The city looked like something an artist might imagine a future city to look like, but certainly not like anything she’d seen in reality. She supposed, in a way, it might almost have been a city on Earth at least in the sense that it looked old and well used, cramped, congested with traffic. There were tall buildings—in fact from where she was standing she couldn’t see a single one that looked to be less than four or five stories tall—but no towering skyscrapers, she supposed because the city was contained beneath a dome.
The dome was transparent. She glimpsed a sky dark with boiling clouds, the peak of a mountain in the distance, the green of a jungle.
“This way,” Akule ordered them, motioning with his hands for them to follow him.
Everyone simply stared at him reluctantly for several moments. Finally, when it sank in that they didn’t have a choice, a few of the women moved hesitantly to follow. It was enough to get everyone else going. They trailed him along a city street, craning their necks to stare up at the buildings they passed, unabashedly gawking because they were too stunned to worry about how it might look to anyone observing them.
It was ironic, Simone reflected, that people spent so much of their time worrying about what other people thought of them when most everyone was exactly like they were—unaware of anything but their own concerns.
She realized when she could finally focus on anything besides the strange design of the buildings that most of the traffic through the city was foot traffic and a hundred percent of it was men.
Wondering if she just hadn’t recognized the women, she became more focused in her search. She still didn’t see any women, but one thing did become obvious. She hadn’t really understood how rigid their class system was.
They segregated themselves even on the street.
She might not have noticed except for the fact that the warrior class had a sidewalk entirely to themselves. They were easily recognizable by the uniforms they wore, but she thought she would’ve been able to guess who they were by their bearing alone.
The other sidewalk was far more congested. The men on that side wore their hair lobbed off at the shoulders and, not surprisingly, they didn’t wear uniforms. Their clothing varied fairly widely in color and design, but it was consistent in the fact they seemed to favor one piece suits similar to the uniforms and all of them wore a sort of shawl-like robe, open on the sides and in the front, collar-less.
The street where they were walking was the most congested of all and clearly the domain of the rabble—and robots. They passed a number of strange looking mechanical marvels that seemed to be completely autonomous. If anyone was controlling them, at any rate, she didn’t see any sign of it.
She’d begun to feel like she was hiking on a mountain when Akule finally brought the group to a halt and directed them into a building. The first floor appeared to be a single room—fairly vast. They were ordered into a single file line and Akule left them to approach a man sitting at a desk. Bowing at the hip, he set some sort of device on the desk that looked similar to a PDA. After bowing again, he turned on his heel and left.
Simone, trying to avoid eye contact if he happened to glance in her direction, leaned close to Liz, who was in front of her. “What do you think they’re doing now?”
Liz shrugged. “Processing.”
Simone had thought as much. She was just uneasy about what processing entailed.
They seemed efficient enough, but in no great rush. The line moved at a crawl.
Simone was as tired of standing by the time she reached the desk as she had been of sitting when the shuttle had finally landed. The man didn’t glance at her. He reached for her hand and settled it on a scanner. “Put your chin on the device and keep your eyes open,” he intoned in a bored voice.
Simone looked at the device a little uneasily. She’d thought it was some sort of camera. He looked up at her impatiently when she didn’t move. “You are holding up processing!”
Feeling her belly tighten with tension, she moved, settling her chin in the cup clearly designed for it. Light flashed in her eye before she even had the chance to blink.
She was still trying to blink away the dark spot in her vision when the man grasped her wrist again. That time he shoved her hand into a device roughly the size and shape of a rural mailbox and tightened his hold on her forearm. She discovered why in the next instant. The smell of burning flesh reached her nostrils before she felt the burn. Sucking in a sharp breath, she snatched at her hand. He released her, settling in his seat again.
Simone gaped at the laser tattoo on her arm in shock.
“Follow the line,” he said dismissively.
She glanced at Liz and moved away, surreptitiously blowing on the burn, which was still stinging. She was even more unnerved about what to expect at the next station, however.
She was sent to stand behind something that reminded her of an x-ray. It unsettled her even more, but unlike the previous experience, she hadn’t noticed any of the women reacting badly to it and she finally decided that it must not be painful like the tattoo.
A man stepped up to her after a moment, pushed her hair out of the way and plugged a wire into the collar around her neck. Her belly clenched, but she didn’t feel anything when he’d walked back to some sort of machine and punched buttons. She studied the wire and the machine and finally decided he was downloading some kind of information from the collar. She’d thought it was nothing but a symbol of slavery! It hadn’t occurred to her that it was a monitoring device.
Curious to know what it had recorded, she waited a little expectantly for several moments and finally realized that he wasn’t going to tell her even if he knew what he was downloading. Her focus on that almost resulted in her missing the purpose of the thing she was standing behind. She caught a brief glimpse of a video display that showed three tiny lumps of flesh attached to the wall of her womb and then she was told to move.
She’d already reached the last stop before it dawned on her that she’d seen her babies. A rush of excitement went through her. She glanced back, struggling with the urge to run back and ask them to let her see.
“Second floor. Apartment five.”
Simone dragged her attention back to the man. “What?”
