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Catch up on the Like A Fine Wine Series!

LIKE A FINE WINE

LIKE A FINE WINE 2

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 01

CHAPTER 02

CHAPTER 03

CHAPTER 04

CHAPTER 05

CHAPTER 06

CHAPTER 07

CHAPTER 08

CHAPTER 09

CHAPTER 10

EPILOGUE

OTHER TITLES

ABOUT ME

CHAPTER 01

“Hey, Jack, you busy?”

Jack glanced over his shoulder at Elizabeth. He was crouched before a panel in the control room of the isolated outpost that was now his home, having just finished replacing a faulty circuit board. Elizabeth, all six feet five inches of her, filled the doorway.

“Let me rephrase that,” she continued before he could respond, and a small smile came onto her pale face. “You’re no longer busy. I need you for something, and Maureen says I can have you. So you’re all mine.”

Jack closed the panel, feeling a thrill of excitement and anticipatory lust shoot through him. He stood straight up, turning and dusting off his hands. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed. “Come on. We’ve got a special assignment to drive out to.”

“All right. What do I need?”

“Grab your armor and at least one weapon, though I doubt we’ll run into any real trouble.” She paused, a frown marring her roughly beautiful features. “Well, I guess that’s kind of bullshit on this planet. It seems like it can go from zero to ten in no time flat out there. But know that we aren’t doing anything intentionally dangerous...for the most part.”

“Uh...okay,” he replied, deciding to trust her. Mainly because he was almost certain that any attempt to get her to elaborate would result in stonewalling. While she’d certainly been pleasant around and to him more than ever recently, he knew that Elizabeth was the kind of woman who you couldn’t make, bribe, or convince to do anything she did not want to do.

She was already in her own suit of dark, intimidating armor, a rifle slung over one shoulder, a pistol on one large hip.

“I’ll be in the rover,” she said, then turned away from him as he approached and began walking away, towards the garage.

He found his eyes drawn to her broad ass like metal to a magnet.

Fuck, that woman had a really huge ass. Even in full-fledged power armor it looked goddamn good. And the way she was swinging her hips, he knew that she knew he was checking out her ass. He sighed softly and headed off towards the armory, where he kept his gear. As he did, he considered the past three days.

They were…

Interesting days.

He’d rested off and on the first day immediately following his time in the mines, nursing the injuries he had sustained saving their lives. Although the meds that Sylvia had pumped him full of accelerated the healing, and he wasn’t that banged up to begin with, he was injured (and tired) enough that he was confined to bed for that day. In the morning, after breakfast, he’d at least moved to his own bed. Of course, that hadn’t kept Riley, Sylvia, and Anya from coming in and riding his dick once apiece. Twice for Riley.

Maureen had come and spent the night with him, sucking and riding him into a wonderfully pleasant sleep.

He was deeply glad to see that most of these women were happy with temporarily adopting care-giving roles, though he thought at least some of it had to do with the fact that they liked being in charge of him, even if only temporarily and in a small way.

He had hoped that Elizabeth would come visit in a similar way, but during that first day assumed that the other women had gotten in her way. During the second day however, despite coming to see him, (he had admittedly milked the resting part through almost all of the second day, but they kept telling him this was a working vacation so he figured why not?), nothing sexual had happened. She’d been friendly, and she seemed more relaxed and at ease around him than ever, but after their intense makeout session in the garage, he thought she was ready to go all the way.

Apparently not, though.

Not that he minded...well, okay. He was frustrated, but that wasn’t going to get in the way of him giving her as long as she needed.

That had been yesterday.

Today, he’d woke up feeling absolutely fantastic. Anya had spent the night with him, and that tight, fit redhead had let him hit it from the back until they both had orgasmed intensely, and then they’d fucked again in the shower.

Now that was a way to start the day.

Jack was still a little sore from the endeavor, but he was well enough to get back to work helping the women get the outpost back online. By now, Lyra, tech genius and hard worker that she was, had already completed most of the repairs with the parts they had gathered from around the region. Contracts had either been fulfilled or were on the verge of being fulfilled. At this point, most of the work left to do on the outpost was cosmetic. Giving the place a new coat of paint, repairing or replacing dented or scuffed panels, making everything look nice and neat and new and shiny again. Except for that busted circuit board, that’s all Jack had been doing since waking up. It was satisfying work, in its own way, but he was already craving more.

In more than one way.

Elizabeth had been teasing him all day long, bending over in front of him, brushing against him, actually outright flirting with him. It was a totally different side of her, one he almost hadn’t been sure existed, given how awkward she had been so far, even after they’d come right out with it about the true nature of the ‘job’ and that he not only fully intended to have sex with her, but would do so gladly. But it was really nice to see.

Maybe it would happen today, on this ‘trip’.

After making out, she had told him soon.

How soon was soon?

Again, he didn’t intend to push the issue, he was just...so fucking eager! He was sure that some of his attraction to Elizabeth was generated simply by the fact that he hadn’t had her yet, and now she’d been teasing him, hitting on him, making it worse. But he was genuinely very attracted to her. He didn’t care that she was big and strong and twice his age and headstrong. Honestly, he really liked all those things about her. He thought she was attractive in a number of ways, physically and with regards to her personality.

Jack finished pulling his armor on and ran a quick check of it. This stuff had saved his life more than once now. He laughed softly at that particular thought. Twice now a mission on this ‘vacation’ had ended in him risking his life for the sake of others. He didn’t regret it, and he wasn’t new to it, but he was surprised that it was coming up as often as it had. As he decided to just take his pistol with him and holstered it and pocketed his ammo, his suit told him that it was fine. Lyra had worked hard to fix it after the incident and after checking over it himself last night, he was not surprised to find she had done an excellent job.

His radio came to life as he turned to leave the armory. “Any day now, Jack.”

He sighed softly. “I know you can’t stand to be apart from me for too long, Elizabeth. I’m on my way right now. Try to keep your panties on.”

“I’m not wearing panties,” she replied, and his response died in his throat. They’d been quipping back and forth just recently and she was clearly skilled. She’d found his weak spot, his kill-code, as it were. To be fair, it was obvious. All she had to do was say something sexual and he’d just freeze up a little, not sure what to say.

It was weird. If he’d already had sex with a woman, then it wouldn’t trip him up like that. If Maureen or Riley said something like that to him, he was fine. Mostly. He was still getting used to these mature women and their overtly sexual nature.

But if they hadn’t been together yet…

Elizabeth laughed at his silence. “Cat got your tongue?”

He tried to fire something back. “I’m sure there’s a clever phrase regarding pussies and tongues in there somewhere, but I can’t think of it right now.”

Now it was Elizabeth’s turn to be silent. He hoped he was having the same effect on her. So far, he really liked the way their relationship was building. It felt nice and steady and, most importantly, organic. It wasn’t quite organic with the others. Sure, there was a real connection there with all of them, and he was very happy with where he was with each woman, (even Lyra, despite the fact that they hadn’t slept together yet either and sometimes it seemed like she was avoiding him), but something just felt different about Elizabeth. He hoped he wasn’t getting too involved, but he felt like there was something more, something deeper beginning to form and grow between them.

A closer connection.

He supposed, once they’d made love for the first time, he’d be closer to knowing if she felt the same way, or if he was just imagining it.

That was totally possible.

Jack came into the garage and found the rover ready to go, the garage door open. He slipped into the front passenger’s seat and buckled his safety belt.

“All right, we’re good to go?” Elizabeth asked.

“Check,” he replied.

“Perfect.”

She brought them out of the garage and then began driving away from the outpost, heading to the southwest. It was a nice day out. After that last heavy rainfall, the sun had come back with a vengeance, shining down and almost blaring through the windows. But there had been a cool breeze out, and there were clouds on the horizon. They’d been drawing closer all day long. He hoped that it meant more rain. Even a light rain would be great.

They drove in silence for the first few moments. Inside the rover, the atmosphere was also pleasant, though he could sense an undercurrent of tension in Elizabeth. Both of them had their helmets off and he studied her pale features out of the corner of his eye. She was staring straight ahead, sitting up straight, both hands on the wheel. Her vividly red hair was pulled into a ponytail. By now, it was no secret that Elizabeth had some difficulty with social situations. Especially, he imagined, if it involved guys she liked.

And she’d made it clear by now that she really liked him.

“So, Jack,” she said after almost five minutes, “I want to talk.”

“What about?” he asked. He had no intention of making this difficult for her.

“Us,” she said. He waited. She glanced briefly at him, then laughed softly.

“What?” he asked.

“I just...I’m sorry. I keep half-expecting you to be grinning like a shark, ready to take advantage of my...emotional attachment to you.”

Interesting. She hadn’t said sexual attraction, she’d specifically said emotional.

“That won’t happen,” he said.

“I know. By this point, I know. I trust you. I’ve just been...laughed at, preyed upon, fooled, taken advantage of, whatever, several times in my life at this point. So I get defensive. It’s, you know, it’ll take a bit to deactivate my defenses.”

“I’m willing to help in any way I can to facilitate this process...and not just because I want to stick my dick in you,” he said.

She smiled and laughed, this time it sounded happier. “I know. I believe that, too, actually. That’s one of the things I actually really like about you: you’re genuine. I feel like you’d tell me the truth to my face even if it pissed me off.” She paused. “You stood up to me after that last mission. Sylvia was right: I find that to be an attractive quality.” She paused again, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, so what I want to talk about. I’m basically ready to try sex. Like, tonight for sure. And don’t worry, I don’t feel pressured at all. Honestly it’s hard not to just pull over and fuck you right now. Seriously, you make me fucking horny.”

“You do the same for me,” he murmured.

She swallowed, cleared her throat. “My point is: I’m ready. But before that, I want to enjoy something nice with you that isn’t sex or a dangerous mission. Something that isn’t work.”

“So what are we doing out here?”

She smiled. “I scouted out an area while you were down for the count, found a great place to have a picnic and just, you know, chat. Get to know each other more. Does that sound like something you’d like?”

“I’d love that,” he replied.

She smiled again and this time blushed a little. “Uh, good.”

They drove on.

…

“Okay, here we are.”

They had driven along for another ten minutes across relatively flat, desert ground, passing stands of some of the alien trees that sprouted from the cracked earth, and at one point they passed through a small, narrow canyon.

Now, Elizabeth was slowing them down as they edged closer to a vast cliff drop. Once they got within a few dozen yards of it, she stopped, then turned the vehicle around and began backing up towards the edge. She stared at a navigational screen built into the dashboard to guide herself. Despite everything, how confident she appeared, how sure he was in her abilities and the tech they were using, Jack found himself slightly nervous.

He’d always had a bit of a thing about heights.

“Don’t worry,” Elizabeth murmured as she slowly crept them backwards, as though reading his mind, “I know what I’m doing and I already checked the place out.”

“I’m fine,” he replied.

She gave a small laugh. “It’s okay to be nervous. I’m not going to think less of you. You’ve already proven that you’re brave to a fault.”

“Is it a fault?” he asked.

She didn’t answer for a few seconds, instead focusing on the screen. Finally, she seemed satisfied and brought them to a halt, then put the rover in park.

“I guess it depends on your perspective,” she answered, killing the engine. She looked at him with her intense green eyes. “You’ll save a lot of people, but you’ll get yourself killed one day. But I can already tell you know that, and you accept it, to a certain degree.”

“Any Marine does,” he murmured.

Now she frowned. “No. Not every Marine. Most, but not all. Some get through bootcamp and discover they just don’t have the right stuff when it comes to actually for real dangerous situations. Boot weeds most of them out, but not all of them. If they’re lucky, everyone will survive the encounter and they’ll get out while they can. And some Marines are selfish. But that’s just-” she paused.

“What?”

“I was gonna say human nature but it’s clearly not related to only humans. I’ve seen brave, selfless aliens and I’ve seen selfish bastard aliens. I guess it’s nature. Sometimes. But you didn’t leave because you couldn’t handle it, I can tell that.” She paused again. “Come on,” she said, undoing her seatbelt and throwing open her door, “check out the view.”

He got out with her and walked around to the back of the rover. They were about ten yards from the edge of the cliff. Jack felt his apprehension rising but pushed it back, telling himself he’d be fine. Plus, he had to admit, it was a hell of a view.

“Wow,” he murmured as they came as close to the edge as they were going to get.

The drop was maybe two hundred feet, and the view extended for probably two hundred miles. The vast desert landscape, broken up by canyons and cliffs and mountains and forests of those cacti-trees, seemed to extend off into forever, most of it beneath a cloudy slate-gray sky.

“Wow indeed,” she said. He glanced at her. She was staring intently ahead. “You know, I used to find places like this when I was on a new world. Got to be, if there was time of course, I’d go looking for some unique place. A location with a great view or a unique landmark or some other interesting quality to it. I wanted to find at least one on each planet I visited. Did it for most of them. And not once, not a single time, did I take anyone with me. I was always alone.”

Jack immediately took the meaning in that: This is special to me, I’ve never shared it with anyone else, but I am now sharing it with you.

“Thank you for bringing me,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied, a small smile on her face. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She looked serene. “Let’s eat lunch.”

They walked back to the rover and she popped the trunk. A metal case was locked in place in the rear cargo hold. She disengaged the lock, brought it closer, and opened it up. Inside, he saw that it was a refrigerated unit. There were two thermoses, some fruit, and a pair of sandwiches.

“I remember you saying you were partial to turkey and cheese, so I made you one.” She paused. “I hope you appreciate the significance that I made you a sandwich.”

He laughed. “Uh, yeah. I do. You’re doing a lot for me today. I really do appreciate it. Thank you,” he replied as he took a seat, his legs hanging over the edge of the cargo space’s floor, dangling just a few inches above the ground. She sat beside him with the case between them and they took a moment to get their food out.

It felt strange having a picnic in full combat armor, but at this point he was used to doing a lot of things in full combat armor.

“So how do you feel about your decisions now?” Elizabeth asked after a few moments of silence and staring out over the vast view.

“Better,” he replied. “I think I’m at that stage where I’m actually feeling kind of good about my decision, but I’m also afraid that the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet. That there’s something to this I just haven’t thought about yet.”

“Oh fuck, I know that feeling,” Elizabeth muttered. “I can’t say for sure, obviously, but I think you made the right choice. I think you’ll be happier.”

“I hope so...how about you?” he asked.

“I’m…” she laughed, a little bitterly. “Scared.”

“Why?”

“I left the Marines, went into private security, and I fucking hated it. And I was burned out of the Marines, just sick of it after so long. And I...don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do for the rest of my life.”

“Oh. Wow. That’s...yeah, that sucks.”

She chuckled. “Sorry to dump all that on you. I know an existential crisis isn’t the best thing to have on a date.”

“Is this a date?” he asked.

“Yes. This is a date. We’re on a date right now. A romantic one.”

“Oh. Okay, cool. I was hoping it was. But, Elizabeth, if there’s one thing that has been made clear to me about this trip, and about this group of people, it’s that we’re all...sharing. We’re sharing in pleasure, to be sure, but I think Maureen also meant for us to share each other’s pain, too. In whatever form that takes. I’m very reluctant to let anyone share in my pain...but I’m glad to share yours, if you want. Even if it’s just listening, or if it’s something more. I don’t know. Whatever you want. I really like you.”

She was looking at him intensely now. If there was one thing about Elizabeth that stuck in his mind besides her size, it was the intensity of her eyes. It had to be a combination of just how green they were, but also how focused she appeared.

“You’re right,” she replied, looking away, down at the cracked dirt beneath them. “That’s a good point. And I...agree with you. I’ve spent decades keeping how I feel locked up in a vault. And I know it’s not healthy, I just haven’t had many people in my life that I’ve honestly felt I could open up to. Honestly…” she hesitated and looked at him with a strange expression. One that oddly conveyed suspicion and guilt. “It worries me, how much I trust you.”

He considered that, then nodded. “Yeah, I get that. You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. Feeling like this is too good to be true.”

She laughed softly. “You being so understanding just makes it feel like more of a trap.” He began to respond but she cut him off. “I’m not saying I think you’re trying to trap me in any regard. The fact that we’re here, doing this, means you’ve mostly earned my trust. I guess I just feel like I want to discuss this kind of stuff before we take our clothes off. I want you to know that I feel like...you get me. Kind of on an organic level. Like how some people just mesh, you know? We gel. We have chemistry. And I really like it…”

“Okay,” he said, hesitating suddenly. It felt like this was actually leading somewhere all of a sudden, and it occurred to him, abruptly, that there was another reason Elizabeth might have been acting awkward recently. That she had something to say, something that she thought might upset or concern him. “Where is this leading, exactly?”

She blushed and looked down at her meal. “This is what I meant,” she murmured. “You pick up stuff about me fast. Normally I’m total poker face with most people.” He waited. She sighed. “So basically, before we have sex, there’s something I have to tell you. Because it would be irresponsible not to. Sex with me is going to carry a certain...risk.”

“What kind of risk?” he asked, wondering what in the hell she was talking about.

“Because of how much I like you, how well we get along, other factors, I’m positive that the risk of me becoming very emotionally attached to you after having sex is high.” She paused. Wow, he thought, that’s an oddly clinical way of spelling it out. But he appreciated the direct words. “What I’m saying is: I can’t offer you what all the others can, not for sure. I can’t, for sure, offer you casual sex. It might...get serious.”

He was silent for several moments, looking at her. “Are you okay with that risk?” he asked finally.

She bit her lower lip. “Right now?...yeah, I-I think I am.”

That surprised him. “Elizabeth-”

“I could be wrong,” she said quickly. “I’ve been wrong about this before. I really like you. A lot. But it might pass. Which isn’t a reflection on you! I could just...this could be a passing infatuation.” She hesitated. “Is this too honest?”

“No,” he said. He reached out and put a hand over the back of hers. They had their gloves off, so he enjoyed the sensation of her smooth, hot skin. He felt a brief shiver rush through him as they made skin contact. He thought he felt something similar happen to her. “Elizabeth, however the conversation turns out, I appreciate that you chose to tell me this. I imagine it must be difficult to talk about. But I genuinely appreciate you just straight up telling me this stuff. As for the risk, as you call it, from where I’m standing right now…”

He paused. Sometimes, it felt like decisions were made for you by some internal force.

“I can live with that,” he said.

She smiled. “You’re sure? We could be going through a brutal, bitter breakup three years from now.”

“Or we could be fucking like rabbits every day for the next several decades, in unexplored realms of bliss.”

She laughed. “I like those odds.” Then she grew a bit more serious. “I won’t be mad though, if you change your mind. I just want you to know that. You don’t owe me anything.”

“I don’t know, I think I owe you a sandwich at least,” he replied.

She smirked. “No, this is repayment for that amazing burger you made for me on the way out here.”

“Oh...right. Say, you’re not one of those people who ‘keep score’ in a relationship, are you?” he asked.

“Fuck no.”

“I didn’t think so.” He felt some of the tension go out of him. Not all of it, but most. That was not what he’d been expecting to talk about.

Riley really was fucking spot on about him and her.

“So, now what?” Elizabeth asked.

Over the course of their conversation, they’d managed to finish their meals. At first, Jack wasn’t sure what to say, then it abruptly occurred to him exactly what to say.

“Oh, uh, hold on, be right back,” he said, getting up and returning to the front of the vehicle. There, he grabbed his helmet and came back with it. “Something a few of you ladies asked me about was if I had any hobbies. I used to. Photography. My helmet has a camera built-in and I’ve decided to try resurrecting the hobby, and this seems a great place to do it.”

“Oh yeah?” Elizabeth replied.

He glanced up. She sounded oddly defensive. “Uh, yeah. I was gonna take a picture of the view. Did you wanna-”

“No,” she said immediately, her voice sharp. He continued looking at her. She looked away and sighed. “I’m sorry. I just-having my picture taken is a whole thing. My parents were really fucking just obsessed with it and I always fucking hated the way I looked and I just, you know, I hate it.”

“It’s fine, I won’t ask again. Sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay. And thank you.”

Jack nodded, then put on his helmet, locked it in place, and walked towards the edge. He looked around for a bit for a good shot. From what he remembered, he hadn’t exactly been great at studying up on photography, but people had been surprised by his ability to frame shots. He’d also been oddly good at screwing with the hues and color grading and applying tweaked filters to make it look even better. Finally, after a minute or two, that feeling hit him as he spied a flock of those large, weird bird creatures in the far distance, flying against the backdrop of a mountain range. He zoomed in a bit, waited a few seconds, and when the time felt right, took the pic.

“Okay, I got it,” he said, walking back, taking off his helmet. “I’ll screw around with it when we get back and I get some time.”

“I’d like to see it when you’re finished,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t mean to spoil the mood.”

“You didn’t,” he said, sitting back down beside her. He offered his hand. She smiled and took it. He laced their fingers together. “I understand how you feel. I’m not upset.”

“You’re probably the sweetest guy I’ve met for a long, long time. Certainly you’re the sweetest Marine I’ve met,” she said, a genuine, beautiful smile creeping onto her face.

“I found it to be conducive to making people happy,” he replied.

She laughed. “And getting laid?”

“Well...yeah, it helped. Sometimes.”

“Probably more often than you think.”

They sat like that together, looking out over the immense plains of the alien world, holding hands in the back of the rover, and just enjoying each other’s silent companionship.

CHAPTER 02

The ride back was quiet.

Jack supposed that they both had a lot to think about. Or maybe just he did. He hoped Elizabeth wasn’t being consumed with doubt and worry right now. Concern that she’d said too much or the wrong thing, that she’d scared him off or that she’d invited him in too deeply into her life. He wanted to reassure her, but with some things, and for some people, there weren’t necessarily the right words. At best, he could temporarily set her mind at ease, and he thought he’d done that inasmuch as he could during their conversation.

To be honest, he understood where she was at.

This was supposed to be casual, fun, easy. No strings.

He fully believed that she had come into this with no other intentions, but wasn’t that the whole deal with infatuation? Even at fifty, apparently it could still blindside you. It felt strange, mostly in a good way, to hear that Elizabeth was into him. Like really into him. As in, wanting to date him, not just be friends with benefits.

But something had him worried.

Well, more than one something.

He was admittedly concerned about a serious relationship right now. He hadn’t had many, and he wasn’t entirely sure he’d been in love before. He thought he had been when he was a teenager, but wasn’t fucking everyone in love when they were a teen? It was practically a rite of passage. And almost all of them looked back on it a few years later and went, yeah, I wasn’t really in love, mostly just lonely and horny and full of hormones.

But that aside, practically speaking, he was wondering exactly what it would mean if they slept together, things got emotionally intense, and the other women continued trying to sleep with him. Although Elizabeth was frighteningly confident in some areas, it seemed she lacked in others, and a lack of self-confidence could result in some very nasty emotions. Like possessive, bitter jealousy. Jack should know, given his own lack of confidence at one point. Not that he was exactly the picture of self-confidence nowadays.

Would it be a problem?

It was something he’d have to ask, but it could wait for now. They’d had enough heavy discussion for the moment, he thought.

They made it back to the outpost without actually saying anything to each other. Something Jack only realized as they were pulling into the garage. He supposed they both had a lot to think about. Elizabeth parked and turned off the engine.

They both sat in silence for another moment.

“Now what?” Jack asked.

“I guess we should get back to work for the moment,” Elizabeth replied. She took off her seatbelt and opened her door, but paused. “Come see me tonight. In my quarters. And bring the picture you took. I want to see it.”

He glanced at her and saw a small, almost hopeful smile on her face. “I will,” he said, returning the smile.

“Okay.”

She got out. Jack got out as well and headed into the base. There were things to do, and it would be nice to keep his mind occupied while he waited for nightfall.

…

“So did you bang her?”

Jack looked back, somewhat startled, then sighed.

“No,” he said. “We had a picnic. It was nice.”

“Nice is nice, but banging in a rover is better,” Riley said, her arms crossed beneath her huge breasts, pressing them up. He could see her tail swaying back and forth behind her, occasionally peeking out from behind one broad hip as she leaned in the doorway leading to the infirmary storage area where he’d been working for the past two hours. It was basically a restoration job, buffing and polishing all the surfaces so they looked new again.

Riley looked around. “Wow, you’re good at this.”

“Well, I was a Marine,” he replied. “We kind of specialized in menial tasks.”

“So I’ve heard. So, why didn’t you fuck her?”

“You have a really one-track mind, huh?”

“Yes,” Riley replied. “If I’m being too nosy, you can tell me to fuck off.”

He sighed, staring down at the tools he’d been using for the past few hours. Then he turned to face her and crossed his own arms, leaning against a nearby counter. He shifted, trying to look behind her, see if anyone was back there in the infirmary.

A look of excitement crossed her features as she took his meaning and, sure she was going to get some juicy personal information, something Riley seemed to treat like currency, she stepped in and closed the door behind her.

“Well?”

“You were surprisingly on the mark,” he said.

“About what?”

“About how she feels about me.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What, she propose to you?”

He snorted. “Obviously not. But she admitted that if we had sex, which we intend to, it might not necessarily end up as casual. She...likes me. A lot. And I...really like her.”

“More than any of us,” she said. He hesitated. Riley smiled. “Again, I’m not going to be offended. None of us will. Maybe Lyra might misinterpret, but she’s not here right now.”

