Happy Friday my Lovelies, and time for another chapter of Fury. Today is a bit of a milestone in our journey with Manning and Mac aboard Fury for several reasons. I told you early on that Piloting Fury is a draft of a novel, with the first half already rewritten into final form or very close. Well, as of this episode, I am rewriting as I post. That means some episodes may be a little slower getting to you depending on how much effort the rewrite takes, so please be patient with me. I would rather get it to you in stellar form (if you’ll excuse the pun) than half-finished.

Secondly, today is the first episode of Fury that might not be suitable for work. You knew it was coming, didn’t you? 🙂 That means a longer post today because it’s just rude to break a hot scene halfway through and make you wait till next week.

If you’re enjoying Fury, please spread the word and pass the link to a friend. I love to share my stories with as many people as possible. I’m offering a new episode of Fury every Friday. Remember this is a work in progress, so please be gentle with me. This week Mac and Manning celebrate as more secrets are revealed.

“Win the bet and Fury’s yours. Lose the bet and your ass is mine.” It seemed like a no-brainer — Rick Manning’s slightly inebriated offer. If he’d been sober, he’d have remembered indentured pilot, Diana “Mac” McAllister never lost a bet. All her life she’s dreamed of buying back her freedom and owning her own starship, and when Fury’s ne’er-do-well, irritating as hell captain all but hands Fury to her on a silver platter she figures she can’t lose. She figured wrong. That’s how the best pilot in the galaxy finds herself the indentured 1^st mate of a crew that, thanks to her, has doubled in size. Too late, she finds out Fury is way more than a cargo ship. Fury is a ship with a history – a dangerous history, and one that Mac’s been a part of for a lot longer than she thinks. And Rick Manning is not above cheating at poker to get her right at the center of it all, exactly where he needs her to be.

Piloting Fury Part 28: Connections

Fury replicated some scrumptious dish from one of the Feshun worlds so far beyond the Outer Rim that no one I knew had ever even been there, and if they’d managed it, they’d have never made it back in their lifetime. I couldn’t pronounce the name of the planet, let alone the dish, though after a couple glasses of Inner Dalmatian fire wine, both Manning and I gave it our best shot. Fury was a patient language tutor, but it quickly became apparent that his vocal processors far exceeded our own.

He informed us that we should be able to just make out the Greater Feshun Cloud from the observation deck. That sent us scurrying up for a look-see with the last of the wine in tow.

“I don’t see it,” I said, squinting through the scope.

“You’re just looking in the wrong place.” Manning moved in and hunched over me so that his face was close to mine, making it difficult for me to focus on anything but his wine-scented breath against my nape. “See the red Giant at nine o’clock?” He had shaved for dinner, a first as far as I could recall. He’d always been stubbled with hair slightly mussed, like he’d just gotten out of bed, and not because he’d been asleep. His smooth cheek now brushed mine as though he would guide my face with his. I was good with that.

“Hard to miss,” I managed around my sudden struggle to breathe.

He offered me an evil chuckle and stepped closer until I felt the full heat of his body, startling and intriguing in the hard landscape of muscles that shifted and undulated with the intake of each breath. “Focus on the damn scope, Mac.”

“Oh, like you’re not making any effort to distract me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” His lips brushed my ear as he spoke. “I take my astronomy very seriously.” He circled my waist with both arms and I let out a little gasp. “Now at five o’clock on the red giant, you’ll see a bright smear, sort of like Fury forgot to clean the windows.”

“I am a ship, not a housekeeper.” Fury commented. “Though there is seldom such a good reason to give the observation deck my full attention.”

“Fury, you’re as bad as Manning.” The words ended with a little gasp, and I felt as though Fury had moved in tight on the other side of me, nudging Manning over just enough to make room for his own embrace, and my neck goose fleshed at his phantom nearness.

“Yes, I see it.” The words came out little more than a harsh whisper. “It’s obvious when you …” I completely lost the ability to speak as Manning settled a warm kiss against my nape. And damn if Fury didn’t mirrored the action. “You really are a full-service ship,” I managed between gasps.

“If he can manipulate the molecules to make your clothes,” Manning’s hand splayed low across my belly stroking the soft fabric of the dress Fury had replicated for our dinner celebration, “then he can easily manipulate the molecules to make you feel really good.”

