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Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 01

By: jdnunyer



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Author's note

Part Five takes immediately after Part Four. It is not necessary for you to have read Parts One, Two, and Three, but if you have not read Part Four, you will find the story difficult to follow.

I won't be including notes to introduce each scene as I did in Part Four. A few readers found them distracting. It should be clear to you whose POV a given scene is written from and where it takes place.

As ever, if you have questions feel free to email me or leave a comment. Either way, I'll try to respond in a timely manner.

This is primarily an incest story, but it is also sci-fi/fantasy, and supernatural elements are not incidental to the plot. Additionally, many chapters will feature elements of other categories, particularly group sex and anal.

All sexual acts are consensual and involve parties who are at least eighteen years of age.

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"So what do we do?" Nick asked.

Veronica studied her brother's face. The way he was looking at her, as if he expected her to solve all their problems, made it hard to hear out the rest of what he had to say. All she really wanted to do was hug him instead.

Sometimes, it seemed that Nick pretended not to have any ideas of his own, just so that he could get her to tell him hers, and to let her know how much he respected her opinion. Transparent as that was, it was still incredibly endearing.

But this was not one of those times. He really was asking her to figure things out for them. And the rare display of childlike innocence from the older brother she'd spent her whole life trying to impress made Veronica's insides melt. She forced herself to look away, to focus her attention on fluffing up her pillow, lest she suffer a cuteness overload.

"Eric's busy planning something stupid as we speak," he said. "And you know it would be pointless to try to talk sense into him."

"Actually," she said, "that's pretty much exactly what I was thinking you need to do."

"Me?" he asked, with a huff that was very close to being a chuckle.

"Yup."

He shook his head. "You're something else."

"Obviously, you won't be able to convince him to hold off," Veronica continued. "But maybe we can talk him out of an all-out assault."

"Maaaaybe," Nick said, frowning. "But this is Eric we're talking about."

Veronica sighed.

Their brother probably was psyching himself up for a direct attack on the throne at that very moment. It wasn't that she doubted that. But they couldn't just give up that easily. From the sound of it, they wouldn't stand a chance against the combined might of House Bravo and House Fisher. And no matter how sympathetic their father might be to their position, which probably wasn't all that sympathetic anyway, he'd have no choice but to make war if the king demanded it.

They needed leverage. Their only hope was to take a few hostages of their own and propose an exchange. Anything else would just result in a bloodbath.

Somehow, Eric needed to be convinced of that. And he wouldn't listen to Veronica. But he just might listen to Nick.

With a flick of her wrist, she changed out of her sun dress and into a baggy T-shirt and loose pair of silk pajamas. Not exactly the kind of outfit that was best suited to seducing her brother. But she was, for once, not in the mood for that. Too tired, for one thing.

And too preoccupied with thoughts about their father.

The trip back to the Playground had taken no time at all. Apparently the yacht hadn't been necessary. It was just less disorienting. And gave the kids a chance to prepare themselves mentally for what they were about to undergo.

Not that it had prepared them. Not for the induction ceremony, and not for the fateful visit from their father. That last part had been one of the most exhausting experiences of her life, even though she'd done nothing but stand there and squeeze Nick's hand the whole time. Simply processing all the emotions her father brought out had been trying enough.

Why couldn't she just hate their father, the way Nick apparently did? Why did all those childhood fantasies have to come back to her all of a sudden?

As she slipped under the covers, Veronica said, "If we tell him it would be stupid and reckless to go for blood, he'll go for blood. If we tell him that it would be going soft on the king to kill his children, that mourning their loss would be easier than constantly worrying about whether he'll ever see his loved ones again, then maybe he'll focus on taking hostages."

Nick remained silent for a few moments. "And if that doesn't work?"

"We'll deal with that when we come to it," she said.

Her brother stared at her, brow furrowed. But, in the end, he offered no objections.

Nice and tame. Like a good, housebroken puppy. If he was as much like their father as Hank had said that he was, he wouldn't have given in so easily.

Without asking her permission, her pussy started quivering.

Damnit.

She wanted her father to disgust her. The way he should have. But she couldn't help herself. There was just something about her father that had made Veronica swoon, even as she cursed him for being a selfish, cold-hearted bastard.

He was just so calm. So perfectly in control. Was there anything as sexy as a man in control? She couldn't be blamed for responding to that. Or for suddenly noticing how pliable Nick was. Men like that just exuded sex appeal, no matter what they looked like.

And those eyes.

Those gorgeous, green eyes. They veritably sparkled with intelligence.

Only, no, they didn't. Because eyes didn't sparkle with intelligence, except in cheesy novels where they not only did that but somehow managed to express all sorts of emotions besides. In real life, eyes didn't do a whole lot besides blink, dilate, and, of course, see.

It might not have been his fuck-me-breathless emerald orbs that told her so, but Veronica knew that her father was every bit as smart as the man of her dreams would have to be. Smart enough to not just keep up with her, but challenge her. As smart as she told herself that Nick was, though in the back of her mind, she had her doubts.

Her father was shorter than she liked her guys. And he was a bit thin too. Not as bad as Kurt, or anything. And what muscles he had were sculpted from stone. But he wasn't even as built as Nick, and her brother struck Veronica as a little small himself. On top of that, her father's face was well past lean and creeping up on gaunt. There were deep grooves in his hard skin, which was only lightly tanned. To say nothing of the scars.

He didn't at all have the kind of face she'd pictured all those times, while fingering herself and whispering "Daddy." That man had a hint of maturity, enough to remind her that she was with no mere boy but a real man. But he still had smooth skin and dark hair.

Exhaling heavily, Veronica rolled onto her side and made like she was getting ready for sleep. If Nick touched her, she just might melt. But it wouldn't be his face she'd be seeing. And what if he noticed that? He was, after all, damn good at reading Libidos.

"Tired?" Nick asked, slipping under the covers beside her.

She moaned incoherently in response.

Nick chuckled and kissed her shoulder.

His touch set her skin aflame. She was aching for it. It wouldn't be her brother inside her, but it would still feel good. She simply needed a hard dick inside her. Who's ever it might be. Strong hands grabbing her. Lips pressed against hers. 

What would it be like to fuck a dragon?

No. She couldn't think that way.

She actually was tired anyway.

"It'll all work out," Nick whispered softly, running a hand up and down her side.

Thankfully, his hand didn't venture anywhere but her hips and her waist. Nor did his lips graced anything but her shoulders with their presence. All nice and safe.

Nothing a brother should do with his sister, of course. But they were long past the point where that mattered to either of them. More importantly, it wasn't anything that would make it impossible for her to resist him.

She found it even easier to tune out his words, utter nonsense that they were.

How could he possibly be so confident about that?

Slowly, Veronica drifted off to sleep, hoping to dream of her brother, yet afraid that it would be her father her awaited her on the other side. Whether he'd be playing the role of villain or love interest, though, she wasn't yet sure.

#

When they got back to what everyone had taken to calling the Playground, Eric couldn't help but notice that their house seemed a lot smaller. And a lot less like home. It was merely the place he'd grown up now. Nothing more.

They'd spent all of one night in Summer, yet that had been enough. It had changed everything. Torn his family apart. Given him a sense of purpose. And opened his eyes to how insignificant his life up until that point had been. All his problems, as well as his achievements, seemed pathetically small now.

Summer was where he belonged. And it was where this would all get resolved.

To hell with small ball. He wasn't going to nip at House Bravo's ankles. No, he was going to go for the windpipe. And that meant going back to the Homelands.

The others would try to talk him out of it, obviously. And call their cowardice "reason." That's what cowards always did. They talked "sense." Curiously, though, "sense" often sounded a helluva lot like doing what was best for protecting their own hides.

Well, they wouldn't all line up against him. Especially Gabby. She, at least, would back his play, no matter what.

Nick might too, if not for Veronica. Eric would bet anything that, at that very moment, Veronica was busy telling Nick that he had to try to "talk sense" into Eric. And the poor sap, who was usually worth at least half a damn, would do exactly as she said.

Fucking pathetic.

"Hey there, cutie," Annie said, walking into the kitchen.

He looked his sister up and down. She wore a pair of pink fuzzy socks, the tiniest pair of pink panties, and a white tank top that was way too small for a girl with such large breasts.

"Nice socks," he said.

Why did girls think fuzzy socks were so cute?

"Thanks," she said as she jumped up onto the kitchen counter.

She sat there, sitting on her hands and swinging her legs back and forth, like a little kid. One look at her body, though, confirmed that she was plenty grown up.

Ever since discovering that their powers gave them some limited control over their appearance, Annie had taken to rocking a new look every time he saw her. Sometimes her tongue was pierced. Sometimes it was not. There was occasionally a little diamond stud on one side of her nose. The ratio of brown to blonde in her hair was never quite the same.

Just now, though, she had no piercings, and her hair, worn in pigtails, was its natural color. He preferred her usual look, but he couldn't deny that her innocent little girl act was having an effect on him. Annie usually tried so hard to convince everyone that she wasn't a child anymore, that she was a bad girl without an innocent bone in her body.

"Where are our moms?" she asked casually.

"Out on the deck," he replied. "Having a fight."

"Oh," she said. The goofy smile faded. "About dad?"

"Naturally," he said, before turning his attention to hunting for beer. There father was what they always fought about, these days. "What did you think of him anyway?"

"Total jerkface," his sister replied.

Eric snickered. Looking over his shoulder at his sister, he asked, "A jerkface?"

Annie looked away and ran a hand through her hair. "Yeah. Jerkface."

The fridge was practically empty. And of course it was. They'd cleaned it out before leaving, knowing that they'd be gone a lot longer in the terms of this world's time flow than it would seem to them. There wasn't much more than the water filter, a bunch of condiments, a jar of pickles, and a can of olives. But he was sure that he and Nick had stashed away some beers for just this reason.

Yes. There, in the vegetable bin.

"Crisis averted," he said.

"He's pretty short, too," Annie said, ignoring his moment of triumph.

Eric regarded her silently, wondering if she was mocking him. After deciding that she was not, he popped the can, took his first frothy sip, and said, "That he is. And scrawny. You see those arms? Kinda ballsy to be walking around in a vest, built like that."

"Yeah," his sister said, voice distant.

"Wait," Eric said, holding up a hand. "Don't tell me you thought he was hot?"

"Who said that?"

"No one. But when I asked what you thought of him, you immediately starting trying to convince one of us, and I'm not sure it's me, that you don't find him attractive." He took another sip. "And you're not doing such a good job of it."

She gave a half-shrug. "I don't know. You have to admit, there is something about him."

Eric simply sipped his beer by way of response.

"At first, I thought he had a funny-looking face. Like, emaciated or something. But those eyes? A girl could get lose staring into those things."

"Shoot me now. Right in the face."

"Oh, don't be like that," she said, swatting at him as if he were a fly. "You're the one who brought him up. Asked me what I thought and I answered. Deal with it."

"No accounting for taste, I guess," Eric said.

"Anyway, I didn't say he's hot. Just that he had something going on. Which he does." Annie paused, then added, "Though he's not entirely hard on the eyes."

"Plus, there's that big ol'...dragon claw. Am I right?"

"Yeah," she said, a little breathless. "Gotta imagine he knows a few tricks."

Eric couldn't reach his sister's ass, so he gave her thigh a playful smack.

And, to his surprise, thought to himself that her legs were a bit thin.

Once upon a time, he'd have thought Annie had a great body. And that assessment wouldn't just have referred to the breasts that he strangely was starting to think of as merely medium-sized. No, he'd have her lower body in mind too. The way her ass cheeks didn't touch. Her inner thigh gap.

But now?

Gabby had staked a claim on him. And not only was she refusing to leave, no matter how many eviction notices he served up, but she was driving away all other claimants too.

"Any-way," Annie said, making two words out of it, "I'm totally fucking with you. The dragon thing was creepy."

"Right," he said.

His sister rolled her eyes. "C'mon. Are you kidding me? He was a total dick. I was hoping you'd punch his face in. And that body? What a joke. The ugliest guy I ever fucked was hotter than him. And I've had some moments I'm not proud of."

Eric simply regarded her flatly. Annie liked to pretend she was as wild as Olivia. But they both knew that she wasn't even close to being in the same league. And he wasn't buying that her earlier remarks were the ones she hadn't meant. Not for a minute.

Heck, even Eric had noticed their father's eyes. They hadn't had the effect on him that they'd obviously had on Annie. But it wasn't hard to imagine why his sister might have gone a little weak in the knees.

"Plus," she continued, "he's totally old. And I don't mean old like Uncle Wes, who's got that distinguished older gentleman thing going on. Dad's hair was more salt than pepper, and his face looked like beat-up old leather. Thought we're not supposed to age like that?"

"We're not," Eric said. "But we can control our appearance. So...."

"Oh," she said, trying to hide the fact that she was intrigued by that.

Eric wasn't sure whether to be amused or disgusted.

Just then, Gabby walked in. Alone. Her cheeks were puffy, her eyes red, and she carried herself like she'd just finished a grueling workout.

Eric put his beer down and went straight over to his mother. Standing behind her, he pulled her against him before wrapping his arms around her waist.

"We'll deal with him," he said. "The king first, but Hank will get what he deserves too."

Gabby laughed and patted his hand. "Oh, baby. You're so sweet. There's no need for that, but I appreciate the thought."

Was she fucking hot for him too?

After everything he'd done to her? After he'd humiliated her son in front of her?

"Well, excuuuuuse me," Annie said, rolling her eyes. "Didn't mean to get in the way. Or, you know, take up too much oxygen."

Eric ignored her.

"He was just trying to help," Gabby said.

Eric didn't see it that way, but neither did he want to argue. Not after she'd just finished having the same argument with Jennifer. Hell, with how stubborn his mother was, she'd probably be inclined to sing Hank's praises just as a fuck-you to whoever tried telling her that she was seeing what she wanted to see in him.

He did that himself, sometimes. Didn't mean to, but he did. It was probably something he'd gotten from her. Wasn't anything any of Jennifer's kids did.

"I guess I'll just go see what Mom-Jay is up to," Annie announced.

When neither Eric nor Gabby reacted to her words, she snatched up Eric's abandoned beer, downed the rest of it in one gulp. Then she tossed the empty can into the sink before heading out onto the deck.

"Goodnight, dear," Gabby said.

His sister's harrumph was cut off sharply by the sliding glass door ramming home.

"We'll get Patty back," Eric said.

"Somehow," Gabby agreed.

"With no help from anyone else," he added.

His mother sighed. "Not enough anyway." Her blue nails ran lightly over his forearm. "Though I think we can count on Wes."

Eric frowned. He started to disagree, but cut himself off. Maybe she was right. His uncle had never struck him as a man of action. And if Aunt Zoey told him she'd like to see him start wearing skirts, his legs would probably be shaved within the hour. But with how upset Zoey was about Kurt's disappearance, that might just work in their favor.

"Jennifer's going to move back in with her mother."

"Really?" Eric asked, stunned.

"Yeah."

He waited for an explanation, but none was forthcoming.

"What about Nick and Veronica?" he asked.

"I don't know. She hasn't told them yet," she said. "You think they'll go too?"

Eric frowned. "Good question."

If Patty was concerned, Nick often seemed to suddenly grow a pair. But if his mother laid the guilt trip on him? If both she and Veronica did?

Of course, Veronica was pretty close to Patty too. Closer, probably, than she was to her mother. And if she argued in favor of helping, then help they would.

"Depends on Veronica," he said.

Gabby gave her ass a little wiggle. "Baby, it always depends on what the woman wants. Some guys just don't realize it."

He chuckled at that, and planted a kiss on the top of her head. "If you say so."

"I do," she said, with a hint of amusement.

Followed by a weary sigh.

Eric decided that he could worry about his brother tomorrow. Patty and Kurt as well. Just then, his mother was his only concern.

"Seriously, though. How are you holding up?" he asked.

She hesitated a moment before responding. "I honestly don't know, baby. Don't really want to talk about it anymore tonight either. No offense. I know you were just trying to help. But I can't even think straight anymore."

"What do you say we go take our minds off it then?" he asked, heart racing.

Was that insensitive? Was he just being a typical guy, thinking about sex when it was the furthest thing from her mind?

"Mmm," his mother moaned. "That's...exactly what I need right now."

So he took his mother by the hand and led her up to his room.

#

After trying, in vain, to fall asleep, Nick gave up. Careful not to disturb his sister, he slipped out of bed, crept across the room, cracked the door open, and drew upon his powers to slip through an impossibly narrow opening.


Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 01



It probably wouldn't have taken much more effort to slide under the door. But the thought struck him as so cartoonish that he couldn't bring himself to try.

To his surprise, the kitchen lights were on. He wouldn't have expected anyone else to be awake, at this hour, let alone out of bed. He descended the stairs further. After gaining a better view, he realized that the kitchen was empty.

Just as he was about to conclude that whoever'd been the last one to go to bed had forgotten to turn off the lights, he saw Mom-Jay lying on the couch in the living room. She was staring blankly at the TV screen, which was showing an infomercial.

Nick cleared his throat as he padded across the tiled floor.

His mother shook herself out of her reverie, turned the TV off, and sat up.

"Hey, sweetie," she said to him. "What are you doing up?"

"Could ask you the same," he said, taking a seat beside her.

God, even without makeup and dressed in casual, comfy clothes, she looked damn good.

"But I'm the mother," she said, unfolding her legs to drape them across his lap.

Nick chuckled as he took one foot in his hands and started massaging it. He wasn't into feet. Not the way some guys were. But his mother's would have done a lot for him if he was, he suspected. They were small, arched, and pretty. Her toes were short, the nails painted red. Her ankles were prominent and her veins were not.

Truthfully, there wasn't much about his mother he didn't find painfully attractive. Veronica and Gabriela were more his usual type. But if anyone could convert him, it was her.

Lately, he'd been so focused on Veronica that he'd just about forgotten how convinced he'd once been that there was a special bond between him and his mother.

And indeed there was, if not quite the way he'd once hoped.

"Guess I'm just too worried to sleep," Nick said.

"About your sister?" his mother asked.

"Yup."

Well, one of them.

He was worried about Patty. And determined to do whatever needed to be done to get her back. But just at the moment, what was keeping him from sleeping was the gnawing anxiety over what Veronica was hiding from him. About why she'd been so obviously horny, yet so disinterested in sex. Her Libido had positively radiated two distinct impressions. One was arousal, and the other was guilt.

Over what, though?

"And you?" he asked.

"Same, I guess," she said.

Nick nodded.

She purred softly and pressed her foot against his hand a little more forcefully. He could feel her Libido beginning to stir already. That might have made his own do so as well, if he hadn't been so stressed out. It had been too long since he'd made love to his mother's athletic, yet nonetheless curvaceous, body. Since he'd squeezed her round, hard ass in his hands, kissed her prominent hip bones, ran his hands over her six-pack, and fondled her full breasts while sucking on her stiff, brown nipples.

Suddenly, she pulled her feet away, and tucked them underneath her.

Nick tried not to notice how good her legs looked in her gray tights. Or how prominent her camel-toe was when she sat cross-legged like that.

He was obsessed with huge breasts. Hers were merely big. And he preferred not to have to worry about who had better abs. But, damn, she had an amazing lower body.

"I need to tell you something," she said, tucking a stray lock of lustrous black hair behind her ear. "Something you're not gonna like. But hear me out, okay?"

"Of course," he said.

Had she finally decided she was through with men?

Had she found everything she'd been looking for in Annie, after years of barking up the wrong tree with Gabriela?

"I'm leaving Gabby. Leaving the court, actually. Joining my parents in retirement."

Nick simply sat there, too stunned to reply.

It wasn't that he felt relieved, exactly. That was not the appropriate reaction to having such a bomb dropped on his head.

Of course she hadn't been about to announce that she was exclusively interested in women. And if she was, Annie wouldn't work out any better for her than Gabriela. That girl was almost as boy-crazy as Olivia. If Mom-Jay was looking to settle down, for real, with another woman, it wasn't going to be with her youngest daughter. What reason, then, was there for Nick to be relieved? There'd never been cause for worry in the first place.

And what would it matter to him even if that was what she'd announced? Though the idea of never being able to have sex with his mother again might not have appealed to him, the idea of her mother being happy most certainly did. If she were to pair off with Annie and he were to do so with Veronica, despite the fact that the vows they no longer intended to uphold obligated him to Annie and his mother to Veronica, would that be so bad?

That was all Hardt family business though. What his mother was talking about was something else. She was talking about a break with House Moody. Severing the alliance.

Abandoning Patty.

"Why?" he asked. "After all this time? And when they need us most?"

She sighed. "I told you you wouldn't like it."

Nick drew a deep breath. "Sorry. Go on."

His mother stared into her lap, only briefly allowing her eyes to flit up to take in his facial expression. "It's not about that." She frowned. "Well, okay, it is. Obviously. But it's not that I don't want to help. It's just that she has a very different idea of what should be done than I do. And I refuse to let her throw our family off a cliff alongside her own."

"Let me talk to Eric," he said. "I can convince him-"

His mother shook her head. "You don't understand. Things were said that can't be unsaid. I can't...I won't...if you want to help, I won't stop you. I know how much Patty means to you. And she's innocent in all of this. But the fate of House Hardt can no longer be wed to that of House Moody."

Though she refused to make eye contact, her voice was like iron. Her mind was made up.

"Okay," he said.

He didn't like it. But there was plainly no sense in arguing.

She looked at him suspiciously. When he didn't tack on a sentence that began with "but", she breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you. I know you don't understand, but I'd rather not explain."

"And you don't have to," he said, laying a hand on her thigh. "If that's what you think is best, I trust that it is." Then he added, "But, yes, I am going to help them. However I can. Even if House Hardt is officially out of the game."

She nodded and laid a hand atop his. "You've a good heart."

Her touch sent a bolt electricity up his arm.

Suddenly, he didn't care where things stood with Veronica, or what she was hiding from him. All that mattered was the desire he and his mother both felt for each other. It was a raging inferno, scouring away all his petty little concerns.

Yes, some men might say she was more handsome than beautiful. And yes, her nose reminded him faintly of a beak. But that only helped him remember that she was real. Given how easy it was to start to wonder if this wasn't all a dream, such reminders were most welcome. Besides, though she wasn't without flaws, she was gorgeous. If her eyes were any darker, they'd have been chips of onyx. Her lips were full, her lashes long and curled, her eyebrows thick and dark.

The two of them smiled awkwardly at each other for a few moments.

Then Nick made his move.

#

Eric felt self-conscious about his stupid posters and trophies, his X-box and shoebox full of games. The damn lamp on his nightstand was even shaped like a football. His room looked liked a stupid teenager lived in it.

Granted, he had indeed been a teenager until recently. But still. He was the man of the house now. Man enough that it would fall to him to rescue his sister and his cousin.

If Gabby noticed that his room was more befitting a boy than a man, though, she kept it to herself. She scanned the room silently, face impassive.

Then, without raising a finger, she slipped out of her dress. The spaghetti straps slid themselves down her shoulders and the garment fell to the floor. After it did, his mother climbed into bed, rolled onto her back, and beckoned him to her with a curl of her finger.

It wasn't easy, but Eric disregarded the summons.

He needed a moment to just stand there and drink her in. To wrap his head around her unearthly beauty. To truly appreciate his mother and her ample charms.

How could he have spent so much time chasing after stupid little girls? Little teeny boppers with their boring little bodies, all free of curves? To say nothing of their incessant giggling, clumsy flirting, frustrating head games, and inexperience. Even their pussies, which were usually shaved bald, failed to distinguish them in any way.

Here, spread out before him, was a woman.

Her puffy, light pink nipples had nourished him as a child. Prior to that, she'd carried him in her womb. Those huge breasts and broad hips were clear signs of her fertility.

Despite her huge breasts and generous hips, she had a flat stomach, a tiny waist, and a tight pussy that collectively seemed to deny that she'd given ever birth, let alone that she was a mother of two. The same went for the rest of her body. There was nary a stretch mark to be found. Not a one. At the same time that she embodied the very concept of fertility, of womanhood, of motherhood, she hadn't lost the blush of youth.

No woman could compare to her.

"Well?" his mother asked, smiling at him.

Without a word, he crawled into bed. And knelt at her altar to praise her.

Eric had never been a big fan of eating pussy. He'd figured that cunnilingus was only for guys who didn't really excite their women all that much, or who didn't have the skill or equipment to satisfy them through intercourse.

Men like Nick.

His brother, he knew, was a big fan of the boxed lunch. And, strangely, proud of it.

But something about his mother made him look at things differently. It wasn't a matter of whether he needed to do that in order to get her excited for him. He wanted to pleasure her. In as many different ways as possible.

One whiff of his mother, and he simply had to taste her. Had to feel her moist lips pressed against his. Had to let his tongue dance over her juicy folds. To hear her moan and watch her writhe and buck her hips and feel her rake her nails through his hair. All of that would serve as testament to his desire for her, and hers for him.

The neatly trimmed tangle of dark blonde curls sitting above her lady parts drove him nuts. He'd actually liked his women bald in the past, for some strange reason. It seemed goofy to him now, though. He was glad that his mother kept everything nice and neat, so he didn't get a mouth full of carpet when he went down on her, but if she'd been completely bald, it would have robbed him of one of the many pleasures of the act.

She tasted like no other woman. He couldn't even describe it. Salty and sweet and fruity.

In a word?

Perfect.

"Oh, that's it, baby," his mother moaned as his tongue went to work, running her fingers lightly through his short hair. The nails hadn't gone to work yet, though. "You know how Mommy likes it."

She was just saying that, of course. Eric knew she was. Uncle Wes, like Nick, was a proud pussylicker. And an accomplished one. Though Gabby thought her brother a bit of a beta male, she also thought him unrivaled when it came to cunnilingus.

Eric wasn't at that level. Not yet anyway.

Of course, he'd never bothered to hone his craft, the way he now hoped to. One day, he'd satisfy his mother the way Uncle Wes could. Maybe even better.

Slowly, he worked his way in from her outer labia to her inner folds and began to pay some attention to her love button. Then more. And more. By the time he formed a seal around the upper half of her vulva and spread his tongue flat over her hood, pulsing it back and forth against her stiff clit faster and faster and faster, his fingers had found their way inside her and were working her G-spot vigorously.

"Ungh, fuck, that's sooo good," she panted.

Her fingers were no longer running lightly over his scalp, but digging in deep. Her powerful thighs pressed against the sides of his head. With each buck of her hips, he thought she just might wrench his head right off his shoulders.

But he didn't dare stop. His mother simply tasted too good. And the way she was melting in his mouth was the biggest ego trip he could imagine. This was the woman who defined what it meant to be a woman in his mind, and she was cumming for him.

And cumming hard.

When her climax passed, he knelt back and stared down at her.

A state of pure euphoria must have taken her over. Her jaw was slack, her lips contorted in a goofy, open-mouthed smile. Her beautiful blue eyes were closed. Those incredible, soft mounds of joy rose and fell as she sucked air. Her orgasm slowly faded, and so too did the rush of blood to her nipples, lips, and labia, deep crimson slowly giving way to soft pink.

"You. Are. A god."

"No more than my goddess deserves," he said.

If he'd ever heard another guy say something that cheesy to a woman, Eric would have taunted him mercilessly. Perhaps even smacked him. But he felt no shame speaking the words, because just at that moment, it seemed there was no other way to respond. He was truly in awe of his mother, as he had never been in Sunday school.

He got on his back and said, "I want you on top this time."

One moment, he was still wearing his cargo shorts and a tank top. The same clothes he'd worn on their trip back from Summer. The next, he was stark naked, just like his mother.

"Oh yeah?"

"I want to be able to explore all your delicious curves with my hands," he said. "And look you in the eyes at the same time."

She flashed him a devilish grin. "Thought you liked your women nice and thin. What's this I hear now about curves?"

"Chalk it up to a misguided youth," he said.

With a giggle, his mother straddled his hips.

She teased him horrifically, expertly, perfectly. A quarter inch went inside, then she pulled back, only to descend again a moment later. He tried to play along, but by the time she'd slid about a third of the way down his monster, he decided he'd had all the waiting he could take. Taking hold of her beautiful hips, he pulled her the rest of the way down, until he felt his groin pressing against hers.

His mother moaned as she settled into place. Fretting at her lower lip, she asked, "Got tired of waiting, huh?"

"You could say that."

His hands roamed freely about her body. He'd never quite realized how ideal this position was for granting the guy convenient access to every part of his lover's body. After all, he'd spent most of his time until now with his cousin, and Olivia's best feature was her face. You didn't need your hands to appreciate that. Her body, he was finally admitting to himself, left a lot to be desired. She had a shapely ass, but it was small. And her tits were a joke.

With Gabby, the ability to easily fondle her ass as well as her tits was sublime.

Her own hands were just as busy. Hardly a moment passed that they weren't pressing against his abs, caressing his pecs, or wrapped around his bis. From time to time, she'd run her hands through his hair or play with his nipples. But mostly she was feeling him up.

Eric wasn't vain. But he was proud of his body. Had been even before he'd learned how to let his true self out. Every woman he'd ever been with had commented on what a great body he had. As had many who'd never been granted the honor of exploring it.

None of that had meant anything though. Not compared to the pleasure he felt in knowing that his mother appreciated his body as much as she evidently did.

It wasn't enough to know that she loved riding his big dick. Which she did. He wanted to be more than a flesh dildo to her. Wanted to know that when she looked at him, she saw a man. And the way her hands worshiped his body told him that she in fact did.

He hoped she felt the same way when his hands roamed over her curves. Hoped she knew how sexy she was in his eyes. Knew that however many skinny little sluts he'd brought home in the past, he'd seen the light now. That when he looked up at her, he saw more than his mother. More than a woman. He saw the very definition of womanhood.

"Cum for me, baby," his mother whispered. "I want to feel it inside me."

"Working up to it, believe me," he said.

She started bouncing faster. Meanwhile, she reached inside him and stroked his Libido.

"Oh, fuck," he groaned.

