Sex or Suffer [Dark Colony 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (11 page)

“What?” he barked instantly and regretted it when Penelope stilled, barely breathing next to him.

“We have a problem, sir.”

Penelope didn’t know what the problem was, but she stopped breathing in order that the party at the other end of the communication device wouldn’t know she currently rested in the captain’s bed with his fingers still lodged deliciously in her pussy.

“I’ll be on the command deck in ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir. Cahill out.”

The incredibly mouth-watering Captain Gray Wyckoff had just wowed her with his clever fingers. The further honorable intention to ensure she got some satisfaction made Penelope’s heart twist in gratitude. She should likely issue him a medal. It was amazing how an orgasm changed her perspective on things.

“What do you think the problem is?” Penelope wasn’t really concerned with the captain’s issues aboard the
Dalton
, as long as the problem didn’t equate to her trip being altered.

“Don’t know. Could be anything? Maybe they just noticed your cabin is unlocked. Or maybe I forgot to sign something.” He smiled and studied her face with an intense sensual gaze.

If she hadn’t been drawn here by his scent, his seductive stare might also have lured her to his bed. He was really very charming. How many other men would worry so much about whether or not she’d enjoyed sex? Her wickedly methodical brain provided a ready answer in the form of a Nathan Tyndall’s satisfied face as he stood against the alley wall outside Nikki’s restaurant. He’d also worried about her orgasm. Her mind screeched to a halt. She mentally shook off that image and went back to the conversation at hand.

“Why didn’t you ask? Maybe space pirates are converging on your ship ready to blast you with laser bombs into a million pieces.” It was a silly statement. But she missed being foolish just a little bit and her relaxed aura helped conjure her long lost frivolous attitude. A smile she hadn’t felt like forming in the past couple of weeks suddenly shaped her lips with the need to joke around. She wanted to lighten the mood. The power of an unexpected orgasm was simply amazing.

He laughed and slowly removed his fingers from her. “If it had been a life or death matter,” he paused and smiled, “Or space pirates with laser bombs, he would have told me instead of signing off.”

She grinned. “Oh. Well, that’s good to know.” It felt so great to smile again. She knew it wouldn’t last long as she had a long road to travel, but for now she relished it.

He lifted off of her and kissed her belly once before removing himself from the bed. “Want to take a quick shower with me?” She noticed he hadn’t even taken his clothes off. But now he unzipped the suit and shucked the jacket part off his shoulders. Mesmerized, she watched him slip the flight suit garment off of his hips. The fabric slid off his thighs and pooled at his feet. His burnished blond hair was cut in a haphazard fashion but it suited him. Wide shoulders, sexy chest leading to flat abdomen, narrow hips, Penelope slid her gaze down his perfect body and stopped at his cock.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t already seen his best parts during the haze of lust encompassing her, but she hadn’t exactly stopped to admire his fine apparatus. And it was very fine. She wished they’d had time to make love once more. If they ever got together again, it would be the crazed animal lust of her viral issues, but she’d love to spend some quality with him after she was cured.

Penelope pulled her shirt down to cover her breasts and slid from his bed. “Um. No. I’ll go back to my room and lock myself in.” She took a few steps intent on getting to the door, but he caught her and hauled her against his naked warmth. She twisted halfway back in his arms, resting her cheek against the center of his chest.

“I’ll check on some things and call your room in a little while, okay?”

She nodded and looked away suddenly embarrassed by the entire situation that had just transpired. He crushed her tight and kissed her cheek. “No need to be shy. I’m delighted to see your lovely smile.”

“Thank you for understanding.”

He squeezed her once. “We’ll talk some more later on after I take care of whatever this
problem
on deck is.” He dropped another kiss on her forehead and while it was charming, she hoped he didn’t misunderstand her continued intentions. She wasn’t exactly looking for a regular booty call. He started whistling, and the exuberance of his attitude suggested he might have a different opinion of their continuing relationship.

Eyes widening, she didn’t want him to assume he could come to her room whenever he wanted and get some. But then he grinned, “We’ll converse over the communications device, if that’s what has you blushing.”

“I’m not blushing,” she said as blistering heat crept up her cheeks to make a liar out of her.

He released her. “Whatever you say, Dr. Drake.”

Penelope, poised to race out of his room and into her own before anything more calamitous happened, forced herself to be calm. Being Captain Wyckoff’s lover wasn’t anywhere close to dire.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be ungrateful. I just don’t want to have to fuck you once before we can converse civilly. And that’s exactly what will happen the next time we are in the same room together. I’m not even sure how long exactly this temporary cure will last. It was two or three hours for the others, but it might be ten minutes for me.”

He nodded. “I understand. Go on to your room, Penelope. Lock it up. Re-deploy the decontamination program, and I’ll call you if I discover why the seal didn’t hold.”

“Okay.”

“And Penelope.”

She turned back. “I’d say I was sorry the seal didn’t work. And I
am
sorry for your sake, but not for my own. If you ever need someone again, I’ll make myself available to you during this trip.”

“I hope I don’t need anyone, but I appreciate your willingness to participate.”

Embarrassed that this was the way she finally met a decent man, Penelope exited his room and quickly slipped back into her own. She locked the door and pushed the green button. The log showed that the room had breached exactly thirty four minutes before. Further study of the device showed the alarm was turned off. She pushed the button and set the device so that next time, she’d know. Perhaps with a warning bell, she’d have time to get into her suit or merely grab one of the provided filter masks.

The choice she wanted to contemplate was getting busy with Captain Wyckoff again if this illness accosted her once more. That was, in fact, fast becoming her first choice of cures.

