Love at First Bight

Chapter Thirteen

“We were assigned to the Wayfarer Margo after we’d been in the Merchants for a year,” Ford started. “The captain was sort of a jerk, but sometimes they are. No big deal, right? The three of us were close friends, of course. We never minded rooming together, so when space was short we usually ended up in the same cabin, sometimes in the same bunk depending on who had watch and if the ship was short on space. So we get to the Margo, and there’s this one girl on board with the other guys. But she wasn’t involved with them. The Merchants don’t have the same rules about that like the DSMC does. There’s no expectation of involvement, even though if it happens, it’s fine.

“The captain was, we found out through the grapevine, pissed that Kelsey wouldn’t get involved with him. She didn’t like him. Can’t say as I blame her. When we were assigned, she had a cabin to herself, the other cabins were full. She volunteered to let us bunk with her. It was that or she’d have to bunk in a storage closet.

“I mean, we all had chips, like in the DSMC. It prevented force.

So it’s not like she was worried. We liked her immediately because she was so funny.” Ford paused, thinking, reliving the past. “Smart as a whip, she was a Beta-rank med. Grew up on Mars, so she’d been used to dealing with military brats. She kept us in line, but we sort of felt protective of her.

“We were all together about a month and we’re on shore leave one night at a spaceport. Had a little too much to drink¯well, a lot, we were tanked¯but she was sober. She rounded the three of us up and got us back to the ship. Started to pour us into bed, then she pulls the bunk mattresses onto the floor.” He laughed. “We thought we were really drunk, couldn’t believe it was happening. She locks the cabin door and sits in the middle of this makeshift bed and rips off her shirt. Says, ‘Okay, boys, you’ve kept me waiting long enough.’” He paused again, a sad smile caressing his gentle lips. “Well, she didn’t have to ask us twice. Even with us drunk, the chips would have kept her safe, but she was willing. She turned us every which way but loose that night.” He looked at Emi. “That’s also the night she broadened our horizons, so to speak. We’d never done anything like that before. We were close friends. Brothers, even. We’d never…you know.”

Emi didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to interrupt him, so she simply nodded.

He continued. “We woke up the next morning, hung-over and all of us a wee bit…worried. She’s sitting there, smiling at us. Kissed all of us and said, ‘I hope you boys will give me a show like that every night.’” He laughed. “We weren’t sure exactly what happened at first, so she filled us in. Before we could start freaking out, Kels said, ‘If you’re gonna be my boys, you’ve got to let me have a say in what happens. It’s obvious you all liked it, what’s the problem?’

“Why not?” He kissed Emi’s hand and looked across the path again. “We never realized we were like that. And to be honest, I don’t think we’d be like that with anyone else. We had to admit being bi with each other¯and her¯felt right. She sure as hell got a kick out of it. We didn’t talk about it with others, obviously, but it only took a couple of weeks for us to realize it was right for the four of us. And if she wasn’t feeling in the mood, she’d curl up in bed with us while we took care of each other.

“We pulled the mattresses down every night. It was nice being able to all be curled up together like that, you know? Just sort of tangled together. That was her idea. We all fell in love with her, but we didn’t feel jealous. She fell in love with us, too. She made us promise we’d all stay together.”

He went silent again, his thumbs gently tracing her knuckles. “The captain was pissed. Here he’d been trying to nail her, and then the three of us come on board and she picks us. No one else cared, some of the guys on our ship were married or involved, but that captain, man, he was an asshole after that.

“We were together for a while on that vessel, about a year. On one mission we were sent out with the ISNC to do some explores in a sector where there’d been some problems with raiders. The captain, Aaron, Kels, and two others including the first went planet-side, left me and Caph on board with two more. The ISNC ship had gone to check out a distress call nearby.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. His voice grew hoarse. “It was a decoy. The raiders grabbed the landing crew. They wanted Kels, obviously. They told the captain he had to hand over at least one other crew for ransom or they’d kill them all. Aaron demanded they take him, because he wanted to try to protect Kels. Aar was the second officer at the time.

