by

Misty Vixen

Catch up on the Like A Fine Wine Series!

LIKE A FINE WINE

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

“So what are we doing exactly?” Jack asked as Riley led him through the ship. It seemed like they were going towards the bridge.

It had been three days since the incident onboard the ship they’d mounted a rescue mission on. He’d been recovering those three days, although his recovery probably would have gone a bit speedier if he hadn’t indulged in Riley’s every whim.

Because she had a lot of them.

She’d spent the past three days making good on her promise to fuck him in every room on the ship. And so far, they’d done just that. She’d fucked him in each of the bedrooms, and then in the cargo bays, the engine room, the kitchen…

The others hadn’t been super thrilled about that.

Since they’d arrived at the planet this morning, they’d all been going through the process of shipping down all their supplies. Which basically meant shifting a bunch of crates into the planet-hopper shuttle that Riley would float down from orbit. Someone would stay behind each time they went down, so that there would be someone on the ship, and also because most of them had other things they wanted to do before they left. Sylvia wanted to make sure their medical database was backed up and she hadn’t forgotten any crucial supplies, Elizabeth wanted to make sure she hadn’t forgotten any gear, armor, or bullets, Lyra wanted to ensure that the ship was going to be fine once they all finally left it in orbit.

Finally, the second-to-last trip had come up.

Although Jack had ridden down with them to help them offload the cargo, this time, Riley insisted she be the one to stay behind, and that he stay with her. The others had groused a little, but hadn’t really fought with her about it.

They all knew what she wanted him for, and hey, this was a vacation for them all.

“We’re going to finish up what we started, Jack,” Riley replied. Her voice was so smooth and sultry. He still marveled at what a reaction she could get out of him simply by having a certain tone of voice. Out of them all, she definitely seemed the most sexual.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. We never fucked on the bridge. I was saving it for last, given how much time I spend in there, how much it means to me as a pilot,” she replied.

Her tail brushed against him, tracing up his leg and then teasing across the crotch of the shorts he was wearing, where he already had a steel erection.

He shuddered slightly as she did that. Women who had tails were just...something else. In a really, really good way.

They came to the bridge and slipped inside.

“I know I’ve been wearing you down the past few days,” she said as she guided him over to her chair. “For which I apologize.”

“I don’t believe you,” he replied.

She smirked and turned the chair around so that it faced them. “Okay, that was a lie. I’m not sorry,” she admitted. “Though I do feel bad. I managed to convince all the others to let me have you almost exclusively, given my personal goal of fucking you all over the ship. I mean, a bit easier when it came to Elizabeth and Lyra.”

“Do they actually want to fuck me?” he asked uncertainly. Elizabeth had at least told him she wanted to have sex with him, just that she was waiting for the right time. But Lyra still seemed a little cold and distant.

“Yes,” Riley replied as she took off the tanktop she was wearing. It had barely been containing her huge tits anyway. Then she pulled her own shorts off and tossed them aside, and finally dropped down to her knees before him. “They’re just shy. Don’t worry, they’ll fuck you.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m positive. Elizabeth’s a fucking slut if you’re the right guy. Trust me. And you are most certainly the right guy. She’s going to take some time, but when she does open her legs for you, Jack, she is going to fucking lay into you. You think I’ve been fucking you senseless? Just fucking wait until that tall fucking redhead starts in on you.”

“Well...good to know,” he murmured.

She laughed and began licking his cock, making him shiver and groan. Fuck she was so good with her mouth.

“Yeah,” she said, pausing occasionally to talk between licking. “Lyra likes you. She’s just a really shy woman. Don’t worry, she’ll get to you in due time.”

“I can wait,” he panted, then she really started sucking him off.

He groaned loudly, watching her work, watching this beautiful, naked alien woman suck his cock, bobbing her head, slipping her luscious lips over his head again and again. The pleasure was phenomenal.

Jack studied her through the haze of pleasure that enveloped him. He loved her red hair, and it was only further accentuated by her vividly red eyes. The two black horns that grew from either side of her forehead and her tail that ended in a spade-shaped tip only made her likeness to a succubus that much more obvious. Something she really seemed to enjoy. At seventy six, she was technically the oldest among all the mature cougars that he was sharing this ship with, but she didn’t seem like it. What had she told him?

Dysil aged slower, so in a way, she wasn’t much older than he was.

It was ironic that the oldest woman on the ship was the most immature.

“There,” she said suddenly, taking his cock from her mouth. She’d covered it in a thick film of her saliva and now she stood up, rising smoothly to her feet. “Now for the main course.”

She turned around, showing him her fantastically thick ass. Her tail, sprouting from her lower back, just above it, twitched back and forth. He watched as she reached back between her legs, gripped his cock around its base, and lined it up with herself. Then she lowered that big orange ass into his lap and he groaned as she penetrated herself with his rigid dick. The pleasure was immediate and immense, a wondrous warmth that pulsed into him. She smoothly slid his inches into her alien vagina, taking him all the way into her.

“That’s right...” she whispered, settling her hands on the armrests and gripping them tightly. She began to push herself up, then let herself back down.

Up and down again.

Her pussy was so fucking amazing.

Jack began breathing heavily as she fucked him with a slow but smooth and steady rhythm. He’d seen more than his share of porn at this point, and having sex with Riley was like living a porn. Watching her work, feeling her easy confidence as she moved herself against him, taking his cock into her again and again, slowly beginning to go faster, was like being fucked by a porn star or a professional prostitute.

It was an exceptionally pleasant experience.

“Fuck, Riley...” he groaned.

“You like that?” she murmured, and he could hear the amused cockiness in her voice.

“Of fucking course I do,” he panted. “You just...”

“Yeah?” she asked expectantly.

“You feel so fucking good,” he muttered.

“You’re so articulate,” she said, giggling.

“Can’t help it.”

“I know.”

He settled his hands on her ass, loving the feel of it and watching it as his cock disappeared into her alien pussy again and again.

It wasn’t long before she was grunting, moaning occasionally, going harder against him. He was glad that the chair was firmly locked into place or she would already have knocked them both over by now. Riley could be quite forceful when she wanted to be. He knew that both dysil and xenians were stronger than they appeared, especially xenians. Lyra could probably out-bench him, even though she was barely over five feet and skinny.

“Shit...I’m gonna come,” he groaned. “Oh fuck, it’s so good...”

“Don’t hold back,” she replied, continuing to fuck him. “You know I fucking love it when you fill me up.”

He tried to say something but it was lost as a surge of ecstasy hit him and he grabbed her hips, yanked her down against him while thrusting up, and starting to shoot his load into her. She groaned, holding herself in place and letting him use her to orgasm, letting him fill her up and thrust up into her with each fresh pulse of bliss that burst through him. Jack groaned loudly, panting and grunting as he came inside of her, spilling his seed into her and absolutely filling her up, just like he knew she really liked him to do.

Jack bathed in the bliss of the intensely powerful orgasm Riley had given him for as long as he could, and then when he had nothing left to give, he fell back into the seat, panting. He watched as she pulled herself up off of him and held her shorts up under herself.

“I’m going to shower,” she said, giving him that very self-satisfied grin as she looked back at him, almost like she was admiring something she’d done.

Which, in effect, was happening.

She’d certainly done him, and she’d coaxed that intense orgasm out of him.

“Be there in a minute,” he murmured.

“Take your time,” she said, and headed off.

Jack sat there in the pilot’s chair for a bit longer, watching her move down the hallway and disappear into one of the bedrooms. He simply sat there and basked in both the post-orgasmic bliss he was experiencing, but also the strange surreal sense he had of being in a dreamlike state. It was the same feeling he’d had, to varying degrees, ever since he’d learned the true nature of this job that he had basically stumbled into.

To fuck six extremely attractive, accomplished, confident cougars.

He’d already slept with half of them just on the way out there, and given the way Maureen had been looking at him over the past day or so, he had the idea that she was going to pounce on him next. And that was, he imagined, going to be a deeply satisfying experience. They all had their own personalities, their own way of being sexy.

Riley’s was just overt sexuality, almost like a caricature, like a porn star who never stopped living in her own porn set.

Sylvia was just a little sly, mostly confident, like a much more subtle version of Riley.

Elizabeth was just this towering inferno of raw sex appeal that didn’t really realize the fact that she was such a thing.

Lyra definitely had that cute, shy, nerd girl thing going on.

Anya was kind of like the casual, fun-loving woman you bumped into at a rave or a party, got to chatting, and then she offered to hook up for the night. He imagined she drifted into people’s lives as easily as she drifted back out of them.

Although some of her story didn’t entirely track with that.

And then there was Maureen. Jack had run into women like her in his life: overtly domineering women. Women of industry, of accomplishment, women who had gotten things done and were used to be listening to and obeyed. Women who had a personality somewhat like gravity: you felt it when they walked into the room.

The fact that she had been a CEO or executive for a dozen major corporations was no surprise to him. She seemed equal parts ice queen and dominatrix. Although he’d never really gone for being dominated before, and he didn’t think he would, there would be, he imagined, an intense satisfaction to fucking an ice queen.

Jack got up and began walking towards the shower Riley was currently in.

He might have been hired to act as a living fucktoy for these women, but they had also hired him to do real, actual work and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to pull that weight. He realized that it was his own room that Riley had walked into. He stripped off his clothes and stepped into the bathroom. She was already in the shower.

“Hey,” she said warmly as he slid the door open and stepped in.

“Hi,” he replied. Then he kissed her. “You’re so pretty.”

She laughed. “Thank you. You sound stoned.”

“I guess I am a little from being around you and getting fucked,” he replied.

She tilted her head back and let the water run through her vividly red hair. “Yes, sex will do that to you. Sex with a dysil will do that even more so.” She finished up, then suddenly stepped forward and wrapped him in a hug.

He was surprised, though not unpleasantly, by the move, and hugged her back.

“How are you doing?” she asked. “For real.”

“For real?” he replied. She nodded. “I’m...in a daze,” he said. “I’m good, mostly. You mean, like, physically? I basically feel back to one hundred percent. I’m still a little tired-”

“No, Jack,” she replied, pulling back and staring into his eyes with her bright red ones. “I mean, I’m glad you’re feeling better physically, and the lethargy will pass soon, probably by tomorrow, but I mean emotionally, mentally, where are you at?”

He considered it, looking away for a moment. Riley waited. Despite evidence to the contrary, she seemed to have a lot of patience. “I’m worried,” he admitted finally. He looked back at her. “I mean, this is all great, you’ve all been really great, and I’m looking forward to all this. But I guess there’s just a part of me that wonders if...” he hesitated, looking for the right words. He sighed. “That wonders if I’m not actually sorting anything out, out here. If I had a crisis and I’m just pretending that I’m facing it, while in reality I’m just out here playing, getting my dick sucked, pretending like I’m useful or I’m doing something meaningful.”

“You are useful, and you are doing something meaningful,” Riley said.

“I didn’t mean to imply-”

“I know you didn’t. I know you meant with regards to us, not that what we’re doing isn’t useful. But you are useful. We could have done this without you, but we chose not to. You’re helping. Not just by shifting crates, but by being nice to us. Yeah, having sex with us, but by listening to us, and respecting us. You’ve done a lot of listening since you got here. A lot of empathizing. You know how I know Lyra’s going to fuck you? Well, besides the fact that she told me she fully intended to, I’ve seen you two talking. She doesn’t do that for other people, Jack. At least not outside this little circle of people. The fact that you’ve logged even a few hours chatting with her is a big deal. And I know it may not seem like it, but Anya is actually kind of at a low point right now. I’ve heard the story she told you about her boyfriend.

“She passes it off casually, and she’s not lying, but it...affected her. Poorly. She could use some tender love and care right now. And you’re good at that.”

“Am I?” he asked.

“Yeah! You’re good at that. I know it feels like you’re still fumbling in the dark, but you’ve got all the right tools for it. You have a great talent for empathy...” she grinned, “and for pleasuring vagina. Trust me, you just need to build your confidence some more, and your experience. Which is exactly what you’ll be doing out here with us. None of us are going to turn you away, we’re not going to laugh at you. We’re all here to have a good time. I would say, try to start being a little more intentional and aware of certain things. You already have the talent, now you just need to build the skill. And you’re off to a great start.”

“I...thanks,” he murmured.

She smiled and hugged him again. “I know it seems like I don’t give a fuck about anything but getting off, but I care a lot about people. I want people to be happy. All of these people are my friends, and now you’re my friend, and I think you can make them happy. I know you can. Yeah you can pound and eat pussy pretty good, and you’re only going to get better, but you can talk to them, you can listen to them, you can hold them at night and tell them it’s going to be okay and they might even believe you. That’s...really important.”

“Yeah,” he said, hugging her back, “it is. I wish I’d had someone to do that recently.”

“Now you do,” Riley said, squeezing him against her huge tits. “It’s going to be okay, Jack. I promise. Plus, you’re going to get a lot of pussy now.”

He laughed as she released him. “Yeah, that’s true.”

“Good. Now wash up. We have one final sweep of the ship to complete before they get back up here. Maureen’s eager to get to work. So is Lyra, clearly.”

“I think Maureen’s gonna jump me soon,” he said as he grabbed some soap and started washing.

“Count on it. Off the record, she’s called dibs on you next,” Riley said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. She’s gonna fucking eat you alive tonight.”

“Oh...awesome.”

Riley laughed loudly. “That is the appropriate response. Maureen is...I think a lot of people think she’d suck in bed, but she actually doesn’t. She’s great. It’s just that she doesn’t partake often. She’s a very career-motivated person, and now her career is...no longer a factor. She’s gonna fuck you so good. I’m getting horny just thinking about it.”

“Me too,” Jack said.

“Come on, we gotta get to work,” Riley replied.

They finished washing, killed the shower, then dried and dressed. Though she had to go to her room to get new shorts given the mess she’d made of the old ones. While she did that, he went over his room one more time, just in case he’d missed anything, though he wasn’t sure what he might have missed, given how little he owned.

Once he was sure that everything was in his bag, he secured his holster and pistol to his hip after checking it out. Technically speaking, the planet was dangerous. Although he hadn’t seen anything as he’d offloaded crates from the shuttle, he knew that could change at any time. Maureen and Elizabeth both had warned them that they were to be armed with at least a basic sidearm and some spare ammunition at all times.

With that out of the way, he grabbed his bag and walked out, turning out the light as he went. He passed Riley, who was on the way to the bridge.

“Need to do one more check of the ship, then I’ll join you in the hangar,” she said.

“I’ll be there,” he replied, and headed on down the length of the ship.

It was strange. He’d only been here for a few days, but already the ship had felt more like home than any other place had for a long time. He knew at least some of that had to do with the fact that he was a Marine and had traveled the galaxy for four years before finally giving it up. But he now had the inkling that this feeling of home had more to do with the people he shared the ship with than the ship itself.

And that was a deeply comforting feeling, because he was leaving the ship, not the people.

The outpost they were to live in and repair would feel like home soon.

Ideally.

Jack walked into the hangar. There wasn’t much left, just a stack of metal crates and a pair of longer ones, all of which held the materials that would allow them to bring the outpost they were staying in back up to par, either that or it was survival gear meant to help them stay alive on the planet. Honestly, he was kind of looking forward to all of this. Although he didn’t really relish fighting his fellow sentients, not unless they were fucking assholes like slavers or raiders who preyed on the outer colonies or merchant ships or the like, he did relish a challenge. And all of this was going to be a bit of a challenge, from how Maureen had described it.

Besides getting his brains fucked out by Riley, he’d been studying up on the planet that would be his home. It had a diverse environment, though the place they would be calling home was essentially a dirt desert. And it came complete with some nasty creatures of its own. He was less than thrilled that there were alien animals that essentially amounted to giant fucking spiders living in some of the caves, and there were things that looked like lizard wolves that had a mean bite to them and hunted in packs. But that was the point of a challenge.

To be challenging.

He jumped slightly as he felt as much as heard the outer airlock opening. The shuttle was back. Excellent. As it cycled through the large airlock at the end of the hangar, Riley appeared. “We’re all set,” she said, carrying her own bag and smiling broadly. “We can get this show on the road.”

“Looks like we won’t have to wait,” Jack said as the inner airlock door began to open.

“Yep,” Riley agreed.

They both watched as Lyra, who was their secondary pilot, brought the shuttle in and landed it smoothly. She was clearly visible in the cockpit, and she waved them towards her. They headed forward and Jack studied the big thing as they navigated around to the back. It was a standard planet-hopper, civilian model, though obviously expensive. In short, all it was was a cockpit, a little area for personnel, and then mostly a cargo bay. But slung under the wings, attached to either side, were a pair of large cargo containers.

“What are those actually for? Why didn’t we load them up with cargo to make fewer trips?” Jack asked as he looked at them. They paused to grab a few of the last remaining crates and then began heading to the ramp.

“One of them is actually full of emergency cargo,” Riley explained as they came to the cargo ramp at the back and began to walk up it. “Extra food, water, medical stuff, emergency repair stuff. But the other one is living quarters. This shuttle is meant to be a mobile outpost.”

They secured the crates in their place, then headed back and grabbed some more.

“Whoa, really? That’s awesome...although why?” he replied.

“I don’t know for sure, but I think some of the contracts we have may necessitate it. It can’t hold all of us, up to three, I think. Four if you squeeze or one of them is Lyra. Or maybe once we finish up with the outpost and our current contracts, we’ll do other things elsewhere on the planet.”

“Oh, cool,” he said.

Before long, the two of them had finished loading the last of the crates.

They got into the little crew compartment directly behind the cockpit, which could uncomfortably seat four, and Jack took a seat.

Riley poked her head into the cockpit. “We’re set.”

“Good. Buckle up,” Lyra replied, her voice flat.

“Yes, Captain,” Riley said, and she took a seat across from Jack after closing the door to the cockpit.

“She’s really...focused,” he murmured as they buckled in.

“Yep, she sure is. She’s excellent at her job. Jobs. She’s a genius, absolutely brilliant, and can focus for fucking hours on a task. But it comes at the cost of a social life. Normally she doesn’t care, but I think it’s been getting to her more lately. But I’ve been telling her not to worry, you’ll take good care of her. Sexually and socially. And of course we have each other.”

“I really want to have a threesome with you and her,” he murmured.

She laughed. “An alien threesome, huh? That really get you going?”

“Duh.”

“I know a lot of humans who wouldn’t admit that.”

“I’m not a lot of humans,” he replied.

“Fair enough. A lot of xenians, too. You two are a cloistered, repressed bunch.” She frowned. “But now I’m starting to sound like a racist, and fuck that.”

The shuttle took off and began heading back out the way it had come in.

Jack finished settling into his seat.

It was time for the next part of this strange, wild journey he’d signed up for.

CHAPTER 02

Lyra gave them a smooth ride down from orbit.

There were windows behind each of them, and both he and Riley looked past each other, out the windows opposite them, as the atmosphere burned by. Soon, it gave way to clouds, and eventually the clouds gave way to sky. It was mostly blue, though there was a pale purple tint to it. The planet was roughly Earth-normal. The gravity was very slightly less than what they were used to, and days lasted twenty six hours, but otherwise it was what he’d gotten used to on planets he could exist on without some kind breathing apparatus.

Soon, he began to see landscape.

Jack studied it as he had the past several times he’d come down today. The region that they were going to live in reminded him vaguely of desert, though more of the cracked earth kind and not the sand everywhere kind. More important, it rained here. Not super often, but often enough that they should get to enjoy the occasional downpour. There were rises in the land, hills mostly, but a few honest-to-goodness mountains in the distance. Clusters of strange plants somewhere between a tree and a cactus sprouted up here and there, and a few miles off he saw packs of creatures roaming around. Certainly some of them were the wolf-lizards.

And then there was the outpost.

Jack studied it as they flew towards the landing pad. It was in roughly an L shape, if the L was rotated ninety degrees to the right. Or at least that was the orientation you had from the landing pad, which was in the bottom right of the outpost area. It wasn’t a large structure, meant to hold no more than a dozen personnel at most, probably less than that, which was perfect for their operation. They’d have room to work with, but not an unreasonable amount of work ahead of them. Or, at least, he certainly hoped so.

He hadn’t actually been inside the outpost yet.

Lyra brought the shuttle in for a smooth landing on the single metal pad. Once it was down, she disengaged the engines and then walked back through the passenger area and into the cargo compartment. Jack and Riley stood up and followed her, grabbing their bags. The cargo ramp was already in the process of lowering as she disengaged the mechanisms that had held the cargo he and Riley had loaded up before they’d headed down. She grabbed one of the crates, turned, and began marching towards the ramp.

“She’s kinda a machine sometimes, huh?” Jack murmured as they watched her go down the ramp and set the crate by a dwindling collection of others that the other teammates had been slowly moving into the outpost.

“Yeah, that’s Lyra. She’s like that a lot,” Riley replied.

“She can hear you,” Lyra said as she walked over to the crates again.

“Yeah, I know,” Riley replied. She began heading towards one of the larger, longer ones. “Come on, give me a hand.”

Jack set his bag down again and helped her get the crate out of its secure area. It was hard not to look at her huge ass straining against her thin shorts as she bent over to work. Impossible, actually. Somehow, he managed to maintain the focus to get his hand on the handle and lift his end of the container up. He and Riley marched it down the ramp.

After a few moments, they had offloaded the last of the crates. Jack grabbed his bag once more and followed Riley back down the ramp one more time.

Lyra passed them, heading back into the shuttle. “I’m going to make sure all systems are still okay,” she said.

“You do that,” Riley replied, smirking after her.

“Good, you’ve made it.”

They both looked over as Maureen emerged from shadow of the garage that lay about fifteen meters away from the landing pad, forming one end of the L-shaped outpost. He could make a few of the others out in the garage, sorting through the cargo. Once they’d dropped it on the landing pad, they had shifted it into the garage, where it would be further sorted, out of the sun. Maureen looked, well, intimidating.

She had on a black, sleeveless top, some boots, and her business casual pants, which were now rolled up to the knee. She’d also donned some sunglasses that had opaque black lenses set into hexagonal frames.

Her black hair was pulled into a ponytail and she was sweating.

She also looked extremely alluring.

“How’s it going?” Riley asked as they this time dropped their bags on top of a pair of crates and picked the crates up.

“Good,” Maureen replied, grabbing a third crate. She began leading them back to the hangar. “Once we get this last load in out of the sun, we can take a little break. We’re going to need to assess the outpost. It isn’t as bad as I had thought it was, but it’s worse than I’d hoped it might be. Lots of broken things, lots of disrepair, lots of missing equipment. We’ve got our work cut out for us, anyway,” she explained.

They dropped the crates off, then returned to grab more.

Jack studied the landscape as they worked.

So, this was Valena Three. His new home.

It wasn’t a bad place, certainly he’d lived in worse. He could see scrub brushes along the cracked earth, several hills and mounds off in the distance, a stand of those weird tree-cacti things maybe a hundred meters from the edge of the landing pad. The outpost didn’t even have a fence surrounding its perimeter.

Besides the outpost itself and the landing pad, there was just a single other building, as far as he could see. Nestled within the interior of the courtyard of space created between the edges of the outpost and the edges of the pad, was a single other structure that he recognized as a defunct hydroponic garden, to help the outpost be more self-sufficient. It was definitely going to need some work. But that’s what they were here for.

He finished the current job by setting the last crate down beside the huge pile of them they’d brought down from orbit. Elizabeth and Anya were currently in the process of sorting them out into smaller piles.

“Where’s Sylvia?” Riley asked.

“Checking out the infirmary,” Maureen replied. “Riley, you help them sort. Jack, come on, I’ll give you a tour of our new home. You’re the only one who hasn’t had a chance.”

“Thanks,” he replied, following her out of the garage through a door in the left wall.

They came into a lengthy corridor with several doors along either side, though there were by far more doors along the right than the left.

“Every door along the right leads to living quarters,” she said. “There’s more than enough for us each to have our own, though I imagine you’ll be swapping quarters a lot.” She paused. “Tonight you will be bunking with me.”

“Understood,” he replied, which brought a small smile to her face. She was still wearing her hexagonal sunglasses, which made her almost seem like a drill sergeant or something of the like.

“The first two doors here along the left lead to storage rooms,” she said as they walked on. “The final door on the left leads to our mess hall.”

She stopped by each as she pointed them out.

The storage rooms were both mostly empty, dusty rooms. The living quarters were small but functional things, not unlike the living quarters aboard the ship they’d just been on, if a bit more sparse and spartan. They came with a bed that had drawers built into the frame to save space, a desk and chair, a very small closet, and a bathroom that wasn’t much better. He’d at least have a shower stall big enough to fuck one woman in.

The mess hall was a simple square of a room with a scattering of tables and chairs taking up most of the space, and a kitchen area stuffed in behind a serving line. Maureen led him onward after they had a chance to look in the various rooms.

“This door at the end of the hallway here leads to our control room.”

The hallway turned sharply to the left, completing the basic L shape the outpost had. They stopped in the control room. It wasn’t all that impressive, mainly just a rectangular room with some broken windows looking out onto the desolate landscape and about half a dozen consoles and terminals spaced around in work areas. This was where the personnel could monitor things like communications, utilities of the outpost, power levels, security, and probably whatever other things they had going on outside their walls.

They made the turn down the main corridor and continued on.

Maureen showed him each room in turn.

Except for a single door that led into the kitchen area of the mess hall, the left wall was made up largely of windows that looked out onto the hydroponic garden and the landing pad. Along the right were another string of doors. Next to the control center was the infirmary, where Sylvia was in the process of unpacking her fancy medical gear and setting up. Mostly she was just cleaning off dusty surfaces.

“Jack! You’re finally here,” she said, putting down some cleaning equipment and walking straight over to him. She grabbed him and gave him a long kiss on the mouth, with a pleasant amount of tongue involved. “I’ve been intending to do that for a little while.”

“Uh...thanks,” he replied after she let him go. “Appreciated.”

She laughed. “Good. Now, I’m afraid I have to get back to work. Unless...” She raised an eyebrow at him.

