Dusk (Dusk 1)

by J. S. Wayne

  “And the diamonds?”

  “I care nothing about diamonds. On your world they are rare and therefore valuable, much as they are on Terra. Here, gem-grade diamonds are only slightly less common than ordinary gravel. I can find diamonds along the beach that put the Hope Diamond to shame both in size and quality. You can line your pockets, or whatever passes for them, to your and your leader’s hearts’ content. So long as the gallartium is mined with due care and stored properly until it is time to take it off-planet, we will both be satisfied. Do you understand?”

  “I do indeed.” Grrrreelawk’s tongue snaked out, flicking across his lips nervously. “I will see to it the operation continues.”

  “Excellent,” the assassin said, staring greedily down at the ever-expanding vein of glowing blue.

  * * *

  “You can’t seriously have meant you wanted to take that ridiculous-looking man out for a sightseeing jaunt!” Merrick fumed.

  “Yes, I did, Merrick. It would be impolitic not to, and I need to learn more about why there’s a military man attached to Al-Aziz’s team.”

  Merrick froze. “How far are you willing to go to do that?”

  Olivia’s face went cold. “What exactly do you mean?”

  “Would you sleep with him, if you thought it would get you information?”

  Something snapped in Olivia’s mind. “Merrick, you’re making a huge mistake. I love you, but I don’t own you. The same applies to you. If I do decide sleeping with him is the best way to get information, then that’s my own choice. Besides.” She smiled slightly, recalling the warmth of his lips against the skin of her hand. “He has nice lips. I wouldn’t mind kissing them, or even better, kissing you while both of you have me.”

  He blinked. “You mean… a threesome?”

  She shrugged. “Well, why not? If I decide I do want to sleep with him, I would feel better about it with you present. It would solve the problem rather neatly, and everyone gets what they want, yes?”

  Merrick frowned and his brow furrowed. “But he’s sleeping with Al-Aziz.”

  Olivia laughed out loud at the ludicrous notion. “You actually believed that? That was Al-Aziz having a joke at your and Colonel Silva’s expense at the same time. The most amazing thing about the whole situation is that you bought what he was selling you. Didn’t you see Silva’s mouth?”

  The frown on Merrick’s handsome face crashed down into a full scowl. “What reason would I have to be looking at his mouth? The only interest I have in his mouth is possibly smashing my fist into it if he does anything untoward.”

  “Come on, love.” Olivia pushed away from the wall, shrugging off the robe. “Doesn’t it make you hot, the idea of watching me with another man, knowing you and he will both have me? You don’t have to touch each other.” She paused, reflecting on that idea. “In fact, I’d prefer it. But just imagine me on my knees, wet and open for you while I suck another man’s hard cock. I’d be completely helpless. You can have my pussy, or even my ass. Would you like that, Merrick?”

  She lowered herself into his lap. To her amusement, Merrick’s cock pressed against her slit, showing what he felt about it despite his protests. Leaning forward, she kissed his ear. “Imagine taking me at the same time he does, with me sandwiched between you, coming over and over as I scream both your names.” She swiveled her hips forward in a tiny, sensual undulation. “Wouldn’t that be worth it?”

  He licked his lips. “I -- well, we’ve talked about it before, but…” His face suddenly flushed. “Why him? He’s such a stiff! Did you see the way he stands? He looks like someone rammed a poker up his ass.”

  Olivia smiled. “I rather doubt that. But I also don’t think he’d do anything to hurt me. Besides, I think he’s hot, and it seems to me we could do worse than share with someone who’s going to be out of here in a week, if it takes that long. Especially if we can find out more about what they’re up to by mixing business and pleasure. He goes his way, we go ours…” An idea occurred to her, and she leaned forward to whisper into his ear.

  When she pulled back, she could see all too plainly the hunger in Merrick’s eyes. “You really mean that?”

  She nodded. “I get my fantasy, you get yours.”

  He gnawed his lower lip pensively, thinking it over. Somehow the expression made him look like a little boy, and she had to fight the urge to tousle his hair. “Interesting. I never thought you were into other women.”

