Amorous Overnight (14 page)

The minister rubbed his jaw. “You may count on it, Ensign.”

They picked up their uniforms and boots and walked down the corridor to the minister’s suite. Presumably Cecine wanted to bathe before appearing elsewhere. Hastion just wanted to get to the privacy of his quarters so that he could take care of his raging erection. As aroused as he was, orgasm would take mere seconds.

Now that it was over, he could hardly believe it had happened. In the moment, he hadn’t allowed himself—indeed, hadn’t had the time—to dwell on their contact, but now the sensations came rushing back at him in uncannily vivid detail. He’d had the hard muscle and smooth, hot skin of that back rippling under his hands. Felt those long arms locking him against that flat, hair-roughened belly. Heard his own pulse racing as those lean, hard thighs clamped on his ears. And that lovely sheen of sweat…

Hastion licked his lips as he followed Cecine into the suite’s living area. Peserin, he’d tasted the minister’s sweat, not just once but over and over. Sparring had never before seemed so intimate. Thank the Powers for constricting briefs or his arousal would have been on display for all.

Averting his eyes as the minister stepped into his sleeping chamber, Hastion walked on, his breathing uneven and his heart pounding with want at the thought of him stripping to shower.

“Ensign.”

Hastion paused. “Yes, sir?”

“I require service now.”

Hastion stiffened. He was already too close. “I should rinse—”

Cecine seized his wrist and yanked him into the sleeping chamber. Reacting instinctively, Hastion dropped his uniform and resisted but Cecine twisted his arm up behind his back and shoved him against the padded bulkhead.

“Now, Ensign,” he growled in his ear. “I require service
now
.”

Hastion’s eyes widened and his heart threatened to burst out of his chest. “Yes, sir,” he panted, wide-eyed.

“Don’t move.”

When he was released, Hastion obeyed, staring at the pad in front of his face without seeing it, breathing rapidly. Peserin, it was as though the minister had torn a fantasy directly from his mind.

A moment later, his brief was jerked down his thighs to his knees, bending his already aching erection unpleasantly, and a hard plastic nozzle was jammed into his anus with little enough care to make him wince. When cool moisture filled him to overflowing, the nozzle was removed and he heard the wet sound of flesh on flesh. A hard hand pinned his neck against the bulkhead and then a foot stomped his brief to the floor and kicked his ankles farther apart.

And still Hastion was unprepared for the hard, hot cock that drove into him. Burning pain and pleasure seared him in a frightening wave of heat, and he ground his teeth, struggling instinctively.

“No.” The minister leaned into him, using his entire body to smash Hastion into the padded bulkhead, grinding his thick cock even deeper.

Unbearably aroused, Hastion arched his back, pushing with his arms but Cecine grabbed his wrists and crossed them in front of him, anchoring Hastion against his chest.

Then he took them both to the floor.

Stunned and breathless from the impact, Hastion yanked fiercely, trying free his arms, but they were trapped between his abdomen and the pad, held there by Cecine’s unrelenting grasp and the weight of both their bodies. Cecine’s cock was still buried inside him, his knees bracketing Hastion’s on the floor, and Hastion had no choice but to close his eyes and brace himself for what was coming. He ground his forehead into the pad, agonizingly aware of the humid gasps of breath against his ear, the sharp chin digging into his shoulder muscle, the sweaty, hair-roughened chest rasping against his back, and the strong thighs pinning his together.

Do it, sir!

The minister took a deep breath and erupted in a frenzy of motion, fucking him without mercy. Despite the copious application of lubricant, Hastion’s overstretched anus burned, and his bowels cramped in reaction to the hard impacts deep inside him. At the same time, all the pleasure centers in his brain were activated by the unrelenting stimulation of his prostate, the friction of his painfully hard cock against the pad, and the pure adrenaline rush of being restrained and forcibly fucked. Piled atop all the other sensory input he’d experienced in the last hour, it was almost more than he could bear and he grappled with the urge to scream.

