Chapter Sixteen
Belle stared at the door for some time after Connor left, feeling pleasantly blank.
Finally, she got up and found a change of clothing, went over to collect the monitor Connor had broken very deliberately and donned the robe he’d turned his nose up at.
Wondering if there was any point in putting the monitor back on.
Beyond the fact that everyone was bound to notice it was missing and the speculation would begin all over again.
In any case, she had ovulated directly after she’d had sex with Ryne and Torr and before she had sex with Connor.
So it was a tossup as to who had hit the bull’s eye, but it seemed unlikely all three had missed.
It was a statement--Connor’s violence toward her monitor--she decided when she’d bathed and dressed, heading down to the rec room for breakfast.
Connor was her primary. She was his. Undoubtedly, he had decided that she was ready to breed if she’d gotten the monitor and he wasn’t going to stand for her substituting anyone else in his place.
He hadn’t produced a child of his own.
He wasn’t just entitled to one, he was required to produce--just as she was.
He was going to be so pissed off with her if he discovered she’d had sex with both Ryne and Torr and, maybe, was already pregnant by one of them, she realized with a sudden jolt of alarm that felt like she’d actually been shot for several moments.
Thus, she was in a state of disordered nerves brought on by an overwhelming sense of guilt she couldn’t convince herself she had no reason to feel when Connor arrived.
Fortunately, he seemed distracted, she decided after she’d stared at him owl eyed with fright for several moments.
It wasn’t fear of harm.
It was fear of displeasing him.
He didn’t seem to emerge from his preoccupation until the first of the group got up to dispose of their meal clutter.
“Hold on!” he called out, getting up to dispose of his own and then pausing near the door and turning to speak to everyone.
“We may have … a security problem. At this time, we don’t know much.
The shuttle was fired upon, however, when we left the planet.
I sent a squad out to investigate and they found a camp that looked well established.
It’s possible it was an accidental discharge of a weapon and the projectile that struck the shuttle was unintentional.
It’s also possible, however, that it was intended as an attack and we managed to move mostly out of range before the projectile struck.
Either way, there was no actual damage but there could have been.
I haven’t tried to stagger the trips to the Artemis, but I’m thinking, now, that that was a mistake.
Instead of staying for the full ten days, I’d like for everyone to get into high gear and let’s finish up ahead of our schedule so that we don’t get back when expected--just in case somebody is watching and waiting.
“Annabelle--I want you, Boyd, Richards, and McNeal to work on loading critical equipment we still have on the ship to take down. If it’s somebody organized and they have the means to target the shuttles and possibly leave us stranded on planet I don’t want anything we really need in orbit where we can’t get to it. ”
Annabelle chewed her lip. “What if …?”
Connor turned to look at her questioningly.
“What if they want us to bring it down so they can get to it?” she asked in a rush.
“It’s a risk,” he responded mildly. “I considered it. I just feel better about bringing it down where we at least have a chance at it ourselves.”
“And the risk should be low,” McNeal threw in. “The natives have got no familiarity with our technology so there’s no reason for them to think we have something they could use.”
Annabelle studied the people she was going to be working with, hesitant to say anything that might cause ripples of suspicion, but it also made her uneasy to keep quiet. “They aren’t primitives,” she said finally.
Even Connor gave her a sardonic look.
“If they were primitives, they would have been terrified of our technology, don’t you think?
At the rock bottom least, it should’ve blown their mind.
I haven’t seen a reaction out of a single one of them.
They may not be familiar with our technology, but they’ve certainly seen it.
Or technology similar to ours.” She hesitated.
“And … Ryne showed me an old building and said his people used to make things there. There was a war. They’re survivors--not primitives. ”
“They’ve … adapted surprisingly well,” Connor said evenly.
Annabelle shrugged. “I got the impression the war happened a good while ago--a generation or maybe more than one generation ago.”
“Well,” Connor said dismissively, “we already know the Huntress arrived here with colonists several years ago. So they’ve had a chance to grow familiar with Earth technology.”
“Oh,” Annabelle said uncomfortably, feeling her face heat with discomfort that he’d dismissed her opinion as if it was of no consequence.
Or perhaps thought she’d said it to champion the Izun--or more specifically Ryne and Torr? When the truth was she hadn’t wanted to mention it at all for fear it would make everyone more prejudiced against them.
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
Everyone relaxed.
Not that she agreed, but she kept her doubts to herself.
To her mind, Noely had been pretty clear, though, that they’d escaped a disaster in the emergency pods. They wouldn’t have arrived on planet with much in the way of technology--wouldn’t have had time to collect anything that wasn’t standard equipment in a pod.
But she didn’t really know, she reminded herself. That might explain their seeming familiarity with technology.
She just felt like, even so, that they would think of technology as magic and scary if it was something they were unfamiliar with and she hadn’t noticed any of the Izun people behaving in any way she would expect if they’d never seen it.
There’d been groups--different people--in the colony repeatedly since they’d formed a treaty with them and that at least suggested that they all knew what technology was.
They worked twelve hours straight, only taking somewhat longer breaks to rest and refresh with snacks to boost their energy levels. Belle’s tail was still dragging from all of the lifting and carrying when they called it a day and everyone headed to their quarters.
Belle didn’t know why she hadn’t expected Connor to join her in her quarters again, but she hadn’t.
It startled her when she’d showered and returned, barely a little more alert than prior to the shower, to find him waiting.