Few things in life were anywhere near as pleasant as being inside his mother. When she supernaturally stimulated him at the same time that her womb worked its magic, she brought him to a level of ecstasy no mortal man would ever know.

It was more than he could handle.

What might have been words, but probably weren't, spilled out of his mouth. At the same time, his seed spilled out of his cock.

Well, shot out, really.

His balls pulsed rapidly, pumping cum deep inside the very womb that had sheltered him from the moment of conception. Filling Gabby with her own son's jizz. Profaning the strongest taboo man had ever devised.

"That's it, give it to Mommy," she cooed.

After the last spasm of his still hard cock, his mother leaned down, kissed him on the lips, then let him slip out of her before she lay down beside him.

"You're amazing, Mom," he said.

His head swam in a sea of euphoria. There was no high like the high that came from cumming inside your mother. It was the ultimate rush.

"You're not so bad, yourself," she said, grinning.

Countless couples the world over had spoken more or less exactly those words to one another. They might as well have been reading from some horribly overused script. Except for the "Mom" part, of course. Yet he just didn't know what else to say. She was amazing.

If it ain't broke.

She gave him a moment to catch his breath then took him in her mouth.

"Oh, that's just mean," he said.

She didn't reply. Just kept right on giving him a masterful blowjob.

And masterful, it was.

Olivia knew how to suck a dick. But his mother? She was without peer.

His cousin must have watched a few too many porn videos. When she went down on him, she'd force herself to gag and choke on his dick. Keep him in her mouth for a few seconds, then take him out and spit on him, or smack him against her cheek. There was a certain appeal to that whole routine. He loved the way she got into it. It made him feel big and powerful. But ultimately, a blowjob wasn't much of a blowjob if your dick spent as much time outside her mouth as it did inside. All the rest of that shit they did on screen was designed to keep guys from getting bored when they watched. Designed, that was, for visual, not physical, stimulation.

Gabby, on the other hand, didn't fool around.

She took him in her mouth, and there he stayed. She never gagged, even a little. Her tongue did things a tongue shouldn't have been able to do. And her soft, pillowy lips felt better than made any sense.

While she sucked him, she lightly teased his balls with her nails. It was exhilarating. No matter that her touch was delicate and careful, a voice in the back of his head screamed that he was in grave danger.

Enjoyable as it all was, though, he didn't let her finish him off. The pain of not being inside her was simply unbearable. Plus, she was already on all fours, and there was no way to look at her in that position and not picture himself fucking her doggystyle.

So he got in position to do exactly that.

He stared down at his mother as he slowly pushed his head past her moist folds. Women just didn't come built like his mother. More was the pity.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 01



Some of his friends were into curvier women. In the past, he'd mocked them for that. Asked them what it was like to watch a girl's ass jiggle when fucking her from behind. An ass should be so tight that it barely moved at all when you smacked it, he'd always contended.

The hell had he been thinking?

Even relatively light strokes made his mother's ass dance. And he found that positively hypnotic. Her bronzed orbs were so big, so round, and yet had not a hint of cellulite. It was unreal. And insanely hot.

Doggy was her favorite position. She'd never said so, but he knew. Little things gave it away. She moaned just a little bit louder. Climaxed just a little bit sooner. And her climax always hit a bit heavier and lasted a bit longer. He'd never really had a favorite himself. There were things he liked about every position. But the simple knowledge that his mother enjoyed this one so much was starting to make it his favorite too.

Eric stared at the ropes of hard muscle in his mother's back. At the jiggle of her ass. The way her labia stuck to his thick shaft, stretching out when he pulled back and sliding back to frame her slit when he thrust forward. He listened intently to the moaning of the bedsprings, to his mother's soft curses, pleas, and moans. The smell of sex gradually came to dominate the room, and it was a smell he savored.

All of that was nice.

But the best part of might well have been the simple knowledge that he was back inside his mother. Back where he belonged.

Gradually, she began working his Libido like never before. Eric felt like he was discovering what ecstasy was for the very first time. When his mother slammed her thighs together and squeezed her vaginal walls tight around his shaft, he coughed, nearly collapsed atop her back, and immediately went into orgasm. The kind that made his hole body convulse.

Though he knew his mother was exercising considerable restraint, Eric felt a ton of energy pour out of him. And afterwards, he felt empty. But not in a bad way. No workout had ever left him feeling so drained. The absence created when all that energy departed was immediately filled by an intense euphoria. An utter sense of contentment. He was weightless. Freed from all pain and worries and insecurities.

He probably should have been completely spent after that. But with a goddess like Gabby in his bed, how was he supposed to know when to quit?

Lazily, he rolled his head to the side, and drank his mother's form in.

Once upon a time, he'd have said that Veronica was the only woman in the family that wasn't more attractive, and the fact that he considered his mother more attractive than Nick's favorite sister had as much to do with his preference for blonde hair and blue eyes as it did anything else. Looking back now, though, it seemed to him that he'd found her unattractive because he'd talked himself into finding her unattractive, the way children hate mushrooms and squid and other foods simply because they expected to do so. Part of Eric felt that his mother's huge breasts and wide hips should turn him off. Hers was not the kind of body you found on the covers of magazines.

But so fucking what?

Nick had told him once that ancient civilizations had idolized women like Gabby. That there were statues of fertility goddesses in museums around the world that were testament to early man's appreciation for figures like hers. Only in modern times were women who were built like thirteen year old boys held up as exemplars of beauty.

It had sounded like academic nonsense to him. Like something Nick must have picked up from Veronica, who had her own reasons to think that society's definition of beauty was flawed, the same way guys with small dicks all tried to convince themselves that it's not the size that counts but how you use it.

But his brother was right.

Once Eric had made the simple decision to disregard what his friends might think, to let his body and his heart speak to him, he found it impossible to deny that his mother was insanely sexy. That she did indeed symbolize fertility.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked, blushing.

"Can't help it," Eric replied.

He rolled onto his side, slipped a hand around her waist, and pulled her towards him sharply, until they lay beside one another and his heavy cock rested atop her stomach.

"Hey there, little guy," his mother said, tapping his cock with the tip of her finger.

"Little?"

Gabby giggled.

"I can make him bigger," he said.

"No need," his mother said, taking him firmly in her grip.

That was what he wanted to hear.

He could, in fact, control his size. It wasn't nearly as difficult to do as it seemed like it should have been. But he was proud of his natural size, and preferred not to fuck around with it. Otherwise, it felt like it wasn't him fucking his mother, but the supernatural powers he'd inherited from her.

That probably didn't make any sense. He'd inherited everything from her, from his height, bronze skin, and blue eyes to his immortality and crazy abilities. All the same, he considered his body his, and didn't like altering it.

"He looks kind of lonely," his mother said, turning onto her side.

"A little," Eric said.

He got up on his knees and rolled his mother onto her stomach. She laughed as he did. Without wasting any time, he pressed her legs tightly together and forced his fat cock in between her ass cleavage to fuck her tight snatch from above.

"Ungh, fuck yes, baby," she grunted.

From the prone position, he could barely get his full length inside her. It didn't allow for the true, deep fucking she both needed and deserved. But it sure felt good. The cool, soft flesh of her butt cheeks greeted him on his way home.

Her ass was absolute perfection. He didn't care that most men wouldn't agree. Despite its size, it was unnaturally smooth, free of dimpling and cellulite. The sharp separation of her beautiful globes from her shapely thighs held him captivated.

And his mother's inviting womb fit him like a glove. Tighter than, in fact. Every single stroke made him shudder with ecstasy.

It took all of four pumps before he shot his load deep inside his mother.

"Mmm, yeah," she cooed. "That's what Mommy needs."

Eric gave her ass a good smack before he collapsed onto his back.

"Wore you out, have I?" she asked.

"Not hardly," he said as he sucked air.

His mother rolled onto her side. "Hmm. Looks like you're done."

"Just need a minute," he said.

She reached down and gave his dick a few pumps. "He hasn't lost interest has he?"

Eric scoffed. Was she kidding? He was still hard as a rock.

"No?" Gabby asked, eyebrow raised. "Why don't you prove it to me." She got up and straddled him. Taking his cock in her hands, she played with it, caressing his helmet and stroking his shaft, but didn't guide it into her warm hole. "That is, if you're not too tired."

"You're evil," he said. "You know that?"

His mother gave him a devilish grin as she finally allowed him back in.

#

Maybe it was just the doubt Veronica had put in his mind. Or maybe he'd only needed a little reminder. But, for whatever reason, Nick found himself remembering how enraptured he was by his mother's beauty. How powerful his desire for her had been after she'd initiated him, right up until just recently. She'd inspired feelings in him that no other woman could. Not even Mom-Gee, who had a more impressive body.

Slowly, carefully, he seduced her. As he had so many times. He nibbled here, gently flicked his tongue there. Caressed this and lightly squeezed that.

"Ooooh, yeeeaaaah," Mom-Jay moaned.

She was biting down on her lower lip and had one hand draped lazily over the back of the couch. The other rested on the back of his head and tried to goad him into moving a little further south, past her hips. But it was only a token effort. Probably even subconscious. Her body might have ached for him to end the teasing, but he knew that she enjoyed it. If he gave in to her unspoken request, she'd actually be disappointed.

Damn, he'd missed this ritual. The way her body begged him to do one thing, while her words told him to disregard those same messages, to keep doing exactly what he was doing.

Equally, he'd missed the simple pleasure of worshiping her body. Even if not for her wonderful reactions, he'd have delighted in the opportunity to get reacquainted with her. The feel of her soft skin. The earthy smell of her arousal. The pleasant sounds she made. And the exquisite taste of her womanhood, which he'd yet to reexperience.

It made no sense that her inner thighs could be so nice and soft when her quads were so strong and hard. That her ass could have that lovely pliant feel when she relaxed, yet remind him of steel when her cheeks clenched. That she could have such wide hips and full breasts despite being so fit. A woman with abs like hers should not have tits that size. Not unless they were made of silicone.

As Nick slowly worked his way up and down his mother's body, he was reminded of how even her imperfections, such as they were, appealed to him. They gave her character. Helped him believe that, as divine as she was, she was real. Flesh and blood.

If he was still in bed, dreaming all of this, the woman wouldn't have had such thick eyebrows, nor such dark arm hair. Her bush would have been more meticulously groomed. She would have had a smaller nose, bigger breasts, and less prominent muscles. But Nick was actually quite glad that none of those things were true.

He didn't want a fantasy.

He wanted his mother, in all her glory.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, as he tweaked a dark nipple. "Careful there, sweetie."

Nick flashed her a devilish grin.

"Oh, who'm I kidding?" she asked, in her huskiest voice. Running her hands through his short hair, she said, "Do whatever you want to me."

Never before had he been the least bit rough with her. And he still wasn't going to be, not by the standards of those who actually liked rough sex. But neither was he going to hold back quite as much as usual.

Some of his nibbles came a little bit closer to bites. And every now and then, he gave her breasts or ass a forceful squeeze. Every time he did so, it elicited a most savory whimper from his mother. When he had her kneel on the couch, with her face buried in a throw pillow and her ass up in the air, he kneaded her ass like dough and gave her a few playful slaps. And a few that weren't so playful. The way her meaty yet surprisingly soft cheeks rippled drove him insane with lust.

"Mmmph," his mother mumbled into the pillow.

He was afraid that she'd tell him to ease up. Or demand to know what had come over him. But she merely wiggled her hips at him, inviting him to give her another spank.

So he did.

"Ungh, oh, baby," she said. "I've never seen this side of you."

That wasn't exactly a request for him to stop.

He didn't respond. Just gave her ass a good squeeze, jiggled it, then relaxed his grip before starting in on a rimjob. Once he did, he went back to being soft and tender.

"God, yes," his mother said. "You really love Mommy's ass, don't you?"

Again, he didn't respond. Especially since he'd have had to take his tongue away from the smooth skin surrounding her anus to do so.

"Would you like to fuck it?"

He felt her heartbeat accelerate. Or maybe only imagined he did, because he sensed the nervousness in her Libido. One way or another, he knew that if he didn't respond quickly this time, the offer would be withdrawn. She'd probably even surprised herself just by saying it. Nick could only assume that she was now worried that he'd think her too freaky.

Freaky, yes.

But too freaky? Definitely not.

"If you'd be okay with that," he said.

His mother hesitated before replying. "I think I would be, yeah."

"There's not much I wouldn't like to do with you," Nick said. "And I'm flattered that you trust me enough to suggest that. But I want you to know that I won't be disappointed if you take it back."

"I appreciate that," she said. "You're always so thoughtful." Another pause. "But I think I actually do want to try it."

Would this be her first time with anal?

Nick's head spun.

"Then we'll work our way up to that," Nick said. He gave one round cheek a soft tap. "But I'm not nearly done showing my appreciation for your perfect body yet."

"Mmm. Good answer."

And indeed, it was a long while after that before he took his boxers off.

Not only did he get a little rougher with his mother than he usually did, he also tried a few other things he hadn't before. Like sucking on her toes. That hadn't done much for her. Or experimenting with the possibility of bringing her to climax purely through nipple stimulation, which had worked.

He'd also, on a lark, decided to give her navel some attention.

And to both Nick's surprise and his mother's, that drove her absolutely wild.

He'd never even considered the idea that the bellybutton could be an erogenous zone. Yet apparently it was one of his mother's favorites. How much of that was because it was a part of her body that was particularly sensitive and how much came from the sheer novelty of it, he wasn't sure. Maybe it simply reflected the fact that his mother liked having him spend more time near her midsection, proud as she was of her toned abs. But whatever accounted for her getting so worked up by him making love to her navel the way he would her pussy, it was just fine by him.

Only after he'd guided his mother through several orgasms, most of which had come during an extended session of cunnilingus, did Nick take his mother up on her most unexpected offer to let him fuck her in the ass.

"Go easy, now," she said. "I've never done this before, case you hadn't guessed."

"Don't worry," he said. "You're in good hands."

His fingers became tongues, and with one hand wrapped around her waist and the other planted between her round ass cheeks, he tongue-fucked both of her holes for a bit. Just as she was starting to really get into that, he lubed himself up and pressed his bulbous cock head against her smooth ring of muscle.

His mother's tight sphincter has gradually relaxed under the relentless but gentle pressure of Nick's tongue-fingers. As a result, it took less effort than either of them had expected for him to push his fat head inside.

Once he did, though, he stopped to let his mother catch her breath and get used to the feel of him back there.

"Oh, my," she said, panting. "That's...different."

"Different good? Or different, `that was a nice experiment but let's go ahead and take it back out now, okay?' different?"

"Mmmph, ungh, I don't know," she said. "Gimme a sec."

So he did. His tongue-fingers stopped writhing against her pussy as well.

After a few more deep breaths, she said, "Okay. Let's try some more."

Ever so slowly, they worked in unison to get every last inch of his huge dick buried inside his mother's bowels. Her cheeks clenched and relaxed rapidly, almost quivering. Her sphincter spasmed, but lightly. Never pinching him too forcefully, as he'd feared it might.

"Fuck, baby," his mother panted. She wiped her hair over the front of her shoulder. "It's not quite like the other way, is it?"

"You tell me."

"Mmm, no. Definitely not. Nice, though. Just not anything I'm used to."

Nick leaned forward and kissed her bare shoulder.

She reached back and pressed a soft palm against the side of his face before saying, "You've been great. Nice and patient. I can't imagine trying this with any other guy."

He ran his hands lightly through his mother's hair while continuing to rain soft kisses on her shoulder. His hands longed to squeeze her breasts or her ass, but the last thing he wanted to do was overwhelm her.

"Okay," she said at last.

Before he could even respond, she started working her hips. She'd pull away from him then gently push back again. And again. And again. With each slow, mini-thrust, she gasped. But her Libido was a raging inferno. And she was more relaxed than he'd expected.

Nick let his mother set the pace. In fact, he didn't do much at all. Just let her impale herself on him. His hips remained still. After a while, once her thrusts grew more rapid and forceful and he was sure that she was thoroughly relaxed, he let his hands go back to work. One still had tongues for fingers, and was waging war on her pussy, inside and out. The other alternated between squeezing a fat breast and cupping her ass.

In the end, his mother experienced one of the most intense orgasms of her life. Or so she said. It seemed believable enough though, to gauge by her Libido.

They took a short break before Nick started the seduction routine over, from the top.

"Again?" his mother asked, smiling languidly. "You're bad."

"Very, very bad," he said.

She gave him a wicked grin as he massaged her feet and kissed his way up from her ankles to her calves. "I don't know how much more of this I can take before I suffer overdose. But I'll be damned if I'm going to ask you to stop."

And he'd be damned if he was going to stop.

They would never have the same connection he and Veronica did. But making love to his mother was a pleasure all its own. She had a body unlike any he'd ever seen. Her waist was slimmer and her hips broader than those of his sister. And her face was prettier as well, despite its signs of maturity. No matter how much time he spent running his hands over her figure, licking it and kissing it and groping it and caressing it, he could never really believe that she as fit, as thickly muscled, as she was, given the extreme curves she nonetheless possessed. Her ass was as soft as dough one moment, and as hard as steel the next. Her thighs were thick and meaty, yet soft in all the right places. Her abs were nearly as hard and sculpted as his, yet she had breasts that were nearly as big as Annie's, if still a good deal smaller than Veronica's.

"Maybe it's Mommy's turn to please her baby?" she said at one point.

"Um...nope, don't think so," Nick said.

She laughed softly as she tossed her head back and made herself putty in his hands.

The musky scent coming from between her legs called to him. Nick wanted to taste his mother. To savor her. To feel her juices running down his chin and her swollen labia pressed against his lips. But he'd only just started teasing her. She would have to wait, he would have to wait, until he'd paid her curvaceous form the attention it deserved.

"You can't possibly be this good, this young," she said. "My father could learn a thing or two from you." Then she added, "So could my mother."

Nick knew that Grandpa Randy and Grandma Flori had been the ones to initiate Mom-Jay. And his mother sometimes talked about them during casual conversation. How much she missed them. How sad she'd been when they'd decided to retire from the court. But if his mother was anywhere near as infatuated with her mother and father as Nick himself was his own parents, she sure did a good job of hiding it.

All the same, the way that last remark had come out, it felt like the highest compliment he'd ever received from any woman. Perhaps it was the tone with which she said it. Or perhaps it was precisely because she so seldom talked about her parents. Either way, Nick felt like his mother had just told him that he, her son, a relative novice in the ways of their kind, had set the bar in her mind for what passed for great sex.

With as much experience as she had, and she'd been around for some time before she'd married Hank and Gabriela, that was really saying something.

Nick had a hard time maintaining his concentration after that. Suddenly, he felt the need to make sure every flick of his tongue, every little caress, was perfect. Otherwise, he might fail to live up to expectations.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 02



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Author's note

As ever, if you have questions feel free to email me or leave a comment. Either way, I'll try to respond in a timely manner.

This is primarily an incest story, but it is also sci-fi/fantasy, and supernatural elements are not incidental to the plot. Additionally, many chapters will feature elements of other categories, particularly group sex and anal.

All sexual acts are consensual and involve parties who are at least eighteen years of age.

########################

Nick was one of those guys who understood that what got one woman off might do next to nothing for another. With Jennifer, he was all tender kisses and gentle teasing. But that would have bored Gabriela to tears. Thankfully enough, though, he understood that.

Even so, Gabriela was surprised by the farewell she got from Nick.

When he'd grabbed her, forcefully but not quite roughly, she'd swooned a little. When he'd pressed his mouth to hers, seeking out her lips hungrily, her heart had started to race. And when his hands ripped her robe open and started groping at her breasts, she knew she was in for a treat. But, even then, she'd expected him to build things up gradually, the way he usually did. Perhaps he'd spend less time on foreplay, she'd figured, but surely he'd put his tongue and fingers to work before granting her the pleasure of feeling his beautiful, young, hard cock inside her.

How mistaken she'd been.

Beautifully, wonderfully, mistaken.

Just a few moments after pulling her robe open, he'd spun her around, barely giving her a chance to prop her hands up on the tiled counter-top. Then he'd lifted the back of her robe up and pressed his glorious manhood against her swollen labia. The closest to foreplay he came was smacking his fat dick against her vulva a few times, rubbing his head along her slit and against her clitoris, before he buried himself to the hilt in her hungry pussy.

Sometimes, Gabriela actually did enjoy a slow build. There was definitely something to be said for skillful seduction. No one could deny that Nick was beyond talented in that department either. But, just then, she couldn't have been happier to have him take her so suddenly, so decisively. The surprise of it, and the overpowering sense of desire she felt radiating from his Libido, gave her the sense that his actions were born out of an irresistible need, a genuine inability to go slow even if he'd wanted to. And that alone had her halfway to orgasm before his fat helmet even parted her lips.

Then the exquisite pleasure of feeling his bulbous head stretch nearly as wide as when she'd brought her children into the world very nearly finished her off.

That sense of being opened as far as she could go lasted but a moment before giving way to the most intense of pleasures. Nick took her breath away, made her knees wobble, and turned her spine to jelly. The shaft of his beautiful manhood was no thicker than her son's, of course. But that thick head made the initial penetration an experience all its own.

Slowly, her womb accustomed itself to his size and shape. Her muscles relaxed, her walls retreated, and she found herself thinking that she'd never felt anything quite so good. That he'd reminded her of the pain of childbirth just a moment ago was irrelevant. If anything, it only made what came after that much more enjoyable.

As Nick pumped his stiff prick in and out of Gabriela, he alternately smacked her ass and groped at her tits. She'd never known him to be so insistent. So relentless. Even as Gabriela felt her backside start to burn and her nipples grow sore, requiring her to draw upon her powers to numb the sting, she found herself silently pleading him to go harder still. It felt so good to know that she could cause him to lose control, to forget all about his usual tendency to be selfless.

To forget about his other mother.

"Mmmph...yeah...just like that," she moaned.

"God, I'm going to miss this," Nick said.

"Ungh," she grunted. "Me too."

Gabriela poured some energy into Nick, amplifying his sensitivity.

He was close already, she was sure. Left alone, he'd be shooting his warm cum inside her soon enough as it was. But she couldn't wait any longer.

"Oh...god," he stammered.

"That's it," Gabriela whispered, pushing her hips back to meet his every thrust.

With his next pump, Nick paused, and Gabriela felt his hips jerk. Then he slowly withdrew and slammed back into her. Again, once buried to the hilt, he stopped.

Gabriela cooed at him, reaching between her legs to tease his balls with her nails. She needed to feel his sperm swimming about inside her. Feel his life-giving juice fill her up.

Even before she felt his balls twitch and his warm seed begin spray inside her, Gabriela felt something stirring in his Libido, and she knew it was going to be a big one.

"Ooohh, yeah," Nick groaned.

"That's it baby," she said. "Give it to Mommy."

Her son unleashed a torrent of cum into her, filling her to overflowing. A sense of warmth spread throughout her body as her son's jizz worked its way up her cervix.

He slowly withdrew, and his fat head forced her to open up wide again. This caused Gabriela to let out a whimper. Every time that beautiful cock retreated, she felt a bit cheated. Her body groaned in protest, demanding to be reunited with his gorgeous member.

But she knew that he was just getting started.

Slipping out of her silk robe, Gabriela turned to regard her son. His glossy black hair was plastered to his forehead, and sweat covered his brow. His lips were stretched into a lazy smile, and his eyes were unfocused.

The lean muscles of his chest and abdominals swelled outward than settled back as he sucked air. Damn, that was a beautiful sight. He might not have Eric's divine form, but he was more than a little impressive.

Only then did Gabriela remember that they weren't alone.

Veronica was on the floor, lying on her back, legs spread wide. Eric knelt above her, thrusting in and out of her more rapidly than any human possibly could have. Gabriela felt flushed as she watched his round little ass cheeks clench and relax, clench and relax.

Neither Veronica nor Eric spoke a word. Eric had never been the most vocal lover Gabriela had known,, but how Veronica could be so quiet was a mystery to Gabriela. If that had been her, she'd have had a hard time keeping her mouth shut.

Watching her son work filled her with pride, excitement, and jealousy.

Feeling a bit flushed, Gabriela looked away. She had been about to ask Nick if he wanted to go another round when he put a hand on her shoulder and guided her down to her knees.

Ordinarily, she wouldn't have let anyone but Eric give her a silent command like that.

But the look in Nick's eyes brooked no argument.

Besides, Nick had so often, and so enthusiastically, pleasured her, that she felt he'd earned the right to push her to her knees just this once.

He held her hair back from her face while she bobbed to and fro. Otherwise, he mostly just stood there and let her do the work. He didn't try to fuck her face or anything like that. She had to admit that the way he started to melt almost as soon as she started, moaning and sighing and cursing and begging her not to stop, was more than a little gratifying.

Gabriela started to really get into it after a while. Her hands roamed over her son's insanely sculpted abs or gripped his hard thighs. She cupped her lips around his foreskin and worked her tongue back and forth against the smooth underside of his swollen helmet. She also showed off her talent for deep-throating every now and then. And took him out and stroked him in her hand while sucking on his balls a few times too.

"God, that feels so good," he moaned.

By the time Nick finally busted his load, Gabriela had started to enjoy herself enough that she was almost disappointed that he didn't last longer. Not so close to disappointed as to offer to keep going, mind, but she was still surprised by how pleasant the experience was.

Of course, she would have preferred it to be Eric's cum pouring onto her tongue. Nick's tasted faintly of almonds, and was too salty. Eric's was almost fruity, and a bit sweeter. If anything, it reminded her of pineapple.

But, all in all, she found herself thinking that she probably ought to have done this for Nick more often. It was a shame that she only realized this now, during what just might be their last time together.

"That was incredible," Nick said, running his fingers through her hair. "Thank you."

She rose to her feet and went up on tiptoes to kiss him on the lips.

She'd freshened up first, but most guys had a visceral reaction to the thought of kissing a woman who'd just sucked them off. Of course, Nick wasn't that kind of guy. He didn't even hesitate before returning the kiss.

Before they'd quite finished, Eric tapped her shoulder and asked, "Can I cut in?"

"Mmm, of course," Gabriela said. "Your sister done with you?"

"Not exactly," he said.

Gabriela looked to see that Eric was still on the floor, taking Veronica from behind. She'd almost forgotten that her son had learned to wear two bodies. That her little boy was finally growing into the man she'd always known he'd one day become.

"Neat trick," Nick said.

"Easier than it looks," Eric said. "Give it a try."

So Nick did.

Before Gabriela's eyes, the dark-haired youth split in two. It was like watching a video about mitosis in biology class. First he grew wider, then a seam formed down his middle, and a moment later, his two halves pulled apart. Only they weren't halves, but wholes. The effect was both unsettling and strangely arousing.

One of the Nicks went to go join Eric and his sister, kneeling before her and offering her his cock. As if he hadn't just received the best blowjob he could have asked for. The other took one of Gabriela's heavy breasts in his hands and started sucking at her nipples. Meanwhile, the second Eric came around from behind and did the same for her other one.

Gabriela stared down at her two handsome sons, both suckling at her tits like babes, smiling. Here she was, mother to both boys, allowing them to do what little boys should do with their mothers...but not once they were grown up. It made her feel beautiful and sexy and desirable and womanly and motherly and dirty. All at once.

A particularly perverse thought came to her just then. She'd never tried it, but given all the other fantastic things their powers enabled them to do, there was no doubt in Gabriela's mind that it would work.

With a thought, she began lactating.

The boys coughed and gagged as mother's milk began seeping into their mouths.

Nick's eyes widened in surprise. Eric's in lust.

But neither wasted much time in resuming.

If her birth son was a little quicker to engulf the swollen nipple staring him in the face than her other son was, it was only by a fraction of a second.

Gabriela giggled and ran her hands through their hair as they drank up.

She'd never before thought of breastfeeding as a sexual act. And, even now, it didn't exactly strike her as the most satisfying one. But the psychological thrill of having her grown sons suck at her tits, of watching her milk dribble down their chins, was potent indeed.

Still, she didn't let that go on for too long. It felt a little awkward, for one thing. And sexual energy was pouring out of her more rapidly than breast milk was. The image would be forever burned in her mind as it was. No need to keep it up.

After the milk stopped flowing, Nick elbowed his larger brother aside, picked Gabriela up and sat her down on the counter. Then he set to work eating her pussy.

With a derisive snort, Eric glowered at him. But when it became clear that Nick wasn't about to stop, Eric resumed playing with Gabriela's breasts, despite the awkward angle from which he was forced to do it.

Gabriela closed her eyes, rolled her head back, and sighed. Having two beautiful, strong sons worshiping her with their mouths felt an awful lot like heaven.

Though Nick was the more talented of the two when it came to cunnilingus, she was pleased when he stepped back and let Eric take over. Looking down and seeing her baby boy's head between her legs, his sandy locks matching the tuft of hair sitting above her sex, sent chills down her spine.

"Yes, yes, just like that," she told Eric, pressing her nails into his scalp as she tried to bury his face deeper between her thighs.

Moments later, she exploded.

Her whole body tingled, and every muscle seemed to relax at the same time. She felt warm and peaceful and satiated.

#

Ordinarily, Eric didn't do much for Veronica.

He was gorgeous, all right. In fact, her blonde brother was almost too perfect. So much so that he made her feel more self-conscious about her own shortcomings. Which was the exact opposite of how Nick made her feel.

But the heightened sense of insecurity she felt around him didn't really stem from anything he did. Maybe what he didn't do, seeing as he never touched her the way Nick did. Never looked at her with all that much affection, let alone the adoration and unbridled lust she so often found in Nick's dark eyes. But it had been years since Eric had teased her about her weight or joked about how no guy would ever want her. No, it wasn't really his fault that she didn't feel comfortable around him. And Veronica realized that it wasn't entirely fair to hold the words of a fourteen year old against a man of twenty.

But she couldn't help feeling the way she felt.

That said, Eric was exactly what she needed just then.

Veronica had rarely gone so long without getting some play after her brother had initiated her. Oftentimes, she'd had to settle for girl-on-girl action, but even that got the job done. Ever since she'd laid eyes on Hank, though, she'd been horny as hell, yet afraid to let Nick touch her. It was starting to get unbearable.

