“No battles to interrupt me?”
“If so, the sight of your naked body running for the escape shuttle will inspire the crew to fight harder.” He was only half-joking.
She gave him a playful shove, laughing. His heart skipped a beat to see her at ease. He was glad she felt safe.
“I can help you wash faster,” Pana offered.
“As can I. Allow me to be your devoted helper,” Dergan said, shouldering the Imdiko aside.
Kels stepped up. “As Dramok, I should accept that responsibility. There’s not enough room in the shower for all of us. You two will have to fight for the privilege to assist.”
“Hey! No pulling rank, Kels.” Pana’s shove was a lot harder than Maryam’s had been.
The Dramok’s com went off, and he frowned at the frequency, all amusement banished. “It’s Sebist.”
Dergan remained merry. “Looks like you’ll be too busy for the next few minutes to perform shower duty after all.” He scooped the laughing Maryam up and took her triumphantly to the shower, with Pana in tow.
His stomach churning as sickly as when Dergan had put their shuttle in a dive, Kels answered the com. “Hello, Sebist.”
His friend whooped. “Still alive, by the skin of your teeth, I hear. I just received word from Captain Rosark.”
“Many thanks for sending him after us.” Sebist had said he’d pull some strings to get help to them quickly.
“What are friends for?”
“You happen to be the best of those.” A headache was forming behind Kels’s eyes.
“I learned from you. I have yet to repay you for believing in me when I was accused.”
“That was decades ago, and you owe me nothing.”
“Not even the woman carrying your child?”
Kels stared at the com in silence. Had Sebist guessed his clan might develop feelings for Maryam?
There was a sigh on the other end. “Before you decided to vacation on a Dumai preserve, I received a com from your clanmates and the lovely Matara Maryam.”
“You did?” Kels had to sit on the huge sleeping mat before his shaking knees gave out. What had they told Sebist?
“The lady made it abundantly clear she wouldn’t be forced to join a clan, especially a clan that wasn’t yours.”
“I—uh—I had no idea, Sebist. Not that she’d have any inclination toward my clan. At least not when she spoke to you.”
“You have an idea now, I take it. She’s become more than a surrogate for your son?”
“She’s—I—damn it. I didn’t intend for this to happen. I didn’t want it to happen.”
“You know Kels, you’re not just more fortunate than most. You realize and appreciate how fortunate you are. You never take it for granted. In fact, I think it embarrasses you sometimes. Like now?”
Kels rubbed his forehead, irritated that Sebist wasn’t angry with him. After all, he’d done everything wrong when it came to Maryam, yet she’d given him reason to hope she’d find him worthwhile. He didn’t deserve her. “It’s not fair to you. I had a Matara. You should have one too.”
“Who says life isn’t fair? I have a wonderful clan and the best friend a man could wish for. Who knows, maybe another Earther is in my future. There are close to fifteen hundred of them on the way to Kalquor as we speak.”
How many are coming willingly? Kels decided not to ask. He had more than his share on his conscience as it was. “You’re not going to talk me out of feeling guilty about this.”
“As long as it doesn’t keep you from a woman who’ll be a good fit for you. Good luck winning her, Kels. Maybe she’ll recognize her own good fortune in having a chance to be with your clan.”
He clicked off before Kels could say more, leaving the Dramok swallowing against the lump in his throat. “I not only don’t deserve her, I don’t deserve you, old friend.”
He had Sebist’s blessing to pursue Maryam. The question remained, could he and his clan win her? Had his luck returned, or would things fall apart again?
Only one consideration wasn’t in question. “No matter what, it’ll be her choice.”
The dripping trio of Maryam, Pana, and Dergan emerged from the bathroom several minutes after Kels’s com with Sebist. Maryam was draped in a towel. Kels’s clanmates were nude and aroused. Apparently, there hadn’t been room in the shower for sensual festivities.
Kels rose from the sleeping mat to greet them. Maryam grinned. “We haven’t been blasted into bits?”
“I’m impressed. I thought only an all-out war would have chased you three out of there.” Their laughter, filtering into the main portion of the quarters, had been continuous.
“What did Sebist say?” Caution sobered their moods. They watched Kels carefully.
If he did clan Maryam, he’d have his hands full. Not as he had with Briel, but Maryam was her own sort of challenge.
A most delightful challenge.
“He wished me luck in courting you. With the bunch of you conspiring behind my back, I’m going to need all the luck I can find.”
Pana and Dergan winced, but Maryam showed no guilt over having commed Sebist without his knowledge. “The verdict is—?”
“After you’ve given birth, the choice is yours to go where you will. Including staying as my Matara. Be warned; I’m going to entice, pursue, and flatter you outrageously for the privilege.”
Maryam smirked. She dropped her towel, revealing a breathtaking view of curved, freckled skin that made Kels’s mouth go dry. Her knowing gaze sent heat zapping straight to his groin.
“After I scrub every inch of you, you can make your case,” she purred.
