“Okay, now we can think in peace,” Aaron said.
Caph loudly moaned.
“Maybe not,” Emi countered. She studied Aaron’s playful expression. “What kind of mood is our captain in?”
She felt his comprehension. He sat up and kissed her. “I’m in a mood to do anything you want to do, Em.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Anything?”
His playful smirk melted her core. “Anything.”
“Caph, let go of Ford’s head.”
At Caph’s disappointed moan, Ford laughed as he sat up. “Sorry, big guy. Doc’s orders.”
She reached for the bottle of lube and handed it to Aaron. “Don’t worry, sweetie. I’m going to take good care of that for you.” She pushed Caph down onto the bed. Then she swung a leg over him and slowly impaled herself on his shaft. Caph was, so far, the only one who’d been able to bring her to orgasm just from fucking her. Not every time, and usually only when it was the two of them alone together, but she loved having that special thing with him.
Aaron knew exactly what she wanted and knelt behind her as Caph’s large hands slipped down to her ass and spread her cheeks. Aaron slicked his cock, applied plenty of lube to her, and gently pressed home.
Emi sighed, filled, content as she felt both men’s shafts inside her, erotically stretching her and sending her nerves into overdrive.
“What about me?” Ford asked, now sounding a little pouty.
Aaron handed him the bottle of lube. “What do you think?”
Ford grinned. “Hell, yeah!”
Aaron stopped his slow thrusts as Ford quickly prepared and slid his cock inside Aaron’s dark hole.
Emi, enjoying the delicious friction of Caph’s body against her clit, let out a happy sigh. “All right, boys. Have fun.”
Caph kissed her as he stroked her back. She knew Aaron and Ford would finish first. They’d already started a rhythm between them she suspected was as old and familiar to them as if they hadn’t missed out on that activity for decades. Ford’s hands rested lightly on Aaron’s ass as Aaron thrust into her, then back onto Ford’s cock.
Emi felt Aaron’s energy strengthen and brighten, his love, his relief, his passion all entwined with that of Ford’s. She was a part of this tableau but not an active part of their activities.
Ford kissed the back of Aaron’s neck. “Jesus, you feel good,” he moaned. “I can’t hold back for long like this. Man, I need you.”
She felt Aaron shiver from pleasant passion. “Goddamn, you’ve got a nice cock,” he hoarsely said.
Caph moaned even as he kissed her, the sound of the other men driving him closer to his own release. She stilled her movements, not wanting him to get off too soon and then leave her hanging.
She felt Ford’s motions slow, then still. “Jesus, Aar, quit fucking teasing me, man. Get your ass moving.”
He did, his thrusts deeper and harder until she knew he hovered at the edge of his climax. Caph reached up and stroked Aaron’s arms. That seemed to be the final cue his body needed to tumble him over the ledge. Aaron thrust home inside her one last time and held still as he moaned.
“Fuck yeah, that’s what I wanted to feel,” Ford cried out, then picked up the pace of his own thrusts. Emi felt the bed shake as he plunged his shaft inside Aaron until he too climaxed.
Ford slipped his arm around Aaron’s waist and held him. “Dammit, I love you, Aar.”
Aaron sat up, turned his head, and kissed Ford. “Me too, buddy.”
When Aaron withdrew, Emi once again started her slow grind against Caph’s hips. Caught in the thick sexual energy from her other two men, she knew it wouldn’t take too much to push her over the edge.
She was vaguely aware of Ford and Aaron stepping out of bed for a moment before they returned and lay on each side of them. Aaron stroked her back while Ford nuzzled Caph’s ear. Her clit throbbed. At the bottom of every stroke, she felt Caph’s hot flesh teasing her, not quite enough to push her over.
Ford lifted her head. “Come on, baby,” he murmured. “Fuck him good. You know you want to fuck his sweet cock.”
Caph’s hands settled on her hips as she sat up and fucked him harder. She felt him straining to hold back, waiting for her to come first. Aaron sat up next to her and played with her nipples. “That’s it,” he coaxed. “Jesus, you’re so fucking beautiful.”