“Fucking asshole let him go.” Ford’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “The first officer tried to get the captain to go instead, or to let him go, thinking they wouldn’t hurt Kels if they had a high-value hostage, right? Or to try to trade himself for Kels, to protect her.

Captain refused. Fucker told them, ‘No, he volunteered, let him go with her. Why risk our lives?’ He ordered them to not volunteer, to let Aaron go with Kels.”

He closed his eyes. Emi knew he struggled not to cry. “The grunts were trying to get back to us. When we got the landing party on board, the first officer relieved the captain of duty, locked him in a storage room because we didn’t have a brig. Fucking bastard. We tried to follow them, not lose them, but they had a small, fast skiff, man. Hit and run group. That’s why they only took two, that’s all they could take. Ransom gang.” He fell silent again for a long moment.

When he next spoke, his voice sounded haggard and drawn.

“Took the grunts three days to find them. They were playing hide and seek in an asteroid field. Grunts used a tractor beam on them, caught the ship, but Kels was hurt bad in the firefight.” Then his tears fell, and Emi leaned in close, her head on his shoulder. “Aaron was still alive. Barely.” He swallowed hard. “The fuckers didn’t rape Kels, didn’t hurt her. If she’d been in a different place on the ship, she would have survived.”

He looked at Emi. “Aaron traded the raiders. Himself for Kels, to not hurt her, not touch her.” He looked at Emi, not wanting to voice it, and her heart caught in her throat. “Aar begged them to leave her alone. They fucked him over hard, man, literally. Damn near beat the life out of him. Nearly killed him the way they used him.” He shook his head. “He crawled to her during the firefight—she was dying. She told him she loved him, to tell us she loved us, and asked the three of us to stay together because she knew we loved each other. He told her he loved her, and then she went. Died in his arms.” He closed his eyes again. “We nearly lost Aaron. He had a lot of internal bleeding. I’d spent enough time in sick bay helping Kels, I’d learned some stuff, and I had basic med assistant training. They had a medic on the grunt ship, but not a doc. Between the two of us we managed to keep him alive until we got him to a spaceport with a hospital. The first became captain and asked the Merchants to keep us together, to let me and Caph stay with Aaron while he recuperated.

He was a decent fucking guy, we really liked him. The captain was the only one on the Margo who didn’t like what we had, no one else gave a shit.

“Aar wanted to die. Between losing Kels after all he went through, he thought he failed her, thought he failed us. Took us three months to get his body healed enough to get him into physical rehab. He tried to kill himself a couple of times. At least one of us always had to be with him, they let us stay with him in rehab. Eventually, he got to the point where he started wanting to live again. When he was ready to return to work, the Merchants offered us bonded crew status and gave him a promotion. We took it, and we’ve been together ever since.

“Don’t tell him I told you this, but me and Caph, we were fucking sneaky there for a while. We’d deliberately get into trouble so he’d have to bail us out, right? Bar fights, do something stupid to a superior, anything. Not enough to get us busted on our asses, but just enough to make sure Aaron felt he had to keep us out of trouble.”

“And you’re still doing it,” she said with a smile.

“Well, not intentionally all the time now. Old habits die hard. It worked though. He started feeling responsible for us. We knew we wouldn’t have to keep an eye on him every second to keep him alive, he was starting to move on.” Ford squeezed her hand. “Aaron swore he would never do what that fucking bastard did to them, he would never leave crew behind, never give up crew unless he was dead already. You already know the captain was executed for dereliction of duty, because Kels died and Aaron nearly did. You don’t fucking do that. You don’t sacrifice crew. You don’t leave people behind.” Ford took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up at the tree canopy. “Caph and I thought maybe after all Aar’d been through that he wouldn’t want the sexual part of our relationship anymore, you know? We understood. But he still wanted to sleep together like we had before, all in a bed. It was a comfort for all of us. We’d think about Kels, we needed each other for support, we still loved each other and by that point it was stupid for us to try to deny it. She’d asked us to stay together. It would have been like spitting on her grave to split up. We didn’t have sex over a year, any of us, because Caph and I didn’t want to put Aar through anything that might trigger flashbacks, right? Aar had fucking horrible nightmares for a long time.

