Maryam

by Tracy St. John

  Take me. Use me. Rut me. Fuck me.

  They did, grunt­ing in an­i­mal­is­tic pas­sion, send­ing her to glo­ri­ous heights she never sus­pected ex­isted. Just when she thought she couldn’t be more aroused, that rap­ture had reached its bil­low­ing lim­its and must now ex­plode into cat­a­clysmic re­lease, she found an­other level of eu­phoric lust. It was as if a raven­ing beast had taken life within her, grow­ing ex­po­nen­tially with ev­ery thrust, strain­ing her be­yond pos­si­bil­ity. It fed on the men’s gasp­ing en­ergy, bloat­ing un­til Maryam be­lieved she must ex­plode.

  She stroked Pana’s driv­ing cock with her tongue, en­treat­ing it for more than the oc­ca­sional taste of a di­vine spicy-salty-sweet­ness. She fed des­per­ately on the smooth sex, as rav­en­ous as the mon­strous arousal that drove off all re­straint. She was wan­ton and didn’t care. If Earth’s gov­ern­ment were to con­demn her, then she’d give it rea­son to do so.

  Der­gan moved with ma­chine gun­fire quick­ness, his groin slap­ping against her. The fric­tion of his flesh rub­bing hers had built to an in­ferno, and Maryam cried out. A mini-seizure of grat­i­fi­ca­tion rum­bled through her, but still her body re­fused to det­o­nate. In­stead, ela­tion found an­other notch to rise to, mak­ing her crazy.

  Pana sud­denly spoke be­tween pants. “Com­ing. Oh. I’m com­ing. Com­ing!”

  Thick fluid filled Maryam’s mouth. At the same mo­ment, Der­gan pinched her clit and rubbed, the cal­louses of his fin­ger and thumb rasp­ing against the sen­si­tive nub­bin. She re­flex­ively swal­lowed the seed pour­ing from Pana, then screamed as ec­stasy oblit­er­ated her.

  Pitch­ing tu­mult from within surged; a vi­o­lent throb­bing that hurled her to and fro. A man’s hoarse cry sounded from far away, and a gen­tler pulse joined the mael­strom. Some re­mote part of Maryam’s con­scious­ness re­al­ized Der­gan was com­ing, fill­ing her with his seed. It brought an­other tidal wave of cli­max to toss her into its vi­o­lent depths.

  Even as he strained against her, the Nobek some­how main­tained the pres­ence of mind to stroke her clit, forc­ing spasms from Maryam un­til she was left limp and sob­bing in the af­ter­math.

  While Der­gan drew her shud­der­ing body into the shel­ter of his, Pana hur­ried to the cool­ing unit. He brought back a wa­ter pouch, which he held as she sipped. They mur­mured over her as she slowly re­cov­ered her strength, so­lic­i­tous as her ex had never been.

  When Maryam had re­gained some mea­sure­ment of co­her­ence, Pana gave her a mis­chievous lit­tle-boy grin. “Would you say two is bet­ter than one?”

  “Both in cocks and men?” Der­gan wag­gled his eye­brows, and Maryam laughed. For a de­li­cious brute, he man­aged to pull off silli­ness well.

  “I con­cede the fact.”

  “Now imag­ine three of us wor­ship­ping you at once.”

  Maryam snick­ered but re­fused to an­swer. Okay, so two men and four cocks wasn’t over­do­ing it af­ter all. But surely the three-to-six ra­tio was overkill.

  * * * *

  Der­gan left Pana and Maryam doz­ing, their limbs and sheets tan­gled to­gether. They looked im­pos­si­bly sweet, and he hated to de­part from their warmth, but he needed to shower and re­turn to the ship’s bridge.

  He scrubbed un­der the hot wa­ter spray in the ship’s train­ing area show­ers in a con­tented daze. Be­cause she car­ried the clan’s child, Maryam would be with them for sev­eral more months. He was jus­ti­fied in hop­ing she might stay af­ter­ward. Wasn’t he? Surely Kels couldn’t re­sist the charms of such a woman for long.

  I’m in­fat­u­ated. He chuck­led. His wor­ship­ful thoughts were those of a younger man. He hadn’t been so en­am­ored with any­one since train­ing camp.

  He fin­ished his shower and dressed in a fresh form­suit. He won­dered if Kels’s dis­cern­ing nose would pick up any traces of his li­ai­son with Maryam. He grinned then gri­maced at the thought of how his Dramok would re­act. Would Kels’s shock be worth the anger that would fol­low?

  Prob­a­bly not. But sex with Maryam was cer­tainly worth any dif­fi­culty he’d get into. Der­gan wouldn’t apol­o­gize for the in­cred­i­ble in­ter­lude he’d en­joyed. Just think­ing about her quick­ened his pulse, and a warn­ing surge of warmth in his groin told him he’d do it again, no mat­ter what Kels said.

