A Menage Made On Madison [The Federation 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read online

  At her teasing, he rolled his eyes. “I meant, you’re right—you have tainted me. You’ve turned me into an Earthling.”

  “That’s why I don’t just love you, I actually like being with you, too. You were a real Shuzon jackass when I first met you,” she teased.

  “A jackass, was I?” He growled.

  “A lovely one.”

  “Oh, you can’t take it back now. The insult has been made and my pride can’t take it.”

  “Don’t be a baby.”

  He grinned at that. “You can’t have it both ways. I can’t be a jackass and a baby.”

  “I’m a woman. I can have it any way I want.”

  “Double standards are also a technique perfected by Earthlings, I think.”

  “Humans are sorely undervalued. You Federation lot could learn a lot from us.”

  “Yeah, yeah. What were you doing down here anyway?”

  “Is it that unusual to see me working?” she asked, affronted. Something she spoiled by grinning. They both knew Parker tended to overdo it more than anything.

  “In your office, yeah. You’re normally on the floor, keeping an eye on the staff.”

  “Not this morning, honey. Rafer is starting to get bored, so I need to entertain him.”

  “Ah, so you came for the ledgers.”

  She nodded. “I’m hoping they’ll keep him occupied for a while.”

  “Going on the hunt for a thief will probably amuse him. In fact, I reckon that could be his role at the hotel. Chief Troubleshooter. It’s probably similar to what he’s been doing at the moment. Only without the starships and high chance of death.” When she flinched, he sighed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Why not? It’s the truth. I need to accept that he was in the Fleet. I should be over it already. It’s not like.…”

  “Not like what, maja?”

  She shrugged. “It’s not like if I’d known, it would have made me feel any better. You were right about that. It was wiser to keep me in the dark.”

  “I’m not going to lie, Parker. I knew that his being in the Fleet would be a problem. I know you hate them.”

  “In a general sense.”

  He chuckled, then pressed a kiss to her nose. “Go and take those ledgers up to Rafer. He’ll probably be wondering where the lukcin you are.”

  His words struck a chord with her, one that she needed to address. “Are we okay, Knox?” she asked, touching her lips to his. “About Rafer, I mean.”

  He smiled. “Any problems I have with my twinling are my own, Parker. They’re nothing to do with our relationship, or yours with him.”

  “How can that be, though? I mean, I don’t want you to resent him.”

  “I won’t, maja. I just need to work through whatever the hell it is he’s making me feel by being here at last.”

  She eyed him. “Then maybe you should be the one to take the ledgers to him. While I wash up. Let’s face it, as soon as I walk through the front door, he’ll scent that I’ve been with you. And no matter what he says, he’s not ready for that. I can get washed up and you can talk to him.”

  Knox grimaced. “You’re presenting that as a fait accompli.”

  “Yup,” she told him cheerfully. “You’re going to procrastinate over this shit, when you could just deal with it now and get over your anger with him. Simple.”

  He grunted, then disentangled his legs from hers. Getting to his feet, he helped her up and rearranged his clothes. “Let’s get this over with.”

  It was hard for her to repress her grin. “Such enthusiasm.”

  When he rolled his eyes, she sniggered, held out a hand, then led him to the elevator. She had a feeling this would be a do-or-die moment. Either Knox would work out his irritation with Rafer, or he’d make the situation worse.

  The beauty of them being twins was that they couldn’t stay mad at each other forever.

  Just long enough to piss her off.

  And, in good conscience, Parker couldn’t sleep—or not sleep—with Rafer until Knox was on good footing with his twin. And God, her body called her a fool for needing to wait.

  Parker hadn’t lied when she said Rafer wasn’t ready to have sex, but he would be soon, and damn, she was ready to fuck him raw and rattle his bones, and in a way his sore and bruised body wasn’t prepared for.

  Chapter Eight

  Staring up at the ceiling was starting to get tedious. It hadn’t exactly been fun the first time he’d looked at the corniced corners, and the pastime was certainly starting to get old.

