Hercules 500 Read online

  In the glaring office light, he opened her one piece suit from neck to ankle, spread her on the desk top and …

  Dragged out the damnedest male tool she’d ever seen in her life.

  OMG! The gods weren’t just laughing. The gods were peeing their pants!

  Maybe it just seemed huge because it had been so damned long since she’d seen one that was erect?

  “Wait!”

  But he was clearly beyond any sort of mental calisthenics by this time.

  And honestly, she was pretty close to lustful idiocy herself.

  “Ok. Let’s give it a shot, then,” she said when he’d planted the head against the mouth of her sex and heaved.

  She discovered she hadn’t been mistaken about the size. They waltzed across the desk with her bare skin clinging to the surface in patches and screeching when she was peeled loose.

  He frowned when he discovered he’d shoved her across the desk, as if he was suspicious it was an attempt to evade. Grabbing her, he dragged her back, scooped her up and began jogging her up and down until the head finally broke deadlock and wedged itself into her sex. Having engaged, he settled her on the desk again and began heaving over her in an effort to gain the remainder of her channel.

  By that time Anika was gasping for air so desperately she’d begun to sound like she was being strangled.

  She was going to pass out before she came, she thought a little frantically!

  Lifting her legs, she fought the binding material of her jumpsuit that was still around her hips and legs and finally managed to lock her ankles at his back. It seemed to be just the counter that he needed. He drove so deeply she thought for a couple of moments that she was going to be gargling seminal fluid when he came.

  Thankfully, he didn’t stay. He pulled out and drove into her again and she was so close to coming in a few moments that she couldn’t think, or worry, about anything else.

  When it crashed over her, she gargled her praises in a mindless litany, “Oh god! Oh Sebastian!”

  He grunted, obviously in the middle of an eruption himself and incapable of speech.

  And then the door crashed open and Anika whipped a dizzying glance toward the sound to discover Chance standing in the opening breathing fire, with death in his eyes.

  Her mind went perfectly blank.

  Well, it was already mush from a horrendous climax.

  “Oh fuck!”

  * * * *

  It took Chance far longer to figure out what was going on by interpreting the sounds than it should have, but then again he had never actually heard the sounds of passion.

  And he damned sure hadn’t heard Anika voicing it.

  When he connected the dots, he leapt from his bunk, strode across the cell and grabbed the bars, uttering an animalistic roar as he shook them.

  “Waste of time, buddy,” Cole muttered. “The bars are welded.”

  Ignoring him, Chance continued shaking the bars until, abruptly, something snapped and the wall sections parted company and fell.

  Chance was left holding the last wall upright, which contained the door.

  He let go and then glanced around the room at the sections of the cells laying on the floor a little uneasily.

  He dismissed his concern as Anika’s voice reached a crescendo and strode purposefully to the outer door.

  It took less effort to burst through that door than it had the cell.

  Mostly, he supposed, because he actually hadn’t set out to break the cell down.

  He dismissed it as soon as his mind told him what his eyes had recorded.

  Sebastian was fucking his woman!

  Despite the drunken stupor threatening to overcome her in the aftermath of a mind-blowing climax, Anika jolted upward at the explosion and launched herself between Chance and Sebastian.

  She wasn’t certain who she desperately needed to save, but she thought preventing Chance from taking Sebastian apart would be the best case scenario.

  She thought for several unnerving moments that he hadn’t recognized her at all and he would run her down. She framed his face with her hands, struggling to make him look at her instead of Sebastian. “Chance! Please!”

  Something seemed to register. The glazed look of fury was replaced with a searching one and then a very different glazed look entered his eyes.

  He jerked Anika to him and planted a wild, erotic kiss on her mouth that electrified her senses when she’d thought they were ash after the powerful climax she’d had with Sebastian. A tsunami of dizziness swept over her as he lifted her from her feet, turned, and strode toward the wall.

  She caught a glimpse of Sebastian as Chance broke the kiss, braced her against the wall, and began a search for heaven’s gate with his dragon. He looked … thoroughly pissed.

  It reminded her that she’d thrown herself into the breach to keep Chance and Sebastian from coming to blows.

  Somehow she doubted she was going to fuck the beast out of Chance.

  “Go!” she mouthed at Sebastian.

  He stared at her blankly.

  “Run while you’ve got the chance!” she got out in a harsh, jerky whisper just as Chance engaged and began jogging her up and down either because he thought he was sheathed or because he thought that might help him work his way in.

  It didn’t.

  It just lifted the skin on her legs from ankle to groin.

  It felt sort of one-sided down there, like he’d stuffed one of the lips in.

  Sebastian sent her a sardonic look, settled his hips on the desk behind him and folded his arms. He was damned if he was going to leave the field wide open to that idiot, Chance—who, in Sebastian’s opinion, was doing a piss poor job of trying to imitate the sex movie he had supplied him with!

  He was going to rest while Chance bumbled his way through his first sexual act, and it would give him time to recall what he had meant to tell Anika to convince her he would be a far better choice.

  It could not hurt that the idiot was clearly convincing her that he had no clue of how to make love to a woman!