“I have him for today,” Maureen said firmly. “You’ve had your fun for now. It’s my turn.”

“Oh yes mistress,” Sylvia replied, rolling her eyes but smirking. “He’s pretty good.”

“So I’ve heard.” She left the infirmary. “Come along, Jack.”

The next door led to another, much shorter corridor, that itself led to a rec room that was mostly empty, a back entrance into a storage area for the infirmary, and a string of offices along the left side. They were also mostly empty. Often all that was left was a dusty desk and nothing else. The very last section of the outpost was tucked away at the end of the corridor. If some people tended to think of the control center as the brain, then this room Maureen was taking him into was the heart. He imagined it would need a great deal of attention, and Lyra would be the one giving it that attention, given her particular skill-set.

“This is where all of our utilities reside,” Maureen said as she indicated the packed interior of the room. It was filled with all manner of equipment. “The primary generator is there, our auxiliary generator is a series of solar panels overhead, the water filtration system is there, the heating and cooling elements are there. Your profile said you had some background in mechanics...”

“Yeah, though I don’t think I’ll be any help in here. Honestly, I imagine I’d get in Lyra’s way. But I can fix stuff like outlets and simple power junctions,” he replied.

She smiled. “Good to know. And I’m glad you were honest.”

“You didn’t think I would be?”

“In my experience, men, when they feel threatened, and nothing quite seems to threaten them more than an older, confident woman, though I admit I could be biased in my experiences there, feel the urge to lie, or boast, or somehow skew the truth to their advantage. I believe you might call this one-ups-man-ship.”

“Oh...yes,” he replied, sighing as he followed her back out into the corridor. They began to retrace their route. “I have experienced a lot of that as a Marine. You hit a new maximum on your bench press, suddenly the guy who overheard you just went ten pounds higher. You managed to hook up with a hot chick last night, suddenly the other guy managed a threesome with two hot chicks, and one was probably a model, he’s almost certain of it. Not everyone I met was like that, but way too many were fucking prone to it.”

“You aren’t, though,” Maureen said. He shook his head. “One of the reasons I feel confident about my choice to bring you along. True confidence doesn’t need boasting. Real confidence is quiet because it already knows what it’s capable of and doesn’t need to prove it to anyone else. You have that, Jack.”

“I don’t know if I have true confidence...”

She laughed. “You just need a bit more time. You’re twenty four. Hell, this trip alone is going to be quite the boost for your confidence. Not just sexually, but in all forms of life. Now,” she said, dropping her light tone as they approached the hangar, “the time to work has come.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

And they got to work.

…

The rest of the day spooled out slowly and in a pleasantly familiar way.

It was familiar in that the work itself was familiar: shifting crates, unpacking gear, getting an outpost established. Jack had done that more times than he’d care to count. And although Maureen and Elizabeth were keen on keeping progress steady and relatively swift, they certainly were not the taskmasters he’d gotten used to. There was no sense of urgency as they worked. What made it better was that he actually liked every single person.

When the grunt work was done, Maureen tasked him with being her assistant.

Largely that meant following her around with a tablet and making notes as she personally inspected the base over.

It also meant the very interesting experience of being the subject of her flirtations.

As they moved through the base, she did a few different things that he quickly began to pick up on. She bent over more than once, facing away from him and towards him, giving him a really specifically good view of her ass, filling out her pants, or down her shirt, which was low-cut. Good fucking God did that woman have some big, awesome tits.

Seeing a bare-chested woman was awesome, but there was something also really great about seeing barely-contained cleavage inside of a low-cut shirt.

She gave him small compliments here and there.

She reached out and touched him in passing, sometimes dragging her hand across his ass, sometimes running her hand up and down his arm.

He had to admit, it was really getting him going.

If she had told him to take her and fuck her right there in any of the rooms they were moving through, he absolutely would have.

But she didn’t. If anything, she just seemed amused by his obvious arousal.

Jack fought to stay focused, and he did throughout the whole six hour ordeal. She visually inspected just about everything. Mostly what she was looking for were cosmetic repairs to be made. New coats of paint, broken windows, cracks in the walls, damage to the structure, vent work. Stuff that wouldn’t be covered by Lyra’s more in-depth and analytic technological review of everything. She had disappeared into the control room for a bit, then had gone off into the utilities room for the rest of the day, and had yet to reemerge.

The others had been shifting supplies throughout the base, getting stuff set up. The infirmary, the mess, the bedrooms.

It was hard but pleasant work.

The sun crawled across the purple-tinged sky.

The shadows lengthened.

The garage slowly emptied of supplies, though most of it was just shifted to one of the storage rooms not far from it.

Finally, as twilight was just beginning to come on, everyone gathered in the mess hall. Riley had already gone ahead of them, quitting an hour early to prepare a meal for everyone, and Jack thought that the smell coming out of the mess hall was absolutely fucking divine. She had fried up a bunch of steaks, mashed potatoes and gravy, and corn on the cob. They each filled up their plates and sat around two of the tables they shoved together in the middle of the room. For the first few minutes, no one spoke, everyone ate.

It had been a long day with a lot of physical labor in it.

Eventually, the eating subsided and Maureen began to talk.

“Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, by the way Riley, excellent food,” she said, and everyone else agreed heartily, “we should discuss our findings. I’ve put together a list of things we’ll need to do. I’ve already custom-designed a program that can be shared across our own, internal network that is being generated by the shuttle. Everyone should have a tablet by now. The customized program is an on-the-fly task-list that can be updated by any one of us. There’s a double layer to each. The first is: someone does it. The second is: either myself, Elizabeth, or Lyra double-checks it and signs off on it.”

“Oh, so you don’t trust the rest of us, huh?” Sylvia asked with a big grin. She was on her way into a bottle of red wine at the moment, and from the way she was looking at Riley, he had the idea the two women would be spending the night together.

“I trust you all fine, but I know which of you I’d like to have double-checking the work. Obviously, Sylvia, you’ll get the final say-so on the infirmary, and anything geologically related will be Anya’s province. But at the end of the day I’m the one who’s name is on this contract, and so I want to be personally sure of as much as possible, and I’ll trust the rest of you in areas where I’m less certain,” Maureen replied easily. “Lyra?”

Lyra sighed, cutting at her meat, which was different than the rest, basically a type of steak that could be more comfortably digested by xenians. “Well there’s a lot to do, but for the sake of expediency, I’ll highlight the four biggest things we need to get done. The first is that the generator is fucked up. We’ll need some rare parts to fix it. It was in worse shape than I thought. Same goes for the interstellar comms relay. I haven’t even had a chance to look at the hydroponic garden yet, but I can already tell you it’s in disrepair. And another more unique problem we have is that the database is locked down because it’s broken. We aren’t going to be able to get into the database without a very specific piece of equipment that I’m almost positive we don’t have.”

“What database?” Jack asked.

“There was a bonus condition stipulated in our contract,” Maureen said. “They believed that the previous corporation left in a hurry and forgot to wipe their internal outpost database. Although there probably isn’t anything crucial on it, there might be, so for the sake of corporate espionage, they’re going to pay us to hand that database over.”

“Oh. Huh.”

“Yes. Something I normally detest, but to be honest I have no love for the corporation that originally owned this outpost and staked a claim here.”

“Professional disdain?” Elizabeth asked.

“No,” Maureen replied dryly, “they’re being investigated for slaver smuggling and they’re probably going to be able to buy their way out of the investigation.”

“Ugh, fuck,” Jack muttered. “That’s sick.”

“Yes,” Maureen agreed. “So I would like to crack this database. Just in case we can use it to hurt them.” She looked back at Lyra. “That’s it?”

“Yeah. I mean, there’s a bunch of other stuff, but I should be able to take care of it with time, effort, and the supplies we already have. I’ll have a more comprehensive analysis tomorrow. I wasn’t able to run a full scan because, as I said, main generator is fucked up. I turned the solar panels on and they’re working, but it’s gonna take more energy than we managed to absorb today to run a full and complete outpost-wide computer and system analysis.”

“Okay, we’ll do it tomorrow then,” Maureen said. “Anyone else have anything to say?”

“The infirmary is mostly set up,” Sylvia replied. “I’ll have it done by tomorrow so, you know, try to keep from seriously hurting yourselves until then.”

“Noted.”

“I’ve got the armory mostly set up,” Elizabeth said. “It’s in the control center. There’s a locked closet that I’m pretty sure they used for an armory before. It’s got a few gun lockers in it. Right now it’s got a thumbprint scan that’s just me and Lyra, I need to code the rest of you into it, and I want it done by tomorrow at the latest.”

“Also noted,” Maureen said.

“Shuttle’s fine,” Riley said.

“You’re welcome,” Lyra muttered.

“Hey, thanks,” Riley replied, then stuck her tongue out. Lyra sighed and rolled her eyes.

That seemed to be it. With official business out of the way, the group went back to eating their meals and they quickly began settling into chatting amicably. As they did, and Jack began to listen to Sylvia recount a funny story, he realized that he was feeling something among this group he hadn’t felt for quite awhile.

He felt welcome.

CHAPTER 03

Dinner was eaten.

They talked for about another hour and a half, sharing stories, mostly.

The air was a casual, calm one, though Jack had to admit, being around six attractive women was difficult for him, largely because he knew he was going to sleep with them all, and already had slept with three of them.

And that when she went to bed for the night, Maureen was taking him with her.

And she wasn’t letting go of him until morning.

The anticipation was intense, and building.

Finally, after almost two solid hours, (not that Jack didn’t enjoy the conversation, they were all, in their own way, great conversationalists, and he honestly did love listening to them), Maureen abruptly got to her feet.

“Who’s turn is it to clean up?” she asked.

“I’ll do it,” Elizabeth said.

“Thank you.” She turned to look at him. “Come along, Jack.”

Sylvia smirked at him. They all did, actually. “Have fun, you two,” she murmured.

“He’s in for a hell of a ride,” Anya said.

“They both are,” Riley replied.

Jack hurried out of the mess hall with Maureen. His eyes were drawn to her big ass and her broad hips, the way they swung as she walked. Something that he realized she’d only adopted today, like she was trying to draw his eyes in.

It was working.

They navigated the hallways, and Jack looked out the windows they passed. A curious purple light hung over the land now, the sun almost completely gone.

“Wow,” he murmured.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Maureen replied.

“Yeah. This place is great.”

“I’m glad you think so. I must confess I was worried.”

“What about?” he asked as they made it to her living quarters.

“That I wouldn’t like it. That I’d get all the way out here and discover this was a shitty mistake I’d have to endure for the next month or two, however long it took to get through. But I don’t think I made a mistake. I’m happy out here.”

“I’m glad. You seem like you’ve worked crazy hard for decades and could use something like this,” Jack said as he began stripping out of his clothes, eager to be in a shower. Before he did anything, he intended to take a shower.

He’d worked up a lot of sweat today.

“Thank you,” Maureen said after a moment’s hesitation. He glanced at her. She was looking intently at him.

“What?” he asked.

“Just...a combination of things,” she replied. “One, I’m getting to see you get undressed for the first time. You’re quite attractive. But also...when you live in the world that I have lived in, for as long as I have lived in it, you get used to a certain level of bullshit. Outside of the other women at this outpost, I haven’t honestly been able to fully trust a single person to talk to me honestly. Everyone has motives, everyone has subversive tactics they are trying to employ, trying to get on my good side, trying to get something out of me, trying to outmaneuver me, trying this and that. Layers within layers, usually. Corporate espionage has gotten just...intricately complex. It’s one of the main reasons I walked away.

“But you...have no reason to lie to me, to bend the truth, to try and get anything out of me. You’re already getting or shortly going to get everything you could want, I believe. I think you know enough to know that you’d have to intentionally fuck up for me to kick you off this planet, and I know you’re going to do as good a job as you can. It’s just how you’re built. I can read people quite well. And you’re an honest man. And I’m going to have unbridled sex with you very soon. You know you don’t need to convince me of anything. So, let’s just say, it’s been a very, very long time since I’ve been consoled by someone outside of this inner circle we now share an outpost with, with zero outside motivations beyond just wanting to be nice.”

Jack considered that in the silence that followed, and also considered what to say. It was times like this that he was truly zeroed in on the fact that these women were a lot older than him. And not just older, but so much more experienced than he was, in almost every way.

“Well...I hope I make you feel better,” was all he could think to say.

Maureen laughed. It was an honest, genuine laugh and the smile it brought made her even more beautiful. “Thank you. I appreciate that. I truly do. You’re a sweetheart. Now, let’s get naked and fool around in the shower. I haven’t done that with a handsome young man in ages.” She paused. “I haven’t done that with a man in ages. God, at least five years.”

“Wow, seriously?” he asked as he finished stripping down and tossing his dirty clothes into a heap next to his bag. He’d snagged it earlier from his chosen bedroom and brought it to hers when she’d claimed him for the night.

“Yep,” she replied, walking into the bathroom and flipping on the light. “A combination of being too busy and coming to rely on women for that sort of thing. If I wasn’t sleeping with one of these lovely ladies around us, then I was seducing my assistants, if they were into that sort of thing, or just paying escorts to fuck me for the night when the need arose and no one else was around to satisfy my vagina. I’m honestly quite excited about this opportunity.”

“Me too,” he said as he watched her turn on the water and then take off her top.

And he finally got a look at her tits.

Maureen was what he’d call a stout woman. She had a full figured frame, which meant broad hips, thick thighs, and big breasts. He watched with extreme interest and a growing erection as she took off the rest of her clothes, finishing with her panties and revealing a smooth, beautiful pussy between some wonderfully thick thighs.

“Wow,” he said.

She let her hair down and shook it a bit, then looked down at herself. “So, you like? I know I don’t have that perfect hourglass figure like Riley but that woman is a freak of nature.”

“You are so fucking crazy hot,” he replied, staring at her.

She smirked and put her hands on her big hips. “You can’t lie when you’re looking at a naked woman, can you?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied.

She laughed. “Good.” She pulled back the sliding glass door. Steam poured out of the shower stall. “Get that sexy ass in the shower, young man.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, and stepped in.

She got in behind him and slid the door shut again.

Immediately, they became enclosed in a hot, steamy space all their own. Two naked, horny people, staring at each other. The showerhead was opposite the stall door, so it rained down on both of them equally. He watched as her dark hair became wet and plastered to her head. She was staring back at him with sharp brown eyes.

She was nearly as tall as he was, maybe three inches shorter. He looked down, at the water cascading down her nude body, at her pleasant padding, her full figure. She stepped closer to him suddenly and kissed him on the lips.

It was an electrifying experience.

He groaned, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her against him, immediately relishing the feel of her thick, nude, wet body against his own. She moaned softly as he slipped his tongue into her mouth and her natural taste flooded his own mouth. Maureen pulled him more tightly against her, pushing her huge, bare, wet tits against his chest, sending an electric pulse of lust through him. He ran his hands down her back until they settled on the thick swell of her broad ass. He began to grope her, to squeeze and massage her wonderfully large ass. Jack groaned as he felt her reach down, put his cock between her thick thighs, and then began to rub them slowly together. The result sent shocks of sexual gratification into him.

Jack tilted his head, deepening the kiss, and she moaned and suddenly pushed him up against the wall, doing the same thing, shoving her tongue into his mouth.

He almost fell over and let go of her, his hands going against the wall behind him.

“Oh wow, I’m sorry,” she said, breathing more heavily now.

He laughed, which seemed to catch her off guard, and then she laughed as well. “Eager?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I...am a little overwhelmed by how aroused I am right now,” she admitted. “It’s...this is...you’re making me feel like a teenager again.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” he asked.

“Not at all.”

She resumed kissing him, probing his mouth with her tongue, and he settled one hand comfortably on the swell of her ass, and with the other began groping one of her breasts. Seriously, this woman had some big fucking tits and he was absolutely in love with them. In love with her whole body, to be honest.

Jack had come to the conclusion that he was kind of a whore in a rather weird way, in that more than one person had accused him of not being discerning or shallow at all.

According to people who’d told him this, being willing to ‘fuck damn near anyone’ was worse than being shallow and only going for superficial traits.

He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He still thought it was a good thing. Jack loved big tits and a thick ass as much as the next guy but...damn if he didn’t like personality, too. And just the female form in general. The varied body types of the women he now found himself around seemed to speak to that. He was just as attracted to Maureen’s stocky, full figure as he was Elizabeth’s tall, muscular body. And he was just as attracted to them as he was to Lyra’s petite little tech-studded body. He’d happily go to bed with all of them, but if he had to choose?

Jack genuinely had no idea who he would choose over all the others if they forced that decision on him.

Well…

Maybe that wasn’t entirely true.

He supposed, if he had to, he’d choose Elizabeth, though for a reason he couldn’t quite fathom at the moment.

Maureen stepped back suddenly. “If you make me orgasm, I’ll suck your dick and jack you off into my mouth,” she said.

He blinked, again surprised by having someone like Maureen talk to him so blatantly about sex. But not minding it at all.

“Deal,” he said.

She smirked. “How will you make me come?”

He answered by getting down on his knees. Her smirk became an eager grin and she propped one foot up on a low shell in the wall. “I’m going to like you a lot,” she murmured.

“Yes, you are,” he replied, looking up at her smooth, mature pussy.

Jack set to work. He at least knew how to do this.

Maureen drew in a deep breath as his tongue sought her clit, and then she let out an almost startled sounding “Haaa!” as it found it. Jack began to eat her out, his movements slow, gentle, gradual. He massaged her clit with his tongue, slipping it between the lips of her pussy, and before long, he worked a finger up into her.

She was really wet.

“Oh wow...” she moaned. “I don’t know how to articulate it,” she murmured as she reached down and ran her fingers through his short wet hair, “but there is something different about having a man do it versus a woman. I mean, I know it depends on the individual how good it is, and usually women are better at it, but...fuck me...good is so subjective, and there’s levels to how it feels beyond just good or bad. There’s something different about having my pussy eaten by a strapping young man, I can really tell that now that it’s been so long.” She began panting and moaning more loudly as he started to lick more quickly, to stroke more strongly, using more of his tongue. And he began fucking her more forcefully with his finger.

Then with two fingers.

He was definitely going to make her come, and then he was going to get to enjoy the mind-blowing pleasure that was having a sixty five year old badass corporate executive like Maureen nude and crouching before him, sucking and working his cock like a whore, jacking him off into her mouth as he busted his load.

It was going to be insanely good.

Jack didn’t take much longer to get an orgasm out of her. She let out a scream of ecstasy as her whole body convulsed as she grabbed his head, fingers gripping his scalp tightly as he continued eating her out and fingering her, and then she was coming. She let out a string of incoherent profanities as she climaxed intensely, coming hard as he continued working her mature vagina. He made her shriek wildly as she came, almost falling over twice. In the end he had to grab her hips and steady her, help her keep from completely losing her footing.

What an awful and abrupt end to the festivities that would be.

When she was finished, she put her foot back down, let go of him, and then leaned back against the nearest wall, panting.

“Good lord, now I know what Sylvia and Riley and Anya were screaming about,” she said after getting her breath back. “Goddamn.”

Jack laughed and stood up, washing his face off in the water. He was deeply grateful they’d managed to get the water not only clean, but flowing, and heated, before nightfall. “Glad I could be of service.”

“As am I,” Maureen replied. She straightened back up and stepped towards him, staring at him with a seductive grin. “Now I can be of service.” She got down on her knees, gripped his cock, and began licking. “I wonder how many men thought I’d be a miserable, cold harpy in bed,” she murmured between licking. “How many call me an ice queen who would never spread legs?”

Jack chuckled, then groaned as she kept licking. “I did have you pegged as a bit of an ice queen, but given what we’re doing out here, I knew you had to be into sex at least somewhat.”

“I’m quite into sex, I assure you. I can be quite the slut when I want to be,” she replied. “I just have to want to be.” She looked up for a second, pausing. “And with you, I am finding that I really want to be a slut.”

“I am so grateful for that,” he replied.

“Indeed.”

She took his cock into her mouth and started bobbing her head rapidly, moaning as she sucked him off. Her lips, her luscious, hot, wet lips were like paradise on his cock, slipping up over his head, gliding down his shaft all the way to its base and back up again. There was a surreality to watching Maureen work, after seeing so many pictures of her with her ice queen persona, her expertly cut black business wear, her executive suits and dead-serious demeanor on display dozens of times during the course of his research.

Now, seeing her nude and wet, sucking his cock, it was like a fantasy come true.

In a way, it was akin to looking at advertisements and pin-up pics and porn and fantasizing about the women in them, knowing you were never going to have a chance in hell of actually fucking them. Only Jack found himself doing that with other types of women, not just models and porn stars, but tough military women and boardroom executives like Maureen, doctors and lawyers, stoic and dead serious. The kind of women most guys, like Maureen said, couldn’t imagine being good in bed, or imagined they probably only got fucked by their husbands, or maybe the occasional young prostitute they got their hands on.

And he was hooking up with one of those tough, stoic, ice queen executives right now.

Maureen worked his cock like she knew exactly what she was doing, getting her hand involved and jacking him off while she sucked him off, bobbing her head in tandem with her first three fingers and thumb, getting her saliva all over his cock.

“Holy fucking shit, you look so hot,” he groaned.

She let out a short laugh and kept sucking.

Jack let himself enjoy the pleasure, let it wash over him, consume him, didn’t try to hold back. He had the idea that Maureen was going in for the kill, wanting to get him off fast, maybe to prove to herself that she still could, and he didn’t want to dissuade her of that notion. Her lips and her tongue and her hand were fantastic.

She seemed to be able to sense when he was just on the verge of coming, and right before he triggered, she stopped sucking him and instead began to rapidly jack him off. He cried out, her hand moving furiously, and then he triggered, and he was coming. She crouched down, looking up at him, her mouth open, tongue out, and the first volley of his seed spurt out of him and went right into her mouth.

She moaned and kept going, jacking him off as his cock kicked and jerked in her grasp, spurts of his seed coming out of him. Jack cried out in absolute bliss as he orgasmed, each spurt that came out of him sending a fresh wave of mind-blowing ecstasy through him. He kept his eyes open throughout, watched her intently, stared in pure rapturous enjoyment as he shot his load into her mouth. He hadn’t had many women jack him off into their mouths, and having Maureen of all women do it was quite the spectacle.

When he was almost done, she got some of it onto her lips, and let him shoot the last of his load onto her cheek and forehead.

Then she put his cock, which was dry-kicking, into her mouth and sucked it clean.

“Ohhh, Maureen...” he moaned loudly as that last bolt of pleasure slammed into him.

She looked extremely self-satisfied as she pulled his cock from her mouth. Then she stood up and began washing her face.

“Thank you,” he panted as he came back to himself.

“You’re quite welcome, you earned it,” she replied as she finished washing her face up. “Sylvia and Riley weren’t exaggerating, that was a lot of semen.”

“I do that when I’m doing women I’m really into,” he replied.

“Good to know.”

They spent the next ten minutes simply showering, taking turns with the water, soaping and washing. They ran the soap over each other’s backs, and he ran it over her ass and her big breasts as she allowed him to, groping her occasionally.

He couldn’t get enough of her wonderful body.

Eventually, they were clean. Maureen swished and spit some mouthwash, and then they dried off and headed into her quarters, nude and clean.

They climbed beneath the blankets and laid together in the dim light-purple luminescence that bled in through the single window in the room. It was akin to moonlight and oddly comforting. For a moment, the two of them simply laid together, side-by-side, in the bed.

“You know, I’m actually a little nervous,” she said, breaking the silence.

“Really?” he replied, honestly surprised.

“Yeah. I know, it’s crazy, right? I spent forty years shouting down jackasses in board rooms, high-powered execs hopped up on their own shit, thinking they’re so great. Busted a lot of balls, broke a lot of skulls...metaphorically speaking, of course. I’ve fucked a lot of times in my life, a lot of people. I haven’t been nervous before sex for...God, ages. A decade, at least. Longer. I can’t even remember the last time.”

“Am I making you nervous?”

“I don’t know,” she replied after a moment. “It’s okay, you aren’t doing anything. I’m not worried about you and I’m not having doubts or anything. I think...I’m just nervous because this is all so new. In a way, every time I made a transition, even when I started over with my own business, I knew the deck was stacked in my favor, in one way or another. Largely just because of my own skill and experience. I know how to read people, how to play people, and, if need be, how to crush them. But this? This isn’t that. Refurbishing an abandoned outpost on a hostile world is about as far from the boardroom as you can get.”

“We’ll do fine,” Jack said.

“You really think so?”

“Yeah. I mean, Lyra’s obviously a genius, you’ve obviously done your research, and everyone here but me is clearly a professional. If something goes wrong, I don’t doubt that you’ll all adapt to it and handle it. If anything, you should be excited. In the boardroom, you knew how to handle the threats, even the unexpected ones, because you could predict them. But this is new to you. You have the experience, intelligence, and people to handle damn near anything that comes up. Which means you’ll get to experience brand new things while still being able to deal with the shit parts of it, Maureen,” he explained.

She was silent for a few seconds, then she smiled. “You’re absolutely right.” She looked at him suddenly. “Make love to me.”

He felt a fresh pulse of lust shoot through him and he shifted closer to her beneath the blankets, laying a hand across one of her huge breasts.

“I can do that.”

“How do you want me?” she asked.

“I want to fuck you on your back,” he replied.

“Mmm, missionary, huh? What do you like about it?” she asked as she spread her legs.

He got in between them, in between those amazing thighs of hers. “I love how intimate it is,” he replied. “How close it feels.”

“So do I,” she agreed.

Then they stopped talking for a bit as he settled into place and she reached down between them, her fingers lightly gripping his cock, taking a moment to feel it, to run lightly up and down it, then she lined him up with herself, resting the head at the entrance to her pussy. He could feel how hot and wet she was, shuddered slightly at the contact as he slipped slowly into her. She let out a long, low moan of pleasure as he started to work his way inside of her. Her hands came up, sliding along his arms. He had his hands planted on either side of her head now, holding himself up, staring down at her. She looked beautiful in the pale light.