  “I’m not, but turnabout’s fair play, isn’t it?” She wriggled her butt again, letting him feel her heat against his pelvis.

  He groaned. “I would be there? The whole time?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, nipping lightly on his earlobe.

  “And I wouldn’t have to touch him?”

  “No.”

  “If he hurts you, I’ll kill him.”

  Olivia rose off him, her eyes sparkling. “Just like a good bodyguard should.” She flounced over to the closet, willing it open as she strutted, giving Merrick a good look at her ass.

  “Now, let’s see… what to wear,” she mused, tapping a fingernail against her teeth.

  * * *

  “Enter!”

  The door slid open, revealing Olivia and her omnipresent bodyguard. Instead of her ambassadorial attire, she wore a complex arrangement of straps that covered the essentials but did nothing to obstruct the view. Merrick had a dark breechclout wrapped around his hips. Both wore boots, and were otherwise unclad.

  Pete rose, hastily shrugging on his black T-shirt.

  “Good afternoon, Ambassador.”

  Olivia smiled. “Actually, it’s morning, Colonel, at least as we reckon time. Astaroth will be rising soon. Merrick and I thought it would be pleasant to take you to the beach and let you see our world’s greatest natural wonder.”

  Pete thought it over. Al-Aziz had cleared him to do whatever he wished until that night, when the natives had a big reception planned. Getting out and seeing some local color seemed like a pretty good idea, and getting to know Olivia better seemed like an even better one.

  “Sure. Give me five minutes to freshen up?”

  Olivia smiled. “Of course. Do you have anything particular you would like to take with you, as far as food goes?”

  Pete thought it over. Technically, he was off duty and had twelve hours before he was due back. He could do more or less whatever he liked and still have eight hours straight before he resumed his duties. So why not?

  “I have some Terran Scotch in my closet. If you want to dig it out, I’ll freshen up and we’ll be ready to go.”

  Olivia nodded to Merrick.

  “Top drawer, at the back. Glenlivet.”

  Merrick considered. “I’ve heard good things about that, but I’ve never tried it before. It’s on my to-do list, though.”

  Pete nodded to the other man. Finally, we’re speaking a common language! “Then you won’t want to pass up this chance,” he said, ducking into the ’fresher.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later the hovercar touched down on the pad near the beach. Merrick dismounted first, allowing Silva to get out.

  “So, I hear Dusk has some of the most beautiful beaches in the galaxy,” Silva said, apparently in a bid to make conversation.

  Merrick studied him closely, trying to divine from a hundred vocal and non-vocal cues if there was anything in the words besides the words themselves. After a moment he gave it up as a futile exercise.

  “That’s what I’ve been told. Of course, I haven’t seen enough other beaches to have much of a basis for comparison,” Merrick replied. “The tri-vids I’ve seen of Terra worry me. All that light, all the time? No wonder everyone has to wear those polarized filter… things over their eyes.”

  “You mean shades? Sunglasses,” Silva prompted. Merrick supposed his confusion must have been visible for Silva to bother with the clarification. “Yeah. Skin cancer used to be a big problem on Terra, but we’ve had that licked for centuries. Still, it’s kind of unpleasa
nt sitting out with no protection over your eyes.” He took a deep breath, stretching his arms over his head. Merrick noticed that, unlike his lean frame, Silva was both stockier and more bulky, with the kind of thick, heavy muscle that comes from sustained, hard physical labor. His black T-shirt strained under the pressure of containing all that muscle, and Merrick had to fight down a surge of envy.

  Olivia, who had been leaning against the side of the ’car during the exchange, eyed Silva avidly, appreciating the view. Then she gave Merrick a wink, as if to say, “Yeah, he’s pretty, but you’re still my number one.”

  “So what shall we call you? ‘Colonel’ seems so formal, and just addressing you by your last name seems rude.”

  Silva turned to her and feigned a courtly bow. “Well, ma’am, my friends call me Pete. And I figure that’s anyone who drinks my Scotch with me and isn’t planning to put a knife in my back.”

  I could think about putting a knife in your back, Merrick thought. But Olivia wouldn’t appreciate the gesture at all.