Chapter Nineteen
Mother of All, he was hard, and growing harder still as Maryam slunk toward him, her hand held out. As if in a dream, his arm drifted upward. The pressure of her fingers on his helped him emerge partway from a lust-induced fog.
He let her lead him into the bathroom, past his leering clanmates. She turned to him and tugged on the front seam of his formsuit, parting it open from his throat to his groin. “Hello again,” she said to the twin shafts when they popped free.
“We’re very glad to see you,” Kels managed.
He wasn’t one to hand over control, but Maryam hadn’t done anything to set off his instinct to dominate. She saw to his needs; peeling his outfit off, ordering the water on, stepping into the spray to set her pale skin gleaming. He watched with fascination the droplets that clung to her red pubic hair.
“Come in. Allow me to wash you.”
He accepted the invitation, joining her in the shower. He grabbed her by the ass, pulling her in so he could rub his cocks against her while claiming a demanding kiss. She moaned and clung to him, letting him handle her as he pleased. The eager surrender inflamed him more than before, and his fingers pressed hard into the yielding flesh of her buttocks. Her nipples hardened against his chest, but otherwise, she was all softness.
“Master,” she whispered against his lips.
He kissed her again, then released her and stepped back.
Maryam pumped cleansing gel from the wall dispenser and rubbed her hands together to create a mound of suds. She set about bathing Kels, rubbing his neck and arms with a firm touch, kneading tight muscles until he groaned in relief. She worked his back next, finding and unraveling knots with practiced familiarity.
“You’ve done this before,” he sighed, bracing his hands against the wall to give himself fully to her ministrations.
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br /> “When he was a medical student, my ex had long shifts at the hospital. He’d be exhausted, but too stressed to sleep. A good massage was guaranteed to put him out like a light.”
She didn’t miss an inch, even working on his ass, thighs, and calves, her hands slick with soap. Were it not for his aching cocks, Kels would have been perfectly relaxed.
The anticipation of what would happen once she deemed him clean made them jerk. He looked forward to proving his value as a clanmate.
Just as she’s proving hers. I’d let her get away with anything for this massage alone.
Her former husband was a proven idiot. But his loss might be Kels’s gain, so stupidity was a great characteristic for the man Kels had never met.
“Turn around,” Maryam said.
He did so, lust walloping him anew at the sight of her rising from her knees, finished with rubbing his calves into ooze. Her attention went to his chest, which she lathered thickly. Once he was rinsed, she gave the freshly washed flesh a good going-over with her tongue.
He watched with fascination as she traced the contours of his pectorals with her pretty pink tongue. She had to know how deliciously wanton she looked doing that—didn’t she? Licking the droplets from his skin, her breath warm. Now using the tip of that talented tongue to flick a dark brown nipple before fastening her mouth on it and rubbing the flat of her tongue against the sensitive flesh. He breathed through parted lips as she kissed her way to the other nipple for the same treatment.
Ancestors, she was amazing.
She treated his abdomen with the same attention, lapping the swells of muscle with closed-eyed intensity. Moving lower and lower, sinking to her knees a little at a time. As she lavished wet kisses a mere inch above his bobbing primary, she lifted her cupped hand. Kels guided her palm beneath the soap dispenser and filled it.
His head fell back as she stroked his cocks, her tiny fingers rubbing as skillfully as they had other parts of his body. He screwed his eyes shut, wanting only to feel the gorgeous pulls on his lengths, the careful scrubbing on the more sensitive undersides. Warm water sluiced down, adding to the enthralling attention. Kels prayed it wouldn’t go cold, not now, not ever.
He was enveloped by greater warmth, a more profound wetness. A soft tugging, her mouth retreating from his secondary, sucking it as she went. He slammed a fist against the wall as excitement surged.
He stared down, watching her bob over him, working his shafts in turn. Lovely pink lips, wrapped around his dark members, her cheeks dimpling as she drew on him. Her tongue slid along the veins beneath each length, tenderly abrading so that he almost came up on his toes. Serving her master with no thought to her own needs, sucking him with only the desire to please. He imagined spurting cum in her submissively opened mouth, watching her accept his passion, her throat working as she swallowed his seed.
His breath caught as heat surged from his secondary to the space between it and his primary. For a moment, he nearly let it happen. It was too alluring to deny himself such an incredible gift.
His instincts came to the fore, however, saving him from selfish impulse. He was a Dramok, a leader. A leader always thought of the good of others before himself.
He bent, scooping Maryam in his arms and ordering the shower off in a shaking voice. He dashed to the sleeping mat, where he crashed them both to its giving surface.
“Who the hell is persuading who to stay?” he gasped. He didn’t give her the opportunity to answer before pressing his lips to hers.
Kels’s wet body plastered against her, and Maryam couldn’t help writhing against him. Fellatio had always been an agreeable activity with her husband, but only as a step toward intercourse. With Kels, it had been a divine service. The increasing spurts of pre-cum had told her he was closing in on climax, and she’d actually welcomed the potential of his passion flooding her mouth. Perhaps he’d order her to swallow. The idea was excruciatingly arousing.
