“You don’t want me alone for a little longer?”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
Emi tipped her head back to look at him. “I don’t mind if you don’t.” Truth be told, not having all three men with her for more than a few hours at a time was downright weird, even though she had enjoyed the alone time with each of them.
The twins arrived an hour later. It felt good to have her men together again. The twins hugged and kissed her.
“Good morning,” they parroted. Emi laughed.
Aaron rolled his eyes. “Twenty years. I’m telling you, Em, you’ll stop thinking it’s cute at some point.”
“It’s freaky, but it’s still cute.”
“Why don’t you go get us a table downstairs? We’ll be right down,” Aaron said.
She met his eyes and knew he wanted to talk to the twins alone.
“Okay.” She kissed all of them and staked out a quiet corner booth away from other patrons.
The men followed a few minutes later. They all looked happy, but a slight haze of melancholy hovered over them, especially Ford. She already knew he’d agreed to Aaron’s request and wondered when they’d have their talk.
“Ooh!” Caph said, grabbing her hand. “Let me see!” He studied the ring, then leaned over and kissed Aaron. “You did good, Cap.” Aaron blushed, the only time she could ever remember seeing him do that. Ford looked at the ring next, and smiled.
“It’s perfect.” He also gave Aaron a kiss. “This makes it official.
Well, not that we needed a ring, but we wanted you to have something from us.”
They ate breakfast. When they finished, Aaron glanced at the other men then turned to Emi. “Why don’t you and Ford take another run over to the Botanical Gardens, see if there’s anything else over there you might want for the hydro lab? I need to talk to Graymard for a little bit. We’ll all catch up here for lunch.” They weren’t fooling her, but if that’s how they wanted to do it, she’d play along. “Okay, that sounds fine.” Ford grinned. “A little more alone time.” Ford and Emi took the car, while Aaron and Caph took the truck.
Once they were alone she leveled her gaze at him. “You guys didn’t have to go through this much trouble, sweetie.” His blue eyes clouded, sadness threatening. “It’ll make it easier on me.”
She hadn’t thought about it like that. “Okay.” They found a shaded bench deep in the Botanical Gardens, secluded, quiet. They could almost be in the middle of a forest.
He held her hand in both of his and stared out into the distance.
Not in space, but in time. Someone passing by might have thought he was looking at the huge eucalyptus tree in front of them. Emi knew he was looking back at their voyage on the Wayfarer Margo so many years ago.
Chapter Thirteen
“We were assigned to the Wayfarer Margo after we’d been in the Merchants for a year,” Ford started. “The captain was sort of a jerk, but sometimes they are. No big deal, right? The three of us were close friends, of course. We never minded rooming together, so when space was short we usually ended up in the same cabin, sometimes in the same bunk depending on who had watch and if the ship was short on space. So we get to the Margo, and there’s this one girl on board with the other guys. But she wasn’t involved with them. The Merchants don’t have the same rules about that like the DSMC does. There’s no expectation of involvement, even though if it happens, it’s fine.
“The captain was, we found out through the grapevine, pissed that Kelsey wouldn’t get involved with him. She didn’t like him. Can’t say as I blame her. When we were assigned, she had a cabin to herself, the other cabins were full. She volunteered to let us bunk with her. It was that or she’d have to bunk in a storage closet.
“I mean, we all had chips, like in the DSMC. It prevented force.
So it’s not like she was worried. We liked her immediately because she was so funny.” Ford paused, thinking, reliving the past. “Smart as a whip, she was a Beta-rank med. Grew up on Mars, so she’d been used to dealing with military brats. She kept us in line, but we sort of felt protective of her.
“We were all together about a month and we’re on shore leave one night at a spaceport. Had a little too much to drink¯well, a lot, we were tanked¯but she was sober. She rounded the three of us up and got us back to the ship. Started to pour us into bed, then she pulls the bunk mattresses onto the floor.” He laughed. “We thought we were really drunk, couldn’t believe it was happening. She locks the cabin door and sits in the middle of this makeshift bed and rips off her shirt. Says, ‘Okay, boys, you’ve kept me waiting long enough.’” He paused again, a sad smile caressing his gentle lips. “Well, she didn’t have to ask us twice. Even with us drunk, the chips would have kept her safe, but she was willing. She turned us every which way but loose that night.” He looked at Emi. “That’s also the night she broadened our horizons, so to speak. We’d never done anything like that before. We were close friends. Brothers, even. We’d never…you know.”
Emi didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to interrupt him, so she simply nodded.
He continued. “We woke up the next morning, hung-over and all of us a wee bit…worried. She’s sitting there, smiling at us. Kissed all of us and said, ‘I hope you boys will give me a show like that every night.’” He laughed. “We weren’t sure exactly what happened at first, so she filled us in. Before we could start freaking out, Kels said, ‘If you’re gonna be my boys, you’ve got to let me have a say in what happens. It’s obvious you all liked it, what’s the problem?’
“Why not?” He kissed Emi’s hand and looked across the path again. “We never realized we were like that. And to be honest, I don’t think we’d be like that with anyone else. We had to admit being bi with each other¯and her¯felt right. She sure as hell got a kick out of it. We didn’t talk about it with others, obviously, but it only took a couple of weeks for us to realize it was right for the four of us. And if she wasn’t feeling in the mood, she’d curl up in bed with us while we took care of each other.
“We pulled the mattresses down every night. It was nice being able to all be curled up together like that, you know? Just sort of tangled together. That was her idea. We all fell in love with her, but we didn’t feel jealous. She fell in love with us, too. She made us promise we’d all stay together.”
He went silent again, his thumbs gently tracing her knuckles. “The captain was pissed. Here he’d been trying to nail her, and then the three of us come on board and she picks us. No one else cared, some of the guys on our ship were married or involved, but that captain, man, he was an asshole after that.
“We were together for a while on that vessel, about a year. On one mission we were sent out with the ISNC to do some explores in a sector where there’d been some problems with raiders. The captain, Aaron, Kels, and two others including the first went planet-side, left me and Caph on board with two more. The ISNC ship had gone to check out a distress call nearby.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath. His voice grew hoarse. “It was a decoy. The raiders grabbed the landing crew. They wanted Kels, obviously. They told the captain he had to hand over at least one other crew for ransom or they’d kill them all. Aaron demanded they take him, because he wanted to try to protect Kels. Aar was the second officer at the time.
“Fucking asshole let him go.” Ford’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “The first officer tried to get the captain to go instead, or to let him go, thinking they wouldn’t hurt Kels if they had a high-value hostage, right? Or to try to trade himself for Kels, to protect her.