* * * *

Gray took a speedy shower and headed to the command deck. Cahill was seated in the captain’s chair but vacated it the moment he saw Gray march through the entry.

“Keep your seat.” He motioned Cahill to sit back down. “I only came to address your ‘problem’. So what is it?”

“A missive with the header of Bravura Space Command just transmitted a message and a search warrant looking for one Dr. Penelope Drake.”

The air in Gray’s lungs ceased movement for a second. He exhaled. “And?”

“Isn’t that the name of our only passenger and the reason we’re blazing a trail at max speed to the Parsec Colony?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Is it an audio message or a video?”

Cahill handed him the computer device. “Neither. It’s a typed up written message.”

“Typed-up written? Jesus. Is it from my grandmother?” The arcane method was rarely used and only by those very few not adept at technology. A message from Bravura Space Command would have been at the very least audio, and that, only if it were informational in nature.

Cahill cracked a rare smile. “No. The message is that Dr. Drake is wanted in connection with a death at the Bravura Science Lab. They’ve dispatched a courier ship aptly named the
Galaxy Retriever
to rendezvous with us so she can be shuttled back to Bravura. They’re several hours behind us, losing ground with each hour that passes and requesting that we slow down so that they can catch up.” An uncharacteristic grin from Cahill accompanied the statement.

“Are they?” Gray scanned the communication and noted the sender wasn’t the usual dispatch address for this type of message. It was a crappy, sloppy attempt to make a homemade private message look official. “You didn’t slow down, did you?”

Cahill sent him a dirty look. “Aside from the fact that I work for you and not for them, it’s a bogus message.”

“I see that. So who really wants to detain this Dr. Drake? And what makes them think she’s aboard this vessel?”

“It’s someone from the Science Labs. I did a little research on the message before you arrived. It came from the office desk of someone named Damon Kaslan. He’s a low level scientist geek from all that I can gather. And they would only know she was here if she told someone or you filed a flight plan listing her as a passenger. That’s public domain information, eventually. Although, for a passenger roster to be available on the public system within twenty four hours is miraculously fast service, if you ask me.”

“Do me a favor, send a return message to the speeding ship and tell them we don’t know what they’re talking about, and we aren’t slowing down. If the geek scientist sends another message and asks, you can even pretend to be me and tell him to fuck off. I didn’t file a passenger manifesto since we only have one passenger. As far as any public information goes, we’re headed to the rendezvous point early to pick up a delegation on Echo Province to transport them elsewhere.”

Cahill cracked a bona fide grin. “Will do. And thanks for the boon. I love to tell people to fuck off.” Gray knew he enjoyed playing mean military bastard leader on occasion. He was also very good at it.

Gray started to leave and then turned back as if he’d just remembered something trivial. “One other thing. Was there a blackout aboard ship in the last hour or so?”

“Yes, sir. I intended to brief you at our shift change.”

“Tell me now. Start with what caused it?”

“Don’t know what caused it, but there wasn’t a breach to any part of the hull or damage any of the primary life support systems.” He consulted the computer in his hand briefly and then reported, “The ship’s computer ran an outer hull scan immediately and an internal scan shortly thereafter with no notable system being compromised. There were a few insignificant and redundant programs ship wide that defaulted to initial programming, but I haven’t heard any complaints. Is there a problem?”

Gray didn’t want to reveal the context of his concern being related to Penelope and her “big problem”, so he shook his head. “It popped up on my quarters communication device when it re-booted. Just checking. Carry on.”

“Aye, aye Captain.”

Back in the hall outside of the command deck, Gray hurried back to his cabin. He knew that his quarters and Penelope’s had originally been linked together as quarantine quarters. The blackout and subsequent system back-up defaulting to the original programming made sense, but he hoped Dr. Drake would understand and not hold the sexual interlude against him.

* * * *

Back safely in her quarters and sealed in after running the sanitation program, Penelope paced the small space in a restless square. Four steps forward and turn right, five steps, turn right again, four steps, and on and on until she’d found a comfortable rhythm to her movements. After several minutes of going nowhere, she realized that her antsy attitude was filled with unknown anticipation. She waited for something.

You want
him
, purred a satisfied little voice down deep inside.
You want him bad.

Captain Wyckoff. Gray. Yes. She wanted him. Bad. She shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss any future contact with the delectable captain. She’d nearly accused him of being a Lothario ready to invade her sealed space for regular sexual activity, and now she wished she’d invited him to do just that.

She paced another square in the center of her room wondering if it would be out of line to call him. Why would he want to come back? What reason could she invent? Given that any physical contact between would have to begin with his cock buried in her pussy, she thought she should have a good reason to lure him here.

Penelope paced across the room in a diagonal and dictated a feigned a message aloud that she’d never have the nerve to send.
“Captain Wyckoff? Could you come back to my room and hang around in bed with me until I need to fuck you again? Why? Because then I’ll know how long the treatment of your virus mitigating semen will last. And additionally I can have sex with you again which is ultimately my true motivation for this call.”

The communications bell sounded once before a voice called out, “Dr. Drake?” Penelope jumped once at the bell and again at Angelica’s voice.
Calm down
.

Hand on her chest, Penelope took a deep breath and responded, “Yes.”

“This is Lieutenant Brice. I was just checking on you. Do you need anything?”

Could you send your yummy captain to me pronto? I want to “do” him again.
“Um. No. But thanks for calling to ask me.”

“No problem. I’m available if you should need anything. Brice out.”

The video screen blanked and went to a blue color. Penelope turned toward the wall next to her bed. If she possessed X-ray eyes, she’d be able to see into his room. Was he there? Was he thinking about her?