“Now who’s the motormouth?” she quipped.
Ford sat up. She had just enough time to catch a glimpse of his amused smirk before he bent his head to her breast and took her nipple into his hot mouth. Aaron did the same to her other. Then one of Aaron’s hands found its way between her body and Caph’s and started playing with her swollen clit.
As her pussy throbbed around Caph’s cock, he let out another tense moan. “I’m so fucking close, babe.”
Emi closed her eyes and fucked him harder, faster, the pull of the other men’s mouths sending neon-bright passion through her body until it centered on her clit, where Aaron’s skilled fingers finally brought her over the edge.
As she started coming, Caph’s fingers tightened around her hips as he bucked his body up into hers, thrusting hard until she felt his hot juices pumping into her. Drained of energy, her body went limp. Ford and Aaron sat back as she draped herself over Caph’s large frame. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly, not wanting to let her go.
“Jesus, that was good,” he whispered.
“Damn straight,” Ford and Aaron parroted.
Even Aaron laughed that time.
* * * *
Another difference from the sim, this base wasn’t nearly as large as the massive Galileo base in Utopia Planitia, but the men had already told her they would take her there for a visit. The sim had drawn from the men’s memories for that portion of their experience, and most of their previous trips to Mars had been to the UP complex.
Emi tried to sleep and couldn’t despite her exhaustion. She really couldn’t go exploring or shopping because the base was in sleep mode. After an hour of staring at the ceiling, she carefully untangled herself from the men, slipped on a robe, and padded to the bridge in her bare feet.
Mars.
It was impossible for her mind not to drift, to think about the telltale faint melancholy air her men wore, the collective, sad sigh present in their minds as they’d drawn closer to Mars despite Aaron’s newfound healing.
Kelsey. The woman the men had loved and lost so many years before. The woman Aaron nearly died trying to save and, in the end, couldn’t. The woman he’d grieved doubly, because he felt guilty for not saving her.
The woman who’d brought the three men together as more than friends and crew, but as lovers and lifemates. Until Emi entered their lives, Kels had been the last woman the men had an intimate relationship with.
Her grave was here on Mars, where she’d been born and raised. Where her parents, Markkus and Delaney D’ambroise, still resided.
Despite anticipating their hot night of lovemaking, Caph had gone uncharacteristically quiet and still during their drop and docking. Ford’s nonstop banter had also ceased. And Aaron…
Emi felt a deep ache in his soul, the one she’d sensed at the start of the initial sim session, when they first “met” and she joined their crew. An ache he hadn’t had in real life since she joined them that very afternoon after the sim session ended.
She found out from the detailed report Dr. Graymard gave her about their experience that the sim was a layered algorithm. Just because she experienced one thing with the men didn’t mean they all experienced the same things. The computers seamlessly flowed the time differences together, layering experiences for the various participants while allowing technicians to alter parts of the program to suit their needs, even though the participants’ minds perceived the events happening in a linear fashion.
For the men, when they’d visited Mars in the sim, the three of them had taken a brief side trip to Kelsey’s grave one day while Emi was in a cooking class, even
though Emi was not aware of it then. Because the men always visited Kelsey’s grave, without fail, when they went to Mars, the sim techs had to allow it to maintain the illusion.
Emi took a deep breath. She had to be strong for them, for all three of them. They’d need her, her skills, and her love, now more than ever.
She sensed rather than heard the presence behind her.
“You all right, Em?” Aaron.
“Yeah.” She looked and noted the slight droop in his shoulders. “Are you?” She sensed not a relapse back into his previous grief but a healthy dealing with his memories.
He walked over, stood next to her, and draped his arm around her shoulder. “I won’t lie to you,” he quietly said. “Being here always brings back the demons.”
She turned and slipped her arms around him, wishing she could do more than just feel his pain. Despite the cathartic night of lovemaking the night before they left the orbital hub, Aaron had still not opened up to her about the events on the Wayfarer Margo. She couldn’t force him to, either. What she knew about that dark time came from Ford telling her the events and details she gleaned from the incident and hearing reports.
