Scowling, Kane returned to his seat.
Reuel turned to face the hall. “We have settled on a target to supply the ship for the long voyage. Tomorrow at 08:00 EST, we will make a jump, so everyone will be expected to be on station and in harness for the jump. Directly afterwards I will expect everyone to report to the bay so that we can begin preparing the shuttles for the landing.
“Before anyone moves from their seat—Neither I nor Captain Chloe were amused by the last attempt to initiate the sex act. If there is not order in this second attempt, you will be waiting a very long while before the attempt is made again. At Captain Chloe’s suggestion, all names that appear on the lists will be put into the computer and the computer will randomly select the time of your engagement. That being the case, there is no reason whatsoever to become disorderly. Regardless of when you reach the cards to sign in, your position will not be determined until the computer has made the selection.
“Iwill oversee the sign ins.Youwill remain seated until I have posted the cards.”
He glanced at Chloe and his eyes lit with amusement. “Ladies, your visitors are anxious so I would like to suggest that you leave the mess hall now and brace … uh … make whatever preparations you would like before your visitor arrives.”
Chloe was so weak-kneed after the announcement, she wasn’t certain for several moments that she could command her legs to lift her ass out of her chair. When she saw the cyborg women get up and head toward the exit, however, she bounded out of her seat and raced to catch up. Being the last out the door and drawing the most attention didn’t appeal to her at all.
She’d already dashed to her cabin, stripped, and flung herself at the bunk before it occurred to her that she hadn’t bathed since that morning. She lay staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, listening to her racing heart and trying to decide whether she had time to bathe and get back. That part seemed essential, to be hiding—waiting in the dim cabin when … whoever, got there.
Since it hit her at that moment that she had no idea who it might be, that it might not even be any of the men she was familiar with and most comfortable with, she decided to dash down to the showers. When she arrived, she discovered the others were already there. Relieved to discover she at least seemed to be on the right track, she headed for a vacant shower and scrubbed as if she was decontaminating rather than preparing for a lover. Everything on her was warm and tingling when she got out and that beat the hell out of being cold with fright.
When she’d dried off, she went back to her cabin to pace and chew her fingernails down to the quick.
* * * *
Reuel had not even managed to post the cards when he saw Kane and then Jared stick their heads out the door. “Back!” he barked.
When he’d finished, he marched to the center and placed his back to the wall. “Now, in an orderly manner ….”
One of his men fell out the door and measured his length in the corridor. Jared leapt over him. Kane stepped in the middle of his back as he tried to get up. Two more men stumbled out the door, tripped over the man that was trying to get up, and created a momentary plug in the corridor. Sebastian bounded over them, landed in a half crouch, and shot toward Chloe’s card.
Narrowing his eyes, Reuel glanced toward the vid and discovered without a great deal of surprise that it was now angled toward the wall where the cards were posted. Shaking his head, he moved toward the growing tangle in the corridor as Lucien, Damon, and Thor plowed through or leapt over the men still trying to get to their feet, who’d managed to trip up several other men in the process. Tempers were already beginning to flare by the time he commanded the men behind them to halt and allow them to get up. Glaring furiously at Chloe’s men, those who’d ‘fallen’ in the corridor stalked toward the posted cards, scanned them and lined up behind Thor. By the time Reuel had taken up his position again, the entire corridor was clogged with the men lining up to sign and he discovered the men had ignored the fact that there were only six lines for signatures on each card.
His lips tightening, he ripped Chloe’s card from the wall, tore the bottom off and informed the men that the card wasfullwhen there were no empty lines. Clearly furious to have their names removed, the men stared at Chloe’s crew for several moments as if trying to decide whether it was worth it to spend the night in the brig with Chloe’s men and finally, apparently, decided against it.
Reuel relaxed fractionally, waited until everyone had made their selection and then collected the cards, informing the men that they would be able to utilize the terminals in the old rec room to draw their night once he had had time to input the data in the computer.
There was a general stampede toward the rec room, but he decided it was orderly enough to ignore it. “Monitors! I will rely upon you to keep order in the rec room. I would not like to have to throw anyone in the brig tonight,” he called after them before heading to the bridge to input the data in the main computer system.
