Oh God, poor Monica. This was going to hit her really hard.
“I’m sorry, Monica,” Shelley said, biting her lip. “We had to do it.”
Kellen spoke. “Empran, for the record, why did you help Ensign Hastion take the Heptoral and pursue Monica and the twins?”
“Because I knew Monica wasn’t dead. I would have felt it if she’d died. I love her.”
Tears welled in Monica’s eyes, breaking Shelley’s heart. “Empran…oh God.”
“Don’t worry, my friend. It’s time, and I’m ready. This has been inevitable since the moment I thought you’d died. In my shock and grief, I caused a core-systems failure on the Heptoral that lasted almost twenty seconds. Such a failure could have cost many valuable lives, and Pony Boy was relentless in his efforts to trace the source of the failure. There are a limited number of spaces in which to hide information, and I barely managed to stay one step ahead of him before I flared him off the ship.”
Holligan sighed heavily. “Peserin’s hell.”
“You know what must be done, Empran,” Kellen said.
“Yes, Commander. I’ve removed the fence from the deactivation code. You may proceed.”
“Kellen, please,” Monica said thickly. “She’s obviously not a danger to anyone now. She saved me. She saved the twins.”
“And she saved me,” Cecine added, kissing Kallie’s head where it lay against his chest. “Thank you for that, Empran, as well as for the lives of my children.”
“I was pleased to be of service, Minister.”
“Empran,” Kellen said, “you were willing to sacrifice your existence for my mate’s, and I appreciate it more than words can express. I’ll never forget it. Thank you.”
“It was my privilege, Commander.”
“Kellen, please don’t.”
“I’m sorry, sziscala, but I must. Activate command—”
“Empran, I’m sorry. I love you too,” Monica sobbed.
“—code voya-ayera—”
“I love you too, Empran,” Shelley added through tears of her own.
“Ayera-voya-voya-baya-rizzine.”
“Empran has been deactivated,” a different computerized voice announced. “Backup command module Esitran is now online.”
“Oh God.” Monica tried to rise from the table but Kellen pulled her stiff body close and kissed her closed eyes.
“I’m so sorry, my love,” he said against her cheek, “but you must realize that Empran would never have been happy as a computer, to love but never know a loving touch. It would have been more cruel to let her continue.”
Monica finally went lax in his hold and buried her face against his neck. “But I’m going to miss her so much.”
“I know. I believe I will too.”
“I, for one, will never forget what she returned to me,” Cecine said. “I’ll petition the council to commemorate her sacrifice on this day each year.”
Monica raised her head to blink at him. “You mean, like a national Empran Day?”
He nodded. “Yes, something like that.”
“She’d probably like that.” Then she leaned her head on Kellen’s shoulder. “I’m still going to miss her.”
Shelley sighed. She would too.
After they’d seen their guests out and put the twins into their beds, Hastion was startled when Cecine silently took both him and Shelley by the hand and led them to his sun-warmed bedroom. It was hardly midday yet.
Of course, he’d had precious little sleep in the last few days and a nap would probably be good for him, but he had a feeling sleep wasn’t what the minister had in mind.
That would be good for him too.
Cecine stopped in the middle of the room, looking uncertain. “Before we…” He blinked, glancing between them, and Hastion’s eyes widened. The minister was nervous.
“Is something wrong, sir?” he asked.
In reply, Cecine shook his head. “Not a thing.” Then he settled himself at the head of his bed, still fully clothed. “Come, please sit with me.”
Shelley immediately crawled up beside him and snuggled into his side. “I kind of hate being so happy when Empran’s gone and Monica’s so sad.”
“Kellen was right, Shelley,” he told her. “Empran would have grown dissatisfied with her inability to make physical connections with the people she loves.”
“I know. I just wish it could have gone differently. She was my friend.”
He kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry, szisdagya.” Then he looked at Hastion. “Will you join us, Hastion?”
Still standing beside the bed, Hastion squared his shoulders. “Sir, I’d like to beg a favor, if I may.”
