“Did I land balls-first?” When he shifted his cramped legs, his balls ached worse than his head.
“The females have been squeezing your cock and balls. The scent of my seed on your skin confuses them. You smell like a male with feral blood worthy of mating, but your cock is human.”
Quiggs stared up, confused by the number of suns shining down. The glare eased, and the suns became light globes. Lots of light globes way, way up on a vast ceiling. “Where are we?”
“We’re trapped on the ground floor of a bunker. We need to find a way out as soon as possible.”
A bunker this size was an exciting find. Why was it important to get out? He shook off the cobwebs, eager to explore. “What’s in here?”
“Us… and about 140 female ferals entering a breeding heat.”
Quiggs snapped into focus. “We gotta get out of here!” He struggled to sit up, and his bare arm brushed a warm, metallic wall. Bunkers had cold stone walls. He ran his fingertips over the slick surface. They tingled, and the smell grated his nostrils like greasy woodsmoke.
“Don’t sniff it!” An oily sheen covered Max’s face, throat, and arms. He wiped Quiggs’s nose and hand before wetting another cloth to clean himself. The cloths apparently came from Quiggs’s nightshirt, which had a shortened, ragged hem and was missing both sleeves. “The females secrete a sticky oil when they enter a breeding heat. It saturates the air and condenses on a male’s skin. If Beau and I don’t take showers every hour, it’ll steal our sanity and turn us into fucking machines. You’re human and can resist longer. Eventually, you’ll surrender.”
Quiggs closed his eyes, remembering the blue metal valve from a raid. “I thought the breeding den they found was the lost engineering room.”
“No sign of it. This bunker has twenty flights of stairs. The other walls are just gray opaque glass without markings. There are no doors anywhere except for an L-shaped entry to the bathroom facility.”
He squinted across the room and saw stairs. “Why can’t we climb those stairs out?”
Max pushed his chin up. “Look higher.”
“Oh.” Two sections of stairs were missing: one in the middle, one near the top.
“The only way in or out is that stairway.”
“I’m not scared of heights. Haul me up the gaps with the same line used to lower me?”
“No line. I threw you down. Beau caught you. Beau threw you. I caught you.”
Okay. He’d have pissed himself. “Gaps are too wide. You aren’t strong enough to throw me against the gravity. You’ll need a line to haul me up.”
“The females won’t let Beau or I near the stairs. Find another way out.”
Quiggs craned his neck. “From its size, this place looks like a massive storage room for construction materials for when the colonists left the shelter and built the Triangle. The colonists would need a mechanical lift to transport orders and workers.”
“What does a lift look like?”
“An empty room with some sort of operating panel to move it.”
Max waved a hand. “Where?”
Quiggs focused through his pounding headache. “Looking at the gaps in the stairs makes me think the glass walls are a lockdown activated during an attack. There is no way in or out but the stairs.” His knees wobbled when he stood. He was doomed, but Beau and Max could leap those gaps.
Beau joined them, his skin glistening from the shower. His pants clung to the sculpted buttocks and thighs of a desirable male, and scratches covered his bare chest and arms. “My Quiggs, you are awake!”
“Why are you scratched?”
“A female marks me to show she will fight to win my seed.”
Quiggs teased, “No scratches on you, Max?”
Max lifted the back of his navy tee. He was as marked as one of Quiggs’s configuration slates.
Quiggs was so fucked. He only had a bump on the head. “Promise me when the fighting breaks out, you two will use the distraction and save yourselves. Leave me behind.”
Beau hugged him. “No! They will not kill you swiftly if we escape and anger them.”
“The stairs are the only way out.”
“No. You are smart. You will find another way out.” Beau set him down. “What kind of place is this, my Quiggs?”
“The tomes described metal walls enclosing the shelter of our ancestors. Maybe this bunker is attached to the shelter.” He pressed an ear to the wall. “Listen for machinery.”
Beau pressed an ear to the wall, then pulled away with a yelp, tugging his earlobe. “Something bit me.” A drop of blood hung off the lobe.