  He’d just tugged his tall black boots on when the floor be­neath him jolted. Blar­ing alarms split the air. With a curse, Der­gan took off run­ning, yelling into his com as he flew down a cor­ri­dor.

  “Pana! Do you need me to join you?” He dodged crewmem­bers who raced to their duty sta­tions as the ship shud­dered again.

  Sec­onds passed, and he ar­rived at a T-junc­tion. To get to the bay where he’d left his Imdiko and Maryam, he’d have to turn left. Reach­ing the bridge, where he’d be needed to help with what­ever dan­ger had found the de­stroyer, meant go­ing right.

  For­tu­nately, Pana’s breath­less voice erupted from the com. “We’re okay. The bay is se­cure.”

  “Com me if you have trou­ble. I’ll be on the bridge.”

  No more than twenty sec­onds later, he was there. Kels was at the first of­fi­cer’s sta­tion, shout­ing re­ports to Cap­tain Odak.

  As Der­gan ran to the weapons sub­com­man­der’s com­puter podium, a quick glance at the outer view vid told him the Earth­ers had caught up to them, which the weapons com­man­der con­firmed.

  “Two as­sault-class ves­sels. You con­cen­trate fire on the one ap­proach­ing star­board. I’ll take the other.”

  As Der­gan read­ied his weapons, he checked his re­ports. “Our fighter pi­lots are scram­bling to the bay. First through eighth squadron will lift off in less than a minute.”

  While he spoke, he con­cen­trated on his own task. He fired a fusil­lade of laser pulses and per­cus­sive blasters at his tar­get. He found his mark and con­cen­trated more fire on the brief blooms of fiery con­tact on the op­pos­ing ship’s hull.

  “Heavy dam­age to the star­board at­tacker. It’s dis­abled. Nice shoot­ing, my Nobek.” Kels’s overt pride warmed Der­gan, but he kept his eyes on the read­out.

  “Re­main­ing Earth as­sault craft is de­ploy­ing sin­gle-man fight­ers. Our own fight­ers are con­verg­ing on the en­emy. Our side is out­gunned.”

  “My pi­lots won’t ap­pre­ci­ate the help but give it to them any­way, Nobek Der­gan.” The weapons com­man­der’s tone was light de­spite trad­ing heavy fire with the larger ves­sel.

  For the next few min­utes, Der­gan’s fo­cus nar­rowed to his task. He paid at­ten­tion to Cap­tain Odak’s and the weapons com­man­der’s or­ders and lis­tened to the var­i­ous re­ports com­ing from other of­fi­cers and de­part­ments. His con­cen­tra­tion cen­tered on pro­vid­ing cover fire for the Kalquo­rian fight­ers en­gag­ing against their Earther coun­ter­parts. He helped even the odds, less­en­ing the loss of the pi­lot lives they’d need to make their es­cape to em­pire space.

  He didn’t re­lax un­til bril­liant or­ange light flared from the vid pro­jec­tion as the en­emy ship blew apart. With the other Earther ship crip­pled, the small fight­ers broke off. The alarms shut off, the abrupt de­scent of si­lence deaf­en­ing to Der­gan’s ears.

  “Are we clear?” Odak called for con­fir­ma­tion, his ex­pres­sion cau­tiously tri­umphant.

  Kels con­firmed. “For now. Sen­sors are pick­ing up sev­eral more as­sault ships and a bat­tle­cruiser on our trail. At the great­est speed we can squeeze out of our ship, we have less than an hour be­fore they’ll en­gage us.”

  “Get us out of here, helm. Com, have you reached our re­in­force­ments?”

  “The two clos­est de­stroy­ers en route are still more than two days away, Cap­tain.”

  Der­gan cursed, sat­is­fac­tion over hav­ing won against the odds dis­si­pat­ing in an in­s
tant. The bat­tle­cruiser alone would fin­ish the dam­aged de­stroyer. There was no ion storm within range to hide in this time.

  Kels was think­ing along the same lines. “Nowhere to hide be­fore they catch up to us. All that’s on my sen­sors is a dwarf planet with a cou­ple of moons. We’ll reach those in half an hour.”

  “For all the good it’ll do us,” Odak growled.

  Der­gan barely kept from smash­ing his fists on the com­puter podium. His clan, his un­born child, and Maryam were all on the line. They had nowhere to go.

  Or did they? Der­gan stared at the nav­i­ga­tion chart Kels had brought up on a large side vid. His gaze nar­rowed.

  “My Dramok, is the planet or its moons suit­able for sus­tain­ing life?”

  “You’re con­sid­er­ing aban­don­ing us, Nobek?” Odak glared.

  “Not quite. More of a dis­trac­tion and sub­terfuge. I think it’s the only chance any of us have.” He quickly out­lined the des­per­ate plan that had formed in his mind.

