by H. E. Trent
“Autumn. Sweetheart.” He swallowed and guided her closer.
“What do you want me to do?” she whispered.
“Baby, can Autumn touch you?”
“Fuck, Luke, just…” He rocked his hips, urging Luke to resume his thrusts. “She can do what she likes, but don’t stop. Keep doing that.”
Luke guided her lube-slicked hand to Alex’s cock and pressed his own hands to the bed for balance.
“He’s got the prettiest cock I’ve ever seen,” Luke said. “I know he’s a distracting motherfucker, but make him come. I’ll try to give you a little room to work. Can you do that for me?”
She nodded with determination and fixed her grip.
Content that she had the situation with Alex’s cock well under control, Luke closed his eyes and concentrated on that decadent few inches of Alex’s body that was accepting him so well. The fact that Alex would let him do it at all after their rocky start and their ups and down over the past weeks spoke to his ability to trust, and that was more important than anything. Trust was the sexiest aphrodisiac Luke knew of.
“So…close…” he said with his teeth clenched. As his loins throbbed in warning and his lungs refused to completely draw in air, his rhythm faltered. Less elegant, more urgent.
Alex hooked his legs around Luke’s ass and guided him harder, faster, relaxing his body for Luke as Autumn worked her hand up his shaft. Luke could only handle a brief peek at her work before the threat of coming overtook him. She was so focused, carefully stretching and stroking the slick flesh and massaging the head, like she really wanted to do a good job for him, for Alex—for both of them.
“I— Luke, I— Ugh.” Alex pulled Autumn’s head down to kiss her as a ribbon of ejaculate landed on his glistening chest, and Luke gave up on trying to deploy pretty strokes.
He’d worry about the technique the next time. He’d plan better, and wouldn’t let the sight of his lover demanding a kiss from Luke’s wife undo him in the same way. He clenched his teeth hard and thrust forcefully into Alex two, three times, and kept going as the fire shot through his belly and loins. He didn’t stop until his arms turned to jelly and he fell at an angle onto Alex.
Alex stopped kissing Autumn then and turned his head toward Luke, breathing raggedly, chest heaving, and his pupils huge in his bright eyes.
“Fuck, I love you,” Luke whispered.
Obviously unable to speak, Alex nodded jerkily and let his eyelids drift shut.
Luke closed his, too, conscious of Autumn’s tentative movements on the bed beside Alex, but he needed a moment before he shifted his attention. He was usually better at multitasking.
She gave Luke’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Should I just—”
“Are you cold?” Luke asked. He still didn’t want to move. He was going soft inside Alex and would need to clean up, but that niche he was laying in half atop his man was a damned comfortable one.
“A little,” she admitted.
“You can go wash your hands. Then see if you can get the covers up around us. Can probably go back to sleep for a while.”
“Okay. Do you want me to…” Her fingertips skimmed at the juncture of the two men’s bodies between their legs. “Take that?”
“Are you squeamish?”
She sighed and held out her hand. “I’ll cope, Luke.”
He laughed. “Go ahead, then.” He eased himself out of Alex and let her unsheathe him. Then she crawled off the bed and her footsteps padded toward the bathroom.
Alex took a deep breath and, draping an arm over Luke’s back, whispered, “Luke.”
“Hmm?” Luke opened his eyes and saw the worry in Alex’s.
“What are we doing?”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me you love me, Alex.”
“I do love you, but—”
“Then you should know I’ll figure it out.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing?”
“No, I don’t fucking know. Maybe I’m greedy, but I want you both. I don’t want to give up either of you. Are you going to be okay with that?”
“I’m not comfortable with it. That’s evident. But I’m not going to lose you to her. Not after what I’ve done.”
“What do you mean, what you’ve done. What’d you do?” Luke sat up so he could better see more of Alex’s face.
Sighing, Alex draped his forearm over his eyes. “I queued a message to Earth. I told my parents about you. They’re probably going to disown me, so you’d better fucking promise to take care of me if shit hits the fan. I didn’t want to let Autumn have leverage over me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“I’m sorry for the difficulty this delay will cause all of you,” the project site manager, Constano, said. “You’ve all come a long way, and I know you’re eager for us to make some decisions so you can get started, but until the weather conditions settle here, we simply cannot be responsible for having you all on site. It’s too dangerous. We have all of your contact information, and when we’re ready to confer again, we’ll send you all communications.”
Autumn gathered up her bag, grabbed her mug of tea, and started for the exit of the cave that had been hastily designated as the central office for The Barrens Project. It was crowded, but at least the wind couldn’t get in, and they could actually hear each other speak.
Surprisingly, she didn’t know any of the developers in the gathering. They were all successful in their own rights back on Earth, but she’d never had any opportunities to cross paths with them before. She’d been too insulated in her father’s culture of depravity, perhaps. They seemed to be decent-enough people, if not as experienced as her. Most were young upstarts, working on behalf of their Earth-based companies. Autumn was the only one working for herself.