He looked up at her, his lips tightening. “Second floor. Apartment five.”
She was more or less pushed toward the elevator by the flow of traffic and found herself in the cubicle with Liz. “What floor are you on?”
Liz blinked, turning to look at her. “I saw them,” she said, swallowing convulsively.
Simone felt her own stomach take flight. “I didn’t really get more than a glimpse of mine. I was so worried about the damned laser I was focused on the guy plugging me in to the computer.”
Fortunately, someone had their wits about them and had punched the button. The cubicle stopped and the doors opened. Simone and Liz were halfway out before they realized it had stopped on the first. They leapt back on just before the doors closed.
When it stopped again, they got off and looked around. It looked closer to a hotel than anything else that came to mind, a long corridor with numbered doors running the length.
The door wasn’t locked—didn’t seem to have one. It was marked with a recognizable number five, however, and Simone went in. The similarity to a hotel vanished. It looked a lot more like a prison cell than a hotel, even a humble one, except that it appeared to be clean.
There was a toilet, lavatory, and shower in one corner, separated from the main room by a short wall. The bed was a narrow bunk like the one she’d had on the ship, but it at least had some sort of bedding and a pillow—sort of. She stood in the middle of her ‘apartment’ and turned in a circle.
Her throat tightened abruptly. In spite of everything, she realized she still hadn’t fully grasped her situation—until now. Sniffing, she looked down at her arm, realizing finally that she’d been tagged, bar-coded.
She didn’t suppose it was worse than being in a prison on Ea
rth, but she wasn’t familiar with prisons on Earth, damn it! She hadn’t done anything to deserve this!
Crying wasn’t going to change anything, she told herself fiercely, but she flopped on the bed and cried anyway until she was too exhausted to cry anymore.
* * * *
Camryn tensed all over when he emerged from the shuttle and looked around and saw that the women were being led away. He’d already clambered down the gangplank before it sank in that he couldn’t afford to behave like a madman if he wanted to have any hope of moving Simone to the palace.
Kael’s cursing finally drew him from his attempt to pinpoint Simone in the wad of women moving away from them.
“Gods damn it to hell!” Kael growled. “The fucking bastards were very quick to collect them when they did not want us to go after them at all!”
Camryn touched his arm and shook his head in warning when he caught a glimpse of his father’s secretary marching purposefully toward them. They exchanged the sharp nod protocol demanded.
“Prince Camryn! Your father sends his greetings and his pleasure that you have returned safely and successfully from your mission. You and your men are to report for duty at dawn. You are to deploy to the mines of Kylo.”
When he’d left, Camryn glanced around at the grim faces of the men surrounding him. “You heard him. Attend whatever business you have pending and report back here at dawn.”
“Fuck!” Ean growled when the men had dispersed and he, Camryn, and Kael had turned toward the palace. “What do we do now?”
Camryn was too furious to speak, too enraged to think if it came to that. “I will speak to our father,” he said finally.
Ean nodded, cast a glance back toward the city, and finally tried to dismiss Simone from his mind when he saw there was no longer any sign of any of the women.
She wouldn’t come to any harm if she did have to stay in the barracks for a while, he told himself. She would be safe. She was smart. She wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the babies, regardless of how unhappy she was about her situation.
He would still have felt far better if they could have made arrangements to keep her out of trouble while they were off planet, if they could’ve seen to it that she was safe inside the palace. He didn’t have much faith that Camryn would be able to convince their father to take care of it for them, though, and it continued to trouble him despite his efforts to dismiss it.
He finally acknowledged once they reached the palace that it wasn’t entirely due to anxiety about her welfare that he could still feel anger simmering inside of him any more than that was why Camryn and Kael were so furious. Housing her in the palace would certainly prevent her from rabblerousing and keep her out of trouble in that sense, but it would also remove her from the temptation of the other men.
When he had bathed and gathered up his gear he headed for Lielani’s apartments.
Kael, he discovered, had beat him. They were eyeing one another furiously when Lielani opened the door. She gasped in surprised pleasure. “My dear hearts! You have been away so long I almost think my eyes deceive me!”
Some of the tension went out of both men. Ean dove for her, lifting her up in an exuberant embrace and nuzzling his face against her neck. “I have missed you also, dearling!” he murmured against her neck.
She chuckled, hugged him back and then wiggled loose to embrace Kael. A worried frown creased her brows when he clutched at her almost desperately, squeezing her so hard she flinched. Backing away from him when he released her, she caught his hand and Ean’s and drew both of them into her apartment. “You must tell me all about your adventure, but first,” she threw a smiling glance at each of them, “you must show me how much you missed me.”
Both men chuckled a little uncomfortably but neither of them balked when she continued across her sitting room, headed for the bedroom. She didn’t release their hands until she’d reached the bed. When she did, she lifted her hands to unfasten her robe and allowed it to float gracefully to the floor and then climbed up onto the bed.
Ean and Kael exchanged a rueful glance. “You are a naughty woman,” Kael said with a chuckle. “You mean to entertain us both at once?”