She didn't want to be seduced. Didn't want to make love. She needed to get fucked.

And boy was Eric delivering.

True, he wasn't really looking her in the eyes. He was looking down at her, but his eyes were unfocused. Staring through her, really, into the tiled blue floor.

But that was okay.

His deep blue eyes might have been unfocused, but they practically shone. Not really, of course. She'd only met one man whose eyes did that. Yet her brother's were still beautiful.

As was everything about him. His sculpted chest was rippling and hard and smooth, with just a little tuft of golden brown hair. The arms that stretched out to either side of Veronica's head were like tree trunks. His abs couldn't have been harder, more well-defined. His jaw was square and broad, his features proud and handsome. Almost pretty. Whereas most people had just the slightest asymmetry to their features, Eric's face was absolutely, completely, perfectly symmetrical. There had never been whiter teeth. His cheekbones could cut glass, and his fuzzy stubble gave him an air of maturity. His spiky blonde hair, slick with sweat, could not have been sexier.

"Mmm, yeah, fuck me, baby," she cooed. "Fuck me good. Like a whore."

Her brother grunted by way of acknowledgement. Or maybe just by coincidence. His eyes continued to pierce through her rather than gazing upon her.

She thought that last phrase might have gotten his attention. Veronica wasn't in the habit of talking that way. She'd never tell Nick to fuck her "like a whore." But it seemed apt just then, given the way her brother was indeed using her like a piece of meat, barely acknowledging her existence as anything other than a receptacle for his cock.

It made her burn with indignity and shame and humiliation.

But it also turned her on. Mightily.

Veronica raked her nails down Eric's back. As she did, she nibbled at his ear and neck. And not lightly either. Though her love bites elicited some exhilarating gasps, she still couldn't quite get a real reaction from Eric.

Only then did it finally hit her. He was, against all odds, in two places at once. Kneeling above her, thrusting that fat cock of his in and out of her faster and harder than any mortal man could, while at the same time suckling at his mother's tits.

As was Nick. There were also two Nicks now as well. One had his face pressed against Gabriela's breast and another was walking over to Veronica, his hefty cock swaying beautifully between his legs.

Her head spun. She'd been avoiding Nick. Now it didn't seem she had much choice but let him join in. Of course, she didn't exactly want to turn him away. But she hoped that her two brothers kept her aroused enough to keep Nick from noticing anything in her Libido other the insane and overpowering lust that she was currently feeling.

To her disappointment, Eric leaned back, pulled out of her, and stood up.

She hadn't been too close to a climax, but close enough that her body groaned in protest after he left her hollow and empty.

Without a word, Eric stepped aside and gestured for Nick to take over. Nick nodded to his brother then turned to Veronica. "Cowgirl?" he asked.

Fretting at her lower lip, she mumbled, "Okay."

It didn't take long for her anxiety to fade away. If Nick noticed anything out of the ordinary in he Libido, he wasn't letting on. So she decided to push all her concerns aside and just focus on enjoying herself. While bouncing up and down on one huge dick, she enthusiastically sucked on another. And loved every second of it.

Veronica experienced a huge ego trip, having not one but two guys, who were both nearer to gods than men, focus all their attention on her. Granted, she knew that they weren't really focusing all of their attention on her. They were both busy seducing Gabriela as well. But she chose to ignore that pesky little detail.

"Suck that dick," Nick whispered to her, taking her by surprise.

She took Eric's cock out of her mouth, stroked him with her hand, and looked down at her brother. "You like that? Watching your sister swallow another man's cock?"

"Oh, fuck, yes," he said, thrusting up into her a little harder with each word.

It took Veronica a moment to regain her senses. She wasn't sure if Nick actually was the type of guy who got off on watching his woman pleasure another guy or if he was just going with the flow. He wasn't above pretending to be into something he wasn't just for her sake. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. Titillated, yet maybe just a little upset that he wasn't more uncomfortable with it all.

The moment she realize that she'd thought of her self as "his woman", she felt ashamed. Just a tad bit presumptuous.

But it felt right too.

Eric slapped her with his dick, snapping her out of her reverie. "You heard the man."

Veronica smiled wickedly before taking him back in her mouth.

To make him pay for the comment, and the slap, she sank her teeth into his member. Lightly. Very lightly, in fact. But, like many guys, he was sensitive enough that it didn't take much pressure at all to make him squeal like a pig. He jerked his hips back a little, but stopped himself short of reacting more dramatically.

Nick, presumably realizing what had happened, laughed.

Taking Eric back out for a moment, Veronica smiled at him and said, "Behave yourself and maybe I'll play nice."

"Deal," he said, looking like a deer caught in headlights.

And, from there, he was a good little boy.

So she rewarded him by giving him the best blowjob of his life. At least, she told herself that it was. If she was being honest, she'd perhaps admit that Gabriela had undoubtedly already beaten her to that punch. To say nothing of Olivia. When people asked her what she was majoring in, Liv sometimes answered, "Fellatio."




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 02



For the time being though, there was no woman in the universe but Veronica. And no men save her brothers, for that matter. After she sucked Eric off and swallowed an inordinate amount of his cum, she rode Nick to a climax of her own.

Then the three of them decided it was time for a DP.

Veronica still wasn't entirely sure how she felt about anal. As long as it was Nick taking her ass, she was usually more or less comfortable with the idea. But there were times she didn't want even him back there.

This was not one of those times.

The voice inside her head, the one that would normally pipe up at this point and ask if she really wanted to go there, had apparently taken the day off.

And she was glad that it had.

Veronica experienced several intense orgasms that afternoon.

#

"Yup," Gabriela said. "That was...yup."

Eric smiled as he stood up.

"You're getting dangerously good at that, baby," she said, ruffling his hair. "Might even teach Nick here a few tricks."

Eric's smile deepened. He turned and flashed a toothy grin at Nick.

For his part, the dark-haired youth merely chuckled and clapped his brother on the back.

Slowly, Gabriela slipped off the counter and back onto the cool floor. Her whole body felt limp and unsteady. In the best possible way.

Hardly two feet away from her, the other Nick and Eric were double-penetrating Veronica.

Gabriela had never found the idea of taking two men inside her at once to be particularly appealing. What experiences she'd had with anal sex were not entirely pleasurable. It was hard to imagine how the sense of being overwhelmed, of being powerless and almost under assault, would be made better if she had a cock in her vag at the same time.

But maybe it was just that she'd never had the right partners. That Hank had been too much of a control freak. That Alan had been overeager, clumsy even, back when they'd first started exploring the pleasures of incest.

Besides, it did look like Veronica was having the absolute time of her life. And she seemed to be in control of it all, even though she was sandwiched between her two brothers. Eric lay flat on his back, fondling Veronica's considerable breasts gently. Nick knelt behind them, holding almost perfectly still. One hand was on Veronica's hip and one held her inky black hair aside so he could kiss her neck. But his hips did not so much as gyrate, let alone thrust. Their sister could choose for herself how fast or slow she wanted to impale herself on their two rods. And, at the moment, she was going hog wild.

The sight gave Gabriela chills.

Eric noticed her noticing. He put a hand on her waist, softly, and asked, "Yeah?"

She fretted at her lower lip. It had been so long since she'd allowed a man to come in through the back door. And she'd never tried anything like this.

But if she was going to do so, who better to try it with than her beautiful sons?

And they were both her sons. It didn't matter that Nick had none of her blood. She'd raised him as her own. Cared for him. Loved him, if not the same way that she loved Eric.

Nick looked at her, expectantly. No, not expectantly. If she said no, he wouldn't let any disappointment show. That wasn't his way. He'd do his best to help her enjoy it, if she chose to go down that path, but he'd understand if she didn't.

Slowly, Gabriela nodded.

She followed Veronica's lead and suggested that Eric lie on his back. Not only did she want to be able to look him in the eyes, but she was only going to enjoy this if whoever claimed her ass was really delicate. Most of the time, delicate was not what she looked for in a man. Ordinarily, she liked that Eric tended to take what he wanted. And if she asked him to, he'd probably be just as gentle as his brother. But at least to start, she wanted Jennifer's sensitive little boy behind her, and her gorgeous hunk beneath her.

To start off, though, she wanted Eric all to herself.

They went slow. His hands were firm, insistent, but not aggressive. His kisses were soft and tender. When their lips weren't locked together, he stared into her eyes, unblinking, and she thought she might lose herself.

"You're so beautiful, Mom. I couldn't possibly be more drawn to you," he said. "You don't have to do this for me."

"It's not for you," she said. "It's for me."

He smiled. "Well, as long as you're sure."

She wasn't, exactly. But she was pretty close.

Gabriela laid a finger over her son's lips, bounced softly on his hard cock a few times, then leaned down for a kiss.

She'd met a lot of guys who didn't know how to kiss, back when she'd dated mortal men. She'd also met more than a few who did, of course. Like every one of their kind, if to varying degrees. Even Wes could make her knees weak and her Libido swell, most of the time.

But Eric?

Her son's kisses were unlike any she'd ever known. They made her feel alive. Made her feel warm and loved. And when he took his hands away from her ass, an ass he insisted was not too big, though she still wasn't entirely sure she believed him, and looped his arms back around her shoulders, holding her tight, she felt safe and protected too.

Once, she'd thought Alan was the one for her. She'd hated Becky for being his favorite.

Of course, she'd then hated herself for feeling that way, after everything that happened. It had taken but one tragic day for her to go from hating her sister to missing her intensely. So much so that she couldn't bear to think the girl's name any more than she could Alan's.

But Gabriela had long ago accepted that Alan wasn't really the one for her. Not just in the sense that if he'd truly been meant for her, he wouldn't have been taken away from her. She'd allowed herself to see that he and Becky were too good for each other for any other woman to lay claim to Alan.

No, her brother was not the one.

Her son was.

For some time, she'd hoped that he might be. Probably since the day she'd initiated him. But she hadn't dared to let herself believe that he really was. Even after he started losing interested in Olivia. It was just too good to be true.

Now, though, as she stared into his eyes, felt his strong arms holding her tight, and as his young, hard dick filling her, connecting the two of them to one another both physically and symbolically, she knew. This was the man for her. Unquestionably.

Nothing bad could happen to her while she was in his arms.

When she announced that she was ready for Nick, Gabriela almost felt like she standing outside herself. From a small distance, she watched as the dark-haired youth crouched behind her, sucked on his thumb, and gently probed at her anus. Though some part of her knew that it took some time, a lot of lube, and still more patience, on some other level, she felt like the buildup just came and went in the blink of an eye.

It didn't hurt. At all.

Perhaps it was a little awkward. Maybe even unpleasant, at first. But not painful. Definitely not that. And after whatever lingering fear remained drained away, and her body relaxed, she actually started to enjoy it.

A lot.

She'd never really thought about, but only about a third of her vagina was sensitive enough to really feel her lover's penis sliding in and out of her. Her anus, on the other hand, was a bundle of supersensitive nerve endings. Which was, of course, precisely why she hadn't enjoyed anal in the past. Alan, and especially Hank, had been too insistent. Too quick to try to get her to take it all in. Too rough.

Nick was the exact opposite. He took his sweet time penetrating her. And she couldn't have been more thankful for that. By the time she felt his balls pressing against her cheeks, though, she found herself thinking, "Finally. About damn time."

"Okay?" Eric asked.

Eyes closed and lower lip buried under her front teeth, Gabriela nodded. "Better than."

Nick ran his fingers lightly through her hair and kissed her shoulder before whispering, "You're a goddess."

"A-fucking-men," Eric agreed.

She felt like a goddess, even if she only really believed that one of her sons thought so. They were her faithful. Her followers. And they were worshiping her with their hearts and hands and mouths. With their whole bodies.

Exactly the way a goddess should be worshiped.

The experience was, in many ways, exactly what she expected. There was a certain awkwardness to the whole ordeal. Too many bodies trying to occupy too little space. Too many smells invading her nose, making it hard to pick out and savor each young man's unique musk. Hands everywhere. Strong muscles pressed against every part of her. And she'd never felt so full. It was almost like she couldn't breathe.

Yet, even though those were more or less the things she'd expected to notice, her reactions to them were not at all what she'd feared. She did indeed feel full. Their movements were indeed awkward. But it wasn't overwhelming. Intense, yes, but not overwhelming. The intimacy, the powerful sense of connectedness, was intoxicating.

She wasn't sure how long she could handle that level of stimulation though. Shortly after her beautiful sons brought her to a climax, she announced that she needed a break.

Veronica, somehow, was still going. Now it was Eric in her ass, and Nick lying underneath her. And the boys were doing more work now too. Thrusting into her, fast and hard. But the girl still seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself, even if it looked like it was taking everything she had to keep from being swept away by it all.

More power to her.

Gabriela might get there one day. After she'd had more practice. But, for now, she couldn't bear the thought of having another dick in her ass, however much fun it had been while it had lasted.

So after she regained her breath, she climbed down on all fours and waited to see which boy would claim her first.

Of course, Eric did.

His strong hands took hold of her hips and her pussy started to ache with anticipation. No one made her feel the way Eric did. Her beautiful son was as perfect as a man could be.

Had Nick pressed his dick to her mouth, she'd have been glad to suck him off again. Just at that moment, she was feeling so horny that there wasn't much she'd have said "no" to. But when he decided to collapse back down to just the one body that was lying beneath his sister, Gabriela didn't complain.

Ostensibly, the point of all this was for the Hardts to say goodbye to the Moodys. But some time alone with Eric was never, ever out of order.

"You've got to be the sexiest woman alive," Eric said at one point.

Gabriela smiled to herself.

"Thought you liked your women skinny? Flat-chested?"

"Noooo," he said.

She leaned sharply forward, leaving his hard prick behind. It wasn't easy to part with it, but with any luck he found the absence even less bearable than she did. "What's that, baby? Mommy can't hear you."

Her son grabbed her hips, hard, and pulled back, impaling her on his fat dick.

"Those...days...behind me," Eric panted, in between thrusts.

"What changed?" she asked.

The slap he gave her ass then was more than just firm. It stung.

Beautifully.

Apparently, he was done playing along with her little game.

Time for a new one then. Time to have her baby boy prove to her exactly how rehabilitated he was. She thrust back against him, gave her hips a little wiggle, then slammed her thighs together. As she tightened her vice grip physically, she simultaneously stepped up her metaphysical onslaught.

She slowly moved her hips up and down the length of her son's massive penis. The feeling inside her pussy was almost unbearable, but even more unbearable was the thought of allowing the pleasure to end. She had to keep it going just a little longer. Even as Gabriela worked her son's member faster and faster with her inner walls, she eased up on his Libido. Reversed course, in fact, numbing him to the pleasures that she was visiting upon him.

Her orgasm was so close. He couldn't cum yet.

Just.

A little.

Longer.

Those tiny little spasms inside her wet pussy were a sure sign that her climax was going to be a good one. The kind that made her whole body tingle. That left her feeling no pain, and forced her to smile uncontrollably. That opened up the floodgates, allowing her son to drink heavily from her pool of energy, should he so choose.

Which, of course, he wouldn't. No matter how vulnerable she made herself, she'd never have to worry about him abusing her trust.

"How's...ungh...that?" she asked.

"Ooooh, fuck," Eric moaned.

Every time Gabriela moved away from her son, she squeezed her vaginal muscles just a little bit harder than the previous time, relishing the feel of her son's big, hard cock. The slick walls of her tunnel were milking him, caressing him on his way out.

"Not yet," she whispered. "Almost there, baby."

He tightened his hold on her broad hips, putting a stop to her languid ebb an flow, and began to pulverize her pussy. He slammed in and out faster, faster, faster.

"Mmmmph, yes, yes, yes," Gabriela panted.

She started thrusting her hips back just as fast, retaking some manner of control. Her son's hands loosened up and he let her set the pace. She gave her hips a good wiggle, sliding her ass about in circles against her son, and felt his cock head stirring her insides.

"Atta girl," Eric said, tapping her ass lightly with an open palm. "Dance for me."

How long Gabriela remained on the brink of an orgasm, she couldn't have said. They kept going like that, speeding up and then slowing down and then speeding up and then slowing down, for some time.

Eventually, though, she knew she couldn't take much more. The pleasure was too much. The sensory overload was causing her to lose control over her muscles, her thoughts, and her very essence. A tingling began deep inside her and worked its way out, radiating from her vulva and her nipples and running down her spine.

Then Eric took over.

He started thrusting his hips as fast as he ever had, fucking her sizzling pussy the way a good son ought to fuck his mother. And Gabriela started to cum, and cum hard. Her pussy throbbed like a bass drum. A wave of euphoria crested slowly. She was almost there.

"Yes, yes, yes, YES!"

And there it was. Pleasure beyond words began to settle over her.

Just as it did, Eric joined her in climax. His virile young seed filled her tunnel, coated her inner walls. Even as she pictured a dam bursting, as it became clear that he was not only going to fill her up, but cause her womb to overflow, she still found herself wanting, needing, to milk him further. To feel his cock twitch and his balls pulse again and again and again, as he filled her with his love.

Her son grunted and his hips jerked, but still he held his cock buried deep inside her. And he just kept right on ejaculating.

"Give it to me, baby," Gabriela cooed. "Make Mommy yours."

Nick and Veronica stopped for a second to look at them. Gabriela was still moving, still riding her son's cock through a few final waves of pleasure, even though, by rights, she shouldn't have had any energy left with which to do so. All the while, Eric was still filling Gabriela with yet more of his jizz. His life-giving sperm. His little babies-to-be.

When he finally retreated, his seed started to gush out of her, hitting the floor with a gentle yet decidedly audible slop. Nick and Veronica smiled at her, their eyebrows raised in amusement, and Gabriela couldn't help but blush.

But her mind was already elsewhere.

For just a moment there, it had felt like more than jizz was filling her. Like her son had opened up in a deeper way. Allowed a part of him to fuse with her.

Whatever images might have danced through her mind as he pumped her full of sperm, her son hadn't impregnated her. She'd felt the beautiful, draining, life-affirming, Libido-emptying rush of conception just twice before, but each had made the kind of impression that lasted a lifetime. Whatever had just happened, it wasn't quite that.

Which was good. Because that was all kinds of against the rules.

It was relief that she felt at the realization. Really, it was.

#

"So. I trust you had a good time," Veronica said as they walked down the driveway, leaving behind the house they'd grown up in.

Nick regarded her quietly out of the corner of his eye.

It wasn't fair, she knew. If Nick had enjoyed Gabriela's affection more than she had Eric's, that wasn't his fault. And she couldn't pretend that Eric did nothing for her. Besides, the frustration she felt had more to do with him spending most of the night with their mother, when she'd thought him was asleep beside her, than it did their goodbye to the Moodys. And, of course, that might never have happened if she hadn't quietly rebuffed her brother.

In short, she was projecting. It wasn't really her brother that she was mad at, even though she was indeed upset with him. The feelings she had for her father, and the things they were making her do, were the real problem.

Fair or unfair, though, she was going to take it out on Nick. No one ever said emotions made sense, after all.

"What's really on your mind?" Nick asked, taking her hand in his.

She pulled it away. "Nothing. Except your obsession with older women."

He nodded. Fucking nodded.

How could he be so casual? Couldn't he just do her the favor of rising to the bait?

That was Nick for you, though. Always understanding. Always mature. Even when she didn't want him to be.

"Did you have to tell me about last night?" she demanded.

"Don't think it's right to keep secrets from you. Especially with stuff like that."

Veronica huffed.

"Besides, it would only make it seem like it was a bigger deal than it was," he added. "If you ever did find out."

"Right, it was nothing," she aid. "Just boredom, really. Because that's what most guys do when they can't sleep. They fuck their mothers."

"Vee."

Why wouldn't he just fight back?

Instead, he wrapped an arm around her. She struggled at first, but only halfheartedly.

"Is this all because you're expecting a fight over whatever it is that you're hiding from me? Figure you should just go ahead and start one anyway?"

She didn't respond.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure you're making too big a deal of it," he said. "If you don't want to tell me, don't tell me. I'm not gonna ask. But I do want you to know that it wouldn't change anything between us."

"How can you say that?" she asked. Then, realizing how that sounded, she hurried to add, "Assuming there's an `it' at all."

He smiled wanly then kissed the top of her head. The jerk just didn't fight fair.

"Fine," she said. "Obviously there is." No sense trying to lie to the Libido-reading bastard. "But I'm not going to tell you, because you'll flip out. Even though I'm sure you meant it when you said that you wouldn't. Hell, I'd be mad, if I were you."

"Well then I guess I should be, even without knowing what it is," he said.

Without a trace of anger in his voice.

The fucker had a point. Rhetorical or otherwise. "It's about Dad," she said.

"You think he's hot."

Veronica stared up at her brother silently. Even though she knew he was entirely too good at reading people, that still took her by surprise.

It shouldn't have, of course. Once she'd said what she'd said, there were only so many things that could fit. But she was still trying to wrap her head around the way she felt herself. How could he just blurt it out like that, as if it was so predictable?

"That doesn't bother me, you goofball," he said, kissing her again.

"Really?" she asked.

"Really."

"You're weird," she said, feeling the tension go out of her shoulders.

Her brother burst out laughing.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 02



"And kind of awesome," Veronica added before kissing him on the cheek.

"Wish you'd just told me," he said. "Though I understand why you didn't."

"You're not even going to make some wisecrack about how old he is?" she asked. "Or say something snide about his eyes?"

"Should I?"

"I don't know," she said. "Guess not. Just don't get how you can be so nonchalant."

He came to a stop and, after she followed suit, spun her around. With his hands on her shoulders and his face mere inches from hers, he said, firmly, "Because I love you."

Veronica might have collapsed if her brother wasn't holding her up.

"You...don't say that."

"It's true," he said. "And I don't care if it's against the rules. I'm madly in love with you, Veronica. And you don't have to say it for me to know that you feel the same way."

Her heart raced and her head spun and her lungs pumped like bellows.

"We can't," she said.

"Fuck that."

That felt good to hear, but it terrified her at the same time. All they'd ever heard from their mothers, since they day they'd been initiated, was that it was okay to have sex, but they weren't to make anything out of it. Weren't to go thinking it meant something.

Her brother was right. She did feel the same. She'd tried so hard to keep from thinking about it. Hadn't even dared to use the L-word in her own mind, lest she be tempted to one day say it aloud.

Now, though? How could she not?

"I...love you too, Nick."

He smiled and kissed her on the lips.

It was as if it was for the first time. The butterflies in her stomach were out of control. Her lips tingled pleasantly and a chill went down her spine.

"This is so wrong," she said afterwards.

"Be more convincing if you weren't smiling like that," Nick said, with a grin of his own.

"Like what?" she asked, blushing. Then added, "Am not."

Nick snickered.

Veronica looked away, still grinning. It was so liberating to say it openly. It was probably the stupidest thing her brother had ever said, but she was still glad he'd done so.

"What now?" she asked.

"We go kidnap some Bravo and-"

Veronica slapped his chest. "That's not what I mean and you know it."

He smiled at her, showing his stunningly white teeth, and however much she knew she should have been thinking otherwise, Veronica couldn't help feeling that everything would be all right. It was as taboo as anything could be among their kind. Destined to end in tragedy too, since they'd eventually have to marry other people, if they wanted to have families of their own. Nonetheless, it was okay. Because it just was.

She buried her head in her brother's chest. Reveled in the smell of him, the feel of his hard body, the soft sound of his breathing. He just stood there in silence, holding her.

Eventually, though, he asked, "Do you have any idea how we're going to do it?"

"Not really." With a weary sigh, she added, "Grandma's diary mentioned some things that might be useful. Doesn't sound all that different from using our powers in the bedroom."

"Grandma's diary," he said, voice flat.

He'd been no more upset when she finally told him about that than he'd been just now about their father. Though he refused to allow himself to keep secrets from her, he apparently didn't mind in the least when she kept stuff from him.

How was she not supposed to fall in love with him?

"Yeah," she said.

"Okay. Let's give it a shot," Nick replied.

#

"So," his mother asked him. "What now?"

Eric stood in the doorway separating his bedroom from the bathroom and stared at the beautiful woman lying in his bed. She wore a pink baby-doll, sheer white thigh-high stockings, and pink stilettos. He'd never before understood why some guys got so worked up over women in lingerie.

Then Gabby decided to play dress-up for him.

Most of the women he'd been with in the past didn't even own any lingerie. And even after his mother had initiated him into the family tradition, showed him a side of her that no son should ever see, he'd rarely seen her in stockings and heels.

It seemed so silly, that such a small thing could make such a difference. It wasn't like she was anything but incredibly attractive all on her own. But seeing her in outfits like that one, wearing just a little more makeup than usual, drove him insane with lust.

He drew a deep breath and tried his best to think straight. To clear his mind of the types of thoughts he didn't have time to indulge.

"We attack," he said.

His mother's blue eyes regarded him. She blinked once, twice, but said not a word.

"We've probably already wasted more time than we should. Our best shot is to catch him unawares. The last thing the king will be expecting is a headlong rush, so soon afterwards. He'll expect us to take time to plan and debate and prepare. To strike out at House Bravo's holdings here in the Playground."

The words sounded surprisingly persuasive. At least, he hoped they did. He realized, of course, that he had no way of really knowing what the king would be expecting. But it still seemed to Eric like they had to gamble on a bolt from the blue strategy.

"Sweetie," his mother said, sitting up.

Before she could start in on what would undoubtedly be a long list of flaws in his plan, he asked, "Has the king got any reason not to sit there, on his stupid throne, feeling invincible?"

Gabby sighed. "You don't know what you're saying."

"You're turning on me now too?"

His mother looked pained. "No, baby. No." Her voice was strained. She slipped out of bed and started towards him, moving hesitantly, as if afraid he'd lash out at her. "No one's turning on anyone. I'm just not sure you've thought this through."

He allowed her to press up against his chest. The stubborn youth in him considered pulling away, but he didn't. Nonetheless, by way of protest, he stood stiff as a board as she ran her hands over his abs and chest, without putting his hands on her.

"I think we should talk things over with your Uncle Wes."

With Uncle Wes?

Eric's back stiffened and he clenched his jaw. Since when did his mother see her brother as the kind of man she could look to in times of trouble? As a take-charge kind of guy? Why was she questioning him like this?

But the look in her eyes told him that he was reading too much into it. This wasn't about who was more of a man. Nor was it about who she thought made a better leader. Wes might not be the one you expected to rally the troops and lead them into battle, but he was the one you consulted with first. A strategist, or maybe an adviser, if not a leader.

Slowly, Eric forced himself to nod.

"I'll call him," she said.

Eric kissed his mother's forehead, ran his fingers lightly through her silky blonde hair, then headed downstairs. He didn't want to hear what she said to his uncle. Didn't want to risk letting the mature side, the side that had temporarily gained the upper hand, to be routed by his inner child.

With Nick and Veronica gone, they were going to need help no matter what they did. Besides, Kurt was missing too. This was as much their problem as it was his and his mother's. No reason not to reach out to Wes. And if they were going to do so, of course they should ask for his input before deciding how to proceed. Only fair.

Didn't mean anything more than that.

Eric got as far as the kitchen before it dawned on him that he was still naked.

The house was empty now. No underage little sister around to keep them all honest. They could walk around wearing whatever they wanted, and as little as they wanted. Could have sex wherever they wanted.

It should have felt liberating.

Why then did the house remind him of a survivor camp?

He willed a pair of shorts and a tight white tank-top into being as he rifled through the fridge, looking for something decent to eat. But, of course, there was nothing. Or as close as made no difference. He should have remembered that. They'd already established as much that morning, when his mother made breakfast from less than scratch.

Why couldn't he do the same?

With a little effort, Eric conjured up an oversized burrito. It wasn't nearly as difficult as he'd expected it to be. Of course, in one sense, it seemed obvious that it should be easy to pull food out of thin air. After all, he could basically clone himself. But there was part of him that didn't really believe that he could use sexual energy, while not sexually aroused, to achieve non-sexual outcomes.

Veronica had explained to him once that the energy they contained within their Libidos really wasn't sexual energy. They only thought it was because of how they harvested it. And they only harvested it the way they did was because the moment of climax left people completely open and utterly incapable of resisting any attempt to drain them of their energy.

All of that made a certain sort of sense. In a nerdy way. But it still surprised him. Pretty much every time he used his powers outside the bedroom.

That was something he was going to have to fix right quick, if he was going to be of any good to Patty. Maybe his mother was right after all. Perhaps it was a bit crazy to plan on storming into Summer and laying siege to the throne, given that he still surprised himself when he managed to successfully summon a damned burrito.

A knock came at the back door.

Eric nearly dropped his lunch. As it was, he spilled more than a little rice, cheese, and hot sauce onto the floor. With a thought, he made it all go away.

Out on the back porch, bending over to peer through the sliding glass door, was a pretty woman in her mid-forties. She wore a loose pair of threadbare jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that fit her a bit more snugly.

Eric tried not to look at her breasts, or notice that she wasn't wearing a bra.

They were a fair bit smaller than his mother's, but so were most women's. They were about the same size as Annie's, or Jennifer's. Maybe bigger. It was hard to say, because they sagged the way women's breasts were supposed to, especially after women got past a certain age. The women of his family had spoiled him. He'd almost forgotten that ordinary breasts did that. He wasn't sure if it was turning him on or not.

One thing was clear though. He wasn't doing a very good job of ignoring her breasts.

When she saw where his eyes were focused, she turned her lips up in a faint smile and folded her arms under those saggy breasts.

Shaking himself out of his reverie, Eric went and slid the door open for her.

"Sorry," he said, as she walked in.

As if he hadn't just been caught checking her out, he gave the rest of her a quick look.

Her hips were narrow, the way he'd once liked. And she was fit. Not like Jennifer, who had thick muscles in her lower body. No, she was just thin, firm and toned. Yet her ass, such as it was, drooped low. And she'd have been a lot prettier if her skin was tighter. She had that sad look that some older women get, where even though they're thin, their cheeks look like jowls and their eye sockets seem sunken and hollow. Still, she had a narrow waist, thin legs, and a face that had obviously once been been strikingly beautiful.