Quiggs hoped there were no boiler ancestors nesting here. He didn’t see anything crawling on the surface
“Do not show fear.” Max’s voice was low and tense.
Quiggs turned around slowly. A female loomed in front of him.
Fear was hardly adequate to describe his first encounter with a live feral. Vines were the bane of the territory, but they didn’t eat you. Ferals had killed his parents, the tragedy stunting his puberty. If Beau and Max hadn’t flanked him with a grip on each arm, Quiggs would have collapsed.
Easily seven feet tall, the female had a lean, muscular frame, her firm, tawny skin naked but for a triangular scrap of hide tied around her waist to cover her plumbing. Her hips were spare, her legs sinewy, and her shoulders broader than Beau’s, her nose wider and flatter. Her eyes were green and tilted up.
The expressive face and high flat forehead marked her as an advanced species.
This female was not a beast who survived by instinct. She had inherited the capacity to think. As Quiggs studied her, she rumbled low in her throat.
“Do not look her in the eye,” Beau warned.
Quiggs bowed his head and saw her elongated feet displaying black-tipped claws. One swipe would eviscerate him. When he showed submission, she sheathed her claws. He was awake, and she was curious. She wrapped a hand around his bicep, small enough so her thumb touched her little finger. She gripped his chin and turned his face left, then right. She thumped the tender knot on his head. The pain buckled Quiggs’s legs, but he didn’t cry out.
Beau hissed his displeasure at the rough pawing, and she stepped back with a human shrug.
Young females with flushed high-pointed breasts and prominent fangs took turns examining Quiggs. They exchanged a series of harsh consonants combined with chittering and chuff sounds. He didn’t need to speak feral to understand they wouldn’t breed with him if he were the last male in the territory and their hindquarters were afire.
“There must have been a famine or a quake. Or shortage of males. Something tragic to cause this many exiled,” Max observed.
“The four oldest females are grandmothers experienced with delivering young,” Beau said. “The rest are young females entering their first breeding cycle at the same time. They must have chosen exile rather than fight for a cave. The grandmothers accompanied them rather than face a harvest of the elderly.”
“But that’s unnatural!” Quiggs cried.
“It is their way for centuries. Like the laws of the Ruling Mothers.”
A young female shouldered her way through and offered Beau a strip of bloody meat. He turned his face away, and she hissed at the rejection.
“Um… Beau… if you’re hungry… it’s not like you haven’t eaten raw goat before,” Quiggs reminded him.
“It is not goat, my Quiggs.”
Quiggs stopped thinking and put up a hedge around his head. Tall, thick, studded with thorns.
A second female stepped forward with a strip of meat. The female had rolled hanks of her dirty brown hair around small bones to frame her long triangular face. When Beau grunted acceptance and stuffed the dripping strip in his mouth, she cut her eyes in victory at the rejected female. He swallowed after a few chews and wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand.
Quiggs shuddered with revulsion.
“This meat is goat,” Beau said quietly.
As the fem
ales competed with each other to feed Beau and Max, squabbling broke out. The two men clamped their mouths shut when the wrong meat was thrust at them. Max held his displayed claws over his mouth, his face ill, when the rejected females pinned him to the wall, determined he accept their offerings.
The four grandmothers swatted them away. They hissed, and every young one stepped back a respectful distance. The old ones tore open leather meal pouches carried by herders and divided the contents among the strongest females, the ones likely to win breeding rights. One by one, those selected females approached Beau and Max and politely fed the men chewy nut bars and thick but moldy cheese sandwiches. A female unable to get near Max or Beau switched tactics and fed her handful to Quiggs. Her clever trick earned extra ogling from Max and Beau, and the rest followed suit, fawning over Quiggs, then cutting their eyes at the worthy males.
After feeding the men, the females butchered goats and fed themselves, separating into smaller groups which Beau said were alliances before the fighting.
The meat and marrow consumed, the females busied themselves forming leafy pallets out of vines. Two grandmothers fashioned pallets for Beau and Max, ignoring Quiggs. The other grandmothers patrolled the floor for females bedding down too near the men. Satisfied by the sleeping arrangements, the grandmothers retired to pallets by the stairs.