“Yeah, more than the rest of you. You’re all great, but Elizabeth…”

“You two click. You get each other. Most of us can see that by now. So what are you going to do about it? Do you want it to turn serious?”

“I mean…” He stared at her for a moment, then heaved a sigh. “Maybe? I’m so fucking indecisive right now. I feel like I was maybe getting a grip on things and then this happens. Could it even work between us? What would we do? Where would we live?” He paused again. “Honestly, the thing that’s concerning me the most is: will she get jealous? I mean, we’re going to be here for several more weeks at least, right?”

“Maybe longer,” Riley replied. “Maureen is picking up more contracts. And I don’t think just here in this region, either.”

“Where then?”

“Elsewhere on the planet. Or maybe she’s considering it. I’m sure we’ll all have a chat about it soon. But you can leave whenever you like, technically.”

“I don’t want to leave, I’m really happy here. I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time. And not just because of the half-dozen insanely attractive older women I’m living with and screwing. This is fun. I have actual freedom and agency here.”

“Okay, okay. So, your main concern: jealousy.” She gave him an intense, surprisingly serious stare. “You want my honest analysis?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think it will be a problem. I’ve studied people for a long, long time. Specifically, I’ve studied people through a sexual lens, physically and emotionally. I’ve experienced a lot, with a vast range of people. I have an advantage being a dysil: we’re traditionally better at reading people. Even aliens, once we learn the tells. Also, it helps that I know Elizabeth better than most people she’s ever met. We all know each other quite well. And this is what I’ll say: if you two fuck, and it gets serious, and you start dating, I think Elizabeth will be, at the very least, cool with you continuing to screw the rest of us. If she ever saw us as competition, she doesn’t any longer. She’s gotten a lot more practical. She knows that none of us are looking to ‘steal you away’.” She paused. “Well, almost all of us,” she amended.

Jack felt a startled pulse of anxiety hit him. “What?! Who the fuck else is looking to get serious?” he asked.

Riley bit her lower lip, looking indecisive. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she muttered.

“Come on, don’t fucking hold out now.”

She sighed. “Maybe Lyra. Maybe. The thing about Lyra is that she’s a wildcard. I feel like me, Maureen, Sylvia, and Anya can all safely fuck you and not want to get serious. Because none of us are looking for serious right now, and because you aren’t quite our type. Sylvia and Maureen love the idea of convincing a hot twenty-something to nail their mature fifty-plus pussies, but they aren’t interested in dating them. Anya just got out of a divorce and she isn’t interested in dating at all. Neither am I. I don’t have a type, because I don’t date. Not for awhile. Maybe someday, a few decades from now. But Lyra? I don’t know. She could hook up with you and decide you’re amazing. I know she’s had casual sex before, but she’s by far the most inexperienced of us all. Physically and emotionally. So you might need to be prepared for something similar with her.”

“And what would that look like? If both of them decide I’m boyfriend material?”

She laughed. “I think Elizabeth would be okay with it. I know for a fact-” she hesitated. “Maybe it’s not my place to say. Um...let’s just say this isn’t the first time she’s shared. But Lyra? I don’t know. She likes Elizabeth plenty, and I know they’re attracted to each other. But...I just don’t know. Even with all my experience and knowledge.”

“Best guess?”

She thought for a moment, then sighed and shrugged. “Can’t give you one. Lyra’s simply too unpredictable. Honestly, she’s the hardest one to read. Even for me. My advice? Play it by ear, and listen to your heart. Also, you know, listen to them.”

“That part’s easy,” he replied.

She smiled. “That’s why I think you’ll do fine.” She opened her mouth and took a step closer to him, then hesitated, a look of pouty dejection coming onto her face. “I wanna fuck you, but I don’t want to get in Elizabeth’s way. That woman scares me. Don’t fuck anyone else today, either. You’ll enjoy the fuck session with her even more. Trust me.” She stepped forward, crossing the distance between them, and gave him a kiss on the mouth. “You’ll do fine. And, you know, if the two of you do end up together...I think that’d be pretty great.”

“You think so? You don’t think there’s too much of an age gap there?”

“No,” she replied. “Honestly, the biggest difference between the two of you is experience. You’re both pretty like each other.” She stepped back. “Okay, I’ll stop being in here and distracting you. I know you can’t be around me for too long without wanting desperately to fuck.”

“Guilty as charged,” he agreed.

She smirked, then turned and left the room. He looked down at her ass. Her thick, broad, fat ass. And her sexy tail.

Good lord was Riley an attractive woman.

Jack sighed and got back to work, trying to ignore the erection straining against his pants.

It was going to be a long day.

…

Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

He hadn’t been this nervous during the entire time he’d been here so far.

Standing before Elizabeth’s closed door, he had been waiting for close to a minute. Why was this so fucking difficult?!

“Oh, quit stalling!” he heard someone whisper harshly, and jumped in shock, barely managing not to shout in surprise.

Turning, he saw Riley sticking her head out of her own quarters. “Goddamnit, Riley!” he hissed at her.

“Just do it! Sooner you get in there, the sooner you can bang that sweet, hot, redheaded pussy!” she said.

For a reason that was probably really stupid, that calmed him. Or rather, it steamrolled over his anxiety and was a straight shot to his lust. He did really want to get in there and fuck her. If nothing else, he was positive that was going to be a fantastic experience.

Jack made himself knock.

“Come in!” Elizabeth called.

He opened the door and stepped inside. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking like she’d been waiting. No doubt she had been. She was wearing a t-shirt and some gym shorts, her feet bare. She stood up as he closed the door, turning to face him, looking equal parts anxious and welcoming. There was something almost funny about that. Given her size, her age, her profession, her confidence, it was just...weird, seeing her as anxious as a teenager on her first real date. In a way, seeing her own apprehension helped calm him more.

“Hi,” he said.

She laughed suddenly, then bit her lower lip. “Hi.” She shifted. “Sorry. I’m just-nervous.”

“I understand. Um...how do you want to do this?” he asked.

“I thought we could take a shower first.”

“That sounds good,” he said.

They both headed for the bathroom, then awkwardly tried to both get in through the door at the same time, laughed nervously, stepped back at the same time to let the other go first, then both took a step towards the door at the same time.

“Fuck, why is this so awkward?!” she asked, exasperated as she then moved through the door. She sighed. “Rhetorical question. Whatever. Let’s just get started.”

He knew part of their nervous energy came from how excited they both were. He’d been thinking about this moment ever since he’d first laid eyes on Elizabeth a few weeks ago. God, had it really been weeks since he’d first met them aboard Maureen’s ship? He watched as she took off her t-shirt, then pulled down her shorts. She discarded them both with quick movements, like she wanted to get them off before she lost her nerve. He had sympathy for her. Although having good muscle definition was basically universally good for a guy, there were still a lot of guys who found it off-putting or an outright turn-off to see it on a woman.

Especially a very tall woman.

But to him she looked like a goddess. A Valkyrie. A warrior deity of stunning beauty. Elizabeth reached in and turned the shower on, then slipped in.

“Come on,” she said.

He quickly stripped of his own clothing and joined her.

As he slipped the glass door to the shower shut, he found he couldn’t look away from her.

Here, after weeks, was Elizabeth bare before him. Something he’d seen in bits and pieces, but never all at once. Something he had desperately wanted to see. She stood with the showerhead to her back, the water cascading over her nude body.

“So...this is what I look like naked,” she murmured.

He thought that the expression on her face was the most naked thing about her right now.

“You look great,” he replied.

And she did. She really did.

She was intimidatingly tall, and built.

Her skin was tanner than it had been when he’d first seen her. And those tattoos. That barbwire circlet around her thigh, the skull and ‘crossbones’ of knives high up on her right arm, the mushroom cloud over her pussy.

She had scars, too. It was rare for people to have scars nowadays, let alone several. Medical technology being what it was, that usually meant that if someone had a scar, it was because either they couldn’t afford to get it removed, or they didn’t want to. But she seemed like the kind of person who might not get them all removed.

Everything about her seemed large. Her hips, her thighs, her breasts, her shoulders, her upper arms. All of it tempered by a tight fitness.

“So, are you just going to stare, or are we actually going to do fun stuff?” she asked.

Jack answered by stepping up to her and looking up into her emerald eyes. She was a full five inches taller than he was. He knew that intimidated or irritated a lot of guys, and he also knew that there were a lot of women out there who wouldn’t date guys shorter than them, but it didn’t seem to be a problem for either of them.

It certainly wasn’t for him.

She ducked her head and kissed him on the mouth as he moved forward.

As their lips met, it felt even more intense than it had in the garage. It was almost like an electrical spark passed between them, and they both moaned as they felt it. Elizabeth immediately deepened the kiss, slowly pushing her tongue into his mouth as she settled her hands on his back. He did the same as their tongues began to wrestle and her taste flooded his mouth. He slid his hands down to her ass and gripped it.

She had a fantastically big, well-padded ass. He ran his hands over it, then to her slick, broad hips, up again, around to the front of her body, until they settled on her breasts. They were pretty goddamned big.

Elizabeth broke the kiss briefly and stared down between them with a smile. “You’ve been wanting to do that for a really long time, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” he replied, groping them. “These are...truly amazing.”

“Come on,” she said, blowing a strand still-dry hair out of her face. “I’m sure you’ve gone to bed with a lot of women at this point. God, Riley alone has more impressive tits than I do.”

“I’m not so sure,” he murmured, “your breasts are just, uh, they’re fantastic.” He looked up into her eyes again. “You’re fantastic.”

“Apparently I am to you,” she said, then resumed kissing him.

They continued making out, twisting tongues and locking lips, hands roaming across each other’s bodies as the air grew steamy and they grew wet. He could feel the energy passing between them as they kissed, almost like a chemical reaction. It was different with her than with any of the other women. Better, more potent, more powerful.

More intense.

After a moment, he pulled back.

“There’s something I’d really like to do for you,” he said.

Her eyes lit up with excitement. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He kissed her once more, then dropped to his knees.

“Not that I don’t appreciate this,” she said as she lifted one leg and rested her foot on the nearest shelf, “but you’ve got some fierce competition. Riley is a goddess at eating pussy.”

“She’s also a goddess at sucking dick,” he replied.

“Okay, fair point.”

Jack got to it, and he made sure to take his time. They had time, and she was worth it. And he really wanted to make a good impression on her.

He started massaging her clit slowly with the tip of his tongue, resting his hands against her as he used his thumbs to gently part the lips of her pussy. He felt a shiver run through her and heard her draw in a breath. Jack spent a good few minutes teasing her, carefully riding that edge between annoying her and keeping her pleasured. He felt her tense several times, like she was about to grab him or say something to him, demand that he stop fucking around and go all in. Each time she did, he increased the pressure or the speed, or gave her a few strong strokes of his tongue that elicited loud moans of ecstasy from her.

Finally, after almost five minutes of this, he went all in, and began using more of his oral arsenal. He put his tongue to full use and began to use his lower lip. Elizabeth had, at some point along the way, lost the ability to make coherent sentences. Soon, all he was getting out of her were words and loud moans of sexual bliss.

He wondered exactly how many of the women were somewhere very close, listening in, because this place was not well soundproofed.

Each of them, even Lyra at one point, had expressed some special sort of interest in his and Elizabeth’s coupling.

She orgasmed abruptly and screamed in pleasure.

When she was finished, (and she hadn’t crushed his head between her fantastically powerful thighs), he kept going

“Oh my God, Jack...oh my God, you don’t-you don’t have to keep going,” she moaned.

It wasn’t a command to stop, merely information that he could stop if he wanted.

He didn’t want to.

So he kept at it, and soon slipped a finger into her. She screamed in a new level of pleasure. He began fucking her with his finger, finding her fantastically slick and very tight inside. Pressing rapidly up into that most sensitive spot that all women seemed to have, he soon switched to using two fingers. At that point, he was genuinely concerned Elizabeth might fall down. She was leaning back against the nearest wall, grabbing onto whatever was available, lost in incoherent, delirious pleasure as he worked her vagina as well as he could.

This time, the orgasm was even more intense.

He kept going, licking and finger-fucking her, feeling her vaginal muscles clench wildly around his two fingers now, a hot spray of her sex juices coming out of her. Above him, she screamed at the top of her lungs, and he was very grateful that everyone who could hear them was well aware of what was happening.

This time, when she was finished, Elizabeth gently pushed against his head.

“Enough!” she gasped, panting. He looked up, seeing her large, pale breasts swaying rapidly as she caught her breath. “Fucking...shit...fuck…” she panted.

Feeling pretty good about himself, Jack stood up and used some of the water that was coming from beside her head, as she was partially blocking the stream, to clean up.

“So was that good?” he asked.

“You know it was you fucking smartass,” she murmured, her eyes closed. She sat down suddenly and leaned back against one of the walls. “Oh my God. That was so intense, I thought I was going to fall over. Fuck.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her eyes still closed. Jack stood before her, looking down at her, feeling pretty good about the encounter.

She opened her eyes suddenly and looked up at him. “Okay. So. You really earned a blowjob. Full on, all the stops pulled out blowjob. Do you want to come on my face?” she asked. “I’ve almost never let anyone do that, but I have to admit that I really, really like you, and I know much guys can be into that. So if you want, I’ll let you do it.”

“I’d like that,” he replied, because he had to admit, there was an intense thrill in convincing a woman to do something for you that she never did for anyone else.

“Okay then.” As she got up onto her knees, a look of mild worry crossed her face. “So, I gotta admit, it’s been awhile since I’ve done this. Like...for a real dick. I guess I’ve sort of kept in practice since hooking back up with the girls, because they have a few of those special strap-ons that lets you feel it all, but I haven’t been with an actual guy in...awhile.”

He hesitated. “Like, how long?” he asked, honestly curious.

She bit her lower lip. “Three years.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

She shrugged and pushed some of her wet hair back from out of her face. “I don’t know.” She rolled her eyes. “I do know. Last guy I hooked up with...it went bad. I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now. But that’s why. And he wasn’t the first. It’s almost never gone really bad with a woman. So I was just...women felt safer, for awhile.”

“Okay. Well...I hope you feel safe with me.”

“I do,” she replied immediately, her gaze honest and intense. “I really do.”

“I’m glad.”

She smiled suddenly. “I bet you want me to get on with this blowjob, huh?”

“I...wouldn’t mind,” he replied.

She laughed. “All right. Here I go.”

It was still weird to see her nervous, but he had a better idea of why she was at least. He couldn’t help but wonder what might have gone wrong with her last relationship with a man. He couldn’t imagine he, whoever he’d been, would survive abusing Elizabeth...but there were all kinds of abuse, weren’t there?

He hoped it wasn’t that serious.

And then he lost his focus as she took his cock into her hot, wet mouth. He exhaled sharply, then let out a low groan as her lips slipped up and down over his head several times in rapid succession. She had wonderful lips.

“Oh fuck, Elizabeth,” he whispered, which only seemed to invigorate her further.

She started bobbing her head, and looking down, he found himself looking at an utterly surreal sight. Since he’d first laid eyes on her, he’d imagine having sex with Elizabeth, being with Elizabeth, getting his dick sucked by her.

Imagination was one thing, reality was something else entirely.

That thrill of excitement from convincing a badass woman to do this for him, like what he’d felt when he’d hooked up with Maureen, came back to him in a rush. It was powerful, a lot more powerful, with Elizabeth.

She was a type of hardcore woman he could truly understand, given they’d both come from similar backgrounds. He knew what it took to make it in the Marines, especially for someone like Elizabeth. Her size and natural attitude would make people want to challenge her far more than usual, and that had to harden you. Though he was glad to see that it hadn’t kicked the kindness out of her. It had made her kind of ferocious though. The look she was giving him was wonderfully intense, her green eyes seeming to glow as she bobbed her head.

Then, suddenly, she took it out of her mouth and started licking it, lavishing his cock with pure, potent pleasure as she dragged her tongue all across it.

“Fuck!” he groaned, trembling and shivering, enjoying every second of this oral bliss.

She let out a little laugh, looking more sure of herself, and a bit satisfied, and he felt the hot puff of her breath hit his dick. She continued licking, then licked up the entire bottom length of his cock and popped it back into her mouth. He moaned loudly as a fresh wave of pleasure hit him as she began rubbing the head against the inside of her cheek.

Jack put his hand on the back of her head out of instinct as she resumed bobbing it up and down, sucking him off with a wonderfully smooth precision. She kept at it for a good several minutes, getting him going, just buzzing with sexual energy. The pleasure flowed out of his core and into his body as her wonderful mouth and lips and tongue went to work.

Soon he found himself pushing a little on the back of her head.

After a moment, she took his cock out of her mouth again and looked up at him. He thought she was going to tell him to stop.

“Don’t be afraid to get rough with me,” she said.

“You sure?” he asked.

She just smirked. “I can take it.”

“You realize what that’s inviting, right?”

“I’m a fifty year old ex-Marine, Jack. I know what I’m doing,” she said.

“Okay, you asked for it.”

As soon as she put his dick back in her mouth, he put both hands on her head and pulled it against himself. She let out a startled sound, but she didn’t try to stop him, didn’t push against him, just settled her hands on his hips to steady herself. He started fucking her face, pushing his cock deeper into her mouth, and soon was hitting the back of her throat.

“You like that?” he asked, looking down at her. “You like that, you little slut?” It occurred to him, as he said it, that it might be the exact wrong thing to say. He and Elizabeth still didn’t know each other sexually too well and he’d kind of just said it.

Again, he was worried he might piss her off, but she didn’t seem pissed.

She just moaned in response.

Okay, so, she was into some of the rougher stuff. He could do that. He could enjoy that. Jack went harder, jamming his dick down her throat, and groaned louder as he felt her swallow. He pushed his hips forward while pulling her head into his crotch, putting his dick down her throat as far as he could manage it, and held it there for several seconds. She swallowed a few times, and he kept holding it there. Then he pulled back.

Elizabeth took it out of her mouth and coughed for a moment.

“Too rough for you?” he asked with, admittedly, an air of slight cockiness.

“Oh fuck you,” she said, and put it back in her mouth.

He grabbed her head again and started violently sliding it up and down his cock. Admittedly, what he got out of this wasn’t so much physical pleasure (although there was still definitely that), but the sexual thrill of being so rough and forceful with her, and her letting him do it. Jack kept it up for another half minute or so, then let go of her head, just keeping one hand on the back of it. She took the meaning and got to work maximizing his pleasure.

It didn’t take much longer for her to get him off.

“Gonna come!” he warned her.

Elizabeth pulled him out of her mouth a few seconds later as she crouched down further and angled her face up at him, then began jacking him off rapidly.

He watched, utterly enraptured, as he began shooting his load.

The first of his seed left him in a hard spurt, a thick one, that landed across her right cheek, eye, and her forehead. She closed one eye and kept going, letting him give her quite the facial. He moaned loudly, bliss running wildly through him, as he came on her face. More of his seed left him, his cock twitching and jerking each time, releasing a fresh pulse of bliss with each shot of it. It got onto her roughly beautiful face, all over it, covering it. She closed both her eyes and after several seconds ended up opening her mouth and jacking him off directly into it, only making the whole thing that much more exciting.

He groaned her name several times, lost in his passionate pleasure, until she had emptied him. Then she put it in her mouth, closed her lips, and sucked as she slowly pulled it back out. He let out a wordless shout of bliss as she did that.

“There,” Elizabeth said after she’d finished. “Congrats, I haven’t done this for over a decade. That’s how much I like you.”

“Thank you,” he replied, panting. That had been one intense orgasm. “Really.”

She laughed as she got up and blindly shifted over to the shower, her eyes still closed. “You’re welcome, Jack.”

CHAPTER 03

They spent the next few moments in silence, basking in the glow of their orgasms, just cleaning up. After a little while, Jack grabbed a washrag and began to run it across her broad back. She let out a sound of pleasure as he did that.

“Why are you so sweet?” she murmured.

“I don’t know,” he replied quietly. He was silent for several moments, actually considering it. “I guess it’s because...I’ve seen a lot of pain and suffering and misery and despair. I hate it. I hate seeing good people suffer. And I want to make things better if I can. I just want people to be happy, you know? Not all the time, I know that’s impossible, but I’ve seen what a huge impact a simple act of kindness can have on someone.”

Elizabeth was quiet for a long moment, then she turned around and wrapped him in a hug. She held him against her slick, bare body.

“You’re a really great person,” she murmured as he hugged her back. “I honestly don’t know if Maureen was just dead on with you, or we just got really lucky.”

“I’m not great,” he said. “I’m just, you know, doing what most people.”

“Jack,” she replied, pulling back slightly and looking down at him. “You know that isn’t true.” She pursed her lips. “Most people can’t be bothered. Most people are only nice when it suits them. Most people want something, and they’ll fake it until they get what they want.”

“Most people?” he asked.

She sighed. “Enough people. Enough of them are cruel, or apathetic, or greedy. It’s nice to see genuine kindness. And I at least believe that you are genuine. You’ve been nothing but great to all of us here since you first arrived. And you aren’t just being polite or just doing it for the pussy. I can tell the difference, and if I can’t, I know Riley can. She loves you, and that’s pretty much how we vet guys usually, if she’s around.”

“Good to know,” he said, and she laughed.

“Come on, let’s go to bed.”

They finished washing up, killed the water, and dried off. Despite having just enjoyed a big orgasm, Jack found himself revving up for another go with Elizabeth. And he could sense it in her too, like a sexual energy crackling between the two of them as they crossed her quarters to her bed. They laid down on it and for the first moment, laid on their sides, facing each other.

“How many of them do you think are out there listening, right now?” he asked.

She laughed. “Given how fucking perverted and comfortable we all are around each other, I’d say every damn one of them. I swear, they’ve all been bugging me to hook up with you.”

“Same, actually,” he said. “I think at least some of them knew of the...potential, of what might happen, if we hook up.”

Her smile faltered. “Are you still okay with that?”

“Very.”

“Why?” she asked.

“So you know how you feel about me?” he asked. She nodded. “Well, imagine that that’s how I feel about you.”

She rolled her eyes and laughed again. “Yeah, but it makes sense for me to feel that way about you.”

“Does it?”

“Duh. It doesn’t make sense for you-”

“Elizabeth,” he said. “Let’s not analyze. We agreed we were going to give this a shot, and try to enjoy it. I’ve been enjoying it so far. You seem to be.”

“Yeah, obviously.”

“So let’s keep that going.”

She sighed softly. “You’re right. Okay.”

“Before we start: what position and can I come inside you?”

“Missionary, and yes,” she replied.

“Exactly what I wanted to hear.”

Their lips and hands found each other again as they came together on the bed. And then he was lost in her once more. Touching her, tasting her, experiencing all that she was. Elizabeth kissed him with an intense passion, her hands running across his body, her tongue probing his mouth again. They made out until she pulled him on top of her and spread her legs. Jack quickly settled between her thick, powerful thighs.

“You ready?” he asked as he rested his cock at the entrance of her pussy and rubbed it up and down, between her lips.

She shivered. She felt wonderfully wet.

“I’m ready,” she replied.

He slipped inside of her.

They both moaned at the same time. His rock-hard cock penetrated her slowly, working its way into her wonderfully tight pussy. Her heated slickness was intensely gratifying to slide into. Jack made it all the way inside of her, and quickly began stroking smoothly into her.

“Oh yeah...oh fuck right there…” she moaned, grabbing at his back. “Oh my fucking God, Jack. Holy shit that’s just-that feels so good…” she whispered.

“Yes,” he groaned, “it does. Fuck. Your pussy…”

“Yeah?” she asked, grinning up at him. He was propping himself up on his hands, staring down at her large body, her huge breasts, her beautiful face and sexy, wet red hair.

“It’s so good,” he panted. “Oh fuck, it’s so good…”

“Is it the best?” she asked, grinning broader, spreading her legs wider, inviting him in deeper.

He immediately began humping her faster and harder, slipping deeper into her, making her moan. “Yes,” he replied, becoming hopelessly entangled in his lust and emotional connection to her.

“Say it,” she said.

“It’s the best. Your pussy is the best. It’s the best,” he replied, staring at her, though his eyes were losing focus. “Holy fuck, this is good.”

“That’s right,” she murmured. “Fuck it good.”

He moaned her name and kept screwing her.

Jack lost himself over the next segment of time. He had no idea how long they fucked, only that he was totally lost in her. In her wonderfully tight, hot, wet vagina, her beautiful green eyes, her seductive and alluring mouth, her vivid red hair. And he could not deny the intense, deeply emotional connection he felt as he made love with her. It was in a dozen different things. The way they looked at each other, the way she articulated her body against his own, the way she seemed to sync up with him perfectly, anticipating his every move. The way she touched him, so lovingly. But it was there at a deeper level, an unspoken level.

He kissed her deeply as they made love and she grabbed at him, wrapping her strong, long legs around his midsection. He let himself lay against her, feeling her huge, bare tits pressing against his skin, and wrapped his own arms around her.

They entered the final stretch of their lovemaking then, going faster and harder, panting, emotions and sexual pleasure swelling, mixing, converging.

She orgasmed first, and it was an intense, full-body climax.