For a mortal woman, especially one of her age, she was attractive. If he was being fair, he'd probably even say that she was far more attractive than the average mortal woman her age. Her brown hair and relatively fair skin weren't quite his cup of tea, but the overall package wasn't half-bad at all.

He just couldn't help but compare her to his mother. Or even to the woman that he'd once thought of as his other mother. He'd never look at older women the same way again.

Of course, if Eric forced himself to remember what his mother and Jennifer had looked like in their mortal guises, he'd admit that neither looked much better than this woman. Gabby had been considerably less attractive, truth be told.

"I'm Nina," she said, extending her hand.

He tried not to squeeze her little paw too tightly in his. "Eric."

"I know," she said.

There was something odd about her skin. A warmth to it. Except it wasn't warmth, really. Wasn't even physical. From the moment his skin came into contact with hers, his Libido had started to gently pulse. It wasn't quite arousal. Not yet, anyway. But it was whatever came just before that.

"Aunt Nina, I should say."

Eric's breath caught.

His aunt? Why hadn't his mother--

Oh.

"That's right," she said, presumably seeing the dawning comprehension on his face. Her amused smirk only reached half her face. "Your father's sister."

"A Fisher," he said.

She shook her hair out, and as her brown locks flailed about, the rest of her appearance changed. She grew a good twenty or twenty-five years younger. Her skin firmed up and lost all sign of wrinkles and imperfections. Her lips got much, much fuller, and her soft brown eyes grew brighter and wider. Though her hair was still a boring medium-brown, it was shinier, straighter, and free of all strays, grays, and split-ends. Suddenly, the face that had struck him as having once been beautiful but not only sorta kinda pretty had become gorgeous. If not for his preference for blonde hair, bronze skin, and blue eyes, he probably wouldn't have hesitated to say that she was every bit as pretty as Olivia, in fact.

On top of that, her already thin waist came in by several inches and her breasts regained most of their perk. If it had been hard not to notice them before, it was downright impossible to keep from salivating now. She still had narrow hips and thighs that could have benefited from being fuller, but with her waist being so tiny all of a sudden, there was an illusion of voluptuousness that was doing a right good job of fooling Eric.

In short, she'd gone from reasonably attractive to smoking hot.

True, she still wasn't quite the type of woman he'd have gone crazy over a few months ago, back before his mother had set him straight. Nor was she the type that would appeal to him now that he'd had his awakening. But a guy with slightly different tastes would have considered her divine.

"Yes. A Fisher," she said.

Eric almost forgot that he'd asked about that.

Could he really have doubted her? She didn't have the look of a Moody or a Hardt, but she was quite obviously from the Homelands. Immortal, like him and all his family.

"Wh-what are you doing here?" he asked.

He never stammered. What the fuck was wrong with him?

Nina -- Aunt Nina -- looked over his shoulder. Not finding whatever she was looking for, she turned her doe eyes back to him. "I've come to help."

"With?"

She planted one hand on her hips and stared at him, flatly.

"Did my father send you?"

"Of course not. He doesn't want us to get involved."

"Suppose that's why he tipped us off," Eric said.

Nina rolled her eyes. "Doesn't want us to get more involved."

"Whatever. Anyway, don't take this the wrong way or anything, but-"

"You're not going to ask me why I'm here again, are you?" she asked.

Eric scratched his head. "Well, yeah."

"You're cute."

In spite of himself, Eric blushed.

"He said your brother was the cute one. That you were closer to gorgeous, but entirely too serious. I disagree. I think `cute' is exactly the right word for you."

Finally catching on to her tone, Eric stopped grinning.

His aunt tossed a lock of hair behind her shoulder, looked him up and down, and said, "Point is, like I said, I came to help."

Eric pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. "With?"

Nina giggled. Tittered, even.

He was not amused though.

His aunt laid a small hand on his arm. Everything about her was small, really. Except her eyes. And her lips. And her breasts. But she was a small woman. More than a foot shorter than him, and that insanely thin waist made it seem like she might float away if she wasn't careful. Why wasn't that turning him off?

"My dear brother wants you to play it safe. Ransom one of their own back to them." She took a step closer to him, and Eric felt his pulse accelerate. "You're not particularly inclined to do that, though, right? You'd rather gun for the king himself."

"You're here to talk me down, then, huh?"

"Not at all," she said. "I'm here to make sure you follow your heart."

Eric raised an eyebrow at her.

Nina licked her lips. Eric shuddered, imagining what that tongue might feel like. To say nothing of her luscious lips.

"You see, Hank doesn't want to get dragged into a bloodbath. If you go for the jugular, he's going to be forced to act. To defend the king he's sworn to protect. Maybe even end up taking the lives of his own children. And though I'm sure he tried to give you the impression that you don't mean much to him-"

"Can say that again."

"-my brother doesn't like shedding anyone's blood, least of all his own. And make no mistake, his blood does course through your veins."

Eric glanced nervously out at the back deck. He sort of expected to find his father there. Though he barely knew the guy, he was pretty sure that putting his sister up to something like this would be exactly like him.

None of what she was saying fit with what he'd said, though.

Maybe Eric was just being paranoid. His father might be an asshole, but what did he stand to gain from telling them to be discreet, only to send his sister to tell Eric to come out swinging? And why did Nina look like she was trying pretty hard to project a confident, cool demeanor, while masking genuine fear? What could she be afraid of, if not her brother discovering that she'd come here?

"So why should I follow my heart?"

Nina frowned. And, for a brief moment, there was a look of panic in her eyes.

"My mother doesn't think I should," he continued. "Pretty soon, I'm likely to be outnumbered. What can I tell my family to convince them?"

"You can't tell them about me, that's for sure."

Big surprise there.

"All I can say is that Phil won't play ball. If you do what Hank suggested, try to get the king to trade you your sister and your cousin back, he'll just go on the offensive. He's obsessed with the idea that everyone thinks he's weak. The last thing he'd ever do is give in. You'll have to kill every last Bravo before he'd ever consider surrendering." She paused. "And I think Hank knows that. He'd just rather see you try something that will leave him some chance of staying relatively uninvolved."

Eric nodded. It fit his impression of the king, superficial as that impression was.

"Anyway, I better go. But you'll see me again," she said. Then she went up on tiptoes, planted a kiss on his cheek, and disappeared.

#

The air around the office building shimmered. Not the way asphalt seemed to shimmer on a hot day. Not even visibly. It was only in the same sense that he felt fear in his sister's Libido that Nick knew something was off about the miniature tower.

"Why am I suddenly not so sure this is a good idea?" Veronica asked.

Despite the turmoil in her Libido, her voice was calm. He was proud of her for that.

"Dunno," he replied.

She took his hand in hers.

None of the windows had blinds, but they were all dark. Nick figured that the people inside could see out, even though they could not see in. There were men in dark uniforms walking around the security gate, the entrance, and, he thought, on the roof. That last part was hard to judge though, with so much glare from the midday sun.

With any luck, they were all mortals. But the first time either he or his sister had tried out combat applications of their powers had literally been an hour ago. In principle, firearms gave them very little to worry about. But if it actually came down to stopping real bullets? He was not at all confident that their powers would give them the edge that they should.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 03



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Author's note

As ever, if you have questions feel free to email me or leave a comment. Either way, I'll try to respond in a timely manner.

This is primarily an incest story, but it is also sci-fi/fantasy, and supernatural elements are not incidental to the plot. Additionally, many chapters will feature elements of other categories, particularly group sex and anal.

All sexual acts are consensual and involve parties who are at least eighteen years of age.

########################

Their disguises and false credentials had been less convincing than they'd hoped. But, nonetheless, getting past the entrance had still been easy.

With a few flicks of her fingers, Veronica had disarmed the guards. Their guns simply slipped out of their hands and went flying across the fenced-in parking lot. Meanwhile, her brother slipped past the guards and into the booth, resumed physical form, and fumbled about for a bit before figuring out how to raise the gate for her.

Even once they'd made their way into the building and found another wave of guards awaiting them, things went more or less according to plan.

Her brother had avoided most of the gunfire by hopping around in shadow form. A few times, Veronica noticed him turning their bullets into dust before they could cover the short distance between him and the barrels of the guns. For her part, Veronica disarmed a few guards before they managed to get a shot off, and generally had little trouble stop the paths of whatever bullets her adversaries succeeded in firing at her.

She did suffer one gunshot wound, but it hadn't taken Nick but a moment to figure out how to use his powers to heal her. Nor, he claimed, had it taken much energy. She feared that might have been because the bullet had only grazed her, but either way, this was all proving much easier than either of them had feared.

"I could have done that," she said, looking down at both him and the gash in her leather pants, a faint smile on her lips.

Yes, leather pants.

Once they realized that blending in wasn't going to work, they'd gone all Neo and Trinity after all. And Veronica didn't care how cheesy that was.

"I know," he said, kissing the little patch of exposed flesh.

Veronica ruffled his hair. She should have been pumped up on adrenaline. Or thinking about whether it was worth chancing the elevators or if they'd be better off taking the stairs. But all she could think about was how adorable her brother was.

When they reached the main lobby, though, everything changed.

It didn't play out anything like the famous lobby scene from the movie, however similar the tiled floor and marble columns made the setting look.

The mortal guards proved little enough of an obstacle, sure. As before, she and her brother did their best to neutralize the threats without hurting anyone. Of course, for all Veronica knew, they were complete assholes. Misogynistic jerks, controlling fathers, and abusive husbands. But they could just as easily have been decent folk. Best to avoid harming them, if possible. And, so far, it had proved easy enough to do so.

Until the Bravos showed up.

She knew who they were the moment they stepped out of the elevator. She knew it by the way they carried themselves. No one else would have waded into a combat zone so calmly, or watch so disinterestedly as the security team emptied clips of ammo at two leather-clad intruders without ever connecting. She also knew it by the way they looked. They had bronze skin and brown hair. Neither was very tall. And they had their father's facial features, though each was a bit more handsome than the king.

Even without the dark shades, earpieces, and stiff movements, they looked like Agents.

If only they actually had been. They might have been easier to deal with.

One immediately transformed into some nightmarish beast that was part man and part lion. Like the CGI beasts in werewolf movies, only bigger, badder, and with an awesome gold-brown mane. His gaping maw was large enough to swallow a man's head hole and his massive paws looked fit for use against tanks, particularly since his claws looked sharp enough and strong enough to cut through steel.

The other carried a pair of swords that he handled so skillfully that Veronica would never be able to watch another martial arts movie again. They spun about him in a silver blur, filling the oversized lobby with echoes of the soft whisk of their passage.

Veronica's knives and axes sank right into the thick hide of the first Bravo. If Liono even noticed the rivers of blood pouring out of the wounds she opened up, he didn't let it show. He just kept bounding around the room, chasing after Nick's shadow.

The other one deflected her knives and axes as easily as a professional baseball player might connect with slow balls tossed at him by a high school softball pitcher. His blades moved faster than she could comprehend, and they never missed their mark.

Not. One. Damn. Time.

Veronica was just starting to panic when one of Nick's shadow scythes sliced an arm off the lion-thing. Unlike the dozen or so knives and axes that she'd sunk into him, that, he noticed. He drew up to his full height, stared down at the stump and the blood pumping out of it, and roared in anger.

Nick approached him in bodily form. Her brother had his hands outstretched, and if she wasn't mistaken, he was about to try to heal him!

What the hell was he thinking?

Yes, they needed to take them alive. But they'd have a much easier time of that if they subdued them first. Did Nick think he could just pluck the proverbial thorn from the lion's paw and tame the beast?

Before she could say anything, though, the other Bravo slipped up behind Nick and cut his legs out from under him.

Literally.

It took Veronica a moment to realize it had happened. Her brother's legs were still planted firmly on the ground, gushing blood, when the rest of him fell flat on his back. Nick was apparently too stunned to scream. He just stared at the empty space where his legs should have been, face contorted into a hideous rictus.

Veronica tossed all her remaining weapons at the man who'd crippled her brother. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see them coming and rolled to the side. But a few connected, sinking deep into his left thigh and calf.

Then, to her surprise, the Bravo boys chose to retreat.

The swordsman clambered back to his feet, scurried over to his brother, and dragged him into the elevator. He stared venomously at Veronica as the silvery doors closed.

A small army of men in riot gear poured into the lobby, assault rifles at the ready.

She wanted to scream in rage. It was all happening so fast. They'd failed to take any Bravos hostage. Her brother was bleeding out, his face turning paler and paler. She was out of weapons. And they were surrounded.

She didn't need steel to get the job done though.

Before the stunned guards could react, Veronica pulled the ceiling down. The second floor collapsed, caving in on them.

The slab of concrete that fell on her nearly knocked Veronica out, even though she'd wrapped herself in a protective bubble and numbed her tactile senses. It wasn't so easy to climb out from under afterwards, either.

But, with some help from her newfound talent for telekinesis, she did just that. And then set about sorting through the piles of rubble, looking for her brother.

Pained moans broke through here and there, but none of them sounded like Nick. She wasn't sure how the guards had survived that, and wondered if she maybe owed it to them to put them out of their misery, but she kept on searching. Nick was all that mattered.

Finally, she caught her brother's voice.

The wreckage came away slowly. Too slowly. A sense of panic built up within her. She'd wasted too much time getting to him as it was. But finally, she dug him out.

His legs looked horrible.

So long as he got through this okay, he should be able to grow them back. But if she didn't hurry, there'd be no guarantee of that. They were likely to get infected. And he'd lost a lot of blood. She found it hard to breathe as she cauterized the wounds and wrapped them in bandages. The fact that they were stained brick red before she was even finished applying them wasn't the least bit terrifying.

Once that was done, Veronica got the hell out of there.

With any luck, her grandparents could do more for Nick than she had.

#

"Why is your mother wearing that dress? Does she know how big her ass looks in it?"

Eric smacked Olivia's arm, and did so about as hard as he would have Nick's.

"Ow!" His cousin rubbed at the red spots. "What was that for?"

"Whaddaya think it was for?"

"I was just sayin' that-"

"Well, don't just say it."

She frowned. "You've really taken to her."

"Yes. I have," he said, hopping up onto the rail of the back porch. "By the way, her ass looks great in that dress. Wouldn't kill you to let yours fill out some either."

He'd helped his mother into the tight sundress. It clung to her curves like a second layer of skin. And she looked good in it. He'd had a hard time resisting the urge to ignore the ringing doorbell and throw his mother on the bed to have his way with her again.

"Please," his cousin said, smacking her own ass. "You wish you were still getting a piece of this on the regular."

"If you say so," he said.

Her tight little athletic shorts were certainly making the most out of what she had. And for all that he'd just been mocking it a moment before, her little bubble butt was definitely nice. Especially considering how small she was. It looked bigger than it was, attached to so short and slender a woman.

But it still didn't hold a candle to his mother's.

There was also the fact that Eric had met prepubescent boys with bigger tits than Olivia. Credit where credit's due, her backside really didn't disappoint. But he was finding it harder and harder to believe that he'd once told himself that breasts weren't all that important.

"Any idea why the grownups wanted to have a private pow-wow?" Liv asked.

Eric rolled his eyes as his cousin lit up a joint. Ordinarily, he had nothing against getting high. But now didn't seem like the time for it. Long as she didn't expect him to partake, though, he supposed it was no skin off his nose.

"Not sure," he said. "Maybe."

Perhaps his mother had mentioned to Wes that Eric favored a direct attack. And Uncle Wes would have told Aunt Zoey. The two of them would then want to gang up on Gabby.

He probably should have insisted on taking part in the discussion. But his mother had seemed pretty resolved when she'd told him that it would be best if he and his cousin left them alone for a while. So they'd done just that.

"Aaaannnd?"

Eric waved away her offer for him to take a hit. His cousin shrugged and tucked the joint back in between her lips.

Those luscious lips.

He forced himself to look away. He'd finally admitted to himself that he liked his women curvier, that he'd been obsessed with skinny little things because he thought that he was supposed to be. But while he might have come to realize that Olivia didn't have much of a figure, he couldn't deny that she was damn fucking beautiful.

And a total demon in the sack.

He drew a deep breath.

"Well, if I had to guess," he said after he exhaled, "your parents are trying to talk my mother into talking me out of staging a direct attack on His Majesty."

"Why?"

He sighed. "Because."

She toked on her joint, held it in for a few moments, then exhaled. "This is all just such fucking bullshit. When can we stop dicking around and get my brother back?"

"I dunno. But we will get him back," he said, wrapping an arm around Liv.

She started to pull away. But then, with a sigh, Olivia rested her head on his shoulder. "I'm worried the goofy little bastard."

"I know. I'm just as worried about Patty."

"Doubtful," she said. "Very doubtful."

Eric raised an eyebrow at her. "Are you...is he, what, your new favorite?"

"Pssh," she said. "Don't be ridic. Besides, we're not even supposed to have favorites. That's the whole point. Haven't you been listening?"

"I know we're not supposed to."

"Is your mother your `favorite' now? Is that what happened to us?" she asked. "Fuck, Eric, are you in love with her?"

Eric's breath caught.

"No," he said, almost instinctively.

That was...a dangerous thought.

"Right," his cousin said, sounding about as convinced as she would have been if he'd denied ever having had sex with a member of his family.

Neither spoke for a few moments.

She wasn't wrong. He'd been avoiding the subject, even in his own mind. Or, rather, trying to avoid it. Nonetheless, the word had cropped up from time to time, in conversations she'd imagined having with his mother.

Fuck. He didn't know whether to be terrified by that, or elated. Realizing that you were in love was supposed to be pleasant, wasn't it? The type of thing that made people break out in fits of giggling?

"Well, anyway," she continued, "I don't know that Kurt's any better in bed than you or my father. But so what? I care about him, hard as that may be to believe. Thinking about how he must be reacting to all this, young and innocent as he is, makes me want to cry."

Eric took the joint from Olivia and took a long drag after all.

He never thought he'd live to see the day that Liv would say that she wanted to cry over a man, let alone her goofy little brother.

After all the guys she'd run through, most of them the type who'd have given Kurt wedgies in school, she was on the brink of a total breakdown over the lovable little twerp. Not that she shouldn't have been worried about him, of course, but Eric just hadn't considered the possibility that it would be eating his cousin up this bad. Hadn't considered that, despite the way she'd always mercilessly teased him, she'd actually felt protective of him.

It was almost enough to make him forgive the comment she'd made about his mother.

"See?" she asked, sobbing. Tears started to leak out the corners of her eyes. She wiped at them with the hem of her tank top. "Don't see you shedding any tears over Patty."

"Just because I'm coping differently doesn't mean I'm less upset," he said.

"Of course. `There's no crying in baseball,"' she said.

Eric drew a deep breath. He recognized the quote.

It was from A League of their Own. One of Kurt's favorite movies.

That kid loved every movie about baseball, no matter how bad they were. Or whether they had both Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell in them. Goofy, serious, cheesy, or poetic. If there was an outfield in it, Kurt had seen it at least twice.

Suddenly, Eric had a picture in his mind of his cousin sitting in her brother's room, going through a box of tissues, hugging all his stuff against her chest.

Meanwhile, he and his mother had coped with Patty's absence by fucking each other's brains out. By trying not to even think about Patty any more than they absolutely had to.

He felt like a total asshole.

Of course, he now knew that his mother had lost a brother and sister when she was even younger than he was now, and she'd never so much as mentioned their names for twenty years. So whatever it was that made her react that way, it shouldn't come as a surprise that his natural inclination was to do the same. Whether it was something he'd inherited from her or simply learned from her without quite realizing it, he wasn't sure, but he'd clearly gotten it from his mother one way or another.

Even so, when Olivia, of all people, made you feel bad about not being sentimental enough, it was probably a sign of something.

"What if they're not even...what if they're...."

Olivia started sobbing again, and the rest of her sentence never got out.

"It's only been a few hours there. And you heard my father. The king enjoys seeing them afraid. He wouldn't do anything too dramatic too soon."

The only reaction that got was hysterical laughter.

"Besides, for all we know, he's not planning on doing anything to Kurt anyway," Eric added. "It's Patty he's really interested in."

"Then why is Kurt missing?"

That was a good question.

When Eric didn't answer, Olivia took another drag of her joint. A long, heavy drag.

"It'll be okay."

"You don't know that," she said.

"I do."

His cousin laughed bitterly. "I get what you're trying to do. But it's not working. If you're looking for a dreamy-eyed optimist, you've got the wrong girl."

True enough. It was Patty's job to fill that role.

So Eric simply hugged his cousin tight and didn't say another word.

It might have been the first time in years she'd been that close to him, pressing up against him, without his Libido stirring. That he didn't notice how good her hair smelled, or how painfully gorgeous she was. With her makeup running down her face like that and her cheeks all puffed up, it was definitely painful to look at her, but not for the usual reason.

As he held his cousin, Eric found himself thinking about Patty. Thinking the thoughts he hadn't allowed himself to think since their father had visited them. Picturing all the vile things Phil might be doing to her. His stomach wretched, and he had to swallow a particularly bitter lump of bile to keep from vomiting.

Olivia thought her little brother was innocent? Was that supposed to be a joke?

Had she met Patty?

He wondered how she must was holding up, wherever she was.

#

They stood before the pearly gates of Solopolis, the city that lay at the center of the verdant valley that was the Eternal Garden of the Sun.

Yes. Pearly gates.

Beyond, Patty saw endless rows of buildings carved from white marble, most of which had a solid sheet of diamonds serving as a roof. Except, of course, for the ones with gilded domes or spires. The streets of Solopolis didn't form a grid, but stretched out from the center of the city, and the main thoroughfares were were paved in solid gold. As a result, when viewed from above, the city seemed to be built around a sunburst.

These people were anything but modest.

They were, however, Kurt's people. On his mother's side, anyway. That was why they were here. In the hope that the grandfather Kurt had never met would take them in and give them refuge.

"I don't know about this," Patty said.

She might not feel comfortable criticizing her cousin's sunlit kindred, but she was having more and more second thoughts about the whole running away thing.

Kurt stared at her like she'd said that she hated puppies.

"What if they're worried about us?" she asked.

"We've been gone for like ten minutes," he said. "Maybe they haven't even noticed."

"Ten minutes for us," she said. "But Summer's time is different than LA's. Sorry, than the Playground's. Why shouldn't it be different here too?"

Kurt frowned, but didn't reply.

Patty pressed on. "Maybe ten minutes here is closer to two hours in Summer. And two hours in Summer would be close to a full day back home. Which is where our family was headed. So we've probably been gone for a day, as far as they're concerned."

"Maybe," he said, sounding skeptical. "But even if that's true, what are we supposed to do? Go back? Tell them that we're safe? Because then you won't be."

"So we just disappear forever?"

"Not forever," he said. "Just until...."

"Exactly," Patty said.

"Well, that still doesn't change the reason why we left. You don't want to have sex with the king, right?"

Patty stared at the white sandals and golden strings that now adorned her feet. When they'd appeared, she couldn't have said, but they did go perfectly with the white tunic and cloth-of-gold belt she also couldn't remember donning.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 03



"Noooo," she said.

"And what do you call it when you're forced to have sex against your will?"

No one here wore any color but white. Many of them even feathery wings, or wings made of pure light. Patty had seen men and women with halos, and a few with golden nimbuses surrounding their entire bodies. Even the ones that lacked such flourishes could hardly be mistaken for anything else though.

Angels.

Not literally, of course. No such beings had ever existed, as they'd heard many a sunlit official proclaim to the throng of lesser immortals hoping to be granted entrance. But these were the beings that had inspired such myths. Of that, there could be no doubt. Even if they didn't proudly boast of it themselves.

Which they did.

Often and loudly.

And with an utterly transparent false humility.

"Beings of pure good, you say? Created the universe, you say? No, no, not us. Though, of course, you can't blame those charming mortals for thinking so!"

A year ago, before she knew she was immortal, before she'd ever heard of the Homelands, if someone had told Patty that one day soon she'd walk the streets of Heaven, bumping elbows with angels, she'd have laughed her fool head off. If that same person had told her that she'd find those angels to be haughty, vainglorious, and insufferable, she'd have rolled her eyes.

And if they'd told her that she'd want nothing more than to leave before she even set foot inside the main city, she'd have known they were crazy.

Her cousin's clothes had changed to match the local custom as well. On him, though, it didn't look ridiculous. Especially since his skin had turned gold like his mother's.

It was beautiful, in a way. But it also made him seem strange and alien. Like the two of them weren't really part of the same family after all, regardless of the fact that his father and her mother were brother and sister.

"We'll stay here for a while, maybe pick up a few tricks, and then head back," Kurt said. "By then, things will have all blown over. The king will have forgotten about you. And if not, we'll be ready to deal with him."

Patty frowned.

"Give me an hour," he said. "Let's find my grandfather. Talk to him. See what he thinks. If you still want to go back, that's what we'll do."

She looked around at the crowd of lesser immortals. They all wore the white on white on gold on white attire of the sunlit folk. But none of the others had golden skin that veritably sparkled under the never-setting-sun. Just Kurt.

He belonged here.

She didn't. It wasn't going to take her an hour to figure that out.

Still, she didn't relish the thought of going back and submitting to the king and his cold eyes either. And how long had she dreamed of being alone with Kurt? Here she was, as alone as alone got. Just her and Kurt and a bunch of strange, ethereal beings with serious delusions of grandeur. Beings that seemed perfectly willing to pretend that she didn't exist.

"An hour," she said with a sigh.

Her cousin ran a hand through her hair and kissed her forehead. "You won't regret it."

"Hmmph," Patty grunted.

It was as close to a reaction as she could muster.

#

"He'll be okay, sweetie," her mother said.

Veronica nodded absent-mindedly.

"He's in good hands," she added.

Of that, there seemed no cause for doubt. As Veronica watched, a busty young woman with daringly short hair knelt at the foot of the bed, holding her hands over the stumps of her brother's legs. That woman, who looked at first glance like she might have been in her late-twenties, was her grandmother.

Lady Hardt.

The author of the diary Veronica had read so many times, who had traveled to Eternal Garden of the Sun, ended the feud between House Hardt and House Moody back before Jennifer or Gabriela had been born, let alone raised a family of Moodys and Hardts together. Veronica certainly wouldn't have known as much if her mother hadn't told her, though. With her caramel skin, brown eyes, black hair, and generous bosom, she certainly looked like a Hardt. But she didn't look at all like the Grandma Flori that Veronica remembered. Because, of course, she wasn't. Not really. Rather, she was a figure of almost legendary proportion. A woman who knew the Homelands and the gifts given to its people better than anyone Veronica was likely to ever meet.

Nick wasn't just in good hands. He was in the best of hands.

Still, Veronica found herself sick with anxiety.

There had to be more that her grandmother could do. That the rest of them could do. All she was doing was sitting there, eyes closed, holding Nick's bloody thighs, while Veronica and her mother watched from across the room.

In the back of her mind, Veronica knew that there was nothing more that could be done. That the wilted petals from the flower on the nightstand floating in the air and the lights flickering and the mirror swirling and glowing were all signs that her that her grandmother was wielding a stunning amount of energy. More energy than would pass through Veronica in a dozen years was being poured into her brother.

As if all the little physical manifestations of her grandmother's power weren't enough to Veronica that she was witnessing something few of their kind could achieve, Veronica felt the energy bleeding out into the room. And she'd never been intimate with her grandmother. Nor did she have Nick's talent for sensing the energy in which their kind trafficked. For her to sense the type of thing that no one save her brother ordinarily picked up on, something uniquely momentous had to be happening.

Not that it showed.

Nick was still unconscious, looking pale as death. And his legs were still missing.

"If he was in real trouble, you'd know it," her mother said, taking one of Veronica's hands in hers. "We Hardt women have a way of knowing when those we care most about are in danger of being taken away from us."

"We do?"

Her mother nodded.

But Veronica could tell by the look on her face that it was a lie. She might as well have been talking about the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny. A little white lie to allow her daughter to believe the world was a better, more magical place than it was. 

The kind of lies she sometimes suspected that Nick was really good at telling. Perhaps that was a talent he'd learned from their mother. Or a gift he'd inherited.

Most of the time, she was thankful for it. Even when she was all but certain that she knew he was lying to her, she appreciated the thought behind it. Her brother's eagerness to please her was one of his better virtues.

Just at the moment, though, she didn't want a comforting lie. She wanted the truth, however ugly it might be.

Their kind had all sorts of amazing powers. But knowing when their loved ones were about to die wasn't one of them. At least, not one that the women of House Hardt all shared. Her grandmother might well have such a talent. There didn't seem to be much her grandmother wasn't capable of. But Veronica and her mother were a different story.

"Maybe you should go see what Grandpa and Annie are up to," her mother said. "They might need help with dinner."

Veronica scoffed at that, though it came out more like she was choking.

Her mother gave her a sad smile and patted her thigh. "Yeah. I can't imagine leaving his side either. Not even for an instant."

That, at least, was true.

Whether it was simply because he was her son, Veronica was less sure. Their mother was more interested in women than men. And she seemed to have a real thing for her mother. But Veronica suspected that there was still something of a special place in her heart, and between her legs, for Nick.

"Just seemed like something I ought to suggest," her mother added.

"Not doing him or me any good to sit here, worried sick," Veronica said, speaking the thoughts she felt sure were on her mother's mind. "I know that. I do. But I can't be anywhere else right now. I just can't."

With a lingering kiss on her forehead, her mother said, "You're most definitely your mother's daughter. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

If anyone else had been trying to do so, it was news to Veronica. Perhaps her mother was referring to Gabriela and House Moody? Did it bother her so that Nick and Veronica wanted to help Patty?

Her mother's gaze drifted back to Nick. "This part is never easy."

A lump rose in Veronica's throat. She wanted to ask her mother if she'd ever lost anyone, but words failed her.

