Hercules 500 Page 9

  She wasn’t comfortable with the fact that the thought of the act made her hot and bothered.

  It was great that she wasn’t put off by the idea—not that that really had any bearing on the results—but, at the very rock bottom least, she thought it was pathetic that she could get excited about a ‘sex toy’.

  Well, she wasn’t made out of stone!

  She hadn’t had sex in just forever!

  It was normal to get horny after a while, even if she was undersexed.

  And Chance was a beautiful male animal—on the surface, anyway.

  Finally, since she couldn’t think of any damned thing else that she could claim as the reason she desperately needed some time with Chance, she decided to go for it.

  It wasn’t as if she was ever going to see any of the people on the ship again—not staff, anyway.

  If it was a female guard, she could try the sympathy route of it was time to get pregnant.

  If it was a male, she’d try the sympathy route of she was horny.

  Hopefully, she wouldn’t get an offer to take care of it or be told to take her horny and her empty womb back to her cabin and wait for the release date.

  Timing, she decided, might mean the difference between success and failure.

  They were in deep space and had been for a while and that meant most of them had circadian rhythm issues.

  A serious effort had been made, though, to help the colonists retain their healthy routine and the ships lighting was on a cycle—common areas all brightly lit throughout the day cycle, dimmed during ‘morning’ and ‘dusk’ and then virtual night during the sleep cycle.

  Most everyone went to their cabins after the evening meal and stayed until ‘morning’ and that also meant skeleton crew at ‘night’.

  She waited until most everyone had retired to their cabins, therefore, and then crept out and headed down to the level where the brig was.

  She thought when she first arrived that she’d hit upon the perfect time to go—that no one was on watch and she could have made her way down at any time and visited.

  The outer door was open and she went in—quietly. After standing by the desk for a few minutes, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other and watching the outer door for the return of whoever was supposed to be on duty, she decided to check the door that opened into the cell area.

  It opened right up when she gripped the handle and pulled.

  There was a tank attached to the handle on the other side, though.

  And Anika planted her nose right in the middle of his broad chest before she could stop herself.

  She sort of bounced off, but he’d obviously anticipated that reaction because he caught her shoulders in the palm of his hands.

  Anika looked up.

  Into the face of an angel.

  And felt the breath suspend in her chest.

  He seemed as stunned as she was, but it wasn’t until much later that her brain was actually able to process the scene that had frozen in her mind.

  She was dimly aware after a few moments, though, that he was in uniform and her brain did connect that with ‘guard’ and made some attempt to recall who she was and what she was doing there.

  “You are Anika?”

  Anika blinked at him. “I am? Uh. Yeah. How did you …?”

  His gaze roamed her face. “You should not be here.”

  Anika went back to blinking, trying to make her brain function. “I … uh … I …uh…. The thing is, I was thinking ….”

  She felt her face heating up to a point where it began to feel like it might catch fire as she considered telling this … devastatingly handsome, god-like man that she’d come for a conjugal visit.

  With her domestic.

  Telling him she needed to get impregnated didn’t sound any better in her mind.

  She damned sure wasn’t going to try to explain how it was that Chance had her seedlings! Or that he’d told her the only way he could return them to her was to make like a human donor.

  Or that she’d really begun to anticipate the event strictly from the receiving viewpoint.

  As Sebastian stared down at the biggest, most beautiful pair of green eyes he had ever seen he felt a rush inside his head that was so reminiscent of the rush he had felt when he had experienced the awakening and had become a sentient being that he feared for several moments that it was rushing away as mysteriously as it had appeared to begin with.

  Mostly because he could not seem to make his brain function past those beautiful green eyes.

  And the pointed little face.

  That was surrounded by a wavy cloud of hair that was the strangest shade of red … like deep, dark burgundy wine.

  The freckles sprinkled across the pale skin of the nose and cheeks were a flaw.

  He told himself they were, but he could not bring himself to care.

  Because he realized that the rush went well beyond his head. His entire being seemed taut and vibrating like the string of a musical instrument, as if he was poised for battle.

  Against a foe he had no hope in hell of defeating.

  He was lost and he did not care.

  This female was meant for him, he realized.

  His entire being recognized it in those few moments while he struggled to make his brain function again and stave off the primitive behavior his body was urging.

  She ran her tongue along her lower lip, leaving a glistening trail that set Sebastian’s heart to hammering a little harder and, he discovered, made his cock swell until he could feel the pulse of blood in it even harder than the pulse ticking in his ears.

  “I just thought that … well, maybe I could have a short visit?” she suggested, leaning a little to see if she could catch Chance’s eye, at least, since the guard was standing in the open doorway.

  Sebastian stared at her blankly. “With who?”

  She blinked at him. “Oh!” She frowned, trying to figure out how she’d arrived at the conclusion that he knew about her connection to Chance. Then she remembered! “You knew my name. I thought ….”

