Replicant: The Kithran Regenesis, Book 2 (10 page)

Erik tugged the corner of the comforter over his lap, crossed his arms. “Did we.” It wasn’t a question.

Nodding as a small smile pulled up one corner of his full lips, Maska leaned forward. “Do you remember a man trying to buy passage on the cargo ship that brought you here from Earth 2?”

Erik’s mouth dropped open before red crept up his pale neck. “That was you.”

Maska laughed. “I was in one of my better-looking male forms and came on to you pretty strong. You were so offended—”

“Not offended, surprised.”

“You were fuming at me, fierce and beautiful, and I decided I would find a way onto that ship no matter what. When you said you were going to Kithra, that just made me think it was fate. But right in the middle of your angry brushoff, you suddenly—”

Erik sat up. “I broke off when
you
walked by.” He lifted his eyebrows.

“Not then. The actual woman was shorter, less curvy. But I caught your reaction to her and sought her out later. Figured she wouldn’t miss a little bit of hair.”

“How’d you get it?” I asked, and both men looked at me as if they were just remembering I was in the room.
Flattering
.

“I snipped a corner, nothing she’d miss, but…”

“Enough DNA to copy her.” I nodded, hugged my arms to my waist. “So you stayed in her form, someone else’s form, all this time for him?”

“For Erik.” Maska stared hard at the other man. “I couldn’t be me and not get caught, do you understand that?”

Erik’s brows drew together. “Of course I understand that part. What I’m having trouble with is, during all that time, you never told me the truth. Why?”

“Fear. That male form was gorgeous and you didn’t so much as look twice. This whole time, I’ve lived in fear that if you ever found out, I’d lose you.”

“Do I look lost?”

Maska picked at a thread on the comforter. “You did for a while.”

Erik reached out, laid his hand over Maska’s. “It’s kind of a lot to process. I didn’t know that I could feel this way about another man. I’m still in love with you, only you look so very, very different now.”

“I can change back.”

I stood silent, thinking they’d forgotten I was even in the room. Probably should have left and given them some privacy, but my feet felt locked in place. I curled my toes in the soft, plush rug—otherwise standing perfectly still so I didn’t distract them. Staring at my hands, I waited to hear Erik’s answer, feeling jittery inside. I didn’t want Maska to change back. I liked his true form. But then, I wasn’t the one in a relationship here.

“Jarana?” Erik’s voice was low. “Do you want Maska to change back?”

I shook my head. “This has nothing to do with me. It’s between you two.”

Maska frowned. “I’d like to know your answer.”

I crossed my arms. “Then no. I think you’re beautiful like this.”

“Tattoo and all?”

I nodded. “Tattoo and all. And I believe Erik feels the same way.”

Maska suddenly rolled off the bed and came toward me, his nude body a mouthwatering ripple of long, lean muscle. I held my breath as he slid his hands into the open collar of my robe and pushed it off my shoulders. He leaned down and closed his mouth over the pulse in my throat.

My core just flooded. Flooded with a capital F.

“Feel that, Erik?” Maska murmured, lips soft against my neck.

I stared at Erik as he swung his legs off the bed and came to us…as he fitted his body to the back of Maska’s and leaned around him to take my lips. Maska groaned against my skin, opening his mouth to suck.

My limbs began to tremble and I started to pull away from them, but Maska wrapped his arms around me and anchored me against him.

“It’s too much,” I gasped when he leaned over to take my nipple in his mouth. I heard Erik groan, felt the tightening of his fingers on Maska’s waist. The fierce clasp of Maska’s arms kept me from moving, and my acquiescence amazed me when I was the one who normally took control. I led and men or women followed. The only one who’d ever really taken over had been Lux, and she’d been so drunk on that Toquerian booze, she hadn’t even remembered half of what she’d done later.

Or so she’d said.

Maska sucked my nipple, opening his gorgeous mouth wide, pulling me deep into the hot cavern of his mouth. I moaned and blinked when I found myself back on the bed with my head hanging off the side and Maska leaning over the bed, kissing my neck, stroking his hands down my body.