She smiled at him saucily. “And why not? You are both here. There’s no need for either to wait when I can see you are both in need. The bed is wide enough for three … and I have holes enough for three also,” she said chuckling.
“Does that mean you intend to wait for Camryn?”
She smiled. “It means that you have choices. Who wants to come inside of me?” she asked when she’d settled on the bed.
Ean and Kael both rose at the question and she chuckled again when she’d studied their erections. “Goodness! Both serpents are waving at me. Well, then, it is only fair that you both have what you desire when you have only just returned from a dangerous mission. Shall I close my eyes and pick which is first?” she asked playfully.
Ean and Kael glanced at one another, shrugged, and began stripping while Lielani lay on her side watching them. She sighed deeply when they were naked. “You two are more beautiful each time I see you!”
They dove at her. She rolled away, laughing when Kael succeeded in pinning her to the bed beneath him. “You are more beautiful each time I see you,” he murmured, nuzzling his face against her neck.
Lielani stroked his hair, but sadness had crept into her. “I wish with all my heart that that was true, dear heart, but it is only your love that sees beauty when it faded long ago.”
He lifted his head to look at her questioningly and she smiled at him. “I cannot do what both of you want in this position.”
He eased away from her and glanced at Ean uneasily. She caught the glance and regretted the impulse that had distressed them when she could tell that they were distressed already. She knew how to distract them, however. Rolling onto her belly, she pushed herself onto her knees and took Ean’s shaft in her hands. Guilt welled in her when she found that his proud soldier had softened, but it responded with renewed need when she began to stroke him. When she sensed the tension in him had shifted from worry to pleasurable tension, she wiggled her ass at Kael. “Are you only going to watch?”
He slapped one cheek of her ass playfully, grinning at her. “You are serious?”
She narrowed her eyes at him in amusement. “Do not tell me such fine soldiers cannot stand at attention twice?”
Kael chuckled ruefully. “I don’t know about Ean’s, but I am certain mine could stand to attention that many times and more.”
Ean made a rude gesture at him, but he was far too focused on Lielani’s magic touch to rouse to anger. Kael watched her stroke and suckle Ean’s cock for several moments and found he was too impatient to wait. On his knees between her legs, he spread the cheeks of her ass and stroked her slit. Pleasure brought him to hard tension when he felt her welcoming moisture, but it wasn’t the pretty brown lips of Lielani’s sex that flickered through his mind when he penetrated her and closed his eyes in ecstasy as he felt her flesh closing around his.
His cock jerked threateningly almost before he had fully entered her and he paused, grinding his teeth, struggling to contain his seed. It was a losing battle from the moment his body and mind betrayed him and Simone’s image rose to his mind. He could manage no more than a handful of jerky strokes before he felt his body gathering to explode and had to pull free of her to spill his seed.
He leaned against her, huffing for breath, grunting as the spasms continued until he’d emptied himself. Finally, he gathered himself and dropped limply beside her on his back, dropping a forearm across his eyes as guilt and embarrassment warred within him.
Lielani drew Ean’s cock deeply into her mouth and suckled him until he ceased to convulse in release. Weary with the effort, she sank to the bed to rest, pleased that she had given both of them pleasure and yet disturbed that they had both come so quickly that it had scarcely required any effort on her part.
Then again, she’d sensed something in both of them fro
m the moment they’d arrived that sent waves of alarm through her. There was nothing unusual in the fact that they’d sought her almost as soon as they’d returned. They always did that. The server droids that met those particular needs when they were on a mission, only relieved them of their semen. It didn’t satisfy their need to feel a real woman beneath them.
There had been almost a sense of desperation in both of them, though, that had never been there before and she felt, right or wrong, that something was bothering them, deeply. It brought out a sense of urgency within her to soothe them if she could, to take away whatever it was that was bothering them, but she knew, whatever it was, they were unlikely to tell her.
When they were younger they would confess their worries, seek the sort of comfort she wanted to give them now, but it had been many years since any of them had felt the sort of hurt that only a woman could soothe, wounds to the soul. She knew better than to ask. It would only make them close themselves off more tightly, drive them from her bed.
Instead, she stroked Kael’s chest. “You are not worn out already when you were boasting only a few moments ago that you were randy enough for several rounds?”
He chuckled dutifully, but she heard no real humor in it, only echoes of the pain she couldn’t entirely understand. He rolled over and kissed her belly. “You are too tired.”
She smiled at the questioning lilt in his voice. “Tired? I believe I might just be able to hold still and allow you to do the work one more time.”
He chuckled more easily that time. “You promised me your mouth,” he reminded her.
She sat up and turned her ass to Ean, brushing her lips along Kael’s hard belly until she was nudging his flaccid member. That disturbed more than anything else, but, feeling him tense, she took him in her mouth before he could roll away. She tasted herself on him, which wasn’t nearly as pleasant to her as his flesh, but she decided it was worth it when she felt his member rise proud and strong in her mouth.
She was a little disappointed that Ean didn’t take her offer to ease himself on her again—and worried. He stroked her ass and her cleft, as if trying to arouse himself and then merely got out of the bed and left. It took her longer to bring Kael off than she’d expected, as well.
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