Two Men for Piper [The Men of Space Station One #7] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (3 page)

“There it is, our new home here on planet Alpha.” Tripp slowed the transport as they neared the front. “What do you think, Piper?”

“It looks normal. I like normal when so much about this place is so
not
normal. I guess what is inside will determine if it really is a normal house. I’ll be happy if we have indoor plumbing and a stove that works.”

“Yeah, I’m seriously bummed that the microwaves don’t work here. Neither do cell phones. They tried towers, and something in the atmosphere interferes with them.” Keith leaned forward to look at the area around the house as they rounded the corner to the back.

“How do we keep in touch with everyone?”

“Good, old-fashioned radios,” Tripp said. “Every house has a small base station and the radios for the family. You can talk radio to radio, but to talk to another family or to get in touch with the city, you have to be at the base station. Don’t worry, we’ll teach you all about it.”

“Good, because that wasn’t part of our Betty Crocker, homemaker training.”

Keith burst out laughing. She was glad he was amused, but she was growing more and more worried by the minute.

Tripp set the transport down near the back door and turned off the engine. Keith began unfastening his harness then helped Piper remove hers. He helped her down, and they all three filed into the house with Piper between the two men. She looked around the kitchen and was impressed. It had up-to-date appliances and was a nice size for a family. The eat-in kitchen had a table with six chairs as well as a small bar that separated the kitchen from the eating area.

“Smells clean and new,” Keith pointed out.

“I was expecting it to have that musty, closed-up feeling.” Tripp walked farther into the house through a doorway. “Look at the living room, guys.”

Piper wanted to explore the kitchen some more and see where all the doors went. She sighed and resigned herself to following them around at first. When she walked into the living room, she was impressed. There was a giant fireplace along one wall with a couch and two recliners facing it in a sort of circular pattern. Since there was no TV, the only other things in the room were the end tables between the chairs and the couch.

There were empty shelves on either side of the massive brick fireplace. Piper could see them filled with books. They didn’t have very many yet, but she understood that books were being shipped there with other things that would be lost forever on earth like music. She was personally glad to know that. She’d brought her MP3 player and music with her, including the little docking station with speakers. She’d been told that there was no real entertainment there because they didn’t have time for entertainment. Well, everyone had time for music. You listened as you worked. She’d spent several days downloading songs onto as many flash drives as she could get hold of. She had a ton of music to choose from.

“What do you think of the living room, Piper?”

“Hmm? Oh, it’s nice. I suppose we’ll need to have fires for warmth in the winter, especially since the house is solar heated and cooled. When the sun isn’t out for several days at a time, we might end up without power.”

“Thank you for that educational lesson on solar energy pitfalls.”

“Screw you, Keith. I can’t help it that it was drilled into me over and over on that stupid ship.”

“Shuttle,” both men said.

“Whatever. Let’s go see the rest of the house.”

They walked around the living room to where a door obviously led outside, and another one beside the stairs led into an office. It was complete with the base station they had talked about and three desks. There weren’t any computers, but there were stacks of empty journals, cameras, a photo printer, binoculars, and several other observation devices. Yep, the government was serious about them keeping logs on what happened to them. She felt another twinge of worry settle in her stomach.

After leaving the office, they headed up the stairs to the rooms up there. Piper counted seven doors on either side of the long hall. Four turned out to be bedrooms, one was a linen closet, and two were bathrooms shared between the three bedrooms. They started with the first bedroom, which turned out to be the master suite. It was rather large with an attached bathroom. The bed took up the center of one entire wall with tables on either side. There was a double-wide dresser and two chests on opposite walls. A chair and a stool were sitting in the middle of the room.

The bathroom was also quite large with a massive whirlpool tub and an enormous walk-in shower. Both would easily hold all three of them. The triple-sink vanity was a dream come true for Piper, who hated sharing bathroom space.