There was a look of naked excitement and vulnerability on her face that looked strange and almost alien. He felt her hands get to his shoulders, then slide down his back until they settled on the small of his back. She moaned louder as he began to stroke into her, finding her fantastically wet and pleasantly tight. Jack slid smoothly in and out of her mature pussy, quickly losing himself in the sheer, raw pleasure that sex with Maureen was.

“I had forgotten,” she whispered, adjusting herself slightly, opening her legs a bit wider.

“Oh yeah?” he replied, breathing more heavily now.

“Yes. Strap-ons are great,” she murmured, “but apparently there is something to the real thing. For me, at least. Or maybe it’s just you.”

He started fucking her a bit faster and she let out a loud moan. “Fuck!”

“That good, huh?” he asked.

“Yes...shit, I’m not used to not being in charge of the encounter.”

“Is it weird?” he asked, surprised that she didn’t feel in charge. She pretty much had him wrapped around her finger.

“No...kind of...mmm...it’s good,” she panted.

He leaned down and kissed her, continuing to slide smoothly in and out of her, adjusting himself slightly and then going a bit harder. She cried out. He decided to run with that. “You like it when I’m in charge?” he asked.

She moaned. “I wouldn’t have thought so...but that’s another thing I’d forgotten. Oh fuck. I don’t dominate just because I want to, but also because I like to...ah...yes!...I like to see others rise to the challenge. Sometimes I want to see if anyone else can successfully challenge me...”

“Good. Now be quiet, put your legs up, and spread them out further,” he said, deciding to try and go for exactly what she was asking for.

She stared up at him, surprised, and then did as she was told. He grinned and adjusted himself again, making her cry out as he hit a sensitive spot. He leaned down and kissed her. She kissed him back, holding him against herself, spreading her legs wider like she’d been told. He listened to her moan and cry out and pant and grunt as they fucked. The pleasure ate into him, consumed him, and he reveled in every second of it.

Within a few minutes he had her yelling rapidly, her voice getting higher pitched, then suddenly she went rigid, holding her breath, squeezing her eyes shut, and then she was coming. She let out a shout as she began to come, and he started stroking into her more rapidly, fucking that wonderful mature vagina of hers, pushing himself all the way in, making her scream louder. And then he was coming too, shooting his load into her pussy.

Jack moaned loudly, losing himself in the incoherent bliss that was orgasming into a woman like Maureen.

He filled her as he felt her vaginal muscles flutter and spasm with her own orgasm. She moaned as they kissed, wrapped up together in their mutual bliss, holding each other, orgasming against each other. They were lost in the momentary world of absolute ecstasy. It seemed to go on for a long time, but eventually it faded away.

Jack stared down at Maureen after he had finished coming in her, and she stared back at him. They remained like that, just looking at each other, as their bodies calmed back down.

“I need another shower,” she said finally.

He laughed. “Yeah, me too.” He pulled out of her and slowly got to his feet.

She followed after him and they turned the water back on and slipped inside again. They washed up quickly, dried off again, then headed back to bed. This time Maureen laid on her side, inviting him to spoon against her, which he did.

“Feel better about your decision now?” he asked.

“Yes,” she murmured.

“I’m glad. Goodnight, Maureen.”

“Goodnight, Jack.”

CHAPTER 04

Jack didn’t remember waking up a single time that night.

Which was odd, given that, even after he had joined the women on their expedition, he’d been having trouble sleeping. Generally, he didn’t sleep through the night, and when he did, he usually had nightmares of some kind.

But the next thing he remembered after fucking the shit out of Maureen, showering, and then laying back down with her in bed, was opening his eyes to sunlight. For a few seconds, he simply laid there on his side, facing the single window in the room.

He became aware of two things at roughly the same moment.

The first was that Maureen was awake. He could sense her moving in the bed behind him, and from the sounds he heard, she was typing something into a tablet.

The second thing was that he had to piss bad.

Jack threw the blanket back and hurried to the bathroom. He flipped open the lid and took a long, long leak.

When he was finished, he flushed, washed his hands, and then splashed some water onto his face. He looked at himself the mirror. He looked...better. Although he couldn’t quite tell how, he just could tell. And he felt better too, better than he had in a long time. Part of it was the recovery from the incident onboard the ship, but it was more than that. For the first time in ages, he actually felt revitalized. Alert, full of energy.

He moved back to the bedroom and looked at Maureen.

“Good morning,” he said.

“It is,” she agreed, studying the tablet. She was still naked, the blanket down around her, exposing her large breasts.

He felt a hard shot of lust hit him, but faltered. Something about her said ‘ice queen’ again. She seemed to sense that in him.

“Not right now, I’m afraid. I’m in full business mode and I don’t want to be distracted. Sorry,” she said, glancing at him.

“It’s fine,” he replied.

“I’m sure one of the others will be more than willing to accommodate you,” she said.

“Good idea.”

He headed for the door and as he opened it and began to step out, she said, “Jack?”

He paused, turned, looked back at her. “Yeah?”

“It was really good, and I’ll want more later.”

He grinned. “Glad to hear it.”

“Go have fun.”

He nodded and left, stepping out into the hallway. For a moment, Jack was stymied, trying to remember where he’d seen Riley or Sylvia claiming their rooms. Then he remembered Riley had grabbed the one farthest from the garage. He moved down to it and knocked on the door. A few seconds went by, then, “Yeah?”

“Can I come in?” Jack asked.

A laugh, Sylvia. “You can always come in me,” she replied.

Jack laughed as he opened the door and felt another thrill of lust slam into him. He found the two women walking around the room, in the process of getting dressed apparently.

“Oh my, someone’s got morning wood,” Riley said, looking down.

Jack looked down too, then realized he’d left the room naked. Oh well, it wasn’t like there was anyone who wouldn’t be seeing him naked or hadn’t already.

“I need some help,” he replied.

Riley abandoned the shirt she was pulling on and took her panties back off. “Which one of us?”

“Both of you. Lay down on your backs, spread your legs,” he replied.

“I thought hooking up with Maureen would’ve cowed you a little more, but it seems to have had the opposite effect,” Sylvia said as she pulled her own panties down.

“Is that a problem?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Sylvia replied.

“Why’d you think that? Of course conquering that badass bitch was going to jack him up,” Riley said as she got onto her bed.

“Fair point.”

They both laid on their backs beside each other, with enough room for their legs to be open. Jack climbed into bed for a moment, staring at them both, trying to decide, then climbed onto Sylvia and got in between her thighs.

She moaned loudly as he penetrated her.

It had been longer since he’d fucked her.

Jack quickly lost himself in the sex as he humped her, groaning at the feel of that fantastically hot, mature pussy of hers. She moaned and wrapped her legs around him, holding him against her as he screwed her roughly.

“Oh my, he’s horny,” she groaned.

“Don’t take him for too long,” Riley said.

“Just a little longer...”

He drove into her furiously, pounding her into the mattress for another minute or so, before Riley started pulling at one of her legs. “Come on!”

“Okay, okay,” Sylvia panted.

Jack pulled out of her as she released him, quickly shifted over to Riley, and slid right into her insanely wet alien pussy. They both moaned and Riley let out a loud cry of bliss as he began screwing her, going hard and fast right away.

“Oh yes, Jack! Fuck that pussy!” she screamed, grabbing at his back.

He drilled her alien pussy, losing him yet again in how fucking wet she was, screwing her until he pulled out and switched back over to Sylvia.

The pleasure burned into him, consuming him, fueling him, as he switched back and forth between the two women, driving furiously into them. Not only did he feel fully awakened and revitalized, but he felt hornier than he’d been in a long time.

He came inside of both of them, filling both women up and feeling the absolutely insane pleasure of doing so as he pumped his seed into them.

When he was finished, Jack sat on the edge of the bed and got his breath back.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“Someone is feeling better,” Riley murmured.

“Better?” he asked. “Yeah, I guess so. I don’t feel lethargic anymore.”

“No, sweetheart,” Riley said, and he shivered as he felt her tail trail down his back. “Remember what I said yesterday? In the shower? You were mopey. Not unreasonably, I might add, I’m not accusing you. But you were mopey, now you’re less so. You feel better.”

He thought about it. Sylvia’s hand joined Riley’s tail, running up and down his back. “You’re right,” he said. “I do feel better.” He looked back over his shoulder at the two women, then he leaned forward and gave each a kiss. “Thank you for letting me come in you.”

They both laughed.

“You’re welcome. Go take a shower, Elizabeth wants to speak with you. She’s in one of the storage rooms,” Sylvia replied.

“I will, thanks.”

He got up and headed out of the room, ducking back into Maureen’s room.

“Someone fucked two women just now,” she murmured. She was in the same position, staring at her tablet, typing on it still.

“Yep,” he agreed, heading into her bathroom.

As he got into the shower and began cleaning up, Jack realized he did feel a whole lot better. Not just physically but mentally and emotionally, too. It was like...coming out of a brutally turbulent storm in the night, and then waking up to find yourself in perfectly calm, clear, warm waters, with the sun shining down on you.

He felt energized.

Jack finished washing up, dried off, and then walked back out into Maureen’s room. He began pulling his clothes on. He pulled on a simple black t-shirt that clung to his body, and a pair of black cargo shorts with several pockets, over black boxers and black socks.

“You like black,” Maureen murmured.

“I’ve found it’s easy to keep clean, easy to buy, easy to wear,” he replied.

“It looks good on you, honestly,” she said, setting aside her tablet to study him. “You’re quite distracting, you know that?”

“Oh yeah?” he asked, tying up his boots.

“Yes. Very handsome. And more confident now. I can just tell in the way you’re moving. That turns me on a lot.” She brought her tablet back up. “I’m not done with you, not by a long shot, keep that in mind.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

She grinned but otherwise kept silent, typing on her tablet.

Jack finished tying up his boots, gathered his dirty clothes, and then marched out of the room. He tossed his dirty laundry in the corner of his bedroom, then headed off down the hallway, towards where the storage rooms were.

He heard heavy breathing and stuff being shifted around.

Elizabeth was in the second storage room and two things immediately jumped out at him. The first was that she was in the process of setting up a gym, the second was that she was one of the most attractive women he had ever seen just then.

She was crouched down, prying a crate open, and he had an amazing view of her cleavage, kept in check by a black sports bra. She was also wearing some loose-fitting black jogging shorts that showed off a lot of her thick thighs. Her red hair was pulled into a rough, functional ponytail and she was slicked with sweat.

She glanced up as she became aware of his presence, then looked actually concerned and looked around. “What? What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I...nothing,” Jack managed, realizing he’d been just staring at her in actual slack-jawed, wide-eyed amazement. “You just...look amazing.”

She looked down at herself. “Oh.” Then back up at him. She blushed, but for the first time didn’t look annoyed as a result of it. “Wow, I don’t know if I’ve ever been looked at by a guy like that.”

“I promise you have, you just might not have realized,” he replied, still staring. “You are...holy shit.” He paused. “You’ve got tattoos.”

“Yep,” she replied, and then with a final grunt, her arm muscles bulging, she got the top off of the crate and tossed it aside. Standing, he again realized just how goddamned tall this woman was. And how built she was.

He saw a circlet of barbed wire wrapping one thigh, high up, and he could just see something, what might have been flames of some kind, peeking up over the top of her shorts, which were riding a little low. He also saw a skull with a pair of knifes crossed behind it high on her shoulder. How had he missed these earlier? Or had he? Were they always hidden by clothing? Or maybe he’d only seen them in poor lighting.

“You like tattoos?” she asked.

“I do. A lot,” he replied. He hesitated. “I don’t want to be pushy or pressuring, but...could we...”

“Didn’t you just get done fucking Riley and Sylvia? I heard that in here,” she replied.

“Yes. But I would give so much to fuck you right now. Holy shit,” he said.

She laughed, looking genuinely surprised. “Are you seriously that turned on by me?” she asked.

“Yes!”

“Hmm...I’m still not ready yet,” she replied. “But...Anya! Get in here!” she called.

A moment later, the geologist appeared. “Yes? What’s happening?” she asked.

“Jack wants to fuck me, but I’m not really ready to fuck yet. But I don’t want to just leave him hanging, he’s like dying over here, look at him.”

The redheaded geologist came deeper into the room. “Oh my, yes. He’s mesmerized by you. I can see why,” she murmured, looking back to Elizabeth. “So what do you want? You want me to fuck him, right here?”

“Suck his dick,” Elizabeth replied. “While he looks at me. Is that fair?”

“I can do that,” Anya said as she crouched before him. “But I want oral from you later, Liz.”

“Deal,” Elizabeth replied.

Anya smirked up at him. “I will satisfy you now,” she said as she pulled his cock from his pants. He was already rock hard again.

“Thanks,” he replied, still feeling stupefied by how goddamned horny he was.

Elizabeth was like a fucking goddess to him.

He was forced to look back down again as Anya got his cock out and began licking across the head. He groaned as that particular pleasure sizzled into him.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered, putting a hand on the top of her head. He felt a little weird that Elizabeth basically asked Anya to let herself be used for him to orgasm, but she seemed pretty comfortable with it.

As she slipped his cock into her mouth and began to bob her head smoothly, her lips gliding beautifully up and down his shaft, Elizabeth stepped a little closer.

“Damn, this is pretty hot to watch, actually,” she murmured.

“You...didn’t think it would be?” Jack replied, trying to keep his focus as he stared at her.

“I’ve seen porn, but it doesn’t do a lot for me, honestly. But I’ve really been learning how watching people do stuff actually in front of you is just...great.”

He nodded, closed his eyes for a few seconds, losing himself briefly in the sheer pleasure of Anya’s mouth.

She was really good at this.

Jack opened his eyes. “Could you, uh...would you pull your pants down?” he asked.

Elizabeth asked. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, come on, let me see something.”

“You ask me to see something and it’s my vagina. Not my tits? My ass?”

“Yes,” he replied.

She shrugged. “Okay, fair enough. I’m totally going to fuck you, but I gotta admit part of the reason I’m waiting is because I want to build up the anticipation. And it’ll be a bit more of an anticipation for you if you see something...”

Elizabeth pulled her shorts down, revealing her pussy. It was smooth, totally bald. He also saw her tattoo. It was a mushroom cloud.

“That’s...a hot tattoo,” he murmured.

“You like it? Also, I hope you don’t mind bald vagina. I got the hair removed awhile ago because I was just done with it,” she said.

He nodded. “I’m a fan...damn, you’ve got a hot pussy,” he said. “And thighs.”

Jack quickly began imaging what it would be like to fuck her, to be in between those well-muscled thighs, to be inside that smooth, mature, ex-Marine pussy, screwing the absolute fuck out of this tall, redheaded warrior goddess and-

“Ah! Fuck!” he groaned as he started coming.

He looked up, directly into Elizabeth’s eyes, and she held his gaze, staring back at him intently as he orgasmed in Anya’s mouth. The Russian woman moaned as she sucked him off, working his cock with a skilled hand and mouth, letting him empty his nuts into her. He and Elizabeth maintained eye contact the whole time he was orgasming and he felt an intense spark of lust passing between them. When he was finished, Anya stood up.

“You’re welcome,” she said, looking satisfied with herself.

“Thank you very much,” he replied. “Next time we do it, I’ll definitely go down on you.”

“Appreciated. Now, I need to get back to work.”

She left the room and he looked back at Elizabeth. He saw she was looking down, at his cock, which was still out, slowly softening.

“How long do you think you’ll last?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” she replied, looking up at him, sounding surprised more than anything.

“How long do you think you’ll last before you hop in bed with me?” he replied, slowly putting his dick away.

She sighed, pulled up her pants, then crossed her arms beneath her large breasts. “Something’s put you in a cocky mood.”

“Is that a problem?” he asked.

She pursed her lips, considering it. “No...not so long as you keep it in check. Confident is hot, arrogant is pussy-repellent. Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t,” he replied.

She sighed again, a bit more dramatically this time. “I guess I should’ve expected this. I know how you young Marine boys are. Getting this much pussy obviously was gonna make you cocky,” she said.

“Hey, come on, don’t lump me in with the assholes who treated you like shit. I’m definitely not like that,” he replied.

She smiled. “I know, Jack. I was just teasing. I like you. Now help me get this gym set up so we have regular access to it. I know you wanna start your mornings by nailing pussy, but you should also maintain the habit of working out.”

“I should,” he agreed, and he set to work helping her.

…

An hour and a half later, Jack found himself eating breakfast in the galley after a workout, (following the workout of actually setting it all up), and another shower. Riley and Sylvia had cooked up a lot of scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast and now everyone was gathered around their new eating place.

“All right, I’ve put together a plan,” Maureen said. “All of you have assignments to complete. The plan will be updated on the fly, as I mentioned last night. Lyra is going to be primarily focusing on getting the main generator for now. Sylvia, I want you to square away the infirmary. Finish getting everything organized, double-check every instrument and ensure that it is working, and get it clean in there. Elizabeth, you get the duty of continuing to sort through all our varied supplies. Unpack it and get it to where it needs to be. Riley, Anya, and Jack are going to start running down the task-list that’s been assembled so far for minor repairs.”

“And what are you going to be doing?” Sylvia asked with a smirk.

“I am going to be doing something blessedly simple: cleaning. I’m going to be wiping down furniture, cleaning windows, sweeping up,” Maureen replied. “And also double-checking your work as you get it done. I expect we’re going to be at this for the next three or four days, so all of you should prepare for the long haul. As for pace, well...keep at it, but don’t rush. We have a job to do, but we are largely here to enjoy ourselves.”

“Maybe you should set some kind of real time limit?” Elizabeth suggested.

“Fair enough. Let’s have the majority of this outpost cleaned and fixed up within a week, how does that sound?” Maureen replied.

“I can work with that,” Elizabeth replied, and the others nodded.

“Excellent.”

They continued eating.

CHAPTER 05

In the end, it took them four days to get through the bulk of the little stuff.

And there was a lot of little stuff to do.

A lot of bulbs needed replacing, a lot of behind-the-scenes technical gear like wiring and piping and power routing boxes and heating elements needed to be serviced for maintenance or, in several cases, outright replaced. So much of it had fallen into disrepair. Broken or cracked windows needed to be replaced. Doors and their mechanisms that allowed them to slide open needed a lot of maintenance as well. Vents needed to be cleaned out. Exterior lighting needed to be checked and, in almost every case, replaced.

And dirt.

Dirt had gotten into damn near everything.

They were a lot of bottles of compressed air broken out at first and for a good, long while everyone set to work blowing dirt and dust out of all the machinery. Hell, Jack spent a solid three hours prying panels loose and just blowing all the dirt out of the equipment hidden behind the panel. Lyra had already anticipated for this and among the gear they’d brought were over a dozen air purifiers that would suck the dirt, and anything else, right out of the air. Maintenance also had to be performed on the outpost’s own air filtration system.

Jack lost himself in those long days. They worked from sunup to sunset, all of them, and he was really given an impression of just how driven, just how prone to long periods of hard work all the women were. He’d expected it from Maureen and Lyra and Elizabeth, but even Riley, clearly the most hedonistic among them, would work for hours and hours in a completely professional, focused manner. And he deeply appreciated that.

He did his best to keep up. Not necessarily concerned that he might be being outdone by a collection of older women, but that they might think he was slacking. Honestly though, he enjoyed himself. It did remind him of being in the Marines, and despite how many people complained about the mindless, boring, repetitive jobs, (and he could sympathize, some did majorly suck), he had gotten decent at taking a sort of meditative pleasure from them. Plus, he didn’t feel that vaguely threatening atmosphere the entire military seemed to project, where if you didn’t do everything fucking perfect, you would be severely punished.

But more than that, Jack thought that there was a deep satisfaction to making a place yours. Even though he knew he wasn’t actually going to live here for all that long, he couldn’t deny that he felt good about taking the dilapidated outpost and directly contributing to its refurbishment. There was a gratification in coming into a dirty room, spending an hour cleaning it, and then looking over the same room when you were finished and seeing all that change.

And, of course, he enjoyed the fact that periodically, the women that he shared this space with kept coming to break his work routine by fucking him.

…

On the first day, when he was straightening up the garage, Riley tracked him down.

She slipped silently into the room and he didn’t hear her, only noticing her when he turned around, sensing something was slightly amiss.

She was completely naked.

“Uh...wow...hi,” he said, feeling lust hit him like a bolt of lightning.

She had the biggest tits, and her hips were just so fantastically broad. He could see her tail swaying behind her, drifting back and forth as she walked slowly towards him.

“Hello, Jack,” she said with a demure smirk. “We managed to fuck in every room on the ship, but now we’ll need to do it here, too. I thought we should start with the garage. What do you say? You wanna fuck this pussy?”

“Yes,” he replied immediately.

“Good.” She walked right up to him, kissed him hard on the mouth, then stepped back slightly. “I want you to take me hard.”

“How hard?” he asked.

“Bend me over and slam me into that table, then fucking pound my brains out from behind,” she replied. “Don’t be gentle, I can take it.”

Jack hesitated for just a second, then decided to take her at her word. He grabbed her by the wrist, twisted her around so that her arm went behind her back, then he looped an arm over her stomach, forcibly whirled her around so that she was facing the table, then he pushed her up against it and slammed her hard into it, bending her over.

“Please, master,” she moaned as he grabbed both her wrists and held them behind her back with one hand, then began unzipping with the other.

“Shut up, Riley,” he replied.

“Please...” she whispered, panting. “Don’t punish me too hard, I’ll be good...” she promised.

“Shut the fuck up, Riley!” he snapped, smacking her ass as soon as he got his dick out.

She moaned and shuddered. She started panting as he penetrated her. Holy fucking shit she was really wet. Was she ever not horny? Not that he was complaining. He started banging her against the table, stroking hard and fast into her, making her shout.

“You’ve been bad, Riley,” he growled at her, reaching forward and getting a handful of her hair by the roots. He gave it a yank.

“Ah! I’m sorry!” she cried.

“You’d better be.”

He’d been involved with this particular sex before, this specific dichotomy. It varied from person to person, but there seemed to be a few universal things you could do. Like yelling, insulting, spanking, hair-pulling.

Riley sure seemed to like it all.

He could feel her getting even wetter, could feel her pushing against him, writhing in pleasure as he screwed her brains out, as he pounded the living fuck out of her alien pussy.

“You gonna be good?” he growled, yanking on her hair again.

“Yes! Please! I will!”

“You promise, you little whore?” he asked.

“Yes, master!” she cried.

“Good.”

He fucked her for a bit longer, then abruptly pulled out of her, yanked her up, whirled her around, and shoved her down onto her knees. She cried out, and as she did, he stuffed his cock in her mouth right as he started coming. He grabbed the back of her head and shoved his cock hard while pulling forward. Jack violently fucked her mouth as he orgasmed, groaning as he stuffed his cock down her amazingly hot, wet throat, shooting his load down it, forcing her to swallow. He could hear her moaning loudly, trembling with sexual gratification from being used like a worthless fucktoy, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t feeling pretty satisfied about using her like one.

As soon as he was finished coming, he let go of her and she fell back, panting.

“That what you were looking for?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” she said, coughing a few times. “Goddamn, that was good. You know your shit, don’t you?”

“I’ve had a few brushes with that kind of sex before,” he replied.

“You’re good at it. We need to do that more. I like it rough, and dysils are structurally stronger than humans, so you can actually go really rough on me without worrying about hurting me.” She paused, smirked. “Well...I mean really hurting me. Hurting me is kind of the point.” She stood up, stretched, popped her neck. “I’ve got to get back to work. See you around.”

He looked at her big tits, then her fat ass as she walked away. “See you around.”

Jack watched her until she was gone, then put his cock away and got back to work.

…

The next time he got jumped, it was at night.

After dinner he’d gone to work out a bit, then he’d headed for his bedroom. Everyone else seemed busy or tired, so Jack had stripped naked and gone to his shower, intent on washing off his sweat before tracking someone down to spend the night with. He had just finished soaping up and began the process of washing it all off when the shower stall door slid open and he found himself looking at a very naked Anya.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello,” she replied, grinning at him. “I take it you don’t mind some company.”

“Hell no,” he said immediately.

She laughed and slipped in. He looked her up and down. Her body was so wonderful to look at in all its pale, nude glory. And that red hair of hers…

He didn’t say anything, just kissed her and embraced her. Anya moaned and kissed him back, hugging him to her. They made out, running their hands over each others’ wet bodies, groping and touching and enjoying. Soon, their tongues were twining together, they were tasting each other, becoming lost in each other.

Her body was fantastic to touch. She was amazingly fit, her body made of smooth, pale skin and small but well-defined muscles. She was light on her feet, smooth and graceful, and that, combined with her frame, made him think of a dancer. Her thighs were decently developed, her breasts great to touch and look at.

After a bit, she gently departed from his grasp.

“Let me wash up, then let us go to bed,” she said in her lilted accent.

“Okay,” he replied, painfully eager to be inside of her.

He finished getting the soap rinsed from his body while she cleaned up. Within five minutes, they were both clean, dry, and hurrying towards his bed. She dove onto it and he dove after her. Anya grabbed him and resumed kissing him, getting on top of him as she shoved her tongue into his mouth. He ran his hands down her smooth, pale skin, settling them on her fit ass, giving it a squeeze, feeling her tits pressing against his bare skin.

After a moment, he gently pushed her up. “I believe I promised you oral.”

She grinned broadly, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “You did.”

Anya hopped off him and laid on her back, opening her legs. He got on top of her, holding himself up, and then leaned down and kissed her on the mouth. Then he kissed her on the jaw, then lower, on the side of her neck. She gasped and shuddered. Then lower, to her collarbone. Then to her breast, where he paused, licking across a small, pink nipple.

“Mmm...oh yes...” she moaned. “You are quite good at this...”

He began sucking on one of her tits and she moaned louder, running her fingers through his hair. He switched over to her breast after a moment and gave it similar treatment. Then he shifted lower, avoiding kissing her stomach, (he’d been hit in the head or kicked involuntarily too many times from extremely ticklish women), and settled down between her legs. He began kissing her inner thighs, which made her moan and shudder harder.