Elizabeth began moaning and writhing as she gripped him more tightly, and he felt her vaginal muscles constrict suddenly, fluttering and twitching, clenching around his cock and spiking the pleasure. Then a hot gush of her sex juices began coming out of her and she let out a loud cry of pure bliss.

That was what pushed him over the edge.

Jack groaned loudly as his own orgasm triggered, and it was one of the most powerful in recent memory. He knew immediately that it came from fucking Elizabeth bareback, from the anticipation, not just of not having sex for most of the day, but also from wanting to fuck her for weeks and her recent teasing and all the sexual tension between them. It was, all of it, being released as he started coming inside of her.

It felt like an earthquake, a tidal wave, a supernova going off.

It felt like his very core was spasming as he began to release his seed inside of her. His hips jerked forward automatically as he cried out in pure, unbridled sexual ecstasy. Each time his cock twitched and his hips slammed against her own, forcing him deep into her, a thick spurt of his seed was pumped into her quivering pussy and a fresh pulse of blinding, overwhelming bliss was sent like a shockwave through his body.

The orgasm seemed to go on forever for both of them.

He was lost in it, lost in her, the two of them locked together in an emotionally overwhelming ride of sexual union.

Slowly, it ended.

Jack was gradually deposited back into his body, and he found himself panting, gasping for breath, laying atop her. They were both slicked with sweat, and it took several minutes to come down from the high of the shared orgasm.

“We need another shower,” Elizabeth murmured, the first to break the silence.

Jack nodded and slowly pulled out of her.

…

Fifteen minutes later, they lay back in her bed together, basking in the afterglow of the orgasm after cleaning up and changing the sheets.

“Oh,” Elizabeth murmured, again the first to break the companionable silence that had settled between them as they lay nude, embracing on her bed, “your picture. I want to see it.”

“Right,” Jack said, slowly getting up. “Uh, where’s your tablet? I sent it to your tablet.”

“There,” she said, pointing to the desk. “Yeah, I remember getting a notification. I was just too distracted to check it.”

He crossed the room, grabbed it, and returned to bed with it. Passing it to her, he got settled again. She fired it up and opened the notification. Jack had spent about half an hour toying with the image. Screwing with the hues, the tones, the colors. Cropping it very slightly. Playing with the focus, and toying with a dozen other things before finally being satisfied that it was going to be as good as he was going to be able to get it.

“Oh my God,” Elizabeth said, sounding genuinely surprised. “Jack, this is amazing...you took this?”

“Yeah. I mean, I did some editing. But I mean, you were there.”

“Stupid question,” she murmured. “Just...this is amazing. This looks, like, pro. Like this could be the cover of something.”

He drifted closer to her. She was holding the tablet up overhead, staring at it. He looked up at it. He thought it looked pretty good, but he knew he was too close to the subject matter to really be objective about it. He thought the flock of alien birds looked pretty cool, as they stood out from the background in just the right way, and there were rays of sunlight peeking from around the mountain range in the background.

“Is it really that good?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied with conviction. “Did you take classes?”

“No, not really. I studied stuff here and there, and I taught myself how to use some software. Mostly I just...eyeball it.”

“You’re a fucking natural then, fuck,” she whispered. “I know what your second career can be.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes!” She turned it off and set it on the nightstand, then looked over at him. “You should be taking more pictures out here. I still won’t want to be in them, and I’m sorry, it’s nothing to do with you, but some of the others would love it. You should show that to them, ask them. Riley loves to pose, and Sylvia and Anya and even probably Maureen would be amenable to it. God, if she wants to go back to business after this, I’m sure you could whip up some fucking epic poster pic of her in front of a mountain or something.”

“Maybe,” he replied. “Yeah, I’ll ask them. I’m glad you like it.”

She smiled and kissed him, hugged him to her. “Will you sleep in here with me tonight?” she asked.

“Yeah, of course,” he replied.

She sighed suddenly. “I promised myself I was going to spend the night alone after we had sex. I wanted a clear head so I could more accurately judge how it went, how I felt, but...asking you to leave just feels wrong. Having you here with me just feels so right.”

“It does,” he agreed.

“Do you hear that?” she murmured after a moment.

He listened, then nodded. “Yeah, it’s raining again.”

She pulled him closer. “I love the rain.”

“So do I.”

He felt like there was more to say, a lot more, but he also felt like now wasn’t the time. She was right. They needed time to pass, things to settle, before examining the situation. Although Jack had the notion that it would be awhile before that actually happened. Maybe not until they were ready to leave this planet.

But until then…

They could ride the high, at least.

He got up and turned off the lights, then got back into bed with her, beneath the blankets. They curled up together, nude and warm and happy, and slept.

…

They made love twice more in the night.

Once he was woken by her and she pretty much dragged him onto her and they screwed until they both had come and then he promptly fell back asleep.

The second time he woke from a particularly intense sex dream, woke her and, once she opened her legs for him in permission, he fucked her again.

The next time he opened his eyes, sunlight was streaming in through the windows and she was shifting around in the bed. As he came fully awake, she sat up and looked down at him with a smile that conveyed both sexual excitement and uncertainty.

“So...how do you feel about being ridden by me?” she asked.

“Great,” he replied immediately. He had terrible morning wood.

“Oh thank God,” she said, tossing the blankets back and then throwing a leg over him. “I’ve met a lot of people who don’t want to be ridden by me because they’re scared I’ll crush them,” she murmured as she got into position.

“You won’t get that from me,” he said. “Honestly, I’d let a fucking Amazonian ride me.”

She raised an eyebrow as she got them lined up. “You’d fuck an Amazonian? I know a few.”

“I would pay for the pleasure of fucking an Amazonian,” he replied.

“You’re an interesting man,” she said, then slipped him inside of her.

And then there was no more talking, just moaning in pure sexual bliss as she rode him.

He groaned loudly, grasping her big, firm hips as she fucked him, staring at her huge breasts as they bounced in rhythm with her. The pleasure washed over him as he laid back and enjoyed the experience, his cock feeling like a thing pure, unfiltered rapture inside of her. Getting fucked raw first thing in the morning was one of the absolute best things in the galaxy, in his experience. And it seemed to be for her, too.

Elizabeth was letting out a series of gasping shouts that were getting higher in pitch and the bed began to shake as she fucked him faster and harder, putting her powerful hips and thighs to use. She fucked herself with his cock until she had an intense orgasm, and he let out his own shout of bliss, feeling that hot ecstasy of her vaginal muscles fluttering and clenching wildly around his cock as she continued to ride him.

Soon, he was coming too.

They came together, shouting and moaning, going and going until they were both finished.

Then she took a deep breath, let it out, and got off of him. Holding a hand over her pussy, she moved into the bathroom and started up the shower. After a moment, he got up and joined her, feeling awake and alert and ready to tackle the day.

“The only problem with morning sex,” she said as he got in, finding her with the showerhead aimed up at her pussy, her legs spread, “is that you gotta shower twice. Or, well, I do. Because I still need to work out.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

They spent the next few minutes showering, and he kept waiting for her to say something, good or bad. When she didn’t, he spoke up.

“So...how are you feeling about...you know, what happened?” he asked.

She smiled. “Good. Still really good. You?”

“Fantastic,” he replied.

They finished showering up, dried off, pulled on some simple clothes, and then went over to the gym. As they did, Jack got the impression of just barely missing at least one or two people slipping out of the hallway. No doubt trying to listen for more sex. He had to admit, he wanted to do it again. Four times now, and he wanted her more than ever. But they hit the gym, got through a half hour workout, then got through another shower without managing to fuck a fifth time. Though it was a near thing. The only thing that stopped them was when Maureen interrupted them and told them there was going to be a meeting over breakfast.

Before long, they were dressed and sitting at one of the tables in the mess hall with the others, who were all staring at them with smiles plastered on their faces.

“So...how was it?” Riley asked, the first to break the silence.

Elizabeth sighed. “I knew you were all going to be like this. It was fantastic.”

“That much was obvious,” Maureen murmured as she buttered some toast, “we could hear you all night long. I’ve never been able to get a reaction out of you like that.”

“Yeah, you two must fit together really well,” Sylvia said with a smirk.

“Are you all going to tease us about this?” Elizabeth asked.

“I think it might just be you getting teased, Jack just looks happy,” Riley said.

“I mean, I got to have sex with Elizabeth, why wouldn’t I be ecstatic?” he replied.

“That’s true, she’s wonderful in bed,” Anya said.

“All right,” Maureen said in her ‘enough playing around’ voice, garnering everyone’s attention, “let’s get to business. At this point, we’re essentially done with the serious work of fixing up this outpost. All the main components have been replaced or fixed, the big pieces of equipment repaired or given maintenance. All that’s truly left is a lot of grunt work, which we can probably finish at a leisurely pace of two or so more weeks, maybe three. That being said, we have a few other things that could use some doing outside the base. Anya still needs her geological survey sites visited, to see if there’s any salvageable data. There’s also some more plant and animal samples that Lyra would like collected, if possible. Given the...recent developments between the two of you,” she looked at Jack and Elizabeth, “I thought it might be best if you were to tackle at least some of these on your own. Maybe you could drive out to the first geo site today.”

“Sure you’ll be okay here without us?” Elizabeth asked.

Maureen laughed. “I’m sure we’ll manage somehow.”

“What do you say, Jack?” Elizabeth asked, looking at him now.

“Sounds great to me,” he replied.

“Perfect. We’ll get it done.”

“No rush,” Maureen said, “make a day of it. That’s what we’re here for, right?”

Elizabeth glanced at her. “Maybe...although I’m beginning to wonder if you and I have different ideas of what we’re here for.”

Maureen shrugged easily. “We’re all here for the same thing, but we’re all also here for our own reasons. Some of us just have difficulty ferreting out exactly what our own personal reasons might be.” She took a drink from a mug of steaming coffee.

Jack looked between the two women uncertainly. Obviously some kind of subterfuge was passing between them, but he wasn’t entirely sure what it was.

“Uh-huh,” was all Elizabeth said, and went back to eating.

CHAPTER 04

Although her mood seemed to have soured, or at least dimmed, somewhat during breakfast, by the time they had geared up and were back in the rover, Elizabeth’s mood was as bright and warm as the sun shining down on them.

While they had enjoyed drifting off together, nude and comfortable, listening to the sound of rain, this morning the region had gone back to its natural bright and sunny atmosphere. As a result, the ground was pretty much hard, baked, and cracked again, and made for easy driving at least. Not that the rover would have too much trouble with a lot of mud, but it would make the whole affair more pleasant to deal with overall.

He and Elizabeth sat in their seats, Elizabeth behind the wheel, both of them geared up from head to toe in their dark power armor. This time around, they had their helmets on and sealed, and he’d brought along with him not just his pistol but a full-on assault rifle as well. This was an actual, real assignment.

He glanced at Elizabeth.

Well, for the most part.

Jack had doubts that retrieving data from an old survey center was going to turn into something dangerous. Then again, he thought the flight out here was going to be a simple affair and he’d ended up at death’s door before that was through.

“So...I thought maybe we should get to know each other more,” Elizabeth said after about five minutes of driving. “I know we’ve been talking for a few weeks now, but, save for a few in-depth discussions, I feel like it’s all been kind of surface-level. If we’re going to be having sex, I’d like to know you more, and be known by you more.”

“I’m okay with that,” Jack replied. “Got any questions?”

She considered it as they drove through the desert and Jack took a moment to look out the window to his right. Despite being such a desolate place, it was beautiful in its own way. The unique terrain and distant horizon and the way the sun saturated everything, the color of the light just a bit different than the one he had grown up with, giving the world a slight alien slant that somehow accentuated and mystified even the most mundane things.

It made him want to take pictures.

That was a desire that was reawakening in him.

“Why did you start taking pictures?” Elizabeth asked, as though reading his mind.

He considered it before responding, wondering the same thing himself, then sighed. “Honestly? To impress a girl.”

Elizabeth snorted. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. I guess not a specific girl, I thought it would just, you know, make me more interesting on the whole.”

“If it makes you feel better, it worked.”

“Yeah, it’s...nice,” he admitted. “It got left in the dust after signing up with the Marines, but it’s been nice to find out that I’m apparently still good at it.”

“You’re really fucking good at it.”

“Thanks. But yeah, I picked it up in high school. Grabbed a simple camera, took a few pictures in a forest outside my home settlement. First thing I took a picture of was a hawk in mid-flight against rays of sunlight coming through some tall trees. Got really lucky there, honestly. I dedicated most of a Saturday to walking around that forest, looking for cool places to photograph. I noticed on that first day this...feeling. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s just this feeling I get, almost like I’m shifting something into focus, screwing with the settings, and then, suddenly, all at once, it’s like there’s a flashing sign that says THAT’S IT! and it snaps into focus and I know I’ve got the shot that I wanted to get or was supposed to get or whatever. People call it intuition or gut reaction or instincts.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I’m pretty good with a sniper rifle,” Elizabeth said after a moment. “I remember getting a similar feeling. Like you can just tell when you’ve got that perfect shot lined up. Bit more of a science with sniping, but there’s an art to it.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I wasn’t too bad at it myself.” He glanced at her. “What about you? Any creative side to you?”

She was silent for a moment. “Well, I have been known to shoot film.”

“Seriously?” he asked.

She sighed. “Yeah.”

“You don’t like it?”

“No, I do. It’s just...the first time I was handed a camera was when I was just a Private First Class and we were working with some documentary crew no one wanted to deal with. Their cameraperson got really sick and they didn’t have anyone else. I was the most unpopular person around at the time, so the CO shoved it at me and basically had me fuck off. Although it was a nice change of pace, and I was surprisingly good at framing shots. It was nice. It’s just...it has some shitty connotations. I was unpopular for all the usual reasons: I’m tall and strong, I’m a woman, I don’t immediately fucking submit when some fucking asshole shouts at me.” She sighed suddenly. “Goddamnit, I keep promising myself I won’t derail every fucking conversation we have with stupid shit that’s happened to me in my past, but…”

“I understand,” he said.

“I don’t want you to think I’m a fucking whiner or a fucking man-hater or something. I hate people based on what they do. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that I’m a fucking misandrist, which is bullshit. I’ve encountered plenty of shitty women. It’s just that I’ve encountered far more shitty men. But I’m fair, or at least I try to be.”

“I get it,” he said. “Don’t worry. I don’t have a bad impression of you in that regard.”

She seemed relieved. “That’s good. I guess I was just worried about some of us maybe having to pretend we liked each other because, even though yes, we can technically all leave whenever we want, I get the feeling none of us wants to. Although if you had turned out bad we’d just make you leave. But it seemed like everything has turned out for the best.” She paused, considering. “I guess, from the way my life has gone, I’m always waiting for the bad thing to happen.”

“I get that, too,” he said. “You keep looking for the flaw, the problem, assuming you’re missing something. It’s too good to be true. In what way is this fucked that I’m missing?”

“Exactly.” She smiled, maybe a little grimly. “We get each other in that regard, at least. Riley and Sylvia are pretty whimsical in how they live their lives. Maureen is...reserved, but I think ultimately she’s good enough at what she does, or figuring out how to do things, that she thinks she has control of her life almost all of the time. Lyra is, well, she’s got some anxiety problems. Anya...hmm. I think she’s more upset than she lets on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think her divorce is bothering her more than she’s admitting. But she can be stubborn in her own way, so we can’t really help her directly unless she asks for it. I think this vacation is good for her, but it can hurt. A lot.” Something beeped and she glanced at the display built into the dash. “We’re almost there,” she said.

Jack looked ahead. They were approaching a huge cliff face that rose a good two or even three hundred feet above them and extended for quite a ways in both directions.

“Let me guess: it’s up there,” he said.

She sighed. “Yep. Hold on…”

Elizabeth brought them to a halt a hundred feet shy of the cliff sheer and punched something into the dashboard. A hum sounded. He watched the screen. The rover had built-in sensors, which could sense a number of things, one of which was geography related. He saw a 3D image of the cliff face appear on the screen, and the graphic of a sensor scan sweeping across it. Abruptly, a red line appeared, slanted and uneven, cutting up diagonally across the face.

“There,” she said. “A path. Four feet across most of the way through. It leads all the way to the top. We can take it, or we can drive around and find another way up. You game?”

“I’m game,” he replied.

She smirked and then drove on. She parked again once they got within a dozen yards, got out, and locked the vehicle down after making sure they had all their gear. Elizabeth contacted Maureen back at the base over the radio, and he listened to her update her while he looked up the path they were to take. He could see it now, and it looked relatively stable, but...it didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Well, these suits of armor could take quite a lot of punishment if push came to shove. He looked over as Elizabeth wrapped it up.

“Okay, let’s go,” she said, walking off.

He let her take the lead and they began walking up the path.

“You’ve got a really fat ass,” he murmured, staring at her backside.

She snorted. “Riley’s got a fat ass, I’ve got a big ass,” she replied.

“Fair point.”

“So tell me, am I the biggest woman you’ve ever screwed?”

“Oh yeah. By far. The most I’ve fucked is a woman about my height.”

“Would you actually have sex with an Amazonian?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied immediately, thinking about the unique group of women. They were, at one point, a part of the military, what most people referred to as a gimmick. Though it had been quite the effective ‘gimmick’ from what he’d heard. They had gone looking for tall, tough women looking to join up in the military and had gotten them to agree to all manner of genetic modification. What ultimately came out of this was a group of human women, (he didn’t know how many, he’d heard from several hundred to several thousand), who averaged around seven feet in height, had enormous strength, great reflexes, and excelled in combat.

They’d stayed with the military for a decade until suddenly they were all discharged. No one seemed to be sure why, but the general consensus was that it had been someone’s pet project, and that someone had fallen out of favor, and could no longer keep them around, and the people who wanted them gone finally got their way. Not that he understood why. He’d fought with an Amazonian twice now, (with as in alongside, thank God), as given how chaotic some warzones could get, you could end up fighting alongside mercenaries and contractors, and both times they were absolutely hardcore, badass professionals.

They’d been some of the best fighters he’d ever seen.

They had also been some of the most attractive women he’d ever seen.

“You know, I know a lot of guys talk tough but I’m friends with a few Amazonians. They have such a hard time getting laid,” Elizabeth said.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yeah. We commiserate sometimes. Can’t tell you the amount of times they had a date with a guy, got to the bedroom, and he couldn’t manage or ducked out at the last minute. To be fair, they are really intimidating.” She was silent for a few seconds. “You know, Jack...if the circumstances are right, after we’re done here on this planet, I could actually hook you up with an Amazonian or two.”

“Seriously?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m still in semi-regular contact with a few, and from what I remember, they’re always on the lookout for a chance to get laid by a cute guy who isn’t afraid of them.”

“Okay so, practically speaking, would I actually be able to satisfy them? Given the difference in size?” he asked.

She laughed. “Considering we did just fine, I’m going to say yes, you’ll be fine.”

“All right...so you’d really be cool with hooking me up with other women?” he asked.

“You’re fucking five of my friends. Now that we’ve finally fucked, I imagine we’re going to be fucking them together soon. Are you honestly surprised?”

“I just...thought it might be different. This particular situation we found ourselves in right now is pretty unique, and me fucking everyone else was already established, before you and I hooked up,” Jack replied.

“Fair point. But put it this way: I’m open to sharing. Even if we-” she paused. “I mean, if we, you know, get serious, I’m open to...you know, being open.”

“Good to know,” he said.

She began to reply, but then stopped suddenly, her fist raised, her helmet angled to the right. They were about three quarters of the way up the cliff-side trail now. It had been slow but smooth going, the path holding up pretty well. Though it narrowed in some areas, it hadn’t gotten too bad so far. It looked like that might change, although not necessarily because of the path.

He followed her gaze and saw what she saw immediately.

A flock of birds, big birds, coming in steady. Making a beeline right for them.

“Crap,” Jack said.

“We might have to fight,” Elizabeth replied, getting her rifle out.

Jack did the same, checking it over and then taking aim. “Not exactly the most ideal place to fight from,” he murmured.

“No, and they’re coming fast. Okay,” she crouched and took aim. There was just enough space on the trail to do so. Jack did the same. “Get ready.”

He raised the scope and checked out the birds. They looked a lot meaner up close. They had a similar lizard-like skin as the wolf-lizards he’d fought earlier. They had big, shiny, sharp talons and huge beaks that looked like they could rip someone’s arm off. They had crazed red eyes that caught the sunlight and reflected it, making them look even worse. There were a dozen or so of them, flapping rapidly right towards them, gaining height.

“Get ready,” Elizabeth murmured.

Jack was tracking them. “I’m ready,” he confirmed.

“They might just be passing over us. I’d like to avoid killing them if that’s all they’re doing, but we’ll wait and see…”

They didn’t have to wait long.

As they drew closer, suddenly, the three in the front of the flock began dive-bombing right for them.

“Okay, that’s it! Fire!” Elizabeth snapped, punctuating her command with a pull of her own trigger. Jack fired at almost the exact same instant, both their rifles sparking at the same time, each zeroed on one of the dive-bombing birds. They were massive. Jack guessed their wingspans were somewhere between twelve and sixteen feet. The first shots connected dead on and the birds’ heads burst like they had bombs in them, send them spiraling to the ground some two or three hundred feet below.

“Shift fire!” Elizabeth called.

Jack immediately turned his attention to the main cluster while she took out the third of the initial trio. He opened fire, the assault rifle rattling in his hands as he released bursts of fire into the group of birds. They squawked and shrieked as the lead cut into their ranks. Jack felt a stab of regret as he took one down, then punched a sizable hole through the wing of another and sent it into a death spiral towards the ground.

He’d fought alien wildlife before, and rarely did he feel anything but regret. In pretty much every scenario, he couldn’t see them as doing anything but hunting for food or maybe protecting their environment, or even their family. But that was the way with a lot of animals: they made it really them-or-you, so it had to be them.

As he shifted aim and managed to get a burst into the head of another creature, sending it plummeting, Elizabeth called for a cease fire.

He immediately stopped shooting, realizing why a second later: the others were retreating now. Just over half had been killed in the attack, and apparently the rest had decided that it would make no sense to keep going.

“Damn buzzards,” Elizabeth muttered as she got back to her feet and reloaded. She peered carefully over the edge of the cliff path. “We’re going to have to remember to grab a few of those. Lyra will want to take a look at them.”

Jack agreed as he reloaded his own weapon.

Once they took another look around and assured themselves that they weren’t going to be attacked by something else, the pair resumed their walk. They reached the apex of the path a few minutes later and found themselves standing on another huge plain of cracked, sun-baked earth, broken up by the occasional cluster of cacti-trees and mounds of dirt. Dead ahead, maybe a hundred yards off, was the building they were looking for.

It looked strange, out there all by itself. The only sign of sentient life or civilization in the entire area, as far as the eye could see.

“So what is this place, precisely? This geo site?” Jack asked as they started walking towards it. As he stared at the dry-as-dust earth they walked along, baking in the hot, hot sun, he found himself immensely grateful for his suit and its air-conditioning.

“It’s a survey site,” Elizabeth replied. “Just a little building, almost always unmanned, though it has the capacity to hold people, in case someone needs to spend the night out here in an emergency or something. But basically it’s just a casing for a powerful, ground-penetrating sensor array that looks for...you’re thinking about penetrating me now, aren’t you?”

“Ah...yeah,” he admitted.

She laughed. “Figured. Anyway, it searches for miles and miles underground, in all directions, for minerals, cave systems, whatever might be buried down there. Groups or some companies set these up on new planets and sell the data to mining outfits, usually.”

“Makes sense.”

As they walked, he continued to survey the scenery, both looking for creatures with hostile intent and maybe something to take a picture of. Nothing really quite seemed to jump out at him, but he did feel that nagging feeling like there was something here, he just wasn’t seeing it. Or maybe he wasn’t in the right position yet. But he couldn’t get too focused on it, this was still definitely dangerous territory, as the buzzards had just proven, and although he fully trusted Elizabeth to do her part, he sure as hell intended to do his own.

He focused on the structure itself. It was a simple gray metal building, looking like someone had stuck a giant brick upright in the ground. Just a dust-chewed, drab, two-story thing that looked sad. Actually, in an interesting sort of way, it looked kind of cool. It had that sort of beautiful desolation feel to it. Jack had encountered tons of abandoned, derelict, or otherwise uninhabited buildings during his years as a Marine, and they all had the same effect on him. A curious mixture of creepy and curious, ominous and interesting.

Kind of like a sliding scale, some were far creepier than others, especially if it was obvious something bad had happened there.

He’d come across too many empty ships with blood on the walls.

But sometimes the reason was obviously innocuous, it had just been abandoned because it no longer served a purpose or the money had run out or a shift in priorities. This place was closer to that. The windows were small and mostly intact, though very dusty. A single door, stuck in the dead center of the wall facing them, awaited.

Almost beckoning.

“Okay,” Elizabeth said, shifting her grip on her rifle, “let’s see what’s up in here.”

She took point and Jack backed her up. The door was stuck open and curious, wavy patterns of dust and grit had blown into what served the place as an ingress. There was absolutely nothing in the bare metal room, whatever might once have been there had long since been either pulled out during the initial abandonment or scavenged.

