Dusk (Dusk 1) (12 page)

Pete shivered. “Yeah. That’s from my neck of the woods. Nasty stuff. I hope he gave you back the difference.”

Merrick allowed a small, cold smile to stretch his lips back. “It took a little persuading, but he finally saw it my way.”

Olivia sipped at her drink and made a face. “Is it supposed to taste like this?”

“Yup,” Silva said. “It’s the finest whiskey ever made on Earth.”

She took another sip and grimaced. “Well, it’s not for me.”

Pete shrugged. “Scotch is one of those things where you either love it or hate it. There’s no in-between. What my dad used to call an ‘acquired taste.’”

“Don’t worry, Olivia. I have something else in the ’car I think you’ll like better.” Merrick turned away, toward the car. “I’ll be right back.”

* * *

“If you watch over the horizon, you’ll see Astaroth peeking up right… about… now.”

Pete followed the direction of her long, graceful finger. True to her prediction, a ghostly corona of blue light formed at the horizon. A moment later it burst as a smooth, blue-black curved blade rose out of the ocean.

Second by second it grew larger, stealing Pete’s breath with how dangerously close it appeared. He staggered back, tripping over his own hind foot and dropping himself unceremoniously on his ass in the powdery sand. Dimly he realized the sand on this beach was far finer than any sand he’d ever felt on Terra. He kept his eyes riveted on the immense, glassy orb as it birthed itself over the water, casting a frozen indigo light over the beach. Tiny sparks of sullen orange and bright red shone on Astaroth’s face, the visible legacy of volcanic activity.

His breath quickened. Despite all his experiences on other worlds, with moons that never showed their bright faces to their companion worlds at all or never shone on the parts of the planets where he’d been, this was a new and terrifying first for him. Astaroth loomed in the sky, menacingly close to Dusk, taking up the biggest part of a quarter of the heavens, the glassy black of its surface interrupted with the hellish light from the magma welling up in pinprick patchwork on its face. He had known, from his research into the planet and its denizens, what Astaroth looked like and how it devoured the Dusk sky. Knowing from tri-vid and seeing it in person were two wildly different things, and his pulse raced with atavistic terror at the difference.

“That’s our moon, Astaroth.” Olivia’s eyes glittered silver in the eerie reflected werelight of the satellite as she stared at Pete, obviously trying to make sense of his reaction.

“That’s not a moon,” Pete retorted sharply, his own anger at his very un-Marinelike alarm tightening his voice. “It’s a fucking nightmare!”

Merrick spoke from behind him. “A lot of people find the closeness of Astaroth disturbing, especially when they first arrive. You’ll get used to it.”

Pete turned to see Merrick pouring the Scotch from Olivia’s glass into his own and Pete’s in roughly equal portions. Then he produced a bottle full of a thick blue liqueur and topped off Olivia’s glass. “Get used to
that
? How do you deal with something that big in your sky all the time? Terra’s moon is absolutely tiny compared to that.”

“Properly speaking, Astaroth isn’t really a moon at all. It doesn’t behave like a typical satellite, according to our astrophysicists. It’s more like a ‘twinned’ planet, a remnant of the formation of this solar system that got locked into orbit with Dusk because it’s much lighter. Astaroth obsidian is some of the most prized material in the galaxy for scalpels and other primitive medical equipment.”

Pete took a long slug of his whiskey, trying to calm his racing heartbeat. “Well, maybe so,” he allowed. “Even so, it’s a damn scary-looking sight.”

Olivia smiled. “But see how it tints the foam on the waves?”

Pete looked and saw what she was referring to. Where the ocean foam on Terra crashed in on the shore in a fairly uniform greenish-white,
this
foam broke in all shades of blue, purple, and even hints of green, shattering the light from Astaroth across the higher end of the spectrum. It didn’t make it any less disquieting, but even he had to admit it was surprisingly beautiful.

He looked back and studied Olivia. In Astaroth’s eldritch light she looked like a spirit or perhaps a Fae, stepped across from the other world to dance in faerie rings and spend a little time in the regular universe. He turned to Merrick, wondering if he would look different, and found to his surprise that he did. The other man looked hard and sharp as a carbon steel blade, his wiry strength now lending his ascetic features and his thin build the same air of threat that danced around the edge of a rapier.

The thought made him distinctly uneasy.

Instead of pursuing it, he turned back toward Astaroth, now fully risen, hanging huge and darkling bright in the sky. Although the primitive dread the moon inspired in him did not abate, he forced himself to experience it again and again, working with and through it until he had finally wrestled it into something tame that he could deal with. Maybe it was his imagination, but he fancied the Scotch helped.

A soft hand perched on his shoulder.

He started and looked around to see Olivia squatting next to him, close enough that he could detect the soft floral scent she wore and a deeper, more subtle aroma that he recognized not by its own merits, but because he knew and instinctively noted the scent of a woman.

“It’s really quite beautiful, isn’t it?”

If Merrick hadn’t been lowering right behind them, he might have said something stupidly romantic like, “It’s okay, but without you here, it wouldn’t mean much.” He caught himself just in time and settled for agreeing with her. “It is.”

She scooted around so she was looking him right in the eye, as if trying to see through his iris into his mind or perhaps his soul. He cringed a little on the inside, but met her eyes with all the calm and discipline his training permitted.

“I… well,
we
… would like to ask you something.”

He raised his eyebrows in an invitation for her to continue, not trusting himself to speak. Her proximity and the soothing, warm scent of her body teased his prick into a vertical attitude, and he was suddenly sure if he said anything, his voice would crack eight ways to Sunday.

“We would like you to… join us.” She flushed, the red color flooding her face contrasting with Astaroth’s light in a way that reinforced his initial feeling of her as someone, or something, that did not fully share the laws of regular human existence.

“Join you? Like… how?” he asked.

“Well…” She fell silent for a moment, her bottom lip thrust out so tantalizingly that for a mad instant, he was tempted to lean forward and capture it gently in his teeth. She shook her head and looked at Merrick helplessly. “Help.” The word came out as a squeak so irresistibly cute that it took everything Pete had not to lean forward and take her in his arms.

Merrick knelt down behind her. “We’re asking you if you want her.”

Pete’s eyes bulged. Of all the things he’d expected, this wasn’t within parsecs of being on the list. “Wh-what do you --”

“Look, it’s not complicated,” Merrick said impatiently. “Do you want to fuck Olivia?”

Olivia’s face was now an alarming shade of purple in Astaroth’s light, but she nodded emphatically. “I want you, Pete. More to the point, I want both of you, together, inside me. I hoped that you would want me, too.”

Pete’s mind whirled back to the Above Top Secret orders he’d received on shipboard. He’d read the orders with disgust, knowing he’d follow them if opportunity presented itself but determined to find any possible way to avoid it. Now here Olivia was, with her bodyguard/boyfriend/plaything… whatever the hell he was, asking him to fuck her with the full consent and acceptance of her man.

A surprisingly vivid and graphic image of Olivia, balanced precisely between the two men, supported by their cocks inside her and their arms around her, seared into his brain. The vision was so powerful he could feel his brain melting into goo inside his skull.

“Are you serious?” he asked, husking the words over a parched tongue and sandy lips.

For answer Merrick pulled Olivia to her feet and began to undress her. He seemed to know exactly in what order to pull on the straps comprising her outfit to reveal her skin.

Pete watched as Merrick pressed his lips to Olivia’s ear, her cheek, and the smooth, graceful curve of her jaw, holding her hair, deep blue in the moonlight, out of the way. As each strap released tension, a little more of Olivia’s long torso was revealed, a tortuous striptease more erotic than anything Pete had ever imagined before. The creamy upper slope of her breast peeked out as the strap concealing it fell away… and then the tight nipple, dark and proud, burst forth from its containment in full, magnificent view.

Merrick reached around with one hand and cupped her breast, weighing it in his palm while he plucked at her nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. Olivia moaned in Merrick’s embrace.

“Please, Pete. I want you, too…” She sighed with pleasure.

For a moment, Pete wondered if he was stuck in one of those strangely erotic but forbidden dreams everyone has. Merrick pressed himself against Olivia, bending her backward so the hard peaks of her nipples thrust out at Pete as he continued to work at the straps. Now her navel was bared to Pete’s hungry gaze, and Olivia’s rapid breathing made the delectable little crevice seem to wink and beckon him with every contraction of her stomach. In short order the tops of her thighs peeked out, framing the trimmed tuft of hair at the junction of her legs.

That settled it. Duty was duty, and some calls to action just cannot be ignored. Pete stood and fit himself against Olivia’s front, feeling her body yield and mold to him.

“Yes, Pete. Please…”

He had no idea what she was asking for, but needed no directions or explanation. In a rite as old as the human race, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. Something Merrick did caused her to gasp, and she parted her lips just enough for him to catch her bottom lip between his teeth just like he’d wanted. He worried at the tender flesh gently, nibbling with his teeth while he flicked his tongue teasingly against her lip.

Olivia went mad under him, bucking her hips against him urgently. He ran his hand down the side of her body Merrick wasn’t currently occupying and found the warm, heavy bulge of her breast. He squeezed it, paying no attention to delicacy. From the way Merrick had been manhandling her body, that wasn’t what she wanted, and right now he was so charged up there was no way he could have been gentle even if she had. Olivia’s sharp, hungry cry of delight told him he’d made the right choice, and he rolled her nipple lightly between his fingers as he invaded her mouth, claiming it like virgin territory beneath his lips.

Pete opened his eyes to find himself almost nose to nose with Merrick. The fevered excitement in the other man’s eyes suggested a man dancing on the edge of anger, flirting with the margin of insanity, much like Pete himself felt. It was one of the most intimate moments he’d ever had with another person, excepting the time he’d held a platoon sergeant in his arms and tried to reassure the man he’d be okay while the sergeant’s wounds pulled him closer and closer to oblivion…

With a growl he forced the memory away and closed his eyes again, moving his mouth down to Olivia’s breast in a fever to taste her, suck her, and make her scream with pleasure. He dropped his hand down to cup the soft, slight hillock of her stomach as her nipple pressed at the gates of his lips.

Suddenly he felt a shoulder against his own and glanced over. Merrick knelt in much the same attitude, his body angled in such a way that he barely grazed Pete as he leaned in and took Olivia’s other breast. That fevered, nearly killing look still danced in Merrick’s eyes, but as he mouthed her nipple and licked at the areola, Pete had the strangest feeling that in a way, he and Merrick were becoming spiritual brothers by nursing on, and feeding the desire of, this beautiful, strong, unusual woman.

Merrick nodded slightly, as if divining Pete’s thoughts, and returned to his feast. Pete followed suit as Olivia’s hand wrapped around the back of his head, urging him on with the delicate pressure and her cries of erotic delight.

Olivia’s senses reeled as the two men, almost with one motion, knelt before her and began to worship her breasts. As if they belonged to someone else she felt her hands rising to clasp the men to her, and she arched her back more to give them unfettered access. Merrick’s loose, silky mane she knew almost as well as she did the feel of her own tresses, but Pete’s close-cropped tonsure was an electric surprise against her fingertips. His mouth against her skin was harder, more avid than Merrick’s, less concerned with her pleasure and more with tasting her completely.

A soft wind blew up, blowing her hair out behind her, and she imagined seeing this from the outside: two men kneeling before a goddess of the night as Astaroth framed her in the background and the sea whispered its blessings on this union of flesh. The picture was so unbearably erotic that she cried out in an orgasm that shook her entire body, pulling the men closer still as one of them found her clit and began to stroke it while the other slipped a firm finger between her nether lips to find the center of her pleasure, feeding her pleasure and converting it to something so fierce and exciting it danced along the border between joy and agony.

Finally she could take no more and pushed the two men away, thinking frantically. How could she best accommodate both of them? A moment’s consideration revealed the answer, and she fell to hands and knees in the soft sand.

“Merrick, let me suck you. Pete, fuck me.”

With a swift motion Merrick undid his breechclout, leaving his magnificent weapon bare and bobbing before her face. She opened her mouth and lunged forward greedily, accepting his length in one graceful move. The head of his shaft butted against her tonsils and she pulled back, just in time to envelop Pete in her heated pussy. She heard Pete’s gasp dimly above the roar of the surf and the pounding in her own ears as she slid down his length until his balls swung up and slapped gently against her clit.