“If you guys want to go, believe me, I understand. It doesn’t bother me. You should go.”
He rubbed his chin in her hair. “I want you to come with us. If you want to,” he quickly added.
“Really?”
“Yeah. You’re our wife. You should come with us. I don’t want to leave you sitting here alone. She would understand.” She felt him take a deep breath. “We want you to meet Mom and Dad, too.” The men still called Kelsey’s parents that, even this many years later.
“They won’t want to meet me.”
“Yeah, they do. I already told them about you.” He looked down at her. His brown eyes had filled with melancholy. “They were really happy when I told them about you.”
Emi looked out the view port and watched as Phobos prepared to sink over the far horizon. Emi’s own parents had died when she was sixteen and still in school, killed in an accident at their lunar research complex. The men of the Tamora Bight were the only family she’d had in the ten-plus years since then.
“Okay.”
Chapter Five
They spent their first several days on Mars unloading cargo meant for the Martian base and loading the supplies they needed for their mission. Emi stayed out of the way and watched the three men work. This side of them, all business and focused on their jobs, fell in sharp contrast to their playful, loving, silly sides. She had no doubt if their lives were ever in danger, it would be these personalities, not her playful lovers, fighting to save them.
Aaron, drenched with sweat, stopped to pull off his shirt and draped it over a packing crate.
Emi let out a wolf whistle from her perch.
Ford and Caph laughed and immediately stripped theirs as well.
“Well?” they parroted.
Despite laughing, she managed to let two more wolf whistles fly.
Through the cargo gangway, she heard noises in the complex as the docking crews secured another large ship into its berth. Upon their arrival, only two other large ships, both medium-heavies smaller than the Tamora Bight, had been docked, in addition to several smaller passenger transports. The Tamora Bight was a type called a full heavy, a large, deep space cargo freighter now retrofitted for exploration duties. Curious, Emi walked down the cargo gangway into the main docking area and watched as the docking crews finished securing the newly-arrived vessel. When the cargo doors and main gangway opened a few minutes later, her breath caught in her throat when Captain Rob Elloy of the Kendall Kant walked out to confer with the dockmaster.
She ducked inside their gangway and pressed her body against the wall, her heart pounding.
“You okay?”
Emi nearly screamed when Aaron touched her shoulder. She hadn’t heard or sensed him coming, her nerves stretched to breaking.
He frowned at her response, then looked out the gangway. With a smile, he pulled her to him. “Remember,” he whispered, “Graymard pulled them from the sim immediately after you rejected them as a crew. The rest of that stuff that happened with them, it didn’t really happen. It was just programmed in as part of the sim.”
She closed her eyes and tried to relax, memories of the sexy exhibitionist show she’d put on with Caph and Ford to get revenge on Rob Elloy and his crew still fresh in her mind, even though it happened only in the sim. Not only had her wild and racy striptease never happened, nor her orgasmic screams broadcasted to the entire dry dock via intercom, neither had Elloy’s nasty comments about her men that prompted it. “So what you’re saying is I need to not hate them.”
Aaron’s deep, rumbling chuckle resonated through her body. “No, don’t hate them. Yeah, me and the twins have had run-ins with Rob and his guys. Nothing major. Normal bullshit. They’re good at their job even if we don’t always see eye to eye with them.” He caught her chin and tipped her face to his. “Remember, you’re our wife. We love you. We don’t give a shit what they or anyone else thinks of us. We never have. Don’t go trying to defend our honor for us.”
“Is that an order, Captain?”
He arched his eyebrows at her. “If you want to take it as one, Doctor, it certainly is.”
She let out a breath as she relaxed against him. “I’ll act professional.”
He rubbed her back as she nestled in his arms. “That’s all I ask.”
The men took a break to eat when Emi fixed them sandwiches and brought them down to the cargo hold. That’s when Captain Elloy appeared in their cargo gangway entrance.
Aaron spotted him first. “Hi, Rob.”