“Oh yes...I’m so sensitive there...”

He licked up one of her thighs and she shivered more intensely. He kept teasing her with his tongue for a bit longer before he settled in to work.

“Oh...fuck...” she moaned as he started licking her clit, massaging it slowly with his tongue. “That is...ooh yes...”

Invigorated, he kept licking, slowly getting faster, applying more pressure, using more of his tongue. And did she ever respond. Anya began panting and moaning and twitching, and before long he had her screaming in pure bliss. He just managed to slip a finger inside of her tight, wet pussy and began to finger her when she let out a scream and started to orgasm. He kept licking her and fucking her with his finger as she writhed and twisted and shouted incoherently in ecstasy. She came a lot, getting it onto his neck and jaw and some of his chest.

As soon as he was done, she sat up suddenly and handed him a pillow.

“Here, lay on your back, now,” she said.

“All right,” he replied, accepting the pillow as he got up and laid on his back, his head now at the end of the bed, facing her.

She quickly got up and turned around, getting onto her hands and knees, facing away from him, showing him her fantastic ass and pink, glistening pussy. She stuck her feet beneath his knees as he raised them up for her. She continued to back up until her ass was at his crotch, then she reached between her legs, gripped his rock hard dick, and aimed it towards herself. He groaned loudly as she introduced his dick to her fantastically wet pussy and began to impale herself with it. Her moan joined his own as she worked him into her.

“You like reverse cowgirl?” she murmured, her voice almost a purr, as she fucked him.

“I do now,” he moaned, laying on his back, watching himself get fucked by her. Watching his cock disappearing into that amazing Russian pussy of hers again and again. “Holy fu-wow that’s good!” he grunted, panting as she sped up, slipping him into herself repeatedly. The sheer, absolute pleasure of her raw pussy clenched tight around his cock, just fucking him smoothly and quickly, was immediately powerful and almost overwhelming.

Plus, just watching her work…

Fuck, she had a fantastic body, and clearly a lot of practice at sex. She moved with such grace and confidence.

And the sounds she made…

Anya really had a voice for sex.

She kept going and going, fucking his cock, stuffing it up into herself, into her insanely slippery pussy, until he was pushed to the brink of orgasm.

“Anya...gonna come...slow down,” he groaned, panting, clenching his muscles, trying to hold off the orgasm that was threatening to come out of him.

“No,” she replied simply.

He groaned as she began going faster. Fuck, she was going in for the kill.

With these women, he was really falling in love with the kill.

Within another fifteen seconds he lost his battle and started shooting his load into her wonderfully tight, wet pussy.

“Oh, Anya!” he cried, reaching out, grabbing her ass and hips, and yanking her down hard against him, thrusting up into her. She cried out as he filled her up, as he pumped that sweet, mature vagina full of his seed.

“Yes! That’s it! Fuck, I can feel it!” she moaned, squatting over him, letting him do it. “Oh fuck, there’s so much, Jack...”

He lost himself to the mindless bliss of the orgasm.

It seemed to go on for awhile, and when it was over and he was slowly coming back, he let her go and fell back, panting.

Anya got up off of him after a moment, glancing back at him with a self-satisfied grin, and then walked into the bathroom.

He heard the shower start up again.

After a moment, he rolled off the bed to join her.

…

“Jack.”

He looked up from his tablet, where he was studying the remainder of the things that had yet to be completed on the master task-list, and to the doorway.

Maureen was standing in the entrance to the rec room, where he had just finished up making repairs to a light fixture overhead and had decided to try and squeeze one more thing in today before calling it quits.

The sun was gone already. They’d all had dinner and then dispersed two hours ago, and he was on a work high, almost desperately eager to keep fixing things, like he was on a roll and he didn’t want to break it.

It had been beginning to fade around the time he’d started the repair on the fixture.

“What’s up?” he replied, lowering the tablet. “How long have you been standing there?”

“A few minutes,” she admitted. “I was admiring you. Maybe it’s cliché, but there is something quite pleasant about a man who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty with real labor. And who actually knows what he’s doing...what are you up to?” she asked, crossing her arms and leaning on the door frame. She looked tired, but in a satisfied kind of way. He knew that feeling, when you hit the end of a long day of getting a lot of shit done.

You felt good, like you’d earned it.

And your bed was so inviting.

“I was thinking about taking care of one more job before quitting time,” he replied.

“I think you’ve worked plenty hard today. Honestly, you’ve performed above and beyond my expectations since you’ve arrived. The rescue mission, all this hard work at the outpost, how satisfied we all are...you’re a treasure. I want you for something.”

“What?” he asked, pocketing the tablet after powering down the screen.

“Follow me,” she replied, turning and heading back down the short corridor that led to the rec room and offices, and into the main hall that ran the length of the outpost. He followed her in silence, his eyes trailing to her ass more than once.

Fuck, did that woman have a big, hot ass.

They arrived back at her bedroom a moment later.

“Lemme grab some spare clothes,” he said.

“Hurry up,” Maureen replied.

“Yes ma’am.”

He swung back by his room and grabbed a fresh change of clothes, then hurried back to Maureen’s room. He found Sylvia already completely naked, laying in her bed and drinking from a bottle of wine. She wasn’t even bothering with the pretense of a wineglass any longer. Apparently neither was Maureen, who was uncorking her own bottle.

“Where the fuck do you keep finding these?” Jack asked as he tossed his clothes on the floor and then shut the door behind him.

“You kidding me? I brought three fucking cases,” Sylvia replied. Judging by her tone and grin, and the fact that she was about a third of the way through the bottle, he could tell she was at least somewhat tipsy by now.

“Wow, you must like it,” he said, studying the vividly pink wine in the bottle.

“I love this stuff,” Sylvia replied. “It’s called Pink Dream and oh my, is it ever a dream. Tastes so good, leaves such a great buzz in your head. Designed, scientifically, to keep you buzzed without pushing you into drunk. I mean, unless you drink like a shitload of it, but why do that?” She closed her eyes as she took another drink. Then she looked at him. “Do you think it’s trashy? To just drink straight from the bottle like this?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied, “but I think it’s hot.”

She laughed. “Obviously.”

“Take your clothes off,” Maureen said as she finally got her cork out and took a healthy drink of the wine. Jack began complying, getting naked. “You want any?” she asked.

“I’m good,” he replied.

“He doesn’t really drink,” Sylvia said.

“Really? Do you mind if I ask why?” Maureen asked as she took her own clothes off.

“I’m not sure, to be honest. I have drank, I’ve been drunk. But there was no experience that soured me on it. I’ve just never been super into it. I guess, if I had to put it into words, I like being completely here more often than not.” He paused. “Although don’t get me wrong, if I get really stressed, I can honestly see the appeal of getting drunk. It’s nice to just...turn the fuck off for awhile,” he admitted.

“It is,” Maureen muttered.

Soon, the two of them were as nude as Sylvia, who was watching them both with a sedate yet lusty grin.

“Good lord, Maureen, I am jealous of that body,” Sylvia murmured as they walked towards the bed.

“Really?” Maureen asked. “Why?”

“You’re so...busty. And buxom. And shapely.”

“She’s really curvaceous,” Jack murmured, staring at her.

“Yes! Curvaceous. Mmm-hmm. You’re beautiful in a deadly sort of way, but you’re also beautiful in an ‘I just wanna fuck you’ sort of way.”

“You both are,” Jack said. “Though, at a glance, you’re less intimidating than Maureen.”

“She is?” Maureen asked.

“Yeah. You’ve got fucking perfect ‘ice queen’ face. When you’re in your business mode, you look like you are ready and willing to sacrifice people by the truckloads to get what you want...if that makes any sense,” Jack replied.

“Makes sense to me. Maureen’s a fucking stud,” Sylvia murmured, taking another drink.

“Don’t know how to feel about that,” Maureen admitted.

“It’s okay,” Sylvia said, setting the wine aside and pulling Maureen close to her. She gave her a kiss and hugged her to herself. “It’s who you are that matters. It’s what you do that matters, my love. And who you are is a great person, and what you’ve done is wonderful.”

“I’ve fucked over a lot of people,” she murmured.

“Businessmen who deserved it,” Sylvia replied. “And what matters right now, Maureen my beautiful, lovely woman, is that we all earned the right to be here and enjoy ourselves. You especially. You’re a great person, Maureen. Trust me. I know.”

“I suppose so,” she said after a moment, and then kissed her on the mouth.

Jack watched, fascinated, as the two mature women made out and groped each other. There was an immediate familiarity to them, a close intimacy that spoke of years, decades of sexual encounters. There was no hesitation, no uncertainty between them. There was a love there, and it was really nice to see firsthand.

It was also really fucking hot to see.

The two women looked fantastically erotic kissing and groping, their eyes closed, lips twisting as they danced together, tongues twisting and twining with each other. Maureen broke the kiss and then licked up the side of Sylvia’s face.

Sylvia opened her mouth and smiled, like she’d gotten a pleasant surprise.

“You like that?” he asked.

“I do,” Sylvia murmured.

“It’s like...marking your territory, among us,” Maureen said, still maintaining direct eye contact with Sylvia. “All of us, not just me and her. Every woman here will lick you at some point, and every woman here will want you to lick them during sex.”

“Noted,” he replied.

“Good, now get over here.”

He shifted closer to her. As soon as he was in range, Maureen got off of Sylvia and let her get closer to Jack. She laid on Sylvia’s other side and began licking one of her firm breasts while Sylvia grabbed him and began kissing him.

As she slipped her tongue into his mouth, he realized she was right: that wine did have a good taste to it. Sweet and fruity, with some unique twist to it that he couldn’t really place. Sylvia’s lips were live and lustrous, meshing with his own as she ran her hand over his body, moaning and breathing heavily as they began to make out. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Maureen groping one of Sylvia’s big breasts and kissing along her neck.

Just like it had been quite a sight to see her jacking him off into her mouth, it was such an interesting sight to see her nude and being so fantastically sexual with another woman. In some weird way, he thought that his mind, for whatever reason, told him that someone like Maureen seemed somehow above sex and lust, like she was too good for it or too powerful to be affected by it, maybe. And it was nice to see that wasn’t true at all.

She was just as horny as he was.

Sylvia stopped kissing him after a bit and brought his head down to her breast, while doing the same with Maureen. Both of them immediately took the message. They started licking across her large, firm, wonderful breasts and she moaned loudly.

“Yes...” she groaned. “Oh fuck, I love having both my tits sucked at once.”

She let out a cry of pure pleasure as Maureen’s finger found her clit and began to rub it. Jack quickly joined her, slipping his own finger up into her tight, wet opening and pushing up, working in tandem with Maureen. Sylvia quickly degenerated into an incoherent mess of overwhelmed rapture and sexual gratification. As they both fingered her and sucked on her nipples, she yelled and twisted and shifted between them.

As Jack fucked her furiously with two fingers, feeling her getting wetter and wetter, something inside her suddenly gave and she began to orgasm. She let out a long, loud cry of release, spread her legs as wide as she could and let herself come and be pleasured by them. They carried her through that blissful climax and then when she was finished, she took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then sat up between them.

“I’m going to have another drink, then I’m going to suck some dick, and I’d like you to join me, Maureen,” she said.

“I think Jack would like that, too,” Maureen murmured.

“Yep. And the sooner we suck him off, the sooner you two can use me like a fuck toy,” Sylvia replied as she reached across Maureen and grabbed her bottle.

“I like that idea,” Maureen said.

Sylvia took a deep drink, and then as she pushed Jack onto his back, passed the bottle to Maureen, who took a deep drink of her own. She set the bottle aside and Jack watched as both women settled down near his crotch.

“I bet you never thought you’d be getting this when you were prepping for this job,” Maureen said with a grin as they both finished settling.

Sylvia grabbed his cock.

“No,” he agreed, watching them intently. “Although...I fantasized about you immediately.”

“Really?” Maureen asked.

He groaned as Sylvia started licking his cock. “Y-yeah. You’re so hot in those pics of you online.”

“The ones where I’m giving speeches behind a podium or in a boardroom?!” she asked, sounding incredulous.

“Yes,” he panted. “You are.”

“Wow, you are something else. I always thought those were the unsexiest photos of me ever,” she murmured, then joined Sylvia in licking his cock.

He groaned, losing himself in the two women for a few moments, watching the nude, mature beauties dragging their tongues around and across and over the head of his cock. It was a mainline of pure bliss.

“Not to me,” he managed. “I wanted to fuck you so bad.”

“Well, now you get to,” Maureen said, and then she started sucking him off. He let out a groan that immediately became louder as Sylvia dipped her head and started tonguing his balls.

“Holy fucking shit, you two,” he gasped. “That’s...oh...you are...oh wow...”

Sylvia giggled and after a moment the two switched. Sylvia began bobbing her head on his dick, her lips gliding up and down his shaft, as Maureen licked his balls.

Never in his life did Jack ever think he would see a woman like Maureen Sharp dragging her tongue across his fucking nuts.

It was absolutely unreal and a total fucking fantasy come true.

They switched back and forth a few times, putting their skilled mouths and lips and tongues and hands to use to bring him to the absolute edge of orgasm, and then stopped.

“Time to switch,” Sylvia said.

He nodded, panting, desperate to be fucking some raw, mature pussy. He scrambled to get behind Sylvia as Maureen took his place, laying with her legs spread open on her back. Sylvia settled comfortably in between her legs, lying on her stomach, and Jack laid on top of her. Almost before she began licking at Maureen’s clit, eating that fantastic pussy of hers, Jack slipped into her slick, slippery vagina.

She let out a deep, muffled moan of bliss as he got inside of her and began fucking her. It didn’t take long to go deep and hard into her, and soon he was settled into a steady rhythm, laying against her backside, pushing himself up on his hands and staring down the length of her body between them. The smooth curve of her back, the swell of her thick ass, the way her thighs were pressed together, and his cock disappearing into her again and again.

It felt absolutely phenomenal.

Jack looked back up, another fantastically erotic sight awaiting him. Sylvia was going to town on Maureen, eating her pussy like a pro. He continued humping her, speeding up, the sound of his hips slapping against her beautiful ass filling the room, rivaling her own moans and Maureen’s sounds of pure bliss. He kept staring at Maureen’s big, beautiful breasts as he drilled Sylvia’s pussy, occasionally looking up at her face.

Seeing that sexy, normally stone-cold and stoic face twisting in pleasure, her mouth open, her eyes wide, the way she was panting and gasping, running her fingers through Sylvia’s pale blonde hair...it was absurdly pleasing and only accentuated the pleasure he was feeling. Her vagina was so insanely slick and tight, he wasn’t sure how long he could last. He kept going though, willing himself onward, listening to both women moaning in pure pleasure. The absolute ecstasy of ramming himself deep and hard into Sylvia’s pussy ate him alive, sending out a continuous stream of pure hot pleasure radiating out from his cock.

He humped her until he couldn’t possibly contain himself any longer and then…

“Oh, Sylvia!”

He started coming inside of her. He heard her moan as he felt her push her ass up against him, inviting him deeper, letting him fill up her wonderful pussy. Jack came deep inside of her, pulses of absolute rapture shooting into him each time a spurt of his seed shot out of him. He filled that sweet pussy up until he was finished, then he pulled out of her just in time to hear Maureen’s orgasm begin to rise into full swing.

He laid on his side, intently watching Sylvia eating Maureen’s pussy as the older woman screamed her way through an orgasm, her big tits bouncing and swaying with her twitches. She looked so...raw. So completely vulnerable. In that moment, as she laid there nude and screaming and coming, grinding Sylvia’s face into her vagina, there didn’t seem to be an ounce of presentation in her. She didn’t seem to be giving even the slightest thought to how she might appear to those looking at her. He wondered how freeing that must be after being studied, sized up, stared at for decades by jerk-offs looking for any sign of weakness, ready to leap in and take a bite out of her at the slightest opportunity she presented.

She orgasmed beautifully.

And when she was done, she released Sylvia, panting.

He reached out and patted Sylvia’s ass. “My turn,” he said.

“Mmm-hmm,” she replied, getting up, holding a hand over her vagina, and grabbing the bottle of wine before heading into the bathroom.

Maureen was still on her back, getting her breath back, when he got on top of her.

“Where do you find the energy to maintain that erection?” she whispered harshly as he began slipping into her.

“I’m twenty four and around six of the hottest women in the galaxy,” he replied.

She smiled fiercely, then moaned, her face twitching as he began fucking her. “You are good with compliments,” she gasped.

He responded by licking up the side of her face. She moaned, grabbed him as soon as he was done, held him close, and did the same thing. It was weird, being licked so obviously and deliberately. Something that a woman had never done to him. But he liked it. He liked doing it. Maureen stared at him with fire in her eyes and he pounded her harder, screwing that amazing vagina of hers. She was just as wet as Sylvia and whatever hardness he’d lost between fucking their pussies he regained instantly as he began drilling her.

They fucked and moaned and screamed, shaking the bed, until he released a second orgasm inside of her. She moaned loudly, holding him against her with her arms and by wrapping her legs around him. He couldn’t move and he didn’t want to, once again lost in the immense bliss of the climax as he pumped another mature vagina with his seed.

He drained whatever was left in his nuts into her and she accepted it all.

When he was finished, he kissed her.

“Thank you, Maureen,” he whispered, panting. “Thank you for letting me inside you.”

She smiled and laid a hand against his sweat-slicked chest, staring into his eyes. “You’re welcome, Jack. I’m very glad that I did. You’re wonderfully revitalizing. And deeply satisfying.” She laughed softly. “Seriously, your cock feels just fucking great.”

“Yes it does,” Sylvia agreed as she returned. She drained the rest of the bottle and tossed it into the waste basket nearby. “Round two?” she asked.

“I’ll need a minute,” he said, slowly pulling out of Maureen.

“Me too,” Maureen said. “You two really take it out of me. Damn.”

“Getting to old for this?” Sylvia asked with a smirk.

Maureen stared at her intently. “Fuck no.”

CHAPTER 06

On the dawn of the fifth day after they had arrived at the outpost, Jack woke to a very enthusiastic Riley sucking his cock.

Maureen was in bed beside him, awake already and again tapping at that tablet of hers.

Jack came awake promptly as Riley sucked him off and then rode his cock reverse-cowgirl just like Anya had. And good fucking lord did he love seeing that sweet, fat, alien ass as she worked his cock into her vagina over and over until he exploded inside of her.

“There,” she said after she had finished him off, “awake?”

“Yeah,” he panted. “Am I ever.”

“Good. Riley, get breakfast started,” Maureen said.

“It’s Elizabeth’s turn and she’s already on it,” Riley replied.

“Oh, right. Well, make sure you report for breakfast, we have things to discuss.”

“Oh?” Jack asked.

“Yes. It’s time for the next phase.”

And that’s all she would say on the matter for the moment. So he left her to it. While Riley went to take a shower, Jack took a piss and brushed his teeth, then pulled on clothes. He left Maureen’s room and jogged down to the gym, where just by the smell he could tell Elizabeth had come and gone already. Maybe he was weird, but he kind of like the smell of women’s sweat. Not like overtly, he wasn’t shoving his nose into anyone’s armpits, but being around a woman working out hard? Yeah, it was kinda hot.

He spent half an hour doing cardio and then some free weights, half his normal morning routine by now given Maureen seemed keen on them all being at breakfast at the same time, and then headed back to her room. She and Riley were gone by then and he could hear people down in the mess. He could also smell steak and eggs and his stomach rumbled violently. Jack quickly tossed his old clothes away, showered, dried, and pulled on a fresh set. He then made his way back out into the main corridor, down the hall, and into the galley.

A wonderful sight greeted him.

Breakfast was made and all the women were gathered around the table.

“About time,” Elizabeth murmured with a smirk.

“I was busy,” Jack replied, slipping into his seat and digging in.

For a few moments, Maureen allowed everyone to eat. It seemed like they were all ravenous all the time, which made enough sense given all the work they were doing. Between refitting the outpost and fucking several times a day, they were all putting in a lot of work.

After they’d stuffed themselves for a bit, Maureen spoke up.

“Okay everyone, time for an update,” she said, studying her tablet. “We’ve made good progress. We’ve gotten a lot of cosmetic work done. Dents and dings buffed out of the walls, broken windows and lightbulbs replaced, the air is finally fucking clear now that we’ve got the filtration system working again. And you’ve all made some great strides in the minor repairs. There’s still a lot of work to do, the bulk of which Lyra and Riley will have to personally handle, given they’re the only two technically skilled among us to deal with it all. Most of the equipment hidden behind the panels in almost every wall, and some in the floors and ceilings, all need to be tended to. At the very least, they need to be checked and have maintenance performed on them. While we were dusting I saw a lot of stuff that could use some tending to.

“But...we’ve done good. Now comes the next part. The part I’m honestly surprised to find myself almost desperate to get to,” she said.

“Oh?” Sylvia asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes. Lyra has completed her analysis of the primary systems, and the central database, and she’s also had a chance to look through our complete inventory. There’s several parts that we need that we don’t have,” Maureen replied.

“How’s that?” Elizabeth asked. “I thought you planned for like...everything.”

“I thought so too,” Maureen admitted. “But there were some things that were, unfortunately, guesswork.” She glanced at Lyra.

“We couldn’t get the exact specs of the outpost,” Lyra said. “So I had to guess the most likely generator they would have, the most likely heating system they would have, yada yada. I was wrong more than I’d like to admit. For the most part the parts and pieces you need to fix a generator are interchangeable, but some parts are really specific to each one. So there’s like eight things I’ll need that are hard, but not impossible, to find.”

“So what do we do about it?” Sylvia asked.

“There’s a few locations, abandoned locations, scattered across the region,” Maureen said with an uncharacteristically intense smile. “Jack and Lyra are going to join me in the rover. We’re going to drive out to some and investigate them.”

“I need to come too, then,” Elizabeth said.

“No,” Maureen replied. “I want you here in case anything goes wrong. Don’t worry, Elizabeth. Lyra and I can take care of ourselves, and Jack is an ex-Marine who, I believe, proved himself quite capable during that rescue mission.”

Elizabeth frowned, staring at Maureen for a few seconds, then her eyes cut to Jack. He felt bad, like he was undercutting her somehow.

“This is news to me,” he said.

Elizabeth sighed. “I know. I’m not mad. Just annoyed. I want to be out there too, if only to watch your backs. But she’s right, you’re very capable. Just...” she looked around at them, “please fucking be careful. This is a dangerous world.”

“If anything seriously goes wrong, I promise I’ll call you. You and Riley can be to us in the ship in a matter of minutes, I’m sure,” Maureen replied.

“Well...not a few minutes,” Riley said. “Takes a bit to warm her up.”

“You aren’t helping,” Elizabeth said.

“I’m just being honest!”

“Anyway,” Maureen said, regaining everyone’s attention. “One of the surveys revealed an abandoned forward operating post, basically a smaller version of what we have here, developed by another surveying corporation and abandoned when funding dried up. They left in a hurry, from the report I got, so there might be useful items there. Once we’re done with breakfast, Jack, I want you to suit up and report to the rover. Bring some weapons, whatever you feel comfortable with. Lyra, do the same thing, I want you to have at least your pistol and some basic armor, and your toolkit, obviously. You’ll be driving.”

“Understood,” Jack and Lyra said at the same time.

Maureen smiled. “I love an efficient team.”

…

As soon as he was done with breakfast, Jack made his way back through the outpost to his bedroom. Once inside, he pulled on his combat armor. It was a relatively simple getup, flexible, capable of stopping, up to a certain point, bullets and knives and flames, and some chemicals and acid. It was lightweight and had its own basic heating/cooling system. Which would really come in handy. It could get hot out there. As soon as he had it pulled on and fitted appropriately, he attached his holster back on his hip, then headed for the armory in the control room.

Elizabeth had gotten to him and made him scan his thumbprint into the system early on, so he swiped in without a problem. The door opened up to admit him to a room the size of a basic walk-in closet. The walls were taken up by tables and a few gun lockers. He studied what they had brought, trying to determine what might be best.

They’d brought a full selection.

Or, really, he was sure it was Elizabeth who had brought the full selection. He saw a full compliment of black metal pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, and even a few precision sniper rifles, as well as a healthy amount of ammunition for them all, and even a collection of grenades. Jack finally settled on a lightweight submachine gun. It came with a digital scope and thirty round magazine. He took aim with it, testing his movements with the gun, and found that it seemed to handle excellently.

It also seemed to be brand new, hot off the assembly line, straight into a padded crate, and then right into his hands. It was sleek and polished, not a dent, ding, or scratch anywhere on it. He loaded it up, activated the safety, and then attached a sling to it so he could hang it off his shoulder. He then pocketed half a dozen magazines for it, and a few others for his pistol. Considering the unknown nature of the situation that potentially awaited him, he grabbed a solid-looking combat knife and attached it in its sheath to his hip, then grabbed a pair of standard fragmentation grenades. Once it was all secure, he headed out, passing Lyra.

He paused as she walked into the armory, his eyes following her.

She was done up in a full set of combat armor.

“What?” she asked when she realized he was staring at her.

“You look really good in that armor,” he replied.

A small smile touched her lips, below those glowing eyes of hers. “So do you,” she said, then she went about checking over the armory.

Jack lingered for a few seconds, looking at her backside, then left.

As he headed outside, he made sure his mental inventory of his current arsenal was firmly set in his head. Didn’t want to forget he had two grenades and throw both with the notion that he had a final one in reserve. Some people might say he was very over-prepared for a simple expedition, but while Jack generally believed in the axiom of ‘I’d rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it’, that fucking was really true for situations that required you to have a gun. Plus, security was in his job description, and he fully intended to take it seriously.

As he walked outside, out of the garage toward where they had their rover parked halfway between the garage exit and the landing pad, he studied the landscape. There were things moving out there. So far they had kept their distance, but that might not hold true. He saw the lean, dexterous shapes of what he assumed to be a pack of the wolf-lizard things maybe two miles off, racing through the dirt, leading a trail of dust in their wake. He saw things moving among the cacti-trees. He saw a shadow printed on the ground half a mile to the east and looked up. In the sky, Jack caught sight of a large bird-like thing.