Probably not a great sign for their own mission.

They walked through the interior and the only other door in the room, coming into another room that took up the rest of the ground floor. There were a few windows, small and rectangular, higher up on the wall, letting in enough light to see by. Judging by the skeletal metal bed frame in one corner and the bare cabinets sans doors in another, it was obvious that this was where they had begrudgingly made space for the sentient component sometimes required to maintain the outpost. There were three doors in the room, all along the wall to the left. Jack also spied a simple lift tucked away in one corner and a ladder next to it.

“Check those doors out, I’ll see if there’s anything interesting in this room,” Elizabeth said.

Jack got to work. The first two doors led to what had almost certainly been rooms packed with high-tech gear and equipment, stuff that couldn’t fit on the second story. Almost all of it had been ripped out. All that was left was broken bits and shredded wires sticking out of the walls and dust. The third room led to a really, really squalid bathroom. There was just barely enough room in there for a toilet, shower, and sink, and small ones at that. The place had also been cleared out of anything that might have been useful.

He rejoined Elizabeth in the main room.

“Anything?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he confirmed.

“Same here. Come on, let’s go upstairs.”

She mounted the ladder and climbed up it briskly. He followed, looking up at her big ass. “Hey, Elizabeth?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we do doggystyle next?”

She was silent for just a second. “Yes.”

“Any particular reason you hesitated? We don’t have to,” he said as they ascended the ladder and came to the second story.

“I’ve got a thing about doggystyle,” she replied after another pause.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Later.”

“Okay.”

The second story didn’t turn out to be all that much better. There was some stuff left, but it looked like it had been gutted. The second story was where they had housed all the monitoring equipment, all the tracking gear, the data storage, everything the survey site was actually meant for. All that was left were some broken pieces of gear and a few gutted consoles.

“Anya’s not going to be happy,” Jack murmured.

“Maybe she knows some alternative,” Elizabeth replied. She fired up her radio. “Elizabeth here, need to talk to Anya, maybe Lyra.”

Jack listened in over his own radio.

“Hold on,” Maureen replied.

A pause, then Anya came on. “What’s up?”

“We’re at the site. Place is trashed, almost nothing left. Any idea where I might find a backup?” Elizabeth replied.

“Yes, actually. I thought this might happen. I managed to get schematics for these places. Are you in the second story?”

“Yep.”

“Okay. Go to the northwest corner. If there’s a console there, move it. You’re looking for a little hatch in the floor,” Anya replied.

Elizabeth walked over to one of the corners and shoved aside one of the gutted consoles. Jack joined her as she crouched. “I see it.”

“Should be a manual release button embedded in the wall to the right of it. Hit it.”

Elizabeth did so and the hatch popped open. “Done.” She pulled the panel back.

“Down in there should be a backup storage drive. It’s rectangular and black and silver. Should be slotted in down there.”

“I see it,” she said.

“Thank fucking God,” Anya muttered. “Carefully pull it out. Secure it. Bring it home.”

Elizabeth reached in and slowly extracted it. It came out with a click. She lifted it out of the hole and looked at it for a moment. It was a little dusty, but it looked intact. It was just big enough to be able to fit into one of her external hardened pockets.

“It’s secure, we’re coming home now,” she said.

“I’ll be here,” Anya replied.

“Anything else you want to do?” Elizabeth asked, looking at Jack after turning off the radio.

“I would like to try and get a few shots,” he replied.

She smiled. “Okay. I can wait.”

He smiled as well and started looking around.

CHAPTER 05

“So…” Elizabeth said after they had gotten back to base and passed the data drive off to Anya, who had been waiting in the garage for them.

“So?” Jack asked. They were still standing in the garage, beside the rover.

“You think enough time has gone by that we can have sex again?” she asked.

He looked directly at her. “Far more than enough time has gone by for that.”

She grinned fiercely. “I thought so. Race you.”

They both took off, nearly tripping over each other as they got out of the garage and ran down the hallway. Lyra happened to be walking along it. She looked back over her shoulder and her glowing white eyes went wide as she saw the two armor-clad figures barreling towards her. She pressed herself up against the wall.

“Sorry!” Elizabeth called as they went past her and slipped into her room.

As soon as they were in, she closed the door and they immediately began stripping out of their armor. It took a few moments to get it off, but soon they had a pile of power armor scattered around the bedroom that would probably enrage Lyra if she saw it, given she was the one who kept their armor up to par, and then their clothes came off after that.

Once the two were naked, they came together at the foot of her bed. Elizabeth ducked down, kissing him hard on the mouth. They made out for a long moment, tongues twisting as they touched each other, ran their hands over each others’ bodies, and then abruptly she broke the kiss and practically tossed him onto the bed.

“Holy shit!” he yelled in surprise, then laughed as he landed. “Wow.”

“Kinda fun, isn’t it?” she asked as she crawled onto the bed.

“Kinda,” he replied.

They resumed kissing and his hands roamed across her large, wonderful body. Before long he found them going down to her ass, squeezing it, feeling it, groping it. She had such a big ass. She broke from the kiss.

“You want to just fuck? I’m so fucking horny right now,” she said, her green eyes bright and alive with sexual energy.

“Yes,” he replied immediately.

“Okay. We can do doggystyle if you want.”

“I do, but if you don’t want to…”

“I do,” she said, hesitating only slightly, “let’s do it.”

“All right.”

He could tell she had some kind of hangup about doggystyle, but she was willing to do it and at this point he was worried it’d piss her off if he tried to switch it up now. Elizabeth could be oddly stubborn about certain things. So she got onto her hands and knees, and he took a moment to admire her from the side.

“You look like a fucking model,” he muttered.

She rolled her eyes. “Come on, enough with the flattery, you already got my pants off.”

“I’m not flattering you,” he said. “I mean it.”

“Well thank you, now stop making me wait,” she said, a little more firmly.

Jack quickly got behind her and found himself looking at her huge, pale ass. He ran his hands over it. Her hips were about twice as broad as his own. Fuck, he really loved her hips. Figuring she was going to yell at him to hurry up, Jack quickly got inside of her. She was incredibly wet and he slipped smoothly into her raw pussy.

“Oh my fucking...ah yeah,” he whispered, sliding his hands across her huge ass around to her broad hips, getting a good grip on them.

The moan she let out and the shiver that ran through her large body was intensely satisfying and only invigorated him further. For the next several minutes, he lost himself totally inside of her, staring down at her wonderfully large ass and hips and her bare back, the way she looked on her hands and knees. He considered giving her ass a hard smack, but something told him not to so he refrained, just kept stroking smoothly into her.

“Oh fuck...Jack...oh my God, you’re gonna...make me...come!” she screamed and suddenly she was orgasming all over his cock. He let out a loud moan of bliss himself, feeling that hot gush of her sex juices coming out of her, the thrill of pleasure from her vaginal muscles, hot and slick, clenching and spasming around his steel-hard cock. He kept pounding her, making her scream a lot louder, as he fucked her orgasming pussy.

Jack was sure everyone in the outpost was listening to them fuck right now.

He kept going, hammering away at her hot, mature, military pussy, bathing in her bliss. There was just something about fucking a woman who had been or was still a warrior, a fighter, that was in some way better than all other sexual encounters. He had never been able to figure out precisely why or what difference it made, but he knew it was true for him specifically. And the effect was compounded, made all the more intense, if the woman in question was really tough, also older. And higher ranking. All things Elizabeth was or had been.

Consequently, he only made it another few minutes of furious, frantic humping until he was unloading inside of her. His whole body shook and shuddered as his orgasm flared up, his seed spilling out of him in hard spurts, hot pleasured ecstasy roaring through his body, filling him as he filled her. He grunted and groaned, digging his fingertips into her skin as he came into her, draining his cock into her perfect older pussy.

And when he was finished, he pulled out and laid on his back as she fell forward and then rolled over onto her own back.

“Well...that went better than expected,” she muttered.

“You wanna talk about it?” he asked.

She sighed. “Yeah, I guess so. It’s nothing big, just...I have a thing about doggystyle…” here, she hesitated, then groaned. “I’m beginning to see that I’ve got a lot of ‘things’. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to have so many fucking hangups.”

“It’s not your fault,” he replied.

She sighed. “That’s debatable. I know I’m a difficult, stubborn woman. I mean I can surely blame some of it on genetics, and life, but I sure spent enough of my time being stubborn, and not always when I had to be, or even when I should have been. I’ve…” She sat up suddenly and looked at him. “Look, if we’re going to even consider becoming, like, an actual couple, there are things you should know about me. The biggest being: I’ve crashed and burned a few relationships out of sheer stubborn resistance. To be completely fair to myself, some of them were worth crashing, because it became a power struggle, with a guy wanting to have power over me, but me to have no power over him, and that’s fucking bullshit, so yeah I kamikazed those relationships straight to hell. But there were some where...I was being unreasonable. I have to admit that to myself now. It was years ago, but yeah, I was being a bitch. And I’ve tried very hard to be more reasonable, but I guess I wanted to say that it’s possible I might be unreasonable sometimes.”

Jack stared at her for a moment. “I mean...you just described every person ever. Everyone’s unreasonable sometimes. I’m not expecting you to be perfect all the time. I don’t live under the delusion that a good relationship involves no fights and perfect bliss all the time. You don’t have to worry about that with me. If we’re going to date, I’m aware that we’re going to fight. I’m also aware that you are a fighter, in more ways than one, so it might be tougher with you, and sometimes one of us is going to have to just take it, and because of your personality, that might end up being me more often than not.”

“And you’re...okay with that?” she asked incredulously.

“I mean…” he thought about it for a moment, sighed. “Not okay, exactly. But I can live with it. Not forever. If it became too much of a problem, I’d tell you about it. But I know there are times where people aren’t going to be rational, they’re just going to be pissed. I guess the only thing I’d ask is that in the times where you get pissed and I agree to drop it, if you were in the wrong, then later, when you’ve calmed down, you apologize.”

“Knew there was a catch,” she said, and he laughed. “You’re shockingly reasonable for your age.”

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t like fighting. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t cut out for the Marines.”

“I can apologize,” she replied after a moment. “All right, this conversation got derailed. Anyway. Doggystyle. Basically, it just became a thing between me and a boyfriend of mine like twenty years ago. It’s all he wanted to do and eventually I got clued into the fact that his precious fucking masculinity was threatened by me, and the only way he could make the relationship make sense in his own head, apparently, was to fuck me like that. Because he saw it as a submission. He saw that position as the woman submitting to the man. It became a whole thing with us. I don’t mind submitting, as you found out in the shower when you called me a slut.”

“Sorry if that was too much,” he said awkwardly. “Kinda just came out.”

“Like I said, it’s fine. Didn’t mind it. I liked it, actually. Because I like you. Because I don’t feel like you’re trying to get one over on me, I don’t feel like you’re trying to control me or force me to submit to you. So...yeah, that’s why I have a thing with doggystyle. It just kind of stuck in my head. It’s not like I intentionally don’t like it, it’s just that it sometimes triggers ugly emotions which, you know, make sex suck. But I wanted to try it with you, because it isn’t always there, and I wanted to see if it would happen, and I’m really glad to report that you and I can probably enjoy doggystyle regularly. Which is great, because I actually love that position. It feels really good. Better than I remember, actually. You’re fucking good at hitting it from the back.”

“You’ve got a perfect fucking ass for that,” he replied.

She laughed. “I’m not sure what that has to do with it.”

“I guess, I love your ass so much that I just naturally do a great job.”

She laughed again, louder. “Fair enough.” She took a deep breath and let it out in a content sigh. “This is turning out really nice so far.” She began to say something else, then sat up suddenly. “Fuck, we forgot to tell Lyra about the buzzard corpses.”

“Oh yeah...guess we should,” Jack said. He sighed. “I don’t want to leave this room.”

“Neither do I.” She looked down. “Fuck, you came a lot again. The others said you did that.”

“I can’t help it, apparently.”

“Hmm.” She got up and went into the bathroom, a moment later, she came back out after cleaning herself up a bit. “Go get a shower started.” She crouched down and grabbed her helmet from the pile of armor. “I’ll get someone on the radio.”

He laughed as he got up. “They’ll be mad we’re being so lazy.”

“It’s not lazy, it’s clever,” she replied, and started trying to track down Lyra using her radio. Jack headed into the bathroom.

…

“Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m impressed,” Maureen said, studying the tablet.

“Yeah,” Lyra murmured, who had just finished looking at the screen and had, with seemingly some reluctance, passed it off to Maureen. She was now staring at Jack with a fierce intensity that he didn’t know how to interpret.

“Give it,” Anya complained.

Maureen stared at the screen for a moment longer, then passed it to the geologist.

“Oh yeah, I can see what you’re talking about,” she said. She looked over at Jack. “You really took these?”

“Yeah. I mean, you know, I screwed with them in post,” he replied.

“Everyone does that now, down to the most rookie teen,” Maureen replied. “Did you use an autocorrecting algorithm?” He shook his head. “Fuck, that alone is impressive. You did all that by eye?” He nodded. “Definitely impressive. Most everyone who takes pictures, usually of themselves, uses those algorithms to clean it up and make it ‘better’ in one way or another. That your pictures look as good as they do, and they were done simply by you using some software, is very impressive. More impressive is the foundation.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“The foundation of any picture is the image itself. A well-framed but poorly edited shot will typically look better, in some regards, to a poorly-framed but heavily edited shot. You clearly have an eye for framing shots.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” Jack said as Anya passed the tablet over to Riley.

“Photography was one of the things I researched for myself when building up my career,” Maureen replied. “When it comes to the world of business…” she paused, reconsidered, “honestly, when it comes to damn near every career, image can be everything. I didn’t necessarily want to trust everything to the photographers and editors. I wanted to make sure I was getting my money’s worth. I took a few classes in photography theory and editing.”

“Nice.”

She adopted a small smile. “I do like my knowledge.”

“Hot damn, these are great,” Riley said. “Will you take pictures of me naked?”

“Yes,” he replied immediately, making them all laugh.

“I guess that was a pretty obvious question,” she said, passing the tablet over to Sylvia. “Maybe we could do that tonight…”

“I’m not done with him yet,” Elizabeth said in a tone strong enough to draw his attention.

“Okay, okay. You don’t have to take a bite out of me,” Riley replied.

“Sorry,” Elizabeth murmured. “It’s been...well, you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a guy like Jack around. I’ve forgotten how good it feels.”

“I get it,” Riley replied.

“I’ll make it up to you.”

Riley raised her eyebrows. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. Tomorrow night. I’m sure Jack will be happy to help me make it up to you?” she asked, looking over at him.

“Obviously,” he replied.

Elizabeth stared at him intently. She glanced briefly down at her meal, which was mostly finished. “You think we can go back to the room now?”

“That eager?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, irritated and aroused in equal measure apparently.

“Yeah, we can,” he said, getting up.

“We’ll discuss your next day trip tomorrow,” Maureen said. “Have fun, you two.”

“Thanks!” Elizabeth replied, already halfway out the door, practically dragging Jack by his wrist behind her.

…

“Am I really that great?” Jack asked.

They were gearing up for the next mission.

Last night had been exceptionally pleasant and long. They had spent all of it in her quarters, naked, alternating between making love and lounging around, telling stories or just talking, or sometimes not talking at all and just being together.

Although he was still pretty uncertain if he was even capable of a sustained relationship at the moment, he felt like that last part was an important component of one. The women he had gotten along with the most were those he could simply be around without doing anything else, or even doing other things. Just being together, in the same room, was its own reward. So if they did end up getting together in a more serious sense, he was feeling good about it. Honestly, the more time he spent with Elizabeth, the better he felt.

It was still very strange though.

He felt some cognitive dissonance. Over the past four years, he’d learned how to hook up and decouple pretty quickly, because life demanded it. If you met someone you liked, sudden rotation, combat situations, and fraternization rules might either get in the way or abruptly sever the relationship. Even if you only hooked up during r and r, it was basically the same thing. You had a set window of time. Maybe you could go back next time around if you liked the person enough, but that was not a thing you wanted either you or them to base their life around, given how long it might be. So he was used to at least some of what he was experiencing now.

But he wasn’t a Marine anymore. Neither was Elizabeth. What she was potentially proposing, and what he was apparently considering with at least some seriousness, was a real relationship. Were they both possibly tricking themselves? Could the same rapid-onset emotional connection they’d developed as Marines be conning them into thinking this was heading towards a real relationship? Was it even? Although Jack usually had doubts about how much someone else liked him, Elizabeth had warned him directly about this possibility.

Although they hadn’t quite spoken of it in the same way again since. Had she since realized that what she was feeling for him was just infatuation, and assumed that he had concluded something similar?

The most irritating thing was that in either scenario it was possible, even likely, that enough time simply had not yet passed to tell one way or the other.

So in the end, Jack just forced himself to put the feelings aside, and enjoy what was happening until it evolved or died.

“I mean, I think so,” Elizabeth replied. He glanced over at her. She was pulling her helmet into place. “Why are you asking?”

“I don’t know, it just seems...weird.”

“What does?”

He finished getting his own armor on and began checking over his weapons. After the attack of the buzzards yesterday, he was feeling a bit more paranoid. “You’re a really great woman, but you’re also a really stubborn woman with a lot of experience. I can already tell you don’t pass out compliments easily. In fact, I get the impression you pass them out only begrudgingly.”

“You’re...not wrong,” she admitted after a moment.

“So it seems weird that you think I’m this great. Or, I guess more accurately, that you are admitting you think I’m this great.” He hesitated, slotted his pistol into its holster, then grabbed his rifle and started looking over it, too. “Not that I’m complaining at all.”

“No, I get it,” she said, raising her rifle and staring down the sights. “I think you’re pretty cool, and I’m also in a unique environment. I’ve never quite done something like this before. But I’m around all the people that I trust the most, so it’s putting me in an interesting headspace. One of the side effects is that I’m a little more free with my honest thoughts and compliments. Plus, I mean, you measure up. I’ve seen you in action a few times now, like serious action. I mean, I respect different people for different things, how people fare on the battlefield or in a combat situation isn’t my only metric of value as a person, but...I mean, it’s the one I’m most familiar with. You’re a great fighter. I admire that, appreciate that...get turned on by that, to be honest. So yeah, I like you that much.”

“Fair enough,” he replied. “I’m still getting used to the fact that you like me as much as you do. Fuck, I’m still getting used to the fact that all of you like me as much as you do, although I can at least appreciate the other’s interest in me.”

“What, you don’t think I like an energetic, fit young guy as much as the next cougar?” she asked with a slight smirk.

“You don’t strike me as a cougar, I guess,” he replied.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. Not like the others. Well, some of the others. Maureen and Sylvia definitely seem mature and older. Riley seems like a sex fiend in her early twenties, even though she’s the oldest of you all. Lyra seems...I don’t know yet. Awkward. Anya seems like a younger woman with a lot of life experience. That’s what you kind of seem like too. I mean, I guess fifty isn’t old anymore, not by a long shot, but...I don’t know. Age is just weird.”

“It is,” Elizabeth agreed. “People age differently.”

“I think if we were to date, and maybe I’m wrong, then the weirdest thing people would think about us, at a glance, is that you’re a lot bigger than I am. Not that you’re a lot older than I am.”

She seemed to consider that. “Yeah, I think you’re right. There’s a kind of maturity to you, a stillness that I don’t see in a lot of twenty-somethings. Or even thirty-somethings. A calm.” She finished with her rifle. “Okay, you ready?”

“Yep,” he replied, doing the same and slipping a few extra magazines into his pockets. “I’m ready to go.”

“Let’s do it.”

CHAPTER 06

They had to drive farther out this time.

This geo site was a good thirty miles away, which wasn’t a terribly long drive, or shouldn’t have been, except that they had to navigate a pair of canyons and move around a large cacti-tree forest. Not that Jack minded. Elizabeth was behind the wheel again and they spent the whole drive out there sharing stories about their times on distant alien worlds and weird or cool shit they had come across. She definitely had him beat there, though, given how long she’d traveled the galaxy. Not that he minded listening to her.

“I’ve got another question,” Jack said as they finally spied the survey center off in the middle of a large, rolling plain of baked dirt. He was a little surprised to see that it wasn’t alone. Two other structures were visible, though a little ways off. One was what appeared to be a simple, slightly raised building that glinted dully off to the left of the geo site, maybe another mile ahead. The second was a partially-constructed comms array built onto a rise of land to the right.

“Yeah?” Elizabeth replied.

“So obviously you’re bi. How bi are you, I guess is the best way I can think to word it.”

She laughed. “How bi are you?”

“Not at all, I’m afraid. Nothing but ladies for me.”

“Fair enough. For the first part of my life I didn’t quite realize I was bi. I was into dudes but I also found myself fooling around with women who came onto me, which was rare but not unheard of. I thought it was just kind of normal, honestly. Somewhere in my twenties I found a lady I really liked, she did it for me in a way no one else quite had, or at least no other lady had, and we had sex. And it was just amazing. So that kind of swung me in the other direction for awhile and I fucked a lot more women. I was pretty even for awhile after that, I liked both fairly equally, and then my last relationship with a guy went sour.”

She fell silent and he waited.

“You wanna talk about it?” he asked.

She seemed to consider that. “Let’s not spoil a good day.”

“All right.”

Elizabeth smiled and glanced briefly over at him. “I’m glad you don’t push. That’s really rare. People like to push and prod, just a little. I’m not saying it’s never okay, but you seem to have a good barometer for knowing when to push a bit and when not to. Anyway. After that, I went heavily into women, as I mentioned earlier. You’re the first guy I’ve been with since. In three years. It’s harder to tell now where I’m at on the bisexual spectrum, given our current infatuation is probably a bit overwhelming, but when the dust settles, I think you’ll be happy to learn that I now probably largely lean towards women.”

“Why will I be happy to learn that?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Because that means if I do want an open relationship, which I almost certainly will, then you’ll be the only man around. It’ll be you and me and a lot of sexy women in our bed.”

“Oh...wow. Holy shit. That’s awesome,” he replied.

She laughed loudly. “Now you get it.”

“Yeah, that works fine for me.”

“I’ll bet.”

They finished their approach to the second survey site. It seemed to be a copy of the first. As before, they got out and got to work. The sun was beating down on the plain and wind drove dust from the earth, throwing up waves of the stuff and occasionally creating miniature whirlwinds. As they entered, it became obvious that this place had been hit by salvagers at one point as well. But that was to be expected for most of the places they came to. Honestly, they were extremely lucky that the outpost they now called home was as intact as it had been.

The pair performed a quick and efficient search of the ground floor, turning up a lot of nothing, and upon moving to the second story, found that the place was curiously more intact than the previous control center had been. It was interesting what ended up getting taken during a salvage operation. A lot of salvagers were indiscriminate, gathering everything, because everything had the potential to fetch a price. Some could afford the luxury of being more discerning. Some were more discerning only because they had to be, they didn’t have the room or the expertise to grab the bigger or more technologically advanced left-behinds. Some were just looking for very specific things, and some were operating on a tight schedule.

Whatever the reason, a fair amount of the tech was left behind. Though Jack thought some of it might have to do with the fact that a lot of it seemed busted. Though there were definitely outfits who bought broken or scrapped tech either to sell it to a repair outfit or a scrap salvager. He wondered what particular set of circumstances had led to this.

“Let’s see what we can find,” Elizabeth said after they’d cleared the room of any potential threats. She walked over to the largest, most intact console. He watched her hook her suit up to the console, giving it a temporary shot of power, and went about booting it up. The process was drawn out over several minutes and Jack eventually wandered off, going to one of the windows and peering out it. The view was pretty decent, but he thought that a view from that partially-built comms array would be pretty good.

He wanted to photograph it.

“Think maybe we could drive over that array?” he asked.

“Yeah, definitely. We have to keep an eye out for plant samples as it is. I was already planning on heading over to that other structure, given its proximity to the forest,” Elizabeth replied. Lyra had asked them to gather some for her, for study. And maybe to give them more of an excuse to hang out alone together outside of the outpost.

Although ever since she’d seen those pictures he’d shot, Lyra had been acting weird around him. Well, weirder. Their conversations had slowly been going more smoothly since the beginning, but after that it was like she had suddenly lost of a lot of ground on how comfortable she seemed around him. Why was that? Did she hate photographers or something? He hoped not. Whatever it was, he had to admit she wasn’t getting his full attention right now thanks to Elizabeth. Maybe that was for the best, give her some time to figure out this adjustment.

Whatever it had been.

“Fuck,” Elizabeth said. “I think this thing is messed. It’s hard to tell.”

“Maybe we should just say fuck it and grab the backup storage drive like last time,” Jack suggested, turning away from the window.

“Yeah, probably.”

She walked over to the corner, though he could tell that the console that was over this panel had already been moved and not quite put back in place. That didn’t sit well with him, nor did it seem to with Elizabeth, who made an unhappy sound before shoving the console aside. She crouched, popped open the panel, and cursed again.

“It’s gone,” she said.

“Great,” Jack muttered.

“Let me see what Anya has to say.”