Max tugged Quiggs onto his pallet. “Sleep with me. Beau has the first watch.”
Quiggs lay with his back against the wall, spooning Max. “Won’t my sleeping on the same pallet with you make them jealous?”
Beau placed his pallet beside them and sat up for the first watch. “Worthy males use smaller males for sex. A male cannot rut with a female except when chosen during a breeding heat.”
Quiggs sputtered at the insult.
Max reached a hand behind to stroke the curve of Quiggs’s hip. “The females will not expect us to have sex tonight. You are hurt. But tomorrow we must prove we are worthy males with needs.”
Quiggs thunked Max’s back. “Forget it. You couldn’t find my dick with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers.”
Beau chortled.
The globes gradually dimmed to a soft red glow. A thousand years, ago this dimming indicated nightfall and time for workers to retire. How had the lighting remained functional for centuries?
As he spooned Max’s hard body, Quiggs thought he saw a halo of shimmery blue insects diving at Beau. He lifted on his elbow for a closer view, and the halo vanished. Beau sat undisturbed. Max was already softly snoring. Quiggs stared another minute, then settled back, thinking his vision quirky from the bump on his head.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Beau’s mewling awakened Quiggs. His tawny skin was sticky and feverish, the scratches on his arms and chest puffy. A salty, fleshy perfume filled the air.
Oh, shit. The females had entered their fertile cycle during the night. The perfume sank into Quiggs’s pores, rubbing beneath his skin like rich sun-warmed suede. He plumped with a deliciously dirty urge to fuck the source of the beguiling aroma. What a fiendish trick of nature—obliterate a human’s revulsion and turn him into a creature with a maniacal drive to fuck.
Quiggs fought the sick urge by slapping his palm against the metal wall for control. Fight it off… fight it off… fight it off. He slapped until the bruising pain cleared his head, then rested his face against the metal where a pocket of air seemed cleaner. Searching for the outline of a hidden doorway or faint pulse of machinery, he ran his fingers over the surface.
As he touched the warm metal, Quiggs had the oddest feeling he was being examined also. He sat up to ask if Max sensed being watched and found him gone. His heart stuttered. Had the females dragged him away?
He quelled the panic and observed his surroundings. The ceiling globes shone white again, definitely on a timer for daylight working hours. The females were awake. Over a hundred contenders for Max and Beau clustered in the center of the stone floor feeding, while the lesser females squatted behind waiting with upturned hands for scraps. He heard the crack of bones and the suck of marrow. For a gut-wrenching moment, he believed they fed on Max because he had rejected their amorous advances.
Relief flowed through him leaving him almost giddy, when Max stepped from the bathroom, his dark hair slicked back from a shower. His soaked tee and pants clung to his skin, showing off a male with plenty worth fighting over. He must have been suffering as badly as Beau to risk leaving them to rinse off. Skirting around the females without making eye contact with them, he hurried toward Quiggs.
Max’s gray eyes were bloodshot, his expression grim as he hunkered down with two canteens. “The fever hit me before I knew what was happening. Barely made it to the shower.” He offered a canteen to Quiggs and splashed the other over Beau’s contorted face. “He’s losing the fight. Got to get him into a shower before he’s sucked under.”
Quiggs poured water over his stubbly head and scrubbed at the sticky film on his head and neck with the rough underside of the vine leaves.
“Aw, fuck, Quiggs. You too?”
“Yeah, me too.” Quiggs didn’t mention the eerie feeling from the wall. “How long do we have before they fight?”
“Hours.”
Quiggs slid a hand under Beau’s back, urging him to stand. “Get up, Beau.”
Beau opened bloodshot eyes, the pupils dilated. His nostrils flared. He growled and pulled Quiggs down. He buried his nose in Quiggs’s neck, inhaling deeply and sucking bruises as if he were starving.
The hungry desperate sounds frightened Quiggs. “Oh, fuck, Max. Has he lost the fight? Am I food or sex?”
