Amanda's Amorous Aliens (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (8 page)

The only thing that stopped him was that Amanda needed time for the salve to help her heal. Well, that and maybe the thought that at this height and size he didn’t really want to put anything on his cock that might “shrink” the swelling. It was something to keep in mind for later, though. He grinned when he realized that it was probably exactly what To’huto had considered when synthesizing the salve.

“That was beautiful, sweetheart,” Karriak said as he leaned over and began kissing their woman again. When Karriak-Sektannen had decided to go this mission solo, he’d had the vague notion of staying away from any sort of relationship before his telkobar. That way the brothers would be able to each seek a wife, but he hadn’t really considered how amazing it would feel to share one special woman between them.

Sektannen stroked her thighs lightly, his touch meant to comfort Amanda, but admittedly also for himself. It seemed so amazing that she would land in his life at a time when he was truly ready to move forward—even if he hadn’t recognized that in himself until she’d arrived.

He reached for the plug that To’huto had provided, coated it well with lube, and pressed the tip against Amanda’s anus. “Okay, beautiful,” he said as Karriak finally came up for air, “this is a lot bigger than the probe. I want you to take a deep breath and push out against the plug as you exhale.”

She did as he asked, her eyes closing as she relaxed and let the top of the plug slide into her ass. She moaned as it grew thicker, forcing her back passage to open wider. She flinched very slightly and he backed off, covered the exposed end of the plug with more lube, and began to twist it gently. Soon the muscles in her legs began to relax again and he pressed a little deeper.

“Almost there, beautiful,” he said as he watched the widest part of the plug slide into her body. He pushed it in the rest of the way, feeling a deep satisfaction as he watched her anal muscles close around the thinner end. He wiggled it slightly, making certain it sat comfortably against her skin and that the outer handle wasn’t pressed against anything that might still be sore from last night’s activities.

Amanda sighed quietly as all three of them stayed still for a moment, Sektannen considering all that this intimacy meant to him and hoping that his brother and woman were feeling the same. He was fairly confident that Karriak would be thinking along the same lines. It often took months, even years after telkobar for the brothers to develop separate and distinctive personalities. Sometimes they never did. It all depended on the experiences of each brother after they were separated. Considering that he and Karriak both planned to stay in the field of historical nature studies and had now fallen for the same woman, it was more than likely the brothers would remain very similar in their thinking for a long time to come.

“She’s asleep,” Karriak whispered as he moved away from her very carefully.

Sektannen turned to the cupboard, grabbed a soft blanket, and arranged it over her loosely. The ship was environmentally stabilized by the computer so she wouldn’t actually get cold, but he’d read somewhere that humans slept better if they were warm. And, of course, it might help his hard-on deflate just a little if his eyes weren’t glued to her beautiful, naked body.

“Did you finish going through the surveillance images?”

Karriak nodded, his eyes never quite moving away from watching their sleeping mate.

“Anything interesting?” Sektannen asked as he tried desperately to think about anything else besides crawling onto the medical table with their woman and making love to her over and over.

“No,” Karriak finally managed to answer. “So far no sign of Ardi. We’re in the right area in the correct time in history, but I haven’t even been able to find any habitats.”

“Who’s Ardi?” a sleepy voice asked.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Karriak said, moving to touch Amanda’s face affectionately, “we didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I need to get up anyway,” she said, lifting onto her elbow as if to lever herself off the bed. Karriak refused to move away. Sektannen moved to stand beside him, but she looked really annoyed by their effort to block her from getting up.

Amanda gave them an exasperated look before wriggling off the bed and placing her body between them. “Who’s Ardi?” she asked again as she reached for her clothes.

“‘Ardi’ is the creature we came here to study. Even in our time, humans are still arguing over whether Ardipithecus ramidus is considered to be the missing link between human and apes.” Amanda nodded but still pulled on her clothes. It seemed their attempts to make her stay in the medical bay weren’t working. Reluctantly Sektannen took a step back and let her get dressed. “So far we haven’t even been able to find Ardi’s species. If she was an ancestor of the modern human she was very rare.”

He was quite impressed by Amanda’s ability to move with the plug in, although, maybe he shouldn’t have been. To’huto had used her medical records to create something that fit perfectly. He smiled at the soft moan that escaped her as she pulled her jumpsuit on.

“You can rest a while longer,” Karriak said, perhaps underestimating their woman’s stubbornness.

“No,” she said with a shake of her head and a wry smile. “If you want to play later, then I really need to get some work done now.”

“Oh,” Karriak said, looking to Sektannen with the same expression of confusion he probably wore himself. He hadn’t really considered what their wife would do once they met her, but he supposed that being as clever as she was, Amanda wouldn’t be happy to just sit around and wait for them to be finished. It was probably just as well that she had her little ship to tinker with.

Considering that she was fully clothed yet he could easily visualize her naked, it was probably a good thing. They still had a job to do.

“In that case,” Sektannen said, trying to mentally switch gears, “I’m going to go finish that…ah…thing that I was…um…working on before.”

He was halfway to the surveillance room before he remembered he’d already finished that chore.

* * * *

Amanda was still walking funny, but this time for a whole different reason. The plug in her ass was a constant reminder of everything the men had planned for later.

But, damned if she could remember what she’d intended to do before then.

“To’h,” she said as she stepped into the cargo bay and moved toward her ship, “can you explain to me how time travel works?”

“In what way?” the computer asked. If she didn’t know better she’d say it sounded sulky.

