by H. E. Trent
He sighed. “Courtney, that’s not fair. Of course you’re more than just a…vessel.” He said the word as if it put a bad taste in his mouth. “And I hear you when you say you would leave. I’m perplexed that you would leave.”
“Because I haven’t fulfilled my obligation to Trig, right? Given him a baby?”
“No! Because he loves you.”
“Loves me.”
She felt as though the wind in her sails had let off, leaving her adrift. They didn’t use that word with each other—love. Love was for Kerry. Or Murk and Trig for each other.
Not for Court.
“I…”
“You doubt it?” Murk asked.
“Yes. I do.”
“For fuck’s sake, why?”
“Because you don’t act like it. Simple as that.”
He furrowed his brow and folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t know what that means.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe go ask one of your Jekhan friends in town. See if they have any insight.”
“That’s not fair. We’re doing the best we can, Courtney. What we have—it isn’t normal. All we should have expected from our mate was a mutually beneficial partnership and physical attraction.”
“Because that’s the Jekhan idea of a ménage à trois, right? In a true ménage, at least on Earth, the love goes in all directions. Not just from one man to the other or one woman to the other with the third person a sometime plaything.”
“What you’re describing is something I want.”
She canted her head, watched him dab his brow again. He fisted his hands at his sides. He was trying hard. She could tell. He wanted to take Kerry, but would wait until she was given to him. “You think you could love me?”
“You assume that I don’t.”
She scoffed. “Like I said. I can’t tell.”
“Tell me how to show it. Tell me what I’m doing wrong. I know Trig. Trig is easy. I know what he needs and delight in giving it to him, but you…”
“I’m a pain in your ass.”
He closed his eyes. Took a breath. “I feel I should know what to do with you, but at the same time, part of the reason I’m pleased that you’re Kerry’s mother is because you’re the way you are.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“I think it was meant to be one. I can try for different words, if you’d like. The sentiment would be the same.”
Sentiment. Maybe she needed a little more of that. She’d never been the type of lady who’d wanted it before she moved to Jekh. Being with the men, though, she craved the affection—all the sappy shit she would have rolled her eyes at as a younger woman. The sap meant she was wanted. It meant she was thought about for more than a night at a time.
She had to get better at teaching them how to treat her.
When he opened his eyes, she held Kerry out to him.
“Thank you.” He seemed to melt with relief before heading to the sofa with the baby.
Jerry scratched at the bottom of the Dutch-style door and Court let him in. For as long as she’d had him, she would have never thought he had it in his constitution to be a country dog. He’d taken to the lifestyle adjustment like a champ and spent most of his days on the loose, chasing birds off the crops. She gave him a scratch between the ears. As always, he skittered over to Kerry, sniffed her head, and continued on his way to the new kitchen in search of kibble. Apparently, terrorizing birds was hungry work.
She filled his water bowl, gave him a scoop of dry food made locally by some curious Jekhan woman who’d heard Court kept such an odd pet, and joined Murk in the sunken living room. Unlike him, she wouldn’t get in his space and commit acts of petty aggravation until he gave up the baby. She was a mature adult, so she took the seat adjacent and pulled her feet beneath her. She nestled her tablet atop her legs and said a little prayer that the satellite feed had connected overnight and that there was news from Buinet.
Not knowing how Trig was getting on was even more distracting than the idea that her siblings were somewhere between Earth and Buinet. She worried they would be apprehended on sight upon landing simply for sharing her last name—even if they hadn’t done anything wrong.
She had no way of knowing if they’d landed yet. She imagined Erin would try to get in touch via Court’s last used com frequency as soon as she landed, but even then, it would take a few days to go fetch her and Owen.
And Trig…well, Trig having Allan with him didn’t make Court feel any better. She didn’t understand why he had to go in the first place.
“Looks like the feed came up.” Murk nodded toward her tablet. The news scrolled up the screen as it downloaded.
“Mm-hmm.”
“What’s worrying you?”
“The same as always.”
“I see.” His gaze was on Kerry’s small fist curling and uncurling around his index finger as she snoozed. Court couldn’t debate that he wasn’t enamored of the child. Perhaps under different circumstances, she would have more quickly found his aggressive brand of fathering appealing.
She fidgeted with the corner of the tablet and looked on. He always seemed to have such impeccable instincts when it came to giving people what they needed, Court being the exception. But even when they argued, which was frequent as Murk seemed to be eager to make up for lost time from when he hadn’t had his voice, he wasn’t being contentious out of sheer stubbornness. They had some cultural differences, and perhaps neither was as respectful of them as they could have been. Even when he tried to extend an olive branch to her, she accused him of gaming her to get what he wanted. That wasn’t fair. If she could trust that Trig was trying to understand her, why not Murk?
Because Kerry raised the stakes for us?
She looked up from the tablet she wasn’t really reading anyway to find Murk watching her. “What?”
“You could pick any quiet room to read in, but you choose this one.”
Here we go again. “Murk—”
“I don’t mean that as an accusation. I’m just trying to understand.”