She stood and activated her radio. He listened to her talk with first Maureen, then Anya, and then, after they had determined Anya nor Elizabeth knew quite enough to properly navigate the situation, they roped Lyra in.

Once she was into the situation, she ran Elizabeth through the process of running a diagnostic on the system.

“Okay,” Elizabeth said after close to fifteen minutes, “good news. It looks like there does exist a copy of at least some data in the drives that are still here, even after the damage and with the loss of the backup.”

“All right, try to access it,” Lyra replied.

She did, waited close to two minutes, the system running very slowly, then growled. “Fuck, there’s a problem…”

Another ten minutes went by while they first identified the problem, then identified if there was a workaround to it.

“Okay, I’ve got the problem, there’s a broken part,” Elizabeth said.

“What part?” Lyra asked.

“Lemme send you the specs,” Elizabeth replied. She typed something into her wristpad, then crouched down, pulled open a panel, and peered around inside.

“Can you fix it?” Lyra asked.

Elizabeth stared into the hole in the console for a long moment. “...no. It’s fried.”

“Shit, and it’s not exactly easy to bypass,” Lyra muttered. “Unfortunately, you need that part to function, because if it can’t, there’s a chance you’d flash-fry the drive even if you tried a direct extraction from it.”

“So what’s the best option?”

“Replace the part.”

“Well...there’s two other buildings out here. What might be another forward station and what looks like a comms array, half-built.”

“The part isn’t exactly uncommon. Either of those buildings could have it. If not, you can drive back here and grab a spare. I’m almost sure we have one around,” Lyra replied.

“All right. We’ll drive out to the other two buildings and get back to you.”

“Thanks!” Anya said.

“Yep.” Elizabeth cut the connection and stood up. She turned to Jack. “All right, which one do you want to hit first?”

“The one near the forest,” he replied. “Be a good chance to double up and grab some samples as well.”

“Good idea.”

They began to head back outside.

…

“So, Jack…” Elizabeth said as they began driving across the plain, towards the cacti-tree forest and their first secondary stop. “I was curious.”

“Yeah?”

“I want to know...do you have any idea why your attraction switch got flipped? And by that I mean...so, like, there’s a reason men typically hook up with women smaller than them. I mean, there’s a theory, anyway. We evolved in response to ‘what would make a good mate’. Bigger guys were typically stronger, meaning they could defend themselves and, presumably, their family, more easily. And so women’s brains recognized that. It’s why being ripped as a man is so desirable. Being tall and broad in the shoulder is desirable. These are all indicators to the brain that ‘this guy can protect me and my offspring’, even if you have no fucking intentions of having kids with him, let alone ever. I think this dynamic played out over thousands of years, eventually culminating in a tendency for the men to be physically larger in the relationships, and so that became ‘normal’, inasmuch as society tends to think things are normal...you with me so far?”

“Yeah. And I get what you’re asking. Why am I so attracted to you?”

“Yeah, but is it in spite of my size, or because of it? That’s what I really want to know. If it’s because of my size, why?”

He laughed and shifted in his seat. “Fuck, I’m not sure.”

“About which one it is?”

“Oh no, I know that. It’s because of. It’s not like ‘oh she’s got huge tits and she’s a redhead, I’ll just put up with the fact that she’s damn near six foot six and more ripped than I am’. I like all of you. The fact that you’re taller than me is a plus. It turns me on.”

“I guess it would have to, given what you said about Amazonian women. Do you have any idea why?”

“I don’t...know, to be honest. My brain just likes that. I just respond well to it.”

“So you tend to be more attractive to taller women?”

“Yeah, honestly. I really don’t know why. Maybe one of the first women who really hit my ‘holy shit she’s hot’ button happened to be really tall? And that just cemented it?”

“I guess that’s how it is. Sometimes you can tell why you’re into something, but most of the time it’s probably a mystery of genetics and how your life unfolded.”

They fell silent as they approached the forest and the structure. Something about it awoke Jack’s combat instincts and he could tell the same thing was happening for Elizabeth. She slowed, then stopped and parked a good thirty yards from the structure. They sat there together in the front of the rover, staring out at it.

“See anything?” she murmured.

“No, nothing,” he replied quietly.

“Let’s do this. Keep a sharp lookout.”

“Yep.”

They got out and drew their rifles after securing the rover. Jack listened carefully as they began a steady approach to the building. It was quiet out, save for the gusts of wind and the occasional alien bird call that echoed out from the forest. The place would have been serene except for...what? What exactly was the problem? Jack didn’t know, and sometimes you just wouldn’t. You were simply lucky that your guts or instincts or whatever it was noticed the problem. If there was a problem. Although it was less likely that this was a false alarm given they were both nervous, it was also possible the same thing was pinging their radars falsely.

They did a check around the exterior of the building. It was a simple, single-story structure of bland green metal, slapped with a generic, faded corporate logo that Jack didn’t recognize. The words themselves were written in a font that seemed hard enough to read when it hadn’t been scoured by constantly blowing sands, so he couldn’t even tell what the corporation was called. He’d be willing to bet it had folded by now.

He wondered how many corporations were born and died on average every day across the galactic civilization they all shared.

“I’ve got point, watch my back,” Elizabeth said as they got to the front entrance of the building.

“Check,” he replied.

He was keyed up and ready to go if anything was waiting in there for them. The main door was open, partially slid into its space in the wall. Elizabeth stood guard with her rifle while Jack crouched and forced the door open the rest of the way, in case anything was waiting inside. Once he got it open, he moved out of the way and got back up, watching her back. She moved in nice and easy, clearing the room beyond.

“Clear,” she said and he followed her inside.

They moved slowly through the building. Another derelict structure, more abandoned rooms, the floors and windows dusty. And yet, in this outpost, the place seemed more intact, less looted. On the one hand, that was good. On the other hand, it put him a little more on edge. Why was this place more overlooked? Could be luck. Might be another threat that he wasn’t seeing. They moved through the entire building, careful of potential hiding places.

The two of them found a small dining area and kitchen, a pair of storage rooms, a tiny office, a security room (that was basically cleaned out, guns were usually the first thing to go if they were available), an infirmary, a control center, a generator and utilities room, another tiny office, and finally ended their search in a shared dorm. Off the side of the dorm was a private bedroom and bathroom. Maybe someone who’d come out here had had enough pull to get it installed, or maybe this whole outpost had been an excuse to get away and relax by someone higher up. It seemed the most intact of the rooms was this one.

There was a large bed that still had some blankets and pillows on it. For just a moment, Jack felt a sting of lust hit him and he really wanted to fuck Elizabeth right here, right now. But obviously that would be a bad idea.

“I guess we’re clear,” she said after they finished their search. “Come on, let’s see if we can get that part.”

She lingered, briefly, in the private bedroom, staring at the bed, then left, heading back through the base. He wondered about that. Maybe she was having the same thought as him. Hopefully. They got back to the control room and spent several moments hunting through consoles for the replacement part they needed. After close to fifteen minutes, they determined that it wasn’t there among the equipment. They had found one that was close, but not the same model, making it incompatible, which they confirmed quickly with Lyra.

“Well, at least we still have the radio tower to get to,” Jack said.

“Yeah, although I feel like it’s even less likely given its incomplete state. But whatever. Let’s head into the forest and get some samples for Lyra.”

“Lyra…” he murmured as they headed back outside.

“Yeah?” Elizabeth replied after a moment, stepping back out into the daylight.

“She looked at me weird yesterday. After she saw my pictures. Like she…” he considered it, sighed after a moment, “I don’t know. Like she was kind of freaked out or something. It could be nothing, but now she seems kind of awkward around me.”

Elizabeth seemed to consider it as they walked around to the other side of the building, making for the cacti-tree forest. “With Lyra, it’s hard to say, though I doubt it was anything bad. Maybe she was reassessing you. Maybe she’s got a thing for creative types. I know I do.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Fuck yeah. Took me awhile to figure out, but as soon as it’s clear that someone’s creative in some way, like not bullshitting and trying to sound more interesting but actually has a creative side and nurtures it, their attractiveness goes up. Ten years ago, I met a kinda funny-looking guy, quiet, somewhat awkward, a technician. We chatted, I thought he might be into me but it was really hard to tell. Given how much I initially dropped the ball in determining how much you’re into me, obviously I still don’t have a handle on that, even at fucking fifty. But I wasn’t too much into him. Then he mentioned he was a writer on the side. That pinged my radar, obviously, but I’ve run into enough ‘writers’. I mean, I have no problem with people who write for fun, honestly I think it’s great. But I’ve seen too many people who call themselves writers, like seriously, but they haven’t written like a goddamned thing.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Posers, basically. Every group, every profession, every hobby, everything has them. People who want a label but don’t want to put in the work.”

“Yeah, so I was wary. But he showed me some of his stuff. He wrote romance with a fantasy setting, you know demons and dragons and shit, and self-published it online. I read the first book in a series he was writing and could tell right away he was good, and humble, and committed. It was like someone flipped a switch. We had a casual relationship for the next three months before I got rotated out of there. So yeah, I’m quite into creative types. I saw that look Lyra gave you that you’re talking about. And like I said: with Lyra, it can be really hard to tell. She’s very guarded. But best guess? I think that’s what happened.”

“Huh,” he murmured. “Interesting.”

“Yeah. When that girl finally decides to fuck you, it is going to be some intense sex. Physically and probably emotionally. She strikes me as the type who would fall for someone like you.”

“Does that...bother you?” he asked.

“No,” Elizabeth replied. “If I had to share you, I’d be okay with sharing you with Lyra. Because I think you’d be sharing me with her too. We’d all be sharing each other. I like Lyra, I love her as a close friend. If it turned romantic, I could see being in love with her. She’s a great person, and very attractive, too. You both are.”

“I think you both are,” he replied.

“Well obviously,” Elizabeth said with a little laugh. She stopped as they approached the edge of the forest. “Okay, focus up. Let’s get this done. In and out.”

“Understood,” he replied.

They slipped into the forest. Up close, the cacti-trees were curious things. They weren’t exactly cacti trees, though they really resembled them. They had a sort of leathery, brown-green surface, and were stuck all over with short thorns. Protrusions stuck out of them randomly like branches that, again, somewhat resembled the arms of a cactus. They were topped by mushroom-like heads some thirty or forty feet overhead.

Stubby, skeletal plants studded the cracked earth. Jack immediately spotted a few varieties. He also spied a few plants that somewhat resembled flowers, though they seemed much tougher, the dark purple ‘pedals’ firm and also studded with thorns. Plants and animals, nature in general, had always interested him in a vague sort of way. There was such a thrill in exploring the wilderness of alien worlds, and he often had opportunities to do so as a Marine. Of course, it could also be extremely dangerous.

There were razor flowers out there, poisonous plants and animals, bark that might melt your skin if you so much as grazed it, viruses hiding in plain sight. He’d seen a lot of wild and sometimes downright horrifying things.

He and Elizabeth took turns keeping watch and collecting samples for the next half an hour. They’d each brought special containers to store specimens and samples in, as well as the tools that might be necessary to collect such things. They each took two samples from every plant they came across, first scanning them with the limited scanners the suits had. Even though they were basic, they should be able to tell if any plants were extremely deadly. Then they’d seal them inside the airtight containers and place them firmly in the padded, armored pockets on their suits. It should have been simple, even enjoyable work, but it wasn’t.

The sense of being watched was growing.

Before long, they began to notice things. Curious movement among the trees, just out of sight. Small sounds of things being disturbed or shifted.

“Something’s moving in,” Elizabeth muttered after collecting her fourth set of samples.

“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Think that’s enough samples?”

“Yes,” she replied, straightening up and securing the containers. “I think that’s enough. Let’s get back to the rover.”

They began retracing their steps, making their way quickly through the forest. It seemed more claustrophobic than before, the trees more tightly packed together, even though he knew that was impossible. Or, shit, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the trees were more mobile than they seemed. That was the problem with new, alien worlds: basically anything was on the table. But they were still able to slip through and he thought it was just paranoia. As they made their way back, the movements and sights and sounds increased.

Whatever they were, and he was sure there were several of them and they were likely animals of some kind, they were tightening the noose.

“We might have to fight,” Elizabeth said.

“I’m ready if we do,” Jack replied immediately.

“There’s a clearing up ahead, we’ll stop there and make a stand.”

“Check.”

They hustled on and he thought they weren’t going to make it. That the creatures, (as he began to catch glimpses of them among the cacti-trees, he became convinced they were the wolf-lizards he had fought before), were going to launch their strike before they could get there. But they made it. Barely sixty seconds later they burst into the clearing, sunbeams streaming down. He could actually see the outpost ahead, some fifty meters away, but she was right, it was too far to make. And they could make a stand here.

“Get ready,” Elizabeth growled.

CHAPTER 07

They stood back to back in the clearing, making sure to give each other enough room to maneuver if they had to, but not so much that one of the creatures could get in between their backs. Jack had his rifle ready, set to burst fire, the weapon clenched tightly in his gauntleted hands. Several light-green creatures were moving among the trees, getting closer and closer. He heard something growl. It was higher in pitch than he would have expected. He tried not to get caught in focusing his attention on any of the specific movement, because it was all too fast right now. Instead he waited for the first strike to come.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Something leaped into the clearing from between two of the cacti-trees and he snapped aim at it. The creature, he realized, was not a wolf-lizard, but it was close. It looked more like a leopard or jaguar cast in light-green reptilian skin. It issued a hiss and then a growl as it came for him, bringing to bear large, sharp claws. Jack fired, unable to do anything else, knowing he had to kill this thing or it was going to kill him if it could.

The gun jerked in his grasp and the bullets punched into its lizard-like hide. It let out a shriek and then flopped to the ground, dead, as one of the bullets punched into its skull. There was always the chance that they would flee once the shooting started, but as Elizabeth opened fire behind him, Jack saw more of them coming for him between the trees, three now. They were pack creatures and they weren’t leaving.

If anything, they were coming more quickly.

Another sprang into the clearing and made a beeline straight for Jack. He fired again, putting another cluster of bullets into the thing and spraying its pale red blood across the dirt and cacti-trees, then shifted aim and fired once more. The burst of bullets missed as the creature wove to the side and in that split second he realized he might be fucked. Two were coming and he’d only had enough time to take them both out if he had landed that shot. He’d missed it. Maybe he’d miscalculated. Hastily, he fired once more, this time landing two shots into the thing’s skull and putting it down. The literal second he confirmed it was down, he twisted.

The third jaguar-lizard creature was now leaping for him, roaring.

He fired.

The thing yowled as at least one of the bullets landed, and then a hundred pounds of wiry, lean alien animal crashed into him. He yelled something out as his gun went flying from his grasp and he was thrown onto his back. His hands came up and he grasped the thing’s lean, oddly shaped head. Saliva spattered on his visor as it snapped its jaws, trying to get at him. It was definitely stronger than he was. Elizabeth was shouting at him but he was too busy to respond. The creature opened its maw wide and tried to get its teeth sunk into his helmet. It was just barely not able to and the whole way Jack was fighting it.

Even with his suit-enhanced strength it wasn’t enough. These things were fucking strong. Abruptly, it switched tactics and went for his neck.

Okay, this wasn’t working. Knowing he had no other choice, he let go of its head, reached down, and tore his pistol free of its holster. Snapping it up right as it dipped its jaw straight for his neck, the armor of which probably wasn’t up to the task of defending against those teeth, he put the barrel against the side of its head and pulled the trigger. Immediately, all he saw was light red as blood sprayed his visor. The thing continued thrashing so he pulled the trigger twice more. That made it go slack, laying across his body.

He could still hear Elizabeth fighting. Although her gunfire sounded more frantic, it didn’t sound panicked. He shoved the dead alien creature off him and sat up, aiming his pistol out while trying to wipe some of the blood away.

It was pure luck he managed to clear his visor just in time to see another one coming for him. Also luck he happened to be aiming at it. All he had to do was adjust the pistol very slightly and fire twice. Both bullets punched into its skull and dropped it in a second. Shooting back up to his feet, he looked around for more targets, but it seemed as though the survivors had run off. Or they’d killed the pack. The clearing was littered with corpses now.

“Tenacious bastards,” Elizabeth growled. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he replied, shaky from the adrenaline.

“You sure? I saw you go down.”

“Pretty sure, nothing hurts,” he replied. “Just cover me while I clean my visor off.”

“Okay, don’t take too long, we should get out of here before something else shows up.”

He responded by grabbing a wipe from his pack and quickly wiping down his visor, doing the most minimum necessary job as fast as he could. Once it was done, he shoved his pistol into its holster, crouched and scooped up his rifle, reloaded, then hung it from its sling across his shoulder and crouched again.

He grabbed the smallest of the dead creatures and slung it over his other shoulder.

“Good idea,” Elizabeth said. “Come on.”

They began making their way back towards the outpost, and after ten minutes they were back at the rover and out of the forest. Nothing else had come after them. They grabbed one of the body-bags, secured the corpse, and stowed it in the back of the rover, then Jack took a moment to clean himself up. He’d gotten a lot of blood on his armor. Elizabeth helped. She seemed distracted, though he couldn’t quite be sure why.

“That was intense,” she said as they were finishing up.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Think I’m getting rusty or something. Shouldn’t have gotten jumped.”

“It happens,” Elizabeth replied. She even sounded distracted.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, just…” She stopped cleaning him and look back at the outpost. “I was thinking…”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna fuck in that bed?”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

She was staring at him intently now. He felt the lust he’d been feeling earlier come back stronger than ever, not just a spike but a wave of it.

“I do,” he said.

“Come on.”

They hurried over to the outpost, going back inside and making their way through it until they reached the private bedroom. Once there, they made sure it was secured, (they each took a moment to seal themselves in by hooking their suits up to the power units of the two windows and the single door and closing them up for now), then they began getting out of their suits of armor.

“This seems kind of risky,” Jack said. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“The thing you should know about me is that I’m kind of a risk-taker,” Elizabeth replied. “I’ve spent my life tamping down on it, because sometimes it gets you killed, but I have got to admit I get a thrill out of stuff like this. A great one.”

“All right,” he said as the last of his armor came off and he began taking his clothes underneath off next.

Soon, the two of them were naked and kissing at the foot of the bed. He felt a sexual energy passing between them as they kissed, something that had a more intense vivacity than any of their encounters so far. They were both still hopped up on adrenaline from the encounter and it was feeding into their lust.

After a moment, Elizabeth abruptly dropped to her knees and gripped his cock. Staring up at him with her vividly green eyes, she started licking the tip of it over and over.

“Ah fuck,” he moaned, staring down at her, getting hit by the pure pleasure of her tongue. She looked wonderful, like a porn star or a model, crouching down, totally naked, her blood red hair a mess, her eyes wide and full of lust. She licked and licked, lavishing him with pleasure, dragging her tongue across the most sensitive thing on his body. Then she plunged his cock into her mouth, taking it all the way in, wrapping her lips around it and pushing them down to its base. She began bobbing her head after that, coating his dick in a layer of her saliva, pleasuring him intensely as her lips slipped over his head again and again.

The oral didn’t last long, though, as she seemed desperate for sex. She got back up, turned around, stared at the bed, gave a huff of irritation, then quickly flipped the blanket over and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Lay back,” he said, getting down on his knees.

“Oh, okay,” she replied, happily surprised. “Not that I don’t love your tongue, but don’t wait too long to stick your cock in me.”

“Trust me, I won’t.”

He went to work on her, again find himself between those wonderfully thick thighs. Elizabeth had amazing thighs. There was a lot about her he liked, but he really liked her thighs. She let out a loud, wonderful moan of pure pleasure as he started tonguing her clit. So far, he’d been going slow, building up, giving her anticipation when he ate her out, really letting her enjoy the experience, but now he found himself doing as she had done with his cock: the bare minimum. He was finding her to be an impatient lover, not that he super minded. Although he liked going down on her and pleasuring her, he also liked fucking her a lot.

Like a lot.

More than an impatient lover, Elizabeth was a vigorous lover.

After about forty five seconds of licking her clit and slipping his finger in and out of her, he stood back up.

“You good to stand for this?” she asked.

“Fuck yes,” he replied, stepping up to her. The bed was perfect fucking height. He guided his cock up to her pussy and then he was inside of her once again. He was within that pocket of tight, hot, wet perfection, that place of absolute ecstasy. They both moaned loudly as he slid into her, working his way into her amazing vagina, settling his hands on her broad, firm hips. Soon he was stroking smoothly into her, satisfying both of them immensely.

Jack stared down at her, taking in her body, her large frame, her scars and tattoos, her huge hips and wonderfully big breasts and well-muscled arms. Her vividly red hair and brilliantly green eyes, her rough face and her somewhat pronounced cheekbones. The expressions that came and went on her face as she closed and opened her mouth and her eyes, losing herself utterly in the shared bliss of their sex. He fucked her smoothly, feeling the mind-numbing total rapture of fucking her raw pussy, all that perfect slick heat.

They managed to last for about three minutes before she came, and then he managed another half minute before he came inside of her.

Immediately, they became locked together in a blissful union, reaching out and grabbing each other’s hands, lacing their fingers together, moaning and shouting, staring into each other’s eyes as they orgasmed together.

And then they were done, panting, still holding hands, still staring at each other.

After a long moment, she released him, and he pulled out of her.

They didn’t say anything as first he laid down beside her on the bed and held her hand again, both of them just staring at the ceiling and coming down from the high, then when they got up and began to clean themselves up with whatever supplies they’d brought with them. Once they were clean, they pulled their clothes and armor back on, grabbed their guns, then headed back outside. It wasn’t until they were back in the rover and making the drive towards the half-built radio tower that one of them spoke.

“I just realized something that I really, really like about you,” Elizabeth said.

“Yeah?” he replied, looking over at her. He felt a lot calmer now, much more relaxed and at ease, in the wake of their lovemaking.

“I don’t feel self-conscious around you. Normally when I take my clothes off, it takes awhile for me to get, you know, comfortable. That period has been extremely short with you. I guess it hit me just now, I was laying on my back, totally naked, in a strange place, as exposed as I can possibly be with my legs open and no clothes, and you were staring right at me, fucking me, and I...had no problem with that. Not even like that nervous reflex you get when you’re naked. I just felt...safe, and comfortable, and happy. I don’t feel like you’re judging me at all, even accidentally. You just seem like you’re...well, enjoying me, honestly.”

“I am,” he replied. “I’m really glad you feel that way, it’s how I’d hoped you’d feel.”

“I know,” she murmured. “I appreciate that. It’s been...difficult. Having an abnormal height and build has fucked with me a lot. I don’t regret having it, I wouldn’t change it, I like who I am...for the most part. But it has been very difficult sometimes. It’s something I imagine I’ll have some measure of difficulty with for a long time, maybe my whole life. Like an old war wound that never heals right. But you don’t trigger it in me.” She smiled and glanced briefly at him. “Hopefully you feel the same way, though I don’t know why you’d have any reason to feel weird about a girl seeing you naked, to be honest.”

He chuckled. “I mean...you know, I’ve been mostly lucky there, but there’s always the fact that I’ve never found my own, uh, package, particularly impressive.”

She laughed. “Package?”

“Dick. Whatever.”

“It looks fine. It clearly does the job.”

“Yeah, it just...I don’t know.”

“Does it really bother you?” she asked.

“Not nearly as much as it used to. Getting into great shape certainly helped, but still, I’ll see it and it’s just like...fuck, is it really that small?”

“It isn’t small,” she said. “God, all that shit really fucks you guys up, doesn’t it? Like actually fucks you up.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not trying to be dismissive, I’m just trying to say...you’ve got nothing to worry about. I mean have any of us shown any inclination at all of being unimpressed with your package?”

“No.”

“Has any woman?”

“Not really. It’s never really come up,” he admitted. “It’s just...you know, a whole thing. That’s the underlying message of society if you’re a guy: if you don’t have a big dick you’re fucking worthless, you know?”

“Fuck, we really experience society different,” she muttered.

He sighed. “Yeah. I mean, I know there’s problems like that you’ve faced. I know it’s stupid, I know it isn’t true, and now that there’s reliable means of making it bigger, obviously it doesn’t bother me enough that I’ve had any work done on it. It’s just...it’s there, baked into society. A hidden meaning, a secret message, something no one says but everyone knows, even if most of them don’t actually believe it. Plus, hey, I turned it into something positive.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I mean, you all seem pretty happy with the work I do with my fingers and mouth.”

She laughed. “Yeah, you’re really good.”

“I figured if my dick wasn’t all that impressive, I’d really better up my foreplay game.”

“You should do that anyway, regardless. Everyone should, if they’re intending on being sexual,” Elizabeth said.

“Agreed. So yeah, it resulted in something. I have to admit, I was nervous. You’re...so tall. I wasn’t sure if there would be, you know, issues.”

“I can assure you, there haven’t been,” she replied with a smirk. A moment of silence passed as the conversation came to a close and they hit the incline leading up to the radio tower. Elizabeth smiled suddenly. “Fuck, tonight’s going to be so good. Hooking up with Riley is just good, but hooking up with Riley and you...oh my God. This is going to be spectacular.”

“Speaking of which...can I fuck you in the ass?”

She laughed loudly, as though he’d caught her off guard. “You’ve really got a thing for my ass, don’t you?”

