Captain refused. Fucker told them, ‘No, he volunteered, let him go with her. Why risk our lives?’ He ordered them to not volunteer, to let Aaron go with Kels.”
He closed his eyes. Emi knew he struggled not to cry. “The grunts were trying to get back to us. When we got the landing party on board, the first officer relieved the captain of duty, locked him in a storage room because we didn’t have a brig. Fucking bastard. We tried to follow them, not lose them, but they had a small, fast skiff, man. Hit and run group. That’s why they only took two, that’s all they could take. Ransom gang.” He fell silent again for a long moment.
When he next spoke, his voice sounded haggard and drawn.
“Took the grunts three days to find them. They were playing hide and seek in an asteroid field. Grunts used a tractor beam on them, caught the ship, but Kels was hurt bad in the firefight.” Then his tears fell, and Emi leaned in close, her head on his shoulder. “Aaron was still alive. Barely.” He swallowed hard. “The fuckers didn’t rape Kels, didn’t hurt her. If she’d been in a different place on the ship, she would have survived.”
He looked at Emi. “Aaron traded the raiders. Himself for Kels, to not hurt her, not touch her.” He looked at Emi, not wanting to voice it, and her heart caught in her throat. “Aar begged them to leave her alone. They fucked him over hard, man, literally. Damn near beat the life out of him. Nearly killed him the way they used him.” He shook his head. “He crawled to her during the firefight—she was dying. She told him she loved him, to tell us she loved us, and asked the three of us to stay together because she knew we loved each other. He told her he loved her, and then she went. Died in his arms.” He closed his eyes again. “We nearly lost Aaron. He had a lot of internal bleeding. I’d spent enough time in sick bay helping Kels, I’d learned some stuff, and I had basic med assistant training. They had a medic on the grunt ship, but not a doc. Between the two of us we managed to keep him alive until we got him to a spaceport with a hospital. The first became captain and asked the Merchants to keep us together, to let me and Caph stay with Aaron while he recuperated.
He was a decent fucking guy, we really liked him. The captain was the only one on the Margo who didn’t like what we had, no one else gave a shit.
“Aar wanted to die. Between losing Kels after all he went through, he thought he failed her, thought he failed us. Took us three months to get his body healed enough to get him into physical rehab. He tried to kill himself a couple of times. At least one of us always had to be with him, they let us stay with him in rehab. Eventually, he got to the point where he started wanting to live again. When he was ready to return to work, the Merchants offered us bonded crew status and gave him a promotion. We took it, and we’ve been together ever since.
“Don’t tell him I told you this, but me and Caph, we were fucking sneaky there for a while. We’d deliberately get into trouble so he’d have to bail us out, right? Bar fights, do something stupid to a superior, anything. Not enough to get us busted on our asses, but just enough to make sure Aaron felt he had to keep us out of trouble.”
“And you’re still doing it,” she said with a smile.
“Well, not intentionally all the time now. Old habits die hard. It worked though. He started feeling responsible for us. We knew we wouldn’t have to keep an eye on him every second to keep him alive, he was starting to move on.” Ford squeezed her hand. “Aaron swore he would never do what that fucking bastard did to them, he would never leave crew behind, never give up crew unless he was dead already. You already know the captain was executed for dereliction of duty, because Kels died and Aaron nearly did. You don’t fucking do that. You don’t sacrifice crew. You don’t leave people behind.” Ford took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up at the tree canopy. “Caph and I thought maybe after all Aar’d been through that he wouldn’t want the sexual part of our relationship anymore, you know? We understood. But he still wanted to sleep together like we had before, all in a bed. It was a comfort for all of us. We’d think about Kels, we needed each other for support, we still loved each other and by that point it was stupid for us to try to deny it. She’d asked us to stay together. It would have been like spitting on her grave to split up. We didn’t have sex over a year, any of us, because Caph and I didn’t want to put Aar through anything that might trigger flashbacks, right? Aar had fucking horrible nightmares for a long time.
“Then one night he woke up and kissed me and Caph and we figured he wouldn’t want…you know, us to fuck him. We never even thought about asking it of him. And he didn’t. If he wanted to, he’d have said so. But he was ready to try to live again a little, he wanted what we had back, as much as we could have it. Took us a long time to convince him he wasn’t hurting us, to get him to relax when he fucked us, even though he knew we liked it and me and Caph did it to each other anyway. He was so afraid at first, we had to beg him. His emotional wounds eventually healed enough he could enjoy it with us again. At least, some of it.”
“Captain doesn’t bottom,” she whispered.
Ford looked at her and sadly shook her head. “Would you, after something like that?”
“No.” Thank the gods for her empath training. She shuddered to think how it might have emotionally wounded Aaron if she’d done to him what she’d done to the twins during the physical exam.
“Caph and I wished we could have ripped the dicks off those sick bastards for what they did to him. There were still two left alive after the fight, the grunts shot them out an air lock. Alive. At least Kels didn’t suffer the way Aar did. They would have killed her like that.
They forced her to watch though. I know that would have been almost as hard on her as him going through it, but at least they didn’t physically touch her.”
He sadly smiled. “Before that, the four of us used to have fun together, didn’t matter who was top or bottom, we mixed it up all the time. I know this is weird to talk about. She used to love it when he’d be inside her and one of us would get behind him and that just really got her all hot. Any of us, but especially Aaron. It was sort of natural, me and Caph and her and Aaron, even though we were all together, like we are now.”
Emi nodded, understanding.
He kissed her hand. “So there’s our crew story. That’s why I say you’re good for him. He’s happier now than he’s been in a long time.
We all love you, but you’re healing his heart in a way me and Caph can’t.”
“When was the last time you guys were with a woman beside me?”
He shook his head. “There was Kels, and there was you. No other men, either. We had each other—it was enough. All or nothing, babe.
We don’t cheat on each other, even if we could, and we weren’t interested in one-night stands. We always knew if it ever happened, that if we had a woman assigned to us we’d be open to it, but we all agreed she’d have to be willing to be with all of us, no one left behind. Not even like that.”
He kissed her. “You’re the perfect woman for us,” he said.
“That’s why we knew Aaron would never refuse your assignment.” He laughed. “We never believed the DSMC would ever find us a fourth who would put up with us. We agreed that if we got pulled from the line for no fourth, we’d settle for short hops. Then you walked in and the future changed for the better.” Emi wanted to cry, for them—and for a woman they’d loved that she’d never met, a woman who’d loved her boys as much as she did now. “Do you have a picture of her?” Ford froze, then reached to his back pocket for his wallet. He removed a picture card and scrolled through the pictures, then handed it to her.
The three men, Aaron in the middle, the twins flanking him, with a woman in front. Aaron had his arms wrapped around her, and the twins each had a hand on her shoulders and Aaron’s. All four of them were smiling, the men looked nearly twenty years younger. She was cute, dark blonde hair worn in a bob, hazel eyes.