Royal: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 5) Read online

  Luke wasn’t kissing her anymore. He was shifting her, pulling both of her arms behind her back. He pulled her higher and sat up with her, planting her between his legs.

  The position was better for Alex’s neck. He crawled in between her legs and hooked her knees over his shoulders. “Relax,” he murmured against her. Her legs were quivering and so was her belly. He’d made plenty of legs go limp before, but usually, he had to do a little more work. The woman was strung out.

  Or afraid?

  But that didn’t make sense.

  “No fingers unless you want them,” he whispered. “Just my tongue. Do you want that?”

  She blinked at him as though she didn’t understand the question.

  “You’d better answer him,” Luke murmured. He hooked one knee up and rocked it at her side, and she fixated on the movement.

  She was focusing on all the wrong things.

  Alex squeezed the ankle of Luke’s other foot and gave him a querying look.

  Luke gave his head a minute shake and mouthed, “Don’t worry about it.”

  Either he had her figured out or he was on the cusp of discovery, and Alex chose to trust him. He wouldn’t worry unless Luke did.

  “Autumn,” Alex said, massaging her mound with his chin.

  Her head snapped back toward him.

  “Do you want me to lick you? Luke wants to watch.”

  She swallowed and after flitting her gaze to Luke briefly, nodded.

  “Don’t you like it?” Alex started with slow, tender licks down her cleft just to get her open and wet, never taking his eyes off her face. Then he nestled his tongue in between the folds and sought out that little pearl. It was like a treasure for him to carefully excavate and polish, and he did that with the tip of his tongue. He lightly drew around the bud and flicked it up and down every so often so she didn’t get complacent. Every nudge at the underside of the hood made her gasp and squirm against Luke, but she couldn’t move too far. Luke had her arms pinned and Alex was clamping her thighs.

  He stopped gripping her briefly, though, so he could use his thumbs to part her and work his tongue in deeper.

  She tried to squirm away—tried to roll over, apparently—but her movement was limited, and her incapacitation made Alex work harder. He liked the needy noises she made. But he didn’t like that she was trying to run away from the pleasure. In his experience, that was a hallmark of someone who didn’t know what to do with the sensations—someone who’d never felt them so strongly.

  “That’s a pity,” he whispered.

  He made a spear with his tongue and thrust it in and out of her quivering sheath, still holding her wide open for his access. She might have felt ashamed being splayed open like that, but he thought there was nothing sexier. It was taking all the self-control he had not to start rocking his crotch against the bed for his own relief.

  “Mmm.” He flattened his tongue against her sex and licked roughly up and down, and her legs tightened around his head. “She’s going to be tight, Luke.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Figured you’d like that.”

  “Oh, I could make anything work, but tight’s nice. So’s wet. Is she wet?”

  “God,” Autumn spat quietly and squeezed her eyes shut with embarrassment.

  Alex wriggled his chin against her sex again and raised it for Luke so he could see the evidence for himself.

  “What’s she taste like?”

  Her eyelids flew up again. “Luke…”

  “Never mind. I’ll find out for myself.”

  Her eyebrows shot up, and he laughed and kissed the side of her cheek.

  “You’re fun to play with,” Luke said. “You know that?”

  “I don’t like being teased.”

  “Oh, we’re not teasing you. We’re just learning you. Trying not to overwhelm you too fast.”

  Overwhelming her seemed extraordinarily easy, in Alex’s opinion. She was supposed to have been a hard-nosed young business tycoon, but in private, she was a timorous fraud.

  Luke released her arms and sat her forward enough to ease out from behind her. Then he walked around to the end of the bed and joined Alex on it. “Give me a taste.”

  Alex pushed up onto his hands to give Luke the room to work, not expecting to have Luke put his mouth on him rather than Autumn.

  Gripping Alex roughly by the back of his hair, he lanced his tongue into his mouth and licked every soft space he could reach. And then he pulled back, grinning. “I don’t think you had enough to eat.”

  Alex took a moment to catch his breath.

  “I think you need to finish.”

