The Ninth Orb (28 page)

He acquiesced to her demand after a moment, however, holding her tightly to him as he surged forward to lay her on her back. She lifted her legs, wrapping them around his waist and locking her ankles together as he withdrew and thrust into her again, slowly at first and then with more surety as he found the rhythm that drove their pleasure upward to new heights, and then faster still as his own pleasure drove him to a mindless quest for release until he was pounding into her at a furious pace.

Eden’s tension ruptured in an explosive discharge of pent up tension. She cried out as her body seized and began to spasm in intense paroxysms of undiluted bliss. The sound of her rapture and the milking seizures of the muscles of her passage dragged him over the edge moments behind her. He uttered a deep, guttural growl that was a mixture anguish and ecstasy as his body tensed at the precipice and went over, grinding his pelvis into hers as his cock jerked, pumping his seed into her.

Thoroughly spent, weak as water in the aftermath, Eden held on to him for several moments and finally gave up the effort, allowing her arms to slide from his neck and droop limply at her sides.

Cal, supporting the weight of his upper body on his elbows, sagged more heavily against her, allowing his head to drop to rest against hers as he struggled to catch his breath. Dragging in a deep, gusty breath after several moments, he nuzzled his face against hers, murmuring her name, whispering words she couldn’t begin to understand as he brushed light kisses along her forehead, her cheeks, her lips in what she knew was a lover’s praise even if she couldn’t understand his language without the aid of her translator.

She kissed him back to show her own appreciation, more than a little stunned by the things he’d made her feel, the magnitude of the pleasure he’d wrung from her.

Lost in the wonder of it, it wasn’t until Cal finally, reluctantly pulled away from her and sat up that her focus shifted from him to the room around her and her awareness encompassed the others.

Baen knelt beside the couch. Slipping one arm beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her knees, he lifted her up and carried her to her bed.

This was a signal that had, up until now, meant that she would be left to rest. As exhausted as she was from the expenditures already, she found she didn’t want to be left alone. More than that, she wanted to give Baen a taste of what he’d given her by teaching the others to pleasure her.

She knew it was him. As scattered as her thoughts were, she realized that that was what he’d been doing when he’d joined her in the bathing pool, showing the others what she needed and how to pleasure her.

There would be other nights, she also knew, but despite the temptation to simply roll over and ignore the fact that their needs hadn’t been assuaged, she found she couldn’t, found that she was moved to give them something they had never had, a lover’s appreciation, passion, affection. She tightened her arms around Baen when he would have simply released her and stepped away.

He studied her in surprise for a moment and finally settled beside her on the bed, stroking her body more soothingly than with purpose.

Trar, who’d come to bathe the semen from her thighs and cleft, a ritual they’d added when they’d seen she would get up and attend to it herself if they didn’t, hesitated in confusion when Baen settled beside her. After a moment, still looking uncertain, he climbed onto the bed and pushed her thighs wide.

She watched him through slumberous eyes as he carefully bathed her thighs and genitals. His hands shook with his own needs, she saw, feeling her resolve harden.

They wouldn’t ask. They certainly wouldn’t demand. They would simply withdraw, and no doubt suffer a sleepless night of aching without release.

They did not service themselves, no matter how desperately they needed release. She supposed that had been denied them, as well, perhaps for fear that they would ‘waste’ seed meant to be used in their queen’s service.

In any case, as sated as she had been moments before, her body responded to the glittering need in Trar’s eyes and his touch.

Her motives were not entirely altruistic, Eden thought with wry, inward amusement as she lay supine and completely still, savoring the soothing touch of Baen’s hands while she drifted lazily. She did empathize with the discomfort she knew they must feel. She did feel a sense of unfairness about taking her own pleasure and then ignoring the needs of her lovers.