  “Then if we’re to call you Pete, you must call me Olivia and he’s Merrick. None of this ‘ma’am’ business… makes me feel old.”

  Silva nodded brusquely. “As you like, er, Olivia.” He looked around at the rocky fangs of the spires. “So, uh, where are we headed?”

  “This way.” Merrick took point, with Olivia’s hand tucked firmly in his, leaving Silva to follow, or not, as he wished. In moments he led them to the ideal viewing point for moonrise and laid down the blanket he’d brought from the ’car.

  Silva cracked the seal on his bottle, and poured a generous jigger for each of them. They clinked glasses and drank.

  Merrick smacked his lips. “This is really good. I had some stuff one time, trader claimed it was genuine Terran Scotch. Damn stuff tasted like it had been cut with turpentine. When I finally got him to confess, he told me it was actually Rigelian fire water.”

  Pete shivered. “Yeah. That’s from my neck of the woods. Nasty stuff. I hope he gave you back the difference.”

  Merrick allowed a small, cold smile to stretch his lips back. “It took a little persuading, but he finally saw it my way.”

  Olivia sipped at her drink and made a face. “Is it supposed to taste like this?”

  “Yup,” Silva said. “It’s the finest whiskey ever made on Earth.”

  She took another sip and grimaced. “Well, it’s not for me.”

  Pete shrugged. “Scotch is one of those things where you either love it or hate it. There’s no in-between. What my dad used to call an ‘acquired taste.’”

  “Don’t worry, Olivia. I have something else in the ’car I think you’ll like better.” Merrick turned away, toward the car. “I’ll be right back.”

  * * *

  “If you watch over the horizon, you’ll see Astaroth peeking up right… about… now.”

  Pete followed the direction of her long, graceful finger. True to her prediction, a ghostly corona of blue light formed at the horizon. A moment later it burst as a smooth, blue-black curved blade rose out of the ocean.

  Second by second it grew larger, stealing Pete’s breath with how dangerously close it appeared. He staggered back, tripping over his own hind foot and dropping himself unceremoniously on his ass in the powdery sand. Dimly he realized the sand on this beach was far finer than any sand he’d ever felt on Terra. He kept his eyes riveted on the immense, glassy orb as it birthed itself over the water, casting a frozen indigo light over the beach. Tiny sparks of sullen orange and bright red shone on Astaroth’s face, the visible legacy of volcanic activity.

  His breath quickened. Despite all his experiences on other worlds, with moons that never showed their bright faces to their companion worlds at all or never shone on the parts of the planets where he’d been, this was a new and terrifying first for him. Astaroth loomed in the sky, menacingly close to Dusk, taking up the biggest part of a quarter of the heavens, the glassy black of its surface interrupted with the hellish light from the magma welling up in pinprick patchwork on its face. He had known, from his research into the planet and its denizens, what Astaroth looked like and how it devoured the Dusk sky. Knowing from tri-vid and seeing it in person were two wildly different things, and his pulse raced with atavistic terror at the difference.

  “That’s our moon, Astaroth.” Olivia’s eyes glittered silver in the eerie reflected werelight of the satellite as she stared at Pete, obviously trying to make sense of his reaction.

  “That’s not a moon,” Pete retorted sharply, his own anger at his very un-Marinelike alarm tightening his voice. “It’s a fucking nightmare!”

  Merrick spoke from behind him. “A lot of people find the closeness of Astaroth disturbing, especially when they first arrive. You’ll get used to it.”

  Pete turned to see Merrick pouring the Scotch from Olivia’s glass into his own and Pete’s in roughly equal portions. Then he produced a bottle full of a thick blue liqueur and topped off Olivia’s glass. “Get used to that? How do you deal with something that big in your sky all the time? Terra’s moon is absolutely tiny compared to that.”

  “Properly speaking, Astaroth isn’t really a moon at all. It doesn’t behave like a typical satellite, according to our astrophysicists. It’s more like a ‘twinned’ planet, a remnant of the formation of this solar system that got locked into orbit with Dusk because it’s much lighter. Astaroth obsidian is some of the most prized material in the galaxy for scalpels and other primitive medical equipment.”