  Alex nodded and as he settled back between Autumn’s thighs, he watched Luke move out of the way. He was pulling the delicate bud between his lips as Luke moved at the right side of the bed. He took off his shirt and dropped his pants with no prelude, and his underwear along with them.

  With Autumn’s clit pressed in his mouth, Alex hummed appreciatively at the sight of him. No matter how many times he saw Luke in the nude, his reaction was always the same. The surge of blood to his cock. The tingle of his balls. The anticipatory constricting of his lungs.

  “Oh God,” came Autumn’s strained whisper.

  Alex released suction on her clit, “Do you like the way he’s built?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Well, thank you.” Luke strutted around to the end of the bed again but didn’t linger there. He went to his bag and bent. While rooting through it, he looked to Alex. “Don’t let me distract you. You had something you were doing. I expect you to do it well.”

  “I’m simply wondering why your clothes are off. Not that I’m objecting.”

  “Keep your eyes on the prize. You’ll find out what I’m up to soon enough.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Luke’s man was easy enough to motivate when he said the right words. Soon enough, he had Autumn bucking and writhing, her hands gripping the bed and the language coming out of her mouth that could have offended even a thick-skinned McGarry.

  “Autumn, sweetheart,” he said, closing his fingers around a tube of lubricant in his bag, “I’m getting the sneaking suspicion you’re not used to a certain kind of attention.”

  She didn’t answer, but he couldn’t really expect her to. Her body was still spasming, belly twitching as hard as he’d ever seen after an orgasm.

  Alex held her legs open and the dirty bastard was staring at the clenching font of all that activity, probably wondering what his cock would feel like in there.

  Luke intended to have him find out, but not right then. The way he saw things, they were still in the getting-to-know-you phase. Luke still needed to learn how best to direct Autumn, Alex needed to get comfortable with her presence, and Autumn needed to just get used to being with men she could trust.

  They could work—the three of them together—but coming together hadn’t been and wasn’t going to be easy. It wasn’t supposed to be, though. That was one of the reasons he hadn’t taken a Jekhan lover. Esteben had advised Luke that he needed a certain kind of partner—someone who was just as much of an asshole as him. That was why he and Alex got along so well.

  He wouldn’t have called Autumn an asshole. She wasn’t one—not really—but she’d certainly absorbed a few asshole traits. Being in the business she was in—and being in the family she was in—she’d had to.

  But she didn’t have to be that way with them. She could keep her public facade and save the fragility for behind closed doors. They wouldn’t tell her secrets to anyone. They had too many of their own.

  Luke had to get both of them to understand the potential. It didn’t have to be Luke and Alex or Luke and Autumn. They could all use what the others had to offer. Jekhans had been making the system work for a thousand years, so why not the three of them?

  Grabbing a couple of condoms from the bag, he looked at Alex. “Clothes, off.”

  Alex only hesitated for a moment. He eased off the bed and onto his feet and quickly
doffed his clothing.

  With what seemed to require a great deal of effort, Autumn pushed herself upright onto her forearms and looked with curiosity from Luke to Alex.

  “Don’t go running off,” he told her, approaching the bed. “We’re still working on heating up the place.”

  She cleared her throat and said, “I was already feeling pretty hot.”

  “Well, this might make you sweat.” Winking, he sat her up and pulled her hand out to him. He dropped the condoms onto her palm. “Hold those for me.”

  She held them stiff-armed, cupping them as though they were bird seed being offered up to a pigeon that had the tendency to peck too enthusiastically.

  He pointed to Alex. “You.” He pointed to the bed. “On your back.”

  Giving Luke a wary side-eyed look, Alex sat at the edge of the bed and then scooted back. The erection he’d been sporting when he’d taken off his clothes had softened, but he didn’t need an erection for what Luke was going to do to him.

  “I like having an audience sometimes,” Luke said.

  Alex gave a grave nod. “Hmm. I recall that about you.”

