Smuggler’s Contubernium (Mea Lupus Series Book 1) Page 11

  “How many did they start with?”

  “Exactly,” he shook his head then looked into the distance. His eyes became dull, I had never seen such a conflicted look in my unshakeable father’s eyes, “What they’re doing is walking a fine line out of desperation and fear. Nothing good can come from those kind of motivations.”

  “What is the Gauntlet Program?” I probed.

  “A charnel house,” he turned away and left me to my shock.

  Hours later, I lay in my bed and couldn’t stop thinking about my father’s words. A charnel house. Was he saying what I thought he was saying? I turned on my side and tried to get comfortable. We had so many more appointments to go to, I needed to sleep.

  “You’re a broody worrier, aren’t you” murmured a low feminine voice behind me. I felt her breathe in my scent and exhale slowly on the back of my neck. “At least you smell good.” Her nose traced up and she buried her face in my hair.

  “And you have a fetish for sniffing strangers,” I chuckled. I turned over and became instantly hard at a very naked Kara lounging on the bed next to me. Her many braids were fanned out on the pillowcase and the elegant column of her neck arched as she studied my face.

  “My stress induced dream, my rules,” she said seriously.

  “I can see why my pack mates are obsessed with you,” I laughed.

  “Ah, so you’ve noticed my magical vaginal too?” She deadpanned. I laughed harder.

  “This dream took an interesting turn,” I teased.

  “Too bad you’re on Nova Roma,” she shrugged.

  “Why is that?”

  “You’re missing out on all this,” Kara cupped her breasts and ran her thumbs in circles around her nipples. She closed her eyes and let her hands wander lower, dipping her fingers between her inner thighs.

  “Or maybe you’re missing out on this too,” I nuzzled her nose with my own and breathed the words onto her lips, avoiding her attempts to kiss me. I chuckled darkly at her frustration. Until she bit her lip and I heard her wet fingers glide in and out of her pussy.

  I skimmed my fingers around her nipples then down her belly. Before I went any lower I brought back my hand and gripped my cock tightly. I stroked up and down slowly to match the pace her fingers set as she dipped them inside her. Our breaths mingled as she tried to out manoeuvre me and capture my mouth.

  “Damn you, Gaius,” she growled, “Give me what I want.”

  “And what’s that, Kara?” My voice was strained, I was fighting my own orgasm and this dream had my senses saturated in fuzzy warmth. I was panting, struggling to know where Kara ended and I began.

  “If you won’t give me your mouth,” she warned, “then I’ll have to take it for myself.” I heard the slick sound of her fingers retreating from between her thighs and stopped my own hand. What I didn’t expect was for her to shove her wet fingers into my mouth.

  My eyes rolled back in my head the moment her taste touched my tongue. I wrapped both hands around her wrist and began sucking and licking each finger clean. I felt my growl rumble my chest. I looked up at Kara and watched her bite her lip hard, cutting her whimper of pleasure in half.

  “Open your mouth and give me those screams and decadent fucking noises,” I didn’t know what I was saying but I was mindless with the desire to have and please her, “and I’ll give you what you want.”

  “Anything I want?” Her eye gleamed greedily. She look her wet fingers back and slowly clasped her hand around my throbbing cock. Divine Couple help me. I was so fucked.

  “Anything,” I ground out.

  “I want you, all of you,” she surged forward and kissed me possessively. I pushed right back and fought her for every stolen breath and moan. Our bodies found their way to each other and I pressed down into her. She ripped her mouth away from mine to gasp and pull my hair tight in her fist.

  “Why are all you wolves so fucking big?” She moaned and whimpered a hot breath into my ear. “You’re already shapeshifting wolves, why the fuck do you also need monster cocks?” I couldn’t help but laugh at her last rhetorical question.

  “Was that a complaint?” I started to pull out of her.

  “Don’t you fucking pull that bullshit with me wolf!” She scolded. Kara dug her heels into my ass and I let her pull me back deep inside her. I reared up sharply and pulled her thighs wide.