  Chap­ter Thir­teen

  Maryam stepped off the shut­tle be­hind Der­gan and had her first look at the moon or­bit­ing an un­pop­u­lated planet in the Du­maitoie sys­tem.

  She in­haled un­fa­mil­iar but flo­ral scents with plea­sure. Just as en­joy­able was the Earth­like view of what Maryam as­sumed to be trees, veg­e­ta­tion, and a nearby stream that chuck­led its way over blue rocks. The shut­tle sat in a small clear­ing be­tween for­est and river.

  It was nice to be in a nat­u­ral set­ting af­ter years on a space sta­tion. Even if it were alien and the calls of dis­tant an­i­mals were un­fa­mil­iar.

  “What do the car­ni­vores here sound like?” she asked, mar­veling at the springy ground be­neath her slip-on loafers. The ‘grass’ was ac­tu­ally tiny, dark green leaves.

  “Not sure.” Der­gan’s gaze was nar­row-eyed as he took the mea­sure of their sur­round­ings.

  Kels had fol­lowed her out, and he also gazed at the land­scape with ob­vi­ous con­cern. “The Du­mai are ex­tremely pro­tec­tive of the species they’ve re­lo­cated here on this pre­serve. We’ll be in huge trou­ble if we kill any an­i­mal, even out of self-de­fense.”

  “We’ll re­main with the shut­tle as much as pos­si­ble. With any luck, we’ll be picked up in a cou­ple of days.” Der­gan drew a deep breath, ap­pear­ing more re­laxed.

  For his part, Pana was more in­ter­ested in study­ing the gray-blue sky. “Do you think those Earther war­ships will fol­low the de­stroyer?”

  Kels reached to squeeze his shoul­der. “We did all we could to es­cape de­tec­tion. Odak veered as close to the planet as he dared so the elec­tro­mag­netic in­ter­fer­ence would mask the crew aban­don­ing ship. All shut­tles landed far apart from each other on this moon and the planet so life signs would be harder to pick up. The de­stroyer con­tin­ues its course on au­topi­lot, hope­fully draw­ing the Earth­ers far enough away so we can be res­cued be­fore they turn around to search for us.”

  “What can go wrong?” Der­gan rolled his eyes.

  “It’s a sound strat­egy, my Nobek. You out­did your­self with this plan.”

  Maryam chuck­led. “You and your schemes. What other plots do you have up your sleeve?”

  “If just one works, I’ll be happy.” Der­gan’s at­ten­tion fo­cused on the near­est stand of trees. Maryam saw no move­ment there, nor did she hear any­thing. “What is it?”

  “Noth­ing.”

  “You scanned this sec­tion thor­oughly be­fore we landed. I’m sure you’ve cho­sen our land­ing spot well.”

  “My Nobek never leaves any­thing to chance.” Kels of­fered praise with a bright smile.

  Der­gan con­tin­ued to scan the tree­line. For all their trib­utes, he re­fused to let his guard down.

  Pana nudged him. “It might be best to gather ex­tra wa­ter, fire­wood, roots, and berries—just in case we end up stuck here be­cause res­cue has a hard time find­ing us?”

  Der­gan al­lowed a slight smirk, and Maryam won­dered what the pair were up to. The way they gazed at each other seemed sig­nif­i­cant for dis­cussing a sup­ply run. “A worth­while idea. You and I will go. Our Dramok can watch out for Maryam.”

  Kels frowned at them but didn’t speak when they grabbed car­ry­sacks out of the shut­tle and set off to­ward the near­est stand of trees.

  Not so trust­ing, Maryam called af­ter them. “What hap­pened to re­main­ing close to the shut­tle?”

  “We’ll be within yelling dis­tance.” Der­gan and Pana dis­ap­peared into the for­est af­ter grin­ning at her over their shoul­ders.

  Kels mut­tered some­thing un­der his breath, scowl­ing. When he glanced at Maryam and saw she watched him, he gen­tled his ex­pres­sion.

  “We could have a look at the stream, see about adding to our wa­ter stores.”

  It beat hang­ing around and star­ing into the dis­tance. “All right.”

  Kels showed her where the ex­pand­able wa­ter bags were. They each took two and headed for the stream.

  Again, Maryam found her­self soak­ing in the Earth-like land­scape. True, the ground cover was leafy rather than blades of grass. The trees were dif­fer­ent too, some with rose-shaded trunks and deep ma­roon leaves, oth­ers with white bark and pink­ish fo­liage. Yet it was enough to give her a com­fort­able feel­ing of fa­mil­iar­ity. For a hide­out, it was lovely.