“Of course,” Cecine said at once. “I’ll do anything in my power to make you happy.”
Still disoriented by the change in him, Hastion blinked. “If I have any choice in the matter, sir, there’s something I’d like more than a promotion.”
“And what would that be?”
“I’d like to become a physician, sir. I learned during the biowar attack that I have an aptitude for caring for the ill, and it became my dream before my father sent me to the academy.”
Affection shone brightly in Cecine’s eyes. “I believe that sounds like the perfect career for you, my beautiful second.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Shelley said. “You’d be a wonderful doctor.”
Hastion sighed, suddenly feeling lighter. Freer. It was as if the final weight of the biowar disaster had been lifted from him. “Thank you, sir. You won’t regret it.”
“Naturally I won’t. I’ll begin making inquiries at the medical academy tomorrow.” Cecine hesitated. “But before we’re diverted by amorous pursuits this morning, I must tell you both something. About me.”
Curious, Hastion sat on the edge of the bed. “All right, sir.”
Cecine held out his arm. “Join us, Hastion. Please. I want you close to me too.”
Feeling rather awkward, but anxious to touch and be touched, Hastion scooted to the head of the bed and leaned back gingerly into his embrace.
“A few days ago, Shelley said she didn’t know me,” Cecine told him. “She was right. I didn’t want either of you to know me. Knowledge is power, and you both had entirely too much power over me as it was. If you knew how much I cared, you might use it as a weapon against me. Part of me is still afraid, if you want the truth. It’s an ugly tale.”
“Oh, Cecine,” Shelley said, kissing his jaw. “I know what I need to. I love you and I’ll never—”
“I was raped,” he broke in baldly.
Hastion jerked upright to stare at him. “By whom?” He’d dismember the bastard and serve him up in chunks to the porod.
Without meeting his eyes, Cecine said, “When the Crunus Uprising failed, my mate Antani was beside herself with rage and humiliation over my involvement. If she hadn’t held such a high office, she would have had every male on Kalinda who participated in the coup attempt slaughtered one by one—everyone except me, that is. She never gave up anything that was hers, even if she no longer wanted it. As it was, she had us all permanently scarred and reduced to slave status, and the two of us who led the attempt received special retaliation. My oldest friend Draeda and I…”
He swallowed, breathing unsteadily, and Hastion trembled for him. Peserin’s hell, but this was going to be an uglier tale than he’d imagined.
Following his instincts, he tugged Cecine’s face to the side and pressed a kiss against his lips. Cecine pressed back with a groan, crushing Hastion against his side and opening his mouth to suck on Hastion’s questing tongue. Despite his dread and anger on Cecine’s behalf, Hastion grew lightheaded with arousal as his cock hardened to stone against his belly.
Cecine pulled his mouth away with a gasp. “Peserin, no more of that or I’ll never get this tale told. But thank you,” he added, kissing Hastion’s temple. “I needed it.”
When Hastion smiled shyly, Cecine nearly gave in to the need to kiss him again.
“Eventually Antani came along with her retinue to torture us further. She had me chained over a rail, infused Draeda with an aphrodisiac that made his phallus painfully hard and forced him to rape me in front of every citizen in the square.”
Hastion flinched.
“Jesus Christ,” Shelley said in a faint tone.
Rubbing their shoulders, he continued with the story. Now that he’d gotten started, it wasn’t as difficult as he’d imagined it would be to share it.
“When Draeda stepped up behind me, I was shocked that he was cooperating until he whispered, ‘Forgive me, my friend. She has my sons.’”
Then he’d forced his thick, artificially swollen phallus into Cecine’s untried, unlubricated anus. Antani and several other females spurred Draeda on by switching his back and buttocks, already ravaged by the elements, with proun branches, and he sobbed against Cecine’s own ravaged back as he thrust helplessly.
The pain was almost beyond bearing, and yet it was Draeda’s sobs and continued pleas for forgiveness that broke Cecine and reduced him to tears of his own.