Besides, the faint nod her mother gave her said it all. Not who or when or why, but there could be no doubt that her mother had watched someone she loved die.

"Ask me about it sometime," she said. "But not today."

Without a word, Veronica rested her head on her mother's shoulder.

#

When Eric and Olivia went back inside, their parents immediately fell silent. And all eyes turned to Eric. Not him and his cousin. Him, specifically.

"Hey, sweetie," his mother said. "Everything okay?"

"With me? Yeah. Just wondering when we're going to decide what we're doing."

His mother turned and stared at her brother.

Uncle Wes sighed. His mouth opened, then closed again, without producing any words. He scratched the back of his head and stared at the ground.

Aunt Zoey glowered at her husband, then turned her gaze on Eric. She was, at the moment, wearing a partial disguise. That is, she didn't look like a moderately attractive woman in her forties, the way she had all while he was growing up. She was currently a statuesque blonde with the kind of curves most men would consider perfect. The kind of curves that allowed a woman to feel comfortable wearing a string bikini like the one that was currently making a poor attempt at covering her charms. But her skin was no different in color than that of her daughter's. Her eyes were blue, and her lips red. When she allowed her true self to shine through, her skin was less bronze than gold, and it took on a metallic glint. Her lips generally became a deep golden-brown, her hair platinum blonde, and it was easy to imagine that some ethereal choir was singing her glory.

In short, she looked like an immortal from the Homelands, all right. But, at the moment, she looked like a woman of Summer, rather than the Eternal Garden of the Sun. Unreasonably, supernaturally, painfully attractive she might be, but she didn't currently remind Eric of classical paintings of angels.

He wished she'd let her true self out.

It would make it easier to remember that she was an outsider. That he didn't have to listen to her. That, while Kurt might have been her son, she was no Moody.

"How about now?" Zoey said.

Eric snorted. "Fine with me. In fact, that's-"

"I say we put it to a vote," she said, cutting in.

A vote? Was she kidding?

If there was anything that could convince Eric not to do everything in his power to get his sister back, that sure as fucking hell wasn't it.

"All those in favor of opening negotiations with the king-" his aunt began.

It was his turn to cut her off.

"Fuck that."

Her blue eyes went wide.

Eric went and stood by his mother. "I don't care if there are three of you and only two of us. We're not going to crawl before the king on our knees, begging him to let us give him more of what he wants. He'll only see us as weak. After we give in to whatever demands he makes of us, he'll still refuse to give Patty and Kurt back, because he'll know that we won't do anything about it."

"Wait a minute," Olivia said. "Three of 'you'? I didn't say anything."

And, when her mother's eyes fell on her, Liv went right on not saying anything.

"You might be right," Wes said.

Zoey's hand closed the short distance between her and her husband, took one of his hands in hers, and gave it a squeeze. Eric could almost hear the bones in his uncle's hand popping.

Through gritted teeth, Uncle Wes said, "You don't know the Bravos, dear."

That the ceiling was not ripped off the roof by the storm behind his aunt's eyes struck Eric as a miracle. Her lips tightened and she asked, "So, you think I'm an outsider now too? I always knew that if it came down to it, you'd choose your sister over me."

Gabby scoffed.

Eric wasn't sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, he was aware that the primary reason his mother wasn't more interested in her brother was that she thought he was a bit too meek. The thought that he might have to worry about losing her to his uncle if Wes ever decided to grow a pair didn't sit well with Eric.

At the same time, he had to admit that he liked seeing the way his uncle looked at his mother. Liked knowing that his desire for her had, apparently, been a source of friction in his marriage. That made Eric proud of his mother, and further convinced him, as if he needed any more convincing, that she was hot stuff. That a man could be married to a woman who so perfectly embodied mainstream conceptions of beauty and still ache for more attention from Gabby gave Eric a perverse thrill.

And, for that matter, it was nice to see his uncle side with them about the king too.

Uncle Wes gave his sister a pained look before pulling his hand back from his wife and turning to face her. "This isn't about choosing between you and her. This is about what's best for our son. And I didn't say I don't think we should try to negotiate. But Eric's right that we need to worry about looking weak."

"So we're back to talking about taking hostages?" Eric's mother asked, sounding more than a little impatient. "I thought we'd all agreed already that that's not practical."

They had?

Good. That saved Eric some effort.

"We can't expect him to just hand our kids over," Wes said to his sister. "Nor can we assume that he'll honor his word if we make some concessions to him first."

"Sounds like we can't expect to reason with him at all," Eric said.

Aunt Nina had made it quite clear. He couldn't tell them what she'd said, of course. He hadn't yet told his mother about meeting Nina. Wasn't even sure if or when he would. But her voice echoed in his mind, and he knew he couldn't let his aunt and uncle talk him out of what had to be done.

Olivia plopped down on the couch, covering her eyes with her hands, muttering curses to herself in between sobs.

The sight of his cousin breaking down like that tore at Eric's heart strings, but he'd done his best to console her already. Her suffering was no longer his greatest concern.

His sister's was.

He'd let Patty slip from his thoughts too often of late.

"You can do whatever you want. Ask for a truce. Renounce membership in House Moody and negotiate on behalf of some new house. Whatever. Makes no difference to me," Eric said. "One way or another, I know what I'm going to do."

His mother stepped up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

If she hadn't been there, he'd still have said it. It was what needed to be said. But feeling his mother's breasts pressed against his back, her breath warm against his skin, her forearms covering his midsection, gave him additional strength. With his beautiful, loving mother behind him, there wasn't anything he couldn't do.

He looked his uncle in the eye. "So. What'll it be?"

Wes drew a deep breath. "We're with you."

"We are?" Zoey asked, a delicate eyebrow arched.

Wes turned to face her, back straight as a board. "Yes, honey. We are."

Olivia gave out a sigh of relief.

The sunlit woman's nostrils flared and she crossed her arms under her breasts, but she held her tongue. The venom in those eyes, which were starting to glow, would have set fire to kindling. Would have melted the polar ice caps. Eric wasn't sure how his uncle, the mealymouthed pushover, withstood that gaze. He did though. Without so much as blinking.

"Well, you know what we need to do then," Zoey said at last.

"What's that?" Eric asked.

"Gather up as much energy as we can," his uncle said, voice flat.

Eric blushed as he realized what that meant.

They had to fuck each other's brains out. Not for the fun of it, though there'd be more than a little pleasure involved. But to make sure that they were strong enough to face the king and his kin.

"For Kurt," Zoey said, eyes focused on Eric.

"And Patty," Eric added.

#

"Pass me that knife, please, gorgeous?"

Veronica blushed as she did as her grandfather bid. And tried not to notice the dirty look that Annie was gave her as she did.

"You should go check on Nick," her sister said. "See if he's awake yet."

"If only," Veronica said, pretending not to pick up on the subtext. "Grandma said he's not to be disturbed. And, apparently, being in the room with him would be a disturbance."

It pained her that she couldn't sit by her brother's side, confident that she'd be there the moment his eyes opened again. But her grandmother had been most insistent. Once she'd finally finished doing whatever it was that she'd been doing to him, that is. The look on Grandma Flori's face had brooked no argument.

Besides, though she never should really doubted that Nick would be all right, Veronica had begun to breathe easier when she saw the stumps at the end of her brother's legs slowly stretch out. He was still a long ways from being complete again, and if there was anything remotely resembling feet at the ends of his regenerating appendages, Veronica hadn't noticed them. But it seemed safe to conclude that there would be, soon enough.

Her brother would make a fully recovery, and they'd be together again.

The thought made her heart flutter.

In the meantime, Grandma Flori was regaining her strength. Which didn't mean taking a nap, the way it would with most grandmothers. No, it meant she was getting busy with her daughter. Veronica hadn't been sure whether to laugh or smile or blush at that. Even after two years of engaging in incest on something close to a daily basis, the thought of her mother and her grandmother together struck her as really perverse.

Of course,this was the first she'd seen of her grandparents since discovering the truth about her family. The first that she'd been forced to accept that the things her grandmother had written about in her diary were not bygones of some long past era, when Flori was still young and pretty, but the surprisingly recent exploits of an immortal woman who had never lost, and never would lose, her beauty.

That was comforting, on a certain level. It helped convince her that she too was beyond the reach of such devils as aging, disease, and mortality. But it was also terrifying. It meant that what happened to Nick wasn't part of some nightmare, but was simply part and parcel of her new reality. Her grandmother's diary was just as full of tragedy as it was beauty and wonder. And the worst of what her grandmother experienced might yet await Veronica too.

The sweet old woman who'd baked her cookies and taught her how to sew was the fairy tale, not the brave, powerful, beautiful heroine she'd read about in those yellowed pages.

And more or less the same went for her grandfather. Except, she only knew that the man who doted on her when she was a child wasn't real. What her actual grandfather was like, she didn't really yet know. The diary she'd stolen covered a period in her grandmother's life before she'd met Grandpa Randy.

That said, he was definitely making a good first impression on her.

Veronica had always had a thing for older men. She understood why, too. Wasn't much of a mystery, really, what with the absent father and all. When she'd finally laid eyes on her father, she'd almost melted. And, truth be told, he wasn't nearly as physically attractive as she'd pictured him as being. Her grandfather, on the other hand, looked exactly like her mental image of a sexy older man. It like the fantasy lover she'd created in her mind had stepped out of her head and into the real world, only he'd mistakenly taken the form of her grandfather instead of her father.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 03



He had a thick but not unruly carpet on his chest and abs, a neatly trimmed beard and a full head of hair, all of which was black as jet where it wasn't shot through with beautiful silver. His face simultaneously bespoke youth, virility, maturity, experience, and resilience. There were lines in his face, particularly around his eyes and his mouth, but not nearly as many, or as pronounced, as with her father. He had a strong jaw, beautiful brown eyes, prominent cheekbones, and an easy smile.

And his body?

It almost hurt to even allow her eyes to drift down past his neck.

Most importantly, from what Veronica could tell so far, her grandfather was not only handsome and built like a god, but every bit as kind, caring, patient, and understanding as the sweet old man of whom she had so many fond memories.

No wonder Annie wanted him all to herself.

If her kid sister shared Veronica's thing for older men, she'd done a good job of hiding it throughout the years. But, at the same time, it would almost have been strange if she didn't. After all, she too had, quite obviously, been abandoned by her father at an early age. Had grown up with the knowledge that the man whose job it was to love her unconditionally had shown no interest in spending time with her, in taking care of and providing for her.

Perhaps she should just tell her sister that she had no intention of trying to steal their grandfather from her. That she couldn't help feeling flattered by his compliments, and wouldn't mind spreading her legs for him once before she and Nick took off again to continue their quest to help Patty, but after that, she'd get out of the way.

"I'm sure she didn't mean that," Grandpa Randy said as he started cutting tomatoes. "You and your brother have a powerful connection though. Your presence might have more effect on him than you realize."

"Wouldn't that be a good thing?" Veronica asked.

"Yeah. Shouldn't she go back in there?" Annie added.

Veronica shot her sister a quick glare that the girl wasn't gracious enough to even notice.

"He needs to stay under as long as he needs to stay under," their grandfather said, without looking up from his knife work. "If his spirit senses yours, senses your need for him and the deep worry you have for him, he might rush back before he's ready."

The breath went out of Veronica's lungs.

She almost wished her grandfather hadn't told her that. It made it even harder to resist going to Nick. And gave new meaning to the forbidden words they'd spoken to one another.

"Best to leave him be, for now," her grandfather continued. "Before you know it, he'll be healthy and whole and back with us."

"There's something to look forward to, huh, Vee?" Annie asked with a saccharine smile that revealed most of her impossibly white teeth.

The diamond stud in her sister's nostril glittered in the natural light drifting in through the cabin's window. Somehow, that struck Veronica as even more mocking than her smile.

Veronica regarded Annie cooly. The hair her sister was running her hand through had fewer blonde streaks in it than usual. Just one on each side, near the front. If Annie would let her hair return to its natural color, all of it, she'd look a little older. More like a young woman instead of a bratty teenager.

And if she'd start acting less like a bratty teenager, maybe men would notice her more.

When Annie was going to realize that the men of their kind didn't fall for the same crap that high school guys did? That she wasn't playing for the minor leagues anymore?

Veronica tried to understand where her sister was coming from though. To remember that she felt bad that Annie didn't have anyone, the way she had Nick and Patty had Kurt. Her sister could be a real bitch when she wasn't getting her way, but she could also be really sweet at times. Often when you least expected it. And her life had been turned upside down overnight, before she'd had any time to wrap her head around the fact that she wasn't mortal and neither was anyone in her family. Her older siblings, on the other hand, had known what they was for quite some time before all this madness began. Before the fateful induction ceremony had taken their sister away from them.

With a deep breath, Veronica turned her attention back to her grandfather.

He wasn't wearing anything but a pair of khaki cargo shorts. His amazing torso made Nick look puny and underdeveloped. Made even Eric look like it wouldn't hurt him to hit the weights a little harder. Yet it wasn't just that he had big muscles. Which he did, and which Veronica very much appreciated. Nor was it just that they were beautifully toned. Which they were. His eight pack was no less perfect than Nick's, yet his chest was fuller, his shoulders broader, and his biceps more akin to basketballs. All of which was to the good. But he also had more hair than either of her brothers.

Some women would have said it was too much. That he looked more like a bear than a man. But in Veronica's eyes, there was nothing more manly than a good pelt stretching from collarbone to the guy's waist. And beyond. Especially since his upper arms and his back were bald. He wasn't exactly neatly groomed, and probably had no idea what manscaping was, but his body hair was hardly out of control.

The way he worked the knife through the vegetables suggested a certain dexterity too. Veronica could only imagine what else he could do with those nimble hands.

"Annie, cutie, would you check on the fish?" he asked.

With another overly sweet smile, Veronica's sister climbed down off the kitchen stool and padded over to the oven. As Annie bent over to look in at the fish, Veronica couldn't help but notice that her sister had no ass to speak of.

"Mostly white," Annie said.

Nick thought that Veronica's ass was too small, and she'd always worried that she had too much junk in the trunk. What guy could look at Annie's backside and not be a little disappointed? True, the girl had pretty big boobs. Not nearly as big as Veronica's, but awfully generous given her slight build.

A wave of guilt crashed over Veronica as she realized what she was doing. Taking stock of all the ways in which she thought that was more desirable than her sister, so as to take the sting off the girl's passive aggressive behavior towards her. There was no need for that though. It was just petty. She genuinely loved Annie. Wanted her to be happy. If their grandfather could give the girl what she'd been missing, so much the better.

"We're waiting for it to start to brown," their grandfather said as he used the edge of the knife to slide the freshly chopped onion and tomatoes off the cutting board and into the bowl of salad he was preparing.

"Should Vee go tell Mom and Grandma that dinner's almost ready?" Annie asked, without so much as a glance at Veronica.

"Not just yet," their grandfather replied.

Veronica was almost amused at her sister's latest thinly-veiled attempt to get rid of her. As if she hadn't even noticed it, she asked their grandfather, "How did you meet Grandma?"

Seeming to forget all about her campaign against Veronica, Annie climbed back into her stool, plopped her elbows up on the marble counter, and rested her chin in between her hands. "I love these kinds of stories," she said, grinning faintly.

"Well, unfortunately, this one is surprisingly boring," their grandfather said.

"So surprise us," Veronica said.

Annie nodded emphatically.

He chuckled as he added oil and vinegar to the salad. "Well, I was one of only two remaining members of a very modest house. Before our feud with House Fisher, there were seven of us, of course. But that's how these things go."

Veronica's throat felt tight. By the look on their grandfather's face and his casual tone of voice, you'd never think he'd just spoken of the violent deaths of most of his family. It might have been long ago, and he might not have been a young man, however much he looked like one, but their kind wasn't supposed to be as used to burying loved ones as mortals were.

"Fisher. That's our father's house?" Annie asked. The grin was gone from her face, and her voice had shifted from enthusiastic to somber.

Their grandfather nodded. "Of course, Hank's father hadn't even been born yet. So we're talking a ways back. Before Daphne's time, even."

"Who's Daphne?" Veronica asked.

"Oh, my. You don't know who...that's for another time. Your grandmother is the one to ask anyway. Not me."

Annie gave Veronica a look, as if to ask, "Should we let him get away with that?"

The name sounded familiar. She was pretty sure she'd come across it in her grandmother's diary, at least in passing. But what the significance of it was, she couldn't have said. She didn't even think Daphne was from Summer. Autumn maybe. Or Winter. Yeah, Winter sounded right. Worlds away from everything she'd ever known.

Veronica shrugged. It wasn't often that she forced her curiosity to take a back seat, but she really wanted to hear about how her grandparents met. Besides, her grandfather's reaction notwithstanding, how big a deal could some random woman from Winter be?

Their grandfather had already moved on though. "Point is, this was all a long time ago, even by Summer's reckoning. So it wasn't your father, or even his father, but his father's father, who very nearly wiped my family out of existence."

Again, he said it the same way he might mention that they'd had a particularly mild storm season that year. Some random factoid that gave context for the important part of the story and nothing more.

Veronica shuddered.

"Until your grandmother stepped in." His eyes drifted up to the ceiling. "That's Flori for you. She was the youngest of the Hardts, and still something of a stranger to Summer, despite having been initiated several years earlier. But it was she who saw an opportunity, where the rest of her House saw somebody else's problem."

"An opportunity for what?" Annie asked.

"To fuck House Fisher over, of course," their grandfather said, nonchalantly.

Annie gasped, then laughed at herself for doing so.

Veronica almost did so herself. Here she was, expecting a romantic tale. The dreamy look on their grandfather's face certainly suggested as much. But it turned out that he was, at least initially, nothing more than a pawn on a chessboard to her grandmother.

But, then, this was the Homelands.

What did love have to do with anything? Her mothers had never been in love with one another. Her father clearly hadn't been either. Uncle Wes loved Aunt Zoey, but Veronica had always had the sense that he was the exception to a lot of rules.

It was probably just a matter of time before someone pressured her to marry a guy she hardly knew, and perhaps had more than a little reason to hate, just so that some stupid feud could be brought to an end. That was just how things were done here.

That made her blood run cold.

It wasn't as though Veronica thought that she was going to get to marry the guy she wanted to marry, of course. If one of their kind married her own brother, it would be a complete scandal. But still. She'd at least like to think she could choose whom to settle for instead. The idea of arranging marriages to end wars seemed so archaic.

"So your grandmother married way beneath herself," their grandfather continued, "her brother married my sister, and House Fisher offered a truce." He gave them a grin, as if to say, "It might have been a boring story, but at least it had a happy ending." 

"Just like that?" Veronica asked, still feeling a bit disoriented.

"Well, you have to understand that, at the time, House Fisher was an upstart," Grandpa Randy explained. "They were strong, and getting stronger, but they were still young and small compared to the mighty Hardts."

Annie giggled at that.

With bemused smile, their grandfather added, "It might help to clarify that those were the glory days for your house. And I should also note that House Fisher wasn't done with us. Or their quest for the throne. But if there's one thing that's always separated Fishers from the rest of us, it's patience."

"So what happened next?" Annie asked.

"Some other time," their grandfather said. "That part of the story isn't so pleasant."

Veronica drew a deep breath.

Did he think that they found it pleasant to hear about how one branch of their family tree had nearly annihilated another branch? How thoroughly unromantic was the story of their grandparents' marriage?

For her part, Annie seemed completely unaffected. A little disappointed, maybe, in either the story itself or the fact that it wasn't going to continue. But certainly not disturbed.

"I'll go tell Mom and Grandma it's about time for dinner," Veronica said.

#

It wasn't easy for Gabriela, but she pulled her brother into her arms and forced herself not to pay attention to her son as he went over to Olivia and Zoey.

She'd reclaim Eric soon enough. But, much as she hated to admit it, her son would get more energy from those two than he would from her. Especially from Zoey. That woman had a Libido the likes of which weren't found in Summer.

And, truth be told, she was feeling a little more attracted to Wes than she had been in a long time. With the way he'd stood up to his wife, Gabriela could almost imagine that her brother actually had a pair after all. She'd of course prefer to be with Eric. But Wes didn't seem like quite so poor a substitute just at the moment.

"The two of you have really fought about me?" she asked, between nibbles of his ear.

He hesitated. Then, with a sound that could have just as easily be taken for a cough or a scoff, he said, "You could say that."

"That's...pretty fucking hot," she said.

Wes laughed awkwardly. "Exactly what I was thinking at the time."

"Of course it wasn't," she said. "But that doesn't matter." She knew how her brother abhorred conflict. Especially with those he loved. And there was no mistaking that he did love Zoey. "In fact, that's exactly what makes it so hot."

She felt a little guilty saying that. She never would have asked her brother to pick a fight with his wife. But she couldn't help the fact that it turned her on that he had done so. That it made her see her brother, and his feelings towards her, in a different light.

Gabriela fumbled with her brother's shorts. Getting him out of his clothes was proving a little difficult, given that she couldn't bring herself to stop kissing his neck.

"Here," he said, taking her hands aside to take care of it himself.

She pulled back and stared into his blue eyes. They were just like her son's. So was his hair, besides the tufts of white at his temples. His blonde beard didn't even seem quite as silly to her as it always had before. If she tried hard enough, she could almost mistake her brother for Ryan Gosling.

"Promise me something," she said.

"Anything."

"Don't hold back."

He furrowed his brow.

"Fuck me like a whore, Wes," she said, without missing a beat. "Use me for your pleasure. Don't worry about whether I like it. If I don't, I'll let you know. But if I know you're enjoying yourself, I will too. So just let yourself go for a change."

Gabriela had never said anything like that to her brother. In the past, she'd always felt that she shouldn't have to tell him. That she'd sent so signals over the years that he should have been able to figure it out on his own. But she was tired of waiting for him to do so. It was time to go ahead and say what needed to be said and hope that it lead to them sharing a special moment. He'd always wanted them to be closer. This was his chance to make it happen. All he had to do was allow her to be who she was, instead of forcing her to be who he wanted her to be.

He didn't respond at first. But, eventually, he nodded.

That was it. Not a word of protest. No questions about what she meant by that. No attempt to explain why he'd behaved as he had in the past, or to apologize for having done so. He just took her request at face value and was prepared to honor it.

She kissed him, and for the first time in too long, felt a real spark.

Her brother might not have Eric's confidence, determination, and intensity, but he was a good man. Caring, devoted, thoughtful, and responsible. And he worshiped her.

It was in his eyes, and in the way his lips wrestled with hers. The way his hands hungrily freed her breasts or slid up the hem of her dress. His Libido was giving off heat like a miniature sun. No man had ever desired her as intensely as her brother did.

Not even her son.

And though he wasn't quite as well-built as Eric, Wes had a nicer body than Gabriela sometimes gave him credit for. As she ran her hands over his sleek torso, up his sculpted abs and hard chest and over his rounded shoulders and firm arms, she forced herself not to think about how disappointing her previous experiences with him had been. How frustrating it was that he'd set her up on a pedestal and refused to let her be a real person, flaws and all. It was as if she was discovering her brother's body for the first time.

And the truth was, Wes was fucking hot.

While they continued to play tonsil hockey, her brother ripped away her dress. The sound of it tearing and the surprise of his sudden aggression almost made Gabriela fail to notice the sting of the fabric cutting into her skin before it gave way.

Wes could simply have made her dress evaporate. But she was glad he didn't.

Gabriela broke away from their kiss, needing to look into her brother's eyes and see the fierce, animalistic lust there. And she was not disappointed. He was practically snarling as he stared back at her.

"Oh, Wes," she moaned.

He pulled her back down, giving her lower lip a gentle bite.

It didn't take long for him to guide his hard cock into her welcoming cunt. She was so ready for him, he slid right in. Which came as something of a surprise, seeing as her brother was not small. By any means. Ordinarily, he stretched her so wide that it took some effort to accommodate his full length.

Gabriela almost cried with joy as her brother filled her up. She could feel him pressing against her cervix. His thick shaft parted her walls and rubbed against the spongy flesh of her G-spot. If she were a mortal woman, incapable of adjusting herself so readily, it would have hurt. Instead, it made her feel more intimately connected to her brother than she'd ever allowed herself to feel before.

Once he drove all the way in, to the point that his heavy balls rested against her ass, he stopped. Whether that was to let her catch her breath or allow him to get used to her tight grip, she couldn't have said. But either way, though, it was only a moment's reprieve.

After that, her brother did indeed fuck her like a whore.

Except that if that was how men treated whores, every woman in the world would be clamoring to take up the world's oldest occupation.

Gabriela bit her brother's neck, raked her nails down his back, and squeezed his tight ass cheeks in her hands. She wrapped her legs around him so tightly that she almost worried that she might cut him in half. But all the while, he just kept staring intensely into her eyes and pounding her pussy.

"That's it, don't stop," she panted.

"You like that?" he asked. "Does my filthy slut of a sister like having her little brother's big dick rip her apart?"

Gabriela threw her head back. "God, yes!" His furious thrusts had her on fire. She was building rapidly towards a climax. "Fuck me, Wes. Fuck me hard. Please. I need it so bad." Biting her lip so hard she feared she might draw blood, she added, "I'm your whore."

She worried that he might be baiting a trap. That if she kept up the dirty talk, he'd eventually pull out and turn his back on her in disgust. But she was too turned on to care. If the thought of his sister wanting to be treated like a whore bothered Wes, though, he didn't let it show.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 04



######################

Author's note

As ever, if you have questions feel free to email me or leave a comment. Either way, I'll try to respond in a timely manner.

This is primarily an incest story, but it is also sci-fi/fantasy, and supernatural elements are not incidental to the plot. Additionally, many chapters will feature elements of other categories, particularly group sex and anal.

All sexual acts are consensual and involve parties who are at least eighteen years of age.

########################

 "Room for one more?" Eric asked.

"For you? Always," his mother said, as she continued to bounce up and down on her brother's oversized cock. "Mommy's ass is all yours."

"You sure?" Uncle Wes asked, looking up at his sister.

"Uh huh," she said.

Eric almost laughed at the mixture of surprise and excitement on his uncle's face.

Maybe there was a reason he'd never seen that side of her. Poor bastard.

With a smile on his face, Eric carefully positioned himself to enter his mother's back door. Lube suddenly coated his hard member and her tight sphincter, though there wasn't a bottle of the stuff handy. Little things like that were coming to him more and more readily.

"Go slow though, baby," his mother said as pressed his swollen helmet against the brown ring of muscle. "Still getting used to two at once."

He swept his mother's silky hair away from her shoulder, kissed her soft skin, and said, "I will." Then kissed the top of her head.

"Ungh, fuck," his mother groaned as he pushed, gently, against her sphincter.

Eric paused.

"No, don't stop," she said.

"Everything okay?" Wes asked.

"Yeah," she replied. "I'm in the arms of my two favorite guys. What more could a girl possibly ask for?"

Wes grinned, but to Eric, it looked rather forced.

After Eric got his entire length inside his mother, though, she started to breathe again and allowed muscles that had been tensed up to finally relax. When that happened, his uncle relaxed too.

"God, that feels good, baby," Gabby said. "Takes some getting used to. But there's nothing quite like it. I feel so connected to you both."

Eric almost told his mother that he loved her. But he stopped himself.

Was that allowed?

He'd always told his mother that he loved her before getting off the phone or before going to bed. Ever since he was a kid. But that was different. Now that they were lovers, those words took on a new meaning.

If he told his mother that he loved her while he was inside her, it would obviously be a lot harder to say that it was the same as when he'd said it growing up. Wes might be surprisingly accepting of the fact that Gabby and Eric were growing closer by the day, despite the fact that he obviously had very strong feelings for his sister, but it was hard to imagine that his reaction to hearing Eric violate their people's norms so flagrantly would be as nonchalant.

So Eric just kissed his mother's hair and neck and shoulder a few times.

"Mmm, that's nice," she said, reaching back to press her hand against his face. After a few moments, she pressed both hands firmly against Wes, leaned her forehead against his, and said, "Okay, boys. Give it to me. And don't be shy about it."

Despite her words, Eric started off slow.

But as she continued to demand that they fuck her harder, he gradually ramped things up. Before long, he was pounding his mother's ass nearly as vigorously as he had Zoey's a few minutes earlier. Meanwhile, Wes bucked his hips rapidly, establishing a complementary rhythm. They took turns pawing at her huge breasts and groping her fat ass.

All the while, Gabby howled in ecstasy. Whenever she gained enough control over her breath to form actual words, she begged them not to stop.

As much as his mother was enjoying it, Eric was enjoying it even more. He loved seeing his mother letting go like this. Seeing her depraved and lustful and completely in control, even as she was sandwiched between the two of them. They were tools for her pleasure, speeding up or slowing down as she commanded.

On top of that, there was the smell of her. Shampoo and perfume and sweat and that characteristic faint hint of coconut that made eating her pussy such a delight. The sheer physical delight of being inside her was almost overwhelming.

There was no one like his mother.

Olivia was beautiful, and Zoey was something else, but his mother was a goddess. She radiated sexuality and femininity and fertility. They were fucking her two holes as hard as they could, and still she wanted more. It pained him that he had no more to give.

Improbably, the three of them climaxed in unison.

"Fuuuuck! Yeah, yeah, oh, fuck, yeah!" Gabby cried out.

Eric heard some sounds escaping his lungs, but he wasn't sure what they were. The release from the tension that had built up inside him was so intense that his mind could process nothing else. His head swam in a sea of bliss. Every trace of pain left his body. There was nothing to his existence but sheer ecstasy.

As the moment faded and oxygen began to enter his bloodstream again, Eric became dimly aware of the strange sensation of his uncle's cock pulsing as he ejaculated into his sister's pussy. With nothing but a thin membrane separating the two of them, and his heavy balls unavoidably resting very near his uncle's, Eric could actually feel the other man cumming. It was odd, but not entirely unpleasant. It added to the sense that they were sharing a unique moment, a level of intimacy that was rarely shared by three individuals, let alone three members of the same family. As if by design, their bodies worked together so that Wes shot his seed into Gabby while Eric's equipment prepared for its next spurt, and his uncle's junk went still whenever Eric pumped his own jizz into his mother.