“I mean obviously,” he replied. “Your ass is fucking fantastic.”

“Well, I have been known to be double-penetrated, and Riley’s already had the pleasure of my ass, so yes, you can fuck me in the ass tonight.”

“Oh fuck yes. Thank you so much.”

She laughed again. “You’re welcome.”

The rover finished climbing up the incline and came onto the relatively flat surface that the communications building had been built upon. Or at least partially built. It looked strangely lonely, now that he was up here. It was skeletal for half of it, nothing but girders in a basic grid pattern of an outline for the walls. Sand had gotten into everything.

“I hope we find it here,” Elizabeth muttered as they got out.

The place felt like a tomb. At least that meant it wasn’t pinging his combat instincts. This place didn’t feel dangerous, just lonely and mildly depressing. They checked the exterior, then walked through a hole in the partially-constructed wall, coming into the ground floor. Dust had blown into everything. The half-finished room they’d come to didn’t have anything in it at all. The pair moved slowly through the building, but each room was as empty as the last, save for dust and trash. They found some stairs that led to a second story and moved cautiously up them. Enough time seemed to have passed that the place had a dangerous feel, and although their armor should protect them from a single story fall, it was still a risk.

“Think we might be fucked,” Jack muttered as they continued their search. The place hadn’t even gotten to the point where they had begun installing the technology.

“Could be,” Elizabeth admitted.

They kept going, moving from one room to the next, and were on the verge of giving up when they came to the final room, and found a cache of metal crates. They were dusty, but intact, still sealed. And some of them were marked for technical parts. Immediately, the pair tore into them, hunting through the selection of salvage.

“Holy shit, I got it!” Elizabeth said after several minutes of quiet searching.

“Goddamn, that was lucky,” Jack replied.

“Yeah. Let’s take this stuff, load it into the rover. Maybe we can find a use for it.”

Jack nodded and they got to work. Half an hour later, they were slamming the trunk door of the rover shut.

“I’ve seen you eyeing that place this whole time, you want to take a picture of it, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “You still think we got the time?”

“Yes. And…” She hesitated, and something in her voice made him look over at her. He was already envisioning a good picture to take. “I was thinking…”

“Yeah?” he prompted when she didn’t continue.

“I’d be willing to be in a picture, if it was from a distance, in full armor,” she said.

“Really? You sure?”

“Yes, I wouldn’t bring it up otherwise,” she replied. “I want to.”

“All right, um…” He looked at her, then at the structure, then inspiration struck abruptly. “I have an idea. It might require a bit of danger but-”

“You know how I feel about that now,” she said with a smirk.

“Okay then. Here’s what I’ll need.”

It took twenty minutes for the two of them to get into position. At the end of it, Elizabeth ended up on the roof of the partially-constructed comms tower, and Jack ended up maybe a quarter mile back. He took it all in, adjusting his position slightly, looking for that perfect moment, that perfect shot. Abruptly, he had it.

“Okay, get into position,” he said over the radio, zooming with his helmet cam.

“You got it.”

Elizabeth knelt, raising her rifle, striking a classic aiming pose. He adjusted very slightly, then snapped the picture.

“Done,” he said.

“I can’t wait to see it,” she replied.

“Sooner we get back to base, sooner I can start adjusting it,” Jack said, beginning to make the walk back to the building as Elizabeth came down from the roof.

CHAPTER 08

“Holy shit...this is fucking amazing,” Elizabeth said.

They had made it back to base and gone through the process of unloading the stuff they’d found, including the data they had managed to recover from the geo site. It had been relatively simple to install the new part and download the data, though Elizabeth was dubious about the quality of the data itself. But Anya just wanted the data, and now she had it. After they’d gotten back and distributed all the stuff, they’d opted not to have sex until they were ready to hook up with Riley to make it that much better.

It had felt like a long wait.

After working around the base, making more cosmetic repairs, and a workout session and shower, (separate for obvious reasons), they’d had a nice dinner and a long talk. Now, they were waiting for Riley, who was grabbing her stuff for their threesome. Jack had found time to toy around with the photo he’d taken and now he was finally showing it to her.

“You’re the first one to see it,” he said, looking over her shoulder at the tablet she held. They were together in her room, stripped down to their underwear, sitting on her bed.

The picture had come out really well, he felt.

Elizabeth, who was little more than an armored figure striking a pose atop the derelict, half-finished structure, was framed by the sun, which was in the perfect position. It was like a corona around her. He’d turned it bluish-white, almost like plasma, as well as a number of other changes, including muting the colors almost to grays elsewhere in the photo.

“Seriously, this is fucking incredible,” she whispered. “Like, so badass. This...means a lot to me.” She looked up at him.

“I’m glad,” he replied. “Thank you for letting me photograph you, I know it couldn’t have been easy.”

She laughed, a little bitterly, he thought, but mostly happily. “It wasn’t. But it was worth it. I’m glad I did it.”

“So am I.”

The door to her quarters opened up and Riley walked in. They both looked over. She was completely naked. He was still getting used to how comfortable Riley was being utterly naked, not a shred of clothing on her body. He was also amazed that, although they’d had sex dozens of times by now, and he might actually have gotten to the point where she was around him without clothes more often than with them, he was still absolutely enraptured by her nude, voluptuous body. She was holding a strap-on and looked very excited.

“Why the fuck aren’t you naked yet?” she asked as she came in and stood at the end of the bed.

“We were waiting for you. Didn’t want to get started without you,” Elizabeth replied.

“Fair enough. I know you two can’t keep your fucking hands off each other at this point, not that I can blame either of you.” She put the strap-on on the nightstand and got into the bed with them. “Come on! I want to see those tits,” she complained.

“Okay, okay, God,” Elizabeth replied, setting the tablet aside and taking her bra off.

“What’s this?” Riley asked, picking up the tablet. “Shit, did you take this?”

“Yeah,” Jack replied.

“Wait, there’s someone in this picture...does that mean-” Her eyes widened and she looked up at Elizabeth, who was in the process of finishing getting naked by getting her panties off. Riley’s eyes widened a bit further as she was no doubt tripped up by seeing Elizabeth’s huge breasts. She refocused. “You were in a picture!?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth replied, rolling her eyes and tossing her panties aside.

“You haven’t willingly been in a photo since I’ve fucking known you, Elizabeth!” She looked over at Jack. “What the fuck did you do to convince her?!”

“She offered,” he replied.

“Holy shit, when’s the fucking wedding?” Riley asked.

“Riley! Stop being annoying!” Elizabeth complained.

Riley laughed, looked at the tablet again for a moment, then set it aside on the nightstand as well. “Okay, okay. Fine. Jack?” she asked.

He took off his boxers and Riley just sat there for a moment, staring at the two of them. “This is just so great,” she murmured. “I fucking love humans. You’re all a bunch of hot fucking freaks.”

“I was thinking the same thing about dysil,” Elizabeth said.

Riley laughed. “Yeah, but we’re honest about it. You all like to pretend otherwise. Now come here.”

Jack watched as the two redheads came together and began making out. He was immediately struck by the awe-inspiring visage of pure beauty that was this event. Two curvaceous, redheaded women locking lips and twisting tongues and groping each other, completely nude, was something he hadn’t ever actually seen in the flesh. He enjoyed watching that for a good minute before they broke apart and then Riley basically jumped on him. Then she was shoving her tongue into his mouth. Her strangely shaped tongue began twisting with his own and she moaned as he groped her fat ass. Her tail was twitching back and forth.

After a moment, she pulled back, looking at once both very happy and very sure of herself, then switched back to Elizabeth. Over the next several minutes, they readjusted their positions in bed, with Riley going back and forth between them, like she was at a buffet and couldn’t decide which of her favorite meals to enjoy.

Finally, she settled on staring at Elizabeth’s breasts. “I have missed these so much,” she said, staring at them with an unbridled joy, grinning madly. “I fucking love your tits so much, Elizabeth. I mean, I love all of you, but these fucking tits-”

She interrupted herself and ducked her head down, dragging her tongue across one of Elizabeth’s large, pale breasts and over one of her pink nipples.

Elizabeth moaned and shuddered in response.

“She’s very correct,” Jack said, on her other side. He began to do the same thing, and soon they were both sucking on her breasts.

“Oh wow, it’s been...a little bit since I’ve been in a threesome,” she panted. Then she let out a loud cry of bliss and Jack glanced down and saw that Riley had begun to pleasure her, rubbing her clit smoothly and firmly. He joined her, reaching down and slipping a finger inside of her, finding her incredibly wet inside. “Holy fucking-oh! OH! YES!” she shrieked, her hips bucking, and abruptly she began to orgasm.

Fuck, she must’ve been primed for it.

They continued pleasuring her through the orgasm, and he could feel a tremendous sexual energy passing through him, feeding off the others, building. It made him almost desperate for sex, and he had the notion they both felt the same way. He enjoyed every second of it as he alternated between sucking on her nipple and then licking across her large breast, pleasuring her with his tongue and his finger at the same time.

When the orgasm had run its course, aftershocks of bliss shivering through her large, tattooed, well-muscled body, she lay panting between them.

“My turn?” Riley asked.

“Yes, girl, your turn. And Jack here can hit it from the back like he likes to do,” Elizabeth replied with a sedate and sultry smile.

“He does seem to love that,” Riley agreed as Elizabeth got up and she took her place.

“You two have really big asses,” he replied. “And you have a tail.”

“You’ve got a thing for girls with tails, huh?” Riley asked.

“Who doesn’t?” Elizabeth replied, getting onto her hands and knees.

“You two are so fucking amazingly hot,” Jack marveled as he got behind Elizabeth. She looked better than ever naked and on her hands and knees, but now he also had Riley to look at, completely nude, her legs spread wide, all that orange skin and her massive breasts, her hands on Elizabeth’s head as she lowered it to Riley’s crotch.

Seeing Elizabeth do sex stuff with another woman was definitely a thing he had thought about a lot since meeting her.

Riley let out a moan as Elizabeth put her tongue to work. That jolted Jack out of his staring and he quickly slipped his cock inside of her sweet, wet pussy. Elizabeth let out a muffled moan of pleasure as he penetrated her, and soon he was stroking smoothly into her. His hands again found her hips and he felt a surge of intensely erotic lust and pure sexual energy begin to roar through him as he fucked the big ex-Marine redhead doggystyle while she ate alien pussy. The pure bliss of the encounter melted into his body, and the absolute gratification of shoving his raw cock into Elizabeth’s unprotected pussy over and over again was better than any drug.

He fucked her until Riley let out a loud, long scream of absolute bliss, her thighs bulging as she bucked her hips, coming hard from Elizabeth’s skilled oral. It was hard not to come inside of Elizabeth right then and there, but he’d gotten a bit better at holding onto his own orgasm. He fucked her until Riley finished, then pulled out of her.

“Now what?” he asked.

“I know what a thrill Elizabeth gets out of riding,” Riley said, “and I’m one of the few ladies that’ll let her ride my tongue. So, Liz…”

“Yes, please,” Elizabeth replied immediately.

“And you can fuck me,” Riley said as she shifted down lower.

“Gladly,” Jack replied eagerly as he shifted closer to the orange-skinned beauty.

As Elizabeth settled over Riley’s face, positioning herself carefully, facing him this time, he got in between Riley’s amazingly thick, smooth thighs and slipped right into her. She moaned at about the same time Elizabeth did. He started fucking her, reaching out and taking Elizabeth’s hands. She smiled at him, moaning, holding his hands and lacing their fingers together. After a moment, the two of them leaned towards each other and began making out. He let go of her hands and began groping her large, pale breasts.

“Fuck, Riley! Yes!” Elizabeth moaned, breaking the kiss. “Oh my fucking God that tongue!”

Jack continued groping her as he kept fucking pounding Riley’s pussy. Her vagina felt so incredibly slick, so fantastically hot and clenched so tightly around his rigid cock. There was an overt hedonistic quality to fucking Riley that he always picked up on, and he didn’t know if it was just her, or the fact that she was dysil. Or if it was real, or just a product of his imagination. They always said the biggest erogenous zone was the brain.

This time, he couldn’t hold back his orgasm. Right around the time Elizabeth let out a shriek of pure bliss and began to come all over Riley’s face, he was fucking her good and hard, and Riley began to come as well. That was too much for him. He let out a loud moan of pure and total rapture as he lost control and began shooting his load into her sweet, alien pussy. He filled that vagina of hers with his seed in hard spurts. It spilled out of him, burst out of him, and sent waves of blinding bliss careening throughout the whole of his being.

All three of them came, and when they were finished, they were reduced to a pile of tangled, sweaty bodies, chests rising and falling rapidly as they caught their breaths from the intensity of the shared orgasms.

“Wow,” Riley said. “Very good. Ooh. Give me a second.”

She got up and headed into the bathroom.

“You busted in her real good, didn’t you?” Elizabeth asked, grinning sedately at Jack.

“Yep. I’m gonna do the same to your ass soon,” he replied.

Her grin widened. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Did I hear we’re gonna DP you, you giant slut?!” Riley called from the bathroom as the shower turned on.

“Yep!” Elizabeth called back. She sat up and stretched suddenly. “You know what? This calls from some wine.”

“Get me some!” Riley yelled.

Jack laughed. “You ladies like your wine.”

“We do,” Elizabeth agreed. “It’s good stuff. Lyra’s really the only one who doesn’t partake.” She got up, stretched, popped something in her back, then walked over to her dresser. Rifling around in the top drawer, she pulled out a bottle and tore the cork out. She drank deeply from it. “You want any?” she asked.

“I’m good,” Jack replied.

“Okay then.” She took another drink, then walked into the bathroom. He watched her go, staring at her huge ass, already fantasizing about fucking it.

“Oh thank fucking yes!” Riley said.

“Damn, don’t drink the whole thing!” Elizabeth replied after a moment.

Jack laughed, listening to the two women as Riley cleaned up and, apparently, tried to chug an entire bottle of wine. He figured if any among the women could, it would be her. Or Elizabeth. She struck him as the kind of woman who could drink a lot of people under the table. He rested on his back, hands behind his head, enjoying the relaxing sensation of being naked and having just fucked a woman after a long day of hard work. Not that these days were particularly grueling after four years as an intergalactic Marine, but still, it felt like a full day’s work.

After a few moments, the shower shut off and they both returned to bed. Riley was holding the bottle, which was already half-gone now, and as she got into bed she drank off a quarter more of it, then passed it to Elizabeth and jumped onto Jack. As they resumed making out, Elizabeth drained the last of the bottle and put it on the floor, then joined them. After they’d taken turns making out with him, they got lower.

“I bet Jack would really like it if two women sucked him off,” Elizabeth said.

“Oh yes, he does,” Riley confirmed.

He watched as they both began licking his cock, their tongues dragging over the head again and again, touching together several times, and it was an intensely, fantastically erotic sight. And the pleasure, the wonderful, melting pleasure of their tongues as they licked his cock, and their eyes as they stared intensely at him. Occasionally the two of them would pause and kiss, and kissing became making out, with a lot of tongue.

And then they were taking turns sucking him off.

This was a side of Elizabeth he had known existed but had yet to see before now. The side of her that was extremely into women. He’d encountered a number of women who were into other women, and it seemed to be on a bit of a scale. Some were extremely into it, and they had sex with other women as naturally as they had sex with him. Some seemed almost cautious, or nervous, likely due to inexperience or whatever bullshit regarding sex and intimacy had been pushed on them when they were growing up.

For obvious reasons, he found a particular enjoyment in hooking up with the women who were very comfortable being sexual with other women. He’d figured that Elizabeth would be like that, based off what she’d told him, but it was nice to see it. And she was clearly into it. Everything about her expressions, her body language, every aspect of the encounter spoke of a lust as deep for Riley as it was for him.

“Okay,” he managed after a moment, “let’s fuck.”

“Fine by me,” Riley said, getting up and grabbing her strap-on. They both watched as she pulled it on up over her big, broad hips. Once she was done, she stared at them. “So, how exactly are we doing this?” she asked.

“I was thinking Riley, you could lay on your back, and I could ride you, and Jack could hit me from the back again,” she said.

“I’m down for that,” Riley replied.

“I’m happy to do that,” he said.

“There’s lube in the nightstand,” Elizabeth replied as Riley climbed back onto the bed.

Jack hurried over to it, almost falling off the bed in the process, making them both laugh. He was exceptionally eager to fuck Elizabeth in the ass. He pulled open the drawer, found the lube, snatched it up, and went about the process of preparing. He watched as Riley laid on her back and Elizabeth mounted her, getting atop her and slipping the fake cock into her pussy. Both of them moaned and shuddered as she did.

“That must’ve cost a lot,” he said.

“Yep,” Riley replied. “But it is way more than worth it. It automatically adjusts itself for maximum pleasure, is self-lubricating, comfortable as hell, and, best obvious bonus: lets the wearer feel the pleasure. So yeah, two thousand credits, but so worth it.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t worn it out,” Jack said as he shifted over to Elizabeth’s backside.

“I have. This is my tenth one,” Riley replied.

“Holy shit,” Elizabeth said. “You are such a slut.”

“Who isn’t?” Riley replied. “Like you aren’t a fucking slut, you big, redheaded bitch,” she murmured, then pushed the cock up into her when Elizabeth began to reply. Her words became lost as she cried out. “That’s what I thought.”

“All right,” Elizabeth managed after a moment, grasping Riley’s shoulders. “Calm down, and let Jack get in my ass. We need to get a good rhythm going.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know standard protocol,” Riley replied.

Jack got up against her and began to work his way carefully into her ass. He listened to her and he felt her body as she responded to his movements. Her ass felt fantastic, it was wonderfully tight around his slicked-up cock, and it took a few moments to first work his way completely inside of her big, thick ass, then to start a good rhythm that got all three of them going. But he and Elizabeth were already quite naturally in tune with each other, and Riley was not only an expert but a natural at all things sexual it seemed, so it didn’t take too long.

Then he was lost in paradise, in a perfect threesome.

His hands slid up in between the two women, and he honestly couldn’t decide whose tits he wanted to grope more. He kept switching between them, they were both such perfect, firm, huge racks. And listening to both women moaning and shouting and crying out in incoherent bliss made the whole encounter so much better. Elizabeth seemed to be really losing it and he imagined it had to be an extremely intense experience, getting fucked by two people at the same time. Two people she was very attracted to and comfortable with. Two people who knew her body, though obviously Riley knew it better than he did at this point.

And her ass was just…

Perfect pleasure. Absolute bliss. Total ecstasy.

He grunted and groaned as the pleasure ate into him, consuming him alive, burning him in its white-hot intensity. It radiated out from the core of his being and filled every facet of himself. His cock felt as hard as it had been in a long time, throbbing with the utter rapture of her tight, thick, well-maintained ass.

“Oh yeah! Oh my fucking God! Fuck it! Fuck my ass!” she screamed.

“You want it harder?” he asked, groping her breasts.

“YES!”

He responded by going harder and faster, and she screamed in response.

“Oh fuck yes, Elizabeth, take that fucking dick!” Riley yelled, then let out a loud moan as, since he was going faster, now she had to go faster.

They were building towards a climax, he could feel it. He wanted to start shooting his load into her huge ass so bad, but he had to hold on, had to wait until they had come as well. He heard Elizabeth began making that sound that some women made when they were getting closer to an orgasm, a series of short moans going up in pitch each time, coming faster with each passing second, and then suddenly, as her whole body tensed…

“OH MY FUCKING GOD!” she screamed as she began to come.

“Oh yes! Right there! OH FUCK ME!” Riley yelled in pure mindless bliss.

That was it, they were both coming. Jack began grunting as he drove his cock furiously into her ass, pounding her, relishing every instant of the encounter, and then he triggered and began shooting his load into her. He moaned loudly, a long, loud groan of absolute, overwhelming rapture as he started coming in her ass, filling her up. His cock jerked and twitched, spurting sprays of his seed into her and sending waves of pink bliss careening through his body, lavishing him in hedonistic ecstasy that reached every facet of his being.

He bathed in the bliss, they all did, sharing the joys of the sexual union and the triple orgasm.

When they were coming down from the sexual high and came back to themselves, they disentangled from each other and Jack flopped onto his back. Elizabeth got up and quickly headed for the bathroom. He heard the shower start up.

“You got more wine?” Riley called after a moment.

“Fuck you, you get a bottle,” Elizabeth called back.

Riley laughed, then got out of the strap-on and laid back down for a moment. “Fine! Just a minute.” She looked over at Jack. “I was right, wasn’t I? About you and her.”

“...I think so,” he admitted after a moment. “Still too early to tell.”

“That’s fair. But she really likes you, and you really like her. I can tell now more than ever. You two seem like you were made for each other. I’m just lucky I got to experience both of you at the same time,” she replied.

“Well, that experience isn’t over yet.”

She grinned fiercely and sat up, her huge, orange breasts bouncing. “No, it isn’t. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He watched her fat ass as she walked out of the room, then he got up and headed into the bathroom to join Elizabeth in the shower.

It was going to be another long, great night.

…

“Today, I want to go with you,” Anya said.

Jack glanced up from his breakfast, first at her, then at Elizabeth. “Okay. Any particular reason?” Elizabeth asked.

“I’ve been wanting to get out of the base for a little while now, but I didn’t ask before because Maureen said you two needed time alone,” Anya replied. “And now I think you’ve had sufficient time alone. Especially since you’ve brought Riley to bed.”

“Yes, I think that will be fine,” Elizabeth said. “I can’t imagine Jack will object.”

“No, I’m cool with that,” he replied.

“He probably thinks you’re going to fuck him while you’re out there,” Riley said with a smirk.

“He’s probably right,” Anya murmured.

“Just make sure you clean up any mess you make,” Maureen said.

“Deal,” Anya replied.

“How’s the data been?” Jack asked, honestly curious. Then he yawned and took another drink of coffee. It had, in fact, been a long night.

“Okay, I guess,” she replied. “Although I’m concerned we won’t be able to offer it for much if the next survey site turns out to be of the same ‘quality’ as the last two. The data was degraded or redundant, or revealed that there was basically a lot of nothing around.”

“Well, worst case scenario it’s a dud contract,” Maureen said with a shrug.

“Yeah, I know, I just like to do these things right, I guess. Force of habit,” Anya replied.

“I think it’s a force of habit for us all by now,” Sylvia said.

“Speak for yourself, you bunch of fucking perfectionists,” Riley grunted.

“Yes, you can come along,” Elizabeth said, clearly trying to get the conversation back on track.

“Good. What’s it look like?” Anya asked.

“Not entirely sure. We really won’t know until we get there. The data you gave me on the third site wasn’t too forthcoming.”

“Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten about that. Well, I guess it’ll be a surprise then. I like surprises.”

“They aren’t always good things, don’t forget that,” Elizabeth said.

“Well thank you, Miss Raincloud. In that case, I will go get my stuff ready.”

“Okay, we’ll be at the rover soon,” Elizabeth replied.

CHAPTER 09

“Hey...don’t put your armor on.”

Both Jack and Elizabeth looked back towards the entrance of the armory.

“Which one of us?” Jack asked.

“You,” she replied, looking at him. “I...need you without armor on the ride out there.”

“Why?” Elizabeth asked, sounding genuinely confused.

“Well I said Jack was probably right that I was going to fuck him while we’re out there. I can’t very well do that with armor,” Anya replied.

“Oh...uh, all right,” Jack said. He had yet to actually put on his armor, which he was grateful for, since it was a bit of a process. Instead, he found a crate that could contain it all and was decently mobile.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Elizabeth murmured.

“Oh come on! You’ve had him for days, I’m fucking horny!” Anya complained.

“Fine, fine. Just remember what Maureen said.”

“I will,” Anya promised, walking over and beginning the process of packing her own armor.

After he and Anya finished packing their armor and grabbed their weapons, and Elizabeth pulled on her own suit of armor, they headed for the rover. Elizabeth took her traditional place at the driver’s seat, and Anya got into the back.

“With me,” she said as Jack began to get into the front, next to Elizabeth. He realized he’d been doing it automatically, and also that Anya had a point: she couldn’t very well fuck him if he was sitting up front and she was in the back.

He looked her over as they settled in and Elizabeth started driving them. In a way, he felt a little bad, as he’d definitely been neglecting them all over the past several days. But he thought they would understand, and it wasn’t like any of them were seriously relying on him for emotional support, or even sexual support. They all had each other. In a way, that was really nice, to be wanted, but not necessarily needed. It was relaxing and somewhat freeing.

Anya looked as good as ever: slim, fit, pale. Another redhead. He was glad that he loved redheads as much as he did. In the same way Elizabeth being tall automatically made her more attractive, (and her tattoos, and military history), red hair was an automatic booster as well. Something he noticed, though, was that for some reason, Anya seemed a bit more aged than Elizabeth. Although they were, if he remembered right, the same age, she did seem older. He wasn’t sure what it was, exactly. Something in her face, not anything physical necessarily, although it could be, but more in...what? Expression? Her eyes?

Maybe it was her eyes.

Or maybe Elizabeth simply seemed more youthful now because he had gotten to know her so much more intimately over the past several days.