  “You love my shapeshifting wolf monster cock,” I smirked. She laughed and I groaned at how good she felt inside when she did.

  “You love my magical obsession inducing vagina,” she winked. I laughed despite myself and the terrible fucking day I had had. I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed and had fun like this with someone. Much less while I was buried balls deep in that someone.

  “Fuck yeah I do,” I held her legs wider and drowned in her laughter turned to screams. I pounded into her harder and deeper, changing up the angle every time I felt her getting close, forcing her to ride that edge again and again.

  “Gods damn you, Gaius,” she whimpered in frustration, “make me come!”

  “The words you’re looking for is ‘Please, Gaius, let me come.’” My laugh was as pained as I felt. I was torturing us both but I needed her to let go. I knew somehow that she needed to let go as badly as I needed to laugh and put my worries on the side.

  “Make me come or else,” she growled but it only made me pound into her harder and faster. Her breasts bounced and I ached to wrap my tongue around her teasing nipples.

  “Let go Kara,” I growled right back. Red ribbons slithered up the bed and up her body to tie tightly around a ring that wasn’t there before. The ribbons then struck like vipers at her wrists and pulled them up and taut above her head.

  “Someone’s a control freak,” her gibe was breathy but still accurate.

  “Looks like it’s something we have in common,” I clenched my teeth, I refused to have her outlast me. Each stroke into her wet cloying warmth was murder on my control. The only way I was holding on was because I knew she needed me to push her.

  “Say the fucking words, Kara!” I swirled my hips and ground down on her clit. Eventually I would wake up and I wasn’t walking out of this dream until she came for me.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Fine!” Kara arched her back and used her bound hands as leverage. She rolled and clenched her inner muscles up to meet me. “Please, Gaius, let me come!”

  “Fucking finally,” I didn’t care how delirious I sounded as my muscles shook from the effort it took to hold out a little longer. I wrapped both arms around her waist to lock her hips down on me and she did the same with her legs around my hips.

  We moved as one. Gravity and the world around us shifted, lifting and enmeshing us. We were no longer separate but not entirely whole. Our breaths, our lips, and our hands caressed each other. We were floating as the red ribbons circled around us, sometimes kissing along our skin. Everything was soft warmth that reverberated around and through us. It wasn’t only Kara’s body that I felt. Her mind pulled my mind in as tightly as her dripping pussy.

  I could feel her genius. Her curiosity for understanding technology and the world around her rang like a bell through my mind. Her thoughts were radiantly complex but flexible and highly adaptive. Unease at how deeply vivid this dream was, was pushed aside with Kara’s every moan. I felt her tighten up around me and knew she was so, so fucking close.

  “That’s it,” I encouraged. I felt like I was falling apart but every sound and thought of pleasure from her gave me strength, “Let go, mea cupita.”

  Kara shattered in my arms and I followed her with a shout. I sucked in gulps of air as my mind shook with the force of our shared surrender. Wrapped in each other we hung weightless as the red ribbons returned to wrap around us both. Their warm soft fabric hugged our bodies without stifling us. Kara sighed and pressed her face into my neck, breathing deeply. I laughed softly and brushed her loose braids from her face.

  “Good dream,” she yawned. I smiled down at her heartbreakingly ope
n face.

  “Beautiful dream.”

  Kara

  “Beautiful Dream.”

  I snorted and coughed. There was drool on my face and my pillow. I had had such a wonderful dream. I chuckled from the bits I could remember then started to cackle into my pillow. I must seriously be stressed the fuck out if I was dreaming about the contubernium’s pack leader, Gaius.

  “You sound like you’re losing your shit over there,” Ai called from down the corridor.

  “Fuck you, Ai,” I sing-songed sweetly.

  “Naw, we agreed to be just friends,” she sang back to me.

  “Did you get everything set up?” I yelled.

  “Stop yelling and get your ass out of bed,” she yelled back, “I’m only two doors down in the galley, for fuck’s sake.”

  Grumbling under my breath I walked into my bathroom and took a quick shower. I dried and checked my braids, making sure that all the little hidden items in them were unaffected. I dressed in a basic tech suit suitable for a transport captain with my much more high tech gauntlet strapped to my right forearm.