“It is true,” the ship said. “I am not without skills.” I could swear I felt a third hand sliding up the outside of my thigh to stroke my hip. I caught my breath and shivered with the oral attention being paid to both sides of my neck and throat.

“If you wish me to stop, I will comply,” Fury spoke, and his voice sounded as breathless as my own. “I understand that making love with a ship is not everyone’s kink.”

“I’m a pilot, Fury. Making love with a ship is exactly my kink.”

While it was true, ships – especially the smaller ones with smaller crews — were all programmed to pleasure their compliment during interstellar journeys if the need arose most were nowhere near this sophisticated, not even on the Dubrovnik. I had never been on the receiving end the ship’s pleasure programming. But then I had never been on the receiving end of anything that might be considered lovemaking or pleasurable until tonight.

Manning cupped my breast and ran the edge of his thumb over a peaking nipple while Fury’s attention to my flank became a gentle stroking and curling of fingers that scrunched the dress ever higher up my thigh.

“You seem to be having a hard time standing, Mac. Too much fire wine?”

“We don’t want our Diana Mac injured.” Fury spoke between nips of kisses down my nape and over my collarbone. “Perhaps we should make her more comfortable.”

Together they eased me down onto the carpet in a flurry of kisses and exploring hands, the floor suddenly felt like a soft mattress. That Fury was always seeing to my comfort made my pulse skip a little for reasons other than arousal. With only the dome of the observation deck between us and deep space, it was easy to imagine Manning and Fury as an inseparable unit, to imagine myself as a part of that unit. There were two sets of hands. I felt them as surely as I felt my own breath. One set moved down my shoulders and over my breasts, and the fabric of the dress dissolved beneath the touch as they cupped and caressed. The other impatiently shoved the vanishing hem of the dress aside and teasing my thighs apart, leaving me open, permeable to Fury and Manning, who touched me as though they read each other’s mind, as though they read my mind.

Fury settled beneath me so that my head rested on his lap, then he bent over me and covered my face in kisses, stroking my hair, caressing my shoulders, my neck my breasts. Manning rose above me, and for a brief moment, I could have sworn he leaned forward and took Fury’s mouth in a possessive kiss. Then I blinked and I was once again looking up into deep space with Manning kissing a humid path down between my breasts and over my belly, cupping my bottom in his large hands, opening me, lifting me, positioning me. His breath came in warm little puffs between my thighs, and I cried out and bucked against their gentle restraint. Then Manning found my center and moved down deeper, so much deeper, tasting and licking and caressing me, loving me in places that had known no intimacy, places that had known only brutality. Fury’s full attention turned to my nipples, tongue and teeth and lips stiffening them, and each move I felt down close to Manning’s mouth, as though their well-coordinated efforts were actually no effort at all, but a deep, intuitive knowing, a plan. Manning took me to the edge with his mouth, and Fury sent me over with a quick nibble and pinch of a nipple. Then they held me, whispering softly — things I couldn’t quite hear over my efforts to breathe, over the pleasure that coursed through every cell.

And when I had calmed just a little, Manning mantled me. I had not known when he had shed his clothes, but for a moment, all I could think was that he was beautiful, that I wanted to melt into his body and never leave, never leave either of them. He looked down at me from beneath hooded lids, kneeling over me restraining his erection in one large hand while the other smooth the hair away from my cheek. I reached out for him, took him in my hand and guided him home and we all three gasped as Manning began to move inside me. In my blissed-out state, I could just make out a shadowy humanoid shape like a halo behind him, larger than Manning. Much larger. For a moment, surrendered to Manning as I was, rising up to meet him thrust for thrust, I basked in the watchful gaze, and then Fury embraced Manning, expanded to embrace both of us and returned to himself with a deep sigh, just as I shivered and convulsed my release, with Manning doing the same.

If there was post-coital bliss, it was brief. The urgency of too much time dreading the touch of another human overwhelmed me. The pent-up need of never having more than a few moments stolen trembling against my own hand in what little bit of privacy was afforded me, now released would not easily be sated. I rose on one elbow and looked down at Manning, naked and dozing next to me, haloed in light that was Fury making sure we wouldn’t wake up in total darkness.

Manning was lean yet well muscled and nearly hairless except for the nest of soft curls in which his heavy penis nestled, stretched against the rise and fall of his lower belly. His nipples were pale pink and tight in Fury’s glow, and the slow in and out of his breath matched my own exquisitely. I leaned down and kissed his nipples in turn. He sighed and lifted an arm, as though it took tremendous effort, and curled fingers into my mussed hair.

“I always imagined you’d be insatiable, Mac.” His words were slurred, but I knew perfectly well it wasn’t from alcohol. “Jesus, you have no idea how often I speculated on just how insatiable you would be.”

“Pretty sure I do, actually,” I said, kissing the place where his ribs came together above the diaphragm. But the truth was, I never imagined that Richard, Bad Boy, Manning, who could have any woman he wanted and a good few men as well, would ever think twice about a lowly indentured, other than the possible turn-on of slumming. I slid my palm over the flat of his belly and he sucked in a deep breath as I bent to kiss his navel. He tightened fingers convulsively in my hair as I kissed down over his hip and onto his thigh, licking the taste of clean male perspiration from the muscles that tensed and relaxed beneath my teeth and tongue. “You spoke to me as though I mattered,” I said, running my tongue down over the hard bone of his shin, feeling his body shift against the floor as I worked my way down and lifted his ankle in my hand to kiss his instep. “As much as I wanted to know what it felt like to make love to you, what I wanted, what I needed more, was exactly what you always gave me. You always made me fee like I mattered.” He gave a wordless murmur as I nipped his big toe and then opened his leg so that I could see the weight of his sac, the under curve of his buttocks and its clench as I worked my way up the inside of his thigh. “To belong to you and Fury,” I cupped him gently, and he sighed. “To belong to you and Fury is no hardship.”

Then I knelt there between his thighs and took him into my mouth, tensing a little at the thought, but losing myself quickly in the act as the taste of him and me together flooded my mouth.

He groaned and drew his knees up so that his feet rested on the floor to either side of me. Then he held very still, letting me get used to the act I had never before performed for the pleasure of someone I cared for, letting me find my pace.

“Jesus, Mac,” he managed between barely parted lips. “You’ve always belonged with us. We just had to find a way to make it happen.” Then he went non-verbal as I became more confident, more sure of my ability to give Manning pleasure. Then he began to push back, to thrust and shift as he needed, as though it were a dance we did.

With a little moan of surprise, I realized that Fury had joined us. From behind, he fingered and caressed me open, still wet from Manning, and then the caressing gave way to positioning, as he cupped my ass and scooted forward until I could feel muscular thighs. I lifted my hips and held my breath. Manning, anticipating what was about to happen, stopped moving. Fury stilled behind me.

“Are you sure, Diana Mac?” I felt the warmth of the breath he didn’t really need against my spine. “It will not be like anything you could easily imagine.”

“I’m sure Fury. Very sure.” I reached behind me to caress a muscular hip.

The act of penetration was such a humanoid thing, and it was easy to sense the humanoid shape behind me, the penis that parted me and entered my body, the hands that pulled me closer, then sought to heighten my pleasure, but the connection was so much more. One thrust and then another, and I cried out feeling as though every circuit, every fiber optic, ever micro capacitor onboard the ship suddenly ran through me. In an instant every micrometer that was Fury filled my body. I could see and feel it all, the cold caress of deep space, the complex hum of the life support, the autopilot constantly checking and rechecking our course, the shields, the computers, the probes the telemetry, the connection between Manning and Fury. At the instant we all climaxed together I realized something that in my heart, surely I must have expected from the beginning. Fury was sentient. Fury was an SNT!

Happy Friday my Lovelies, and time for another chapter of Fury. 

If you’re enjoying this rollicking read, please spread the word and pass the link to a friend. I love to share my stories with as many people as possible. I’m offering a new episode of Fury every Friday. Remember this is a work in progress, so please be gentle with me. This week the secrets Manning and Fury reveal to Mac generates more questions all with colossal implications.

“Win the bet and Fury’s yours. Lose the bet and your ass is mine.” It seemed like a no-brainer — Rick Manning’s slightly inebriated offer. If he’d been sober, he’d have remembered indentured pilot, Diana “Mac” McAllister never lost a bet. All her life she’s dreamed of buying back her freedom and owning her own starship, and when Fury’s ne’er-do-well, irritating as hell captain all but hands Fury to her on a silver platter she figures she can’t lose. She figured wrong. That’s how the best pilot in the galaxy finds herself the indentured 1^st mate of a crew that, thanks to her, has doubled in size. Too late, she finds out Fury is way more than a cargo ship. Fury is a ship with a history – a dangerous history, and one that Mac’s been a part of for a lot longer than she thinks. And Rick Manning is not above cheating at poker to get her right at the center of it all, exactly where he needs her to be.

Piloting Fury Part 27: More Answers, More Questions

“What?” That was all I could manage. It was as though I’d forgotten how to speak. I pulled away enough to look down at my shackle and cradled my arm in my hand as I’d done since I was first indentured, the only way I had of comforting myself, comforting my assaulted flesh, the flesh that constantly carried the means of my destruction. “You …”

“Oh you won’t be able to tell any difference and neither will anyone else.” He lifted my chin onto the crook of his finger and held my gaze. “Do you really think I’d ever have an indentured? The same technology that allows me to reprogram your shackle to me, also allows me to deactivate it entirely,” he said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.”

“It would not have been wise,” Fury interjected.

Manning reached out and lay his other hand gently over my arm. “Believe me, I wanted to, but if you knew you were no longer an indentured, if anyone knew, then the risk to you and to the research going on at Pandora Base would be that much greater.”

I felt as though I was doing another hyper-jump – this one without a ship, this one without even my own body.

“It’s still not safe for you to know, but it’s not safe for you not to either. If we’re to finish what we started, then I can’t have you living in terror, and I can’t have you looking back at the past.” He nodded down to my arm. “I’d remove it completely if the circumstances were different, and I hope in time to do just that. But for now, it’s best if the world believes Diana McAllister is a runaway indentured who ended up in the hands of someone who could hijack her shackle.”

I didn’t realize I was crying until Manning wiped a tear with his thumb. “I’m free,” I hiccupped.

“You’re not free. You’re a long way from free yet,” Manning said.

On the replicator by the bed a steaming cup of tea appeared and the scent of chamomile filled the room. “Here, drink this. It’ll help calm you.” Manning handed it to me and smiled. “Fury has a home remedy for everything.”

“From seven hundred different worlds,” the ship added.

“Then there’s a plan. There’s a reason why you cheated me in poker.”

“There are lots of reasons, but yes, there is a plan, Mac, and you play a major role in that plan. You have since before you were born. You just didn’t know it. Fallon suspects, and that’s why he made sure your father got the blame for the loss of the Merlin and forced you into indentured service – to him specifically. More than likely that’s why he infected you so many times with the virus as well. But that’s something you’ll have to discuss with Professor Keen.”

“He infected me for punishment,” I said.

“Fury, pull up the data,” Manning said, holding my gaze.

A graph flashed on the monitor on my wall with Diana McAllister and my indentured number written after it.

“These were the dates Fallon infected you,” Fury said.

“Fucking hell!” I swallowed hard. “The bastard kept track!”

“Oh he did way more than keep track,” Manning said. “And he wasn’t best pleased about losing his data.”

“I don’t understand, I said fighting back the urge to be sick.

“Look at the graph, Mac, look at the dates. Every time, he infected you, he left the cure a little longer. I know,” he said waving a negating hand, “that’s a game sadistic owners often pull with their indentured, and if they go too long, well, they just send them off to a plague planet and get another indentured. It’s not hard in this day and age to trump up charges, to make sure someone can’t pay the debt they own. It’s just a matter of what position you need filled. The Authority and the conglomerates have had control of the universities and technical schools for years and no one gets through them without owning some kind of service to the Authority, most owe way more than service by the time they’ve managed their education.”

“I know that, every one knows that,” I said, “but what does it have to do with Fallon keeping track of the times he infected me.”

“He played it close to the bone with you, didn’t he?”

Bile rose to my throat and I shoved the tea aside. “The bastard took bets on how long he could hold out before he injected me with the antidote.”

“Barbaric pile of excement.” To my surprise, it was Fury who spoke.

“Mac,” Manning took both of my hands in a tight grip. “You should have died after the third time he injected you.”

“What?”

He nodded up to the graph. “My cheating at poker was nothing compared to the bets he made. The deck was always stacked in his favor. Mac, listen to me, very carefully, after the third time, he infected you, the antidote was just saline. You’re immune to the SNT virus.”

Knuckles cracked in the suicide grip I had on his hands and I wasn’t sure if they were mine or his. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breath. The graph on the screen blurred and went out of focus.

“I … I’ve never been so ill.”

“That’s because he infected you with higher doses of the virus each time, until in the end, the dosage would have been lethal even to a full bred Polyphemian. And yet, you recovered. Your body healed itself every time. Every time.”

“I was his guinea pig.”

“The data, the tissue samples, the work, it was all done in conglomerate labs under one of the conglomerate’s best scientists. But Fire Star labs were infiltrated. The data and the tissue samples they had taken from you were stolen by some of Keen’s network. That was the precious cargo aboard the Svalbard. At the time, the Svalbard didn’t know that my cargo was even more precious.

“The reason I cheated in poker, the reason I would have kidnapped your ass and hauled you kicking and screaming onboard the Fury is because with his data and samples gone, Fallon needed you back. Fallon was about to arrange your transfer from The Dubrovnik back to conglomerate labs.”

I didn’t realize I was shaking until Manning pulled his damn monk robe off and draped it over my shoulders. Hell, I hadn’t even noticed he still wore it, but then I had a lot on my mind.

“If Fallon’s son was as far out in space as the edge of the Rim, then he was looking for you. You’re the cure that Fallon wants to control, because if he doesn’t, you could sway the course of history.”

“Drink your tea,” Furry said. “You do not look well, Diana Mac.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked, “And even more importantly, how do you fit in? Are you just doing it for money? Am I just another job?”

He cupped my face in his hands and gave me a kiss, a quick kiss, but it got my full attention nonetheless. “You know better than that, Mac. You’ve always known better than that from the day we first met. Let’s just say I have a long history with SNT technology and I have at least as much of a stake in this as you do.”

I waited for more, but it didn’t come, and I wasn’t entirely sure I could take in any more tonight anyway. For a moment we all sat in silence. I sipped my tea, which somehow Fury had managed to keep warm for me. “So what do you want with me then. I’m assuming I’m not just the pilot. Or will I get booted off on Pandora Base permanently the next time we’re there for research purposes.” I suddenly felt queasy again.

“That’s not going to happen, Mac. You’re right here with me and Fury where you’re supposed to be.” Manning blew out a sharp breath. “But you’ll have to trust us for now that for the three of us to do what we have to, we’ll need Victor Keen’s help.” He reached out and smoothed the hair away from my face. Oh believe me, I would love nothing more than for you to have no other task but piloting Fury. I have wet dreams of what the three of us could do together in the galaxy if we were free to do what we pleased.”

The thought made me a little wet too, I had to admit, and better yet, it made me smile.

“Maybe someday we’ll be able to, but not yet. Right now there’s just too damn much at stake.”

I gulped back the rest of the tea, heaved a sigh and squared my shoulders. “All right. We just scammed back a fortune in contraband, we just escaped a seriously nasty sonovabitch, which will probably come back to bite us in the ass, and I’ve just learned I’m no longer an indentured plus I’m the reverse of Typhoid Mary. What’s next?”

Manning brought my hand to his lips and placed an enthusiastic kiss on my knuckles, and it felt almost like Fury shared his excitement. “Well, we need to sell the whiskey to the New Sumerians, and I know just the buyer for the musk oil out there as well. New Sumerians are gaga for aphrodisiacs. We’ll need the resources. When that’s done we’ll head back to Pandora Base. Keen will need to run some tests on you.” He squeezed my hand. “None involving infecting you, believe me. And some of those, believe it or not, will involve your piloting skills.” He held my gaze. You really are the best pilot in the galaxy. By far. Keen can also answer more of your questions than anyone else alive. After that, the plan gets complicated, but,” he gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze, “it’ll involve clearing your father’s name and the sentient ships as well as Keen, and I don’t have to tell you the implications for indentureds.”

“Wow!” That was suddenly all I could say. My world had just shifted on its axis again, and if the first shift had been major, this one was beyond colossal.

“We focus on one day at a time, Mac, just like we always do, and we do the task set before us. And right now the task set before us is food, drink and celebrating one hell of a scam.”