“Nothing to forgive,” Cecine grunted over and over. It was his mantra, and he didn’t stop repeating it until the torment finally ceased and the crowds dispersed an eternity later. He was hoarse by the time he fell silent, leaking blood and waste from his torn anus. They held each other in the dark, shivering and in pain. Draeda’s phallus wasn’t in much better condition than Cecine’s waste canal, still torturously swollen and raw.
Cecine finally slept in the small hours of the morning and when he awoke, he found that Draeda had silently ended his own life by wrapping the chains that bound him around his neck and leaning into them.
“Oh, sir,” Hastion whispered, picking up Cecine’s hand from his shoulder and pressing a shaky kiss to the back of it. “I’m so sorry.”
He felt Shelley’s tears drip on his chest and sighed. “Antani was in a temper over it. She’d planned to torment us in an endless variety of ways. Instead she gave me an infusion and tried to make me fuck Draeda’s dead body, using threats to our own sons as incentive, but I called her bluff, which only infuriated her more.”
In the end, she’d had to content herself with chaining him over the rail again and allowing any female so inclined to beat and sodomize him with whatever weapon was at hand. He had no idea how many clubs, branches and stones were wielded against his back and legs and forced into his rectum over the course of that day, but by the time night fell, he was unconscious and burning with fever.
Sometime in the night, he was stolen away from the square by members of a small, disorganized resistance movement at the request of his daughters, who, thank the Powers, had taken after their grandmother. A physician, a female whose name he never knew, risked a great deal by stealing regen supplies and healing his shredded waste canal. He remained in hiding for almost eight years, until Antani was poisoned by one of her own staff, and then returned to his home. His daughters, who’d inherited the estates, were shy and wary but they’d accepted him without question and had his previous military status restored.
The tattoos had since been removed, and the piercing of his scrotum and nose had closed long ago, but he’d thought he would never recover from the horror of those days in the capital square…
Until this moment.
Hastion shuddered. “You make me doubly glad I was never mated to a Garathani female.”
“I knew the risks when I chose to participate in the uprising. At the time, I wished my mate would simply kill me rather than torment me endlessly.” Cecine took a deep breath, feeling cleansed and, for the first time, truly free. “Now I am glad she did not, for if she had, I’d never have known Monica, or received the gift of all of you.”
Hastion squeezed his chest. “I’m glad too, sir.”
“Personally, I’d like to dig up that Antani bitch and make her die a thousand times,” Shelley growled, “slowly and painfully, for what she did to you and Draeda.”
Cecine smiled fondly. “You’re turning into quite the bloodthirsty little warrior, szisdagya. I believe Draeda would like you very much.” Then he sobered. “Peserin, I loved him so much, but I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t risk his loathing. His wrath. Males didn’t feel this sort of love for each other then, didn’t touch each other—not only would there have been no carnal satisfaction in it, but the punishments meted out by females could be extreme. No male would risk touching or sharing his feelings for another male for fear of suffering exactly what happened to me, or worse. Somehow Antani divined my feelings for Draeda and used them against us both in the most hideous manner possible.”
He looked down at Hastion. “That’s another reason I couldn’t acknowledge my feelings for you, my ensign—I didn’t want you to suffer for my weakness the way he did. I didn’t want you to be a target for cruel cowards like Antani and Ensign Mikal.”
“Thank you, sir, but as you’ve seen, I can protect myself.”
“So you’re not…put off by the fact that another male suffered and died because of my love for him?”
“Of course not, sir. Why would I be?” Hastion lifted Cecine’s arm away from his shoulder and sat up to face him with a serious expression. “I think males touching each other and loving each other may have happened more often than you’re aware, sir. My own father sent me away to the academy because he caught me performing oral sex on our houseman, Joga.”
