Del's Pirates [Sequel to G'baena's Pirates] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (13 page)

“Cooper, no. Snap out of it. Please don’t do this.”

The creatures surrounding them laughed, the harsh barking sound grating against Cooper’s nerves.

Cooper stayed silent, advancing on her the way he expected a brainwashed man would—unflinchingly, unmoved by her pleas, concentrating on only doing what his supposed master ordered.

She tried to crawl away, but he grabbed her before she could get close enough to any of the guards for them to lash out at her. He dragged her backward as she screamed and tried to scramble away.

“Fuck her now!” Keytark yelled, his patience obviously at an end.

Cooper held her down as he looked over at the cruelest man he’d ever had the displeasure of meeting and said, “Yes, master.”

Avery screamed, tears rolling down her cheeks as she begged him not to follow Keytark’s orders. The men around them laughed raucously, a couple of them even rubbing their finger-sized hard-ons through their uniform pants. Cooper felt sick to his stomach, his own cock not reacting to the situation at all. He loved Avery. He couldn’t do this.

God, he was going to get them all killed.

But then Avery, god bless her quick thinking, managed to turn in his grip and act like he’d forced his cock into her mouth. She pretended to gag, pretended to try and fight her way off him, but the whole time caressed his soft cock in her mouth and tapped her finger on his thigh. Their signal that she was all right. To the casual observer it would look like the terrified shaking of a woman in distress, but to Del and Cooper it was four quick taps of her finger followed by what looked like a reflexive squeeze of her hand.

Avery sucked harder against his cock, coaxing his erection to life, even as she made it look like he was pushing her face onto his cock against her will.

She moved off his cock, gasping for air, crying for Cooper to wake up, to snap out of his trance. She tried to escape again, but this time Cooper managed to react, pulling her back by her hair and forcing her face-first onto the ground. He lay over the top of her, dragging her back as his cock brushed against her pussy. He only just managed to stifle the groan when he realized she was wet for him.

He pulled her backward, pushing his cock into her pussy, nearly weeping with relief when he slid in easily. She screamed as if he’d hurt her, but again she made the signal that she was all right.

The guards were concentrating so hard on what Cooper was supposedly doing to Avery that nobody saw Del’s covert movements. Silently, as Cooper and Avery kept everyone’s attention on them, Del managed to dig the poison needle from under his skin, remove the safety coating, and press it against Keytark’s calf muscle. Keytark barely noticed such a tiny sting, his leg not even moving as he became more engrossed by the show.

Del was already lying back in the same “unconscious” position when the room suddenly filled with a most foul odor.

“Fuck!” one of the creatures exclaimed. “Who died?”

Almost as one, they turned to Keytark. The poison Del had used had been specifically chosen for its ability to cause the victim to have a heart attack. Keytark’s species was physically huge, bulbous and muscular in their appearance, but over countless generations of increased physical strength in each generation they’d developed a single weakness. They were especially susceptible to heart attacks. The poison Sarah and Tee-ani had chosen had seemed like the right choice at the time. What they hadn’t expected, however, was for it to work so damn quickly.

Keytark already smelled like a rotting corpse.

Avery had fallen silent, no longer fighting against her supposed attacker, but none of the guards seemed to notice. Cooper kept moving inside her, trying not to blow their cover at least until they figured out what might happen next.

It was almost a relief as the guards started yelling at each other. The two different factions seemed determined to blame the other for Keytark’s death. As words turned to violence, Cooper realized none of them had even given the slaves a thought. The three of them managed to scramble away from the fighting without anyone even noticing. They ducked into a small alcove as heavily armed guards ran into the throne room and started firing their weapons. All hell was about to break loose.

Cooper quickly checked the bump on Del’s head, made certain his eyes were clear, and then ran down the hallway toward the nearest exit. At the last moment, Del turned to the left, not leaving the building, but following a narrow corridor instead.

“We need to be quick,” he said as he indicated what seemed to be an intricate series of locks.

“Del?” They didn’t have time for this. They needed to steal a ship in the chaos and get as far away from here as possible.

“This is where Keytark locks away the untrained slaves. Everyone else in the palace can run, but these people are likely to die before someone remembers they’re here.”

“Okay,” Cooper said, not willing to leave innocent people locked up if they had a chance to save them. He got to work quickly, determined to use every ounce of concentration to find a way to unencrypt the locking sequence.

He barely had a chance to look at the first lock before a guard came around the corner. “What are you doing?” he demanded, his weapon pointed at Cooper’s chest.

“Forgive us,” Del said, his head bowed in a perfect imitation of a well-behaved slave. “We were ordered back to our holding pens, but there was no one here to let us in.”

The guard flinched at the sounds of gunfire coming from the other side of the palace, glanced at the exit, and then as if he’d made a quick decision, stepped forward and released the locks. The door swung open at the same time that Avery used an electronic type of weapon to render him unconscious.

Del grabbed the guy’s weapon and then ran into the darkened area. Avery threw the weapon she had to Cooper, and he was about to follow Del when he emerged again, this time with dozens of poorly dressed, underfed people behind him. Some squinted in the light as if they hadn’t seen the outside of that dimly lit cell in months.

These people weren’t capable of escaping on their own. It wasn’t enough to liberate them from their cells. They needed a ship to get off this damn planet, and now it needed to be a big one.

“Del, which way to the landing bays?”

“This way,” Del said, leading the way. “Stay together.”

It didn’t even occur to Cooper that they were still naked until the two remaining guards standing around the palace’s landing area locked their eyes on Avery’s beautiful body. It gave him and Del more than ample time to shoot the bastards into unconsciousness.