  “When you’re being watched, you have to be on your best behavior, don’t you?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Good.” Luke crawled onto the bed and hovered over Alex’s long body. With a hand pressed to the mattress at either side of his shoulders, Luke lowered his head to touch his lips to Alex’s mouth.

  His tongue still carried a hint of Autumn’s feminine musk, and Luke lapped at it and sucked the flavor from his lips, his tongue. Pulling back for air, he chuckled and looked at Autumn. “The first time I kissed him, I wondered if he trying to choke me with his tongue since he couldn’t beat me up any other way.”

  “Shut up, Luke,” Alex grumbled.

  Autumn’s lips twitched at the corners.

  “Go on and laugh,” Luke said. “He gets huffy when folks laugh at him. Kinda reminds me of what he sounds like when he’s about to come.”

  “Lucas,” Alex warned.

  Luke dropped another kiss on his lips and waved Autumn down.

  She rolled over onto her hands and knees.

  “Let’s compare notes. Maybe he kisses everyone like that the first time.”

  “You want me to…kiss him?”

  “If he’ll let you. I’d like to see it.” Luke sat back on his heels between Alex’s legs and skimmed his hands down the other man’s powerful thighs. Luke had always liked the look of them—as though Alex would be equally comfortable galloping on a horse to meet his destiny or climbing onto the top of his ship to knock the grime off the clogged solar panels. Versatile, like any good duke would be.

  “You can if you want to,” Alex said to Autumn, but his gaze was firmly on Luke. His expression said, “There’ll be hell to pay later,” but Luke was used to getting that from him. Typical Duke.

  He raked his fingertip up the insides of Alex’s thighs and watched Autumn make her slow approach. Watched Alex’s mouth soften for her and the eventual parting of his lips for her shy, exploratory tongue.

  She held herself up, awkwardly gripping the condoms and using the back of her hand to prop herself into a plank. Her other hand was patting beside Alex’s shoulder as if in search of someplace to press it that wasn’t on him. Actually touching him would have made most the sense.

  Chuckling, Luke gave Alex’s balls a tender caress, testing the heavy weights in his hand and skimming his thumb down the downy seam. Up and down, again and again, adding a few more centimeters each time.

  By the time the pad of his thumb was massaging Alex’s taint, Alex had gotten frustrated enough to pull Autumn down to him. He had her empty hand pressed to the far side of his chest and had her lying half on him as he used his other hand to hold her head in place. He may not have been an enthusiastic starter, but he worked his tongue into her mouth with a dominating eagerness that had her fingers flexing and gasps falling from her lips every time he gave her enough pause to breathe.

  And, idly, he pulled his feet up flat and let his knees fall to the sides as Luke massaged a finger, then two, around and into his hole. With a slick of lube applied to his fingers, he added a third finger and pressed them past the tight ring.

  Alex’s belly quivered and thighs clenched, threatening to dislodge Luke’s hand. He and Luke had been there before, though. They weren’t doing anything new yet. Luke kissed his left knee and down it as he stretched him, and Alex slowly let his legs fall back where they were.

  “Just like that, baby,” Luke whispered against his thigh. He pulled his fingers free and sat back on his haunches again. “Autumn, sweetheart, I need a condom.”

  “Oh.”

  Alex released her with what seemed to be reluctance and watched the handoff through sultry eyes, breathing heavily through his mouth.

  “Not like that.” Luke guided her closer and made her wrap her fingers around his shaft.

  Her face colored immediately and she held him cautiously as though he were made of glass.

  “Standard equipment,” he said with a laugh and leaned in to plant his lips on the sexy bend of her neck.

  “Well, maybe, but…” She pulled her fist slowly up his shaft and tugged her tongue across her lips. “I guess I’m not used to being the aggressor in this space. I just let…things happen.”

  “And that’s fine.” He moved her hand down to the pre-cum-slicked tip and squeezed it tight. “If that’s what you want, you can wait and let things happen, but you need to also be comfortable with what you’re entitled to get.”

  She licked her lips again and rolled her hooded gaze up from his cock to his face. “Am I entitled?”

  He shrugged. “Benefit of marriage.”