  It didn’t help that he agreed with Parker. No matter what the hover chair indicated about his vitals, the readings of which had led his medic to state he was on the mend, Rafer knew something wasn’t right with his legs.

  Oh, they were healing, but it always took a Shuzon a goddamn age for their bodies to accept polinium pins, the parts that kept the damaged bones together. It was more than likely that another race would be on their feet by now. Rafer had been injured often enough to know it would be at least a semanal until he’d be walking around the suite.

  The idea pissed him off more than he could say. He was finally with his mate, Parker was here, in his lukcin bedroom, spending half her time hovering over his bed, and he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

  His cocks were in a perpetual state of half-hardness, but no matter how times she bent over him, adjusting his covers and inadvertently displaying a bit of leg, or making her skirt perfectly delineate the curve of her butt, he never had a full hard-on. Not yet, anyway, and it was a new deya. The thought made him grin up at the cornices.

  He’d be concerned about his dicks, but Rafer just knew it was his body’s way of telling him he wasn’t ready. Even if he was mentally.

  In this instance, the spirit was willing while the body was weak.

  When Knox had told him someone was embezzling from the hotel, he’d leapt at the chance to investigate. Anything to put an end to the slow torture of the tedium of staring at four walls.

  Parker spent as much time with him as she could. But she worked a lot. In fact, he was surprised by how often she disappeared downstairs to “check” on something or other. It didn’t come as a surprise that the five mins it should have taken for her to go down to her office to collect the ledgers turned into half an heura.

  When the door to the suite eventually opened, he learned two things.

  Parker wasn’t alone, Knox was with her. And they’d had sex.

  He didn’t know whether to be jealous or not. Although jealousy was not an appropriate emotion to feel at all. Not when it was his felixi, a mate destiny had decided he had to share.

  Shuzon breeding families consisted of two bound males and two bound females. While the bond was equal, it was only natural that one male drifted toward one certain female, and vice versa.

  In their instance, he had to share Parker. That he’d even thought the word jealousy told him it would be a long path to a peaceful relationship between the three of them.

  At least he wasn’t alone. Knox was acting like a male Shuzon kir around a female. Rafer half expected him to start beating his fists on his chest at any given moment.

  Bearing that in mind, he was shocked when Knox appeared in his doorway, then slouched in as the door slid back into place, locking the two of them into the sleeping chamber.

  It saddened him that his choice of career had created a chasm between him and the man he’d been born with, the man who had shared the womb with him. He’d been born to be a soldier. It had been in his blood, just as it was in Knox’s to be a merchant. Sometimes, a man couldn’t change what he was, not to suit his twinling, not to suit his mate.

  Still, it hurt that the closeness every Shuzon twinling had would never be between him and Knox. Too many annals had passed apart. They were completely different creatures now. Not the symbiotic pair they should have been. Another reason why the word jealousy had crossed his mind. And with it, another sin to lay at his door.

  “
Knox,” he murmured, deciding to start the conversation because his twinling certainly didn’t seem to intend to.

  Rather than take a seat opposite him as Parker did, Knox had bypassed the chair and headed to the bank of windows. Looking over the clouds, down to the complex he had crafted with the help of their mate, Knox was surveying his world. It was hard not to feel like the poor relative. While his rank in the Fleet had paid well, very well, it was nothing in comparison to the wealth Parker and Knox shared.

  When they finally became a fully realized partnership, Rafer knew he’d have to think long and hard about what he could bring to the relationship. A cheeky smile and a Fleet uniform certainly wouldn’t pass muster.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, trying to kick start a conversation. The silence between the two of them was suddenly painful…but that might have been guilt talking. It was his fault they had nothing in common anymore. It was his fault his twin was more like a stranger than anything else.

  “Parker would like me to make amends with you.”

  “Parker would,” Rafer commented. “Not you?”

  Knox shrugged. “It isn’t that I don’t want to, it’s that I’m still mad at you. Parker says I’m right to be angry, that it’s justified. It’s hard to reconcile that with the knowledge I once knew you better than I knew myself.”