She took a deep breath. “Nothing has changed for me. I let you and Trig into my bed because I wanted the company. Wanting the company to stick around shouldn’t be surprising to you. I don’t tend to throw away people I’ve come to have affection for. That’s self-defeating.”
“Do you have affection for me?”
“In spite of you being a raving jackass?”
He narrowed his eyes to wine-colored slits.
“Yes, in spite of you being a raving jackass. I don’t know what that says about me. I feel like I don’t know which is the real you. The charming Dom who likes to cuddle, the bossy prick with the murderous gleam to his eyes, or this…” She made a waffling gesture. “Mama bear.”
He chuckled, and wore the grin she hadn’t seen in months. His smile made her melt a little, sort of like the way Kerry made him melt. The grin was familiar. Genuine. He didn’t have a phony bone in his body.
She wasn’t used to men like him, except for her brothers. Her brothers were exponentially easier to read, however.
“I suppose I’m all of those things,” he said. “Do they have to be mutually exclusive?”
“No. I’m just the sort of skeptic who expects them to be.”
He stood with Kerry and disappeared down the hallway.
Court itched to follow, to watch, but kept herself still by fixing her stare on the news stream. She skimmed the content from other cities and districts. Not much going on. They weren’t nearly as populous as Buinet and its surrounding area. Taking a bracing breath, she nudged up the Buinet section and hoped she didn’t see Allan’s name mentioned nor any description of her violet-eyed man. Or her siblings, for that matter.
She’d just started reading a sanitized news item about the clearing out of Zone Seven—they were converting the area to low-income housing for the upcoming enormous influx of factory workers—when Murk returned without Kerry.
She arched a brow a
s he sat beside her. “You okay? Feeling feverish?”
“No. I put Kerry in her cradle, and she’s content to sleep there.”
“But you’re not content unless you’re holding her.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t believe I’ll self-destruct for the duration of her nap.”
“Heading back to the orchard?” There was a Jekhan fruit similar in texture to pears but with a more tart flavor Court had become quite fond of. The added benefit of eating so much of the stuff was that it improved her milk production. She didn’t make that connection. The kind doctor had informed her in passing when he caught her stuffing her face during his last visit. He’d wanted to make sure the inside of Kerry’s nostrils didn’t have bulky scars from her newborn surgery. Fortunately, she didn’t. Court couldn’t bear to hear the child cry and didn’t like the idea of the tiny baby enduring another operation.
“I can bring you back more fruit if you want some,” Murk said, “but aren’t you tired of canning preserves by now?”
“Tired of it? A little. But the store credits are nice and I’d like to stockpile more of them. Allan’s son Geno says they can’t keep the stuff on the shelves.”
“I imagine not. My father did a great deal of trade of those preserves decades ago. Trig’s family had the only farm in the area with mature trees. He explained that they’re very difficult to nurse in their first few years. Most don’t survive uncovered in the winters until they’re five years old. They need a lot of coddling.”
“That’s probably why Trig is confident he can grow coffee.” She laughed, but her amusement was short—punctuated by her memory of the situation at hand.
“You worry about him.” Murk reached a slow hand to her hair and freed the elastic from its bun before she figured out what he was doing.
She tried to pull her hair back together, but it was no use. She gave up and let the mess fall where it may.
He moved closer and twined a length of her locks around his fingers. “Do you?”
“Yes, I miss him. Isn’t that natural?”
“For our women? No. That’s why I ask.”
“Are your women not capable of a wide range of emotions? I haven’t seen that to be the case.”
Or have I?
Ruth had been quite animated, and so had many of the other women in the desert enclave. The few women she’d encountered in Little Gitano seemed to have a full arsenal of feelings. But Court hadn’t met many Jekhan women in Buinet. The one she remembered clearly, however—Festus’s servant woman—seemed to have only one channel: fear.
“Passion has been all but bred out of Tyneali women, and I suppose that’s what makes Jekhans so passive overall.”
“Why would they want to breed that out?”
“I’m not sure they wanted to, but I believe the outcome was a side effect of manipulating other inherited traits.” He dropped the length of curls he’d been fondling and stroked the underside of her jaw.
She sighed and instinctively lifted her chin. She’d missed his touch, had forgotten how tender he was. It’d been too long, and she’d doubted him. They needed to rebuild their trust.
“Trig always thought he was too soft.” Murk skimmed his lips along her jaw. “Thought there was something wrong with him for wanting…more.” He nipped at her earlobe and pulled a gasp from her.
“More?”
“Mmm. He’s needy, is he not?”
“He hides his desires well enough,” she said.
“I’m sure he didn’t see where he had a choice.”
“And you’re happy to give him what he needs.”
“Because perhaps there’s plenty wrong with me, too.” He slid his hand across her breasts. Once the shockwave of fear passed, there went the grip of anticipation. Of course he’d seen her breasts in the past five weeks. They were front and center every time he stalked her as she nursed Kerry, but all those times, he’d seemed more interested in Kerry’s nutrition than of the source of it. Now, he fondled and played, stimulating her through the thin fabric of her flannel shirt.