He’d seen pictures of one up close from whoever had initially surveyed this part of the planet. It looked like a vulture with too many eyes, on steroids.

Big talons too.

One of the first rules that really stuck with him was: respect danger. Don’t assume you’re safe just because nothing’s happened yet.

He’d seen too many young jackasses hyped on swagger and adrenaline, obsessed with proving how tough they were, end up seriously injured or even, in a few sad cases, flat-out fucking dead. All because they were doing stupid shit or ignoring their surroundings, assuming that if anything happened, they could handle it.

If you had that kind of attitude, it tended to handle you.

Sometimes that was unavoidable, but more often than not, shutting the fuck up and paying attention was a surprisingly good deterrent.

Jack studied the vehicle they had brought with them for land traversal. It was a simple, six-wheeled rover, painted a tan-brown that roughly matched the landscape it was to be moving around in. Its windows were heavily tinted. He’d seen the inside of it just once while they were on the ship, when Riley wanted to fuck in it.

It could seat four people comfortably, all of them if most of them squeezed into the back. There were four chairs that took up about half of the interior, with the rest dedicated to cargo. It seemed like a pretty solidly built vehicle, and he had no doubt it would run smooth as hell given that Maureen had been the one to choose it for the mission and Lyra had had a chance to look it over more than once during their trip out there.

He leaned against the side and waited. Jack glanced at himself in a side-view mirror and was surprised to find that he liked how he looked. He’d taken the sleeves off his armor and thrown on a tanktop so his arms were pretty bare and visible, and his hair had grown out just a bit since he’d left the military. He’d always thought he looked kind of stupid with it buzzed down all the way, nor had he liked it too long.

Right now it seemed to be a perfect blend, and between the shower he’d had and the wind out here, it was oddly fashionably messy. Considering that, he reached into his front pocket and pulled out the blue-lensed sunglasses that came with his gear. Slipping them on, he looked at himself again. Jack had never thought he was good looking, but his concerns about how ugly or attractive he was had been basically quelled when he’d gotten into noticeably good shape thanks to his career. You had to have a very ugly face to offset well-developed muscles as a guy. Same for personality. He’d seen women put up with the absolute worst, stupid assholes just because they were ripped. But it wasn’t until that moment that he considered something.

Maybe he actually did have something there.

He snorted and turned away as he heard footsteps. Maureen and Lyra were making their way towards him, coming out of the shadow of the garage’s interior. They both looked fucking great. Maureen looked more like a military superior than ever now that she was wearing body armor, toting a shotgun, and wearing those sunglasses of hers.

“You look so handsome,” she said as she approached.

“Yeah, she’s right,” Lyra murmured. “Shit, you look like you’re posing for a poster or something.”

He laughed. “Uh, thanks.” He glanced at Maureen. “You a good shot?”

She smirked. “This may sound crazy, but since I was young my primary source of recreation was virtual reality shooters.”

“That’s awesome.”

She laughed. “Yes, and once I had decided to actually come here and do this expedition and began preparing for it, one of the first things I did was hire a private trainer to teach me to shoot and protect myself effectively. Although that is why I have you and Elizabeth. I’m no fighter, but I can handle myself in a pinch.”

“Move, I need in there,” Lyra said as they came to stand before him.

“You are so rude, Lyra,” Maureen said as Jack stopped leaning on the driver’s side door and stepped out of the way.

“Sorry,” she said after a moment.

“You’re blunt. I get that,” Jack replied.

“Good thing someone does. Although Elizabeth’s like that, too. Come on, Jack. Let’s sit in the back together. Lyra doesn’t like anyone joining her up front.”

“It’s distracting,” Lyra said as she got in and put her toolkit in the passenger’s seat.

“Fair enough,” Jack replied as he went around to the other side and got in. They all quickly settled in the extremely comfortable and fresh-smelling interior. Jack looked around. “Wow, this is so damned nice.”

“It had better be. It was a hundred thousand credits,” Maureen muttered.

“Holy shit, seriously?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated. “...how rich are you?”

She laughed again. “I’m a millionaire,” she replied as she buckled up. “I learned how to reinvest my money, which I did again and again. Plus the corporation that I sold mine to paid me ten million for my shares.”

“Holy shit. You scared they’re gonna fuck it up?”

“No,” she replied. “The person who runs that company is a close friend of mine. She’s ethical, if a bit...spontaneous. No, if anything happens to my company and my people, it will be as a result of her occasionally rash decision-making, and if that happens, well, she has a very high degree of personal accountability. She’ll make sure everyone is taken care of. And if, God forbid, she fucks herself out of all her money somehow, I will step in and help. But I trust her.”

“That’s good to know. Too many businesses and corporations exist just to fuck everyone, including their own people, out of money,” Lyra growled.

“Yeah,” Jack said. He looked over at Maureen. “I had a chance to look through your professional portfolio. Reading between the lines, it became obvious to me that you...weren’t like other business people. You actually help people. I have to be honest: that’s the most attractive thing about you.”

“I...thank you,” she replied, for once seemingly at a loss for words. A few seconds went by and she cleared her throat. “Um, we should talk about this place we’re going to.”

“Yeah, where am I going?” Lyra asked. She’d started the vehicle and the engine was idling in almost perfect silence.

“Northwest,” Maureen replied. “I programmed it into the navigational system.”

“That makes sense,” Lyra said, reaching forward and tapping something out on a holographic keyboard, just below a screen, both of which were built into the dashboard. Jack peered between the seats, studying it. The screen flashed and a topographical map of the region appeared. A blue dot pulsed a little ways away.

Lyra began driving.

“This is a forward operation outpost, the place we’re going,” Maureen said. “It won’t be very large and honestly I figure there’s a decent chance salvagers have already been by and stripped it clean, but you never know. And Lyra has an excellent eye for this sort of thing.”

“Yeah, just make sure nothing chews on me. I’ve read the file front to back and back to front on this planet and there’s some nasty-ass monsters wandering around.”

“I’ll keep on alert,” Jack said.

“That does make me feel better, admittedly,” Lyra replied.

“I’m glad.” He looked back at Maureen. “What about other places in the area?”

“For now, there’s two other sites I’m considering, since certainly this site is not going to have everything we need. The first is an old crashed supply shuttle. The crew had to put down hard during a storm when lightning struck their vessel. They managed to get out, but the shuttle was abandoned when it was determined the cost of recovering the supplies was too close to the cost of the supplies themselves. The supplies are probably gone, but that ship might have some integral components Lyra can use. And the other one is an abandoned mining complex.” She frowned.

“What?” Jack asked.

“That one’s a little more concerning. I couldn’t actually get the records on why they closed down. It was rather prosperous at first, but then, abruptly, they shut down and sold it. The second company got it up and running again, but shut down within a week. It passed hands to a third corporation, who declared it condemned and actually sued the second company before they could even finish the inspection. Unfortunately, it’s all sealed as to what was actually wrong with it. That was two years ago and I’m hoping whatever danger was there has passed, but, well...I do have you and Elizabeth along for a reason.”

“You know we aren’t like super-soldiers, right?” Jack replied uncertainly.

“Of course, and if it looks too dangerous we’ll leave, but we have top-of-the-line gear and equipment,” Maureen said.

“All right.”

He was somewhat dubious on that, given all the crazy-ass shit he’d run into on frontier worlds, and Lyra did have a point. Some of the things he’d seen in the field guide were intimidating. Plus, that was just what they’d found. Who the hell knew what remained undiscovered? But he knew he was actually pretty good at staying alive, and he trusted that Elizabeth was way better at it than he was, and that the others knew what they were doing.

They drove along in silence for several minutes.

“I’ve always wanted to do something like this,” Maureen said quietly. Jack glanced at her. She was looking out the window beside her, staring at the landscape as it rolled by. “Just drive across a new world. Some place that I’d never been to before, and that not many people had been to either. I’ve gotten into the habit of watching exploration footage that gets uploaded to the net. Probes and drones and scouting teams.”

“There’s a whole subculture of that,” Jack said. She glanced over at him. “I once worked with a squad hired to protect a documentary team who was filming on the world we happened to be on. They needed a lot of stock footage of landscape, wildlife, shit like that.”

Maureen smirked suddenly. “You’ve got a certain tone in your voice...did something good happen during that time?”

He laughed awkwardly. “Wow, you’re really good at reading people,” he muttered.

“It’s in my job description. Come on, spill,” she pressed.

“Yeah, something good happened. I started hitting on the camerawoman. I wasn’t the only one, but for some reason I was the only one she responded to. She was this fucking wild-ass chick with blue hair, half her head shaved, these crazy fucking eyes. One was like deep violet, the other was this glittering emerald green. She had this fucking tight, fit, kickass body, lots of little well-developed muscles, a lot like Anya actually, but even more definition. And this rough voice...I dunno, she was fucking something else.”

“What was her name?” Lyra asked.

“Linz. At least that’s what she called herself. She was fucking wild. She was fucking crazy sexually.”

“How long did it last?” Lyra asked.

“Three weeks. They were only there for a month. Took a week for her to decide I was worth her time, and then she just fucking let it rip. We fucked like every chance we got. And then her job was done and she left. We tried to keep in contact but honestly it was just too unrealistic with our jobs taking us all over the galaxy at totally random intervals.”

“That’s too bad, but it sounds like it was great while it lasted,” Maureen said.

“It was. That’s what this whole thing feels like, honestly: that assignment. Only better, obviously. And crazier.”

Maureen smirked. “Some of us are rather crazy in bed.”

“Just so you know: I’m not,” Lyra said. She glanced briefly in the rearview at Jack. “I just wanna let you know now I’m probably going to be the most disappointing lay of the whole group.”

“I...really doubt that,” Jack replied.

She hesitated. “Why?”

“Let’s just call it a feeling,” he replied. “I’m sure we’ll have a very good time.”

She laughed softly and blushed. “I guess we’ll see. And, um, I do intend still to sleep with you. I’ve just been busy...”

“It’s fine, Lyra,” Jack replied. “Like I said before: I want you to feel comfortable with it. However long that takes. I’m not interested in an orgasm at the expense of someone else’s discomfort,” he said.

“You’re patient,” she murmured.

“And kind,” Maureen said.

He laughed awkwardly. “Well...I mean what I said is true but don’t think I’m too great or anything. I mean, it is admittedly easier to wait when I have four other women who are taking turns making me orgasm every day.”

Lyra laughed. “True.”

“But you mean it, and that matters.”

“I see it,” Lyra said suddenly.

Jack and Maureen leaned towards each other, looking between the two front seats, out the windshield. There it was, indeed.

A simple structure, just a square of metal among the fields of dirt against the backdrop of some far-off mountains.

“Let’s do this,” Maureen said, and Lyra sped up a little.

CHAPTER 07

Jack prepared himself as the rover slowed and finally came to a halt twenty meters from the forward outpost.

Even from this distance he could see that it had clearly been abandoned for some time. Everything went silent as Lyra killed the engine. The soundproofing inside the vehicle was good enough that they didn’t even hear the faintest trace of the gusts of winds that occasionally shook the vehicle outside.

“Wait here,” Jack said as he undid his seatbelt.

“We’ll defer to your judgment, let us know when it’s safe. The radio is already keyed to our own secure channel,” Maureen replied.

Jack nodded and looked around, out of all the windows, before opening his door. He didn’t see anything moving around out there, just dust in the wind and a few little twists of miniature dirt whirlwinds here and there. He closed the door firmly and checked over his submachine gun, ensured it was ready for a firefight, and took the safety off.

Then he activated his radio. “Comms check.”

“I hear you,” Maureen said.

“Same,” Lyra said.

“I’m going forward.”

He mentally chastised himself as he began walking away from the rover, SMG in hand. A goddamned radio check was something he should have done before they had even gotten in the rover back at base. It spoke to the detrimental effects of not constantly living in strain and stress every day. On the one hand: that was awful. On the other hand: it kept you sharp. Jack knew that he was going to have to train a bit more seriously. He had the hard work part down still, but the awareness? He was certainly more aware of his environment than the average civilian, but he was less than he should be. Situational awareness wasn’t just looking around and having quick reflexes, it was also planning for whatever environment you were going into.

Before you went into it.

Jack let himself shift into that certain specific focus he’d discovered, developed, and honed over the past four years. There wasn’t much on this side of the structure, just a lot of big, open dirt fields. But behind it he could see the tops of those cacti-trees peeking over the roof, and to the right and back a bit was a large rise in the land.

Then there was the structure itself.

It was all one building, a simple, roughly square shaped prefabricated building. Most of the windows were broken out. He’d seen similar structures before, lived in a few, actually. Good chance there was a plus-symbol of hallways cutting the interior into four quadrants, each quadrant holding some crucial part of the bare-minimum outpost. There didn’t appear to be any movement behind those windows, but someone could be hiding.

The rover was certainly noticeable enough from a distance.

But he didn’t see any obvious telltales of someone having been around the area recently. No disturbances in the dirt, no bootprints, no extra gear around.

“I don’t see anything so far,” he reported. “Moving around back.”

“Understood,” Maureen replied.

He was glad she seemed to grasp the basics of radio chatter. Ideally, you wanted to relay the most information with the fewest words possible, and to also keep the line clear as much as possible in case shit went wrong.

Short, concise responses were a blessing.

Jack kept a bit of distance between himself and the exterior of the building as he worked his way around it, checking in the windows and also the rise in the land, now directly to his right. Still nothing. He moved around to the back and studied the cacti-trees, then frowned as he finally got a good look at them. This was as close to a forest as he had seen so far on this world. Besides the cacti-trees being more densely packed than usual, the scrub-brush type vegetation was thicker, clustered around the bases of the big plants.

Which meant: more places to hide.

He didn’t see anything among the plant life, but he imagined that anything dangerous on this planet that tended to hang around these forests would be quite adept at hiding. He studied it closely for a few minutes, then finally moved on.

Completing his circuit of the outpost, he keyed his radio again. “Exterior clear, I’m going to check out the interior now.”

“Understood,” Maureen repeated.

Jack walked up to the main entrance and tried the door. No power. He sighed softly and found the override, hit it, and physically pulled the door open. Ideally, this really needed to be done with two people: one person to open the door, another to cover the entrance as it was revealed. It’d be way too easy to get shot in the face if someone was on the other side of the door. But he got it open and there was nothing behind it.

As expected, he saw a corridor that extended dead ahead, the full length of the building, (or so he guessed, some of it was lost to shadows farther back), and another hallway intersected it diagonally halfway down its length.

Jack activated one of the flashlights that was attached to his suit, this one embedded in the chestpiece, and a brilliant cone of white light appeared, dissolving the shadows. “Gonna need a minute. There’s no power and most of these doors are closed.”

“You want one of us to come in?” Maureen asked.

He considered it. “Yeah, I’m getting the impression that this place is vacant. If you wanted to, both of you could come in. It would make everything go a lot faster,” he said.

“We’re on our way.”

Jack waited, listened. Car doors opening and closing. Footfalls, getting closer. The wind, usually whispering, sometimes gusting harder. Then shadows fell across the little bit of ground he could see outside the entrance he’d pried open. Lyra came in first, her more diminutive form obvious against Maureen’s taller, fuller body.

“What do you need?” Lyra asked.

“Lyra, help me get these doors open. Find the override. I’ll guard while you do it, since we don’t know what’s in each room,” he said.

“Got it,” she replied, handing her toolkit to Maureen, who accepted it.

There were just a few doors within reach. Lyra went to the first one and got to work, getting down on her knees. Jack stood, aiming.

“Remember, I’m pointing a live gun over your head, so please be careful.”

“I’ll be careful,” she replied. She sounded calm, which was good. He wondered what kind of dangerous situations she’d been in before.

She got the door open. He covered her.

Nothing was beyond it, just a mostly empty storage room. Lyra slipped out of the way and Jack stepped up to the door, clearing the room with a quick sweep of his SMG. Nothing but some shelves and crates inside.

“Clear, next,” he said.

“Next,” Lyra confirmed.

They headed for the next door.

…

It was slow work, taking almost forty five minutes to open each door and clear each room, but it was worth it, at least. Jack felt better and found himself slipping back into the military mindset as they swept the structure.

There was no one in the building with them, all of the rooms clear...save for one.

They found a door that led to the basement that was locked.

What they had seen so far was decently promising. Although it was obvious that some salvagers had been by at some point, they seemed more the ‘grab some shit and go’ kind, rather than the professional kind. So while the pantry and armory were empty, most of the equipment was intact, if in ill condition.

The forward post was split up into a storage area, medical, living quarters, and control, and each section wasn’t very large. Each room was either mostly empty or jam-packed with stuff that had been actually attached to the structure.

Lyra ended up at the basement door, trying to cut into it and get it open. Maureen kept watch over her and Jack moved through the outpost, checking out the rooms, one by one. Something about abandoned structures had always fascinated him for some reason, and there were so many of them on frontier worlds. Even ones where something bad had happened, he hated to admit it, but there was a dark excitement to investigating it. Obviously he hated that shit had happened to people, but there was some kind of thrill to moving in and checking out the aftermath.

It was almost like the start of a horror game.

Of course, it was very different when you were actually there and you’re life was in real danger. So he preferred places like this, where the abandonment had been a bit more organic and a bit less brutal. There was a curious interest to poking through dusty rooms, and even the most mundane things took on a sheen of interest. He checked out the living quarters, which consisted of three rooms, only one of which was an actual sleeping area. A pair of triple-stacked beds were shoved into the corners of that room, and what a misery it must have been for the half-dozen people living here. Privacy wasn’t something you got on the frontier.

The other room was a recreational area, not that there seemed to be much recreation to be had, even when the place had been fully functional. And the final area was a tight-fit galley where he could imagine the crew sharing meals, hopefully laughing and joking or telling stories. One of the most unfortunate realities of long-term isolation like this was if you got slotted in with someone you couldn’t stand, you were just fucking stuck with them. Even if you got lucky and had something short like a two-month rotation…

Two months could be a long time if you were in a place like this with one or more people you couldn’t fucking stand.

He’d been there before. More than once.

Fuck, he was glad to be here for so many reasons.

Jack moved on. The storage rooms had been basically cleaned out. All that was left were some bare shelves, a few tables with nothing on them, and some empty crates. It’d be worth checking over and doing a simple sweep, he supposed, but for now he left it. The infirmary was in an equal state, although there was enough bulky equipment bolted or welded into place that was still around that Lyra might be able to cut into it and find something useful. The control room was the most promising. Although it seemed pretty barren compared even to their own control center, it had several consoles and pieces of equipment still in place.

All in all, not a bad first impression.

Jack hesitated as he caught movement out the windows ahead of him. His hands went to his SMG instinctively and he stepped forward, focusing closely on the alien forest that lay beyond the forward post.

More movement. The trees swayed in the wind, dust swirling about.

Something shifted near the edge, low to the ground.

Jack activated his comms. “I’ve got movement out here, in the forest.”

“What kind of movement?” Maureen replied.

“I’m not sure, but you should be ready to defend yourselves,” Jack replied. “I’m going to go check it out. Stay here.”

“Tell me what it is when you find out,” Maureen replied.

“Yep,” Jack said, and headed for the broken window.

He could go all the way around to the nearest exit, but there was no time for that. Hopping up, he grabbed the frame, trusting his gloves to hold if any glass lingered, then thrust his feet through the opening and let his body follow. He landed in the dirt outside the room with a grunt and stuck the landing cleanly, staying firmly on his feet. His hands went immediately back to his SMG, and just in time, too.

Something was emerging.

As a lean, angular head poked out of the scrub between the trunks of the cacti-trees, Jack immediately realized what he was contending with: the wolf-lizards. It was the first time he’d actually seen one up close in real life, and not in a picture.

It somehow looked more threatening in real life.

It had a triangular head and a big jaw stuffed with some nasty-looking, razor sharp teeth. It had two large, rounded eyes an ugly yellow in color, with dark horizontal slits for pupils. Drool, dark gray in color, dripped from its mouth as it emitted a low growl and stalked out of the scrub. Its skin was an ugly mottled leathery material that shaded towards various greens and grays, kind of a seemingly random patchwork of color.

“Wolf-lizard,” he reported as he took aim.

Jack hesitated. He saw another head poke out. And then another.

And another.

“Check that: wolf-lizards,” he muttered. “At least four...five...half a dozen, fuck!”

He punctuated his curse with a burst of gunfire. The submachine gun rattled in his hands as he released a burst. The bullets flew out and nailed the first one he’d seen and drew a bead on at high velocity, splattering its alien brains all over the scrubs. Jack felt bad about having to kill it, and really hoped that the attack would scare the others off, but it didn’t. If anything, it just emboldened them. With a strange-sounding group howl the rest burst from their hiding places and began charging for him as a seemingly single-minded pack.

Well, this was it, his first real combat situation on the planet.

Jack dropped into a crouch to steady his aim further and shifted targets to the next nearest one. They were all already clear of the treeline. They were fucking fast. Jack fired another burst of bullets. Two missed but one clipped its shoulder and drew blood. He adjusted his aim and squeezed the trigger again. Two shots took it in the face, the first hitting it in the forehead and ripping away a chunk of its strangely shaped skull, the other blowing its eye out into a geyser of gore. It dropped. The others were still coming, though they weren’t growling anymore.

Jack shifted and opened fire again.

Then, over the comms, Maureen said: “Behind you. Backing you up.”

Then the overwhelming boom of a powerful shotgun going off somewhere behind him. She must be standing where he had jumped out of, he realized.

The shell she’d fired connected with the head of a third creature dead on and flat out fucking vaporized its skull, spraying the dirt with its brains and blood.

That damn well gave them some pause.

Maureen fired again. She missed, a plume of dirt shooting into the air, but that broke their courage and sent them scattering, racing back for the cover of the alien forest. Jack fired another spray of gunfire over them, aiming intentionally high. He’d never been a fan of killing, even when it was clearly necessary, and he hoped the things would learn some respect and keep their distance. Jack let out a breath he’d been holding and reloaded, in case they came back.

“Is Jack okay?” Lyra asked over the radio after several seconds of silence had passed.

“I’m fine,” Jack replied. “Maureen?”

“Fine,” she said. “Do you think they’re coming back?”

“Not sure, but I don’t think so. At least not for awhile. If they do, I can handle them,” he said, though he wasn’t entirely sure about that.

They were fast.

And if there had been a few more of them, and they’d pressed that attack, he might not be so lucky next time around.

“How are we with the door?” Maureen asked.

“Getting there,” Lyra replied. “Five minutes.”

“Okay, keep going.”

“I’ll stay out here and patrol for awhile,” Jack said. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Understood, and thank you,” Maureen replied.

Jack got to it.

…

He patrolled outside for an hour.

Initially he had wanted to come in when Lyra had finally gotten into the basement, but Maureen told him she’d take care of it, and she’d call him if anything happened. So he listened to her report what she saw over the radio while keeping an eye on the forest. There was not much in the basement. It was where all their utilities were kept: power, heating/cooling, water filtration, etc. There wasn’t anything hanging out down there, and Lyra seemed excited about the prospect of finding at least some of the parts they were looking for.

In the hour he was out there, Jack didn’t see any further movement, and he had the impression that the wolves had moved off.

“Something just occurred to me,” Lyra said suddenly over the radio.

“Yeah?” Jack asked.

“There’s some body bags in the back, specimen storage basically. Why don’t you go grab one and zip up the most intact corpse? I’d like to study it.”

“That’s a great idea. We do get a bonus for any further data we can gather on the planet,” Maureen said.

“On it,” Jack replied.

He moved back around the exterior of the outpost, coming to the rover. Popping the trunk, he located one of the black, zippered bags she’d told him about. He grabbed it and headed back around to the battle site. He wished he’d thought of it, or one of them had, awhile ago. It had spent an hour in the sun and already it was starting to smell. Jack decided on the one he’d shot second, given it seemed the least damaged out of the three, and spent a few minutes grunting with effort as he hauled the eighty pound thing into the bag and got it properly situated.

Finally, he zipped it up and started hauling it back to the rover.

“Okay, I’ve got it,” he said. “How’s it going down there?”

“Decent, actually. And thank you, I appreciate it,” Lyra replied.

“Welcome,” he grunted. He got back to the rover and tossed it in the back, then shut the rear door. He made his way back around to the other side of the outpost to maintain his patrol. As he got back to it, he found his mind wandering.

He felt…

Different.

He supposed the closest he had ever felt to this particular emotional state before was back when he’d gotten through basic training and had been sent out into the galaxy. He’d felt just good, like he was on top of the world, doing what he had wanted to do for years. He was functioning and existing in a manner that just felt right.

Fuck, if only it had lasted.

But this felt even better than that, in a way. What he was doing out here, it was beginning to feel right. Correct. Like this was the kind of shit he was supposed to be doing. Could it be that he only had part of the equation? Could it be that he had missed something crucial in his own head? That some aspects of the military lifestyle had drawn him in, but not others? The problem with the military lifestyle, and in a way its greatest strength, was that you didn’t really get to customize it. You couldn’t take some and leave what you didn’t like.

You had to live it all, the way they intended it to be lived.

And he respected that. He understood why, they were doing extremely important and dangerous work, keeping the galaxy safe. He still felt proud that he’d committed to that, helped with it, even in his own small capacity, for four years.

They were four years well spent.

But now he was beginning to see that maybe what he wanted was something different. Because the freedom of his particular situation was feeling pretty damned good. He supposed he really should be trusting in what the women had told him so far: he was adrift, cast out into a sea of uncertainty, and he should just…

Let himself sort it out on his own time.

He finally felt like he was making some kind of progress, like he had actually taken a few steps in the correct direction, even if he wasn’t sure where that direction was leading. And that was an absolutely fantastic feeling.

Jack kept watch and continued ruminating for another hour and a half until Lyra reported that she was finished.