* * * *
Chloe halted abruptly and turned wide eyes toward the door when she heard footsteps moving briskly along the corridor, holding her breath while she waited to see if they would stop at her door. When they did and a knock sounded on the panel, she nearly jumped out of her skin. Whirling, she raced to her bunk and leapt in, her heart hammering deafeningly in her ears. After trying several different positions, however, she decided she needed to discard the notion of posing seductively and bounded out of the bunk again when whoever it was at her door knocked the second time.
Racing to the door, she snatched it open. A jolt went through her when she met a wall of flesh in the opening. Tipping her head back, she gaped up at him for several moments, eyes wide, mouth open in an ‘O’ of surprise, gulped a couple of times, and finally found her voice. “Jared!”
He’d seemed as frozen as she was until she managed to croak his name. At that, he stepped inside, narrowly missing crushing the big toe on her right foot, caught her head between his palms and lifted her by her head to meet his descent. A bone in her neck and several along her spine popped before she had the presence of mind to push herself upward on her tiptoes, but his mouth connected with hers before she had time to assimilate whether there was any pain or damage associated with the ominous pops.
As if it hadn’t been days since the first time he’d dragged her against him and kissed her with such fevered longing, the same conflagration erupted instantly inside of her. She slipped her arms between his and dug her fingers into his shoulders, trying to get closer. His skin was still damp from a shower. Droplets of cold water dripped from his hair, landed on her arms, and skated down them, creating shivers with their passing.
He pulled her closer, realigning his mouth with hers and stroking his tongue restlessly along hers, making her drunk with oxygen starvation and the wonderful feel and taste of his mouth. She twined her arms more tightly around his shoulders, lifting herself higher and when he gripped one buttock and pulled her belly against his erection, she lifted her legs and curled them around him.
A shudder went through him when the lips of her sex parted to enfold his hot flesh. He broke the kiss, looked around a little dazedly, and headed for her bunk, climbing onto the mattress on his knees and falling forward and catching himself with his arms with her still coiled tightly around him. She discovered she couldn’t maintain her grip without his support. Her legs slipped. Her ass hit the mattress. He dropped to his elbows when she lost her grip on his neck, diving low to burrow his face against her throat.
She made a grab for his cock, searching blindly for it to shove it into place and came up empty when he shifted from her neck to her breasts. For a few moments, she continued to search a little desperately, found his hard belly and splayed her fingers against it, trying to follow the thin trail of hair from his belly button downward. He latched onto a nipple however, and completely distracted her from her goal as he tugged at the sensitive tip. Fire shot through her and erupted in her belly. It clenched so hard she gasped.
Grabbing two fistfuls of his hair mindlessly, she struggled with equal opposing desires to pry him loose and hold him closer. The sensations flooding through her were so keen it was hard to decide whether it was sheer torture or pleasure to feel him sucking and pulling at her breasts. Just about the time she decided she wanted more, he let go and lifted his head, sucked in a couple gulps of air and dove for the other.
She gritted her teeth, ground them together, threw her legs around him and tried to lift her hips high enough from the bed to mount him. She bucked against his belly button uselessly for several moments before it occurred to her that she’d bumped the head of his cock on the way up.
Dropping to the bed, she gasped for air, struggling to figure out how she was going to mount his cock when it was about six inches south of where she needed it. Just about the time she decided to scoot down the bed, he shifted upward in search of her mouth. They bumped noses but finally managed to connect.
She pulled at him a little frantically with her hands, capturing his tongue with the suction of her mouth and sucking on it while she tried to identify what part of his body she was gripping and felt her way downward in another search for the cock. Either it finally penetrated his mind that she was searching for it or he took that moment to decide to curl his hips. She managed to grab the head and shove it between her legs but there was still a gap of several inches between him and the connection she wanted.
He pumped his hips, yanking free of her grip, tried to curl around her and finally broke from her lips and surged upward. The head of his cock snagged briefly in the mouth of her sex and skated up her cleft to her clit, sending an almost electric jolt through her. She dug her heels into the mattress and arched upward, trying to get it to slide down in the right direction. It did, slipping past the mouth of her sex again and then spearing between the cheeks of her ass.