  Chance.

  That fucking bastard!

  And he had just given the son of a bitch a bundle of porns to watch.

  Because he was tired of hearing the bastard demand instruction and programming in human sexuality!

  And he had thought it would be a great joke when the moron tried those moves on his woman.

  This woman!

  “No,” he growled, mostly in response to his own thoughts.

  She jerked as if he had slapped her and it refocused his mind—somewhat. He discovered those porns were playing in his own mind and pretty much all he could think of at the moment was retrieving them. “I have been commanded not to allow visitors.”

  She looked confused and disappointed. “I can’t see him at all? Not even to reassure myself that he’s ok?”

  He gestured absently at the monitor, directing Anika’s attention to it.

  Chance was lying on a bunk.

  She might have thought he was in sleep mode, but he had a small vid held in front of his face and … well, something tenting his trousers that looked an awful lot like a hard on.

  A really big one.

  Feeling like a peeping Tom, she whipped around, nodded blindly at the guard, and left.

  The moment the door closed behind her, Sebastian stalked back into the jail, unlocked Chance’s cell door, and snatched the vid player out of his hands. “Bastard,” he snarled and then smashed the small device on the floor and stalked out again.

  Chance stared after Sebastian in stunned disbelief and dawning outrage. “What the fuck?” he growled, still thoroughly baffled by the sudden turn of events.

  “I’m guessing he’s met Anika,” Cole offered dryly.

  Chance whipped a look toward his companion prisoner. He was not surprised that Cole was awake. Sebastian had made no attempt to be quiet when he had stalked into the cell to destroy the vid machine. What made him vaguely uneasy was that Cole seemed far
too alert. He did not seem like someone who had just woken. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

  Cole shrugged. “Hey! She’s a good looking woman. I’ve had a few pangs about her being with you myself. Maybe he decided the porn movies weren’t such a great idea after all?”

  He’d had more than a few restless nights since he’d first gotten a good look at her if he was being one hundred percent honest, but then again, he wasn’t convinced the cell would hold Chance if he got really pissed off and he saw no sense in testing it when it wasn’t likely he was ever going to get the chance to tap that thing.

  She might have been interested if he’d met her before he was blown all to hell—there’d been plenty of women that were. Now? Well, that was another life. He doubted she’d be interested in a man that was more machine at this point than man.

  Chapter Eight

  Anika was still a nervous wreck when she got back to her cabin. She thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink but the nervous energy eventually wore itself out and she crashed.

  She dreamed some weird and exciting dreams that featured both Chance and Sebastian.

  She wasn’t really surprised that she dreamed about Chance.

  Despite every effort to refuse to see him as an actual person, he just had so much personality it was impossible to dismiss him as just a machine.

  And why should she?

  Really?

  Plenty of people had animals as pets and for companionship and treated them like a child. Nobody thought that was crazy.

  Well … she supposed some people probably did, but she’d never been particularly inclined to worry about what other people thought. It was her life. She had the right to live it the way she saw fit as long as she didn’t interfere with anybody else’s rights.

  It wasn’t as if she approved of all the choices other people made.

  Chance’s intelligence might be artificial, but he was intelligent.

  Anyway, he had her seedlings. Getting impregnated didn’t have to be clinical and she was actually glad she was going to get the chance to conceive in a more natural way—or at least something that felt more natural.

  It was certainly no worse than going into a clinic and having a physician insert it.

  Not that she would have had to do that anyway under the circumstances, but it also beat the hell out of inserting the capsules herself.

  Except for the fact that now it wasn’t sorted and she was only going to have one go at it.

  She supposed there was still some chance that she might meet a colonist ….

  It wasn’t a colonist that popped into her mind’s eye, though.

  It was the guard—Sebastian.

  She made a pretense at examining her memories of the night before for a possibility of turning something to her advantage and wrangling a visit with Chance, but she discovered it was pretty hard to think of Sebastian and not focus on how devastatingly attractive he was.

  She had thought that Chance was the most amazing looking male she’d ever set eyes on and she had really wondered at it because he wasn’t natural.

  Sebastian, though ….

  Well, she supposed it would be more fair to say that they were equally handsome, just in different ways.

  Like Cole.

  Well, Cole wasn’t actually handsome in the way both Chance and Sebastian were—which was more of the classic male beauty.

  Cole was just hard and rugged looking.

  But he was still very attractive.

  It was a damned shame that he had set out to ruin her life!

  Because she found him very attractive and he was one of the few single males that had joined the expedition.

  Not that that had been voluntary.

  But it made her realize that the chances were probably less than zero that Sebastian was free.

  Disappointment flickered through her, but she resolutely dismissed it. She told herself she was being ridiculous to be upset about it when she’d not only just met him, but he hadn’t behaved in any way as if he was the least bit interested.