They gathered at the rover and Lyra took a chance to look at the body he’d collected. “Ugh,” she muttered as she looked in at it.

“Gross,” Maureen murmured. “Good shot.”

“Thanks,” he replied. “How’d we make out on the parts situation?”

Lyra zipped the bag up, shut the trunk, and headed around to the front.

“Good,” she replied, getting in. Jack and Maureen climbed into the back. “There’s eight unique parts I need to finish bringing the outpost online and render it operational. I managed to find three of them here today.”

“Nice,” Jack said.

“Yep. Now we can get back and I can start installing them,” Lyra replied.

“I hereby declare our first outing a success,” Maureen said as Lyra began driving them back.

CHAPTER 08

Jack sensed someone stepping into the room and glanced up from where he lay on the bench Elizabeth had set up for some free weight lifting. Presently, he was laying on his back, pushing a pair of dumbbells up over him, going for a hundred reps.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” Riley said as she walked slowly into the room.

She was wearing nothing but a pair of panties.

“You walk around naked a lot,” he replied, laying his head back down and resuming his workout. He was almost done.

He had to admit, he thought that line would have sounded a bit cliché or maybe even lame coming out of most other people, but…

Riley had a way of making pretty much anything sound sexy.

“I do,” she agreed as she came to stand beside him, out of the way of his arms, staring down at him with an appraising smirk. “Fuck me, you are hot,” she muttered.

“Thank you. So are you. I’m almost done,” he replied. “Unless you need something?”

“No...just came to admire,” she replied.

He laughed and kept at it. It felt a little weirder and was harder to focus with her just...standing there, watching him. But he finished it out and set the weights down.

“Just to admire?” he asked. He was already getting hard, staring at her huge orange tits and her seductive, alien face.

“Well...” her smirk became something a bit more devilish. “Maybe to sample, too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah...don’t move,” she replied, reaching down to his gym shorts. She freed his cock.

“I’m really sweaty,” he said as she got it out and began massaging it.

“I don’t care,” she replied, and she shifted, putting one leg on the other side of the bench so that she stood over him. “You’re really hot, is what I care about. I want some dick.” She reached down and pulled her panties aside as she settled over him, revealing her glistening pussy, then she lowered herself until he slipped into her.

“Ungh...fuck...” he groaned. “Shit you are just...so wet! Oh my fucking God,” he whispered, starting to pant as she lowered herself completely. “It’s been awhile since I’ve met someone who is this sexual.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she agreed, then she began to ride him. “You’re going to get very lucky tonight.”

“I’m getting very lucky right now,” he groaned.

“You are,” she agreed, her legs doing an amazing job of keeping her aloft over him and her thighs bulging as she slid up and down his dick with a wonderful smoothness. “But tonight you get to experience the absolutely mind-blowing threesome that is myself and Maureen.”

“Oh fuck...” he moaned loudly, and almost immediately triggered as she said that.

“Oh wow!” she said as he began coming inside of her. She moaned and lowered herself so that he was completely inside of her.

Jack lost himself for several seconds as he orgasmed inside of her fantastically slick pussy, pumping her full of his seed, the pleasure raging through him.

When it let him back down and he opened his eyes, he found that he felt really awkward. “Shit, that’s embarrassing,” he muttered. “That wasn’t even sixty seconds, was it?”

Riley laughed. “Jack! Don’t be embarrassed. All that tells me is that my pussy’s really good, and I’m positive I’m going to have plenty of orgasms tonight. Honestly, I feel great that I made you come in less than a minute. Although...” she smirked. “It was the thought of me and Maureen fucking you together that did it, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “It was. Although your fucking pussy...”

“Is great, I know,” she replied. “Lots of human dudes worship dysil vagina if they’ve had it.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

She got off of him and pulled her panties back in place. “Now, I need to go take a shower and wash up before the threesome. You should come with me and do the same.”

“Yeah,” he said, getting up and putting his dick away. “Where’s it happening?”

“My room, that’s where my toys are. I’m so joining you in fucking ramming Maureen tonight.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked.

“Fucking hell yes. I’ve got a special strap-on. We’re gonna DP her. I’m sure she’ll give you her ass.”

“Oh my fucking God yes,” he whispered, hurrying up.

As they headed for Riley’s room, they heard voices. Well, mainly Elizabeth’s voice. They came in and found Maureen in her usual position when in a bed: naked and holding a tablet. Elizabeth stood at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed.

“Don’t pretend like this was nothing,” Elizabeth said.

“Elizabeth,” Maureen replied, setting the tablet aside and looking directly at her, “it was an attack, our first combat since hitting dirt, and we handled it. Jack was on it immediately. I helped out. None of us were close to getting hurt. I understand your feelings and I appreciate how seriously you are taking the situation, but I stand by my orders. What happened there could just as easily have happened here, and I’ll feel better with you here.”

Elizabeth stared at her for a moment, then looked over at Riley and Jack.

“Do not involve me in this,” Riley muttered as she headed for the bathroom.

“Fine,” Elizabeth said. She heaved a sigh. “Sometimes I just worry you aren’t taking this seriously enough.”

“I know, and we both know what this is really about,” Maureen replied.

Elizabeth’s lips thinned out. “This isn’t about-”

“Elizabeth, please don’t insult my intelligence, or your own,” Maureen said firmly.

Elizabeth heaved another sigh. “Whatever.” She turned and began stalking out of the room. She paused at Jack. “Good job today,” she said, and then left.

“What’s...up?” Jack asked after she was gone.

“Elizabeth had...difficulties, last year. They affected her deeply, and with good reason. But I will let her give you the details, if she wants to. For now, you and I and Riley are going to celebrate our first outing.” She paused. “Did Riley fuck you?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

“You fucking snitch!” Riley yelled from the shower.

“What?! You didn’t say it was a secret!” he called back.

Maureen laughed. “I told her not to, but I guess I shouldn’t have underestimated what a huge fucking whore she is, and your own intense allure, especially while working out...but no harm no foul, I guess. You’ll have plenty of energy to fuck me, I’m sure.”

“Oh yes, I will,” he agreed, taking off his shirt.

“Yeah I’m the fucking whore,” Riley said.

“You are,” Maureen replied simply.

Jack finished stripping and headed for the shower.

“You’d better not fuck in there, or suck, or anything else. Just wash and get out here, I am rather aroused,” Maureen warned.

“We’ll be out soon,” he promised.

Jack slipped into the shower with Riley and joined her in washing up.

“So, you have fun today?” she asked.

“Yeah, actually. I mean, I feel bad about putting down the wolf-lizards, but otherwise it was an interesting experience. It feels good to be exploring frontier worlds again.”

“I bet, you must’ve done that a lot.”

“Not as much as I’d have liked. A lot of times it was just, you know, go to a base and pull guard duty or shift crates all day. But sometimes we got sent out into the wildlands. It was exciting, and dangerous, and usually beautiful,” he replied.

“They can be,” she said.

The pair of them quickly finished washing up, and he was glad that Riley didn’t try to coax him into doing things with her while they were showering because he genuinely wasn’t sure what would win out: his respect for/fear of Maureen, or his lust towards Riley. Because she brought out the lust in him in a way none of the others quite did.

In the end, he ended up naked and clean in Riley’s bed.

“How should we start this one?” Jack asked.

“I thought you and I could, after some nice kissing, fuck Maureen’s face,” Riley replied with a smirk.

“Oh?” Maureen asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah. Come on, you know I love riding your tongue, and I bet Jack would get a kick out of fucking that sweet mouth of yours,” Riley said.

“I suppose so, okay. But I get two great orgasms from oral from you during this,” Maureen replied.

“Deal.”

Riley laid down and, at the same time, begin groping one of Maureen’s large, pale breasts and kissing her firmly on the mouth. Jack laid down on her other side, groping her other breast and immediately loving the feel of it, feeling an electric bolt of lust hit him. He had been very interested to see how Riley and Maureen looked together. They seemed so opposite, although Riley seemed opposite, to varying degrees, of everyone here. Except maybe Anya. She was the only one who seemed as blatantly sexual as Riley.

But like she had been with Sylvia, Maureen seemed quite comfortable with Riley. If anything, she seemed very excited, her hands running almost hungrily over Riley’s voluptuous, orange body. He knew how she felt. Riley felt exciting to be in bed with in the same way it must feel to actually get to bed a porn star or a model, or taking a high-class escort to bed. Riley seemed like...an extravagance. She almost seemed to have a body streamlined to be sexy, but he could tell she enhanced her physical assets with her personality.

Given decades of experience, she probably had a hundred tiny, subtle tricks in her movements, expressions, actions, and words that he didn’t even realize were making him horny. Only that he was around her and getting more aroused by the second.

And it seemed that even Maureen wasn’t immune to that.

After a moment, Riley released Maureen and she shifted her attention to him, slipping a hand over the back of his neck and pulling him in close for a deep kiss. She tasted of that pink wine. It was a wonderfully pleasant taste, especially since it was tied with her slipping her tongue into his mouth. He met her tongue with his own, twisting them together, relishing in her taste and her feel, her enjoyment of their encounter, the way she pulled him against herself. All her soft, bare skin. Her big breasts and the way she was breathing more heavily in excitement. The fact that she was a hot, mature cougar. All these wonderful things about her.

They kissed for a little while longer, and then Riley grew impatient. She shooed Jack out of the way and then swung a leg over Maureen and straddled her face.

“I’ll take care of you while you’re taking care of her,” Jack said as he got down in between Maureen’s pleasantly padded thighs.

“You are a treasure,” Maureen replied.

“Yes you are,” Riley agreed, then moaned as Maureen set to work.

Jack got to his own work, settling in to eat her mature pussy. He licked at her clit, teasing and caressing it with his tongue, looking up the length of her body to her large breasts and, right above them, Riley’s huge ass and her tail twitching back and forth as Maureen worked her clit. He enjoyed the show as he licked at Maureen’s own clit, quickly using more and more of his tongue, stroking it firmly, pleasuring her intensely.

“Oh fuck, Maureen...” Riley groaned. “You’ve gotten really good at this...of course, I am the one who taught you the most about eating pussy.”

Maureen let out a muffled laugh and kept going, followed by a loud moan of her own.

“Sounds like you’re doing her good back there,” Riley said.

“Yep,” Jack agreed between licks.

They continued pleasuring each other, the bedroom filling with the sounds of two women moaning in ecstasy, and Jack felt erotic intense lust pounding, pulsing through his body. In a way, he was glad Riley had fucked him beforehand. He’d gotten a quick orgasm out and now he’d last longer before the next one.

Jack kept going until Maureen made Riley orgasm. She let out a sharp gasp and went rigid, twitching occasionally as she climaxed. He stopped eating Maureen out, instead just staring at Riley, intensely distracted by her as she came. When she was finished, she let out a deep breath and got off of her.

“Your turn,” she said.

“Get me a washrag,” Maureen replied. “You fucking got it all over my chin and neck and chest, Riley.”

Riley laughed and got up. “Fair enough.”

Jack waited until Riley grabbed a rag, wet it, and brought it back. Maureen wiped herself up, then tossed it aside. “Okay Jack, you’re turn.” She looked at Riley. “Eat me.”

“Yes ma’am,” Riley replied.

They traded places and Jack straddled her face, getting atop her and staring down at her. “So how rough can I go?” he asked.

“Go hard,” Maureen replied. “I can take a dick in my throat.”

“Awesome.”

She opened her mouth and he stuck his rock-hard cock inside of it. She closed her lips around it and stared up at him as he grabbed her head with both hands and started fucking her in the mouth. He stroked slowly at first, slipping his cock all the way inside. He felt her working her tongue and lips as best she could from a prone position getting fucked in the face. Which served to make it feel even better. He had to admit, a lot of the pleasure from this came from the actual act of ramming his cock into Maureen’s mouth.

It didn’t take long for him to start stroking faster between her lips, humping her face, pushing his cock deeper and deeper until the head was hitting the back of her throat.

“Fuck, that’s good,” he groaned, listening to her moan and feeling her twitch beneath him as Riley went to work on her pussy.

Jack pushed his cock deeper and soon he had her deep-throating him. He kept it there for a little bit, then pulled back and kept fucking her mouth. He made sure to keep an eye on her, in case she wanted him to stop, but she looked fine, staring up at him with her beautiful eyes. If anything she seemed to want more.

So he gave her more.

Soon he was banging her head, pounding it into the pillows as she fucked her mouth. Her throat was fucking tight and slick and wonderful.

He kept going until the desire to pound pussy overrode his current desire. And he pulled out of her mouth apparently just in time, because as soon as his cock was clear she began crying out in pure release as Riley coaxed an orgasm out of her.

“Oh fuck Riley!” she screamed, grabbing the woman’s head as she came.

Jack quickly shifted behind Riley, who was on her hands and knees, and slipped into her fantastically slippery, insanely hot vagina and started hitting it from the back. He ran his hands over her amazingly thick ass as he stroked smoothly into her alien pussy, groaning loudly as the pleasure started washing over him.

For awhile, he just enjoyed her pussy, enjoyed fucking it, quickly increasing his speed and strength, drilling her harder.

He went like that until Maureen let out a second set of screams from another orally-induced orgasm. Jack watched her as she came, getting close to coming himself from Riley’s amazing pussy, and then made himself stop. Riley’s vagina was so fucking good that even with that first orgasm already out of the way, apparently, he was still being pushed towards another faster than he would have thought.

So he pulled out of her and waited, just watching the beautiful display.

When Maureen was finished with her second orgasm, Riley pushed herself up and got off the bed.

“Where are you going?” Maureen murmured.

“To get my toy. We’re DPing you. If you’re still down for that. If not, we’ll just take turns humping that sweet pussy of yours.”

“Oh...yes, I’d be down for that,” Maureen replied. She smirked at Jack. “I take it you want my ass, hmm?”

“Is it that obvious?” he asked.

“Given the way you stare at our asses, especially me and Riley, it seemed pretty obvious, yes,” she replied, maintaining that smirk.

“Well...you’ve got amazing asses,” he replied.

“I’m glad you think so.”

“Me too, now let’s do this,” Riley said as she found her strap-on and started getting into it, pulling it up over her thick thighs and settling it into place on her broad hips. “This is my favorite toy in the whole fucking galaxy,” she said as she walked over and climbed onto the bed. “It’s an expensive toy that allows me to actually feel the sex I have. I use it a lot on the ladies around here, and they use it on me. I’m not entirely sure how it works, something in the material that syncs with your nervous system somehow...all I know is, it’s fucking great.”

“I can see why,” Jack replied. “Can I fuck Maureen for a minute?”

“Yeah, a minute,” Riley replied, hanging back.

He looked at Maureen. She laughed. “Obviously,” she replied, opening her legs further.

Jack hastily laid down on top of her and slipped into her amazingly slippery pussy. He groaned as he pushed his way back inside of a beautiful woman and began making love to her, thrusting into her and staring down at her seductive face.

“Just can’t get enough of my pussy?” she asked, panting.

“I really can’t,” he replied.

He kissed her on the mouth, then he licked up the side of her face. She gasped softly, eyes closed briefly, enjoying the sensation. Then she smiled and licked him back.

“Ah, you two are at that stage,” Riley murmured. “Nice.”

“Come here,” Jack replied.

She came closer, until she was beside him. He got up, resting on his knees, and as he continued screwing Maureen, he kissed Riley on the mouth, then licked her face. She exhaled as he did, a sound of satisfaction coming from her, then she licked him back.

“I like that,” she murmured.

“It is interesting,” Jack replied. He pulled out. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“Good. How do you wanna do this, since you’re the one getting both holes fucked at the same time?” Riley asked.

“I’ve always liked it best lying on my side,” Maureen replied.

“Perfect. Jack, there’s lube in the bedside stand there, in the drawer,” Riley said, pointing.

He twisted around and tracked it down, pulling out a tube of clear blue lubrication. He squeezed some into his hand and rubbed his cock down with it, watching as Riley laid down on her side along Maureen’s front. He tossed the lube aside once he was done and laid down against her backside. This was going to be quite the experience.

“Nice and easy,” Maureen murmured. “Been a little while.”

“We’ll take care of you,” Jack replied as he got into place.

“Yep, let me go first,” Riley said.

He nodded and waited, reaching up between the two women and cupping one of Maureen’s large breasts. He listened to Maureen moan, to both of them moan, as Riley worked her way inside. He’d heard about toys like this before, and wasn’t surprised that Riley owned one. He felt Maureen move against him, shifting and shuddering as the pleasure of Riley’s toy hit her. Before long, Maureen shifted a bit closer to him, raising one leg up.

“Okay, I’m ready for you, Jack,” she murmured.

“I’m coming in,” he replied.

He spent a moment carefully working his way into her ass. He had to admit: she was right. He’d thought about anal sex with her a lot, even since before meeting her. There’d been a couple of promo pics of her from the back, not many, but enough that he got an idea of how thick that ass of hers was. Even now, after what they’d done together, he still felt an immense sense of dreamlike wonder at actually getting to fuck this woman.

Let alone in the ass.

And what an ass it was. She was fantastically tight, and the pleasure was immediate and powerful, surging into him once he got comfortably inside of her.

“You doing okay?” he asked, a hand on her big hip.

“Yes,” she murmured, breathing heavily. “I, um...like I said, it’s been awhile. And this is...quite a unique experience. Always has been. I guess in a way I’m lucky that I never got used to it. It’s just as exciting each time it happens. Oh my...”

For a little while, Jack just lost himself in the pleasure of the encounter.

He took a bit to get into a good rhythm with Riley, both of them fucking Maureen, who was simply laying there, letting herself get fucked from the front and the back, enjoying it. Jack let the pleasure burn into him, fill him, consume him slowly. He stroked smoothly into Maureen’s ass, pressed up against her backside, cupping one of her large bare breasts in his grasp, kissing the back of her neck. He felt Riley reach over Maureen and run a hand lovingly down the side of his face, then felt her fingertips trailing down his arm, and felt amazed at how much she managed to pack in that one small motion.

He felt connected to both of them, like they were both very aware of him and in tune with him, they both wanted him here.

Was that an older woman thing or something else?

He’d always felt an awkward disconnect with a lot of his random hookups, but this felt like a deep connection, a wonderful one. They both had been so welcoming and accepting, so kind to him. There was that phrase, ‘We just met but I feel like I’ve known you for years’, and he hadn’t fully comprehended what that actually felt like until he had met this group of women. Even outside of sex, it felt like he had been part of this group for a long time, even though it hadn’t even been two weeks since they’d very first met each other.

It was amazing.

Maureen quickly devolved into a moaning, shivering mess as the pleasure overwhelmed her and Riley and Jack fucked both her holes. He slipped himself into her ass again and again, finding it amazingly tight. He soon found himself grunting as he went harder and faster, though he kept himself carefully in check in case Maureen didn’t like where he was going. But she seemed to be enjoying herself as much as ever.

“Oh fuck!” Riley moaned abruptly, and he felt her moving her hips even faster. “Fuck...I’m gonna...oh shit I’m coming!” she cried as she began to orgasm. Jack reached out and ran a hand over her arm. He felt one of her hands come out and grasp his, holding tightly. He held her hand while she orgasmed, lacing their fingers. He felt her climax as much as he heard it, and felt that intense connection they seemed to form when they were having sex. It was both intensely intimate and intensely erotic.

When she stopped coming, she resumed fucking Maureen.

Jack knew he was getting closer by now. Maureen’s thick ass just felt so good to fuck. He grunted and groaned as the sexual bliss and gratification burned into him, pushing him ever closer to a climax. He quickly lost himself again in her wonderful body, fucking her up the ass faster, his breath coming faster than ever, his grunts getting louder. He kept going and going and going, feeling the pleasure building inside of him like a volcano getting ready to erupt and suddenly-

“Fuck! Yes!” he cried as the mindless ecstasy overwhelmed him.

He was coming.

He was coming up Maureen’s thick, mature ass.

He could hear her moaning as he started pumping his seed into her, as his cock started kicking and spitting furiously. The pleasure pulsed through him, slammed into him like a dam breaking, like an asteroid impacting a planet. It felt monumental and overwhelmingly intense. Each time more of his seed left him it sent a pink wave of pure rapture throughout his body, filling him with its intensity, blinding him with its ferocity.

When he was finished, Jack opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“Damn, I felt that one,” Riley murmured.

“Me too,” he replied, then he carefully pulled out of Maureen. “Thank you,” he said.

She laughed softly. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m going to go wash up, and then come back for the next round,” he said as he got to his feet.

“Good,” Riley said. “We’ll be waiting.”

…

Jack emerged from Riley’s room the next morning feeling better than ever.

After a quick round of sex, with Maureen and Riley taking turns riding him, putting their thick thighs and broad hips to use, they fucked him until he had come inside Maureen. After that, he’d slipped on some clothes and gone for a wakeup workout. From there, he’d showered and dressed, ready to face a new day.

Breakfast consisted of omelets this time around.

He grabbed a cheese omelet and dug in.

“What’s on the agenda today?” Elizabeth asked.

“Same thing as yesterday, basically,” Maureen replied. “Jack, myself, and Lyra are going to drive out to a second site. Remember that crashed shuttle I mentioned earlier? I think we might be able to find something useful there.”

Elizabeth frowned, seemed to consider that response, then sighed. “Fine. Just...don’t do anything stupid,” she replied.

“Come on, consider who’s going. Are we known for stupid things?” Maureen replied.

“Well Lyra certainly isn’t,” Elizabeth said. “And yeah, I guess I have to give you credit there. As far as Jack? I don’t know, but I guess not. Your record was pretty spotless, and you were smart enough to sign on with us.”

“That was more luck than anything else. I’ve been known to be stupid, but...I’m usually not stupid when it comes to people’s safety.” He paused. “I know you aren’t knocking my abilities, so this isn’t me defending myself, it’s more me trying to put you at ease: I do know what I’m doing, and I also recognize the danger here. I’ll try my absolute fucking hardest to make sure that nothing happens to Maureen and Lyra,” he said.

She stared at him for a few seconds, then nodded. “Yeah, what you did during the search and rescue proved that. You’re no coward, and you don’t just think of your own ass...hell, if anything, I think you might go too far in the other direction. I’m concerned you’re going to run into something nasty and wind up fucked up or worse because you went down swinging making sure the others got away safely.”

“Is there any other type of person you’d rather have out here with your best friends?” he asked.

She sighed. “Total disclosure: No, there isn’t. But I don’t want something to happen to you either,” she replied.

He couldn’t help but smile, just a little. “You like me that much?”

She let out a huff of irritation. “I like you fine, I just don’t want bad things to happen to my friends, jackass.” But she was blushing at least a little. She snapped a gaze to Maureen, who was just watching them both with a small smile. “Got something to say, Miss Bitch?”

“Oh no, not at all, just watching the display,” she murmured as she refilled her glass of milk.

“You all get too much entertainment out of me,” Elizabeth growled.

“You’re just so entertaining,” Sylvia replied.

“Especially now that there’s a boy around,” Riley said. “A boy that you like.”

“Oh my God, what the fuck is this, high school?!” Elizabeth snapped.

“Okay, okay,” Maureen said. “Eat your breakfast and gear up, we’ve got another job to get done out there today.”

CHAPTER 09

“I have to say Jack, I’m impressed,” Maureen said as they drove out into the badlands surrounding them once more.

This time, Maureen was driving and Jack was up front with her. Lyra sat in the back with her toolkit, looking out the window.

“With what?” he replied.

“You. And how apparently not intimidated you are by...well, all of us, but especially Elizabeth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone tease her, let alone effectively.”

He chuckled. “Is it effective?”

“Yes. Definitely. She turns red when she gets angry a lot, but I can tell the difference. She’s not mad at you, she’s got a crush on you and she doesn’t know how to handle it.”

He snorted. “A crush on me? She’s like fifty years old.”

“So?” Maureen shrugged easily. “I’m sixty five, I get crushes. My mother is a hundred and two, and she was telling me about a new guy she was crushing on a few months ago. Just because you get older doesn’t mean you stop feeling butterflies in your stomach or get all stupid and big-eyed around someone you’ve got a crush on. I think Elizabeth has had crushes about as much as anyone else, the main difference is that she hasn’t had a crush on someone who’s been within sexual reach, or someone who would reciprocate it like you. I wonder how many men she’s scared away just because she’s big...okay, and because she’s an ex-Marine and tough as nails and doesn’t back down from goddamn near anyone.”

“So I’m unique, is what you’re saying,” he replied.

“Yes. You are. In a few ways. In good ways, as far as I’ve been able to determine so far.”

“Should I keep teasing her?”

“If you like to live dangerously.”

“Hmm.”

He looked out the window at the landscape of cracked earth and cacti-trees and scrub-brushes rolling by beside them. Did he like to live dangerously? Maybe, under certain circumstances. He ruminated on the situation until the downed cargo ship came into view. Maureen drove them up and over a rise in the land and then parked them atop it for a moment. They took the opportunity to study what was before them.

Not a whole lot. A stretch of land that was clear to the left and right for quite a ways, but dead ahead, maybe three hundred meters away, was a much sharper rise in the land made mostly of rock that had a big, obvious cave in it. Halfway between it and where they were now was the dust-covered remains of the shuttle. It had been here long enough that the deep furrow it must have cut into the land was now gone, filled in by the blowing dust.

“See anything dangerous?” Maureen asked.

“No,” Jack replied after a moment.

“Then let’s do it.”

She drove on, down the incline and then across the field of open space, driving around a few bigger rocks that stuck up out of the ground. Jack readied himself. Time for another mission, although he imagined this one would be simpler. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to hide around the area, besides the cave, but it was definitely far enough off that if anything came out of it, they’d have plenty of warning.

No, the only place he had to worry about was the ship itself. Once they had that cleared, Lyra could do her thing and he could keep watch.

They rolled up to a stop, parking the rover about ten meters shy of the edge of the ship. It wasn’t very large, perhaps half again as big as the shuttle they’d ridden down here. Jack could already see where the lightning had struck it. One of the engines on this side had blown out completely, and there was an ugly black mark across the wing and down the side of the transport where other components had shorted or blown out.