Erik came over me and slid inside me to the hilt. He braced one hand on the bed. “Sorry, won’t last—it’s just so damned…” He trailed off, groaned, his whole body going tense. I clenched around him so hard he yelled, his voice hoarse. He collapsed to the side and I just lay there, panting.

Until I saw Maska’s dilemma. I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his cock, loving the slide of silky skin under my fingers. Rolling to my side, I reached out my other hand to tangle my fingers in the soft hair around the base of his cock. Sliding fingers over his sac, I put pressure on that sensitive place between his balls and ass, loving the deep groan the move pulled from his throat. The tip of his dick grew shiny and my nostrils flared at the scent he began to release. “Gods, that smells good. It’s like a drug.”

“It is,” Erik whispered from behind me, his hot breath brushing over the back of my neck. He reached past me, touched the tip of his finger to the moisture gathering on the slick head of Maska’s prick. He rubbed it between his fingers, then brought one finger to my mouth.

My eyes locked with Maska’s violet ones as I sucked Erik’s finger into my mouth. Maska grew still, cock pulsing under my hand, his stare so intense, so full of fire, I rolled onto my belly and scooched forward until I was half off the bed. He grasped under my arms to hold me steady as I swallowed him down. His slightly sweet flavor was here, only it was salty too, and I loved the feel of him on my tongue, moaned when he touched the back of my throat.

I’d missed doing this. Loved the slide, the satiny skin…the feeling of euphoria I got from knowing I caused someone else to lose control. Because he did. Maska thrust gently into my mouth. I could tell by the tense clasp of his hands that he held back, that he wanted to pound into my throat. I increased suction and flattened my tongue against the pulsing vein on the underside of his cock. He yelled, coming into my mouth so hard, it was all I could do not to gag from the force. I swallowed, pulled back and licked my lips.

His eyes were intense, focused so hard on my face, I frowned. He lifted me to my knees on the bed, then stroked one hand over the fuzzy hair on my head before tracing my right cheekbone with his finger. “You are not bony and hard. You’re beautiful in ways you don’t want anyone to see.”

I pulled away from his touch, stomach clenching into a knot. Shaking my head, I backed away more. “Don’t make this about anything more than it is. We’re having fun; you two are reconnecting. That’s all this is.”

He lifted a black eyebrow. “Is it?”

Erik stopped my backward scramble by wrapping one big hand around my calf. He pulled me to him, tucking me under his body before I could blink. My eyes went wide with shock when he spread my legs and slid inside me. Again.

“Watching you with Maska does something to me,” he whispered before kissing my jaw softly. The urgency from earlier wasn’t there this time. He moved languidly inside me, stroking, caressing.

I clenched my thighs around him, wanting to move away but unable to stop the rolling of my eyes as he moved deep and deeper, touching my womb and sending spasms of heat through my body. I clutched his ass, digging my fingers into the hard, round muscles that flexed as he pushed and pulled. “Gods!” I cried out, feeling the gathering of sensation low in my gut, the one that signaled the kind of orgasm all women strived for…but one Gwinarian women worried about. The one that opened them to breeding.

Gasping as fear speared into me, I let go of his ass and bent my legs to use my feet to push back.

He didn’t understand what was happening, held me too tight, wouldn’t let me move. Opening his mouth over mine, he groaned so hard, his lips vibrated against me. “You feel so good, so damned good. It’s like you’re pulling all of me inside you.”

I forgot about moving, forgot about everything but the rapidly gathering sensations flooding every inch of my system. My heart picked up until it pounded like thunder, my breaths rivaled the earlier Kithran storm winds and my fingers curled into claws that scraped the bedding beneath me. My head rolled back and my eyes opened wide, gaze locking with Maska’s as he watched with his mouth open, something close to awe and shock sharpening his features.

My orgasm hit me like a full body slam, and I couldn’t stop the scream that tore from my throat as my entire body went taut.

“Fuck!” Erik yelled, spasms wracking his big body even as he slid hands under my back to clutch me as close as he could.