  Before her brow had completely finished furrowing, he pulled her out of balance and into a kiss that had her half propped on Alex and held against Luke.

  Evidently, she still didn’t know where to put her hands. She didn’t know what she could touch and what was off-limits, and that should have been such a simple decision for any woman used to getting what she wanted. Perhaps she wasn’t used to winning in as many aspects of her life as he’d thought.

  “Aw, sweetheart,” he said, bracing her upright and nudging the condom hand again. “You’re a mess, aren’t you?”

  She drew in a deep breath and focused too intensely on tearing open the condom packet.

  He nudged her hair back from her face and caught Alex’s gaze over her shoulder. For as often as the other man tried an unreadable countenance, Luke saw the concern and the subtle signs of annoyance in his features. The tight press of his lips. The twitch in his jaw. The high coloring in his face. He still didn’t understand what Luke was doing, but that was all right. Luke could bridge the two of them until Alex figured out for himself that he could have Autumn the same way Luke could. One lover didn’t supplant the other. They supplemented. They’d all grow together.

  Pushing a fall of her hair over her shoulder, Luke angled his body more in her direction. “Put it on me, sweetheart.”

  Her teeth notched into her lush bottom lip as she bent, squinting intently as she applied the sheath to his tip and slowly rolled it down. She massaged a couple of air bubbles down with an unnecessary amount of meticulousness, and he laughed.

  “Sweetheart.” He gave her a quick kiss and let her sit back onto her feet. “You don’t have to grasp at scraps. If you want to touch me, you can touch me. I’m not gonna tease you for it.”

  He grabbed the lube again and applied a generous amount to his cock and also trickled some down Alex’s sac. Then he turned her free hand over and poured some into her palm.

  “You want me to…”

  “Just hold onto that, hmm?”

  He caught her nod in his periphery as he pushed Alex’s knees back to improve his entry angle.

  “I hope you’re enjoying the view.” Alex’s tone had its usual haughty undercurrent. He laced his fingers together behind his head and was a trooper as Luke slid in p
ast the opening.

  Autumn didn’t respond to him. She was too occupied with watching Luke’s achingly slow surge into Alex and also in making sure the lube in her hand didn’t spill.

  Alex let his head fall to the side and arched his spine as Luke pressed against his inner barrier.

  “Don’t shut me out now, baby,” Luke said. “Bear down and let me in.”

  Alex’s hips gave hesitant side-to-side motions and his breath sped as he took more of Luke into him.

  His bellow as Luke fully sheathed himself could have challenged the wind’s howl.

  “Just like that, baby.” Luke leaned his chest onto Alex’s and took his mouth in a rough kiss. Rough because his blood was pounding so damn hard and his body was lighting up at the sensation of being sheathed so deep and so tight inside Alex, and rough because Alex’s movements were just as disordered and they seemed to be working at opposite rhythms. They had the same goal in mind, though—to feel good.

  “You like that burn?” Luke whispered against his mouth. He was waiting for Alex to relax a bit around him before he pulled out a little. “Hmm?”

  The first time was going to be slow, because Alex needed it, and short because Luke wasn’t going to be able to last. He’d never had a problem with lasting before, but he’d also never fucked a man with a beautiful woman watching. The only observer he’d had in the past had been Owen, and those scenarios had always had a woman on her back.

  “Give it to me,” Alex said.

  “Fuck, baby.” Luke pushed up onto his hands and threw his head back as he withdrew a couple of inches and then surged back in.

  Alex swore and clenched, but that was okay because Luke was all the way in.

  Another outward slide and a forceful glide back in that had Alex grabbing his ankles for purchase and his soft cock dancing atop his belly.

  Luke fisted the covers and gritted his teeth as he rocked his teeth and increased his speed. It’d been a year or more since he’d had penetrative sex with anyone and Alex had been worth the wait. Luke was harder than he’d ever been. His nuts throbbed with his urgent need to spend his load. He’d gone without that breathless sensation of desperately needing a climax for so long, and he’d forgotten that he was the director of the scene.