Beyond that, however, their hunger was almost palpable. She felt it deep inside of her in a hunger that refused to be entirely quenched, felt their heated gazes move caressingly over her body and even as she cooled a restlessness entered her that prevented her from relaxing entirely, a budding of warmth, a resurgence of need. She felt a wild, wicked yearning to have them all, to glut her senses with their touch, the taste and scent of them, to feel them thrusting into her with savage need.

Resolved, she dragged in a last deep, sustaining breath and rolled onto her side to face Baen. Lifting a leg and draping it over his hips, she shifted closer, tilting her head up to nuzzle her face against Baen’s neck, breathing in his scent with a sense of welcome. He stiffened, his hand hesitating for many moments before he resumed stroking her, more hesitantly now, as if he wasn’t entirely certain of what her objective was.

She decided not to leave him in doubt. As she felt his cock, engorged with his needs, nudging her belly she arched her hips against him.

He exhaled a faint hiss of pain, flinching at the pressure against his painfully swollen member. Contrite at once, she moved a little away from him and reached between them, caressing his cock with her hand and finally shifting until she could push the head of his cock into her nether mouth.

He swallowed thickly, arching his hips and pressing deeper, claiming her passage by excruciating inches that sent her heart rate soaring.

The heat of his desire enveloped her as he shifted closer abruptly. Grabbing her hips, he thrust upward, struggling against the awkward position to seat himself fully inside of her in a series of breathtaking sorties. He stopped when he had worked his way as deeply inside of her as he could manage, breathing in short, harsh gasps. After a moment, he grasped her hair, tugging her head back so that she was looking up at him.

“Feels so good inside you, baby,” he murmured hoarsely and claimed her surprise parted lips before she could speak. Rolling on top of her, he thrust his tongue deeply into her mouth as he drove his cock deeply into her passage, grinding his groin against her clit. The effect of the double penetration was total annihilation of her senses. She groaned, sucking his tongue greedily as he withdrew slightly and drove deeply inside of her again and again until he’d set a pace that spoke of unleashed, savage need.

Eden felt her body respond to the call, burgeon so quickly that she had no time to relish the building, no time to savor his possession before her body reached its crescendo, catching her so totally by surprise that she tore her mouth from his, crying out.

He uttered a throaty groan, then, burrowed his face against her neck and shuddered with his own release.

It wasn’t until she lay panting, struggling to catch her breath in the aftermath, that it occurred to her that Baen had spoken to her in her own tongue.

Chapter Twenty One

It was morning when Eden roused to awareness again. One moment she’d been worrying over the fact that Baen had spoken to her in English and the next--oblivion.

The memory was the first thing that teased her when thoughts began to whirl through her mind and it roused her more fully, making it impossible to simply roll over as she felt inclined to do and burrow deeper into the bedding.

Warmth flooded her at the memory, too, not just because he’d said it, but the way he’d said it.

It dawned on her abruptly that she’d said almost those exact words to him when they’d made love in her office. Had he merely repeated the sounds he’d heard her say without any idea of what it meant, she wondered?

He didn’t have to know what it meant to repeat it, she realized, and repeat it with much the same inflection that she’d used.

She didn’t know whether to be relieved or outdone when that occurred to her.

Frowning, she recalled that she’d worried before that he might have understood some of what they were saying because he had said he didn’t want her to leave him.

Had she dismissed that anxiety too easily because she didn’t want to face the possibility that he might know of their plans?

Aside from that remark, though, and the fact that he’d repeated what she’d said when they’d made love, she couldn’t think of anything he’d done or said, any particular looks she’d encountered that would seem to indicate that he was watching, listening--spying on her.

He was intelligent, though. She didn’t doubt that for a moment. Intelligent enough to begin to learn her language only by listening to the words she used?

It dawned on her abruptly that the translator, because of its very nature, told him what everything she said meant. She hadn’t considered that before, that he could be listening to what she was saying and the translation at the same time and learning her language.

It hadn’t occurred to her because he’d never used it before.

So, could she consider that there was nothing ominous in her discovery? Was he only just now beginning to learn it? Or had he had a good grasp on the language long before now and kept it from her?