“I take it you two have been having fun?” Anya asked, and he immediately could tell she was trying to seduce him. She was laying her accent on a bit more and she knew by now that he found it really hot.

“Oh yeah,” Elizabeth said.

“Definitely,” Jack agreed.

“I’m glad. Elizabeth is too...serious. A good fucking from a guy she actually likes was just the ticket, I think, to calm her the fuck down and lighten her up.”

“Oh piss off,” Elizabeth replied easily.

Anya smiled. “You’re just mad because now I’m edging my way back in.” She reached over and laid a hand in his lap. “Ooh, he’s already hard.”

“He’s twenty four,” she said, then glanced at him in the rearview. “No offense.”

“I mean you’re pretty much right,” he said. “I’m glad I don’t have a fucking hair-trigger for orgasms anymore, but I’ve still got one for erections.”

“Which is just great for us,” Anya said, slipping over to him. “Drive slow,” she said to Elizabeth, pressing herself up against him.

“Uh-huh,” Elizabeth replied, rolling her eyes.

Anya kissed him, and he immediately became lost in her. He was realizing that these women had that power, that effect, whether intentional or not. They became the only thing he was aware of whenever they were up against him, focusing on him, kissing him, touching him. She was so wonderfully energetic and so into him. It made him feel electrified with life and lust. She reached down and began undoing his pants, getting his cock out single-handedly. She began to massage it as they made out, twisting tongues and locking lips, almost panting by the time she broke the kiss and then put her head down into his lap.

“Ah fuck, Anya…” he groaned as she started sucking him off. “Oh wow. That’s...phew, fuck, that’s good.”

“She is pretty good,” Elizabeth murmured.

As much as he was enjoying it, he had to admit that he was a little nervous. They were in a fucking rover, driving across largely uncharted badlands, and he his dick in a woman’s mouth. Between two sets of strong teeth. But damn did it feel good. And ultimately, he trusted Anya to not hurt him, even if it might not entirely be up to her.

Anya kept going for another few moments, then sat up and began undoing her pants. “Wish I could’ve worn a skirt,” she muttered as she maneuvered around, looking a little ridiculous as she tried to wriggle out of her pants.

He saw that she’d opted out of panties.

“Kind of surprised you didn’t,” Elizabeth replied.

“Well, this is a dangerous frontier world. We have uniforms for a reason...fuck! There,” she said, getting her pants off.

He immediately found his eyes drawn her smooth, pale thighs. They were slim and firm and wonderful. As much as he loved Elizabeth’s large, muscular frame, he also really had a thing for women like Anya: tight, fit bodies made of lean muscle. She nimbly and easily mounted him, smiling down at him as she paused to pull her shirt up until her breasts fell out. He immediately reached up and began groping them, unable to do anything else. She let out a small sound of satisfaction as he touched her, then she reached down, gripped his cock, and slipped it into herself.

“Ah my yes…” she moaned as she penetrated herself.

“Oh wow,” he whispered, continuing to massage her breasts. “Fuck, you are so tight.”

“Yes...I have missed this,” she murmured as she began working her wonderfully fit and firm hips and thighs. His hands slid from her breasts to her sides, then down them until they rested on her hips, watching her work, feeling an intense closeness in the tight confines of the rover’s backseat. It had been quite awhile since he’d fucked in a vehicle, let alone a moving vehicle. Not a lot of opportunities had afforded themselves.

He quickly became enraptured in her as she began kissing him again, bouncing on his cock, riding him with a smooth perfection of absolute bliss. Her pussy was a world of hot, slick paradise and feeling her trim, athletic body moving against his own was a study in pure enjoyment. When she had brought him to near orgasm, she seemed to come back to herself.

“Don’t come in me,” she said, “too hard to clean up right now. I’ll take it in my mouth.”

“Thank you so much,” he groaned in reply.

“Yep,” she said, kissed him, then, in a surprisingly agile and quick movement, hopped off of him and put her head back into his lap. He moaned loudly as a fresh wave of pleasure hit him when her lips and tongue began laying on the ecstasy.

Within seconds he was coming in her mouth.

“Oh fuck! Anya! Oh my fucking-oh Anya!” he moaned, incoherent with rapture.

She sucked him completely dry, taking everything he had to give, and kept sucking even when he was just dry-kicking.

When he was finished coming, she sat up, grinning at him. “I am so glad I found you.”

“Honestly I feel like I’m getting the better end of this meeting,” he replied, leaning back and closing his eyes, floating in his post-orgasm glow. When she didn’t respond immediately, he opened his eyes back up and looked at her.

She looked oddly serious now. “Let’s just say...I could really use a really cute guy less than half my age being absolutely enraptured with me sexually right now.”

Jack kept looking at her, unsure of what to say, and abruptly, it hit him that the other women’s assessment of her, that she was having more difficulty, emotionally, than she was letting on, came back to him in a rush.

Before either he or Elizabeth could respond, she began pulling her uniform back on. “But hey, I know you’re cool to pay me back later tonight with some excellent oral,” she said, her easygoing nature reasserting itself suddenly.

“Yeah, definitely,” he replied, still unsure if he should pursue that or not.

Probably not. If she wanted to talk about it, she would. He glanced at Elizabeth, but she was focusing on driving at the moment.

“I think we’re getting close,” Elizabeth said.

“You think? I thought this thing had amazing navigational gear,” Anya replied as she finished pulling her pants back on. Jack quickly tucked his cock away and zipped back up.

“You’ll see,” she replied.

A moment later, the rover rolled to a stop. They got out and Jack realized they had again come close to the edge of an abrupt drop-off. The three of them walked slowly to the edge of the cliff and looked out over the vast desolation that lay a good hundred yards down.

“Wow,” Anya murmured. “Yeah, that might be a bitch.”

“Uh-huh,” Elizabeth said.

Jack looked around. There was no obvious way down from what he could see. The cliff extended away to the left and the right for probably close to a mile in each direction. Maybe another half-mile away, dead ahead and down in the next area, was the third and final geo site. Jack could also make out what might have been another few structures in the enormous canyon. And after several moments, he sighed.

He couldn’t see an obvious way down either. The canyon was huge, its cliff walls sheer. There might be a path way down on the opposite end, but it was far enough away that they couldn’t see it clearly.

“Let me run some scans, you two gear up,” Elizabeth said.

He glanced over. She was staring at a rise in the earth off to the left maybe a quarter mile away. It looked like there was an opening in it. A cave?

They headed back to the rover and while she climbed back into the driver’s seat to scan, he and Anya went around back and popped the trunk.

“Wait, Jack,” Elizabeth said, making him look up.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t put your armor on yet.”

“Why?”

“I want to get fucked in the rover too, you know.”

He felt a beat of lust go careening through him.

“Lucky boy,” Anya murmured with a smirk, nudging him.

“Very,” he agreed.

After several minutes, Elizabeth came back and began the process of getting out of her own armor so they could fuck. “That cave over there,” she said, pointing briefly, “it looks like it’s the only way down. If you want to do this, I’ll still go, but if you want to quit, I’ll be fine with that, too, given our luck with caves so far.”

Anya seemed to consider it for several moments.

“I want to keep going,” she said.

“Okay then.”

“Leave your upper armor on,” Jack said.

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “You like it with the armor on, huh?”

He laughed. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind trying it. I’ve had to fuck in armor before and, I don’t know, it was kinda hot. I guess because we were so close to getting caught.”

“I get it,” she replied.

She just took her lower half off, as well as her pants, boots, and underwear, then sat her big, bare ass in the back of the rover and spread her legs.

“My pussy awaits,” she said. “Gotta admit, I kinda just want a quickie. It’s dusty out here, not great for vaginas.”

“Oh, yeah, good point,” he said, getting up against her and pulling his cock out.

“Anya, will you be willing to take another shot in the mouth? To help with cleanup? I’d do it myself, but I’m afraid I’d hurt one or both of us trying to drop to my knees in this top-heavy fucking armor,” she said.

“Yeah...if you promise some long sweet oral, too,” Anya replied with a grin.

“Yes, I promise,” Elizabeth replied, sounding mildly exasperated.

“Good. I’ll be ready.”

Jack was feeling extremely horny as he got up against Elizabeth and slipped into her fantastically wet vagina. As he began fucking her, listening to her moan and feeling her shiver in response to his touch, he knew he wasn’t just turned on because of the obvious factors. The fact that he had Elizabeth in half of her armor and Anya now completely suited up in her own body armor just fucking got him going. He’d developed a massive lust for Marine women in specific and tough warrior women in general, and the sleek, dark power armor that they were all wearing was hitting that button hard. Especially now that they were actually fucking with it on.

“Oh yeah, that’s...whew, that’s fucking good dick,” Elizabeth whispered.

He stared at her. She looked phenomenal in her black armor, her eyes closed, chewing on her lower lip, enjoying his cock going into her again and again. He quickly got into it, though he didn’t get nearly as into it as he would have otherwise. When they were back at the outpost, he pretty much lost himself in the women. But out here? No, it was too dangerous. Anya was keeping watch...sort of. And he trusted his and Elizabeth’s senses to let them know if something was approaching them, but she was right, this needed to be a quickie.

As it turned out, the decision was made for him, because her pussy felt so damned good thanks to the lust boost he got from the armor-wearing babes, he shouted a warning to Anya. She managed to get down onto her knees and as soon as she did, he pulled out and stuck it in her mouth and then one more time she was sucking him dry. He moaned, going rigid, that fresh pulse of familiar pleasure blasting through him, radiating out from his cock, filling him. Watching Anya, in her full suit of power armor, suck him dry only heightened the bliss.

When he was finished, she got up and pulled out a flask.

“Thank you, again,” he murmured, sitting down besides Elizabeth, who was already in the process of pulling her uniform and armor back on.

“Yep,” Anya replied, taking a drink.

“All right, we’ve had fun,” Elizabeth said as she finished up. “Time to focus. We’ve apparently got some caves to navigate and I have no fucking idea what’s in there. Scanners are spotty. I want both of you to seriously pay attention.”

“I will,” Jack said as he got up and began pulling his armor on.

“Anya?”

“Don’t worry, Elizabeth. I’ve been on enough frontier worlds to know how to handle myself. I know how to get serious,” she replied.

Elizabeth nodded. “Okay, finish suiting up, then get back in the rover and I’ll drive us over there.”

…

Ten minutes later, they stood before the entrance to the cave.

They were all suited up, weapons at the ready, safeties off. Elizabeth had called Maureen and updated her on the situation.

“So, we sure we want to do this?” Jack asked. He had to admit, he was at least a little nervous about going back into a deep, dark cave after last time.

“I want to do this,” Anya said firmly.

“I’m good if you are,” Elizabeth replied, which he thought was kind for her, given it gave him an out if he wasn’t feeling up to this.

Honestly though, he was. Even with the anxiety he was feeling, staring into the dark opening, some part of him was looking forward to this.

Like Elizabeth, he was kind of a thrill-seeker.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“Okay. I’ll take point, Jack, cover the rear. Anya, stay between us. If you see or hear anything weird, sound off. Could be more cave spiders in there, but this planet is largely uncharted, so there could be fucking anything in there,” Elizabeth said.

And with that, she set off towards the entrance, rifle at ready.

He was glad to see that all of them had settled into a professional composure. Not everyone could switch back to that if they’d been intimate and it was potentially very dangerous. Anya, and obviously Elizabeth, could slip into a cold professional mentality when they had to. Jack was glad to see that he was still mostly capable of it.

They activated the lights mounted on their armor as they entered the cave, which was really more of a tunnel in the beginning, and made it deep enough inside to run out of sunlight. The tunnel immediately began to descend, and they moved down the slanted, earthen passageway in silence. Jack listened and watched their back, trying to pay close attention to his environment, in case it was telling him anything crucial.

Surviving in dangerous places meant learning how to understand and read them, because there were usually context clues hidden around in the form of sights, sounds, or even smells. Things that instincts tended to react to. He’d sharpened these over the past four years and was again glad to find that the months following his discharge hadn’t dulled them. He studied the tunnel, looking for such clues. In the beginning the walls, floor, and roof were mostly dry, hard-packed earth. As they went deeper, the dirt began to give way to rock.

There were signs of life in the caves, that people had once come through here.

They found bits of metal pushed into the dirt, old wires running along the ceiling and walls, and the occasional stumpy remain of a lighting fixture. So they were almost certainly going in the right direction. The tunnel continued for almost a quarter mile, descending deeper and deeper until finally letting out into a pitch-dark cave.

“Anya, watch the tunnel we just came out of. Jack, go right, I’ll go left. Sweep the area,” Elizabeth said.

They both fired off quick responses and got to work. Jack broke right, sweeping his light across his area of the roughly circular cavern. It wasn’t too large, maybe twenty yards across, and there were more traces of life. He saw an old metal table, scattered with scrap metal and bits of wire. He also saw brown stains across its surface. Pausing, he looked closer.

It looked a lot like old blood.

Looking ahead, he saw several things glinting in the dirt, closer to the only other exit out of the cavern, another tunnel across from the first. He finished his check of his side of the cavern, finding nothing, and returned to the glinting objects.

As suspected, his investigation revealed them to be spent shell casings.

“There was a firefight here,” he said. “Found some blood and shell casings.”

“Great,” Elizabeth muttered as she joined him. “Well, this all looks old as hell. Maybe whatever it was is gone, or was wiped out.”

“Maybe,” Jack replied.

“Let’s keep going. Come on, Anya, we’re good for now.”

She joined them and they pressed on. The next several minutes disappeared into the gloom as they moved in a pool of light through another tunnel, descending further and further. They took a few turns, thankfully only having a single path to follow. The tension, however, began to grow as they found more signs of some old conflict. More spent shell casings, more bits of scrap metal that had blood on them in some cases.

No bodies, though.

They began passing by openings in the tunnel and cave walls. They were too small to go into, and even the biggest ones that could be gotten into, you’d have to crawl. Not something any of them were willing to do at the moment. Flashlights only revealed a lot of nothing. After close to twenty minutes of moving through the darkness, Jack thought they had to be a lot closer to the ground at this point. That was when they ran into something new.

“Wait,” Elizabeth said, and they froze. She crouched for a moment, and he waited. After a bit, she stood back up. “Come here, look at these, before we disturb them.”

They moved closer to her and stepped to either side of her, as the tunnel they were in was wide enough to admit them.

Jack immediately saw what it was she was seeing: rows of indents in the dirt, about two feet apart.

“Tracks,” he muttered.

“Yep. Something’s living in those tunnels,” Elizabeth replied.

“They’re small,” Anya said quietly.

“But they’re about two feet apart, those tunnels are between one and three feet in height and over two feet wide usually,” Elizabeth replied. “Could be looking at cave spiders. Or some other kind of nasty, big bug.”

“Great,” Anya growled. She suddenly didn’t sound so confident. “Shit. Maybe we should-”

She fell silent as they heard something. All three turned around, the sound behind them. They each raised their weapons, shining their lights back the way they’d come. Jack wasn’t sure what he had heard, exactly, it had been lost in the echo, but it seemed intentional. Not just a rock settling into place or falling or something like that, though it could be. It was all too easy to become paranoid in a place like this, even with combat training.

“Should we go back?” Anya whispered.

“Might be too late for that,” Elizabeth replied. “Dammit. I should’ve-”

She stopped speaking abruptly as they started to hear more sounds. A dull kind of tapping, repetitive, and it was getting closer. They waited in terse silence. It got closer. Abruptly, Jack realized what it was he was hearing: footsteps of something with six or eight legs. He felt dread begin to fill him as he closely watched the few tunnels that were nearest to them in the cave walls. After several long, miserable, tense seconds, something emerged.

At first, he thought they were going to have to fight the cave spiders again, but as it cleared the small passageway and came into the tunnel with them, it became obvious that this was different. It was much closer to a scorpion, though about twenty times the size. It was patterned in red and black, had six bent legs that ended in points, and the two arms that came out of its front, on either side of a small, oddly conical head, ended in pincers.

“Oh fuck,” Elizabeth said.

The thing regarded them with six eyes that shined a menacing red. It issued a hiss and its tail began to rear back.

“Fuck this,” Jack said and opened fired.

As his bullets made contact with it, splattering glowing pink blood across the wall behind it, its tail snapped forward and something launched out of it. Jack jerked to the side, bumping into Elizabeth, and heard something smack wetly into the wall beside him. He twisted to look at it and saw a gob of reddish-pink something stuck to the wall. It was already sizzling, eating into it, melting it. Jack groaned as he saw it.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me!”

“Fall back!” Elizabeth said.

But even as she said it, suddenly, more scorpions began to appear out of the tunnels, effectively cutting off their escape route.

“Shit, forward! Go! I’ll cover us!” she said, and began laying down fire with her rifle.

Jack and Anya immediately turned and began rushing down the tunnel, into the unknown. They managed to get to the end of the tunnel before running into the more of the giant scorpions. They came into another cavern, this one longer and narrower, and saw almost a dozen of the things waiting for them.

“Shit,” Jack snapped as he took aim. Nothing to do but to fight now. He flipped to full automatic and pulled the trigger, hosing down a cluster of five of them to his right while Anya opened fire on some others. He emptied the entire magazine into them, spraying their glowing blood across the walls, floor, and even getting some up onto the ceiling, as well as several stalagmites. He managed to slice and dice the lot of them, emptying his assault rifle doing so, and as he quickly reloaded, he heard more of them coming, as well as Elizabeth firing frantically behind them. Anya was holding her own, and it was obvious that she’d had her own fair share of combat experience. But fuck, more had come to replace the ones they’d killed already.

“What the fuck are we gonna do!?” she snapped as she reloaded.

Jack opened fire again, now sending out bursts of bullets into individual scorpions. They didn’t seem particularly resistant to them, it was just that there were so many of them. They were even scuttling along the walls now.

“I don’t know! We might have to just run back the way we came, the tunnel is a bottleneck! There’s too many in here!”

As he said it, suddenly, an explosion rocked the area.

Jack felt panic ignite in him.

Elizabeth.

“What’s going on?” he snapped after activating his radio. He heard a response from her, but it was far too garbled by static. “Say again?”

Same thing: Elizabeth saying something through a massive wall of static.

Shit.

She didn’t sound panicked at least. As he ran dry again and began reloading, he heard running footsteps behind him.

Abruptly, Elizabeth appeared at his side, between him and Anya, and opened fire. “The way back is blocked now!” she snapped.

“Fuck!” Jack yelled.

“We have to push through! Start clearing a path and make for the far exit! We’re likely not that far from the way out of here!”

They got to it. Jack focused fire on the scorpions to the near-right of dead ahead of them, Anya covered the left, and Elizabeth swept up the middle. As they began killing the scorpion creatures, they made their way forward, gaining ground as quickly as they could. It felt like a long, brutal battle, and Jack worked his way through three more magazines, but finally, they shot their way through to the other side.

“Go!” Elizabeth snapped as they hit the corresponding tunnel. Jack and Anya ran. As they did, he heard a sustained burst of gunfire and after several long seconds, running footfalls and then another explosion that rocked the whole area.

They ran until they saw daylight again, Elizabeth catching up with them after a little while, and suddenly, they found themselves back outside.

Jack looked up. The cave they’d emerged from sat at the base of a huge cliff sheer that shot hundreds of feet into the air.

They had arrived.

“Maureen,” Elizabeth said, breathing heavily as she emerged behind them into the light, “we might need a pickup.” She paused, and Jack listened carefully over the radio network. There was no response. Elizabeth was silent for a moment longer, then exhaled sharply. “Fuck!” she growled. “Our signal isn’t getting out of this canyon. Something’s interfering with it.”

“Great,” Anya muttered.

“The plan is the same as before,” Elizabeth said after a moment. “We hit the geo site, see if we can find a way to get a radio signal out.”

She started walking towards the structure in the distance.

Jack and Anya followed after her.

CHAPTER 10

“Sorry about getting us into this mess,” Anya said.

They had been walking for almost fifteen minutes at this point, and so far no one had said anything. At first it was because they were all too focused on the abrupt situational change, but it had become, to Jack and Elizabeth at least, the quietness of a quick march across inhospitable land. He realized abruptly that to Anya it might be uncomfortably or even angrily silent.

“It’s okay, Anya, I’m not mad,” Elizabeth replied. “This was a situation we had to accept as possible, given what we’re doing here.”

“Yes, but I kept pushing for this,” she said.

“I know, but Jack and I accepted our share of the responsibility for that. You did, too. Don’t worry, okay? This isn’t the first dangerous situation we’ve been in.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“I’m not mad, either, if it helps,” Jack said after a moment.

She laughed. “I guess it does. And hey, worst-case scenario, we all got laid by people we like within the past hour.”

Now Elizabeth laughed. “Yeah, there is that.”

They kept walking for awhile after that, putting bootprints in the baked earth, the sun glaring down from high above. Jack kept an eye out for more creatures. Between the cave spiders, the buzzards, the lizard-wolves and jaguars, and now the fucking giant scorpions, this planet was shaping up to be pretty lethal. He’d visited planets that were basically what some of the older Marines called milk runs, where nothing was dangerous or it was a paradise of some sort, and planets actually worse than Valena Three.

It was always kind of a trip, being thrown into a survival situation. As he walked along the canyon, Jack found that he was still liking it. Admittedly, liking it in sort of a wild, crazy way that might also boarder on the edge of hate, but there was definitely an appreciable amount of like worked in there. There was a satisfaction to near-death experiences, to coming up against something that fully intended to murder you and walking away the victor. He was interested to see that Elizabeth was still apparently ensnared by this particular trait. Maybe it never went away, even after decades. Or maybe she would outgrow it, eventually.

“Jack,” Anya said when they were about three quarters of the way to the geo site.

“Yeah?” he replied.

“I was curious...are you finding what you were looking for out here? You really struck me as someone looking for something important when we first met.”

He considered that for several long moments, and finally replied. “Either I’m in the process of finding it, or I’ve found it, and now I’m in the process of figuring it out.”

She smiled at that. “I’m glad. I feel like we’re all looking for something out here. I like you a lot. You’re a good guy. I want you to be happy.”

“Thank you,” he replied, a little awkwardly. He’d never been good at accepting kindness. “I like all of you, too. And I hope you find what you’re looking for.” He paused. “What about you?”

She sighed. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “In a way, and I don’t want to come across as dismissive to you, but I think it’s much easier to find answers when you’re younger, in some ways. When you’re older, you’ve tried and rejected so many things that it gets harder to find something new. Problems arrive with less frequency, I think, or at least problems that require new answers, but when they do show up...they take longer to figure out.”

He considered that. “That makes sense, although…”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe the answer is something you’ve already considered, but it’s been long enough that you left it in the darkness of memory, assuming it wouldn’t work.”

“That was...surprisingly eloquent,” she murmured. She was silent for another moment. “Shit, maybe you’re right. I don’t know. But...I do know that I’m having a good time out here. How about you, Elizabeth?”

“Fuck,” Elizabeth replied. “Was hoping it wouldn’t come my way. I don’t know. I am having a great time. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for. Purpose, I guess. I had a lot of purpose when I was a Marine, even when I felt kind of adrift, I still at least had the structure and orders. Even though it sometimes felt meaningless, especially during the last few years, there was still basically a checklist to follow or, barring that, a procedure to enact. I thought that would keep me going into private security, but so many of those operations are such shitshows...I don’t know. I guess I’m just trying to figure out what the fuck to do with my life.”

“Maybe you could do this?” Jack suggested.

“What, exactly? Hang out on some frontier world running contracts? Fighting alien monsters and probably mercenaries or slavers?”

“I mean...why not? This is fun.”

“Not without people I like around. And I can’t imagine everyone will want to do this forever. I’m guessing Maureen and Sylvia are basically just going to realize they miss their old life, consider this a nice vacation, maybe do it again in ten years, but go back to their lines of work. Riley actually is just treating this like a straight-up vacation. She can transition back to her old life without a problem. I don’t know about Lyra. Anya...I don’t know what you’ll end up doing. Obviously I can’t tell where you’ll go either, Jack.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I am liking this.”

“So what, are you saying you’d be down to keep doing something like this with me?”

“I mean...yeah, probably.”

They were silent for a moment.

“You two need some time alone?” Anya asked, and she sounded like she was only half-teasing.

“No,” Elizabeth replied quickly. She sighed. “I don’t know. I...let’s just focus on getting out of this canyon. Like I said, I’m still figuring everything out.”

“I get the impression all three of us are,” Anya replied, and that seemed to be the end of it.

They arrived at the building a few minutes later. It looked as dusty and disused as the others, though at least decently intact. Though as they got inside and began hunting around, it became obvious that it suffered from the same thing the other two had: salvagers. Probably someone with a ship had come down here, though it could very well be someone had tried to set up an operation in those caves at some point over the last few years. The three of them cleared the building, finding that some of the gear still remained.

They moved through each of the few rooms in the simple structure, finding it vacant and dusty. No more scorpions hanging around, at least. And, as luck would have it, the control room seemed to be still largely intact.

“Okay,” Anya said as she hooked her suit up to one of the more important-looking consoles and, once the screen powered on, set to work. “Let’s see if their comms system is still functional, and if we can hook into it. If we can, we can just call home and Riley can be here in like half an hour. She can just land here in the canyon and drop us off back at the rover.”