Oreva ducked into the space and, with forehead furrowed with curiosity, watched the developers pass in the opposite direction. “Where are they going?”
“We’ve been dismissed because of the weather.”
“Dismissed?” He passed a hand through his curly hair and drew in a sharp inhalation. “The weather is what took me so damned long to get back here. I’d just called them three hours ago and they didn’t say anything about closing down the site.”
“Sorry. I think they only made the decision thirty minutes ago.”
“Ms. Ray? May I speak with you?”
Autumn turned at the sound of Constano’s voice. The older Jekhan man wore his silver hair cropped short beneath his hard hat and his Terran-style coveralls made his wiry body seem impossibly long.
He ducked into the low-ceiling cavern and beckoned her away from the exit.
Gesturing at Oreva to wait, she joined Constano near the cave partition. “I suppose this is where you gently inform me not to return when the others do?” she asked drolly.
Constano narrowed his eyes at her and made a face. “Why would I do such a thing?”
“I know my reputation.”
“Your…” He put his head back and made an “Ah” sound. Then he shrugged and gestured to the makeshift benches running adjacent to the partition. She sat, as did he.
Watchful, Oreva leaned against the wall near the opening.
“I know a little something about reputations,” Constano said, twining his fingers. “I have one here, and have had one since we fled to this place years ago.”
She nodded. She was curious, but she didn’t want to pry, always preferring to be exceptionally cautious in mixing business with personal, unlike her father. He tended to barrel into conversations with all the finesse of a charging bull.
“My fellows here thought I’d lost my mind after I’d cut my hair. That’s just not done.”
“I noticed.” Jekhan men wore their hair long and bound as a matter of tradition, and the practice was strictly adhered to by all but the most brazen of males. Apparently, the Beshni brothers at the farm tended to be more careless about the state of their hair than most, but they were b
oth married men—for all intents and purposes. If their lovers didn’t care they went around flaunting their hair, nobody else should have, either.
“I figured, why maintain a custom when we’re so far away from the culture? Why bother at all when the custom creates greater inconvenience in a place like this where we already have to go without so many things? When I fled from Yarnte, I didn’t even have a comb. All I had in my satchel were a couple of old maps, some rations, and some surgical equipment that had been passed around from person to person. We’d all been excising the tracking chips the Terrans had implanted in us during the occupation.”
Again, she nodded—not because of the personal nature the conversation had devolved to, but because she felt too small to do anything else. And she was one of those people—the Terrans. She was always going to be prejudged on Jekh. People would make assumptions about her until she proved she wasn’t like that. She’d probably be fighting for the rest of her life to prove she wasn’t like that, and if she wasn’t willing to put in the work, she needed to go.
I don’t want to go.
She wasn’t going to run from something hard. Just because others had broken something didn’t mean she was absolved from doing her part to fix it.
“Perhaps I’m overly practical,” he said, shrugging. “The reputation I have now is for tiptoeing around conventions. People assume I’m not going to do what’s expected.”
“That’s not always a bad thing,” she said quietly.
“Indeed. That’s why you’re sitting here and not one of the others.”
“I don’t follow what you’re telling me.”
He turned his hands over and stared at his palms. Work-roughened. Dry. Callused. He was a man who put actions behind his work—not just a delegator. He was both a decision-maker and a doer.
As different from her father as a builder could possibly be.
“You’ve been quiet about your ideas for the site,” he said. “I’ve been catching drips and drabs and looking over your shoulder on occasion to see what’s on those pads you’ve been scribbling on. You didn’t submit any of those ideas.”
“I didn’t know how to. I didn’t know this convention was taking place until that gentleman—” she pointed to Oreva “was heading here. I sort of invited myself along to see if I could make something happen.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“You are?”
Constano grunted and waved Oreva over.
Oreva pointed at himself in that falsely, “Me? Why?” fashion that people who were pretending not to eavesdrop always did. He sauntered over without waiting for Constano’s response.
“You vanished,” Constano directed at him after he’d taken a seat.
Oreva crossed his legs at the knees and grunted. “Yes, well, generally I try to avoid letting my personal life interfere with my business one, however when your significant other of three years decides that you leaving the planet is the perfect time to inform you that she’s been made pregnant by another man, you have to make some concessions.”
“Oh my,” Autumn murmured, cringing.
He ground his teeth and stared forward at the cave exit. “My apologies for abandoning the project in such an unprofessional manner, however, I needed to see to her prompt exit from the company. She had access to quite a bit of sensitive information about both my business partner and myself.”
His business partner Alex, who’d she’d let touch her in the most intimate of ways and wasn’t sure yet if she was supposed to regret her part in the tryst.
Things that felt that good were supposed to be bad for her.
Autumn leaned forward to look around Constano for a better view of Alex’s friend. “I’m really glad I didn’t sleep with anyone I work with. I’ve only got one employee left on Earth, and the last I heard, she was looking for a different job.”