They both filled her to overflowing.

Eric probably should have thought it gross when he felt his cum dribbled out his mother's ass and flowed around the base of his cock then down his sac. He had to imagine that his uncle was weirded out by having both his and Eric's cum leaking onto him, mingled together with Gabby's own fluids. But Eric felt such utter contentment, a complete and overwhelming sense that all was right with the world, that it didn't even occur to him to pull out.

The three of them leaned against each other, Gabby lying flat atop her brother's chest and Eric pressed against his mother's back.

They huffed and puffed, lungs sucking air. But even if they weren't completely out of breath, he suspected that none of them would have spoken a word. They were too overwhelmed by it all. Nor was any verbal confirmation necessary for them to know that they were all thinking the same thing.

That. Was fucking awesome.

Eventually, Eric slipped out of his mother's ass, a soft pop announcing his departure. Gabby gasped as he left, then sighed so contentedly that Eric almost thought she was having another orgasm. A few moments later, she dismounted her brother, legs wobbling and lips stretched in a beautiful, blissful smile.

Wes simply sat there, limbs loose, grinning goofily.

Eric gathered his mother up in his arms and rained soft kisses on her forehead and her sweat-dampened hair. She pressed one hand against his hard abs and laid her face against his chest. Her breath was warm against his skin, as warm as her heavy breasts were cool. For a moment, he was tempted to say that it was the best thing he'd ever felt. But, of course, it didn't compare to the feeling of being inside her. Only one thing ever had and ever would. And he'd just as soon forget that, if he could. The simple pleasure of holding his against him was still more than worth savoring, regardless of whether it was the very best feeling that he'd ever felt or not.

His uncle stood up, slowly, clapped Eric on the back, and shuffled over to the other couch. There, his other body was still busy trying to satisfy Zoey and Olivia.

Eric split himself in two. One half of him joined Wes in tending to the needs of his cousin and his aunt. The other staid put.

She looked up at him, her beautiful blue eyes making his heart miss a few beats. There had to be a dozen different shades of blue in the rich folds of her irises. More than a few of green and yellow as well.

"Is it time?" she asked.

"Not yet."

For just a little longer, the problems of the outside world were forgotten.

With one body, Eric joined his uncle's two, and they took turns DP'ing Liv and Zoey.

Meanwhile, his other body made love to his mother.

He didn't know if he was just getting better at compartmentalizing, or whether all the energy he was taking in was making it possible to do things he'd otherwise have found daunting, but Eric managed to enjoy each of the women in their own right.

With Zoey, there was no affection. No compassion. Just raw, animalistic lust that bordered on anger. They were competing with each other, and it wasn't exactly friendly. But it was undeniably hot. The woman had unbelievable control over her body, and the things she could do with her powers were stunning.

Olivia had always been something of a wild thing, notwithstanding the sudden and uncharacteristic display of vulnerability and empathy that she'd allowed to slip past her carefully constructed facade a little while earlier. She had her game face back on now, and though she wasn't quite competing with her mother, she was definitely looking to make an impression on Eric. And succeeded in doing so. Some of the things she did, or begged him to do to her, took Eric by surprise. Even after two years of fucking her as often as he could, he'd underestimated the depths of depravity to which his cousin was willing to sink.

His mother, by contrast, was initially more restrained than ever. And that was exactly the way he wanted it.

Their hands spent as much time in each other's hair, or pressed against one another's faces, as they did fondling and caressing each other's bodies. Their eyes focused unwaveringly on each other. At least, when they weren't kissing. Which they often were. Their lips came together again and again in long, soft kisses. Lots and lots and lots of them. He couldn't get enough of his mother's lips.

All the while, they fought not to say those powerful, dangerous, three little words.

Gradually, they shifted towards more passionate, vigorous love-making. But it was a very slow shift. They made sure to fully exhaust the possibilities of the gentler approach first.

After her kisses turned increasingly towards necking and nibbling on his ears, his mother started to slowly work her way down his torso. Eric sat back and enjoyed the tortuous descent, playing with his mother's hair and staring into her blue eyes.

When he thought she'd take him in her mouth, she instead put her breasts to work.

Eric had never quite understood the appeal of titty-fucking before. But, then, before his mother, most of the women he'd been with didn't have a whole lot to work with in that department. A few of his girlfriends had tried to impress him by squeezing him between their girls, but he'd usually ended up feeling bad for her as she tried desperately to pretend she had what it took to make that meaningful. Olivia had even proposed it once, though he couldn't for the life of him imagine what that would even look like, small as hers were.

His mother, though?

Her love-pillows surrounded his member perfectly. Rather than just barely creating some friction, she enveloped him. The feel of her soft, cool skin was nice. Better still was the visual delight of watching it all happen, and trying to wrap his head around just how thoroughly his mother shamed every other woman who'd tried this with him before. The very breasts that he'd suckled as an infant were now massaging his manhood.

That wasn't enough to get him off, but it sure served as a nice warm-up.

When his mother finally did take him in her mouth, Eric was so worked up, it hardly took her a minute to finish him off.

After that, he returned the favor. Increasingly confident that he knew what she liked, he found himself really enjoying the act of seducing her. He took his time exploring all the wonders of her body. Her breasts received extra special attention, but he spent a good deal of time on her hips and ribcage and even her feet as well. Finally, he worked his way up her long, curvy legs and worshiped at her altar.

Had he really once thought there was something less than manly about going down on a woman? That there was something degrading about it?

Crazy talk.

Feeling his mother's hips writhe, tasting her juices thicken as she came, and listening to her moan and curse and scream and plead and beg him not to stop, made him feel powerful. What could be manlier than having the ability to pleasure your woman properly? To make her melt in your mouth and thrash about wildly in complete ecstasy before she collapsed, turning limp as a jellyfish, unable to do anything but pant for air?

He guided his mother through a second orgasm before telling her to get down on all fours.

Had she the wherewithal to do so, Eric suspected she would have scrambled to comply with his request as quickly as possible. As it was, she was riding so high on the ecstasy of his oral services that it took her a few moments to even twitch. She did, eventually, get down on the floor. But it took a while, much to Eric's amusement.

He entered her slowly. But at her insistence, he worked his way up to a record pace. Before long, he was crashing into her so hard that she nearly toppled over. Most of the time, Eric leaned back, so as to fully enjoy the view of her ass cheeks rippling. But he couldn't resist the urge to occasionally lean forward and grab hold of her heavy tits, rolling her nipples back and forth between his fingers as he did.

If not for the fact that he felt some personal connection to Olivia, he wasn't sure he'd be capable of enjoying sex with her anymore. After allowing himself to revel in the pleasure of being with a full-figured, voluptuous woman, his cousin's figure seemed like a true tragedy.

This, this was what a woman should look like. His mother was beyond beautiful. She was the physical embodiment of womanhood. Her huge breasts symbolized the power to nourish offspring, while her hips issued a silent promise to bring those children to term without any difficulty. Yet, despite her generous breasts and broad hips, she had a waist that belonged on a very different woman. Staring at the stark contrast between her hips and her waist made Eric's head spin. Her waist had to be half the size of her hips.

"Keep going, keep going, please keep going," his mother panted. She said it so fast, it almost became one word. Keepgoen.

"Planning on it," he grunted.

"Mmmm," she moaned.

Watching the impact of his thrusts work its way across the bronzed flesh of her beautiful orbs was like staring at the ocean. Beautiful, rhythmic, and hypnotic. Soft and delightfully squeezable as her ass was, it had a perfect heart-shape. There were thick muscles underneath the layer of soft padding. Exactly what a woman's ass should look like.

The constrictions of her inner walls grew more and more frequent, and Eric felt an orgasm rapidly approaching. For a moment, he considered numbing his senses, but then his mother made it clear that she wanted him to get off.

"Cum for me, baby," she said. "Mommy wants to feel your love inside her."

Eric's heart almost stopped.

She was speaking figuratively, of course. They still hadn't said aloud what he was sure they both felt. But she'd inched closer to the edge of what they were allowed to say, and it excited him more than words could describe.

"Fill me up," she said. "Like you did before. Make my cup runneth over."

He chuckled at that, and picked up his pace.

Meanwhile, he felt his mother pouring energy into his Libido, and every little sensation grew more intense. Right after she dialed his sensitivity up to ten, Gabby forced her womb to close tighter still around his poor dick. It then began to vibrate.

It was more than any man could take.

"Oh, fuck!" he howled, his eyelids fluttering and his muscles twitching.

"That's it, baby," his mother cooed.

Somehow, she prolonged his orgasm. He must have cum for two minutes straight. His balls just kept on pumping sperm into his mother's womb. The very womb from which he'd entered the world. Hot spunk flowed out her pussy, pouring down his shaft and dropping audibly onto the floor. Then his mother started to cum as well.

Soon after that, though, he announced that it was time to return to Summer.

#

"He's going to be fine," her grandfather said.

Veronica sighed heavily. "I know."

"He really will be."

She smiled. "I really know."

"So why do you seem like you're waiting for the doctor to tell you if he'll make it?"

She rolled onto her side and regarded her grandfather. Damn, he was handsome. Everything she'd ever wanted, really.

For as long as she could remember, she'd had a thing for older guys. And she'd always liked her guys big and strong. Grandpa Randy was covered in thick muscles, but didn't look like a bodybuilder. He was nicely toned, and incredibly well-built, but neither overly veiny nor completely devoid of body hair, the way guys his size often were. There were a few prominent veins here and there, like in his biceps, but not too many. And he was hairy enough to look like a real man, yet somehow had no hair at all in the places where it would have been unwelcome. Like on his back.

He had the perfect face too. He didn't look old, the way her father did. Rather, he had that strange mix of youth and maturity you only found in the Homelands. He had beautiful silver streaks in his black mane and beard, and his face had a few deep troughs. But otherwise, his skin was firm. There wasn't so much as a hint of wobble in his neck, and no one would mistake his cheeks for jowls. He had a square jaw and strong features.

But he wasn't Nick.

That was all there was to it.

She'd probably always get a little chill in the presence of a hot older guy like her grandfather. But it was purely reflexive. Like when the doctor taps your knee with that little pointy hammer thingamajig. Nothing more.

Besides, one day, Nick too would be an older gentleman. When his coal black hair became streaked with silver, and his face developed some character-building lines, she'd be in for a real treat. She could wait for that day.

To think, just the night before, she'd avoided having sex with her brother because their father was on her mind and she didn't want him to know. That seemed so absurd now. Like it had happened to a different girl altogether.

"Do you love him?" her grandfather asked, thick eyebrows raised.

"Of course not," she said immediately.

"Uh huh," he said.

"Well, yeah, obviously I do," she said. "He's my brother. But I'm not in love with him, romantically, if that's what you're asking."

"You sure about that?"

Veronica hesitated.

Her grandfather laid a hand on her thigh. "It's okay. Does it seem like I care about the stupid rules of our court? There's a reason your grandmother and I haven't sworn any vows or kissed any feet besides each other's in a good, long time."

The image of her grandfather kissing her grandmother's feet, lovingly, rather than as an act of subjugation, brought a smile to Veronica's face. She'd thought they were cute together before, back when she thought they were old and out of shape and incapable of doing much bending over. Now that she knew what they really looked like, she thought they were absolutely perfect for each other. A perfect model for her and Nick.

Which seemed strange, after hearing the story about how they'd gotten together. But she supposed it wasn't the first time two people who'd married for reasons other than love had fallen for each other. Perhaps Summer allowed its children to find happiness together every once in a while after all.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 04



Fuck.

Who was she kidding? She wasn't going to marry Nick. They weren't going to settle down and have kids of their own. That just wasn't how things worked. However much their kind might scoff at certain taboos when it came to pleasuring one another, they shared the mortal world's views regarding inbreeding.

"I know it can't work," she said, voice heavy with resignation. "But yes, god help me, I'm hopelessly in love with him. The jackass."

That last part elicited a chuckle from her grandfather.

"Pretty obvious, wasn't it?" she said.

"Even before your grandmother told me she'd seen it in your Libido, yeah," he confirmed. "Didn't need any supernatural assistance to suss that out." He kissed her on the tip of her nose, the way he had when she was a child. "Your brother's lucky to have you."

"Going to get us in trouble, isn't it?"

Her grandfather frowned. "Being love is always dangerous."

Veronica rolled her eyes.

He was right, of course, but she wasn't looking for droll witticisms. She was worried about a lot more than mere heartache.

"Probably, yeah," he said, in a less breezy tone. "Can't lie to you, kiddo. There's rules you can bend, rules you can break, and rules you've got to follow to the letter. Everyone, and I mean everyone, bends this one at least a little. But sounds like you've got it bad. And that usually leads to breaking rules that can't even be bent."

"Like sticking to one partner at a time, and changing partners every year?"

"That's a bender," he said. "I think you know which one I mean."

Veronica shuddered.

It felt like he was reading her mind. But of course he wasn't. It was just really easy to guess what she was thinking. What she was feeling.

"Were you ever in love?" she asked. Only that was a stupid question, because he clearly was, right now, with her grandmother. "With someone you shouldn't have been, that is?"

At first he didn't respond. Then he shook his head. "Guess I haven't really lived, huh?"

"Didn't mean that," Veronica said, rubbing his upper arm.

"I know you didn't," her grandfather said. "But I realize I've had something of a charmed life. At least, since the day I met your mother, some ten years ago."

"You've only been together that long?" Veronica's brow furrowed.

"Ten years ago, by Summer's reckoning," he said. "But in that time, we've spent nearly fifty years together. Most of them in the Playground."

"Right," Veronica said.

It sort of made sense. The whole differential time flow thing seemed perfectly reasonable, at first. Different worlds, different rules. That idea had first been introduced to her back before puberty, when she'd read the Chronicles of Narnia. But when it came down to actually keeping track of time, Veronica realized just how deeply ingrained the mortal conception of time was in her mind. She thought she was comfortable with letting go of it, but she never could quite manage to remember to make the appropriate adjustments.

A soft kiss graced her forehead. "Anyway, it may not seem like it, but a good number of our kind fall in love, and do so by the rules. With someone from another family, that is. They get married, and, every now and then, even live happily ever after together." He paused and looked her in the eye, as if to make sure she was listening. "Might not true for the majority of us, but it does happen."

"And the rest?" Veronica asked.

He hesitated. "Marriages of convenience, for the most part." He frowned. "Those don't always work out as poorly as your mother's did, though. A lot of the time, they last until the kids come of age, then everyone goes their separate ways, with no hard feelings."

"And they spend the rest of their years taking a new lover, chosen at random, every year," Veronica said. "All the while wishing they could be with that one special person."

"Suppose that does happen a lot, yeah," he said.

Veronica frowned.

Her grandfather ran a hand through her hair. "It's not so bad."

"It's horrible!"

He shrugged. "Maybe someone will change the rules someday."

"Someone should."

To that, her grandfather offered no reply.

The idea had never occurred to her before. She'd simply taken for granted that this world was beyond her control. That she had no choice but to follow its rules. Even after the king kidnapped Patty and Kurt, she'd assumed that they would find a way to make him give them back and then make their peace with the throne.

What if there was a new king though?

Or queen?

But that was a thought for another day. Bad enough she was already allowing herself to flirt with one unthinkable thought. If she filled her head with still more dangerous ideas, things would only get harder on her.

"You never developed stronger feelings for one of your family members than the others?" she asked her grandfather, her tone sounding more skeptical than she'd intended.

It wasn't her fault though. It was just so implausible. Kind and caring as her grandfather was, he had to have been a mamma's boy. Guys that sweet always, always, had close relationships with their mothers. And, in the Homelands, that closeness would have to have had a romantic component as well. Wouldn't it?

Yet his response was not at all what she expected.

"I never really got along with my family," he said. "Besides my brother."

The only other one who'd survived the feud with House Fisher. The one who'd married Grandma Flori's sister. The one he'd only just mentioned when he decided that he didn't want to talk about the past anymore. Not a topic he wanted to explore further, then.

"Tell me about this sister of yours," he said after a fashion. "The one your brother very nearly gave his life for."

"Patty?" Veronica asked. As if he could've meant someone else. "You've met her."

"That was a long time ago. I was a different man then. And she was just a child."

Veronica considered asking what he meant when he said he'd been a different man. Was that just a reference to the fact that he'd worn a mortal disguise at the time?

She thought not.

But she chose not to press the issue.

"She's...adorable," Veronica said. "Not that she'd want to hear me say that. Everyone says she's cute, and she kinda hates it."

"People tend to mean it in the best way," her grandfather said, "but it's still a little demeaning. Especially for a grown woman."

"Guess so," Veronica said. "Anyway, she's really sweet. Wouldn't harm a fly. And has this infectious idealism. Almost makes me forget all the cynical stuff I've learned in school. She's the kind of student my poli sci professors love to have in class, so they can watch her entire view of the world fall apart over the course of a single semester."

"Hmm."

"This is coming out wrong," Veronica said.

"Well, if Phil took a liking to her, there's probably a lot of truth to what you're saying," he said, cautiously. "But have you considered that she might just project that image to the world because it's what everyone expects of her?"

Veronica fell silent.

"One way or another, I suspect you'll find her a changed woman when you get her back."

"You think we will?" Veronica asked "Get her back, I mean?"

Now it was her grandfather's turn to go quiet.

But if he really didn't think they had any chance of doing so, he would have spoken of how different they'd find Patty to be "if" they got her back, not "when." So he couldn't really think it was hopeless.

Why then did it feel like it was?

"What's taking Annie so long?" she said, suddenly remembering her other sister.

"Don't know," her grandfather said.

"Maybe you should go check on her?"

"Good idea," he said.

He climbed out of the pull-out bed and padded across the living room, stark naked. Veronica felt entranced as she watched him walk away. The muscles in his back and legs rippled beautifully, and his tight ass was a work of art. Thick as his chest hair was, there was hardly any hair on his back.

Veronica didn't envy her sister. What she had with Nick was better than she had any right to ask for. But a girl could do a lot worse than a man like their grandfather.

"Annie? You okay?" her grandfather asked, rapping lightly against the bathroom door.

No answer came.

He looked at Veronica, a question plain on his face. She'd been gone a while, but what if she was on the toilet? Would she want her grandfather barging in on her?

If she was in there, though, she'd have responded to his knock. Veronica shrugged.

Her grandfather frowned before trying the handle.

The door eased open. Still, no response from Annie. He leaned his head into the bathroom, then disappeared inside. A moment later, he came back, wearing drawstring pants and a plain white T-shirt.

"Must've gone out the window. I'm gonna go look for her," he said.

"What?" Veronica asked, stunned.

"She probably just wanted to be alone," her grandfather said, in a calm voice. "But best go find her, just to make sure."

A horrible thought ran through her mind.

She was glad her sister had disappeared. Glad to have a few minutes go by without anyone hinting that it would be great if Veronica would find somewhere else to be. Glad to have her grandfather all to herself. Why couldn't he just assume that Annie was throwing a high-school girl fit in a desperate bid for attention and come back to bed?

But she felt disgusted with herself the moment the thought occurred to her.

Veronica conjured up some clothes herself and scrambled to join her grandfather.

#

From the moment they arrived, it was clear they'd made a mistake. The island itself was prepared for them. Or, more accurately, the king had prepared a trap for them that sprang as soon as they set foot on the island.

Gabriela could only assume that setting up such a trap had required a ton of energy. More than she imagined any one person could wield.

The white sand stretched out and out, and the interior of the island receded further and further from view. Suddenly, there was an ocean behind them, a desert before them, and nary a sign of life anywhere.

"Maybe we should go back," Gabriela said.

Zoey stared at her with equal parts disbelief and disgust.

"Can't," Wes said.

"Yeah, too late for that," Eric said.

"No, I mean we can't," her brother said.

Everyone looked at him, waiting for the explanation his statement called out for.

"Didn't you feel it?" he asked.

"Oh, shit," Zoey said.

But she didn't bother to explain what she meant by that. Just grabbed Olivia and hugged her to her chest in what was presumably intended to be a comforting gesture.

Unsurprisingly, that only seemed to freak the poor girl out.

Wes looked at his daughter, but he spoke loudly enough that it was clear that his words were intended for all of them. "We're not in Summer," he said. "We're in a prison world."

"A what?" Eric asked. "How?"

Gabriela felt like she was on a rollercoaster that had just reached the peak of its ascent and had begun to plummet downward at breakneck speed.

Someone should have answered her son's questions. She herself would have, but she found that she couldn't speak. Perhaps the others were just as stunned, because everyone just stood there, speechless.

Naturally, it was Eric who broke the silence. "So what do we-"

The rest of his words turned into a yelp as the sand rose up, took a roughly humanoid shape, and swung a fist at him. Eric dove off to the side, dodging the clumsy blow.

All around them, more and more of the things appeared. They might not be nimble, but there were suddenly a great many of whatever they were.

"To me," Gabriela shouted.

Zoey gave her a skeptical look, but everyone else rushed to form a circle around her. And once they did, her sister followed suit.

A dozen bolts of lightning rained down from the clear sky, shattering the pillars of sand and scattering hot glass everywhere. Everywhere, that was, but within the protective circle Gabriela had hastily formed around them.

"Quick thinking," Wes said, smiling proudly at her.

Eric stared at her in awe. And, like her brother, pride.

Gabriela tried not to blush as she said, "Something tells me this place has got much worse in store for us."

"The first step, then," Zoey said, "is a real safe zone."

What did the golden cunt expect? Gabriela had been acting instinctively. Not to mention simultaneously orchestrating a dozen different attacks!

Zoey thrust both arms up into the sky and threw her head back. Her lips, which never could seem to decide what color they wanted to be, went from red to their natural deep golden-brown. Her electric blue eyes changed color, too, which Gabriela had never seen before. Suddenly, gold light was radiating from them. The woman's hair began to float upward, and her feet left the ground. The blue summer dress she wore turned purest white, and a cloth-of-gold belt appeared just below her bust.

The protest Gabriela had been about to offer died in her throat.

There was a reason the sunlit folk were often said to be the basis for mortal beliefs in angels. Even without wings or a halo, that was exactly what Zoey looked like.

She rose higher and higher in the air, until her feet dangled well above Eric's head. Then she pointed at the ground a little ways off, and it began to rumble. Once more, the white sand slowly rose up. Only this time, it didn't take the shape of a man. Rather, it changed before their eyes from sand into marble as Zoey created a miniature tower.

"We'll be safe in there," she said.

No one spoke.

The angelic figure slowly settled back to the ground. Her eyes turned a breathtaking blue once more, and her lips red. Her skin remained golden, and she kept the outfit, but she looked just a little more human now.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Eric asked.

So they made a break for it, abandoning Gabriela's protective circle to dash over to the tower. Though they had but a short distance to cover, in the brief time it took them to get there, they fended off or dodged past another dozen or so sandman attacks.

Heavy steel doors closed behind them once they were all inside the tower.

"Now what?" Gabriela asked.

No one replied.

Gabriela looked around the antechamber, which comprised the entire ground level. It was tiled with gold, of course. A spiral staircase ran along the inside of the cylinder, leading up to the next floor. Other than that, the chamber was empty.

"Can we go out onto the rooftop?" Olivia asked.

Zoey nodded.

So the girl grabbed Eric's hand and pulled him along behind her as she rushed towards the stairs. He turned back and looked a question at his mother.

Gabriela waved him on.

Though she didn't like seeing her niece behave as if Eric was hers, it was best that neither of them hear what was about to be said.

"You're not powerful enough to break us out of here, are you?" Gabriela asked Zoey.

It felt good to pay the woman back for ruining her moment of triumph earlier.

Though Gabriela was tall herself, her statuesque sister still had a couple of inches on her. And she managed to make that seem like still more as she crossed her arms under her breasts and looked down her nose at Gabriela. "No. I'm not."

After they'd pinched out the curt response, Zoey's lips formed a thin, flat line.

"Are you sure?" Wes asked.

His wife glowered at him. But then her gaze softened, and, in a polite tone, she said, "It took almost everything I had to get the world to obey me enough to raise this tower. Whoever built this world, they did it with a lot of help." She hesitated a moment before adding, "At least, I'm hoping they did, because I've never met anyone in your court who was powerful enough for this. There are few enough back in the Eternal Garden who are, for that matter. Besides, of course, the Ancients."

Suddenly, Gabriela didn't feel like rejoicing in Zoey's inability to free them.

There were only so many explanations then. And all involved Hank.

The bastard.

He'd made it clear that he couldn't assist them, but he'd hardly left her with the impression that he was going to help the king imprison them for the rest of time.

Granted, he hadn't exactly encouraged them to attempt to attack the king directly either. Had that been his way of trying to tip them off? Had he known, even then, what the king would ask him to do?

Or perhaps the king was so paranoid that this trap had been in place to begin with? Gabriela didn't know if such was possible, but if it was, it would be exactly like Phil to set something like this up, even without having any specific reason to anticipate an attack on the island in the near future.

She sighed. There was no use trying to figure it out. For all she knew, when Hank suggested that they kidnap one of the king's kids, he'd been hoping that they'd instead do exactly as they'd done.

"What if we all worked together?" Wes asked.

"Don't take this the wrong way, honey," Zoey said, "but there ain't much difference between what I can achieve alone and what I can do with the help of you all."

Obnoxious as that sounded, Gabriela knew it to be true. Olivia had inherited a fair amount of her mother's power. She was clearly stronger than either Eric or Patty. But even Olivia was nowhere near as powerful as her mother. And though Gabriela didn't like admitting it, she was no more powerful than her niece either, despite having much more experience. Eric had a lot of potential that was as yet unfulfilled. One day, he'd be even stronger than his mother.

But not as strong as Zoey, in all likelihood.

And who knew when that day would come.

Wes shook his head. "No way. Come on. Phil's not weak, and neither is Hank, but even put together, the two of them aren't so strong that the five of us, working together, couldn't undo anything they've done." He turned to Gabriela. "I'm sorry, Gabs, but I think we need to admit that Hank was in on this."

She snorted at that. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Must have been more than just the two of them, then," Zoey said with a shrug.

But what other major players were there?

"So. Do we have any options?"

Zoey shrugged. "Our best bet is probably to hope that the king is too proud to simply leave us here for all eternity. If he ever comes to gloat, we'll have a shot at breaking free."

"If we can force him to help us, that is," Gabriela said.

"Naturally," Zoey said. "Don't imagine he's very likely to volunteer to do so. It's really great, then, that we let Eric talk-"

"Shut up, dear," Wes said, eyes closed and fingers pressed against his forehead. Then, in a flat tone, he added, "Don't take that the wrong way."

Gabriela could have kissed her brother.

But it might not be wise to add to the sense that they were ganging up on Zoey. Irritating as her sister could be, she was the best shot they had at getting out of there.

For her part, the sunlit woman stared at Wes so intensely, it was a wonder her eyes didn't bore a hole right through him. When he didn't so much as flinch, though, she let out an exasperated sigh and said, "You're right. Pointing out whose fault it is that we're in this situation isn't helping us get out of it."

The bitch just had to try and sneak a little jab in, even as she pretended to back down. But Gabriela let her have her petty little victory. For her, it was enough to see her brother stand up to his wife on behalf of her son. Not only was her son twice the man Zoey's was, but the woman's own husband was abandoning her.

And she knew it.

Zoey's willowy arms fell away from her modest breasts and she went over to Wes, planting a kiss on his cheek. "I'm sorry, dear. I'm just freaking out. You understand, don't you?"

Wes sighed and kissed her forehead while smoothing back her hair. "Looks like we're going to be spending a lot of time together. Best we all stay in a forgiving mood."




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 04



Gabriela nodded.

They needed to put their heads together and come up with a better plan than waiting for the king, and then hoping that if he did show up, that they could subdue him and force him to put his power to work for them. Because that was about as bad a plan as she'd ever heard. Not only was it unlikely that Phil would would ever drop in on them, but it was even less likely that they'd get him to free them.

There had to be another option.

She just had no idea what that might be.

"Well, shit," Gabriela said.

Zoey burst out laughing.

Then Wes followed suit, and soon all three of them were laughing hysterically.

#

"They think we can't handle hearing that they haven't got a clue how we're going to escape," Eric said. "It'd almost be amusing, if it wasn't so patronizing."

"Yeah," Olivia said. "Course, that's pretty much been their thing all along, hasn't it?"

She had a point.

"You'd think that-"

Before she could finish the sentence, his cousin slumped forward, fast asleep, with her head resting on arms stretched across the battlements.

"Liv?" Eric asked. He reached over, grabbed her shoulder, and gave her a gentle shake.

"Now why would you want to go and do that?" came a woman's voice. "I'd just have to put her back to sleep again."

Eric spun around, and found the aunt he'd never known he had until earlier that afternoon standing behind him. Nina Fisher.

"You," he said.

"Me," she replied.

Eric tried his hardest not to let himself get distracted by the fact that she wasn't wearing anything but a set of see-through pink panties and a matching bra, the most substantial parts of which were the ribbons at the center of each. But damn. He could see everything. And he liked what he saw. Liked it very much.

As before, Eric found himself thinking that his aunt somehow managed to appear curvier than she really was, thanks the dramatic difference between her hips and her waist. Her hips were actually relatively narrow, but her waist was insanely small. If his hands were just a bit bigger, he might almost have been able to encircle her waist with one hand. There was no question that he could do so with the two of them. With room to spare. It didn't make any sense at all. Shouldn't even have been attractive. It should have struck him as cartoonish. But he couldn't deny that it was pretty fucking hot.

And though her breasts were not enormous, sitting above a waist that almost made his cousin's look wide, they seemed a good deal bigger than they were.

And they weren't exactly small to begin with.

As if that wasn't enough, she had a painfully gorgeous face. The kind of face that made men go blind, if they were foolish enough to look straight at it for an extended period of time. She shouldn't have had that effect on him. Not with her skin being relatively fair and her hair and eyes being brown. Eric liked his women bronzed, blonde, and blue-eyed. Still, he couldn't deny that Nina had exquisite features, a perfect heart-shaped face, big eyes, and the kind of lips that made men's mouth water and minds drift into the gutter.