I could only lie there, neck still stretched back, gaze still lodged with Maska’s as he shook. In his stare, I saw his acceptance of me, of Erik, of this new relationship.

And in that stare, I saw his knowledge of the bleak future ahead of him on Bastilleen.

I closed my eyes.

Erik groaned and rolled off me but didn’t let go, pulling me to his side until I was half draped over him. He held up his free hand to Maska, who climbed onto the black comforter and lay against Erik’s other side. I met Maska’s look again, this time across Erik’s chest. “I can tell what you’re thinking,” he said, voice low and husky with emotion.

“Wish you’d tell me, then.” I meant it. Inside, I was a shredded mess. I had to take Maska back to prison and I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I would go to jail so these two could be together. And somewhere deep, deep inside of me, a voice cried out that I could be going to jail with a babe in my womb. Gwinarian women only opened up enough to breed with people they loved deeply. We called it soul locking.

I didn’t think either of these men knew about it, would understand what that scream had meant.

“You don’t plan to take me back to Bastilleen.”

“I told you that in the communal showers.” I flattened my palm over the crinkly blond hair on Erik’s chest. His heart beat hard and strong beneath his skin.

Maska slid his hand under mine, threaded our fingers together and held tight. I suddenly knew that what he was about to say would make me run, and he knew it because he firmly clasped my fingers.

Erik must have picked up on it too because his hand tightened on my shoulder.

“Seven years ago, I bought passage on a cargo ship off my planet. We stopped here several weeks before the explosions.”

My blood ran cold and my heart stopped.

“I didn’t know you’d been here before.” Erik’s hand stroked Maska’s hair before he rubbed his fingers over the soft whiskers on Maska’s chin. “It must have been so different then. I’ve seen pictures of how beautiful Kithra was.”

Maska and I stared at each other as we listened to Erik go on about something that had absolutely nothing to do with this conversation. I knew what Maska was telling me even before he quieted Erik with a glance. Then he returned his gaze to me.

“I was on the ship that took you from here.”

Chapter Eleven

This time, neither could stop me from pulling away. I sat up and scrambled back, wrapping my arms around my bare knees. I stared at the Replicant with wide eyes, shook my head.

“What ship?” Erik whispered, his body tense now.

“The slave ship that kidnapped and chained Jarana in the cargo hold.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as Erik whispered, “No.”

Maska sat up and climbed over Erik toward me.

I opened my eyes, held up my hands. “No, please don’t touch me.”

“I didn’t know I was on a slave ship until you came tearing out of that hold, half-starved and crazed with grief. Until you freed other species that had been kidnapped, not just for DNA—they could have just taken that—but for worse things on my planet. Unfortunately, the slave trade is still strong in some areas.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “That part of my world sickened me, but Jarana, we are not all like that. We have the bad members of society just like any other.”

I didn’t say anything. Logically, I knew that, but all I could do was flash back to that time in the cargo hold when the details of Kithra’s explosions had played over and over on the news coms. When the captain had cut the clothes off my body and released me, believing I’d starved enough, was weak enough not to fight back.

He’d underestimated me, and to this day, my only detailed memory was the spill of his blood over the flat, steel floors of his ship. The blood as it pooled under my body, his heavy, fat frame slumped over mine. I’d slit his throat as his dick had entered me.

I stared at Maska, at the love I could see shining in those violet eyes. “I didn’t see you,” I whispered, throat so raw it felt turned inside out.

“You didn’t see anyone, not really.” He moved closer, his long, naked body curling into a cross-legged position that left his sex blatantly exposed. He didn’t cover himself; he only looked at me with a compassion I didn’t deserve. “You burst out of the cargo hold, and I saw that stunning, long hair of yours and knew instantly what kind of ship I was on. I was so sickened, I didn’t say a word, not even when I ended up on Bastilleen with the slavers.” He looked down at his hands. “I feel things more than most of my kind, feel them deeply. Bastilleen was killing me, so I joined the prison break. I signed on to help build Kithra because—”