so eager to leave the army—leave the death and killing and deprivation—and return to his old life that he hadn’t even considered it. It hadn’t been until later when he’d felt something had been missing from his life that he’d realized how much the ship and his crew had meant to him.
A light on the comm came on. Keiko eyed it sidelong and tapped a finger on the panel, as if she was thinking of answering it and shouting a warning.
Cortez rested a hand on her shoulder, a gentle reminder that he was there, that he would stop her. He hated to be a bully. Maybe he should have had one of the men handle piloting the shuttle—most of them could fly it through open space. But landing in a shuttle bay would be another matter.
Keiko shrugged, as if she could shrug off his hand. “All right, my thugly captors. Who’s taking that call?”
“I believe it’s for me.” Jerick leaned forward. “Looks like we’re on course for the warship. Want to take our pilot for a five-minute break, sir? Buy her a cup of coffee?”
“Yes.” Cortez squeezed Keiko’s shoulder, then stepped back, hoping she would follow of her own accord and that he wouldn’t have to hoist her over his shoulder like a troll kidnapping a fairy-tale princess.
“The coffee this shuttle spits out is abysmal,” Keiko grumbled, but she stood and headed for the back.
The men had already disappeared into the cargo hold and, if this worked, would disappear further into compartments behind false bulkheads that Tek Tek had hastily built.
Only the sleeping Tek Tek remained on the deck—since he was well out of the comm camera’s sight, and he’d stopped snoring, Cortez left him there. He also nodded to Skylar and left her there. She wasn’t supposed to say anything, but Cortez wanted her visible so Falconer knew one of the hostages was aboard this shuttle. Otherwise, it was possible the captain would blow Jerick and the shuttle out of the sky. Cortez had given him the leeway to use her in his story if he thought it necessary, perhaps saying he’d managed to escape with her. He just didn’t want her to have to do anything that might cause her to incriminate herself.
Even though Cortez trusted Jerick, it made him uneasy to walk into the back and leave him more or less in charge. He couldn’t help but wonder if he could have convinced Falconer to take the shuttle aboard by pretending to give in, the scenario he’d originally imagined. Probably not.
Sighing, he made sure the doors to the other compartments were closed—in particular, he didn’t want Keiko hearing the story—then stepped into the lav. He left his door open so he could listen. He touched the bulge in his pocket, making sure he still had the four vials that he’d kept for himself. They were carefully wrapped so they couldn’t break open by accident.
A few of the men had the clumsily modified grenades, but Skylar, Jerick, and Cortez had split the remaining
twelve vials as they were, insulating them and sticking them in their pockets—or, in Skylar's case, her bra. Cortez didn’t have a plan for them. He’d simply told the others to use them at their discretion if they got the chance, or if they were desperate and felt they had to take a gamble.
“This is Tom Jerick in the shuttle,” Jerick said. “You see anyone on my six, Black Star?”
“Who the hell is Tom Jerick?” came a low voice, spoken not into the mic but to someone else.
If Cortez hadn’t had enhanced hearing, he wouldn’t have caught the question.
“I’m one of Antioch’s unfairly imprisoned prisoners. Can I talk to the captain? I—” Jerick paused, and in a mirror in the lav, Cortez glimpsed him glancing back over his shoulder.
To imply he worried about pursuit, Cortez hoped, not that someone was in the back about to jump out at him. Nerves twisted in Cortez’s gut, and he wondered again if he should have simply done this himself. He trusted Jerick with his life but had doubts about whether he could trust him to do something that required quick thinking and good acting.
“I risked a lot to get this shuttle,” Jerick went on. “I don’t think the prison has weapons mounted on the asteroid, but I’m not positive. He’s got to have realized I got away already, that I’m trying to… Look, who am I talking to? I need to talk to the captain.”
Silent seconds passed. Cortez couldn’t believe Falconer wasn’t standing right behind his comm officer, listening in on this. Why delay? Falconer had to already have all the reports he needed by now. Unless he was waiting for someone to look up Jerick. That was possible.
“This is Captain Falconer,” came a cool voice over the comm. Cortez could imagine the man’s nose with its typical upward tilt. “Former sergeant and current prisoner Jerick, who is that behind you?”
“Doctor Something R-something. She’s a brain-something. Cortez’s men were going to keep her as a hostage, but I saw her and her pilot, and I got them out with me.”
Unchained_ A science fiction romance adventure Page 17