“Then one night he woke up and kissed me and Caph and we figured he wouldn’t want…you know, us to fuck him. We never even thought about asking it of him. And he didn’t. If he wanted to, he’d have said so. But he was ready to try to live again a little, he wanted what we had back, as much as we could have it. Took us a long time to convince him he wasn’t hurting us, to get him to relax when he fucked us, even though he knew we liked it and me and Caph did it to each other anyway. He was so afraid at first, we had to beg him. His emotional wounds eventually healed enough he could enjoy it with us again. At least, some of it.”

“Captain doesn’t bottom,” she whispered.

Ford looked at her and sadly shook her head. “Would you, after something like that?”

“No.” Thank the gods for her empath training. She shuddered to think how it might have emotionally wounded Aaron if she’d done to him what she’d done to the twins during the physical exam.

“Caph and I wished we could have ripped the dicks off those sick bastards for what they did to him. There were still two left alive after the fight, the grunts shot them out an air lock. Alive. At least Kels didn’t suffer the way Aar did. They would have killed her like that.

They forced her to watch though. I know that would have been almost as hard on her as him going through it, but at least they didn’t physically touch her.”

He sadly smiled. “Before that, the four of us used to have fun together, didn’t matter who was top or bottom, we mixed it up all the time. I know this is weird to talk about. She used to love it when he’d be inside her and one of us would get behind him and that just really got her all hot. Any of us, but especially Aaron. It was sort of natural, me and Caph and her and Aaron, even though we were all together, like we are now.”

Emi nodded, understanding.

He kissed her hand. “So there’s our crew story. That’s why I say you’re good for him. He’s happier now than he’s been in a long time.

We all love you, but you’re healing his heart in a way me and Caph can’t.”

“When was the last time you guys were with a woman beside me?”

He shook his head. “There was Kels, and there was you. No other men, either. We had each other—it was enough. All or nothing, babe.

We don’t cheat on each other, even if we could, and we weren’t interested in one-night stands. We always knew if it ever happened, that if we had a woman assigned to us we’d be open to it, but we all agreed she’d have to be willing to be with all of us, no one left behind. Not even like that.”

He kissed her. “You’re the perfect woman for us,” he said.

“That’s why we knew Aaron would never refuse your assignment.” He laughed. “We never believed the DSMC would ever find us a fourth who would put up with us. We agreed that if we got pulled from the line for no fourth, we’d settle for short hops. Then you walked in and the future changed for the better.” Emi wanted to cry, for them—and for a woman they’d loved that she’d never met, a woman who’d loved her boys as much as she did now. “Do you have a picture of her?” Ford froze, then reached to his back pocket for his wallet. He removed a picture card and scrolled through the pictures, then handed it to her.

The three men, Aaron in the middle, the twins flanking him, with a woman in front. Aaron had his arms wrapped around her, and the twins each had a hand on her shoulders and Aaron’s. All four of them were smiling, the men looked nearly twenty years younger. She was cute, dark blonde hair worn in a bob, hazel eyes.

“She’s pretty.” She handed the picture card back to him.

He looked at it, his voice sad. “Yeah, she was. Mouth on her like a grunt though. You’d think she had a set of balls on her the way she talked.” He shook his head and returned the card to his wallet.

“You’re a lot like her in some ways, totally different in others.” Ford met her eyes. “That’s good. I think it would be too weird if you were just like her in every way. No offense.”

“None taken.” Emi leaned against him as he put his arm around her shoulders.

He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “And that’s our crew story, babe. Like I said, I don’t know everything that happened while he was on that ship. I don’t think I want to. It kills me I wasn’t there to help him, me and Caph both. If we’d been on the landing party, we’d been fighting those fucking raiders. They’d have to kill us all down there.”