  I needed to look the part when I went to see Fillion today. Today I would be the scared out of my pants liaison for the Ferryman. My gauntlet looked scuffed and grungy but that too was for affect. The tech developed in my gauntlet was far superior even to the Mea Lupus tech suit gauntlet. I’m the one who created it, I would know.

  I pushed back my braids into a knot at the nape of my neck. I put my black scythe septum ring in my nose. It was a faux piercing that served a dual purpose: a physical reminder that I was the Ferryman, and a last resort weapon. If I took it out and pressed the ends together it would send a signal to any nearby tech telling it to self destruct.

  It was a bit of coding that could slip past most firewalls. Enough to cause exploding consoles or minor electronics to surge and blow, but not enough to trip a ship’s self destruct. It was one of the hardest tech I had ever created besides Ai. Small, compact, undetectable, inert. Until I was in such a fucked situation that I’d have to use it. So far I had only had to use it once.

  Stomping down the corridor in my heavy boots I followed the smell of warm bread and melted cheese. Ai was making me her special pressed sandwiches for breakfast. Fuck. She was stress cooking and I was stress dream fucking one of my targets.

  “You better not have cooked our entire galley stock again,” I grumbled, “So help me, if we’re drowning in muff—“

  “You’d think drowning in muff would be a life goal with you, Kara,” laughed Cassie. I stopped and stared at Cassie happily munching away at one of Ai’s brown sugar crumble muffins.

  “Cassie, what brings you to our ship,” I asked before giving her a peck on the cheek. Ai pointed behind her to the plate already steaming and waiting for me. Gods, what would I do without Ai.

  “I haven’t given any of the details to Cassie,” she said over her shoulder. She was taking out the last of the muffins she had baked. I was glad she had only made two trays of her favourites and not ten. Strictly speaking Ai didn’t need to eat at all but I wasn’t about to deprive her of any and all ways to enjoy life. That and she loved volunteering to test if food was poisoned then dramatically ‘die’ and ‘come back to life’ mid-fight.

  “It’s for the best,” I mumbled around my bite into the massive vegetable and cheese melt toasted sandwich she had made me. I finished chewing my bite and took a big sip of the creamy protein shake she had paired with it.

  “The less I know the better,” she agreed. She picked at her muffin in thought.

  “It’s not just what you know, it’s how you feel about things as well,” I sighed and put down my tempting sandwich to explain, “Quintillus is an empath, you don’t have the training to fake emotions like I do.”

  “You ever going to tell me how you got all this ‘training’?” She whispered the question gently. Cassie was one of our only friends, she wasn’t asking because she wanted leverage. She was concerned about my past and how she could help ease any burden she might not know about.

  “No,” I said flatly, “As for your part, all we’re asking for from you is the truth.”

  “What do you mean?” Her face screwed up in confusion. Telling the truth could mean anything in our world.

  “About your owner and how he betrayed the Ferryman,” Ai sat down across from me and I returned to eating my sandwich while it was still warm. “Especially the part where the Ferryman came in and eviscerated him in front of witnesses and got away with it.”

  “In gory detail,” I held Cassie’s eyes, “You need to feel what you did back then. The hopelessness. The terror at watching what the Ferryman did to your owner. The shock but bitter acceptance that of course something like that would happen on Castra 3. The frustration and fear when the pimps tried to come around after. Your terror that you didn’t really see his face but you heard the rumours after that he kills those who betray him.”

  “And when they inevitably ask what’s Kara’s connection to the Ferryman you first say you don’t know,” Ai snorted and handed me a napkin, “And because they’re so fucking predictable they’ll both threaten—“

  “Probably that asshole Adohi,” I interjected.

  “—and try to tell you they can protect you or Kara,” finished Ai. It was Cassie’s turn to snort and shake her head.

  “Tell them you’re not worried about yourself. Nothing’s happened to you all these years,” Ai reached across the table and patted Cassie’s hand pulling a dramatic face of concern. “But Kara? She’s your friend,” Ai choked up a bit, she even sniffled and had tears in her eyes. Cassie laughed. “You just worry that if you tell them Kara’s one of the Ferryman’s liaisons it’ll put her in danger.”

  “I won’t have to fake my worry about outing that,” Cassie looked at me with worry written all over her.

  “Good, just like that,” I quipped. Cassie sighed and finished eating her muffin.

  “You’re playing a dangerous game,” she said quietly.

  “That’s not even the most dangerous part,” mumbled Ai. Cassie didn’t acknowledge what Ai had grumbled but I knew she heard it when she slid her hand out of view. Her tells always involved her hands moving.

  “This is the life we live,” I said coldly. I was under enough stress as it was, I didn’t need her’s as well.

  “The life we live,” Cassie pulled her shoulders back and put dark steel in her spine. Cassie was hiding behind her own charismatic brothel madam persona. She winked, then headed out the door.

  “Erase all records of her visiting the Charopos,” I turned to Ai and found her already looking far away.

  “There’s too many,” Ai disagreed. “It would be suspicious if they all or partially vanished. That’s why I had her visiting throughout the last month so any visit from her wouldn’t be abnormal.” I nodded with her assessment and decision.

  “I’m heading over to Fillion’s,” I stated.

  “Kara,” Ai took in an unneeded breath, “I know why we picked him, but he’s not a killer.”

  “We picked him, Ai,” I ground out, “because he can’t keep his fucking mouth shut.” She looked away from my hard glare. I knew she wasn’t wrong but I wasn’t going to back out, “We never took any jobs from him before now because of that. He knows the two rules like everyone else. He talks he dies.”

  “Except we know he’ll talk!” Ai was frustrated with the morality of what we were doing. “We’re setting him up to fail so that we can murder him.”

  “Ai, there’s no backing out now! And you’re the one who came up with this fucking plan,” I yelled. I didn’t have the same moral qualms as she did about killing Fillion when he eventually ran his mouth. His inability to patch the breach in his face hole was what this whole plan hinged upon. I sighed and said gently, “It’s a miracle he’s lived this long anyways. If it wasn’t us, it would have been someone else.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” she scoffed, “I’m the one that has to run around as the Ferrym
an and kill him while your ass is visibly working on the ship. You get an alibi and I get to murder someone in cold blood!” I pinched the bridge of my nose. She wasn’t wrong.

  “Then don’t do it,” everything was already set, we couldn’t back out now, “Change your shape to look like me and I’ll go kill Fillion. We’ve done switch arounds like that before.” Ai had only ever killed in defence, if this was affecting her this badly then I wouldn’t have it on her conscience.

  “No,” she closed her eyes and set her mouth in a flat line. After a moment she opened eyes filled with determination, “We’re doing this to keep us safe. And... And you’re not wrong about Fillion. At least if it’s us we can be humane about it.”

  “It’ll need to look dramatic,” I watched her face to see if that would show any cracks in her decision. I couldn’t have her losing her nerve midway through her part.

  “Oh, it’ll be dramatic,” a evil glint twinkled in her eyes, “I’ll make sure the wolves get a clear message to go fuck themselves.”

  “Take the shielding I made for you,” her eyebrows wrinkled up in confusion at my demand.

  “That doesn’t seem a bit excessive to you?”

  “We’re going for dramatic. Nothing more dramatic than leaving zero trail to follow after a bloody murder,” I shrugged. “And Adohi is good. Too good.”

  “Strange to hear you worried,” she chuckled.

  “What’s the golden rule?”

  “Better to overestimate than underestimate,” I nodded along with her recitation, “No one likes getting fucked in the ass by surprise.” I choked on the last sip of my protein shake, laughing at her addition.

  Walking through the corridors and shops of Castra 3 I slowly lost my smile. I made sure to be seen on the few surveillance bots there were. I paced myself, and doubled back a couple times too. I allowed my face to morph into one of worry that edged on fear. I didn’t think Adohi was watching me now but I knew he would look for this later.