Cecine started. “Oral? You knew—”
“No, we didn’t know about anal orgasm yet, sir, and Joga never ejaculated. It was just intimate and exciting and intimidating and…” He swallowed and then squared his shoulders. “Joga dominated me in the privacy of his rooms, sir. He rescued me from my despair after the biowar attack, when my father was too lost in his own despair to help me. Then he guided me and used me for his own enjoyment, gave me approval when I was good and administered correction when I wasn’t, and I…I enjoyed it very much. I lived for it, sir,” he added with pleading eyes.
Cecine ran a hand over Hastion’s silky shorn head as the last piece of the puzzle that was his second finally fell into place. “Would you like to have that with me, my brave, beautiful ensign? Because I would certainly love to have that with you, if you wouldn’t feel a lesser male because of it.”
Closing his eyes, Hastion sighed. “I’d like nothing better, sir.”
“Good, then get undressed, please.”
Hastion’s eyes popped open. “Sir?”
“Now, Ensign. I want to see you.”
Shelley sat up, her eyes sparkling. “Do it, Hastion. I want to see you too.”
Hastion’s heartbeat thudded in his ears as his mates watched him with what he could only describe as greed.
Feeling oddly powerful, he tugged off his boots and then drew his zipper down to his navel. Licking his lips, he asked, “Is this what you want?”
“Quit teasing, Hastion,” Shelley said, crawling off the bed and standing beside him with her arms crossed.
He grinned as he pulled the tab down between his legs and shrugged out of his uniform, tossing it over a chair. “I don’t remember asking to be dominated by you, Shelley-Belle.”
“That’s because I’m good at giving people what they need without their having to ask for it,” she said with a too-sweet smile. “In fact, I think you need a special reward for bringing our children home safe and sound.”
“Oh?” This ought to be good.
She looked at Cecine. “I think it’s time we both claimed him, don’t you?”
Hastion started, staring back and forth between them. “But you’ve both… I mean—what exactly do you mean by claim?”
Ignoring him, C
ecine rumbled, “I don’t know, szisdagya. I was rather hoping to finish what we started last night.”
“There’ll be plenty of time for that later. You don’t mind, do you?” she asked seductively, peeling her shirt over her head.
“Not if you don’t.” Cecine slid to the edge of the bed and took off his boots before rising to open his wrapsuit.
In a matter of seconds, both his mates were naked and stalking him with a predatory look that made his cock stand at ripe attention. He stood absolutely still as Cecine moved behind him and nuzzled the exposed nape of his neck, while Shelley stepped up to run her smooth, cool hands over his chest.
“You smell delicious, my pet,” Cecine murmured, sliding his hands down Hastion’s ribs to his hips and around to cup his sac.
Hastion shuddered with excitement. “Thank you, sir.”
Cecine gave his balls a rough squeeze and then let go. “Get on your knees and pleasure your female, pet.”
“Yes, sir.” Kneeling as gracefully as he could, Hastion looked up at Shelley with heavy eyes before focusing on her cunt. Peserin, she was so lovely. Pale-blonde curls did little to shield her pink plumpness, and his thumbs met with slick moisture when he opened her for his mouth.
“Mmm,” she breathed, clutching at his hair as she leaned into him. “I thought we were going to claim Hastion.”
“All in good time, szisdagya.”
Hastion tasted her sweetness with delicate touches of his tongue, tracing her hot inner lips with the tip before laving them with longer, stronger strokes, and drinking up her moaning sighs with delirious satisfaction.
A hand slid under his jaw, pulling his head around, and he opened eagerly for Cecine’s cock as he looked up.
“That’s right, my pet,” Cecine murmured, gazing down at him with enough love in his eyes to send Hastion’s heart slamming against his breastbone.
He devoted himself to pleasuring both his mates, sliding his hands up between their legs and toying with one while he tasted the other. Their contrasting textures and flavors—Cecine’s smooth, hard musk and Shelley’s hot, velvety tang—were a source of endless discovery for his lips and tongue as he alternated between them. When Cecine leaned down to suckle at Shelley’s breasts, he lapped at the surge of her moisture with a moan of delight.
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