They checked out each of the other bedrooms and bathrooms. They were all decent sized and could actually hold two children each, but Piper shushed them when they mentioned that part. Three children sounded fine to her. More than three would be a brood. She wasn’t a brood mare.

“Let’s go back downstairs and start unpacking.” Keith headed for the stairs.

“Piper, can you unpack all our things and put them away while we unpack the supplies and get them inside?

“Sure, do you have preferences of where I put whose clothes?”

“Naw, we wear each other’s anyway. Just as long as we both have enough in our drawers to wear,” Tripp said.

That was good to know. She wouldn’t get fussed at if she accidently put someone’s underwear in the wrong chest. She licked her lips thinking about underwear, which made her think about what was in the underwear. She risked a glance at their crotches and wasn’t disappointed to find that they were nicely built if they weren’t sporting socks in their pants.

She followed them down and back into the kitchen. She quickly checked out the washroom and the pantry. Both were well stocked with supplies. She pulled open the trapdoor that led down to a cellar. She thought she heard something down there when she opened the door, but decided it was just her ears playing tricks on her and closed it back. She would check down there another time. Right now, she had the luggage to unpack. She waited until they made it up the stairs with the first piece of luggage. It turned out to be one of hers. They teased her about how heavy it was when she knew in reality that one of theirs was even heavier than hers. She’d had to move them.

“What do you have in here? Shoes?” Tripp fussed as they set another one down.

“No, it’s probably purses,” Keith quipped.

“Like I have a use for a lot of purses and shoes here.” She smiled sweetly at them until they had disappeared down the stairs. Then she cringed.

Piper had actually packed five purses that she thought would be good for carrying things around when they went anywhere. She hadn’t packed any shoes other than those that were good for working outside or just walking around inside the house. She quickly unpacked the purses and shoved them in her walk-in closet. They were sharing the other one, so they had no reason to snoop around in hers.

“Look, she’s getting rid of the evidence.” Keith walked in carrying one end of a trunk.

“Smart-ass.” She grinned just the same.

Once they had everything upstairs, she began to unpack first her things and then theirs. She was surprised to find out that though they had plenty of thermal underwear for the winter, they didn’t have either boxers or briefs for the rest of the time. She let that sink in for a few seconds before she moved on to put away their jeans. She made sure they each had an equal number of them hanging in the closet along with long-sleeved and short-sleeved shirts and T-shirts. They were both wearing boots, but they had two more pairs apiece that she put in the closet along with tennis shoes.

By the time she had unpacked their things as well as hers, she was tired. All the bending and stooping had taken a toll on her. She hadn’t been this active since they had left earth. Most of their time had been spent in classrooms sitting down. She had used the shuttle gym when she had the chance, but it obviously hadn’t been nearly enough.

“Piper! You up there?”

“Yeah. I’m on my way down.” She ran the back of her arm across her forehead to wipe away the sweat beading there.

Once she made it down the stairs, she headed through the living room toward the kitchen. She found the men standing at the backdoor talking. They stopped and turned to look at her when she walked into the room. Instantly her panties grew damp at the obvious interest in their eyes. They looked her over from top to bottom and back up again. Keith’s eyes remained on her breasts while Tripp’s seemed to be interested in her pussy.

“Um, guys? Did you want me for something—other than sex?”

“Oh, yeah.” Tripp grinned and shook his head. “Sorry. We’re going to drive around a little bit before we park the transport to see what’s around us.”

“Okay, how long before you might be ready for dinner?”

They looked at each other for a second, then Keith said that they should be back within the next hour and a half.

“You’ll take a shower after that because you’re all hot and sweaty, so I’ll figure dinnertime to be about two and a half hours from now. Be careful.” She turned and headed for the pantry. She needed to figure out what to cook. She didn’t hear a sound from the men for several long seconds, and then the door opened and shut. She smiled. They figured she would throw a fit about wanting to go along with them. They didn’t know she was used to men since she had four brothers. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out how to work around them.