It had landed on its belly and stayed mostly intact, so he imagined it would be quite the target for salvagers.

“Wait here,” Jack said, opening his door.

“We’ll be here,” Maureen confirmed.

He shut the door and checked over his SMG. It had performed quite well yesterday and he was already getting to like it. Though if he ran into anything deadlier he might want to consider packing something a bit more substantial. For now though, this was doing fine. Jack made sure the safety was off and then set out. He performed his standard procedure, first doing a perimeter sweep of the exterior, walking around the whole outside and studying it closely, just in case anything was hiding along the niches afforded by the design.

But no, there was nothing under the wings, or tucked up into a little bit of space dug out beneath the vehicle, or anywhere else. He circled all the way around to the back again, where the rear door had been left open, and looked inside. Like it had looked when he’d first peered inside on approach, the bulk of the ship, the cargo bay, was empty. Just a derelict metal cavern, home only to dust and a few bits of scrap metal. He walked inside, looking around, his boots echoing on the deckplates. He got to the only door inside, which was also open.

It led to a little chamber that granted access to three other rooms. The cockpit, a bathroom, and a little seating area for extra personnel.

All three were equally empty.

Finally, in the cockpit, Jack climbed up to one of the escape hatches built up into the ceiling and popped it open. He got out onto the hull atop the craft and looked around, wanting to make sure nothing was hiding out of sight up here, either.

Finally, he activated his radio. “It’s clear.”

“How about what we’re looking for?” Maureen replied as they began getting out.

“It’s like the forward post: stripped of obviously useful stuff, but I didn’t seen much in the way of panels ripped off. The equipment looks basically intact.”

“Perfect,” Lyra said.

“We’re coming over to dig in,” Maureen said.

“I’ll keep watch from up here,” Jack replied.

He looked up after they got into the ship. There were clouds today and he wondered if it might end up raining sometime soon.

That’d be nice.

He moved slowly up and down the length of the shuttle, keeping an eye out for hostile wildlife or hostile sentients. It wasn’t unknown for one group of salvagers to roll up on another group with lethal intentions. Shit, some of them had attacked him back when he was a Marine, which had pretty much never turned out well for them. But it seemed like they had this place to themselves. Although, he did keep looking at that cave. Something about it made him vaguely uneasy, although he had no idea what might be causing that.

It could just be good old fashioned paranoia, or it could be something else.

After barely twenty minutes, Lyra spoke up.

“We have a problem,” she said.

“What?” Jack asked.

“I’ve been digging into the cockpit and it seems like someone did start a salvage operation.”

“It didn’t really look dug into...”

“I know. This is what I think happened: someone came by and hauled out all the cargo. Then they just recently started digging into the mechanical components of the vessel. Maybe they got a little bit into it and had to call it a day. Smart salvagers will put the panels back when they’re done for the day, to keep the elements out and preserve whatever got left behind until the next round of salvaging. Only...”

“Only what?” Maureen asked.

She sighed. “Only it’s weird. Judging by what I’m looking at, I’d guess it’s been a week, maybe two since this thing was last tampered with. And there hasn’t been any radio transmissions in the region as far as I’ve been able to determine. It’s possible they aren’t using radios, it’s also possibly they bugged out, but...maybe not.”

“What’s the alternative?” Jack asked.

“Something happened to them,” she replied.

“Like?” Maureen pressed.

“I have no idea. But here’s our problem: one of the things they did get was one of the two parts I was hoping to get here. I got one of them, but when I went looking for the other, I found clear evidence that it had been carefully removed.”

“Great...so where might it be?” Maureen asked.

Jack found himself staring at the cave. “I think I might know.”

…

“Maybe we should get Elizabeth,” Lyra murmured as they stared into the darkness of the cave.

“We can handle this,” Maureen replied. “That’s what the guns and armor are for.”

They had already attempted short-range radio contact, but it had yielded nothing.

“How do we even know they were here?” Lyra asked.

Jack turned on his flashlight, both of the ones embedded in his chestplate, up to their maximum brightness, illuminating a large amount of the cave beyond. It was roughly ten feet tall and maybe twelve wide, the walls made of dry, dusty light tan rock, the ground just more dirt. At the edge of the light, which extended about fifty feet into the cave, something gleamed. Something metallic. Something someone put, or at least dropped, there.

“Your call, Maureen,” Jack said as he readjusted his grip on the submachine gun.

“We’ll investigate, but if it looks too dicey, we’ll leave and call for help. Our number one priority will be seeing if we can find out what happened to the people here, our number two priority will be finding that part if at all possible. Come on.”

Jack led the way, flipping on the flashlight mounted on his weapon’s barrel as well. For the first several minutes, they walked in silence, moving along a tunnel that slanted down, into the earth. It was pleasantly cooler down here, but there was a bad smell, something he couldn’t identify, but it certainly put him on edge.

The shiny thing turned out to be a canteen, half buried in the sand.

They saw footprints in the dirt.

“Definitely were people here,” he muttered before pressing on.

Maureen and Lyra remained silent, as Jack had hoped they would. He needed to hear, to listen for any sign of attack. This could be a trap. If it was, he felt decently ready. Jack had seen his fair share of combat, and although he didn’t think he was unstoppable, he felt confident he could handle most things this planet could throw at him.

Probably.

They kept going, finding a bit more evidence of people having been there, until the tunnel broadened, opening up into a roughly oval-shaped cavern. The roof rose another ten feet or so and the walls reached out to a good sixty or seventy feet at the broadest point in the cavern. Clearly, someone had set up shop in here.

There were some basic walls set up, creating the most bare-minimum of functional structures, little more than open-faced rooms with, often, just two walls and a roof, pushed up against the cave walls themselves. There were tables, chairs, crates, and shelves scattered about, as well as some cots. At a glance, Jack would guess that it was a dozen-person operation.

The only problem was…

“Where are the salvagers?” Maureen murmured.

“Hold on,” Lyra said, and pulled something from her pocket, a device with a holographic interface. “I should have done this beforehand,” she murmured as she began tapping at it, studying the display intently.

“What is that?” Jack asked, moving slowly towards the back of the chamber, where shadows seemed to be gathering.

“Basic life detection,” she replied. “If there’s life signs in this cave, we’ll know. Or, at least, theoretically we should.” She paused. “Put it this way, if there’s life as we understand it in this cave, i.e. humans or xenians or whatever, this thing can detect them.”

“Wait, so you had this? I could’ve used it earlier,” he murmured.

“...that’s a good point. Sorry. We can utilize it in the future,” Lyra said, looking sheepish. It seemed they were all out of their element at least a little.

“Lyra, give it to Maureen, you go look for your part. Now,” Jack said.

“What’s wrong?” Maureen asked, though he could hear Lyra walking towards Maureen’s position. He kept his attention on the way ahead.

“Obviously something happened here,” Jack replied. “And if you’ll recall, one of the creatures warned about in the damned travel guide was giant cave spiders.”

“Oh...right,” Maureen murmured. “Shit.”

“I’m going,” Lyra said.

Jack stopped as his light finally reached the farthest wall of the cavern, where another tunnel, this one smaller, resided. He hesitated as he saw what appeared to be several drag marks in the dirt, and what might have been a bloodstain on one of the walls. It was difficult to tell. He listened to the life detecting device working, the only sound it emitted was a soft hum, and to the sounds of Lyra quickly searching through the scrap that the salvagers had gathered over the course of their operation. The minutes ticked by tensely.

“There’s no life signs in here but us three,” Maureen said, breaking the silence first.

“Well, that’s good news at least,” Jack muttered. “I’ve got evidence of a struggle up ahead, so I think we have an idea of what might have happened to the salvagers. Something came and got them all, or some of them and the rest bugged out.”

“Wonderful,” Maureen muttered. She began to say something else but Lyra interrupted her.

“Got it,” she reported.

Jack turned and looked back at her. She was holding some shiny piece of technology in her hand, studying it closely.

“You’re one hundred percent?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied after a few seconds. She slipped the device into one of the pouches on her uniform and zipped it shut. “I am.”

“Then let’s get out of here,” he said.

Something let out a strange series of wet clicks that echoed into the chamber with them. Jack immediately returned his attention to the back of the cavern. He began to take a step back but hesitated as he saw movement at the farthest edges of the light, in the tunnel.

“I’ve got movement here,” he said tightly, readjusting his grip slightly on the SMG. “It’s...big, whatever it is.”

It was about half the height of the tunnel, which was a good eight feet tall, and almost as broad as it was: four feet. It was moving rapidly, and it had many legs.

“Oh fuck me, it’s one of those spiders!” he snapped as he saw a constellation of dark eyes catching and reflecting the light when it got close enough.

They had been labeled as hostile and lethal in the manual.

Jack squeezed the trigger, pouring half a magazine into the thing while he had it bottle-necked safely in the tunnel. The giant spider creature shrieked wildly and he heard a pounding sound as it slammed its legs around, trying to escape whatever was hurting it. But then his bullets punched into something crucial and it stopped screaming and ceased moving.

“Good lord,” Maureen whispered, aghast as she took a few steps closer to him. “That thing is fucking enormous.”

“Let’s go!” Jack snapped, backing up rapidly while keeping the tunnel covered.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Lyra agreed.

They all began backing up. Right before his light left it, Jack saw the thing twitch again. He hesitated, prepared to pour the rest of the magazine into it as it began twitching more rapidly. Something was wrong, though. It didn’t seem like it was moving so much as it was being moved, which would mean-

“Shit!” he screamed as half a dozen more of the things, about half the size of the original but still very large, burst from around its corpse. “GO! NOW! RUN!” he yelled as he squeezed the trigger. He hosed them down, spraying their dark blood across the rock walls and eliciting several squeals and shrieks of pure rage and pain. As soon as the SMG clicked empty, he turned, ejecting the spent magazine, and began sprinting and reloading at the same time. He was glad to see that Maureen and Lyra were already out of the cavern.

He sprinted after them.

The sound of the giant spiders’ feet pounding the ground as they came for him thundered in his ears as he ran for all he was worth. Adrenaline flooded his system and blood pounded in his ears as he ran, just booking it across the cavern. He hit the initial tunnel in record time and kept on running full tilt, quickly catching up with the others.

“Faster!” he snapped.

They went faster, pushing themselves.

Behind them, the cave spiders shrieked and already he could hear them coming into the tunnel. He’d kept a rough running tally of all the meters they’d walked getting to that initial cavern, helped along by the occasional flash of metal abandoned on the ground, which he’d filed away as impromptu markers. They made it a quarter of the distance, and then half the distance. The trio just ran, and ran, and ran some more, going for all they were worth. Jack had to slow down to keep from running into the others or getting in front of them.

He was security after all, he had to watch their backs.

As they reached the two thirds mark, Jack skidded to a halt and turned around.

“What the fuck are you doing!?” Maureen cried, panting as she stumbled to a halt with Lyra.

“Don’t stop!” Jack snapped as he grabbed one of the grenades he’d brought along.

“Jack-”

“Don’t fucking stop! RUN!” he roared at her.

A look of surprise crossed her face, and then without another word the pair turned and began sprinting again. They were close enough that he could see the light at the end of the tunnel. He aimed his own lights back the way they’d run, letting it all get sorted in his head: the distance of his allies, the distance of his enemies, how fast the pair were roughly moving, how fast the spiders were advancing, how long the fuse would last, when to throw it to give himself enough time to get to safety but also make sure that the blast would hit the spiders.

And that wasn't even considering if it caused a cave-in.

The calculations running through his tactical mind suddenly screamed: now! And he pulled the pin, hurled the grenade, and barely before it had left his hand he was turning and sprinting away after them. Jack thought of nothing else, just putting his body to the task of running. He heard the spiders shrieking behind him, the light sound of the grenade hitting the ground, just barely audible over the shrieking and his own heavy tread and his heart thundering in his ears. And then, for just a second, there seemed to be pure silence.

Then the explosion came.

He felt a blast of hot air rush over him and he stumbled, dust briefly enveloping his vision. He coughed harshly, forcing himself onward, listening to the sound of rocks falling. Shit, cave-in. How bad was it going to be? Could he get out? The light was getting closer, and closer, and closer...he saw two dark figures just now leaving the cave, going back out into the light. Jack pushed himself that final stretch and suddenly he was back out in the sunlight.

Spinning around, gasping for breath, he raised his SMG and waited.

For several moments, they all waited, getting their breaths back. Jack felt shaky with adrenaline but incredibly honed and focused, ready for a brutal battle.

But nothing happened.

No spiders came.

His shoulders sagged and he leaned forward, fighting the urge to puke. “I think we made it.” He twisted around to look at Lyra. “We got it?”

She gently patted her pocket. “We got it.”

“Maybe we don’t tell Elizabeth about this,” Maureen murmured, still staring at the cave with wide eyes.

…

“You yelled at me.”

Jack glanced over. They had gotten back to the rover and Maureen had asked him to drive. They had been silent for the past five minutes as he drove them back home. Lyra sat in the back again, cleaning up the devices she had recovered.

Maureen had been just staring out the window.

“I’m...” He hesitated. “Well, I’d apologize but it would be a lie. That would indicate that I feel like I’d made the wrong choice. Which I don’t believe.”

She blinked again in surprise. “I’m not looking for an apology,” she said finally. She laughed softly. “I’m more just...impressed. I can’t even remember the last time someone raised their voice to me. No, you’re right, you were right to do that. I...” She sighed heavily and shook her head. “Maybe Elizabeth was right. I’m not quite taking this seriously enough. Cave spiders should have been the first thought in my head.”

“I figured you two had thought of it already and decided it was worth checking out,” Lyra murmured from the back seat.

“I guess I should’ve brought it up sooner,” Jack said.

“I would have wanted to go in anyway. I didn’t realize...I mean, the field guide didn’t say they would be that big.”

“Only one of them was,” Jack replied. “The others were normal sized.”

She shook her head again. “I’m still getting used to all this, apparently. I thought I was ready for this level of danger. I mean, in a way, I suppose I was. We got out-”

“We got lucky,” Jack replied. “We might not have. I’m not saying the situation got out of control, but it could have gotten out of control without much more in the way of bad luck.”

“Oh, Elizabeth’s going to be so angry...but I’ll handle her. You two performed your jobs admirably. Lyra, you found the part rather quickly. Jack, you handled those things very well. Technically, it was a success, but I should have been more cautious. So I’ll handle Elizabeth. Lyra, if you would be so kind as to install those pieces, I would appreciate it.”

“Can do,” she replied, still tending to them.

“Need me for anything?” Jack asked. They were within sight of the outpost by now.

“No, but I’ll let you know,” she replied.

“All right.” Glancing up as they came on final approach to the base, he saw that the skies were grayer than ever. “Should I park in the garage or let it get a wash? I think it’s gonna rain.”

“Let it get a wash,” Maureen replied.

He nodded and stopped a little ways short of the garage. As he killed the engine and they got out, he noticed a cold gust of wind driving across the area. It was still technically before noon, but it was appreciably darker now, thanks to the gray cloud cover.

Jack headed inside. He had things to do, and honestly, he felt like he needed some kind of mindless, repetitive task to take his mind off of how insane that had been.

His hands were still shaking occasionally.

…

The day unrolled with relative smoothness and comfort.

Jack did some cleaning, some shifting of supplies. He ate lunch and spent five hours making basic repairs or performing maintenance he knew how to perform. At one point Sylvia grabbed him and rode him in her bed until they both had come. After that, he’d gone for a quick workout session, grabbed a shower, and then dinner. Elizabeth was subdued. So was Maureen. He wasn’t sure what to make of that, exactly.

But by the time dinner was over, they seemed to be in better spirits.

Jack found himself drifting by the windows every so often, to see if it had started raining. But each time he did, it hadn’t yet. It got darker and grayer though, and the winds gusted more. Finally, after another workout session and a shower, Jack found himself standing in the corridor that gave the best view, the windows looking out on the landing pad and rover and hydroponic garden. It began to rain right as he came into view of the windows.

For several long moments, he simply stood there with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the rainfall.

“Jack.”

He looked over and saw Riley standing at the turn in the corridor. She was looking at him, a small, happy smile on her face.

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“Elizabeth wants to talk to you. She’s in the garage.”

He hesitated. “What about?”

“I actually don’t know, but she asked me to get you.”

“All right.”

Riley gave him a kiss in passing, something that made his heart flutter. Despite that, he found himself wondering, intensely, what Elizabeth could want. Maybe she was mad at him for today. Had he fucked something up that he hadn’t realized? Something Maureen had said in passing that she hadn’t recognized for the fuck up it was, but Elizabeth had picked up on immediately? No, he didn’t think so. He maybe should have been a bit more firm on not going into the cave in the first place, but then Maureen would have just pressed on anyway. And besides, he figured that if Elizabeth was mad at him, she’d come to him.

She’d come at him.

He found her standing by the open front of the garage, staring out into the rain. She wore cut-off shorts and a tanktop, and had no shoes or socks on.

He came to stand beside her.

For a moment, neither side anything.

Finally, he decided to break the silence. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” she murmured. “I did.”

He waited, but she seemed distracted. “If this is about what happened out there today-”

“Oh, no,” she said, and that seemed to bring her out of her distraction. “No, it isn’t.” She looked over at him, giving him a disarming smile. “I mean, I was really mad at Maureen, but it turned out for the best and we needed that part anyway. Lyra told me we probably wouldn’t have been able to find it anywhere else. Not without some crazy luck. No, what happened, happened. Although I’ve told Maureen that I’m going next time. Especially considering what next time is.”

“What is next time?” Jack asked.

“The mining complex.”

“Oh. Yeah, that seems like a ‘whole squad’ kind of thing,” he murmured.

“I agree. But that’s not why I asked you here.”

“Why did you ask me here?” he pressed when she again hesitated.

She blushed, looked away briefly, then faced him again. “I’ve decided that I want to make out with you.”

“Oh...awesome.”

She laughed. “I’m glad you’re as easy as you are.”

“You were expecting me to be difficult? You thought I’d say no?” he replied.

“No, not at all. You’ve already told me you want to fuck me. I just thought you’d...hold it over me. Tease me.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve been teasing you too much,” he said hesitantly.

“No, no, you haven’t been. I’m just...feeling vulnerable today. Right now, specifically. I’m glad you’re keeping it simple.”

“Okay then, simple.” He stepped a little closer to her, looked up at her. Goddamn was this a tall woman. Even though she was just about four inches taller than his six feet, she still seemed to tower over him. “I’m ready when you are.”

Her face relaxed and she smiled slightly. “I’m ready.”

Then she leaned down and, settling her hands on his lower back, pressed her lips gently against his own.

Jack’s eyes opened wider.

He saw Elizabeth’s do so as well.

It was like an electric arc passed between them as their lips met. He put his own hands on her big, firm hips as that first kiss lingered and he first tasted Elizabeth. After several seconds, she pulled back, her eyes closed for a second, like she was enjoying a particularly pleasing sensation. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

Her breath smelled like something kind of sweet, but also kind of dark.

“Wow,” she said. “I...”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “That was...”

Neither of them seemed to know what to say. They simply looked at each other, staring directly into each other’s eyes, and then they kissed again.

Harder.

More passionately.

She moaned as she tilted her head, deepening the kiss. He quickly began to lose himself, slipping one hand over the back of her neck and pulling her slightly closer, deepening the kiss even further. She opened his mouth with her own and slowly slid her tongue in, gently probing. His pulse was skyrocketing in pure excitement as they made out. This felt like...it reminded him of the first time he’d ever made out with a woman. It was exquisitely thrilling and intensely passionate, and he could feel the same things radiating off of Elizabeth.

She was breathing heavily, pushing her larger body against his own, hugging him against her as she began to dance her tongue with his own. They twisted and twined, tasting each other, enjoying each other, becoming lost in each other.

Jack slipped a hand up under her shirt and began to grope one of her huge, bare breasts, finding that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

That went on for about ten seconds before she broke the kiss. “Wait,” she said, panting.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, pulling his hand out and away. “I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay,” she said, smiling awkwardly at him, blushing fiercely. She brushed some vividly red hair away from her face. “It’s fine. I’m not mad.”

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I just...”

“Got lost in the moment. So did I. I mean I was basically inviting you in. I wanted you to put your hand up my shirt, actually...”

“I thought so, I just...” he sighed. “I don’t want you to think I was trying to push you into anything.”

She smiled a little more broadly and took his hands suddenly. “Jack, I believe you,” she said. “It’s really okay. I trust you. And like I said, I wanted it. Having you touch my breast was...” She shuddered suddenly, briefly closing her eyes. “The only reason I stopped was because I knew that if I didn’t, I was going to go all the way. Right here, right now.”

“And you aren’t ready for that yet,” he said.

She nodded. “I’m sorry, I really not trying to be a cock-tease or anything.”

“I didn’t think you were,” he said.

She reached up and placed a hand against his jaw. “Thank you. Honestly, I’m very close.”

“I want you to take your time, as much as you feel like you need, but...can I ask why?”

She sighed and looked away, her hand falling away. “It’s complicated, and not something I feel like getting into. Not yet.”

“I understand.”

“Thank you.” She gave him a hug suddenly. Then she shifted slightly. “Wow, I can feel that hard-on,” she murmured. “You are just...pulsing.”

“You have no idea how badly I want to fuck you right now,” he replied.

She laughed ruefully and let go of him. “I think I have an idea. God, I just feel bad...and frustrated! Believe me, I’m fucking horny as shit right now. I’m so fucking wet there’s probably a stain in my panties from how goddamn wet I am. I just...need a little more time. But right now, before we lose our cool, what’s say we split up and just go fuck someone else? I want Riley.”

“I’ll take Maureen,” he said.

“I’m sure she’ll enjoy it.”

They looked at each other for just a moment longer, then they turned and almost tripped over each other trying to get to their respective lovers for the night.

CHAPTER 10

“It’s going to be a little different this time around,” Maureen said.

It was the next day. Jack felt...better.

He’d fucking pounded Maureen three times last night. And judging by the outright screams of ecstasy he’d heard from Riley, they’d all heard from Riley, Elizabeth had given the dysil pilot a run for her credits.

“This time,” Maureen continued, “everyone but Riley is going. She’s going to stay here and watch the base. We’re all taking the shuttle out to an abandoned mining complex. The plan is as follows: we will land at their landing pad and then secure the above-ground portion of the complex. Once it’s clear, we’ll descend into the underground portion. Our first objective will be to procure a map of the installation. I couldn’t get my hands on one, but Lyra assures me that if she can get to any general terminal she can hook a battery up to it and pull the data for us. Once that happens, we will split into two teams.”

Sylvia groaned softly. “Two teams?” she murmured.

“We can handle it,” Maureen said, looking at Elizabeth.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be with you,” she said.

Jack looked at her too. She did look intimidating and reassuring as hell, decked out in her black combat armor, toting a big-ass machine gun. She caught eyes with him briefly and blushed fiercely, then looked away.

He couldn’t help but smile.

“Two teams,” Maureen continued. “Jack, Lyra, and myself will head for the control center once we determine its location, and recover the last of the pieces we need. They should be there. Elizabeth, Sylvia, and Anya will head into the geological survey center. Traditionally speaking, when a mining corporation sets up a mining complex, they establish a handful of geological survey centers across a region, and these centers gather data. If we can get that data, or at the very least the locations of these centers, that would help whoever comes after us a lot. Plus, it would make for a fat bonus for all of us. Once we get these things, we leave.”

“And what about when we run into whatever the fuck drove those three corporations out?” Sylvia asked.

“I bet it’s giant cave spiders,” Anya said.

“No, my money’s on something else,” Sylvia replied.

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“I don’t know, deadly gas or something. Radiation, toxicity.”

“I’ll take that bet. Loser has to be the winner’s bitch for the night,” Anya said, grinning fiercely.

“You’re fucking on,” Sylvia replied immediately.

Jack watched the display with interest. He had an idea that it was kind of a win-win situation for the women, since they both seemed amenable to being submissive and dominating. That would certainly be interesting to watch.

And be a part of.

“Let’s focus,” Maureen said. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”

“If it looks too dangerous, we abort,” Elizabeth added.

“Yes,” Maureen agreed reluctantly. “Now, let’s get on the shuttle. Riley, make sure you let us know if anything goes wrong. We’ll be patched into the shuttle, which will be linked with you back here. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Riley replied. “Just make sure you all come back in one piece.”

“I fully intend to,” Elizabeth replied. “I intend for all of us to.”

They began making their way to the shuttle.

…

Jack checked over his gear one more time as the shuttle rattled in a bit of turbulence. He’d put on his entire suit this time, so that he could atmospherically seal it if need be. He’d already run checks on its power, air supply, functionality, and a basic check on all of its internal mechanisms. They’d come back clean, and he trusted Lyra and Elizabeth to have performed proper maintenance on it, and Maureen to have bought top-of-the-line gear, but he still wanted to be double sure. Just in case. After last time, he was admittedly a little nervous.

But he’d been through worse. A lot worse, actually.

Jack looked out one of the windows in the passenger area. Everyone but Lyra was crammed in there, just barely able to fit between their numbers, their armor, and Elizabeth’s huge frame. She couldn’t seem to meet his eyes.

“You’re blushing a lot more lately, Elizabeth,” Anya said as they flew through the air.

“I am not,” Elizabeth replied.

“No, you have been,” Sylvia murmured.

Elizabeth heaved a sigh. “Did you and Jack do something finally?” Anya asked, unable to keep a big grin off her face.

“If we did, it’s none of your business,” she said firmly.

“Come on Jack, spill,” Sylvia murmured, brushing her foot against his leg.

He laughed loudly. “Fuck that, I’m not saying shit one way or another. Can neither confirm nor deny. This is Elizabeth we’re talking about.”

“She is rather intimidating,” Maureen said.

“You’re going to keep fucking poking,” Elizabeth muttered, but the small smile on her face told him she wasn’t actually annoyed. Or, well, no more annoyed than someone tended to get when being joked with by their best friends. “We made out,” she said.