He tried reminding himself that he wasn't into super-skinny girls anymore. That a pretty face only went so far, if it didn't sit atop a proper figure. A womanly figure.

But a voice in the back of his head protested that his aunt did have a womanly figure. Not as exaggerated as his mother's, certainly. But he couldn't look at Nina and tell himself that she lacked for curves. Her waist looked like it was about half the size of her hips. And less than half the size of her bust. In what world did that not qualify as voluptuous? She made an hourglass look like a stick figure, even though she was incredibly thin.

He couldn't let himself think such thoughts though. Had to think straight.

Eric made a show of pressing his thumb against one eyelid and his forefinger against the other, while letting out a dramatic sigh. "Why are we having this conversation?"

"I suppose that's not quite `What are you doing here,"' she said. "Technically. But you're sure cutting it pretty close, there, buster."

"It's lovely to see you again, Aunt Nina," he said, deadpan. "That's a nice outfit you're wearing. Really brings out your...something or other. And have you done something with your hair? It looks wonderful."

"Much better," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Okay, nevermind what you're doing here. Let's start with how we get out."

"Oh, that's easy. I let us out."

"That's it?" Eric asked.

"Well, sure," Nina said. "I helped build the place. I know where the seams are."

"You did?" Eric drew a deep breath and turned his back to his aunt. He leaned against one of the tower's broad crenels, hoping the stone could lend him some strength and stoicism. If he let the frustration he felt get the better of him, this conversation wouldn't end well. "If you knew about it," he said, his words coming out slow and precise, "why'd you tell me to go ahead with a direct attack?"

"Because I'm trying to help you."

That again.

"By getting me and my family imprisoned?"

"Oh, for ten minutes," she said. "Cry me a freaking river. Granted, that's been more like ten hours back in Summer, but whatever. That's not the point. You haven't endured some great hardship, so don't get all sanctimonious on me."

Eric stood there, silent, too stunned to talk.

" Besides, it was all part of the plan. I just couldn't tell you, because I knew you'd react...well, sort of like how you are reacting right now."

Another deep breath. Then, as calmly as he could, he asked her, "Is there some reason I should trust you?"

"Here," she said. "A token of good will."

Suddenly, the air hummed with energy, and Eric felt something warm against his back.

He turned around.

His aunt handed him a longsword. Counting the hilt, it had to be close to five feet long. There was a blue nimbus surrounding it, so faint he almost didn't notice it.

"It's beautiful," he said.

It had an oyster shell in the pommel, and blue waves were stained into the length of the fuller. The blade was bright and smooth, long and double-edged.

"Where'd you get it?"

"Has anyone ever told you that you ask a lot of questions?" his aunt asked, pulling the sword back away from him.

The damn thing was nearly as tall as she was, yet with the way she wielded it, it seemed like it weighed no more than a table knife.

"I tend to think that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is," he replied.

She stared at him flatly for a few moments before saying, "Okay. It was a gift from my brother, who got it from the king, who took it from your uncle."

Eric stared at her in disbelief. She spoke so casually of the uncle who, thanks to the king, he'd never met. Of how her brother came to possess his uncle's sword. As if it had been the king's to give in the first place.

Nina rolled her eyes. "This was all before you were born. Would you even have known that it had been taken from your family if I hadn't said anything?"

He didn't reply.

"Exactly," she continued. "So can you do me a favor and not stare at me like I'm some grave-robbing murderous thief?"

"Did you know him?" Eric asked.

Her expression softened. She reached out, as if she was going to put a hand on his shoulder, then stopped and let her arm return to her side. "No." She stared into his eyes, and the genuine warmth he found there made Eric suddenly feel very ashamed of how hostile he was being towards her. "Your father did. But Hank's always encouraged me to stay away from Summer as much as possible. I've been around a lot longer than you, but Summer still feels like a foreign land, and its people are all strangers."

Eric nodded.

"Anyway," his aunt said, her tone returning to normal. "Every family that's worth a damn has got one of these puppies." She raised the sword up for emphasis. "They're serious weapons. Imbued with the same energy that fuels our powers."

Every family had one.

So much for thinking it was going to give him some great big advantage.

"The king's got one just like it?"

"Well, no, not just like it," she said, looking away and burying her ultra-white teeth into her lower lip. "The Bravos have a nasty piece of work known as a bardiche. Long handle, like a spear, but with a huge axe blade mounted on it instead. More than two feet from top to bottom. Sort of like what you'd use if you were an elephant-headsman."

"I see," Eric said. "Clumsy, though, right?"

"In the wrong hands...," she said.

"Which Phil's are not," Eric finished for her.

His aunt gave him a sympathetic, almost apologetic, frown.

Lovely.

"Forgive me for needing to ask this, but why are you giving it back? Why not keep it for yourself? Why come here and help me escape?"

"What's in it for me, you mean?" Nina asked.

Eric shrugged. "Well, yeah."

"The king's death."

That would do it, yeah.

She wrapped her willowy arms around herself the way she might if a chill wind had suddenly picked up. "I want my brother back." She wiped away a tear before continuing. "He hardly ever has time for me anymore. And when he does, he's not the same as he used to be. Colder. Harder. Distant."

"So why not do it yourself?" Eric asked, his tone more curious than skeptical. Or so he hoped. "You're obviously stronger than I am."

"Stronger, yes. Strong enough to do it alone? No."

The wind that wasn't there pebbled Eric's skin with goose bumps.

How strong must the king be?

"But between you, me, and the raiding party you've assembled, we might have a shot."

"Might?" Eric asked.

Nina didn't reply.

"What about your brother?"

"Oh, if he were with us, the odds would definitely be good," she said with a tone of exasperation. "But Hank doesn't put his life on the line when the odds are good. They need to be downright overwhelming."

"And even with all seven of us, they wouldn't be?"

"Maybe. Probably." his aunt said. "But it doesn't matter. Your father's out. Doesn't even know that I'm planning on going up against the king in fact. So this is it. We do it ourselves, or we don't do it at all."

"I'm starting to like the idea of staying here for the rest of time," Eric said.

His aunt narrowed her dark eyes at him. "You don't mean that."

Of course he didn't.

He should have, from the sound of it. Apparently that was the choice his father would make, were he in Eric's shoes. And he wouldn't be surprised if his Uncle Wes suggested the same. But it just wasn't who Eric was.

"And afterwards?" Eric asked.

"If we succeed, you mean?" she said, stepping closer to him. The sword dragged along the smooth marble of the tower, its tip leaving a trail of sparks behind it.

"Yeah. If," Eric said. "Assuming I even agree to this."

His aunt planted a palm on his chest. "We'll need a new king, then, won't we?"

"Suppose so, yeah," Eric said breathlessly.

"The king can do as he pleases. Take whatever he wants," she said, her voice sultry.

"Okay." Eric told himself that his aunt's unspoken promise had nothing to do with his decision. He'd made up his mind before she'd turned on the charm, after all. "Let's do it."

Nina gave him a naughty smile as she handed him his uncle's sword.

His mind had already been made up, yes. But the prospect of getting between his aunt's legs helped ease any doubts he might have had.

#

Her father took her by the hand and led her away from the cabin.

"Are we going to the lake?" Annie asked.

He glanced at her over his shoulder. It wasn't an angry look that he gave her, exactly. In fact, there was no real expression at all on his face at all. But his eyes briefly lit up, causing the dark of night to recede, and that was more than enough to communicate his irritation.

Such an impatient response should have given Annie pause. Should have set off alarm bells and forced her to admit to herself that she really didn't know her father and could only guess what plans he had for her. All it did, though, was make her tingle between her legs. She barely managed not to whimper.

Any unspoken commands he might issue with those emerald orbs, she'd hasten to obey.

He'd come for her. Not Veronica. Not her mother. But Annie the Overlooked. That he might have chosen her because she was the youngest and least experienced probably should have occurred to her. But that was a thought her fragile ego dared not allow her to entertain. It wasn't her vulnerability that drew him to her. It was that he saw something special in her. Something the others didn't see. Had to be.

They stopped at a clearing in the middle of the woods. With a wave of her father's hand, a mossy log became a king-sized bed covered with a deep green quilt. Then he swept his hand in an arc before him, and Annie saw the air shimmer. Some sort of dome formed around the clearing. For the briefest instant, it was like they were inside the largest soap bubble the world had ever seen. Or something more glamorous.

If she'd been a little less stunned, maybe she'd have been able to think of a better metaphor. But it was hard enough just remembering to put one foot in front of the other without trippig over any upraised roots.

Whatever it was that her father had summoned, though, all visible signs of it were gone a moment later. The air suddenly felt warmer too, and Annie realized that the cool breeze that had been blowing through the woods no longer reached them.

"So no one will disturb us," her father explained.

She nodded. Then, with butterflies in her stomach, she took her father by the hand and started towards the bed. For a brief instant, she was afraid he wouldn't follow. That he'd snatch his hand back and rebuke her. But, to her relief, he trailed after her silently. When she sat down on the bed, though, he remained standing.

Annie's throat constricted. That was why they came here, wasn't it?

Why else would he have made them a bed? Had she done something wrong? Were the stockings and heels too much? Was she supposed to wait for him to make the first move?

She drew a deep breath and tried to relax.

For the most part, she failed though.

"My little girl's grown up to be such a beautiful young woman," her father said, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.

Annie stared up into her father's eyes. The way they stood out against the dark of night reminded her of that stupid Sin City movie Veronica had made her watch. Like the only color in the entire world came from those gorgeous green orbs. Everything else was painted in various shades of gray.

His fingertips brushed her cheek lightly before his hand returned to his side. That sent a jolt through her. She shuddered as it ran down her spine.

"I have to ask you something," he said, softly. "You're not going to want to answer, but it's important that you trust me. Okay?"

Annie nodded. She'd have told him, "Anything," if her mouth was working.

"Your brother and sister aren't planning on withdrawing from the court, are they?"

Suddenly, the spell was broken.

His eyes were no less mesmerizing than a moment ago. But his words popped Annie out of the dream. Reminded her of all the things she'd just as soon forget.

Her father might have said that he wasn't here as the king's Shadow, but that tone wasn't one of fatherly concern. He was conducting an investigation.

"You're right. I don't want to answer," Annie said softly, looking away.

Fuck.

Why did she have to be such a fool? The king had only pledged to pretend that this little pocket of the Hardt family island didn't lie within Summer, wasn't part of his dominion, because her grandparents had withdrawn from the court. Now that they were providing comfort to enemies of the throne, that was out the window. None of them were safe here anymore. And she'd walked off into the night with an agent of the throne.

She needed to get away. Not just for her own safety, but to warn her grandparents.

Except they already knew.

They had to. As soon as they'd opened the door for Veronica, they'd thrown away the quiet little life they'd built for themselves, and they'd done so knowingly. By all accounts, her grandmother knew exactly how this game was played.

Why hadn't they said anything?

"It's okay," her father said, pressing one finger against her chin, beckoning her to look back into those disarming eyes. "You can tell me."

Reluctantly, Annie turned back to face him.

"What if they're not?" she asked. "Are you going to...," she paused, searched for the right words. She failed to find them, but she proceeded anyway. "Bring them to justice?"

He didn't answer.

"Oh, god."

"Relax," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Nothing like that's going to happen."

"Really?'

Annie wanted so badly to believe him. Those green eyes couldn't lie, could they? They were too beautiful to be dishonest.

"How's that brother of yours brother doing, anyway?" he asked, with genuine warmth in his voice. Less like an inquisitor asking after a fugitive than a father asking about his son.

With a sigh of relief, Annie said, "Oh, no, he's fine. You'd think he was going to die, the way Veronica is moping about, but Grandma healed him up good."

Her father raised an eyebrow. "She did, did she?"

"Should not have told you that," Annie mumbled to herself.

Was she that stupid? Or desperate to believe that they could be one big happy family? Of course he wasn't concerned about Nick.

"No, it's good that you did," her father said.

"You're going to tell the king."

Her father didn't reply at first. Then he said, "There's no need to mention how I came to possess such information, or that I might have passed up an opportunity to apprehend those who sought to kidnap his sons. But your grandparents have put themselves back in the game. That, the king needs to know." He paused for a moment. "I take no pleasure in it, understand. You have to believe that. But while he hasn't exactly got me on a short leash, if I stray far enough, bad things can happen."

Suddenly, Annie remembered her grandfather's story about how he met her grandmother. How House Fisher had nearly wiped his entirely family out of existence. Her father was a scion of that very same house. She and Nick and Veronica might mean something to him, she hoped, but he had no reason to give her grandparents any special treatment.

"Then what?" she asked.

"I think you know," he said.

Tears welled in Annie's eyes.

"But it's nothing your grandmother hasn't been through before."

"Oh?" she asked, with a choking sob.

"Hasn't she told you?"

"Told me what?"

"About all the years she spent in exile?" he asked, calm as you please.

"No!" Annie said, suddenly mad at her grandmother.

And at her father. And the king. And the horrible shit they all did to each other. And the whole damn Homelands and all its damn rules.

"This was some time ago. Before my time, or His Majesty's. But he still talks about it, any time anyone mentions the name `Hardt."' He grinned in amusement. As if it were all okay! "It started with the Playground. A dozen men were killed within two months. When their bodies were found, there were certain parts missing."

"Ick."

Her father snickered at her reaction before continuing. "It was only when the killer claimed not one but two of House Moody's sons that the queen realized that it had to be one of us. Mortals might get lucky against one of our kind, but not two at once."

"I don't like where this is going," Annie said.

"Well, in your grandmother's defense, the police later determined that none of the victims were innocent. Every single one of them had either been accused of beating their wives or girlfriends or date rape or some other crime against women."

"Oh," Annie said.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 05



######################

Author's note

As ever, if you have questions feel free to email me or leave a comment. Either way, I'll try to respond in a timely manner.

This is primarily an incest story, but it is also sci-fi/fantasy, and supernatural elements are not incidental to the plot. Additionally, many chapters will feature elements of other categories, particularly group sex and anal.

All sexual acts are consensual and involve parties who are at least eighteen years of age.

########################

"You said it yourself," Nick said. "She's just desperate for attention."

His sister rolled her eyes at him. "I know. But that's the point. She should have known how much it would freak us out, after what happened to-"

"I did actually hear you the first three times," Nick said with a smile.

Veronica tried glowering at him, but she gave up and started snickering. "Jerk."

He pulled her in for a kiss, and briefly considered telling her to get on top of him again. But they'd already done it twice that morning. And, sooner or later, he needed to get out of that damn bed and go thank his grandmother. If not for her, he'd never walk again.

It wasn't easy though. Just being near his sister had him constantly aroused. He simply couldn't get enough of her, no matter how hard he tried.

"Seriously, though," Veronica continued, "who climbs out-"

Nick swung his new legs out over the bed and, after only a brief moment of hesitation, hopped down onto the wooden floor.

Strangely enough, they worked just like real legs. Because, of course, they were real legs. He didn't even have any scars. If he didn't know any better, he'd have sworn that he'd dreamt the whole ordeal.

"Okay, okay, done talking about Annie," Veronica said. Then, noticing him staring in awe at his new limbs, she rolled onto her stomach, propped her chin up in her palm, and studied them herself for a few moments. "How do they feel?"

"Good as," he started, stopping himself short after realizing that what he'd been about to say didn't do it justice. "Like nothing ever happened."

Veronica reached out and stroked his calf.

That simple little touch made his cock twitch. He couldn't feel his sister's skin against his, in even the least sexual way, without his Libido stirring. It was almost a problem, albeit one he didn't mind having.

He bent down and kissed her on the cheek. As he stood back up, he gave her ass a playful smack, leading her to whimper delightfully. "Come on, you. Let's get some breakfast."

"Maybe just once more?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at him suggestively.

"I'm hungry," he said. "For food."

"Fiiiiiiine," his sister said, rolling out of bed. "You're no fun."

"That's not what you said five minutes ago," he replied.

"Well, five minutes ago you were taking me on a ride to Happytown," she said. "Now you're saying there're no more trains running today."

"Didn't say that," he said, standing in front of the mirror on the back of the bedroom door. "Just none right this minute."

His legs looked fine, but the man staring back at him was not quite the one Nick expected to see. Though he'd only been bedridden for a day, he seemed to have lost some of his bulk, and his skin had lost a lot of its color. That couldn't be natural. Must have been his subconscious wielding his powers to make his body reflect the way he felt.

"Well maybe I won't be looking to board later," his sister said, planting a hand on one of her beautiful hips. "Ever think of that?"

Nick closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was wearing a tight black T-shirt and a pair of shorts. He looked over his shoulder at Veronica. His heart slowed as he watched her wiggle into a form-fitting dress. It clung to her curves so perfectly that he very nearly changed his mind about breakfast.

"What?" she asked. Then, looking down at her dress, she added, "You like?"

Nick turned back to the mirror. "You don't need me to tell you how good you look."

He noticed her reflection blush.

"Now," he said, forcing his body to return to its natural state. "Breakfast?"

"You really must be famished," Veronica said with a laugh.

"Didn't eat a thing yesterday," Nick replied. "And, as you may have noticed," he added, reaching down to grab his legs just below the knee, "I put on a lot of weight recently."

His sister walked up behind him and smacked his butt. "Well then, we better get you fed before you starve to death."

He turned around, pulled his sister against his chest, and kissed her. For a long time. Just as he was afraid it would be impossible to avoid ending up back in bed, he broke away. Then, leaving Veronica breathless, he opened the door and headed down the hall.

He found two very sexy women in the kitchen. They stood in front of the stove, kissing each other. One of them made a token gesture of stirring the contents of the frying pan.

One was his mother. She wore a pair of skin-tight black leggings that, with an ass as incredible as hers, was an absolute gift to all mankind. Her tight sports bra similarly did wonders with her breasts. Only when Nick noticed her running shoes and the iPod clipped to the waistband of her leggings did he realize that the outfit might have been chosen for reasons other than allowing everyone to marvel at her amazing body.

The other woman, who wore a billowy floral print skirt and a blouse that was so tight that it was a wonder she could even breathe, he'd never seen before. At least, not in this form. The last time he'd seen Grandma Flori, she'd been a short, round woman with skin like a raisin, breasts down to her kneecaps, and a long braid of white hair.

The temptress currently sucking his mother's face, though, was every bit as hot as the other women of his family. And she had the same caramel skin and coal-black hair.

Whereas his mother came very close to having a classic hourglass, with hips just a bit wider than her bust, his grandmother was more top-heavy. Even more so than Veronica. If he had to guess, he'd say that his grandmother's breasts were a cup size bigger than his sister's, and her hips were a little bit narrower. It was hard to tell with her skirt being so loose, but that was what it looked like.

His mother was one of the shortest women he'd ever met. His grandmother was also short, but stood a few inches taller than her daughter. His mother had an athletic form, from her baseball calves and big, round, solid ass to her faint sixpack and toned biceps. His grandmother had less muscle mass, and still less definition. She did have a surprisingly nice ass, though. From the looks of it, his grandmother's backside was bigger and softer than his mother's, but it was round and juicy and begging to be squeezed.

His mother was a bit more hard-bodied than he preferred. She was still insanely hot, and it took only an instant of undressing her with his eyes to remember why he'd been so fixated on her for so long. But a little bit less muscle wouldn't hurt things. That wasn't the reason he'd drifted away from her and into the arms of Veronica. Their personalities had a lot more to do with that. But it didn't hurt that his sister was more his type.

If his grandmother's hips were a bit wider, so that there'd be more tapering as your eyes worked up from the bottom of her ass to the small of her back, he'd have to say that her ass was the nicest one he'd ever seen. Though Nick was overall more of a breast man, he definitely did appreciate a good posterior. And the one thing he found lacking about his sister was her backside.

He hadn't seen his grandmother's face yet, but with bigger breasts than Veronica, and a nicer ass to boot, his grandmother was making a rather memorable "first" impression on him. He might well end up thinking her the hottest of the Hardt women.

"You'll have to forgive them," Veronica said, coming up beside him and running her nails lightly down his back. "They do that sometimes."

He snickered. From what she'd told him earlier, they did "that" an awful lot. That, and more. They were about as inseparable as he and Veronica were, to hear his sister tell it.

He'd been concerned that poor Annie was not only feeling like she had to compete with Veronica for the attention of Grandpa Randy, but would have to worry about her mother and grandmother too. But apparently the two of them were more interested in each other, leaving Annie free to monopolize her grandfather's time.

Suddenly realizing they were not alone, the two women pulled apart.

Their mother blushed, gave her two children a quick wave, then slipped away to take a seat at the homemade kitchen table.

"Well, look who it is," Grandma Flori said. "Glad you finally decided to join us!"

"Ha ha ha," Nick said, over-enunciating each syllable, as he walked over to his grandmother. Leaning down, he gave her a big hug. "Nice to finally meet you."

She slapped his arm. "Like I'm a different person than you knew before, just because you never saw me in my own skin?" Her eyes held his gave for a moment before she went up on tiptoes to plant a peck on his cheek. "I don't have to tell you it's what's on the inside that makes us who we are, do I?"

"No, Grams, you don't," he said, grinning. Then he stepped back.

So as to take a good look at her, of course.

Her appearance might not define her, but theirs was a very physical family. And he couldn't help wanting to take better stock of what she had to offer. If that made him a shallow prick, then so be it.

But he was pretty sure that she was doing the same.

She definitely did have a better body than his sister. But she wasn't nearly as pretty. In part, that was because of her hair. Their grandmother had the same thick, blacker-than-black locks that all the Hardt women did, but she wore it in a pixie cut. He'd seen women who looked good that way, but he wasn't sure his grandmother was one of them.

Or maybe he just needed time to get used to it. It was kinda cute. He wouldn't really be able to run it through his fingers the way he loved to do, but it commanded a certain amount of respect. For the most part, it was only women with much more petite figures who dared to sport such a hairstyle. There was nothing about her figure that reminded him of pixies. Not that Nick liked women with such physiques, of course. But they were the ones his grandmother's hairstyle looked most natural on.

But it wasn't just the hair that made him think that his grandmother wasn't the prettiest of the Hardt women anyway. On closer inspection, she had more visible signs of aging than even his mother had. Not so much so that she wasn't attractive, mind. But her cheeks were a little hollow, and her eyes a little sunken. Like most of the fat in her face had melted away. And she had noticeable crows feet.

Her lips were a little thin too. Especially compared to Veronica's. His sister had nice, full, pillowy lips. Kissable lips.

Lips that felt really damn good wrapped around his cock.

There was no doubt that his grandmother was a beautiful woman. But he went from thinking she might be the hottest in the family to concluding that the three women there in the kitchen were all more or less on the same footing. They all looked a fair bit alike, but they were different in various ways as well. And each had their own unique virtues.

He was actually thankful for that, in fact. His grandmother was of course right that it was what was on the inside that mattered most, but if his grandmother had been more physically attractive than his sister, that would have presented some awkward challenges. He didn't want there to be any tension between what his heart told him and what his cock did. And when and if his sister asked him what he thought of his grandmother, he wanted to be telling the truth when he told her that she didn't look as good as Veronica. His answer would be the same either way, but he didn't like lying to his sister.

Putting an arm around Veronica's shoulder, he pulled her against him and kissed her hair. She smiled and wrapped and arm around his waist.

"Nick here is so hungry, he almost chewed my leg off," Vee said.

Their mother stared at her, eyes wide, and his grandmother's mouth was agape. It was one thing to make jokes about his infamous appetite. Only Eric had ever made Nick's eating habits seem normal. But it was quite another, he could imagine them thinking, to joke about that by referring to someone losing a leg.

Nick chuckled. "That's okay. No reason we can't laugh about it." He glanced down, still having trouble believing that his new limbs fit so seamlessly onto the rest of him. "You did a helluva job stitching me back together, Grams."

"Was nothing," she said. "Just kissed your boo-boo and made it better."

"I'm sorry, was it you who kissed his skinned knees?" Nick's mother said. Despite her words, it was amusement rather than umbrage that he heard in her voice.

There was a hint of territoriality to her words though. Perhaps she wasn't quite so ready to let go of Nick. Strange, then, that she'd never talked to Veronica like that.

Did his mother know that her children were in love with one another? Was that why she didn't try to get in the way of whatever was developing between him and Veronica yet didn't seem eager to have her mother claim a special role in his life?

That was a scary thought. And, at the same time, deeply reassuring.

"Think I did," Grandma Flori said, sounding uncertain. "One time."

His mother gave her an incredulous look.

"Well, in grandma's defense, this was just a liiiittle bit worse than a skinned knee," Nick said, holding two fingers a hair's width apart.

"So, anyway, about that breakfast," Veronica said. "If we don't feed him soon, the world might end." Turning to him, she added, "At least, that was the impression I was given."

"Smartass," he said. As he did, he gave her butt a soft smack.

"Well, someone seems to have allowed herself to get so distracted that she burned the eggs," their mother said. "Not that I'm naming any names or anything." Then, under her breath, she mumbled, "Mom."

Grandma Flori laughed. "Gee, I wonder who might have distracted her?" Then, turning to Nick, she said, "There's some sausage and hash browns, if you really can't wait."

"I might be able to survive for a few more minutes," he said. "Coffee?"

His mother handed him a carafe that had already gone tepid.

While he warmed up a cup for himself and one for Vee, he asked, "Where's Grandpa?"

"Took Annie fishing," Grandma Flori said.

"Like, fishing, fishing?" he asked.

Veronica giggled.

"Can't say they won't get distracted," his grandmother said, "but they did actually take bait and tackle with them. And they brought back dinner last night."

"Just don't be surprised if it takes them a few hours to catch anything," his mother added with a grin.

"So those two have really hit it off?" Nick asked.

"Yep," Grandma Flori said. "Lord knows that man put up with me long enough that he's earned himself a piece of strange."

Nick raised an eyebrow at that, but his mother laughed, and that brought a smile to his grandmother's face, so he joined in.

"On a more serious note," Nick said, "if I may?"

His grandmother nodded.

He handed Veronica her coffee, kissed her, then turned back to his grandmother. "What's going to happen to you now that you've helped us?"

The room went quiet.

"I said I was going to strike a serious note," he observed.

That got a brief giggle out of Veronica, but otherwise, the room remained quiet. Save for the sizzle of the fresh batch of eggs his grandmother was pouring into the frying pan.

After a few more awkward moments, she said, "We'll have to decide as a family whether we want to stay and fight or leave Summer."

"What about you two?" his mother asked. "Will you be joining us?"

Veronica looked at Nick over the rim of her ceramic mug.

"Fraid not," he said. "The whole point was to get Patty back. No sense dragging you out of retirement and into this mess if we're not even going to see that through."

His mother regarded him cooly, but his grandmother gave an approving nod, and Veronica rubbed his bicep and offered him a wan smile. Not that it mattered how any of them reacted, of course. This was about Patty, after all.

All the same, though, it was nice to know that Veronica was still on board. And the nod from his grandmother didn't hurt either.

When his grandmother noticed the almost-frown on her daughter's face, she snorted and told Nick, "Don't mind her. She's just bitter that things didn't work out differently with Gabriela. And she'd just as soon pretend that she gave birth to you asexually as admit that she ever had anything to do with Hank Fisher. So she can't bring herself to admit that Patty's just as much family to you as we are."

His mother crossed her arms under her breasts and made a harrumphing sound, but didn't say anything to contradict Grandma Flori's words. Wouldn't have done her any good to, anyway. Nick had already surmised as much.

"Can you help us find her?" he asked.

"Nick," Veronica said reproachfully.

"What? She's already involved herself, as far as the king's concerned. And she's got to be able to do more than we can." He turned back to his grandmother. "What do you say?"

"I don't know, kiddo," she said, without looking up from the eggs. "I understand where you're coming from. And I don't think you should let your mother browbeat you into walking away from that. But it's not my fight."

"Or his, really," his mother said.

He ignored that. "Please?"

Veronica laughed. "He thinks he's so cute." She planted a kiss on his cheek. "In his mind, all he has to do is sprinkle the littlest bit of charm on a girl and she'll be powerless to say no." Beneath her breathe, she added, "Too fucking true, too, half the time."

"Tell you what," Grandma Flori said, her back still facing him. "I'll teach you a few tricks that should help you along your way. But beyond that, you're on your own."

"Deal," Nick said.

"What do you mean, `deal,' babe?" Veronica asked. "You haven't offered her anything." She pinched his cheek. "The phrase you're looking for is `thank you."'

"Thank you, Grandma. For that, and for taking us in. You really didn't have to."

Finally, she turned to face him. "Oh, sweetie. Of course I did. I couldn't have left you to bleed to death in your sister's arms. Or let you go lame, if you were lucky enough to live." She gave him a sad smile. "But you're welcome all the same."

Well. What was he to say to that?

#

"Are you sure we can trust her?" Zoey asked, her arms crossed beneath her breasts and her upper lip curled as she eyed Nina up and down.

"I'm right here, you know," Nina replied.

"If Eric thinks we can, then we can," Gabriela said.

Despite her words, she was actually tempted to agree with her sister. The first and last time she'd seen Hank's sister was the day he'd left her, after all. And she'd hated the skinny little bitch ever since.

Perhaps she should have blamed whatever woman had born Hank his new children instead. But Gabriela didn't know anything about that woman. Not even her name. So it was easier to hate the one who'd stood outside their home, looking all smug and young and beautiful as she waited for her brother to say goodbye to his wives. Especially with that impossibly tiny little waist of hers. It made her look like a cartoon figure.

Nonetheless, Nina was offering them a way out of their prison. And she seemed to have taken a liking to Eric. Gabriela wasn't entirely comfortable with that, of course. If the bitch dared to think that she could take Eric away from her the same she had Hank, she'd learn herself a harsh lesson. But she couldn't deny that Nina didn't seem keen on seeing any harm befall Eric. As many reasons as Gabriela had to dislike Nina personally, she saw no reason to share Zoey's fear that they were being led into another trap.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 05



"Well, I say it's mistake," Zoey said. "Not that anyone here cares much about my opinion." Her blue eyes turned to her husband. "Isn't that right, dear?"