She settled on cooking a meatloaf with green beans and potatoes. She would start introducing them to some of the newer plants starting tomorrow. But for tonight, they would have all natural-to-Earth foods. She got everything out and after washing down the counters, bar, and table, began to fix the meatloaf. She got it ready to bake then concentrated on peeling the potatoes and putting them on to boil.

By the time the men got back, everything was ready to finish off while they were in the shower. They were both dirty from head to foot. She just shook her head and watched them hurry into the other room. She could tell that she would spend a lot of time cleaning up after them. She grinned. To finally have her own home was exciting to her. She had lived with someone else all her life. Even her small apartment housed three other people. Being underground had limited the space somewhat. She’d wanted to stay above ground and live, but her father and four brothers hadn’t given her much of a chance.

Now she was mistress of her own domain and could do what she wanted as far as keeping house went. She liked to clean, so she obviously had been given two someones to clean up after. It was a challenge, but she was up for it.

She had just taken out the meatloaf when the men walked back into the kitchen without shirts but wearing clean jeans. She looked down, and neither of them had bothered to put on socks or shoes either.

“Dinner’s ready. Let’s eat, guys.”

She passed them the meatloaf off the stove, then the potatoes and lastly the bread and green beans. Everyone filled their plates and cleaned them in mere minutes. She got seconds of the green beans while the guys got seconds of everything. It pleased her that they liked it well enough for seconds. She knew she was a fair cook because her brothers would eat her food. They were picky eaters, so that was saying something.

“Good food, Piper. Thanks,” Keith said.

“Really good. I was expecting some of that posh stuff.” Tripp wiped his mouth with his napkin.

“Oh we’ll have plenty of that, too, guys. It’s really good if you cook it right. Tastes like a nut, and it’s crunchy. You’ll like it.”

Tripp made a face but didn’t say anything. Keith just continued eating. She got up and began to clean up the kitchen while they finished eating.

“We thought we’d talk about what our plans are for the next week. How long before you’re finished in here?” Keith asked.

“Give me thirty minutes, and I’ll be in there to listen.”

They nodded and after scraping their plates, left them on the side of the sink and disappeared into the living room. She could hear them talking low in the other room, but she didn’t try to listen. She would find out soon enough. So far everything was going pretty well. They all seemed to be getting along just fine.

As soon as she had the kitchen squared away, she walked into the living room and sat on the couch. The men stopped talking and watched her.

“What?”

She looked down at her shirt to see if she had something on her. She couldn’t find anything, but when she looked back up, they were looking all around the room and not at her.

“What’s going on?”

“Um, we need to talk and get to know each other, I think.” Tripp started out the conversation.

“What do you want to do? Introduce ourselves and tell a little about ourselves? Aren’t we past that?”

Keith grinned then sobered. “We just want to be sure you’re comfortable around us. We don’t want there to be any anxiety between us.”

She sighed. “I’m Piper. I’m twenty-six and have never been married. I’m used to being around men, so you don’t bother me, and I know all about the birds and the bees. You don’t have to coddle me, guys. I’m fine with whatever.”

They both looked a little taken aback. Then Keith grinned from ear to ear and jumped out of his chair to snatch her up from the couch. He swung her around and planted a noisy kiss on her mouth before letting her slide down his obviously aroused body. Gawd, he was built, everywhere.

“Settle down, Keith. I don’t think she was expecting you to sweep her off her feet.”

“I don’t know. She seemed pretty okay with it to me.”

“Piper, we thought we would take tomorrow to just get to know each other and then work on the garden and putting up a fence the rest of the week.”

“A fence?”

“Yeah, we decided that putting up a fence would give you, and eventually our children, some measure of safety from the creatures out there.”

“That’s a good idea, but I think you need to remember in the future that I expect to be part of any decisions that involve this family.” She waited for the fallout from that. Her brothers would have been going ape shit over that.