“What do you want, Courtney? Tell me what Trig and I can give you. I want to give it to you.”
“I just want you to not forget me.”
“You’re impossible to forget.”
“Then show me that.”
“I’ll exhaust myself trying, if you’d like.” He crushed his lips against hers and pushed her back down onto the sofa. His tongue probed her mouth, searching and dominating as he gripped her hair in his fists—tugged it possessively. Every time her heavy eyelids slipped, he gave another little look at me yank, and she did. He was so easy to look at.
She wrapped her leg around his waist, knowing she couldn’t invite him in for another week, but craving the full contact of him—his heaviness, his hardness.
“You miss me?” He rocked his hips, abrading her clit beneath all those layers of fabric, which somehow seemed far more erotic a thing than him touching it directly. Perhaps that was because so many months had passed since she’d done anything remotely sexual with anyone beside herself.
“Of course I do. I miss feeling like you see me.”
“You’re impossible to ignore, Courtney.” He lifted the bottom of her shirt and slid his hand up the side of her ribs, skimming the bottom of her breast. “I’m not supposed to see you as a sexual thing. That would be disrespectful of me, treating you that way.”
“Why, because I’m a mother?”
“Yes.”
“I was raised Catholic. I can vouch for women being quite sexual after their first child. Several times over.”
He circled her breast and gave it a tentative squeeze.
“Careful,” she warned.
“I miss those.”
“I would have thought the novelty would have worn off by now.”
He rocked his hips again, driving his hard shaft against her thigh. “What do you think? Hmm? I’ve felt like a deviant for months, looking at you…the things I want to do to you…”
“Like what?”
He sat up a bit to roll her shirt up more, exposing her bra. He nudged down the fabric of the right cup and bent. He licked around her areola, pinning her in his gaze and ignoring her distress.
Much more of that and she was going to leak and wouldn’t be able the stop it. All that fucking fruit…
“I’d keep you up all night. Not like before when I was weak.”
“You were doing admirably considering the circumstances.”
“Once isn’t enough. I could have done better. I hoped you didn’t think that was all I was capable of.”
“At the time, I didn’t think anything was wrong with what you were doing. As long as I come, I’m a happy camper.”
He turned his attention back to her breast, flicking the tip of his tongue against her nipple until she grabbed his hair and pulled him back.
“You’re going to get sprayed. Some guys like that, I hear, but let’s explore one kink at a time, shall we?”
“I’d like to know all about your kinks.”
“Why? So you can get me all hot and bothered and not follow through?”
“Can’t I, though?” He bent, tugged her earlobe between his teeth and ground his cock against her again. “Can I touch your clit?”
“Yes.”
“Massage you? I could get the oil. Strip you naked and rub you until you’re begging for my touch,” he whispered.
“That doesn’t sound productive for either of us.”
“You could suck me.”
“True.”
“I wouldn’t last long in your mouth.”
“And will the massage result in a happy ending for me?”
“If you’d like. I could rub you off while taking your ass. Would you let me fuck you there?”
Every muscle on her body seemed to spasm at once. She was fairly certain that anal sex was included in the doctor’s pelvic rest order, but what Doc didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
“Get the oil,” she said.
Murk chuckled and eased off her. “Gladly.”
No sooner had he set his bare foot on the floor did Kerry make a plaintive cry.
Murk grimaced.
Court lay very still. “Maybe she’ll nod back off.”
No such luck. Kerry let out another little cry, and then a louder, more insistent one. She wasn’t going to be ignored.
“C’est la vie, right?” Court started fixing herself up.
Murk placed a hand on her cheek. “Let me get her. Please? The orchard is shady. I think she’d like being outside today.”
His voice was so earnest and sweet, she couldn’t say no.
Court nodded. “I’ll join you out there later, though.”
“Because you’ll worry?”
“Exactly.”
He gave her one last kiss and eased off her.
She watched him walk away, appreciating his tall, strong physique as he moved, and found her tablet computer buried beneath the chair cushions. She pulled the newsfeed back up. “Search,” she told the tablet.
“Input.”
“Beshni. B-E-S-H-N-I.”
“No hits. Try again?”
She wouldn’t say she was relived, exactly. Trigrian probably wouldn’t have given his real name if arrested. She’d probably have to read word-for-word to find any specific references to him.
“Search Rowe, R-O-W-E, higher search rank in proximity to first name Allan, A-L-L-A-N.”
“Six hits. Display?”
Hope plummeted. “Um, save and continue to search.” She couldn’t let herself get distracted. She needed to look at everything at once.
“New search?”
She swallowed. “Search McGarry. M-C-G-A-R-R-Y.”
Murk padded into the room holding Kerry against his shoulder. His furrowed forehead gave evidence of his curiosity. She held up a hand, bidding him to wait.
“Nineteen results for McGarry. Isolate?”
“Yes, eliminate any references to the senior Owen McGarry.”
“Four hits. Display?”
She was stunned there’d been fifteen references to her grandfather. Probably propaganda. She could wait until later to peruse them.