Wes wrapped an arm around his wife's waist and kissed her on the cheek. If he noticed the sour look on her face as he did, he didn't let it show. "Of course I do," he said sweetly.

"Uh huh," Zoey said, rolling her eyes.

"I mean it," Wes continued. "If you think we should stay behind, we'll stay behind."

"Really?" both Gabriela and Zoey asked at the same time.

Gabriela gritted her teeth together as her brother turned to look at her. But his sad look made the tension in her jaw fade away.

"Gabs, you know I love you," he began, "but think about what's happening here." He stared into her eyes, pleading with her silently to have a fraction of the faith in him that she had in her son. "Hank set us up. Now his sister conveniently shows up to offer to bail us out? Of a trap that she and her brother laid? If we're not walking into yet another trap, we're certainly dancing on their strings. And I can assure you that we'll come to regret it."

"Gosh, who knew I was so devious?" Nina said, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

Everyone turned to look at her.

"You know, I wish I was half as clever as you seem to think I am," she continued. "But the simple, boring truth is that my brother doesn't even know I'm here."

Even Eric seemed unconvinced. He inched closer to Gabriela and took her hand in his.

Which did not escape Nina's notice. She looked at Eric with pleading eyes. When he didn't budge, she steeled herself and faced Zoey and Wes. "Look, it's no skin off my nose if you don't want out. All I want is to see the king's head on a pike. To occasionally spend an entire day with my brother, without having to worry about him saying he's got some important business to tend to and leaving my bed cold and empty. To make that happen, I need Eric. I don't need the rest of you. Help if you want. Don't if you don't. Either way, I'm not going to argue with you."

"Seriously?" Olivia asked. Then she blushed and folded her shoulders inward, apparently regretting giving Nina a reason to stare at her. "No disrespect or anything, but Eric's not that strong, is he?" She looked to her parents for support, and found little. Wes gave her a nod, but that was it. "I know you just gave him Excalibur or whatever, and I'm not the most knowledgeable person in this room, but it seems to me that if you're weak enough to need Eric's help, you're weak enough to need all of us, and if you're strong enough that you don't need us, you don't need Eric."

"Damn good point," Zoey said.

"Are we going to stand here and talk all day, or are we going to get the fuck out of here?" Eric asked, looking flustered.

"It's okay, Eric," Nina said. "The girl asked a simple question. No harm answering it."

Who was this woman to talk to her son in that tone of voice? Like she was his mother!

Gabriela didn't realize how hard she was squeezing her son's hand until he pulled it away, shook it about, and gave her a confused look.

"I'm sorry, baby," she whispered.

"You don't realize how powerful that sword is." She turned to Wes, then Gabriela, saying. "Nor do you, or you."

"Excuse me?" Wes said.

"I'm sorry," Nina said, "but neither of you spent much time in Summer before heading to the Playground to raise families of your own. Neither of you were there when Alan-"

"Don't you speak his fucking name," Gabriela said.

At the same time, Eric said, "I thought you weren't either."

Nina held up her hands defensively. "All I'm saying is, I realize how it must sound for an outsider to tell you that you've underestimated the power of your family's own relic. But no one here has ever seen it, or any of the others like it, in action, have they?"

Neither Gabriela nor Wes replied.

"So," Nina continued. "As I said. If you all would like to join us, that would be great. But if you're afraid I've got something up my sleeve, then stay here. Won't bother me none."

"I think we should go," Gabriela told Wes.

He met her gaze for a few seconds. Then he turned to Zoey. "I'm inclined to agree, but it's completely up to you, dear."

"Why does it feel like you're just going to side with your sister anyway?" Zoey asked.

Gabriela rolled her eyes.

"Can we get this show on the road?" Eric asked. "For fuck's sake."

"Count me in," Gabriela told Nina. "Whether my brother and his darling wife wish to remain behind or not. I won't have my son go into battle without his mother at his back."

Nina gave her an approving nod.

More importantly, Eric flashed a warm smile at her. That made her knees tremble. For that smile, Gabriela would wage war against all the forces of the Homelands.

"Which means this is where you say that you can't let your sister go into battle without you, right?" Zoey asked, glowering at her husband.

Wes hesitated.

Gabriela knew what the answer was. But she also knew that her brother loved his wife. For some strange reason. If it was possible to avoid hurting her, he would. So it didn't entirely surprise her when he said, "No. I mean it. This is your call."

Nor did it surprise her when Zoey sighed and said, "I don't want to be fucking trapped here forever." She hesitated a moment before adding, "There's something going on here that we're not seeing, but I guess we'll just have to hope that she's the lesser of two evils."

"So. We're all in?" Nina asked, nonplussed.

"Looks like," Zoey said, wrapping an arm around Olivia.

Gabriela laid a hand on her son's shoulder. His strong muscles were like steel cables. She wished she could take him inside her and drain away all his fear and anxiety. Her little man, who'd seemed so grown up just a little while ago, now struck her as entirely too young to be in the situation he was in. Too young to carry Alan's sword.

Of course, Alan himself had been too young. But that was precisely why he'd never have any sons or daughters of his own. Why she'd never feel his arms wrapped around her again. Never feel his lips pressed against hers.

If she allowed her son to follow in her brother's footsteps, to follow his uncle into an early grave, Gabriela would never forgive herself. She already didn't know if she'd ever see her daughter again. Losing both her children would be positively unbearable.

If it mattered to Wes that he alone stood ready to face death without the slightest touch of a loved one to strengthen and reassure him, he didn't let it show. He just stood there, proud and tall, his face a mask.

Gabriela almost reached out to him. But she'd have to leave her son's side to do so.

Then Nina snapped her fingers, and the ivory tower disintegrated. As did the world around them. A moment later, a world returned, but it wasn't the prison world in which they'd been trapped. It was the First Court of Summer.

They stood in the king's royal palace.

The floor was tiled with seashells. In each corner of the room, there was an in-ground hot tub. Wisps of steam rose up from the bubbling surface of each. Two of them were empty. One was filled with women in various states of undress, wearing expressions that hid their fear with various degrees of success.

In the other sat the king, his head rolled back on his shoulders and his eyes closed. There was a martini in one hand, his limp dick in the other.

She had only a moment to wonder at that before everything started happening.

It all unfolded so slowly. But even as time seemed to slow down, Gabriela found herself feeling powerless. It was like the air had thickened up, making it impossible to move quickly. She had plenty of time to watch everything, but no time to act.

Nina leapt forth straight away. In midair, she turned into a white tigress. One the size of a tank, and similarly covered with steel plated armor, at least on her shoulders, hips, and forelegs. The ground trembled when she landed, and Gabriela almost fell over.

Strangely enough, though, Nina wasn't pouncing at the king. Rather, she seemed to be charging towards one of the empty pools.

At the same time, Eric raised his huge sword overhead, and charged towards Phil.

The women in the hot tub beside them shrieked, covered themselves, and rushed towards the nearest door. They nearly trampled each other in their hurry to escape the carnage.

The king opened his eyes, saw Eric heading towards him and gave a quick start. For a brief instant, he looked frozen in place, too shocked to react. He'd apparently never considered the possibility that anyone would have the audacity to attack him in his own home. But he recovered quickly. Too quickly. Moving faster than anyone Gabriela had ever seen, he lurched forward and fanned his arm out before him as if throwing a frisbee.

Indeed, a flat disc appeared and hurtled towards Eric. But it wasn't made of plastic. Rather, it was pure energy, and it glowed like the midday sun.

Gabriela wasn't sure exactly what she did, but somehow she deflected it.

Her son could have done the same, no doubt. That sword of his probably had the power to absorb the energy or cut it in half or something. But she didn't have any time to think. Her son was in danger, so she acted. Simple as that.

And her brother paid for her carelessness with his life.

Diverted from its original course, the disc rushed towards Zoey and Olivia. And just as Gabriela couldn't see a threat to her son without acting, however reflexively, neither could Wes stand by while his wife and daughter were in harm's way.

The damn fool could have knocked the disc off course, the same as Gabriela had. Then they'd all have been safe.

But did he do that? No. Of course not. The first thought that entered her brother's mind would have been to put himself between the disc and his family.

So that was exactly what he did.

As she should have known that he would.

Gabriela watched the golden disc cleave her brother in twain, the two halves of his body producing twin fountains of blood, and she knew that it was all her fault.

That thought should have come to her later. At the time, she should have panicked. Or gone into shock. Or something. She shouldn't have had the mental capacity to blame herself for putting Wes in a position where he felt it necessary to give up his life to save his family. That wasn't how it was supposed to work.

Or maybe it hadn't. Maybe it was only later that she thought such things. She couldn't even be sure. From there, things sped up. No longer were they trapped in slow motion. Everything happened at once, and Gabriela saw none of it. She simply stared in horror at the mess that had once been her brother.

"Mom? Are you okay?"

What was Wes doing calling to her? Was he contacting her from beyond the grave? Had he come back to tell her that it was okay that she'd got him killed? Damn if that wouldn't be just like the selfless bastard.

"Mom!"

No. That wasn't Wes. "Eric? Is that you?" she asked.

He is arms were looped under her armpits and his hands fastened like hooks to her shoulders. He was dragging her. Where to, though, she wasn't sure. Away. Away from the pile of slop and blood and guts and viscera. Why had she been grabbing at that? What would possess her to allow herself to get it all over her? If it had been her intestines spilled onto the floor, rather than her brother's, she'd have been no less of a bloody mess.

And who was doing that horrid shrieking? If they didn't stop, Gabriela's ears might start bleeding. As if there wasn't enough blood to go around already.

Was it her?

She told herself to stop. But the screaming kept up and she realized that it wasn't her voice anyway. Zoey was the one making that unholy sound. Zoey who was desperately trying to claw her way out of her daughter's arms so that she could get back to Wes' remains.

How little Olivia managed to restrain her mother, Gabriela couldn't have guessed. But the girl was evidently drawing on some hidden well of strength, both physically and emotionally. Her cheeks were stained with tears and runny makeup, but it wasn't grief that had contorted her face so much as a grim determination to get her mother under control.

"We have to go," Nina said.

"You're not a tiger," Gabriela said, scrambling to her feet. She'd wanted to say that Nina had set them up, but her tongue wasn't keeping up with her mind.

Searing pain overwhelmed her and suddenly she was on her back. Nina stood over her, offering to help Gabriela up with the very hand that had just slapped her.

Eric put a hand on his aunt's shoulder and pushed her away. Nina stumbled as she backpedaled, but she got out of the way sure enough.

"Don't you dare lay a hand on my mother ever again," he said, without looking at Nina. His beautiful blue eyes were locked on Gabriela's as he helped her back to her feet.

"We don't have time for this," Nina said. "You can threaten me or yell at me or accuse me of laying an ambush later. Right now, we need to get the fuck out of here."

And the next instant, they were gone.

They were now in the living room of the beach house, back on House Moody's private island. Nina was with them, as were Olivia and Zoey, who'd finally stopped shrieking.

Olivia pressed her mother's face against her shoulder and stroked her hair. Voice shaking, she asked, "What the hell just happened?"

"I don't know," Eric said.

Nina dusted off her sundress. "He got away."

"I figured that much out, thanks," Olivia snapped.

"Why didn't you attack him?" Gabriela asked.

The words sounded like they came from some other woman. One who wasn't freaking out over her brother's death. One who knew how to string words together into actual sentences.

If only she hadn't acted so hastily. There were a thousand things she could have done instead. Steered the disc towards the floor or the ceiling. Sent it back at the king. Allowed her son to deal with it. Conjured up a shield to absorb the attack. Something. Anything.

God. Wes.

But at least it wasn't Eric.

The moment the thought crossed her mind, she threw up.

"-around from behind," Nina was saying. "It's called a pincer attack."

"You mean letting us do the dirty work, while you protect your own worthless hide," Olivia said, voice growing steadier by the second.

"Noooo," Nina said, feigning patience, "I mean taking our best shot at the king. If we'd all attacked him from the front, he'd have had no trouble fending us off."

"Didn't seem to anyway," Olivia said.

"Liv," Eric said.

Gabriela wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before saying, "Let her speak."

Eric gave her a pained look, but closed his mouth. He got up and went into the kitchen.

"You let him get away," Olivia continued. "He kidnapped my brother and killed my father. His blood should be on that floor, right alongside my father's. But instead, he got away. Because you were too worried about yourself."

"Listen, little girl, I didn't 'let' anything happen. I want him dead just-"

"I'm not a little girl," Olivia said. "And you can spare us your bullshit."

Just then, Eric returned with a damp cloth and some paper towels. Without a word, he set about cleaning her vomit off the floor.

Olivia and Nina stared daggers at each other, but neither spoke another word.

"I want to go home," Zoey mumbled.

"We are home," Olivia said. "Los Angeles isn't real, remember? You told me that."

"I don't mean California," Zoey said. "I want to go home."

"You mean the Eternal Garden?"

Zoey nodded.

Olivia looked at Gabriela.

That almost made her laugh hysterically. Who was she to tell the girl what to do?

But, of course, she knew the answer to her own question. Wes had trusted her. And so his daughter trusted her.

"If you think that's best," Gabriela told her niece.

Was she supposed to say that the king was still at large, that Kurt and Patty were still missing, and that they needed Olivia's and Zoey's help now more than ever? How could she say that with a straight face to Olivia now, after what the girl had just been through? What kind of help was Zoey going to be, anyway, when her daughter was already playing her part for her? She ought to have been comforting Olivia, not the other way around.

"Please?" Zoey asked.

"Okay," Olivia told her mother. Looking back up at Gabriela, she said, "We'll come back. Or I will. At some point. But I don't think she can deal with being here right now."

"I understand," Gabriela said.

She wasn't entirely sure she could deal with it herself. But she had to be strong. For Eric. And for Wes too. She couldn't let his death be in vain.

"I'm sorry," Olivia said, eyes focused on Eric.

His back was to her though. He'd seen to the vomit and was now cleaning blood and guts and who knows what all else from Gabriela's face and thighs. "No need to be," he said.

Gabriela saw that her son's face was slick with tears. Her niece deserved better from him, after being so brave and so strong. But Gabriela understood that Eric didn't want his cousin to see him cry. And, selfish as it might have been, she was kind of touched to know that she was the only woman her son would allow to see his tears.

"So, uh, I guess I'll see you later?" Olivia said, fighting back a sob.

"Yeah," Eric said.

Zoey finally stood up. Without a word, she took her daughter by the hand, nodded to her, and then the two of them vanished.

"Well, that was touching," Nina said. "Now can we talk about what we're-"

"Shut up," Eric said. Gabriela wiped away his eyes before he stood. "That might not have been an ambush, and you might well have been trying your best to take the king out, but one thing's for sure. You're being an insensitive cunt. My uncle just died. Get that?"

"I do," Nina said softly. "But the king won't be very accommodating."

Though she hated herself for doing so, Gabriela said, "She's right."

Eric stared at her, eyes wide and lips narrowed. His Libido pulsed with anger. "Fine," he said. "Let's draw up another brilliant battle plan." He turned to his aunt. "Make sure to include a pincer attack."

That was when Gabriela started crying herself.

#

"Concentrate, Nick," his grandmother said.

He knew better than to insist that he was trying. But his grandmother's Yoda routine was getting a bit frustrating.

They were in the woods behind his grandparents' cabin. Somewhere out here, Veronica was waiting for him to find her. Which he was supposed to do blindfolded. After all, what need had he of something as ordinary as vision when he should be able to feel his sister's Libido calling to his?

It had worked fine back in the living room. But there, he hadn't needed to worry about tripping over roots or smacking his forehead against branches or walking into trees. Out here, he had to divert most of his energy and attention to mapping his surroundings.

He hadn't realized before that he could do that. And he sort of felt like he deserved some credit for figuring that out so quickly. But his grandmother was not so easily impressed. His task was to learn how to locate his sister without being able to see her, not to learn how to walk through the woods at night. That he had a much stronger connection with Veronica than he did with Patty, and he was still having trouble finding Veronica even though she was no more than a dozen paces away, did not bode well for Patty.

"What was that number I gave you again?" his grandmother asked.

Nick nearly tripped over the rock he should have known was right in front of him.

His grandmother had asked him to commit both a four digit number and a snippet of a Robert Frost poem to memory. Easy enough, if he wasn't expected to recite them at a moment's notice while trying to get the lay of the land and searching blindly for his sister.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 05



"Four-three-seven-two," Veronica called out from somewhere behind him. Then a gentle pop filled the air, as if his sister had slapped a palm over her open mouth.

"Vee," their grandmother said.

"Sorry, Grams," Veronica said.

Nick's cheeks burned. He hated that Veronica was watching him make a fool of himself. And hated it more that she must have been starting to look at him like a newborn kitten.

"I'll get it," Nick said. "Just give me some time."

"We may not have much time," his grandmother said.

Nick drew a deep breath. She was right. He knew she was. But it wasn't easy to hear. Hard as it was to concentrate already, it only got worse when he thought about what Patty might be going through, or what would happen if the king's forces descended upon their cabin while they were all distracted.

"So why can't you help us find her?" Nick said.

"I told you," his grandmother replied . "I might be a more experienced bloodhound, but you're the one who knows what she smells like."

She had indeed told him that before. But he couldn't help feeling like it was just an excuse to make him learn faster.

"I could give it a try," Veronica said.

"That's sweet of you, dear," their grandmother said, sounding as though she found it less than endearing. "But your brother's the one with the talent for reading Libidos."

"Okay," he said. "Let me know when Vee's in position again."

For a few seconds, his hearing was cut off as well. That was just another one of the things his grandmother could do without any apparent effort. There had to be limits to what she could do, but Nick had no idea what those might be.

When his hearing came back, his grandmother said, "And again."

The further away he was from his sister, the harder it was to sense her Libido. But it was clear that walking around while searching for her wasn't going to work. So Nick stood perfectly still and focused all his effort on scanning for some trace of his sister's energy.

Nothing.

Nothing.

More nothing.

Just as his grandmother started to ask a question, he felt it. It was faint, but it was there, and unmistakably Veronica.

"Got it," he said, and pointed his finger in the direction of his sister.

Nick walked slowly towards her, allowing himself a few brief sweeps to ensure that he didn't trip on anything or walk into any trees. As he did, he felt the steady hum of his sister's Libido grow stronger and stronger.

And then he fell flat on his back as his sister crashed into him.

"Well done," his grandmother said, laughing.

In between kisses, his sister said, "I knew you could do it."

"Let's try it with a little more distance," his grandmother said. "Ready?"

Nick fought off the urge to groan in protest.

"Not yet," Veronica said. She kissed him again. A few times. "Okay, now I am."

The world grew a little colder and a little sadder as his sister climbed off him.

Again, the world went completely quiet. And not just for a few seconds either. By Nick's count, it was close to five minutes before his grandmother lifted the curtain of silence.

"Here we go, kiddo. Get this one, and you just might be blah blah blah."

His grandmother had probably actually finished the sentence with something coherent. But he couldn't have said what, as he'd stopped listening. Stopped receiving all the stimuli from his five senses. Nick existed only on a higher level, no matter that he was anchored within a bag of flesh and blood.

His sister's Libido was calling out to him. As it always did. He had but to listen for it.

"She's not on the island," he said after a few minutes.

"Oh? Are you sure about that?"

"She's in Summer. But not here." He paused, waiting for a reaction. None came. This last part he wasn't sure about, but he said it anyway. "She's on the Moody family island."

"Let's see about that," his grandmother said, slipping her hand in his.

Without covering the ground between them, Nick stepped from one island to another. Suddenly, instead of damp grass, he felt warm sand beneath his feet.

"Already?" Veronica said with a giggle. "That was quick!"

"I get that a lot, unfortunately," Nick said.

His grandmother snickered to herself as she removed his blindfold.

They stood on the same stretch of shoreline that had first welcomed him and his sister to Summer, less than two days ago. Two days, yet so much had changed.

"Should we try a few more times, just to be sure?" he asked.

"Ideally, yes, we'd practice more," his grandmother said. "A lot more. But time ain't exactly on our side. And you seem to be picking it up now."

Nick looked a question at Veronica.

She came and pressed herself against his chest, wrapping her arms around him.

"Best of luck, then," their grandmother said.

"Wait, that's it?" Nick asked. "You're leaving us?"

"Someone's got to be ready to defend that cabin, and those inside it. Or have you forgotten that we're no longer a neutral party in the king's eyes?"

"No, I know, I just," Nick began. But he never finished. He didn't know what to say.

"We'll see each other again soon," Grandma Flori said. "I look forward to you reintroducing me to Patty. It's been so long since I've seen her, I don't know that I'd recognize her. Lord knows, she wouldn't recognize me."

"Be safe," Nick said.

"Oh, you don't need to worry about me," she said. "It's that king of ours you should be worried about. Or whatever poor souls he sends to hurt my loved ones."

Then she kissed each of them on the cheek, waved goodbye, and disappeared.

"I almost do feel bad for whoever goes up against her," Nick said.

His sister smiled at him. "You should have heard some of the stories she told while you were convalescing. Wouldn't surprise me if the king decided to leave her be after all."

"You think?"

"He's scared of her," Veronica said. "And well he should be."

#

"Here it is," Kurt said, pointing to the markings on the walls of the houses at either edge of the street. "Three spears and a pair of wings, just like the guy said."

"Great," Patty said. "And it only took an hour."

Kurt stopped and turned to face his cousin. With a faint smile, he brushed a lock of hair back from her face. Even when she was moping, she was cute as could be.

"I know. I promised," he said. "But we haven't even made it to my grandfather's yet. And we're almost there now. So can we please, please, pretty please, have twenty more minutes? No more, I swear."

Patty stared down at her feet. "I guess so."

"You're the best," Kurt said, before planting a kiss on the tip of her button nose.

"But he better not be as rude as the rest of them," she mumbled, almost incoherently.

Kurt pretended not to have heard.

His cousin wasn't wrong about the sunlit folk they'd met so far, though. They treated him fine, sure, but they seemed to be insulted if Patty so much as looked them in the eye. Or didn't fall to her knees in adoration. At first, he'd taken that for sexism. But the women were all like that too. And then he noticed that the few other "lesser immortals" that walked the streets of Solopolis did indeed treat anyone with golden skin as if they were deities. He wasn't sure how he'd have felt about that if he'd been alone. Disgusted, hopefully.

Though he couldn't deny that he found it a bit intoxicating as well. Like he'd finally discovered some secret about himself that made him special. He was one of them. The beautiful sunlit gods and goddesses who'd inspired beliefs in heaven and angels. The original immortals. It didn't matter that he only had a little more of their blood in him than the other immortals did. That was enough to make him different.

But the idea of expecting other immortals to bow down to him struck him as incredibly obnoxious. He liked the idea of being connected to something greater. But he didn't like the way his people behaved towards everyone else.

At least, he wanted to believe that he didn't.

Taking his cousin by the hand, Kurt led Patty down the street. Like all the sideways and byways, it was paved with marble. That was good. Kurt didn't think he'd ever quite get used to the sound footsteps made on streets of pure gold.

They stopped in front of the fifth house on the right.

It looked identical to every other building on the street. Or any of the ones in the outermost ring of the city, for that matter.

That was to be expected, of course. They'd quickly learned that it was only when you got closer to the center of the city that any sign of individualization could be found, either among the buildings or the people themselves. And, even there, few people chose to differentiate themselves from their peers.

They were all quite distinguishable from those who lived in the outer rings, though. And not just because they were taller, closer still to physical perfection, and had halos. Though those things were hard not to notice. It was other things too. The higher status sunlit folk never traveled anywhere on foot. They flew on wings of white feather or pure light. They rode about in a golden chariot or on the back of a pegasus. They also wore a whole lot more gold. Their belts were often paired with sashes or vests or stoles that were also woven from cloth-of-gold. They wore solid gold rings, necklaces, ankle bracelets, bits of armor, diadems, and earrings. Many of them carried weapons, of which there appeared to be but three acceptable choices: the stereotypical flaming sword, an ivory bow coupled with quiver full of golden arrows, or a white spear with a broad golden head.

He'd heard tell that some of the oldest among the sunlit folk didn't even wear bodies of flesh and blood. They could choose to take on human shapes if they wanted, but they'd long since become beings of pure energy. Allegedly. None of the residents of Solopolis they'd spoken to seemed to know whether that was true or not, seing as none of them were allowed to enter the innermost rings of the city.

This far out, the sunlit folk looked a lot like the people of Summer. Relatively tall and unnaturally beautiful, but nearly human. Except, of course, that they all had golden skin.

As did Kurt, now.

It was like returning to his ancestral homeland had awakened something inside him. Brought out his inner angel or something.

Kurt raised his fist and rapped on the golden door, hoping that the man who answered proved to be just a little bit more normal than the rest of the people here.

To his surprise, his mother answered the door.

"Kurt?!"

"Mom? What are you-"

Before he knew it, she was hugging him so tight he couldn't breathe.

And when she let him go, Olivia appeared and all but tackled him to the ground as she leapt into a hug.

Needless to say, twenty minutes came and went without him once acknowledging that he and Patty were supposed to revisit the decision of whether to return to Summer. She let him know it too, though she wasn't overbearing about it. Just gave him subtle, imploring looks now and then or glanced at her wrist pointedly.

Kurt totally understood where she was coming from. He'd already broken his promise once. On principle alone, he was clearly in the wrong. As if that wasn't enough, his grandfather was unfortunately proving to be very much like the other sunlit folk they'd met. He didn't quite seem to understand why his daughter had ever married a "lesser immortal" and so was having a hard time commiserating with her loss. He didn't approve of Olivia's piercings and tattoos, nor of Kurt's posture or haircut. Even when his daughter was between bouts of crying, he'd make a point of telling her what a poor job she'd done raising her children. And he hardly spoke to Patty at all.

Of course, that was probably just as well, because when he did, it made Kurt wish that hadn't. It was like he was speaking to a child. One with poor manners, at that.

Still, his cousin had to understand why he hadn't pulled himself away from the kitchen table yet. She just had to.

He hadn't expected his mother and sister to be here. Nor for his father to be dead.

Patty hadn't taken the news well either. And she'd been quick to comfort him. Or try to. His mother and his sister didn't really leave much room for her to do so. But she'd never been too close to his father. The whole situation was making her uncomfortable too. If she felt the need to mourn her Uncle Wes further, she'd probably prefer to do so in private. Or at least out of view of Kurt's grandfather.

When his mother started dropping hints that what she really needed was to take her mind off it entirely, and that there was only one surefire way to do that, Kurt finally asked everyone to excuse him and Patty.

"No son of mine would so blatantly disregard his mother's needs," Kurt's grandfather muttered. "Sounds to me like this late husband of yours did you no favors."

"Daddy, please," his mother replied. "Can we do this later?"

Patty gave Kurt her best "Are you fucking kidding me?" look as they headed out the back door. No words could convey her sentiment more clearly than that expression.

"I'm sorry," he said, as soon as they got outside.

Patty paced around the tiny garden that was his grandfather's backyard. She stopped to smell the exotic flowers and ran her fingers along the gilded trellis and dipped her toe in the tranquil little pond. But she didn't speak.

Kurt came and stood beside her at the edge of the pond. Much as he wanted to put his arm around her, he knew that such a gesture would not be welcome at just that moment.

"Look at that frog," he said. "White, with flecks of gold. Figures, huh?"

His cousin gave him a flat stare.

Part of him was tempted to play the "my father just died" card, but he knew that had already done as much good for him as it was going to. Besides, he wasn't sure that he'd want to go back inside that house either, if he were Patty. He could only expect so much from her after what his grandfather had just put her through. Nor did it help anything that his mother and sister were also behaving as if she didn't exist.

"Don't take this the wrong way," she said at last, "but your grandfather is an ass."

"No argument here," he said.

"And though I can't blame your mother or Liv for behaving the way they are, after what they just went through, they're not exactly making me feel welcome either."

"I know."

She took his hand in hers. "So you know what I'm going to say next, right?" Before he could answer, she asked, "Can you blame me?"

"Not one bit," Kurt said.

"But you're going to stay."

They'd run away so they could be together. Had it really come to this? It seemed so senseless. Especially since his father would still be alive if they'd never done so.

Kurt felt like he might retch.

"At least for a little while, yeah," he said, speaking slowly. He felt weightless. Almost like he wasn't really there. "I kinda feel like I have to, you know?"

"Yeah," Patty said. "I understand." She gave his hand a good squeeze. "We didn't really think this through, did we?"

Kurt laughed awkwardly at that. "I think that `we' is mostly `me', but I appreciate you pretending otherwise." Then, in a softer voice, he said, "I'm sorry. About everything."

"Don't be."

"I'll see you again soon?"

"For you, maybe," she said. "Time flows a lot faster in Summer than it does here."

"Yeah," he said. "Though that also means that I can visit for a long time, when I do come back, and they'll hardly even miss me here."

"Well, that's something," she said.

Neither of them commented on the fact that he'd just implicitly admitted that when he returned to Summer, it wouldn't be for good.

#

Turned out, they didn't even get a chance to discuss how to proceed.

There was a loud thud and then suddenly the front door was flying across the living room. At the same time, the window shattered into a million pieces, as did the sliding glass door that let out onto the back porch. Before Eric even came out of his reflexive crouch, he noticed that there were three Phils in the room.

When he'd first met him, Eric had not found the king to be all that impressive. He was relatively short, fairly modest in build, and no more handsome than any of their kind. Less so than most, really. Hardly what you expected from the man in charge.

Yet, just at that moment, he seemed about as fearsome and terrible as Eric could imagine.

One of the three Phils carried the thing Nina had referred to as a bardiche. Eric hadn't quite been able to picture it in his mind, but now that he laid eyes on it, he saw why his aunt's had spoken of it with such awe. The thing looked suitable for chopping down trees. If by "trees" you meant "skyscrapers." