Shifting Currents (21 page)

“So what are you going to get for us?” She slapped a hand on Lisa’s ass, who shrieked around Hans’s cock. “What’s she bargained for?”

“Plans,” Hans moaned. “Oh gods, your tits.”

Karen leaned so her nipples hit Lisa’s shoulder blades. “I want those in my face when I come.”

“I need to make the little slut come first.” Karen slapped Lisa’s ass again.

Karen slammed her hips in Lisa. “Touch your clit,” she ordered, and Lisa’s fingers went there.

“Take it,” Karen snarled, her hands on Lisa’s hips. “Take all of it.”

Lisa sucked hard and released Hans’s cock. “Coming,” she screamed. Jagged cries shuddered through her. She slumped on her side, her cheek resting on Hans’s leg.

“Nice and hard, now,” Karen said, admiring Hans’s cock. Dragging Lisa up by the hair, Karen lay on her back next to Hans. “Suck my cock now,” she said, pushing the leather cock into Lisa’s mouth. “You watching this, Hans?”

Hans turned on his side. His hand squeezed Lisa’s ass.

“She’s a good cocksucker, isn’t she?” Karen said.

Lisa rolled the leather cock in her mouth and looked up at Karen.

“Get it all.”

“When do I get to fuck you?” he asked.

Karen pushed her breasts together. “After you make me come.”

Hans latched on to her nipples, rubbing his face and moaning over them. Lisa and Karen exchanged a look over his head. Lisa rolled her eyes and gave the leather dildo a last lick.

While Hans was utterly distracted playing with Karen’s breasts, Lisa pushed her fingers inside Karen.

“Finally,” Karen moaned.

Lisa flicked her fingers over Karen’s clit, while Hans laved his tongue over Karen’s breasts.

“I like your enthusiasm, Hans.” Karen smiled and gasped when Lisa plunged fingers inside her.

“I bet your wife would like it if you played with her pussy more,” Lisa said.

Hans just grunted.

“Just lick it like you’re doing to my tits.” Karen held his head down. “Suck it harder.”

He pulled and stretched her nipple until she cried out, and then he did it to the other. Lisa stretched out on the other side, her fingers still fucking Karen. When Hans let her in, they both sucked on Karen’s breasts.

“Gods,” Karen cried.

“You’re not mad at me for fucking Hans, are you?” Lisa asked, her fingers moving at a fever pitch inside Karen.

“No,” she said. “I just like treating you rough.”

Lisa grinned. “I like it too. I want you to spank me.”

Hans grunted. “Can I fuck you yet?”

“See where she’s got her fingers?” Karen said.

“That’s so hot,” he groaned.

“Put that enthusiastic tongue to good use.”

Hans licked Lisa’s fingers, Karen’s clit, anything he could get his tongue on.

“Like this.” Lisa showed him, positioning him. “Now roll your tongue all over that until I tell you to stop.”

Karen held him there, her hips bucking. Lisa kissed up her body and reclaimed Karen’s breast as hers.

Karen was sighing, writhing.

“Thanks for doing this,” Lisa said quietly, kissing her nose and forehead. “It means a lot to me. If we can get news of Alcatraz, we have a better shot of rescuing my brother’s pack.”

“Anything for you,” Karen vowed and pulled her down for a kiss.

Karen came with Lisa’s tongue in her mouth. They were still kissing when Karen started to shake again. Her eyes grew wide. Lisa looked down, and Hans was still greedily sucking on her clit.

“Go, Hans,” Lisa cheered.

Karen screeched, whined, and shuddered again.

“Now?” he asked.

Karen barely nodded before he covered her completely.

“Gods, I like watching you get fucked,” Lisa said. “You’re so beautiful.” She stroked her hair.

Karen locked her legs around Hans. “Anything for you,” she said again. “Oh.” Her eyes rolled back in her head. “Fuck yeah.”

Hans was incoherent when he came, muscles corded on his neck, and his eyes wide. He shuddered, pumped a few times, and collapsed on his elbows.

“I’ll get you whatever you want,” he panted. “Whatever you want.”

Chapter Thirteen

Bethany

Two months later

Exhausted, Bethany climbed down from the train to a part of the world she never would have thought she would see. The Pacific Ocean in the distance looked wilder than its Atlantic counterpart. The rumors exaggerated the “little islands” popping up from the sea, and if whole universities or buildings were still intact, Bethany couldn’t see it from where she stood. What she could see was more desperation. People were swimming and drowning. Ramshackle boats sank under the treacherous waves. Sailboats dotted the horizon.

As they unloaded the train, the excitement at finally being at their destination dimmed. It had taken longer to get to the shoreline with the caravans than the entire trip from Colorado to the Reno station. It had been a grueling trip, long and boring with stabs of terror to keep them all on edge.

When Bethany wasn’t running the electricity on the train, she had been looking out the windows. Miners dug for precious stones and buried treasure. If she was a normal and had a pickax, there was where the money would be—and the danger.

During one perilous chug, they’d had to stop the train and clear the line of rockslide debris. Lucas told her there had been lots of human remains there too. One portion of tracks had sunk into the earth. While the engineers built a temporary bridge, Bethany had looked deep into the crevice where bubbling magma would cause instant death. The Shifters flew over the crevice. Bethany and Vera took the trucks south until they found a way to cross. The train slid sideways and almost was lost, but they had built barriers. It had been harrowing, but they managed to cross the chasm. Lewis shifted into a dragon and lifted the train, car by car, until it was back on the tracks, and things returned to normal until the next blockage.

The nomads stopped following after the chasm, but Bethany couldn’t relax. In Colorado, she had spent most of the time recovering from being immersed in the truck for days on end. It took her a week to remember how to walk. Lucas had been treating her with kid gloves since then. She missed their lovemaking, but she wasn’t strong enough for a wild time. Things still felt fragile inside her. Bethany didn’t like how he was keeping things from her, not sharing what he was thinking to spare her the worry. She worried anyway. His thoughtfulness touched her, though. She wasn’t just a battery to him. For the first time in her life, a man wanted to cherish her for something other than the Tech she could provide.

“I don’t want you to control the vehicles again,” Lucas said as they trekked toward the coastline. If he had his way, she’d be cuddled up in the back of the leather caravan trying not to listen to Jesse and Lem sixty-nine each other.

“I handled it all right,” she said. What Bethany didn’t tell him was it felt wonderful to not have a body that ached and demanded things of her. Hunger, voiding, sleeping, it had been overwhelming when she was forced back into her body. She missed being inside the machine, but it frightened her that one day she wouldn’t want to come back out.

“Let me know when the walking is too much for you.”

Bethany wanted to walk. Using her legs reminded her she was still human.

The lights of Reno weren’t far in the distance, and she was looking forward to experiencing this boomtown fully aware of her surroundings.

Lisa and Karen were in love with the town around the Gran Juc station. They were talking about going back there and setting up permanent residence. It was sweet. Bethany wondered what she was going to do if Daniel wasn’t at the prison. She had looked for him everywhere on all their stops. If he wasn’t at the prison, Bethany just hoped he was somewhere protected and content with his life.

“What happens after we find your pack and rescue them?” Bethany asked.

“It depends on how the rescue goes. If we destroy the people experimenting on us, maybe we’ll make a home in Nevada. Colorado seemed nice too. There’s a whole country to explore.”

“Do you want to live like nomads? Or do you want to settle down?”

Lucas looked off into the distance. “It isn’t really safe for Shifters to settle down in one area unless they have the protection of a tribe.”

“Sometimes not even when they are a part of a tribe.” Daniel was proof of that. They said he went feral and mauled those people. What if those people had already been mauled? She couldn’t believe he was guilty. And yet he’d left her all alone.

“What are you thinking about?”

“My brother,” she said.

Reaching out, Lucas took her hand. “We’ll find all our people.”

“You sound so sure.”

“We’ve come this far,” he said.

They camped for the night, circling the wagons and caravans. The sound of sex and debauchery had Bethany flip-flopping in her bed. Lucas was on night watch, and she was feeling horny and out of sorts. Her tent was cozy but lonely. She curled up in her blanket and tried to relax. Her mind longed to jump into the nearest electronic device and play in the virtual wonderland that was out there.

Sleep came eventually, her body warring with her mind. Bethany dreamed she was being fucked, and damn it felt good. She couldn’t see who it was, but she pictured it was Lucas. Lucas who was treating her like a woman and not a porcelain doll that would crack. The buzzing on her clit felt like a vibrator—one of her secret finds. They were worth more than her pistol in trade. Was she doing herself in her sleep?

With that thought, Bethany woke up, gasping with denied relief. Her vibrator was locked up safe with her pistol. Her pussy still throbbed with the memory of the buzz. Cries of lovemaking sifted to her. She recognized Lem and Jesse at it again.

Turning over, she heard another set of muffled moans. Was it Karen and Lisa? Nah, Bethany was sure that Karen and Lisa were too busy rooking someone out of something. Fucking would come later after the profit had been counted. Not that she could blame either one of them. The information they got on Alcatraz should make their assault easier, provided the man hadn’t been lying nor the procedures changed.

Unable to get back to sleep, she figured she should go over the documents again and at least be useful. She crept out of her tent and silently moved past Jesse and Lem’s tent. The flap was open slightly, and she peeked through, unable to resist the sounds inside. Lem had Jesse on all fours and was banging the shit out of her. Bethany flushed. So that was where the dream came from. She moved along with only a slight pang that she hadn’t taken Maya up on her offer of Lem.

Lisa and Karen’s caravan wagon was locked. Knocking as softly as she could didn’t produce any results. They were probably out and about somewhere. The electric truck called to her. What could be the harm? Easing into the bench seat, she curled up and closed her eyes.

“I’ve been waiting for you,”
Vera hummed.

Bethany let go of her mortal body and entered the radio waves where Vera danced to a waltz from 1910.

“Dance with me,”
Vera said, swooping her up into a reel that twirled them around the night. Stars were their ballroom, and the aches of her body were long forgotten.

“When are you going to stay with me?”
she asked.

“I can’t.”
Bethany shook her head.
“I have to find my brother. Lucas needs me.”

“What about your needs? You need this.”

Bethany couldn’t argue. This plane of existence felt like home. She almost wished she never met Vera. Then she would have never known what she was missing.

“I’ve been to the island you’re going to.”

Research! Bethany’s soul lit up. She could explain away her time in the Tech realm as research.
“Take me there.”

Vera shook her head, radiant. She was dressed in a gown of power, and diamonds of light adorned her hair and wrists.
“It’s a dangerous place. The building itself has the standard power grid. You’ll be able to run the lights and the elevator. But it’s guarded by technological nightmares.”

“I don’t understand. Show me?”
Bethany sank to bury her face in the gown’s hem. Power pulsed through her like an orgasm.

“I think the monsters are trapped Techs,”
Vera said, absently playing with Bethany’s hair.

“How?”

“I didn’t get close enough. I thought they were men in clunky body armor, but it was more like a battle suit inhabited by a ghost, like I was before you rescued me.”

Bethany shuddered.
“Those are the guards? How many?”

“At least five. I did a quick pop around and came back here.”

“Thank you,”
Bethany said.

Vera pulled her up to her feet to dance to a roaring swing tune from the 1920s.
“We are timeless, you and I. I wish you could see that. I can be any lover you desire.”
Vera changed her appearance, and it was Lucas.

“That’s not funny,”
Bethany said.

The buzzing started between her legs again.

“Oh,”
she gasped.
“That was you.”

“It can always be me.”

The power wave of sensation rubbed back and forth the length of her slit.

“I can’t,”
Bethany said.
“It’s cheating on Lucas.”

“Do you think he’s been faithful to you?”
Vera turned up the pulse of the vibration so Bethany’s teeth were rattling.

Bethany fought through the waves of pleasure, found herself on her hands and knees instead, spreading wide for the sweet, pulsing caress.
“What do you mean?”
she gasped.

“Hot-blooded Shifter like that? All those young, pretty girls looking for a way into the caravan. You can’t blame a man for accepting a blowjob or a handjob.”

“No,”
Bethany cried.
“I don’t believe you. He’s my mate.”

“Yeah,”
Vera said pressing down on her with her power.
“But are you his?”