He took another deep breath. “I saw what Aaron looked like when the grunts got him back to us, I had to try to keep him alive. I can connect the dots. I don’t need to know unless he ever wants to tell us.

Damn near killed Caph losing her, then as bad as Aaron was, he wouldn’t leave Aaron’s side for weeks. I thought I was gonna have to have him admitted and doped up to get him to sleep. You know what a softie the big guy is.”

She nodded.

“I mean, it was bad for me too. At least I could sort of push it away. I had to keep Aaron alive. I had to make sure Caph didn’t collapse. I could put my energy into them and not think about things for a while.” He patted her hand. “Look, when we get back, don’t go all moonie over either of them, okay? I know you feel bad for them, and that’s okay. They understand. But they’re at a point where they don’t want to go back there. In some ways they’re not strong enough to go back there, not to talk about it. Not right now. Maybe one day.”

“Okay.”

He ran his thumb over the ring and smiled. “It looks beautiful on you, babe.”

“They can’t split us up, can they?”

“No. Not bonded crew, they can’t. Aaron will put the papers in and you’ll be all ours.”

“You’re sure? I mean, there’s no loopholes or anything? I don’t want to be anywhere but with you guys.”

“That’s good, because you’re stuck with us.”

They returned to the hotel and had lunch in the restaurant, then spent the afternoon at the pool. Ford’s mood lifted almost immediately. Aaron and Caph were both playful, tossing her back and forth between them in the water and roughhousing with each other.

She spent time napping in the warm sun, watching her boys as they lounged, talking, along the pool’s edge.

Dinner was casual, again in the hotel restaurant. They split a bottle of champagne, not enough to get them tipsy. Aaron held up his glass in a toast, and they all joined him.

“To the Tamora Bight, may she bring us all safely home. Crew first.”

They clinked glasses, and the others repeated, “Crew first.” Pleasant anticipation tensed Emi’s body. Several times during dinner, Ford’s eyes met hers, and he playfully winked. She still wanted it. In retrospect was glad Ford insisted on waiting. It was something the four of them should share together. After dinner, they returned to the room, and she started to walk through the door when Ford grabbed the back of her shirt and pulled her to him.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Oh come on. All of you have carried me in.”

“Not together,” Aaron said.

Before she could complain, all three had picked her up and carried her together, dumping her with a round of laughter onto the bed.

Emi sat up. “Happy now, boys?”

They nodded with broad, beaming smiles and started undressing.

“Oh, yeah,” they all echoed.

Aaron grimaced. “Here we go again.”

They ended up in the bathroom, in the large sunken tub. There was plenty of room for all of them. Emi relaxed in their arms as Ford took over and started seducing her, his lips tenderly exploring hers while his fingers gently stroked her between her legs.

He traced her jaw with his tongue, then whispered in her ear,

“You still want to?”

She nodded, her eyes closed, her passion stirred by the feel of their hands on her.

He kissed her again and turned her around so she faced Aaron. He took over care of her lips her while Caph snuggled in close and played with her nipples.

Emi didn’t open her eyes, enjoying the sensations, giving her body to them, trusting them.

Ford positioned her hips above the water, her knees resting on the steps on either side of Aaron’s legs, and she felt something cool and wet against her ass.

Aaron reached down and spread her cheeks as he kissed her, distracting her. Then Ford carefully, gently massaged her virgin rosette, not penetrating, taking his time, his other hand lightly stroking her back.

When he felt her relax he added a little more pressure, still not penetrating. Caph reached between her legs and found her clit, started circling it with his fingers, drawing a low moan from her. She wanted more and rocked her hips against Ford’s hand.

“That’s my good girl,” he whispered, resisting her attempts to rush him. “Just relax and enjoy it, sweetheart.” After what felt like hours of hovering, he added more lube and one finger easily slipped in her tight rim. She gasped and he paused, making sure that was a good gasp and not a pained one.

“Don’t stop,” she begged before sucking on Aaron’s tongue again.

The men chuckled. “I told you he’s got the touch, sweetheart,” Caph said.