“Oh really?” Sylvia replied.

“Yes, really.”

“How was it? He’s a really good kisser,” Anya said.

“He is. It was...very good,” Elizabeth answered, still not quite looking at him.

“Jack?” Maureen asked.

“Oh yeah, it was fucking amazing. Honestly, it was even more exciting than the cave yesterday,” he replied.

“Good lord, that must have been some makeout session if it provoked a stronger response than being chased by giant spiders,” Anya said with that same smirk.

“I am a good kisser, you know,” Elizabeth replied.

“I know,” all three women replied at the same time.

Jack laughed. “You all are something else.”

“Yes, we are,” Maureen agreed. She lost her smile. “We’re all going to have to focus up for this one. While I think it’s possible that there won’t be a threat in there, I’m not counting on it. Elizabeth, Jack, I’m really going to be counting on the two of you to do your jobs.”

“We will,” Elizabeth said, now looking at Jack, her sense of responsibility and commitment to her friends cutting through any lingering feelings she had about last night.

He nodded. “We will,” he echoed.

“Good. Sylvia, Anya, Lyra, all of us are going to have to be on our toes.”

“Don’t worry, Maureen,” Sylvia said. “You know that when the shit goes down, we know how to handle ourselves. We’ll take this serious.”

She nodded and fell silent.

“We’re a few minutes out now,” Lyra said from the cockpit.

“Okay. Let’s get ready,” Maureen replied.

…

From high up, the top side of the mining installation didn’t look very impressive.

But Jack knew that it was just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Ninety five percent of the installation wasn’t presently visible. Lyra brought them in nice and steady, blowing up a huge plume of dust and dirt as she landed on the long-abandoned metal pad beside the large, single story that was the mining installation’s entrance.

“Okay, I want everyone to be careful,” Elizabeth said as she stood when the ship finally settled into place. “We’re going to take it nice and slow. First thing’s first: are there life signs?”

“I’m already running it,” Lyra replied as she came back from the cockpit.

“Maureen...I’m not trying to be a bitch, but how did you forget that?” Elizabeth asked.

Maureen looked actually embarrassed. She sighed. “I’ve been thinking on that. I think my problem is that I’ve been so used to having all the answers, or being able to determine all the answers within a pretty short amount of time, that I’ve become overconfident, and it doesn’t occur to me that I might be missing something. That’s why I’m bringing everyone and being much more aware. Or trying to be, anyway.” She smiled suddenly. “After yesterday, I know Jack isn’t going to be afraid to tell me if I’m fucking up.”

“Good, that means you hired the right man,” Elizabeth murmured. “Come on, let’s do this.”

She and Jack took point at the back of the shuttle. He activated the cargo ramp and watched it open up onto a dusty landing pad. Everything was churned up and muddy from the night before and the heavy rain that had fallen.

Jack studied the building as they moved down the ramp, onto the landing pad. It was an old, weather-eaten, time-corroded thing. Most of the windows were broken out. It was a simple two-story rectangle of metal, scoured by the winds.

“Lyra?” Elizabeth asked as they gathered on the platform.

“There’s no one up here with us,” she replied.

“And creatures? Animals?”

She sighed. “This thing can only do so much, unfortunately. But I’m not getting any readings save for us right now.”

“Good enough, let’s go.”

They set off. No one spoke as the group of them crossed the distance between the landing pad and the main entrance of the building. As they walked inside and looked around a barren lobby, Elizabeth insisted they clear the building, just in case. They didn’t need anything sneaking up on them, and for that Jack agreed. So they spent the next twenty minutes sweeping the area, room by room, making sure they were alone here.

Most of the rooms were empty save for dust. There were a few skeletal remains here and there of unlucky salvagers, or maybe thieves on the run. That was always another possibility with these largely uncharted frontier worlds.

At the end of that segment of time, they gathered before a stairwell that led down into a gloomy darkness.

“So far, so good,” Maureen murmured.

“Yeah, now comes the hard part,” Elizabeth replied. “Remember, nice and easy. Stay focused. No fuck-ups.”

“No fuck-ups,” Maureen agreed.

She and Jack led the way after activating their flashlights. There was no power in the structure, above or under the ground, as far as they could tell. Which would mean this entire thing was going to be done in darkness.

Not exactly how Jack had hoped to spend his day, but this was the job.

They both arrived at the bottom of the stairs in an empty room. Nothing but darkness and metal and a sense of derelict desolation. Jack shifted uneasily. He’d been in a lot of shitty environments, a lot of dangerous situations, but there was something that still, illogically, got to him when he was somewhere under the earth.

Especially if it was dark and dead like this.

“Come on,” Elizabeth said after they’d had a quick look around. “There should be a terminal somewhere nearby.”

Jack followed after her, and the others followed after him. Their heavy boots echoed throughout the underground installation as they entered it. They came into a wide metal tunnel that extended a good hundred meters away from them. Jack could easily envision it full of workers and personnel shifting through it, moving crates or carrying tablets, going about their business. He’d been in a few mining installations running at full capacity before and seen what a beehive of activity it could be. It was just creepy seeing this abandoned place.

“There,” Elizabeth said, making him jump slightly, her light focusing on a terminal embedded in the wall to the right.

They moved over to it and Jack studied it as Lyra pulled out a power cell and began hooking it up. He knew these kind of terminals basically acted as bulletin boards, running on a kind of internal network where people could access schedules, maps, and basic information about the installation. It was just a simple screen and keyboard, unlit and dusty. Lyra crouched beside it, popping a panel off and plugging a few wires in.

“That should be...it,” she murmured.

“Yep, got it,” Elizabeth said as the screen flickered weakly to life. They waited as Elizabeth took a moment to navigate the system. “God, there’s barely anything left,” she muttered. “I don’t even know if there’d be any data left in the geo-center.”

“It’s worth a shot. Even just the locations of their survey sites,” Anya replied.

“Yeah...okay, good. Map. I’ve got a map. They didn’t get very far in tearing out the second company’s stuff, so we should be good there, I think. Hold on...” She typed at the screen for another moment and something pinged on Jack’s head’s up display, which was digitally imposed over the inside of his visor. “There, I’ve downloaded a map into our internal network shared by our suits. Take a moment to study it and plan your routes. All of you, in case we get separated.”

Jack looked over the layout. Although it was large, it was also pretty basic. As was common in a lot of quick and dirty installations, there was an X of two giant cross-corridors that connected everything. The hall they were in largely led to personnel-related rooms, the hall to the left led to storage and the geological department, the hall to the right led to the control room, security, and utilities, and the final hall was actually just the mine itself, dead ahead of them at the end of the hundred meters of corridor.

“All right, simple enough. We get to the end of the corridor and split up. My team heads left and gets into the geo-center, Jack’s team heads to the right and gets into the control room. We both grab what we need if we can, then meet back up and get out of here. In and out.”

“Jack’s team, hmm?” Maureen asked with a small smile.

“Yes, Jack and I are security here, so we’re in charge,” Elizabeth replied firmly.

“Fair enough,” Maureen said.

“Let’s go.”

With that, she turned and began walking down the hallway. Jack and the others followed after her, letting her take point.

It was slow going.

Most of the doors were shut, firmly, and wouldn’t be opening without difficulty. But some of them had been left open, or had been opened by prospecting salvagers. Jack wasn’t sure if the area was vacant or not, and although he felt like they were alone for the moment, he was with Elizabeth on the idea that they needed to do a sweep of all these rooms to make sure nothing snuck up behind them. But eventually they managed to get to the end of the lengthy corridor. They didn’t find anything, nor any trace of what had caused so many problems for the previous miners.

Although they did find something unsettling.

“So...what the fuck is this about?” Sylvia muttered unhappily as their lights revealed something new. They stood at the exact center of the X, where the two corridors met and branched off. All along the wall that ran up against where the mines were, there were holes. Big ones. They’d been ripped in the metal, somehow. Clearly, they hadn’t been planned. They’d been done at random. Jack walked up to the nearest one, slowly, and shined his light in.

There were just rocks and earth beyond in a large cavern.

“This doesn’t bode well,” he muttered.

“Any idea what could do this? Because I’m drawing a blank,” Anya asked.

Although he didn’t say so out loud, he thought that, given enough time, the cave spiders could probably do something like this. Some of them were supposed to be pretty fucking strong. But he kept that to himself.

“Keep an eye out and let’s do this,” Elizabeth said after peering into one for a long few seconds. She turned and began heading away, towards the geo-center.

“Let’s go,” Jack said.

He started leading them down the long passageway, again having to stop at every opening. Of which now there were several more. He carefully surveyed each one, every hole that looked like someone had taken a giant can-opener to the wall, and every open door. Each hole led to a mostly natural-looking space, a cave or cavern of rocky walls and dirt floors, occasionally with some mining equipment strewn about. The doors led to mostly empty rooms, occasionally there were barren shelves or dusty tables.

“Sylvia,” he said as they began walking, “I’m assuming that if we’d run into any of those things you were concerned about: radiation, gas, toxins, you’d know?”

“Yes, of course, Jack,” she replied. “Our suits would warn us. So far...it’s looking like I might not win this bet.”

“You think it was spiders?” Maureen murmured.

“Could be,” Sylvia replied. She sighed. “If we’re lucky, we won’t find out.”

“I think we’ve been using up all our good luck ‘getting lucky’ recently,” Jack replied.

Both women laughed at that. “Quite true,” Maureen agreed. “But whatever happens, I’m sure we can handle it.”

Jack hoped she was right.

Bit by bit, meter by meter, room by room, they made it to the end of the lengthy corridor, where the control center they were looking for resided.

Jack found the door closed. “Lyra,” he murmured.

“Yep,” she replied, already getting up to it. She crouched by a control panel next to it and started cutting into it.

“How long?”

“Two minutes,” she murmured.

“Don’t open it until you warn me first and I can get into position.”

“Yep,” she repeated, and went silent.

“Elizabeth, we’re at the control room. It’s locked. Lyra’s opening it. So far, nothing. Over.”

He heard a soft laugh come from his radio. “Still adhering to protocol, huh?” she replied. “Nothing on our end. Almost to the geo-center. Over.”

“Just for you. Over.”

“Aren’t I a lucky girl? Over.”

“Holy shit you’ve got a sexy fucking voice on the radio,” he muttered.

Elizabeth laughed louder. “I’ve been told that. Stay focused. Out.”

He turned his attention back to Lyra, keeping an eye out. The small sounds she made hacking the door open seemed to be amplified in the gloom. He wondered why she couldn’t just hit the manual release, but figured that maybe it was a little more complicated than that, given it was a crucial part of the installation.

Or maybe it was broken.

“Almost there,” Lyra said.

Jack took up position, weapon raised. He’d swapped out his submachine gun for a full-on assault rifle at this point.

“Do it,” he said.

She finished her work and the door slid open. Jack tensed, ready for something awful to lunge out at him, but there was nothing. He let out his breath in a long sigh and moved forward, carefully clearing the large, circular room beyond.

“Clear,” he said.

“We’re at the geo-center,” Elizabeth reported. “It’s empty, although...”

“What?” he asked as they went inside.

“I thought I heard something just now. Some kind of movement through the holes in the walls. There down here, too. But it might’ve just been echoes.”

“Understood. We’re in the control room, it’s clear, beginning work.”

“Same on my end.”

Jack looked around the control room. It wasn’t as gutted as he’d thought it might be. There were still several terminals and work areas left, several computers that looked intact. A lot of equipment and gear to check over. Lyra was already crouched before one of the larger ones, removing a panel and setting a miniature work light up beside her.

“How long?” Jack asked.

“I can’t say for sure, but probably twenty minutes,” she replied.

“Shit,” he muttered.

“We’ll be fine,” Maureen said. “Is there something I can do to help?” she asked.

“Yeah, actually,” Lyra replied after a moment. She pointed without looking at one of the other consoles. “Pry the main panel off and tell me if there’s a green octagon looking thing plugged into the interior.”

“Okay,” Maureen said.

“I’ll stand watch,” Jack murmured, and shifted back to the door. There were no holes in the walls of the command center, and no other ways in besides some vents, and they were pretty small. Jack grimaced as he realized what a goddamned fire hazard this place would be. How the hell had they passed inspections?

He came to stand at the entrance, machine gun at ready. Distantly, he could faintly see the lights from Elizabeth’s team.

A minute passed, then two, then three.

He hesitated as he thought he saw something dark flash by, breaking the lights from her team for just a second. Was that his imagination? It had looked to be about halfway down, so it would be roughly as close to him as it would be to her.

“Elizabeth,” he said, then hesitated as he heard some kind of movement.

“Jack? What?” she replied when he didn’t say anything else.

“I thought I saw movement out in the main hall, and I thought I heard something nearby. Hold,” he replied.

“Holding.”

Jack walked slowly down the empty corridor, towards the nearest hole in the wall, shining his powerful lights on it. His heart rate was rising, his heart pounding in his chest as he kept envisioning some monstrous thing leaping out of the hole. Each passing second as he drew closer only piled on more tension.

He came to stop a few feet from the hole, still not seeing anything inside of it.

He waited.

Swallowed.

Seconds ticked by, feeling longer, almost excruciating in the expectation they buried him beneath.

Finally, Jack let out a sigh. It must have been nothing.

He began to say something over the radio when he heard movement again. He was positive that time that something had moved beyond the hole. It wasn’t an echo, wasn’t some trick of sound, wasn’t his imagination.

“I’ve got something here,” he said.

“What?” Elizabeth asked. He could hear the tension in her voice.

“I don’t know, wait one.”

He didn’t move any closer to the hole, instead he strafed, keeping his light and weapon aimed at it as he got a clearer view of what lay beyond. At first, he saw nothing but rock and earth. But then something moved, farther back in the little cavern beyond. Jack took a tentative step closer, trying to determine what it was. His lights were powerful but there were a few big rocks in the area and they were blocking part of his view, casting shadows.

“I think-” he began.

A black and red cave spider with wickedly bent legs suddenly appeared in the entrance, dropping down from where it had been hiding on the roof just beyond the hole.

“OH FUCK ME!” Jack screamed as he opened fire.

He heard Elizabeth shouting at him but her voice was drowned out by the blood thundering in his ears and the gun roaring in his grasp. He emptied most of his magazine into the giant spider and the second one that leaped into view.

“Spiders!” he screamed as he let up on the trigger. “Giant cave spiders! Fuck!”

He heard gunfire immediately start up from way down at the other end as Elizabeth got jumped as well. Several of the women were cursing over the network and suddenly the holes nearest Jack were alive with activity.

“Oh fuck, come on...” he groaned as he rapidly began backing up, knowing he had to work with the bottleneck the control room entrance offered.

Of course it also meant there was no way out for them.

“Maureen, get over here!” he snapped as he opened fire, emptying the rest of his magazine into another giant spider as it scrambled out into the corridor. He came to stand beside her in the control room and hastily reloaded, both of them aiming at the door. “We want overlapping waves of gunfire, understand?” he asked, trying to speak clearly despite the adrenaline screaming through his system just then.

“I understand,” she replied.

“I’ll go first,” he said as he slapped a fresh magazine in.

With more control, Jack aimed and fired. There were a dozen giant spiders in the corridor already. A hail of gunfire from his rifle began cutting into their awful, angular bodies, spraying their dark gore over the old, dusty walls.

Well, he thought as he hosed them down, looks like Sylvia lost the bet.

Now if they could just all manage to get out of here alive.

Jack saw that there were a lot more coming already and he needed to buy them some more time. Maureen was firing, but he wasn’t sure it would be enough to hold them back, and he had no idea how Elizabeth and her squad were faring.

“Lyra, how long!?” he snapped.

“I’ve got the first piece, working on the second now!” she replied, her usually utterly calm voice sharp and afraid.

“For the love of fucking God, hurry,” he muttered.

“I know, I know!”

“Frag out!” Jack yelled as he pulled the pin on one of the four fragmentation grenades he’d bought with him and hurled it.

He and Maureen stepped aside and the grenade detonated. Within the confines of the many spiders and the corridor itself, the effect was devastating, and it pulped, shredded, and blasted away every spider in a ten meter radius. Effectively all of them, but Jack could already see even more of them dragging themselves through the openings they’d somehow worked in the metal. Apparently it wasn’t as strong as it looked, but that’s what happened when you hired out to the fucking lowest bidder to build your compound.

“Elizabeth, talk to me!” he said as he took aim again.

“A little busy! Up to my ass in fucking spiders!” she snarled amidst a background chatter of several machine guns.

“What’s your timeline?!”

“Anya?!” she snapped.

“Just need three minutes!” Anya called.

“I’ll need five!” Lyra said.

“Fuck,” Jack snapped and resumed fire.

More spiders came, throwing themselves into the gunfire and getting shredded by the bullets. He and Maureen had a good thing going with their overlapping gunfire, and it was obvious that the older woman knew enough of what she was doing to keep up with him on this. But how long would it last? Seconds seemed to take forever to go by as he poured more gunfire into the spiders. How many were there?! He had brought a lot of extra ammo with him this time around, but he didn’t have an infinite amount of it.

“Second piece is out!” Lyra said. “Almost there!”

Jack almost laughed in crazy frustration. He hadn’t expected to run into an entire nest down here! Maureen said nothing, just firing and firing, keeping her gunfire lined up with his own, timing it carefully as the minutes went by.

Finally, it happened.

“I’m ready!” Lyra said.

“Give me all your grenades!” Jack snapped as he emptied his assault rifle and hastily reloaded. Thankfully they didn’t ask why, they just hurried over to him. He pulled the pin on one of his grenades and tossed it, then repeated the action once more. As soon as they were out in the hallway, he turned and collected what the women had for him. Maureen had brought two frags, Lyra had brought two flame grenades.

Good enough.

He looked out in the hallway. The dual explosions had caused a lull, though he could still see a shitload of them attacking Elizabeth’s position.

“Run! Run for the shuttle and don’t stop!” Jack screamed.

This time, Maureen didn’t argue with him. They sprinted out of the room. He moved after them, though hesitated by the first opening. He had an idea, something to buy them enough time to get out of there. Once they were a sufficiently safe distance away, he pulled the pin on his last frag grenade and tossed it in the hole, then started running.

Jack repeated this as quickly as he possibly could, tossing a grenade into each and every hole he passed. He saw dark movement within most of them. He tossed in Maureen’s two fragmentation grenades and Lyra’s two flame grenades as well. Then he saved the last two he had on him: his extra powerfully high explosive grenades, for what came next.

Amidst the explosions and shrieks and gunfire and rumbling of the installation, Jack kept focus on Maureen and Lyra.

They made it to the crossroad section, turned left towards the exit, and disappeared around the corner. Good. Jack kept running and skidded to a halt at the intersection. He saw there were no spiders in front of Maureen and Lyra, and none had appeared behind them. They were already booking it towards the shuttle.

“Elizabeth!” he shouted over the radio as he glanced behind him. There were no more spiders coming out on his end, for now, but there were still a lot on her end.

“What was that?! Those explosions!?” she called back over the roar of her machine gun.

“Grenades! I’m going to throw a high explosive grenade your way, to clear a path for you. Run to me! Got it?!”

“Yeah, wait one!” she replied, and he heard her quickly coordinate with the other two women with her. The five seconds it took her to speak up again felt like ages. “Okay, we’re ready! Go for it!” she yelled.

Jack pulled the pin and tossed the grenade as hard as he could down the length of the corridor. It landed near the back of the horde of giant spiders that had amassed there. He fell back behind the nearest wall right as it went off. It was a significantly more powerful explosion than the fragmentation grenades and he prayed the corridor didn’t cave in. When the explosion ceased, Jack leaned back around the corner and took a look.

There was definitely some damage to the corridor, the floor and the ceiling bore serious stress fractures and burn marks, and three holes had become one giant one, but the spiders were gone. For the moment, anyway. And Elizabeth, Sylvia, and Anya were already barreling towards him through the slowly clearing smoke.

Jack held his ground, keeping an eye out in as many directions as he could in case the spiders reemerged.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Whatever hesitation they’d had apparently dissolved pretty quickly.

Just about the time that the group reached him, every hole began to spit out spiders. “Fuck!” Jack snapped as they reached him.

“What do we do?” Anya asked, the fear obvious in her voice.

“Give me all your grenades,” Jack said.

Elizabeth stared at him for just a second and a half, her gaze hard and analytical, and she must have seen something in his eyes. “Do it,” she said as they began backing into the main corridor. They passed him all their grenades in the precious amount of time allotted to them by the fact that the spiders were getting in each others’ way as they tried to surge into the installation. He ended up with half a dozen on top of the high explosive one he had.

“Run,” he snapped as soon as he had them, shoving a few into his pockets so he wouldn’t drop them as he ran.

“Let’s go,” Elizabeth growled and they began sprinting away after Maureen and Lyra, who he couldn’t see anymore. He heard her demanding confirmation from the other two over the radio as he began following after them.

There was something he was looking for.

As the women ran ahead of him and the spiders massed behind him, Jack hunted frantically for the thing he had noticed in the initial corridor when they’d first made their way down it: a structural weakness. He found it about halfway down the way and immediately set to work. Ignoring the increasing tidal wave of sound that was coming at him from the dozens of giant cave spiders now coming at him from behind.

Some kind of accident must have happened between the three different corporations who’d held onto this place, some industrial thing or human error or maybe just poor welding, but this part of the corridor showed a lot of wear and tear, much more than usual. If he was going to be able to collapse the tunnel like before, it would be here or nowhere.

Jack shoved grenades into the stress fractures, setting their timers to fifteen seconds and, once he had them all in place, activating them in rapid succession. As soon as the last one was primed, he ran for all he was worth.

It was close.

Jack just caught sight of Elizabeth’s tall, bulky form waiting for him at the very end of the corridor.

“What did you do?” she asked, her voice strained as it came to him over the radio.

“I-” Jack began, and then the explosion happened.

He felt something smash into the back of his helmet, hard, and then blacked out.

EPILOGUE

“He’s coming awake.”

“Finally.”

Jack opened his eyes, then immediately groaned and closed them again. His head rang like a gong that had just been struck with a sledgehammer.

“What happened?” he groaned.

In the moment, all he had was a fuzzy impression of a long, dark tunnel of metal, uncertain shapes of giant dangerous things shifting around, and something exploding. And a headache. A fucking awful headache that seemed to consume him.

“You almost died, you fucking idiot,” Elizabeth growled.

“Is everyone okay?” he asked, keeping his eyes closed. “Please tell me everyone’s okay.”

“We’re all fine, Jack,” Maureen murmured. He felt a hand settle on the back of his own. “We completed the mission and got out alive.”

He tried to say something else but a flare-up of pain instead forced another groan out of him.

“Okay, everyone get out, give him some space,” Sylvia said with a professional firmness.

The others began to shuffle out.

“Everyone means you too, Elizabeth,” Sylvia said.

Jack opened his eyes. He realized that the lights were dimmer than he thought they might be. He saw Sylvia standing to one side, Elizabeth standing to another.

“I need to talk with him. Give him something to take the edge off,” Elizabeth replied.

“Elizabeth-”

“I need to talk with him, Sylvia,” Elizabeth said, a warning note in her tone that gave the doctor pause. Finally, Sylvia sighed and grabbed something from nearby.

“This will make you feel better, Jack,” she murmured, sticking something into the IV that was hooked into his arm. He groaned, this time in frustration.

He hated IVs.

But immediately, he began to feel better, the pain bleeding away, though not entirely.

“How are you?” Elizabeth asked after a moment, looking down at him.

“Better,” he muttered, then winced. “A lot hurts. Mainly my head.”

“You got pelted with some projectiles from your little maneuver. You’re lucky it worked and didn’t crush your ass,” she said, her voice sharpening.

“Elizabeth...” Sylvia warned.

She looked up at her, sighed, looked back down.

“I’m not sorry,” Jack replied. Elizabeth blinked in surprise. “I did the right thing.”

She stared at him intently, pursing her lips, then sighed again. “Yes, you did,” she agreed. “It was stupid and risky, but the situation called for it. It was quick thinking on your part. I just wish that I had thought of it instead.”

“Your heavy ass would’ve been a lot harder to carry out,” he replied.

Sylvia laughed loudly in what sounded like surprise.

“Fair point,” Elizabeth said, recovering from her own surprise. “Is this the drugs talking? You normally aren’t this much of a smartass.”

“Maybe,” he murmured. “Thank you for getting me out of there.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, crossing her arms.

He waited. “Well, was that it? You look like you want to say more and I have to admit, I’m fucking tired.”

“Don’t pretend his ‘backtalk’ is bugging you, Elizabeth,” Sylvia said. “I know that look. You like a man who isn’t afraid of you, isn’t scared to tell you what he thinks, but also isn’t some jackass high on his own sense of self importance.”

“Oh shut up,” Elizabeth snapped, not unkindly though. She looked back down at Jack. “I guess I’m mad that the situation became what it did, and that you were injured, almost killed. The grenades worked. The corridor caved in, killing a lot of spiders and trapping the rest. Your armor saved your life. Your skull would have been eviscerated by the impact of the projectiles sent forward by the explosion otherwise. As it is, you’ll be fine. You just need to relax for a day or two. But you did a good job, and I’m proud of you. You kept the spiders from coming after us. So...good job.” She leaned down and gave him a lingering kiss on the mouth.

“That was more than a sufficient reward,” he murmured, already getting sleepy again from the painkillers.

“Good. More’s coming soon,” Elizabeth replied with a grin. “Rest up.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, making her laugh softly.

She left the room and Sylvia came over. “You can rest now, Jack. Your vitals will be monitored continuously. I’ve checked you over thoroughly while you were out. Everything looks fine. No concussions or brain bleeds.”

“Thanks,” he murmured, then yawned.

She gave him a kiss, then left him to rest.

Jack laid on his side, closed his eyes, and began to drift off.

All things considered, he felt pretty good.

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 3 will be out in Fall 2020!

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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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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The Complete Series

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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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 2. 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.