  Pete took a long slug of his whiskey, trying to calm his racing heartbeat. “Well, maybe so,” he allowed. “Even so, it’s a damn scary-looking sight.”

  Olivia smiled. “But see how it tints the foam on the waves?”

  Pete looked and saw what she was referring to. Where the ocean foam on Terra crashed in on the shore in a fairly uniform greenish-white, this foam broke in all shades of blue, purple, and even hints of green, shattering the light from Astaroth across the higher end of the spectrum. It didn’t make it any less disquieting, but even he had to admit it was surprisingly beautiful.

  He looked back and studied Olivia. In Astaroth’s eldritch light she looked like a spirit or perhaps a Fae, stepped across from the other world to dance in faerie rings and spend a little time in the regular universe. He turned to Merrick, wondering if he would look different, and found to his surprise that he did. The other man looked hard and sharp as a carbon steel blade, his wiry strength now lending his ascetic features and his thin build the same air of threat that danced around the edge of a rapier.

  The thought made him distinctly uneasy.

  Instead of pursuing it, he turned back toward Astaroth, now fully risen, hanging huge and darkling bright in the sky. Although the primitive dread the moon inspired in him did not abate, he forced himself to experience it again and again, working with and through it until he had finally wrestled it into something tame that he could deal with. Maybe it was his imagination, but he fancied the Scotch helped.

  A soft hand perched on his shoulder.

  He started and looked around to see Olivia squatting next to him, close enough that he could detect the soft floral scent she wore and a deeper, more subtle aroma that he recognized not by its own merits, but because he knew and instinctively noted the scent of a woman.

  “It’s really quite beautiful, isn’t it?”

  If Merrick hadn’t been lowering right behind them, he might have said something stupidly romantic like, “It’s okay, but without you here, it wouldn’t mean much.” He caught himself just in time and settled for agreeing with her. “It is.”

  She scooted around so she was looking him right in the eye, as if trying to see through his iris into his mind or perhaps his soul. He cringed a little on the inside, but met her eyes with all the calm and discipline his training permitted.

  “I… well, we… would like to ask you something.”

  He raised his eyebrows in an invitation for her to continue, not trusting himself to speak. Her proximity a
nd the soothing, warm scent of her body teased his prick into a vertical attitude, and he was suddenly sure if he said anything, his voice would crack eight ways to Sunday.

  “We would like you to… join us.” She flushed, the red color flooding her face contrasting with Astaroth’s light in a way that reinforced his initial feeling of her as someone, or something, that did not fully share the laws of regular human existence.

  “Join you? Like… how?” he asked.

  “Well…” She fell silent for a moment, her bottom lip thrust out so tantalizingly that for a mad instant, he was tempted to lean forward and capture it gently in his teeth. She shook her head and looked at Merrick helplessly. “Help.” The word came out as a squeak so irresistibly cute that it took everything Pete had not to lean forward and take her in his arms.

  Merrick knelt down behind her. “We’re asking you if you want her.”

  Pete’s eyes bulged. Of all the things he’d expected, this wasn’t within parsecs of being on the list. “Wh-what do you --”

  “Look, it’s not complicated,” Merrick said impatiently. “Do you want to fuck Olivia?”

  Olivia’s face was now an alarming shade of purple in Astaroth’s light, but she nodded emphatically. “I want you, Pete. More to the point, I want both of you, together, inside me. I hoped that you would want me, too.”

  Pete’s mind whirled back to the Above Top Secret orders he’d received on shipboard. He’d read the orders with disgust, knowing he’d follow them if opportunity presented itself but determined to find any possible way to avoid it. Now here Olivia was, with her bodyguard/boyfriend/plaything… whatever the hell he was, asking him to fuck her with the full consent and acceptance of her man.

  A surprisingly vivid and graphic image of Olivia, balanced precisely between the two men, supported by their cocks inside her and their arms around her, seared into his brain. The vision was so powerful he could feel his brain melting into goo inside his skull.

  “Are you serious?” he asked, husking the words over a parched tongue and sandy lips.

  For answer Merrick pulled Olivia to her feet and began to undress her. He seemed to know exactly in what order to pull on the straps comprising her outfit to reveal her skin.