  Perhaps it was destiny that Knox’s words ran along the same path as Rafer’s thoughts just had. “I can’t regret leaving for the Fleet, Knox. I know you want me to, and I hate that we will forever be the most unusual set of Shuzon twinlings, but I did a lot of good out there. It wasn’t all a waste, I can promise you that.”

  “I’m sure you did, Rafer. I expect nothing less from you.”

  That certainly didn’t sound like a compliment. “What do you want me to say, Knox?”

  “Nothing. I just need to work through this. It’s something I need to handle on my own.”

  “What is this? What exactly do you need to work through?”

  Knox swiveled around, switching his attention from the world he’d created with his own hands to the brother that had abandoned him over one hundred annals ago. He studied Rafer, eyeing him carefully, before saying, “I need to come to terms with the fact Parker is yours, too. Even though I don’t feel you deserve her.”

  When his starship had been attacked with IEDs, a piece of shrapnel had sung through the air and lodged itself in his stomach. He’d experienced a lot of pain in his life, but nothing like that agonizing tearing of flesh and muscle. An injury he’d known could kill him. This, Knox’s revelation, was the emotional equivalent.

  For a set of male Shuzon twins to find their mates, the moment was miraculous. Those females, or in his and Knox’s case, female, were priceless. A male would give up his life, in a flash, to save his females. The connection was galactically unique and envied. That Knox didn’t think him worthy of it hurt.

  But the truth of the matter was, Rafer wasn’t sure if he deserved Parker either. He’d sacrifice anything to keep her safe, but was that enough? Evidently his twinling didn’t think so.

  Knox hadn’t finished twisting the knife yet. “I wish, and I can’t help it, that I’d never let you anywhere near her that Libac, and that you hadn’t consummated the bond two Fahnils ago. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have triggered your mate bond. Until then, neither of us really knew if Parker was both of ours. There was no reason to believe she was. She’s not Shuzon, not made for two mates. It was my own stupid fault for letting her anywhere near you.

  “Because of that, I’ve watched as every annal, Parker’s body cried out for you. This last annal, I could barely touch her. Couldn’t touch my own felixi because if I did, if I let things get out of hand, if I let her come, she’d pass out on me.

  “It’s the fact you could leave her in that state, when I told you how bad she was getting…all of these things just make me question whether you’re worthy of her. I guess I’m bitter, and I never thought I’d feel that way about you, Rafer. Mostly, I’m pissed off at you for making me feel like this at all.” He scrubbed the back of his neck with his hand.

  “You don’t pull your punches.”

  “That’s Parker’s influence. Earthlings are surprisingly blunt.”

  Rafer grimaced. “What can I say, Knox? I probably don’t deserve her. I’ve been away too long, I know that. But you have to understand, the Fleet isn’t a regular job. You can’t just quit. And in my rank, I’m lucky they’re letting me retire at all.”

  “Bullshit. I didn’t ask you to quit or to retire. But you didn’t work all the time. There’s zero reason why you couldn’t have spent your free time here. Why you couldn’t have helped Parker then.”

  Rafer hissed as his twin cut away at his reasons, leaving him with the unsavory truth. “I couldn’t come back.”

  “Why not?” Knox asked with a sneer.

  “I’m not going to lie, my excuses are selfish.” He sucked in a breath. “If I’d come here, if I’d started our relationship, I wouldn’t have been able to go back.” His hands clenched in the sheet. “That notte we all spent together…I never expected my reaction to her to be so strong. I just thought…well, like our mothers, that she was just an amusement. That we’d look for and find two mates in the future.

  “I knew you’d been with her a long time, I knew she meant a lot to you, but I was arrogant enough to think you’d follow tradition.”

  “Like you did,” Knox bit out.

  “I said I was thinking arrogantly, Knox. Cut me some slack. I didn’t realize how hard I could fall for one woman, an Earthling at that.” He bowed his head, stared at his fingers as he pleated the sheets covering his legs, legs that looked like a patchwork quilt. Endless seams of scars and scar tissue. Therapy would eradicate some of the lines, but they’d always be there. A badge of honor and a curse, a memory of the good he’d done and what he’d sacrificed to do that good. “If I came back, I knew, I just knew I’d go AWOL.”

  Knox frowned. “I know you had some time off the spaceship.”

  “Every six semanals for three or four deyas.”

  “Why couldn’t you just spend them with us? You wouldn’t have gone AWOL, you’d have gotten used to having to come and go. At least Parker wouldn’t have been left to suffer, Rafer.”

  “Knox, you’re not fucking listening.” At the Earthling curse, one Parker had taught him the other deya, Knox stiffened. “I couldn’t. Don’t you think I wanted to be with her? With you? Of course I did. Griljerrd, not a deya passed when I didn’t miss you. Before Parker came alone, it was hard to leave even then. That first annal, I think I….”

  He broke off long enough to have Knox asking, “Go on. Tell me, Rafer.”

  “I spent most of that annal crying myself to sleep.” He flushed at the admission. “I was in a place that was right for me. I could sense that. I’d never been at ease in the business. I’d always felt out of place. But in the Fleet, even in the barracks and during first training, it just gelled with me. I still missed you. It was like I’d cut out a part of myself, sacrificed it to become a member of the Fleet.

  “I knew leaving Parker would be harder than leaving you. How could I endure that when I knew I had more annals to serve?”

  Knox shook his head, but his face was tinged gray. Sorrow. Sadness. It was a relief to see his twinling felt some compassion for him. There was some give, some leeway. For the first time since he’d entered the room, Rafer felt like he could breathe. Like maybe Knox wouldn’t think he’d been saddled with the worst twinling in the galaxy.

  “You stupid bastard,” he relented on a sigh, and somehow Rafer knew that wasn’t an insult. Acclimating himself to his brother and their mate’s way of speaking would take a long time in coming. Knox had evidently adopted some of Parker’s speech patterns, making even the Lexicon Translator have to work hard. “Look, Parker needs you, and I do, too. I’m just being stubborn. I’ve had to care for her myself all these annals. It was hard, Rafer. I needed you, and you weren’t there for ei
ther of us. I had to learn a lot, and I’m going to have to relearn it all.”

  “I know, and I’m not trying to rush either of you into anything. I just…when they said I could go back to the barracks to recuperate, there was nowhere else I wanted to be but here.”

  Knox cocked a brow. “Pull that sappy shit on Parker.” He grunted. “More likely to work on her than me.”

  Rafer’s lips twitched. “It was worth a try, mostly because it’s the damn truth.” He sighed. “You’ve no idea how long I’ve been desperate to come back here. I fucked things up for us when I enlisted with the Fleet, but I just knew it was what I had to do, where I was supposed to be. You’re a merchant. It’s in your blood like it’s in our parents’. For me, at that time, it would have been like dying a slow death riding a desk instead of a starship.”

  “I stopped resenting you for leaving a long time ago, Rafer. I know why you did what you did, and at the time, being separated from you was a nightmare. We both know that. The only problem I have with you now has to do with Parker.

  “Mainly, I want to know that you’re retiring or whatever the hell it is you need to do to get out of the Fleet. I won’t let you bind yourself to her, finally give her body what it’s been craving all these fucking annals, only to fuck off back to the Fleet.”

  Rafer nodded his understanding. “You’re well within your rights to wonder if this is a flying or a permanent visit. For my part, it’s permanent. I’m ready to retire.”

  “Why now? Because of Parker?” Knox interrupted abruptly, crossing his arms over his chest as he turned away from the window to face his brother again.

  “Yeah.” Rafer scrubbed a hand over his face. “I would be a serviceman until I died if I could. But I can’t have that and have Parker, too.”

  “So, what? You’re going to resent us both for tying you here, for stopping you from riding a starship and pushing you behind a desk?”

  Rafer’s laugh was gruff. “The higher up the Fleet you go, Knox, the less action you see. I’ve been behind a desk for the most part of the last two decades. I only see any active duty if the situation merits it.”