Oreva shrugged. “Alex told me not to hire her. He’d told me to never hire anyone I’m personally involved with, and I thought that, of course, the rule didn’t apply to me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it.
He shrugged, but there was no true nonchalance in the gesture. He was pissed, and he had the right to be.
“Is she going to…continue to be a distraction going forward?” Constano asked in a gentle tone.
“Who knows? According to my assistant, she was escorted out of the office and had all of her accesses revoked. He’ll be diligent and will watch her, but that doesn’t mean some issues won’t crop up.”
“Ah. Well, as your people might say, ‘shit happens.’”
Oreva raised a brow. “Pardon me?”
“I’m willing to take the risk if you are.”
“What risk?”
“Your return time was serendipitous. If you hadn’t returned, I might have actually had to call all of those people back. I’ve looked into your portfolio. You’ve developed properties in some very unlikely places and they seem to be thriving.”
Autumn turned away and cringed. The compliment was a true one. While she didn’t necessarily like Oreva and Alex’s style of work, they were good at what they did, and they never lost a penny.
So, what’s that mean for me?
“We try to make all of our communities self-contained so that people don’t have to leave for basic necessities,” Oreva said. “If we can’t get groceries and dry goods retailers to commit to having stores within walking distance of the center of the community, we don’t build.”
“That’s what we need here. We need to build an entire community and bring to it the missing infrastructure.” Constano turned to Autumn. “I want to know more about your residential plans because I think they’d work here. I think the people here would be comfortable with them.”
“You do?” She couldn’t help her surprise. He’d barely seen the tip of the iceberg as far as her ideas went.
He grunted. “I think even with your limited participation, you’ve demonstrated best out of everyone gathered at this summit that you were knowledgeable about building structures that would be a transition from traditional Jekhan style, but suited well to this area. It’s multi-family, community-minded housing, and not just…” He made a dismissive swishing gesture with his hand. “Condos.”
“I guess I conceptualized what I would want for myself if I’d had a family I actually liked.” She hugged her bag against her chest and sputtered her lips. “All I have here is my sister, and she’s eighteen and will get deported if she doesn’t… I’m rambling. Ignore me.”
He laughed. “I doubt she’ll get deported. Mark my words, the people who make the decisions will ignore that she’s here unless she makes trouble. There are too few women on the planet to have such a strict adherence to the rules. Do you think she’d be fine without your constant supervision?”
She scoffed. “Cree doesn’t need me. She’s bold and knows how to make friends in a way I can’t. Why do you ask?”
“Because if you work here, you’ll have to spend weeks on end on-site. There’s no telling when you’ll be able to cycle out to take a break.”
“Wait, are you—”
He turned to Oreva before Autumn could get out the rest of her query. “I’d like to hire you on the retail and commercial ring of projects. You’d have to work closely with Ms. Ray so that everything blends seamlessly with the residential structures. Of course, you’d have to bring in your own teams or hire locally if you think you could. Could you work together?” He looked from one to the other. “Perhaps give it some thought and let me know within the next couple of weeks. We really are shutting down the site temporarily, so I wasn’t being completely dishonest to the group. Think about it and let me know.”
He walked through the opening into the greater cave system before either could say anything in response.
For a minute, Autumn and Oreva stared at each other, and then they both spoke at once.
“I want this job,” he said at the same time she said, “I need this job.”
Then the
y stared at each other again.
He made a “Go on” gesture.
“This is important to me, not only so I can establish myself in this place, but so that I can set myself apart from my father.”
Oreva chuckled. “You might start by changing your last name. You have the legal grounds to easily do so.”
Notching her teeth into her bottom lip, she nodded.
She could change her name—she could be Autumn Cipriani and separate herself from the Ray brand forevermore. But…she could only do that if she had confidence that Luke was going to keep her. She had no reason to believe that he would. The chemistry between him and Alex was real and explosive, and she knew better than to think that a bit of play would lead to permanence.
She needed to let him off the hook as soon as possible. She’d remain his wife just long enough to clear her residency requirement, and then she’d give him whatever he wanted. His life would likely be exponentially easier if she stayed in The Barrens.
“Yeah, that’d be nice,” she said quietly, squeezing her bag and pondering her lot in life. “Any name but mine, really, but Cipriani would be nice.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Alex decided that the alien who’d been the last owner of his ship had demonstrated a stroke of genius by having the after-market retracting privacy panel installed between the cockpit and living section of the ship.
Exactly two days north of The Barrens, his ship’s COM began chirping to notify him of a message backlog. There were a few from Ais, giving status updates about her trip with Owen and her mother, which he appreciated. There was a couple from Oreva who’d tried to contact him when he’d been away during the windstorm.
And there was one from Alex’s mother.
That one, he’d deleted without response because he’d already had another queued to go out to his parents that should have forecasted his feelings about her arranged marriage idea well enough.
She was calling non-stop, and the damned chimes were getting harder to ignore.