Page 73 of Essa

"Okay, okay, I'm setting it down," Adam says. At least I didn't hurt it."

He mutters the last part much quieter, as though he doesn't want any of us to hear that he cares about something. As if we don't already know that he cares about each and every one of us. Even Phial and he are friends, even if neither of them will ever admit it. Adam would do anything for the crew and Seth as well. The feeling is mutual between all of us.

A deep rumbling fills the air around us and vibrates the cracked Earth below our feet. The lizard darts away from us as soon as his little feet hit the ground, and thankfully, it runs off in the opposite direction of where we're coming from.

The rumbling grows louder until a loud explosion fills our ears. I grab for my males on instinct, pushing them behind me and wrapping my tail around Phial's ankle when he refuses to let me be his shield. He's too in awe of the cloud of dust and dirt that has filled the sky from where we've been walking away.

"I thought it would be bigger," he says after a few moments of admiring the destruction of his work. "Maybe next time we blow up an underground research facility, you let me pack more explosives."

"You packed enough," I remind him.

We debated how many explosives we would need to render the research facility useless. Phial tried to make the argumentthat the bigger the explosion, the bigger the message, and I had to keep reminding him that I was only doing this to make the people who hurt my males pay for what they had done. There was no message, and thankfully, there were no other test subjects.

Adam pushes back in front of me when the rumbling stops, and the dirt and dust start slowly settling.

"Where are you going?" I ask him, confused about why he's walking back toward the research facility when our transport is still a distance away in the other direction.

Adam doesn't turn to answer me. Just keeps walking back toward the now destroyed research facility.

"Oh, I wasn't joking when I said he wants to fuck you in the ruins," Seth tells me, squeezing my hand in his as he urges me to follow after our male. "I might be hoping for the same thing."

I expect to hear more grumbling from Phial, but he's walking back the way we came from, toward the transport. I allow Seth to pull me back toward the research facility. My comm is in my pack, so we can reach the crew if things go wrong.

"You have an hour once I get back to the transport," Phial calls over his shoulder. "I'll bring the transport, but I don't want to see anyone's genitals."

Adam's shoulders tense, and I wonder for a moment if he's going to spin around and tell Phial not to even think about my genitals, but he takes a deep breath, lets it out, and keeps walking. At least I know which desire wins out between wanting to argue with Phial or sleep with me. If it was the other way around, I might be concerned that I'm losing my touch on keeping my male in line.

"No genitals, promise," I call out over my shoulder, laughing when I watch Phial's feathers lift off the top of his head, his whole body shaking with a shiver of discomfort. He's my most dramatic friend, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

"Hurry up!" Adam yells at Seth and me. "If we only have an hour, I want to make good use of my time."

I shake my head in amusement, but Seth and I pick up the pace.

"I said no genitals, and then when I showed up, he wasn't wearing pants," Phial groans like he's in pain as he points at Adam, who's lounging on my spot on the couch. Adam's still amped up from what we did earlier and wants to pick a fight, but he's being petty about it, so I'm being even pettier and pretending I don't notice him purposefully trying to antagonize me. "Humans don't have pocketed genitalia, so he wasn't even modest by any standards at all."

"Pocketed genitalia?" Seth asks, his attention fully snagged on that piece of Phial's whining.

No one else is really listening to Phial except for Avery, who's bright pink, either in embarrassment at her male being so dramatic or because she's thinking about his pocket. My face screws up at the thought.

"Human males just have their cocks hanging there, between their legs. It's foul." Phial pretends to faint in his beanbag, falling on top of Avery, which has her giggling.

"Wait, where's your cock then?" Seth turns around on the couch, looking at where Jovi's whispering something to Sloane as she sits in his lap. His question catches them both off guard, and Jovi sputters something before Sloane saves him.

"Varon cocks look like yours but bigger and better in every way."

Sloane shoots my male a wink as she says it, and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing at the confused worry onSeth's face as he looks down at his lap and then over to me. I'm surprised Adam hasn't snapped to tell us all that his cock is perfect for Seth and me. But he's too focused on watching me to see if I'm going to react to him.

"No more talking about cocks," Alik sighs as he enters the entertainment room.

He told us to meet him here but took his sweet time joining us. I'm about to say as much when the look on his face tells me that we're about to have a serious conversation.

I sit down, using my strength to push Adam out of my spot. He grumbles something about me not playing fair but doesn't try to cause more of a scene than that. Although, his hand does find its way to my lower back, where he teases the base of my tail because he's an evil male.

"I've heard back from the Intergalactic Alliance," Alik says, his face serious, his tone giving nothing away.

Technically, our mission to destroy the human research facility wasn't legal. It was illegal in many senses, but we were careful, besides the intercourse afterward. Not to mention, the research facility was off-record, not attributed to any government agency, and they were conducting illegal experiments. If anyone tries to come for us, they'll have to admit to what they were doing there. We should be safe from legal ramifications. But Alik's making us sweat, making me wonder if we messed up somehow.

"Tell us now if four of us are going to some prison planet," Phial hisses. His blunt words pierce through whatever fun Alik's having at our expense because his stern expression softens into a small smile.

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