When orgasm claimed him, he managed to hold on, hissing through his clenched teeth as a kaleidoscopic confusion of hot pain and shivering pleasure exploded through him.

Growling, Cecine squeezed Hastion’s wrists tighter, never backing off the brutal pace. The drag over his prostate was almost intolerable now that he’d come, and Cecine’s emerging spur ramming against his coccyx added to his agony. He pushed a knee wide in an attempt to gain some leverage, but Cecine just crowded between his legs and drove deeper.

The urge to beg for mercy was suddenly overwhelming, and Hastion prayed for control as he sucked in huge draughts of air. Finally the minister rammed home and held, shuddering, his cock like molten rock in Hastion’s ass as it pulsed and jerked.

Dazed and disbelieving, Hastion lay still, keeping his forehead against the pad as he swallowed repeatedly. What in Peserin’s name had just happened?

“Minister, Shelley Bonham seeks an audience with you.
”

Shaking his head to clear it, Cecine withdrew from Hastion and pushed up to kneel between his pale legs. What he saw shook him. A rush of foamy liquid escaped the unmoving ensign’s wide-open orifice—lubricant and semen streaked with blood ran down over his sac and melted into the pad beneath. Worse, there was a bloody hole in the skin covering his tailbone where Cecine’s spur had gouged him.

Peserin’s hell, in his quest to strip away a fine warrior’s control, he’d lost control himself.

And Hastion had paid the price. It shamed him beyond bearing.

“Minister, Shelley Bonham—”

“Admit her to my sitting area,”
he ordered harshly,
“and tell her I’ll be with her momentarily.”

“Affirmative.”

“Don’t move,” he said. He had amends to make, sooner rather than later. “I’ll return shortly.”

When she was here earlier, she’d been too upset and blinded by tears to take note of her surroundings, so she strolled around curiously.

Like every other room in the ship, the minister’s living room was iridescent blue from stem to stern. Blue used to be her favorite color, but after months trapped aboard the
Heptoral
, she was sick of it. She’d never paint a room any shade of blue again.

Though his furniture was the same dull gray as hers, he appeared to have actually made an attempt at personalizing. There were colorful throws draped over the backs of the couches, several huge potted palms and ferns bracketed the flare window, and on the low square table between the couches sat a crystal vase filled with exotic red and orange flowers.

She was surprised to see two white bookshelves stuffed with both hardbacks and paperbacks in one corner. Didn’t everyone read digital books in space? They sure took up a hell of a lot less room, something the Garathani claimed was at a premium aboard the
Heptoral
.

But then power had its privileges.

Interestingly, the minister’s quarters smelled a hell of a lot better than hers. Of course, she did have two babies soiling several diapers a day, but the blue biologic pad lining every inch of the ship’s interior was supposed to provide uniformly clean air throughout the ship.

Maybe the difference was the plants and flowers. Or maybe the furniture was stuffed with potpourri instead of polyfill.

Or maybe it was just the smell of power.

But the most interesting thing in the room was the wall that appeared to be…moving.

Shelley tipped her head to the side and wandered over for a closer look at the live seascape. Like the rest of the room, it was blue on blue, which was why she hadn’t noticed it right away. The gently swelling ocean waves were deep blue with delicate pale-blue crests where they broke gently on the beach. The cloudless sky was such a dark blue it was almost purple, and the setting sun—or was it rising?—was so white she thought it was the moon at first. But then she noticed two moons higher above it, one a crescent and the other almost half-full.

It must be Garathan. Did he miss his home as much as she missed hers? She’d never thought of that before, that the mighty Garathani might get homesick. They were all so hard and inaccessible. Except Hastion, but he seemed like a breed apart from the others and always had.

Curious, she reached out and touched the mural with a single finger, confirming her suspicion that it was a flare image. The picture distorted slightly where her fingertip came into contact with the warm, flexible surface. Must be nice. Maybe she could get one like that for her room, only with a glorious morning view of the Gore Range.

Then again, maybe that would just make her even more homesick.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement and turned her head just in time to watch the minister’s ginger-furred chest and incredible washboard abs disappear under the silky, white, short-sleeved shirt he was pulling over his head. Down below, a pair of pearl-gray pants rode low on his narrow hips and his elegant feet were bare.

A lust bomb detonated in her belly, sucking away her breath as it shot white-hot sparkles all over her body. Damnation, how could he possibly be sixty years old? Admittedly that was like thirty-five in human years, but still…holy shit. His body could have dominated any of the eye candy websites she and all her coworkers had drooled over every morning before their shifts. When she saw him earlier, fresh from his workout and almost naked, her mind had emptied of everything except the desire to lick off a bead of sweat rolling down those abs.

“You wished to see me, Ms. Bonham,” he said as he reached up to pull his hair out of the back of his collar. It was wavy, as if it had been braided, and the ends were a darker red. Had she gotten him out of the shower?

God, she could see him there now, soaping himself sensuously while water poured down his hard, naked body…

She blinked. “Uh…yes, I—”

“Please, be seated.” He gestured at the long couch against the wall.

“Thank you.” Totally disconcerted, she sat at one end, perching on the edge of the seat so her feet still touched the floor.

The minister smiled as he sat down in the other corner, leaving a good five feet between them. Half facing her, he leaned back with his legs crossed and his left arm stretched out along the back of the couch. The pose made the leg of his pants ride up, and Shelley was disturbed to see two faint sets of scars about three inches apart circling his bony ankle. There were similar scars around both wrists.

The idea that he’d been forcibly restrained at some point bothered her more than she cared to think about. Who’d done that to him, and why?

“Our furniture is no more made for you than yours is for me,” he said with a slight smile, as though he hadn’t noticed her frowning inspection of his scars.

Resisting the urge to ask about them, Shelley smiled back. “When you were sitting in my father’s recliner, you reminded me of Goldilocks sitting in Baby Bear’s chair.”

“And you look like Goldilocks on Papa Bear’s chair.”

Something about the way he said that sent a warm, slow wave of arousal curling through her. Damn, if she was Goldilocks and he was Papa Bear, she’d skip the chair and go straight to his great big bed to wait for him. Naked.

She blinked again.
Down, girl!

“I’m surprised you know that story, sir,” she said quickly. Jesus, her hormones had better straighten themselves out soon or she was liable to attack someone.

“I enjoy learning about other cultures through their literature, and actually, a similar story has been handed down on Garathan for generations.”

“Oh? What’s yours called?”

“Roughly translated, ‘Ristaci and the Three TaRaiaks.’”

“Interesting. Does she sit in their chairs, eat their porridge and sleep in their beds?”

His smile grew distinctly sly. “No, but she tugs on their colloks.”

Okay, either that was something dirty or he was teasing her. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“Their hibernation sacks.”

She laughed, blushing anyway. “That doesn’t sound very smart.”

“Neither does falling asleep in a bear’s bed.”

“Touché.”

“So, Ms. Bonham, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

Shelley hesitated. Suddenly her mission seemed very self-serving.

Licking her lips, she said, “Well, I just wanted to— That is… Well, I don’t know if you realize how very much my mom and dad mean to me, sir. They were the best parents I could ever have asked for, and the idea that they were both dying…” She closed her eyes briefly and shuddered. “My God, the thought of it scares me right down to my bones.”

“You needn’t thank me without ceasing,” he told her wryly. “It’s very clear how much you care for them.”

“But I don’t just want to thank you,” she rushed ahead before he could shove her out the door. “I mean, when Tara said what she did about me wanting to get away from the Garathani, I felt like a complete jerk. You’ve been nothing but kind and helpful, not just to me and my family but to the entire planet, and it took me way too long to see that. Even after I saw, it took me way too long to admit it. So I want to apologize for acting like all of you were monsters for so long.”