“Well,” she said, searching for specific questions, “how was I able to get here from the twenty-first century?”

“You came through a rift in time.”

She managed not to roll her eyes, barely. “What I mean is, To’h, was it just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, or was there something specific to my vessel that allowed me to pass through?”

“It wasn’t your vessel,” To’h said after a short moment of silence. “Anything passing through that area would have come through—miniature tin can or not.”

“Did you just dis my ship?” she asked, not certain whether to laugh or feel insulted.

“I did,” the computer said in a snooty voice. Fuck, she’d put up with arrogant disdain from the men she worked with. She wasn’t sure she could take it from a freaking computer as well.

“What the fuck is your problem, To’h?”

Yes, she knew she was yelling at a computer, but in her defense it had been a couple of confusing days.

“You’re my problem,” To’h said angrily.

“Explain,” Amanda growled through her teeth. She had a feeling that it was more than just her unexpected visit causing this issue. The computer had liked her just fine yesterday.

“There’s nothing to explain,” To’huto said in a dismissive voice. “I thought you were the perfect partner for Karriak and Sektannen. Turns out I was wrong. Maybe I would have picked someone more suitable if I’d known.”

Amanda opened her mouth to yell some more, but the computer’s choice of words was confusing. Picked? She was the only one here. How could To’huto “pick” from a selection of one?

And why did she feel like she was being played? Were computers even capable of reverse psychology?

One thing that was very obvious, though, was that the computer was annoyed by her attitude to sex. She wanted to giggle hysterically at that. Trust her to run into a computer program with a narrow attitude to casual sex.

“To’h, I’m sorry I’m not the one.” The computer remained silent, neither acknowledging nor arguing with her apology. “Please, To’h, you need to understand that I have a life, a career, people who are depending on me. I need to get back to my own time.” Well, that was stretching the truth just a little. Her career was her life, and the only people depending on her were the ones who planned to make big money from her inventions. When it came to friends and lovers, they were both rather rare these days.

Amanda swallowed hard at the realization of how empty her life had become. There was a time when she’d had close friends, but they’d drifted apart when Amanda’s career had taken her in the opposite direction to where the rest of them had been heading. If she remembered correctly, her best friend from high school wasn’t just happily married but had just given birth to her third child.

“To’h,” she said, trying to think about the way her life might have gone if she’d made different choices, “Karriak and Sektannen are wonderful men.” And probably annoyed as hell at a computer that assumed they would join their lives to hers in the Kobarian equivalent of married bliss after a single night of sexy fun. She’d heard of shotgun weddings before, but living up to the expectations of a computer program seemed a little ridiculous. “I’m sure they’ll have no problems finding themselves a wife all on their own.”

And damned if that thought didn’t somehow make it hard to breathe.

* * * *

Sektannen was bored.

Karriak-Sektannen had set up the surveillance mission so that at the beginning the job could be handled by one person. There was a much greater workload set for after his time of telkobar, but because he’d gone through it months early there was barely enough work to keep him and Karriak busy for half a day. Add that to the distraction of having Amanda within reach—but not actually available—and he was finding it tough to do anything at all.

Out of sheer desperation for a diversion, Sektannen headed into the computer’s hub to run the ship-wide diagnostics that weren’t really due until next month. It wouldn’t hurt to run them early, or even more often, but it would take him a least a couple of hours.

He checked the running programs, set the data file to back up, and then began taking nonessential software offline.

“Sektannen, what are you doing?” To’h asked politely.

“I just thought I’d run your routine diagnostics.”

“That is not required,” To’huto said in a very professional-sounding computer voice. “I am not due for maintenance for another 29.27 Earth days.”

“Yeah,” Sektannen said with a grin at the computer’s necessity to add the partial day to its calculation, “I just figured I have the time, so I’d get it done now.”

“But it is not necessary,” the computer said again.

“I know,” Sektannen said. He wasn’t sure a computer would understand the concept of boredom. He reached over to disengage several other running programs when the screen he’d been working on went dark. “To’h?”

“I said,” the computer practically growled, “that it’s not necessary.”

“Okay, fine,” he said, trying to sound defeated, “I’ll leave it until the proper schedule.”

“Thank you,” the computer said in a clipped tone.

Sektannen casually moved toward the power grid. Maybe he was being paranoid, but if the computer had been a person he would swear it had something to hide. Artificial intelligence was quite advanced in his own time, but they’d never been known to run amok as some of the fictional entertainment videos had suggested.

It was probably ludicrous that he was expecting an electric shock or something else sinister, but he breathed a sigh of relief when the main systems shut down and To’huto went offline without anything bad happening.

As expected, Karriak came into the room a few moments later.

“What happened?”

“I took the computer offline to run some diagnostics. It seemed to be acting strangely.”

Karriak nodded, perhaps having noticed the same thing. “Do you need a hand?”

“It shouldn’t take long,” Sektannen said with a shake of his head. “Why don’t you find Amanda and let her know what’s going on?”

Karriak grinned, nodded, and left.

Hell, so much for thinking alike for years to come.

* * * *

Karriak found his woman on her knees.

Holy fuck.
That did a whole lot for his happy meter.

Amanda looked over her shoulder as he approached. “What’s up, Karriak?” she asked, smiling when he stepped close enough to put his hard cock at eye level. She rolled her eyes. “I just had to ask, didn’t I?”

He grinned and took a half step closer.

“Sektannen has taken To’huto offline for some routine maintenance. It shouldn’t take long,” he said with a wink, “but in the meanwhile I have nothing to do.”