It tied to the fantasies of utter surrender. Of giving herself without reserve to others. Maryam was beginning to accept that she enjoyed submitting to the men of Clan Kels. She wondered if she could deny them anything.
Kels leaned back, his drenched hair raining on the bed linens. Big, strong, unflinching Kels. Maryam felt her spirit draw toward him, seeking more than physical union. If this wasn’t the first blush of love, then it was damned close.
“Love me,” she whispered.
“Do I have a choice?” he whispered in return.
Even with that promising reply, he stood, leaving her alone on the mat. Pana and Dergan had drawn close, so that they stood on either side of their leader. Three men, carved gods, their bodies poised to claim her. Maryam spread her legs in offering.
Kels said something that sounded like tutlito tolp. Whatever that meant, the others responded immediately. Pana gasped, straightening. Dergan growled low in his throat. Their sexes jerked.
“My Nobek.” The Dramok motioned his clanmate toward Maryam.
Dergan crawled over her, his gaze intense. Maryam closed her eyes against the frightening stare, needing to hide from that view of ferocity. Yet his kisses were gentle as they lit first on her lips, then her chin, her throat, its hollow, down to the swell of her breast.
Two tiny pinpricks against the fleshiest part. Maryam whimpered but offered no resistance.
The pain of his bite was fleeting. She shuddered at the cruel dart, then lay quietly. As he injected her with his venom, he teased her pussy lips apart with two fingers, then pushed in. He stroked her clit as he pumped within her, and Maryam arched with a cry.
Pleasure mounted, increasing a hundredfold as the intoxicant spread its magic through her. As she gyrated with greater enthusiasm, Dergan eased his fingers free and withdrew his fangs.
“Don’t go,” she begged.
For an answer, he licked her juices from his fingers, watching her face as he did so. “I have no intention of leaving until I’ve fucked you as you’ve never been fucked before,” he promised. “Hold your legs open for me.”
Maryam did so, grabbing the backs of her knees and splaying wide, feeling how the cool air danced over her pussy. The slight sensation sent thrills up and down her spine.
“Listen to me, lovely Maryam,” Dergan said. He appeared more dangerous than ever, but instead of warning her off, she wanted him with desperation. “What’s about to happen requires caution. A large degree of carefulness. That means you’ll lie there and be very still. Do as you’re told, or I’ll put you in the corner with your arms and legs tied so you can’t bring yourself to climax.”
She cried out to hear such cruelty. Would he really do that to her?
He nodded, as if hearing the question in her thoughts. “If you disobey us, I’ll not only deny you orgasm, I’ll keep you aroused until we reach Kalquor while granting you no relief.”
With the intoxicant singing in her veins, its eagerness making her desperate to be filled, Maryam couldn’t imagine more horrific punishment. Better to be beaten than endure the torture Dergan threatened her with.
“I’ll do what you want. Anything you want. I promise.”
“See that you do. I don’t hold back when it comes to discipline.”
She could see that he didn’t.
Trembling, she kept otherwise motionless as Dergan crouched over her, bracing himself on one hand while gathering both his shafts in
the other. As his hips lowered toward her waiting pussy, eagerness made Maryam’s heart pound. She wanted nothing more than to thrust against him, to stuff herself with his veined, livid flesh.
However, with his warning ringing in her ears, Maryam didn’t move. Not even when his primary nudged her womanhood, urging it to yield. A stab of violent desire bulleted through her as it drove the first inch, but she managed to keep still. Barely.
He was forging deeper. His tapering girth widened suddenly, pressing hard against the walls of her womanhood. Forcing her achingly open. Maryam grunted as surrendering to the invasion became effortful. Dergan hadn’t been this thick before.
“Easy. A little at a time now. Such a lovely cunt, taking both my cocks at once.”
Maryam whimpered as a shock of desire shot through her. Both? In her pussy? Was it even possible?
Possible or not, she had no inclination to stop him. As the strain increased, verging on painful, she held herself open to him, kept in place by desperate yearning and the need to please. Excitement overwhelmed her, making her wet, easing his passage.
“Good, Maryam. Give yourself over to it. Yes. Yes.”
He ground against her in slow circles, finding that magic spot within her sex, bringing hair-raising elation to the fore. The ache of taking him was lost in electric excitement. Maryam’s fingernails dug into the meat of her leg.
It was incredible. If he’d torn her in two, she wouldn’t have stopped him. Dergan paused with each increment gained, and her head swam with the sensation of being stretched to her limits while bliss poured through her. Such utter possession was arousing all on its own.
Then he was fully within her. Dergan leaned down to kiss her, his tongue stroking hers. She was astoundingly full, her body oh so aware of his. Maryam released her grasp on her legs to cling to the Nobek. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, clutching him tight.
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