  As she dipped her bags into the cold wa­ter that chased its path briskly over the rocks and peb­bles, she turned her at­ten­tion to her com­pan­ion. Kels stared mood­ily into the dis­tance, his strong fea­tures sharp­ened by min­gling worry and sad­ness. His was the de­meanor of a man who’d watched his world crum­ble around him. Maryam felt a pang of sym­pa­thy.

  “Tell me about be­com­ing a fa­ther. What do you look for­ward to most?” she in­vited, hop­ing to ease the weight he wore.

  He blinked at her, and a smile ghosted over his face, smooth­ing some of the lines that had taken res­i­dence. “I’m not sure. I sup­pose watch­ing him dis­cover his world. See­ing things I take for granted through his eyes, al­low­ing me to no­tice them as if for the first time.”

  “That’s sim­i­lar to what Briel said, though she was more ex­cited about si­mul­ta­ne­ous dis­cov­er­ies with him.”

  A chok­ing sen­sa­tion blocked any fur­ther speech. Maryam glanced at the shut­tle. Briel’s body was in a sta­sis cham­ber, locked in the ves­sel’s cargo hold.

  She dragged her gaze away to find the sad­ness had re­turned to Kels’s ex­pres­sion. “I wish I could have given her the op­por­tu­nity to ex­plore all she wished with our son. And more.”

  “Like love? Pana suf­fers a lot of guilt be­cause he couldn’t force him­self to love her.”

  “I’m aware. It’s why he was of­ten in­suf­fer­able when it came to tak­ing care of Briel.” Kels sighed. “The un­cer­tainty of whether or not love will hap­pen is per­haps the big­gest draw­back of ar­ranged clan­nings. Maybe Earth­ers are smarter than we in that re­spect.”

  “Cer­tain cul­tures of Earth also have ar­ranged mar­riages. Our church en­cour­ages them, es­pe­cially in the hopes it’ll strengthen ties to its teach­ings. As for those of us who mar­ried for love—well, we didn’t al­ways suc­ceed ei­ther.”

  Kels cocked his head with in­ter­est. “What les­son can we learn from that, I won­der?”

  “Re­la­tion­ships are hard. Full stop.”

  Kels laughed at her rue­ful sum­ma­tion. The sound was won­der­ful; deep and rolling. With him only inches from her, the mirth pleas­antly vi­brated her bones. It trans­formed the stern fea­tures into gen­uine at­trac­tive­ness. He was riv­et­ing when he wasn’t glow­er­ing.

  It ended too soon, leav­ing him with a lost coun­te­nance that tugged at Maryam’s heart. “I’ve messed up in a huge way. Which is hard to take. I’ve ei­ther been very smart or
in­cred­i­bly lucky up to this point. Life for the most part has been sim­ple for me.”

  “In what way?”

  “I haven’t had to work hard for any­thing. I was born to the right clan, as­sur­ing me an easy path. My stud­ies were chal­leng­ing, but I grasped con­cepts with­out a ter­ri­ble amount of strug­gle. I won over a Nobek and an Imdiko oth­ers only dream of clan­ning. The ca­reers I pur­sued de­manded lit­tle ef­fort to en­ter. I was among the rare for­tu­nate who man­aged to win a Matara.”

  “No ob­sta­cles at all?”

  “There were some to over­come. A dear friend was ac­cused of a crime, and I de­spaired of his name be­ing cleared—but it turned out fine in the end. Pana be­came ter­ri­bly ill at one point, and I was ter­ri­fied I’d lose him. Ob­vi­ously, I didn’t. A few trem­bles in my charmed life, but they worked out.”

  “Then Kalquor de­cided it needed Earth women, no mat­ter the price.”

  “The cost—Mother of All, how could I have been so blind to what I’d lose? The im­moral po­si­tion I put Der­gan in? Your abil­ity to re­turn home; Briel’s life. I wanted to save my world. In­stead, I de­stroyed so much.” His voice caught, and it took sev­eral sec­onds for Kels to col­lect him­self. “I’ve never had a cri­sis of faith in my­self un­til now. For the first time in my life, I have few de­cent choices. Sec­ond-guess­ing my­self at ev­ery turn has forced me to weigh who I am—and I keep com­ing up short.”

  Maryam thought back to her own dif­fi­cult past. To when her brother, an im­pul­sive and an­gry young man, had begged to live with her un­til he got on his feet. Yet she’d known not to do so. Scott had drifted from one job to the next, crash­ing on friends’ couches and bor­row­ing money he never re­paid, con­stantly in trou­ble with the law. It had been shortly af­ter she’d re­fused his plea to stay with her that he’d got­ten into a high-speed chase with the cops af­ter ‘bor­row­ing’ a shut­tle, end­ing in a fa­tal crash. Though Scott would have de­stroyed their re­la­tion­ship with his re­fusal to take re­spon­si­bil­ity for him­self, Maryam still felt at fault for not let­ting him move in.