“Permission to come aboard?” he nervously asked.
Aaron, not as big on formalities as the former ISNC officer, waved him in. “To what do we owe the honor?”
He glanced at Emi before returning his focus to Aaron. “Just wanted to say hi. Didn’t get a chance to wish you all good luck before you left Earth.”
Ford couldn’t hold back. “Thought you were supposed to be a four-pack. They send you guys out alone?” Even though Ford’s tone sounded deceptively light, Emi didn’t miss the deep vein of irritation running through him.
“No, we’re paired. Our med officer had to take care of some things on Earth before joining us. She’s arriving in three days. She asked me to pass a message to Dr. Hypatia.”
That set all four on edge. “What?” she asked, startled. “What are you talking about?”
“Actually, it’s a message from all of us. Thanking you.”
She didn’t sense sarcasm from him and held her hand up to stay the acerbic retort she knew Caph itched to dish out. “Thanking me?”
Elloy actually blushed as a hint of a smile crept across his hard features. “Dr. Stevens said she’s looking forward to catching up with you.”
“Dr. Stevens?” Emi squealed with joy. “Donna signed up for the DSMC?”
Elloy actually grinned, something Emi never imagined the experienced military man could do. “She said you suggested she look into signing up. She did, the day after you guys lifted.”
Emi jumped off the cargo crate she was sitting on and threw her arms around Elloy in a hug. “Congratulations!” While Emi knew she wasn’t a good match for the personality-challenged grunts, as she’d dubbed them, she’d offhandedly mentioned to her best friend she should sign up for the DSMC, with the Kendall Kant’s crew in mind.
Elloy awkwardly returned Emi’s hug before stepping back and clearing his throat. Emi had turned the former military men down due to their rigid view of following “regulations,” and their less than enthusiastic response to her rounded figure.
The men of the Tamora Bight, by contrast, more than appreciated her, inside and out.
“So how did they race through your training so fast?” Aaron asked.
Emi caught a whiff of Elloy’s emotions, like he’d been chastised. “Extenuating circumstances. They needed us up and running. What she
doesn’t know, she’s learning on the way here. We can teach her other stuff once we’re underway.”
Aaron stepped forward and offered his hand. They shook. “Congratulations, Rob. So what’s next for you guys?”
“Actually, we just got our orders a little bit ago. Change in plans. We’re following you to the first stop for support, that’s why the rush. Didn’t they tell you?”
“I haven’t received final orders yet. We’re supposed to get them soon.”
Elloy returned to business mode. “We have to jump to the Acetal sol-sys. It’s in the Perseus Arm. The DSMC received an emergency message from the Aroykin settling colony there that they’re having a medical crisis.”
Caph frowned. “Perseus? Isn’t that ISNC responsibility?”
“Normally,” Elloy confirmed. “They don’t have any other available ships besides the three of us that can make the jump like we can with the supplies and possibly perform a full colony evac if needed. And it is a DSMC-established colony.”
“Wait,” Aaron interrupted. “Three ships?”
“You, us, and the Braynow Gaston.”
Emi silently groaned. Figured. That was the other crew she’d turned down. The other end of the spectrum from the grunts, the Braynow Gaston’s crew were geeks. Handsome and nice, but not her cup of tea. “They got paired?” she asked.
“No. They’ll return to Earth immediately following this assignment. This is an emergency and considered a priority. There are three hundred colonists. The DSMC wanted to make sure they could be evac’d if necessary, and we have the three biggest ships that can do it.”
“What, exactly, is the nature of the medical emergency?” Emi asked.
“We don’t know. The transmission cut out. All I know is when the BG gets here, we leave. Donna…I mean, Dr. Stevens, is hitching a ride with them.”
Emi grinned. “Sounds like someone’s not quite following regulations when it comes to addressing crew,” she teased. That had been a point of contention when she first met the Kendall Kant crew, their rigid formality.
He blushed again. Knowing Donna, she had quickly gotten under the men’s skin in a way Emi couldn’t have. “I want to apologize to you, by the way,” Elloy said.