Without a word, he waltzed her inside and divested her of her robe and then peeled out of his uniform and boots and carried her down on the bunk as if it was the most natural thing in the world and something they had done many times.
He seemed to have memorized every touch he’d tried the night before that had given her pleasure.
Or perhaps it only needed to be his touch?
Whichever the case, she couldn’t determine less pleasure or more desperation in his lovemaking or her perception of it than what she’d experienced their first time together.
He explored everything with his light touches, the suction of his mouth and tiny, light bites until her skin felt like it was on fire and she began clutching at him in wordless despair for him to end her torment by taking her the rest of the way to fulfillment.
He did.
And it was so glorious, she fainted.
Or collapsed from exhaustion.
Either way it was wondrous and she was still sparking and throbbing many minutes later when he began to stroke her--gently at first, lovingly, worshipfully.
And then with a determination to carry her to splendor again in spite of every effort to elude him and play dead.
She had a bad feeling--later when she regained consciousness--that he felt like there was a competition and he was determined to win.
The best part, though, was that he curled around her and cuddled her all night.
And only woke her up one more time for sex.
She supposed he was feeling a little uncomfortable that they’d barely managed to hook up before both of them came and then passed out on their first night together.
Either that or he was determined to knock her up and he thought once a night during her ovulation just wasn’t enough. He needed to fill her so full of semen that her pot was leaking. THAT way the little egg couldn’t escape.
Unless it floated away.
He didn’t seem to realize that she wanted his baby.
Ok, so she was a little messed up about that, because she wanted one for Ryne and Torr, too--because they wanted a baby, a family, and they were the first two that really seemed to want her, to think she was special.
She thought they were honestly fond of her and she was certainly fond of them.
And she hurt for them that their world had been so fucked up by war, their people scattered. They’d lost so much.
She wanted to give them something good to look forward to.
She didn’t know what in the hell to do.
Because she was afraid, now, that things weren’t going to work out like she’d envisioned and she’d done taken the leap--had sex with all of them and now she was really doubtful that that was going to stop the fighting between them.
She was just sure--before--that she’d figured it all out and things would work out. She’d be happy and they’d be happy. They could have sex, enjoy sharing with each other, and nobody would have to worry about getting her pregnant or taking care of her/being stuck with her afterward.
She was starting to have a very bad feeling, though, that there was going to be a major cataclysm arising from her attempts to ‘fix’ the problem.
She should have known better, she thought morosely. She’d always been really bad at figuring people out.
* * * *
Connor decided to cut their maintenance trip short.
He checked the event log to ascertain any glitches that had been recorded so that they could be sure to check those particular systems out and determined the most critical cargo to be taken and in what order.
They worked a shift and a half for five days and managed to get almost seventy five percent of the regular maintenance work done on top of the things that had popped up as in need of attention.
Harvested everything that was ready to be harvested in the Artemis garden and planted another crop.
And then everyone loaded up in the shuttle on the sixth day and left the Artemis--exhausted, unnerved about the possibility of an attack, but immensely relieved to be going ‘home’.
Belle had mixed feelings.
She’d missed Ryne and Torr--way more than she’d thought she should--especially when she’d had more of Connor than she’d had in her entire life before.
Because she had never been with him as an adult, never been intimate with him at all. And she’d been purely in a joyful delirium just from that circumstance alone to say nothing about what it felt like to be with him intimately.
Like heaven.
Before, of course, she’d been a small child and she supposed it was because of that that it had seemed he was always with her, but it certainly seemed to her that, right up until she’d been assaulted when she was thirteen, Connor was more a part of her life even than her parents had been.
Nobody messed with her then.
Even when he wasn’t actually with her to watch over her, nobody messed with her.
Until Jeffery and Newton had decided she belonged to them and they had the right to take even though she fought them with everything she had to protect herself ….
She would’ve welcomed Connor--even then--but of course, he’d been grown by that time and he still thought of her as a little kid--cute because she was little but sexless.
And it made her feel so good to be with Connor she thought she shouldn’t want to be with Ryne or Torr at all, but she did.
It made her feel more than a little sick to think they wouldn’t want to be with her at all anymore because she’d left with Connor directly after she’d been with them.
She thought, very likely though, that Connor was done with her.
She was pretty convinced if the situation hadn’t been convenient for it, and they hadn’t been ‘trapped’ together for so long the liaison wouldn’t have lasted as long as it had before he moved on.
And she was sure he was going to want to now.
He’d never been inclined to stay with any woman long that she knew of.
Not that she’d stalked him, but it was impossible to avoid knowing, hearing, the gossip even though she really hadn’t wanted to know.
Connor liked women, or at least sex, though, almost as much as the women liked Connor. And it was well known that he was disinclined ever to stay long before he moved on.
Of course, choices were limited. In time, he’d made the first choice rounds and moved to second choice. And occasionally, he’d been forced by circumstances to revisit.
But he was always welcome for a return engagement.
She just hadn’t realized what that meant before.
None of them wanted to let him go.
And he hadn’t worn out his welcome even if he parted company with them pretty quickly after he’d said hello.
So it was probably dump time--which made her very unhappy.
And she didn’t think Ryne or Torr was going to be that happy to see her.
It was a good thing that she’d already made plans for being a single parent, she decided a little glumly. She was pretty sure she could cancel the appointment for insemination, though. If she hadn’t collected enough seed by now it just wasn’t doable.