“Hopefully it’s that easy,” Elizabeth replied.

Anya said nothing, but Jack could hear the uncertainty in her tone. He knew how she felt. When it came to bad situations, it rarely was that easy. Almost like a universal constant or law of nature or something.

“Well, the good news at least is that my data is here and it looks pretty solid,” Anya muttered after a little while.

“And the radio?” Elizabeth asked.

“Working on it.”

Jack looked out the window, over the bleak desolation of the canyon. He saw movement off in the distance, both in the air and on the ground.

“Looks like buzzards and maybe some wolf-lizards out there,” he said to Elizabeth.

She joined him at the window, looking out ahead of the building, opposite the cave they’d come from, where the canyon extended on for another several miles. He used the zoom function on his helmet cam and tried to get a better look at what was out there. Yes, definitely buzzards and definitely a pack of wolf-lizards, and there were definitely a pair of structures down there with them. Though one of them was so badly damaged that it was little more than a pile of rubble. The other was actually another radio center, this one smaller and finished, that sat on the highest point in the canyon, built on another rise in the land. Maybe they were in luck and they’d be able to hook up their radios there if this didn’t pan out.

“Fuck,” Anya said.

“What?” Elizabeth asked, turning to look at her.

“The comms array is shot in here and, on top of that, I’ve just found an advisory that there are a lot of minerals in the canyon floor and walls that fuck with radio signals. So we can’t call out. God-fucking-dammit.”

“I bet that’s what that radio tower is there for, they must have a booster or a way to compensate for the effect,” Elizabeth said.

“I fucking hope so,” Anya muttered.

“Worst case scenario, Maureen will try to reach us by radio in a few hours, won’t be able to and, because she’s cautious by nature and gives a huge shit about us, will make Riley fly out to the rover, which they can track. Or, at the very least, they have our last known location. They know we’re in this canyon. So for now we’ll walk over to the radio tower, see if it works, and call for help. Anyone got a problem with the plan?”

“No,” Anya said.

“No, we just need to avoid those assholes,” Jack replied, nodding to the buzzards and the pack of wolf-lizards.

“We’ll mange. Anya, grab your data, then we’ll go.”

…

They walked away from the survey structure, to the right of the canyon, where, through a happy coincidence, both the radio tower was and the hostile alien creatures weren’t. Though Jack was nervous, as he had no idea what their operational range might be. But they made the walk to the shadow of the canyon wall within fifteen minutes, and then spent the next fifteen making good progress towards the radio tower. Their conversation dropped to nothing as they focused on their survival. As smoothly as things were going, he knew they could go wrong, badly, at the drop of a hat. Especially in alien wilderness.

As they stuck to the wall and soldiered on, Jack found himself thinking about the conversation he and Elizabeth had had. It had kind of slipped out, but that idea he’d floated...of just doing stuff like this from now on. Could they? Could he? Probably, he realized after thinking about it for a moment. Yeah, honestly, he could do something like this as a job. It would be dangerous and unreliable probably, but it would also be just the right mix of fun and procedure. He and Elizabeth had the training and mentality to conduct themselves in a professional manner befitting a dangerous, hostile alien environment, but they could also fuck whenever they wanted, or take long breaks and days off or sleep in, or invite hot women to come along and fuck.

What a fucking life that would be.

Could it work? He wasn’t sure. The only reason this one had worked out as well as it had was because there was a shitload of money front-loaded into it. This was a well-funded, well-organized expedition, planned months in advance. If they were to go about it on their own, they would need so much: tons of credits, their own ship, supplies, weapons, a team...but he had to admit there was a certain amount of excitement he felt when considering the notion of putting it all together. Just him and Elizabeth, maybe one of the others, if they were interested. And if they were a couple, it would make it all the more interesting and fun.

Maybe that was something to aim for, or, if worse came to worse and everyone here ultimately decided to part ways with him, something to try and make happen on his own. He wasn’t sure if he was a leader but…

Perhaps he could be.

Jack was pulled out of his pleasant fantasizing, and sadly just when he began thinking about all the hot alien women they might encounter out there, (what he would not give to sleep with a kai), when Elizabeth let out a warning.

“Buzzards, ten o’clock,” she said.

He looked over ahead and to the left, and sure enough, a good dozen of the bastards were flying over, angling towards them. Rising up in that same attack pattern he’d noticed the first time around. He hesitated as he realized he’d lost track of the pack of wolf-lizards. The area they were in was a bit...hilly wasn’t quite the right word, but close enough, with rises and dips in the cracked earth. This wasn’t a good situation.

“What do we do?” Anya asked quietly.

“Keep going, I’ll keep an eye on them. If we get lucky, they’ll fly over us, but I’m almost positive we’ll have to fight. Just shoot ‘em. They go down easy enough,” Elizabeth replied.

After another forty seconds, it became apparent that the buzzards were preparing for an attack, and Elizabeth called for a halt. They were relatively secure, a solid wall to their back, but the hilly area meant something could be hiding from them nearby and they’d never see it until whatever it was was pretty much on them.

“Get ready,” Elizabeth said as they spread out, rifles drawn.

The three of them aimed up at the collection of buzzards. Now that they were nearer, Jack saw that there were closer to a dozen and a half of the big bastards. Fantastic. He zeroed his sights and the second they were in range, opened fire. They began dive-bombing as the humans on the ground opened up, and bullets met leathery flesh. The rounds punched ugly holes through their broad wings and narrow bodies and skulls, and immediately several of them began plummeting earthwards. Jack fired on one, nailed it, then shifted aim, adjusting for its movement, and squeezed the trigger once more. The burst of bullets tore into one wing and it began to pinwheel while shrieking. Figuring it was out of the game, he began to line up another shot.

That was when he heard it: growling.

“Shit!” he snapped, lowering his rifle. Immediately he spied half a dozen wolf-lizards making for them over the nearest hill. “Wolf-lizards!”

“You and Anya take care of them! I’ll get the buzzards!” Elizabeth snapped.

Jack fired the second he had one of the lean, mean things in his sights and split its skull, splattering its alien brains across the parched landscape. It went down and the others hesitated, which gave him a good opening to shift and fire again. Anya was opening fire beside him and he trusted both of them to do their parts, leaving him to focus on his own. He shot out the eye of another, killing it outright and then shifting to fire on another. As he squeezed the trigger, the wolf-lizards regained their courage and pushed the attack again, making him miss as it leaped forward. He growled in frustration, aiming, firing, and missing again.

They were closing the gap rapidly. He squeezed off another burst of fire and finally killed the one he was aiming for, but two more were coming for him. He emptied the rifle at them as they drew too close for precision aiming. The barrage of bullets chewed into one of them, punching through its neck and chest and putting it down. The other was only grazed and it leaped for him, snarling and bearing its teeth. Jack dropped his rifle, grabbed it by the neck, twisted, and flipped it up over him all in one smooth motion.

He hurled it into the wall, where it let out a yelp as it slammed into the hard surface and hit the ground. Not giving it a chance to get back up, he snatched his pistol out and put three rounds into it, then turned around quickly and punched another bullet into another that had started coming his way. It was a clean headshot, dropping it in an instant.

“Jack move!” Elizabeth screamed at the same instant he realized a shadow had fallen across him.

He reacted on pure instinct. Throwing himself to the right while also twisting so that he would land on his back, he aimed up with the pistol, gripping it tightly in both hands, and began squeezing the trigger. The buzzard that was dive-bombing him was close enough that he couldn’t miss, and he put five shots into it before he hit the ground and it slammed into his legs. It continued flapping and shrieking, and he hastily shot it twice more, putting it down. Sensing more movement to his immediate right, he turned and saw another wolf-lizard right there.

He had no shot because he had no time to get the pistol up.

Suddenly its head snapped to the side in a spray of blood and it stumbled, hit the ground, and skidded to a halt, bumping against him before coming to a rest. Looking around for more threats, he saw nothing, not on the ground or in the air.

Anya had been the one to save his ass, but Elizabeth hurried over and began moving the huge alien bird.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” he replied. “Armor did its job.”

He helped her get it off of him, accepted her hand, and let her yank him up with a grunt.

“Goddamn you got some moves on you,” Anya said as she walked over. “I’ve worked with some mercs and Marines before, and you’re good.”

“Thanks,” he murmured, reloading his pistol, holstering it, and then grabbing his rifle.

“She’s right. You’ve got great reflexes and instincts,” Elizabeth said, reloading.

“I appreciate it but we should get the fuck outta here before more show up,” he replied.

“Yeah,” Elizabeth agreed.

They started moving again, making sure to keep watch in case any of the creatures had survived, but five minutes later they were back on relatively flat ground and hadn’t run into anything. The adrenaline kept making Jack paranoid as they walked along, and he kept thinking they were going to be attacked at any second, but the rest of their walk was thankfully uneventful. Finally, they arrived at the base of the radio tower, and this one looked not only complete, but intact. Although that was just the exterior, it could be a different story inside.

“All right, here we go,” Elizabeth muttered as they made their way inside. They performed a standard sweep and clear, moving carefully and systematically, checking each of the rooms inside the radio tower. It was a three-story structure, the ground floor holding some storage, a tiny office, and an infirmary. The second story had a pair of bedrooms, a rec room, and a galley. The third contained all the radio gear and consoles.

They also found a door that led to a basement on the ground floor. Getting it open, they found a sign that informed them more storage and the utilities awaited them at the bottom of an ominous, pitch-black stairwell, and they happily closed it, hoping they would not need to head down into the dark depths. Once at the top, Anya got to work, booting up the system by siphoning off power from her suit as they had gotten used to doing.

Ten minutes later, she gave them the news.

“Good news and bad news,” she said.

“Good news first,” Elizabeth replied.

“This place has the equipment we need, and it should definitely be able to reach Maureen,” she said.

“And the bad news?” Jack asked.

“We don’t have enough power between our suits, even if we drained them, to turn it on and maintain it for long enough to send our message. Nor could we, even if we had a backup battery, because basically the way it’s wired, we need the generator,” she explained.

“So we find a power cell, hook it up, and we’re in business?” Elizabeth asked.

“If we are lucky enough to find one, and if it still works, and if the generator is still there and works, or can be repaired, then yeah.”

Elizabeth groaned. “Too many ifs. Whatever, let’s do this.”

They made their way back downstairs, arriving at the basement door. Jack opened it up again and aimed his flashlights and rifle down it. The stairwell seemed somehow more ominous than before. He took point, slowly descending the stairs. They let out onto a hallway that was just as dark. He kept his movements careful and as he reached the bottom of the stairs he stopped and checked what was waiting for them down there.

Doorways and dust, apparently. Two doors to either side and one at the end, some twenty yards away. It seemed like a long distance.

They were all open.

“Anya, wait here. Cover the hallway. Elizabeth, I think we should split up, each take two of the doors, clear the rooms,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I’ll go right.”

He nodded and headed over to the first door on the left. Carefully, he leaned around into the open doorway, rifle at the ready, and checked the room. Nothing but dusty shelves and crates and a basic table stained with what was probably machine oil. He didn’t see anything out of place, but he stepped inside and checked any potential hiding places, just in case. In the end, he found nothing, though he wasn’t convinced there were any batteries in here, either. He moved back out into the corridor, slipped down to the next room, and stepped inside.

“Crap,” he said. “We might have a problem in here.”

“What?” Elizabeth asked.

“There’s a hole in the wall, looks roughly the same shape and size as the scorpion tunnels and it definitely burrows into the rock,” he replied, crouching and shining a light down the tunnel that was across from him.

“Stay there, keep watch. Anya, come here.”

He listened to the two women finish clearing the final two rooms and given he heard no shouting or gunfire, assumed that nothing was waiting for them. He stared down the ominous tunnel, keeping his rifle trained on it, prepared for the worst. After a moment, Elizabeth appeared by his side. She crouched beside him.

“Great,” she muttered. “All right, we found a battery and the generator seems intact. Anya’s on it right now. Let’s get this door shut.”

He nodded in agreement and stood back up. They fell back and worked to close the door. Eventually, he ended up plugging his suit directly into the door’s motor and not only closing it, but locking it. He breathed a sigh of relief once that was done, then moved with Elizabeth over to the final room, where Anya was working on the generator.

“How long?” he asked.

“Five minutes,” she replied without looking up. Something popped and sparks flew. She cursed. “If nothing goes wrong,” she added.

“I’m guessing you didn’t find anything in the other rooms?” Jack asked as they stood guard while Anya worked.

“No, it’s clear. Cleared out, honestly. We were lucky to find a battery that still has some charge left in it. With any luck, we’ll be out of this canyon within an hour.”

Jack nodded and kept his focus on the hallway. He was admittedly somewhat nervous about being back among the scorpions, potentially, and in an underground, enclosed space. Although he felt better about metal walls than he did about dirt and rock ones, they’d clearly gotten through into the room at some point, so it was possible for them to get through metal walls. He imagined probably by melting the material. But was that a fast process or a slow one? Had it taken them minutes or weeks to make that hole?

After three minutes came and went, the only sound being Anya working and occasionally cursing, Jack began to hear a new sound.

An unfortunately familiar one.

It was muffled, but distinct by now: the rapid ticking of pointy legs walking across a hard surface. And it was coming from behind the door they’d shut.

“Fuck,” Elizabeth muttered. “One of them just came out of the tunnel.”

“Seriously?” Anya asked.

“Don’t stop working,” Jack replied.

She muttered something under her breath and quickly got back to it.

“Maybe they can’t get through the door,” Jack said.

“I guess we’ll find out. If they don’t sense us, maybe they won’t have reason to try.”

That fantasy died quickly as they heard something smack against the door and immediately a sizzling sound began to fill the air. How could they even know?! Maybe they could smell them or could sense heat or motion? Or some other sense that they weren’t aware of. Either way, they knew fresh meat was on the other side of the door, and he realized that even as he was thinking they more of them could be heard scuttling into the room.

“Anya?” Elizabeth asked.

“Almost done!” she replied.

“We’re going to have to shut this door behind us, we don’t want them getting in there and fucking up the generator or we really are going to be stuck here until Maureen decides to come get us,” Elizabeth said, stepping out into the hallway. Jack stood in the doorway, joining her, staring unhappily at the closed door.

Within thirty seconds, smoke began to appear and the metal started to run like liquid.

“What the fuck are these things?” Jack muttered.

“Dangerous,” Elizabeth replied quietly. “Keep the door covered.”

They continued waiting and the door continued deteriorating. He could definitely hear more of them now and they sounded like they were getting increasingly desperate, smacking their gobs of acidic goo into the door again and again.

“Done!” Anya said.

The exact second she said it, the door gave way and a scorpion burst through the remains into the hallway with them.

“Get out here! Seal off the generator room!” Elizabeth snapped as she opened fire.

Jack joined her, firing off a sustained burst of bullets as he stepped out of the way. The hallway didn’t leave them a lot of room to work with. He and Elizabeth came to stand directly in front of the melted door and hosed the scorpions in the room beyond down with gunfire. Anya emerged in the hallway and turned to close off the generator room.

“Shit!” she yelled.

“What!?” Elizabeth snapped as she hastily reloaded, her first magazine depleted.

“It’s jammed!”

“Um-jam it!”

“Trying!”

Jack kept firing, emptying his own magazine and reloading as Elizabeth picked back up the assault. There were over a dozen of the fuckers in there now and he could see more in the tunnel through the haze of smoke the melting door had created. He shouted in anger and fear as he ducked, barely managing to dodge one of the gobs of acid. Elizabeth did the same, sidestepping and narrowly avoiding getting hit by another.

“Anya!?” Jack shouted.

“Done!” she snapped.

“Go! Now! Elizabeth roared.

They both ceased fire, allowing Anya to rush past them. They both then emptied their rifles into the mass of scorpions, spraying their blood and chopping their bodies up in order to give themselves the few second window necessary to start running after her without getting overwhelmed. Both reloaded as they ran down the hallway, hit the stairs, and began ascending. Jack stopped and turned back around, shouting for them to go.

Several scorpions hurried out into the hallway. Damn, these fuckers were tenacious. He opened fire, putting another magazine worth of bullets into their awful bodies and spraying their bright blood across the walls and floor, then he turned and ran after the others. Hustling up the steps, he saw Elizabeth waiting for him by the stairs. He closed and locked the door behind him, then they hurried up the stairs to the second story, repeated that, then did the same thing, locking themselves in the third story, where Anya was already hard at work.

“Think it’ll be enough?” he asked as they stared at the closed, locked door.

“Probably,” Elizabeth replied.

They both took up a defensive position and waited.

EPILOGUE

In the end, it was enough.

Although only because the scorpions couldn’t climb. They were as tenacious as ever, somehow tracking them to the third story and burning through each and every door between them. Jack, Elizabeth, and Anya ended up climbing up onto the roof after making the call to Maureen, who immediately sent Riley out to get them. Jack had to admit, he was pretty afraid of the scorpion creatures. They didn’t give up.

Even when Riley showed up with the ship and parked in a hover with the ramp down, allowing them inside, he could still hear them clattering around down there.

He’d almost passed out from all the sustained adrenaline after finally getting on the ship and beginning to fly home.

Back at base, they’d gotten out of their armor and checked out by Sylvia, who insisted, but they were fine, just tired. They ended up being so tired, in fact, that all three of them stripped naked and passed out in Elizabeth’s bed.

Jack woke up twice, once so horny he could barely stand it, and he’d fucked Anya until they both had come and then had gone back to sleep. The second time he’d been woken up by Elizabeth mounting him, and she had ridden him until again, they both had enjoyed wonderful orgasms, then had gone back to sleep.

Some time after that, they’d all woken up and had a very long shower. There, both he and Elizabeth had made good on their oral promises to Anya. Then they’d gone back to bed and had a proper threesome that lasted over an hour.

It was a good time all around.

They’d showered again, then had a big dinner with the others, catching them up on what exactly had happened out there.

Finally, after a long, pleasant dinner and conversation, he and Elizabeth had gone back to her room. They had fucked again, and now lay nude and sweaty on her bed, simply holding each other, enjoying their shared time together.

Jack was the first to break the silence. “So...um…”

“Yeah?” Elizabeth asked when he didn’t continue.

“You warned me that this could turn serious if we hooked up, and now we have. I guess...how do you feel about that particular aspect of what we have going on now?”

She was silent for a long moment, and he wondered if he shouldn’t have said anything.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Right now, I like this, and I want it to keep going. You?” she asked.

“Same,” he replied. “Very same.”

She laughed softly. “Good. I think we shouldn’t make any decisions yet. For now, let’s just keep doing this. Later we’ll figure it out. Sound good?”

“Sounds great,” he said.

She nodded, then yawned. “I’m sleepy. Today was rough. You want to spend the night again?”

“Honestly, at this point, any night I don’t spend with one of the others, I want to spend with you,” he replied.

Elizabeth hugged him closer to her. “I really like that answer.”

They stayed like that, holding each other, until they fell asleep.

Hello, Misty Vixen here!

If you’ve made it this far, then thank

you so very much for finishing my book!

I’m here to ask you if you wouldn’t mind

leaving a review for my story. I would

deeply appreciate it!

OTHER TITLES

Like A Fine Wine 4 will be out in late 2020 or early 2021!

THE MISTY VIXEN STARTER PACK

Get ready to experience over 100,000 words of hot, filthy fucking. This starter pack features four original novellas, each from one of my shared universes, and a whole lot of passionate, human-on-inhuman sex.

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POST-APOCALYPTIC SHARED UNIVERSE

HAVEN

David is a young, terrified adventurer who is trying to survive in the wake of a new mutation of the virus that already ravaged the Earth once. Now it turns inhumans into extremely dangerous zombies. After the collapse of the settlement he was staying in, he and his only friend, Evelyn, a beautiful, tough, seven-and-a-half foot goliath, flee to an isolated location, and inadvertently become a beacon of hope by providing a safe haven for other survivors.

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The Complete Series

SEX & SURVIVAL

Welcome to a post-apocalyptic world where a virus, once meant to be a scientific revolution, has ravaged the planet and turned most of the population into inhuman creatures. Some have become mindless zombies, others have morphed into new species. Some can fly. Some can breathe underwater. Some exhibit animal characteristics. Enter Mike Walker, a survivor and adventurer. In this brave new world, Mike often finds himself in the company (and beds) of beautiful, inhuman women.

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The Complete Trilogy

SCIENCE FICTION SHARED UNIVERSE

HELLCATS

Ryan is a socially awkward, young technician who takes a leap of faith and joins up with a mercenary crew called the Hellcats. What he finds is a squad of alien or otherwise inhuman women who are looking for a boytoy to live on their ship with them and fuck them hard. Ryan fits the bill perfectly.

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ALIEN HAREM

James is a failing author who is friends with Aria, a beautiful alien woman who is also a failing author. She happens to live with three other attractive alien women who are creative types of varying degrees of success. Everything changes when they invite James to live with them and help them shoot human-on-alien porn to help pay the rent.

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DESIRE

Derek is a technician fresh out of college. Unsure of what to do with his life, he feels adrift as he stares down the barrel of adulthood. But all that changes when he gets the opportunity of a lifetime: he is invited to come live and work on Desire, a city-sized space station that caters to every sexual fetish imaginable.

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FANTASY SHARED UNIVERSE

DEMONESS

When John Greenfield heads into the forest outside his home village, pissed off and hungover, the last thing he expects to find is an injured and unconscious demoness. When he rescues her, it starts him on a path he no longer thought possible, and into a romance he didn’t think could exist.

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WANDERLUST

Owyn Fisher has just come of age and decides to leave his small village and start adventuring out into the world at large. But instead of danger or riches, he finds that his greatest adventure is all the beautiful monster women he encounters that wish to experience the taboo thrill of sex with a human.

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The Complete Series

LUST & ADVENTURE

When Alan Wilde, a magical healer living a quiet life in a small village, begins having a personal crisis, wondering if he’s missing out on leading such a life, he meets Layla, a beautiful, cat-woman felis adventuress. She and her friends are on a dangerous journey and need a healer. The chance meeting feels like fate, and so Alan begins his journey of adventuring and, he is happy to learn, sleeping with several attractive adventuresses…

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The Complete Trilogy

PARANORMAL SHARED UNIVERSE

PARASEXUAL

Alex considers himself a failure. After losing his job, losing his roommate, and coming close to losing his mind all in the same day, he goes to hang out with his best friend, who happens to be a particularly attractive werewolf woman. In an attempt to help him out and also to alleviate her own growing wanderlust (and regular lust), she has sex with him and then decides to take him on a road trip to Thorne: a giant coastal city that is home to a huge concentration of paranormals. And on the way, she begins hooking back up with several of her old girlfriends, who are apparently interested in hopping in bed with her and Alex.

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The Complete Series

PARANORMAL PASSIONS

Jason is a regular, twenty-something human who feels adrift. After trying to radically alter his life, all that really changes is that he now lives next door to an incredibly hot, redheaded vampire. When they hook up, she leads him into a world of hot sex with paranormal women.

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The Complete Trilogy

ABOUT ME

Hello, I’m the author! There isn’t too much to me personally. I live somewhere in the United States and I like to write stories about people having sex and people having adventures!

So what makes me special? What sets me apart from most of the other thousands of similar authors out there?

Well, a few things that I can think of.

I write about reasonable, more down-to-earth guys. I’m honestly sick of all the billionaires and NAVY Seals and cowboys and firefighters. Most of all, I’m fucking sick and tired of all these BS ‘Alpha Male’ types. I don’t really want to bring down anyone who is writing or reading that, but I thought it was high time we started hearing about guys who aren’t like this.

Another big focus of mine is human guy on inhuman lady sex. There are certainly tons of stories about hot chicks getting laid by werewolves and dinosaurs and even Bigfoot! But there’s not enough out there, in my opinion, about regular guys fucking hot alien or monster or otherwise inhuman ladies. I love writing about human guys getting laid by mermaids and dryads and sexy aliens and genetically engineered female super soldiers and robots and even more.

Finally, I like emphasizing sexual encounters, casual and longer engagements, that focus on consent, communication, trust, and respect. I like both parties getting what they want out of the sex. (Or I should say all parties, given how many people are fucking at once!)

If you want access to extra content, to get news about my progress on upcoming stories, or pictures of hot, naked inhuman ladies featured in my books, then here’s some places you can check out.

This is my WEBSITE, (www.mistyvixen.com). Here, you can some free content, a monthly newsletter, alternate versions of my cover art where the ladies are naked, and more!

This is my TWITTER, (www.twitter.com/Misty_Vixen). I’ll post updates and pictures of hot, naked alien, monster, or otherwise inhuman ladies I find on the internet. Also, I respond to pretty much everyone, so feel free to say something!

This is my PATREON, (www.patreon.com/MistyVixen). There, you can get early access to the first two chapters of my in-progress works, and early access to alternate versions of my cover art where the ladies are naked! They will be released to my website after one month.

Finally, if you want to talk to me directly, you can send me an e-mail at my address:

mistyvixen@outlook.com

Thank you for reading my work! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

LIKE A FINE WINE 3. Copyright © by Misty Vixen. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entire coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.