“Get everyone on board,” Cooper yelled to his lovers. “I’ll get the systems up and running.”

Cooper almost laughed in relief when he realized the ship’s encryptions were the exact same codes as the door to the cells. In fact, every system that was protected by a passcode responded to the same one. It seemed that the guard back at the door had inadvertently given them the master code to everything on the planet.

Avery joined him on the bridge of the ship and unerringly moved to the weapons control panel. Del joined them just as Cooper managed to lift the ship off the ground.

“Where are the others?”

“I locked them in the cargo bay,” he said sadly. “We can’t risk letting any of them know they are being rescued until we’re sure none of them are brainwashed and capable of blowing up.”

“Good thinking,” Cooper said without taking his eyes off the radar in front of him. It seemed they weren’t going to be followed from the planet, but they still needed to get through the swarms of Keytark’s guards before they could leave this sector.

A message that seemed to be on an official frequency crackled through the communications panel.

“Keytark is dead. I am taking over. All hail your new ki—”

The words were cut off by the loud sound of weapons fire. A cruel, laughing voice came onto the airways.

“Your new king has been relieved of his throne. I shall be overseeing things from now on.”

The transmission was again interrupted by weapons fire, the loud, violent confrontation coming through the speakers until the signal failed. They crept the ship slowly through the sector, careful to give the impression of moving through the sector rather than away from the fight.

He glanced up from the navigational controls to where Avery stood at the weapons console. She winked at him and then went back to watching the radar and other informational feeds. Only one ship seemed to notice them, but just when they thought it would contact them, it suddenly reversed and headed in the opposite direction. It appeared that whoever was on that ship had decided retreat worked better for them.

As they reached the edge of the sector, Cooper engaged the faster-than-light engines and made a beeline to the pirate ship’s last-known location. They wouldn’t be there, of course, but they would be in transmission range. Of course, they’d been expecting a much smaller craft to try and find them. The ship they’d stolen was almost as big as the pirate ship itself.

The farther away they got from Keytark’s palace the more confident they felt that they might actually make it home alive. Avery must have noticed where his thoughts took him once the need for intense concentration lessened. She glanced at Del, who took over the weapons console without saying a word, and then Avery moved into his arms.

“I’m so sorry that we had to put you through that, Avery-girl.”

“I’m not,” she said with a soft smile. “The whole time it was happening all I could think about was how much you loved me. You’re an honorable man, Cooper, and your actions today just made me love you even more.”

He wasn’t really sure how to respond to that. Ruth—after much persuasion—had told him what had happened to her and Avery the day they’d been abducted, but had sworn him to secrecy. She’d finally agreed to tell him so that he would be ready in case something like exactly what had happened set off Avery’s nightmares once again.

He held her closer, aching for the pain she must have suffered at the hands of such brutal and physically powerful men.

“It’s okay,” Avery said as emotion gripped him and he trembled in her embrace. “I had a feeling Ruth might tell you before we left.” He nodded against her head, trying to at least keep his dignity by focusing part of his concentration on the ship’s systems. Avery snuggled closer into his embrace. “Cooper, what we went through today…it was nothing like the day I was abducted. In your arms, I wasn’t frightened. In a way, I felt powerful. Even as you pretended to do what they’d ordered I knew you’d protect me. I knew you loved me and that your intentions were honorable. I love you, Cooper, and I’m so very sorry you had to go through that.”

She was apologizing to him? Fuck, his woman was amazing.

“I’m getting a response to our signal,” Del said cheerfully. “G’ntriel says to continue on our current heading. They’re less than five minutes away.”

Cooper nodded in acknowledgement. Less than twenty hours ago they’d left on a mission that could have taken days, maybe even weeks, and could even have cost them their lives. Instead, they’d accomplished their task faster than they’d dared hope and caused more damage than they’d dared dream. If the earlier transmissions were anything to go by, Keytark’s “kingdom” was in complete disarray. Hopefully, it would be a very long time before someone else came along who was capable of doing what Keytark had done.

Of course Cooper was also certain that once he and Devlin got the pirate ship back to fully functional, the crew would happily help to keep the slave trade disorganized.

Cooper glanced at the man who’d made it all possible and loved him even more. Without Del’s bravery and willingness to fight to protect others from the fate he’d suffered, none of it would have been possible. Cooper felt a swell of pride and awe as he realized just how incredible it was to be loved by two of the most amazing people in the universe.

He pulled Avery closer, mouthed the words “I love you” to Del, and then settled in to dream about the future they now had a chance to live.

* * * *

Del watched the man and woman he loved and couldn’t believe how lucky he was. Not only had they accomplished their goal, but they’d gotten the miracle they’d hoped for and managed to get out alive. Rescuing dozens of slaves and making off with a large, well-equipped, well-protected ship was an amazing bonus. And just like all of Keytark’s slave ships, it was fully stocked with the most expensive medical equipment available. “‘Home, sweet home’ approaching off the port bow,” he said as the pirate ship came onto their sensors.

He watched the pirate ship that had been his home for the past three cycles approach their position and realized that sentiment was no longer true. Home wasn’t a place, a cabin, or possessions. Home was in the arms of the two people who loved him.

Del smiled as he watched Cooper hold Avery close, his love for her telegraphed in every soft touch, every murmured word. As long as the three of them were together, no matter where they lived, Del knew he would always be where he belonged.

Avery ran through the empty hallways. She was already late, but it seemed that no matter how many things she squeezed into a day, there was always more to be done. She was almost looking forward to their next assignment just so she’d have a moment to breathe.