  Distress flickered through Anika, but she was in no state at the moment to figure out a solution to the problem that was looming.

  Thankfully, Chance realized there was an impediment to claiming her fully. He eased off and cleared the way with his hand. When he tried breaching the gate again he broke deadlock and plowed all the way up her channel in one thrust.

  It seemed to madden him. He began pounding into her until Anika had the sense it was a race to see who could make it to the finish line first. That inspired her to focus on the business at hand enough to outrun him.

  And it was a glorious finish. She thought—although she wasn’t completely certain—that her climax rivaled the one previous in duration and power.

  She felt next door to comatose when she finally stopped shuddering with her release and realized with a touch of relief that Chance had made it across the finish line right behind her.

  He paused, gasping for breath loudly enough to drown her desperate gasps out. Finally, shaking, he disengaged his body from hers and allowed her to slide down the wall until her feet were solidly planted. Her knees threatened to buckle, but he saved her from finishing the trek to the freezing metal floor.

  “You are my woman,” he growled with an edge to his voice that sounded distinctly like a challenge.

  There was something wrong with that. Anika was certain of it. She just couldn’t quite figure out why there was something wrong with the statement.

  “I don’t know,” Cole drawled from somewhere fairly close by. “I’m no expert, but it sounded like a draw to me.”

  Chance reared back to stare at him for a split second and then slugged him on the jaw hard enough to send him reeling backward.

  A look of pure horror washed over Chance’s face the moment he’d clobbered Cole. Anika experienced what seemed to be a matching sense of horror.

  “I forgot you were human,” Chance said, almost apologetically.

 
Cole swiped the blood from his lip and glared at Chance furiously. “Yeah, and I forgot you were an asshole!”

  Chance set her behind him as Cole lunged at him.

  Before Anika could even consider what she might do to head the fight off, Sebastian grabbed her and ushered her toward the outer door.

  “Go to your cabin. You will be safer there.”

  Anika stared at him. “But ….”

  “Go!” He caught her shoulders, turned her toward the corridor and gave her ass a slap with his palm that stung like crazy.

  Rage flew over her and she whipped a deadly look at him as she rubbed the offended member.

  He threw up his hands in surrender, but it was his expression that instantly dowsed the fire in Anika’s eyes. She shook her head at him. “It’s your ass.”

  He chuckled. “I thought so.”

  Anika was torn between amusement and uneasiness. She didn’t know if he’d willfully misinterpreted the comment or not, but he was no fool. He must think he could diffuse the situation or hold his own.

  She was sorry she wasn’t equally convinced, but she realized now that she was a safe distance that it could easily be more dangerous for her to try to interfere than it was for them to try to beat one another to a pulp.

  She went to her cabin—after a detour to the showers to clean up.

  She was arrested there a few hours later.

  * * * *

  Anika was so drunk with fatigue, she thought the sound that entered her dreams was distant thunder. But it persisted, getting louder and more determined until it lifted her to the edge of consciousness—close enough she realized it was someone pounding on the door.

  She rolled from the bed. Tangled in her cover, she couldn’t catch herself, and she hit the floor hard enough to rattle her brains.

  Unfortunately, it really didn’t jar her to a lot more alertness. She was drunk from being wakened in the middle of a deep sleep and it was all she could do to negotiate the short distance from the bed to the door.

  When she opened it, she discovered there was a wall of guards on the other side.

  “Anika Leigh McNeal?”

  Anika blinked at the man that had spoken, trying to figure out what he meant.

  It was her frigging cabin. Did he think he had the wrong one?

  “Uh … yeah.”

  “You are charged with instigating a brawl.”

  Anika gaped at him in shocked disbelief. “I was asleep ….”

  “Come with us.”

  Anika looked down at the T and panties she was wearing—which was all that she was wearing. “But … can I get dressed?”

  He looked disgusted. “Grab something. Quickly.”

  She was still dizzy and uncoordinated, but she managed to find a jumpsuit in her locker and step into it. The guard hustled her out while she was still trying to get her arms in the sleeves.

  The floor was icy on her bare feet. The discomfort helped to rouse her so she could be really worried about the charges as they marched her to the lift and then down to the jail/brig level.

  Instead of escorting her to the cell area, though, they turned in the other direction and led her to a large conference room.

  Chance, Cole, and Sebastian were all lined up at the opposite end against the wall in manacles. Security guards were three deep around them.

  If they hadn’t been so tall, she wouldn’t have been able to even see them.

  Captain Lee, wearing a robe and dark circles under her eyes, was seated at the head of the table.

  “Thank you for joining us,” she said, her voice neutral enough Anika almost missed the sarcasm.

  She felt her face heat.

  As if she’d just been waiting for Anika to arrive, the captain started the video on the wide screen to one side and Anika got to watch her ‘performance’ in wide screen, high def. By the time the video switched to the mayhem that had ensued after she’d left she could feel her face pulsing like a neon sign.

  “Would anyone like to add anything?” Captain Lee asked pleasantly when the video was stopped after the arrival of the security team and the surrender of the prisoners currently standing at the opposite end of the room.

  The men glanced at one another and shrugged.

  All eyes turned to Anika.

  Her face felt like it went up in flames.

  She didn’t think she could’ve unglued her tongue if she could have forced her brain to function. She merely shrugged.

  The captain nodded. “Ms Anika Leigh McNeal—you will be under ‘house arrest’ until such time as I deem you prepared to follow the rules set down for the passengers of the International Space Liner Anna Marie. “Detective Cole Parker, Security Officer Sebastian Monroe, and Colonist Chance McNeal—The three of you will repair the damage to the brig and then you will all three be confined to a cell until we reach Beauterre.”

  “That’s a little extreme, don’t you think!” Anika gasped in outrage.

  The captain narrowed her eyes at her. “No. I don’t. My first impulse was to pack them into a life pod and eject them. But then I thought it would be grossly unfair to turn them loose upon whatever population they ended up with. … Which might very well be Beauterre anyway since we’re already past the halfway mark.”

  Well! If she was going to be nasty about it, Anika thought indignantly. Fortunately, she wasn’t so outraged that it ‘slipped’ her mind that the captain was king onboard the ship. It wouldn’t do to piss her off.

  More.

  But she was looking at a very miserable several months, damn it!

  It wasn’t until she was escorted back to her quarters that it occurred to her that Chance might well have delivered her family! That thought cheered her so much that she wasn’t even particularly upset to be escorted to the bathroom under guard.

  Chapter Nine

  Anika’s first inkling that her seedlings had indeed been delivered and had taken root and begun to grow was when she puked on her guard’s boots one morning several weeks later.

  She’d actually been far more concerned about the guys when she’d been hauled away and taken to her cabin under ‘house arrest’ to give a lot of thought to what it would mean to her to be confined.

  She’d realized a few days in that she should have been more focused on her own dilemma.

  In a way, it was almost more of a convenience than a punishment—at least in the beginning. She was under house arrest so she was only allowed out when she needed to go to the bathroom or to shower, and then she was escorted to and from the facilities.

  She wasn’t allowed to fraternize with the other passengers, which meant that they brought her meals to her.

  And she was happy to be served in her room when they’d deprived her of any chance of companionship by locking Chance up and keeping him there.

  She had a lot of time to think about what had happened to precipitate her situation, though, and that wasn’t really a good thing because the more she thought about it the more she wanted to explore the possibilities that had been suggested.

  Well—and the sex.

  She did her best to convince herself it had only seemed so mind blowing because it had been forever since she’d had sex at all.

  But she thought she was way busier convincing herself she was in love.

  She’d been instantly struck by his physical appeal the first time she’d set eyes on Sebastian, but it certainly hadn’t occurred to her that he might be interested in her—at all.

  And yet he’d said that he had been thinking about it since that first encounter and he thought he would be a better mate than Chance.

  It practically sounded like a proposal!

  Not that she’d ever had one.

  Well, he was probably right, but she didn’t think he realized Chance was a robot—not that that totally precluded him from being a nearly perfect mate as far as she was concerned.

  Except for not being human, he fulfilled pretty much every need anybody could have as far as a partner and companio
n.

  And he’d totally rung her bell when she wouldn’t have thought she was capable of having it rung at that time.

  Not that she’d ever seen great sex as a necessity.

  Because she’d never had great sex or even pretty good sex and you couldn’t miss what you’d never had.

  Not really.

  Admittedly, that had been part of her youthful yearnings when she’d imagined a future where she had the perfect man, the perfect life.

  But she’d come to realize that that was not only not realistic, it didn’t seem to be in the cards for her at all—not even something sort of close.

  So it hadn’t been that hard to dismiss sex from her life. She’d finally realized she wasn’t getting anything out of it but the icky mess from the bodily fluids. She had never met anyone like Sebastian, who just exuded chemical attraction that had her so excited before the first touch that it took very little to hit the peak.

  The question was, she supposed, was it just another line to get her to cooperate with his desire for sex? Sure she’d thoroughly enjoyed it, but now it came down to motives.

  With a great deal of disappointment, she finally acknowledged to herself that, as much as it had thrilled her to hear Sebastian suggest he would be a better companion, as if he wanted the job, there was nothing significantly different about the remarks from plenty of other come-on lines she’d gotten over the years.

  It was a good thing she had Chance, she told herself, because he had certainly proven that he was willing and able to handle intimate needs.

  Not that it was something she really needed, but it was nice to know he could take her there if she felt the desire.

  It wasn’t easy to put the entire episode behind her regardless—at first. She was a shut in. True, she’d spent most of her time in the cabin anyway, but she’d been able to get out and stroll around the ship whenever she felt like it and now she couldn’t.

  Now she had to pace the cabin and that left time to think that cut up her peace.

  And then came the red letter day when the guard came in with her breakfast tray and the smells didn’t appeal to her—at all.

  She thought if she’d just lain perfectly still she would’ve been ok, but he’d held the tray out for her to take it and it had seemed easier to sit up and reach for it than try to tell him to get out with it.