If that was the case, though, why reveal such a strategically important factor only because he was in the throes of passion? Only because he was disturbed that he had failed to please her?

She was worrying for nothing, she decided. He was a soldier, incredibly well disciplined and trained, but he did not have the slyness, she felt certain, for subterfuge.

She knew now that he was beginning to pick up things. She would just have to make sure she was more careful, and she would have to warn the others to be more careful.

It was Trar and Vladiv who came to help her with her morning bath and to dress her, Adri and Pizan who brought her breakfast. Guilt swamped her when she saw them. She’d intended to give tit for tat, to please them because they had tried so hard, and succeeded in pleasuring her--fabulously. Instead, she’d flaked out after her third mind-boggling climax and left them to deal with their ‘problem’.

She had work to do, however. As tempted as she was to ignore business just for one day and spend it with Baen and his brood, she knew it was a bad precedent to set. Instead, once she had eaten and rose to leave she paused before each of them, and caressed their cheeks. “Tonight,” she promised, smiling at each of them, wondering even as she made the promise if she could handle the four of them--which still left two, she reminded herself. She couldn’t ignore Miccan and Pael only because they were warriors when she had taken Baen into her bed.

Pausing on the threshold where they stood like matching bookends guarding the door she lifted her hands and stroked their cheeks affectionately, as well. “And then the two of you.”

It was a hell of a job, she thought with a mixture of wry amusement and anxiety as she was carried to the city, but somehow she was going to manage.

It would’ve been easier if she didn’t have two other broods to be concerned about.

Despite her anxieties, Eden’s spirits were high when she reached her office and she settled to work in a more cheerful frame of mind than she could recall in years. It was a struggle to keep her mind off the night she’d spent with her men and almost as hard to keep from dwelling on the promise she’d made to the others for the night.

She managed after a while to focus on her work, however, and had sifted through the majority of her daily reports before Ivy and Liz arrived for a meeting that Eden had forgotten, but that they’d scheduled several weeks earlier.

Instantly mindful of her suspicions about Baen, she suggested that they take their meeting over lunch.

Liz and Ivy both sent her a look of surprise, but agreed readily. Their timing was good. The café wasn’t so full as to make it nearly impossible to find a table, but it was bustling.

When they’d settled at a table, Ivy studied Eden speculatively for several moments. “You think he’s starting to understand our language?”

Resisting the urge to glance toward Baen, who had assumed a watchful position near the exit, Eden shrugged. “I don’t know. He … uh … repeated something I’d said, which might mean nothing.”

Liz frowned down at her plate and finally picked up the condiments one by one and began assembling the sandwich she’d chosen for her lunch. “Arrogance,” she muttered succinctly.

Eden sent her a sharp glance. “Excuse me?”

Liz shook her head. “I didn’t mean you. At least, not just you. We know these people are an intelligent, advanced race. If we hadn’t gotten so caught up in trying to figure out and understand their bizarre social structure, it might have occurred to us that they could be just as busy analyzing us as we are them.”

Ivy sent her a cold look. “Speak for yourself. It occurred to me. That’s why I didn’t want to get too chummy with them to start with.”

Eden felt a tension headache coming on. “I’ve no intention of debating this at this time. You’re both wrong. I think it occurred to pretty much everyone that this was a ticklish situation and whether they were conscious of it or not, part of the uneasiness all along was because we were concerned about how they would react to our social structure once they figured out that it was nothing at all like theirs. That’s certainly why I suggested that we must at least appear to accept their customs.

“It’s not that I didn’t think they were capable of learning our tongue. I’ve never had any doubts about their intelligence. It’s just that we’re so dependent on our own technology--and lazy about learning things we don’t have to learn because we have machines, and bots, and computers to do them--that I didn’t consider the fact that the group of Xtanians here have had to learn to get along without most of their technology because they were dumped here with little more than the clothes on their backs.