“Let him breathe you in. Your scent mutes the heat. With so damn many females in here, the rings on our cocks are throbbing like a sore tooth. I jerked off twice in the shower.”
“Without me?”
“You were with me every second,” he purred.
Quiggs moaned as a wave of heat engulfed him. He arched his neck and grinded against Beau’s belly, desperate to come.
Max thumped the knot on Quiggs’s head. At the grieved ouch, Max said, “Pain helps to deflect the achy need. Press the knot before the lust overtakes you. Or pinch the base of your cock like I do.”
When they helped him stand, Beau swayed. His tongue darted out, tasting the air. His head swiveled toward the circle of females, and his mouth hung open as if eager to swallow a baited hook.
Quiggs leaped and wrapped his legs around Beau’s waist when he started toward the females. He cupped Beau’s face. “Don’t look at them. Look at me. Come take a bad shower with your Quiggs. You’d like that, right?”
Beau stared intently at Quiggs. “Bad shower… naked with my Quiggs?”
“A bad, bad shower. With me washing you all over.”
Beau reacted like a buck to the opened gate of a breeding pen. He strode toward the bathroom with his hands gripping Quiggs’s ass, mouth gnawing his neck. The older females watched them impassively. The rest glanced at them, then continued eating.
“Why are the females ignoring us?” Quiggs gasped.
Beau’s voice was guttural. “Because females don’t watch when worthy males rape a weaker male to relieve the mating frenzy. They won’t expect to see you walk out with us afterward. They will eat what’s left of you.”
Quiggs offered Max, striding alongside them, a brave smile. “There’s the distraction we need. While the ferals believe we’re having sex, you and Beau can escape up the stairs.”
“Not without my Quiggs!” Beau’s squeeze threatened to crack his ribs.
“I already have a plan,” Max said. “But first into the showers. The water is freezing. After we’ve cooled down, I’ll explain.”
The bathroom facility used an L-shaped entrance instead of a door. Its gray, opaque glass provided privacy. Apparently, it had escaped the lockdown because there was nothing to steal. A long row of sinks with mirrors above stood opposite a row of open toilets. From the handprints on the bowls, the females drank from the toilets. The
dozen showers lining the back wall lacked enclosures. With accommodations for so many people, there absolutely had to be a lift somewhere to transport materials and workers to the surface.
Inside the bathroom, Beau released Quiggs and stripped, his hot gaze, more beast than human, fixed on his friend.
“Max, help!”
Max had already shed his clothes. Sweat rolled down his chest. He said he had jerked off twice, yet his cock jutted as if starved a week, the ring swollen. He shoved Beau beneath the shower on the far right, then stepped under the one on the far left. The spray activated seconds later. Each man planted one hand on the wall, the other stroking his cock as the icy water pounded him.
Quiggs hesitated to strip off his nightshirt and jump in the shower, not from modesty but from fear of appearing like a tempting weaker male. He splashed cold water on his flushed face at the sink, activating the flow by holding his palm beneath the faucet for five seconds—a trick the ferals hadn’t figured out. He stared at his reflection. His eyes were bruised circles, his exposed skin basted with a greasy sheen. Beau had sucked a collar of marks on his neck. He sported an unflattering egg-sized bump on the top of his head, but there didn’t appear to be a gash needing stitches.
A gamey musk infused the room. Both men had rubbed one off. Thinking himself safe to scrub off, he tiptoed toward the middle shower and saw the men were furiously palming another, their buttocks flexing, their heads thrown back.
Oh, fuck, there was worthy and there was superlatively worthy. He stood gaping back and forth between two superlatives. A delicious wave of breeding heat knocked him off guard, and a savage desire pooled low in his belly. Nothing existed but finding release. He dropped to his hands and knees. “M-Max… p-please…”
Max cursed, grabbed the front of Quiggs’s nightshirt, and pulled him under the middle showerhead. The icy water failed to squelch the need. Quiggs’s greedy hands roamed Max’s chest, and he bit a pebbled nipple. He dropped to his knees, licking the V-shaped line of Max’s hipbones, only to be wrenched up and turned to face the wall. “Get your lust under control.”
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