  That gave her pause, though.

  He’d been very short with her when he’d answered her questions and she’d interpreted that as annoyance that she would bother him at all. Now that she recalled the incident, though. Now that she was able to look past her own reaction to him. She saw a few things she thought might have been interpreted as interest.

  Sexual interest, anyway.

  Maybe she wasn’t the only one that had felt lust at first sight?

  A desperation to explore that rare and immediate chemical attraction to see if they clicked on other levels, as well?

  Well, even to see if that part was potent enough to spell fireworks.

  She shook her head.

  What did that matter if he was already committed to someone else?

  Was there any way she might find out?

  The background checks that had been done on everyone on board were public record, she realized abruptly, wondering if it would also have information on the ship’s staff. It should, she decided. It was available because a lot of strangers had been brought together in a situation that could make them easy prey if they had anyone among them that was predatory in nature. She thought that should also apply to the people they had put their trust in to get them halfway across the galaxy.

  It was worth a look, anyway, and with that thought she left her cabin and headed to the communications area to access the computers.

  There she discovered with mixed feelings that Sebastian actually was single—because he’d lived with his grandmother, Lauren, and taken care of her until her death a couple of years earlier.

  He was probably still grieving over her, Anika thought unhappily.

  Cole’s was a different situation altogether. He’d been married, briefly, when he’d been in the military—nothing since.

  But since he’d nearly been killed in action and had spent years in reconstruction/rehabilitation that pretty much explained why he was single.

  Damaged. Poor guys. It made her want to ‘fix’ them, but she knew there was really no fixing damaged humans. They didn’t want anybody trying.

  So did that mean there was zero possibility that either of them would be interested?

  * * * *

  Sebastian had done nothing since he had first gazed into Anika’s deep green eyes but plot how he might have her for himself. He had decided that he would begin with logic. He would point out that he had more data, more programming, and far more actual experience than Chance and those skills would make him a much better choice as a mate. Then he would proceed from there with a careful display of his desire and affection for her. Once he had done that, he would focus on the courting process per Lauren’s determined instructions until he had managed to convince her that he was the best choice.

  “I have given much thought to this since you came before and I believe I would be a better mate,” Sebastian said, clearly keeping his tone even with an effort although there were definitely undertones of anger—as if he was braced for an argument.

  Anika looked around to see whom he had addressed and saw she was still completely alone with him in the brig office. When she looked back at him, he was closer.

  Much closer.

  “I can do more than he,” Sebastian managed to get out even though it seemed both his brain—every move, word, and gesture that he had so carefully rehearsed and memorized—and his dexterity had abandoned him the moment he moved close enough to capture her scent.

  He could not recall anything, could not think, could not manage any fluidity of motion. All he was aware of was the rush inside of him that seemed closely akin to the awakening—at least in the sense that he was aware of his body in a way he never had been before, aware of a quickening inside of him that make him feel as if he was burning up from the inside out, aware of need pounding in his groin and his ears until he could hear nothing but the jungle beat that was a demand for surcease.

  Anika blinked at him, all
at sea.

  Her lustful thoughts about him had rotted her brain, she decided. It actually sounded like he was telling her that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

  She nodded. “I’m sure ….”

  She didn’t get the chance to finish voicing the thought. He stepped closer, captured her face between two plate sized palms and lifted her to her toes by her head.

  Before she could get too alarmed by that circumstance, he planted his mouth over hers and ….

  Well, fireworks would pale!

  As unexpected as it was, despite the wall of shock that briefly engulfed her, the feel of his mouth on hers, his scent and taste, took her from zero to mind blown in seconds. It was a sensory cocktail that intoxicated her virtually instantaneously. The hands she’d lifted instinctually to brace herself for an assault she wasn’t certain she wanted, gripped him tightly instead of making any attempt to push him away.

  She was disappointed when he ended the kiss and lifted his lips from hers.

  Thankfully, he didn’t actually release her because she was way too drunk to stand on her own. It took all she could do to lift her eyelids and her eye balls were still swimming around, making it impossible to focus them.

  She did notice that he seemed to be waiting for something.

  She forced a smile. “Well! That was nice! I should be going, I suppose ….” She frowned, trying to recall if she’d done whatever it was that had brought her to the jail to start with.

  Bribery!

  She’d decided there might be a possibility that she could convince him to let her have just a short visit with Chance.

  If she could just figure out what she might offer that would convince him.

  He’d seemed pleased with the cookies ….

  He dragged her close again and captured her mouth beneath his once more.

  And she lost the battle she hadn’t even known she was waging.

  He took her so quickly back to that place of floating, spinning euphoria that she was barely aware of his earnest efforts to remove her clothing. And by the time the tugs registered, she was beyond caring.

  No—beyond that. She was eager to help.