After a few minutes of this, Ford added more lube and a second finger. “You okay?”

“Fuck yes!” she gasped, and the men laughed again.

When he thought she was ready he withdrew his fingers and pressed his stiff and well-lubed cock against her. “Relax. Breathe, baby.” She briefly tensed as he pressed in past the first resistance, then he stopped, waiting.

Between Aaron and Caph distracting her, she soon flexed her hips against him, wanting more. When he felt that, Ford slowly sank his full length into her with a low groan.

“Jesus, you’re tight, baby. You’re so good!” Caph had two fingers buried in her pussy, his thumb stroking her clit. Her body vibrated against them, every sensation rocking her.

“You okay?” Ford asked, not yet moving.

She broke her kiss with Aaron again. “Yes! Don’t stop!” Emi closed her eyes and enjoyed every second of it, the feel of their hands and Ford carefully thrusting. When her climax hit she screamed and bit down on Aaron’s shoulder to muffle the sound.

Ford held her hips. After a few more thrusts, he was also coming.

He held still for a moment, then wrapped his arm around her waist, kissing the back of her neck.

Caph and Aaron cradled her in the water, supporting her. “You okay, baby girl?” Aaron asked.

She nodded, beyond speech.

After a few minutes, Ford carefully untangled himself from her. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

She turned and kissed him, sinking into the water with him and wrapping her legs around his waist. “Did it sound like I was in pain?”

“Not sure. Did you bite a chunk out of Aaron?” She winced and turned to examine the bruise forming on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Aar.”

Aaron smiled. “It’s okay. I’ll consider it a war wound.”

“Who’s next?” she slyly asked, looking at Aaron and Caph.

Ford grabbed her around the waist again and pulled her into his lap, splashing water on the floor. “Nope, not tonight, babe. We don’t want to hurt you.” He kissed the back of her neck again, making her shiver with pleasure. “We can do that every night if you want, but until you’re used to it we’re not going to risk hurting you. Besides¯” He cupped her breasts, pulling her tight against his chest, running his thumbs over her pebbled nipples, “we can do lots of other things to you tonight.”

Aaron flipped the drain lever. “Yeah, and let’s get in there and do them,” he playfully growled. He leaned over to kiss her again and his stiff cock brushed against her leg.

She grabbed it, slowly stroking him. “Anything you say, Captain,” she teased.

They spent a long night making slow love to her and each other.

When she drifted to sleep in Aaron’s arms, Caph and Ford were still at it. The next morning they were all in bed, snuggled tightly together because it was a little smaller than their one at the ship.

Ford winked at her. “You okay?”

She did a quick inventory. “You did good,” she whispered. “I’m not a bit sore anywhere.”

“Good.” He kissed her. “It’s not fun if it hurts, and I don’t think you’re into kink.”

She tried to stifle her laugh, but Aaron awoke, his hand cupping her breast. “Someone go turn off the window sim,” he groaned. “I want a few more hours.”

Ford leaned over her and kissed him good morning. “Wish I could, but that’s a real window. Reality calling—we’ve got a ship waiting.”

Caph stirred, stretched. “I have to admit I love the tub, but miss our bed. I feel like I’m going to fall out.” Aaron and Caph headed to the bathroom first, and Ford took the opportunity to hog Emi for a few minutes. “You really okay?”

“I’m fine. Wonderful.” She gripped his hand and pressed her lips to his palm, flicking her tongue against his flesh. “I feel great.”

“Tomorrow the countdown begins.” His blue eyes studied hers.

“You nervous?”

“Of course.”

He smiled. “Good. I’d be worried if you weren’t. We all get nervous, it’s pre-flight jitters.”

“I’m not scared, though.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of. You know we’ll take care of you.”

Ford was always the easiest for her to read. She didn’t know why, but he was. And right now she felt his love, his protective urge¯and not the slightest hint of jealousy for the other two men. Sometimes she sensed a little envy from one of them if they were busy and couldn’t spend time with her when another could, but never jealousy.

“I know.”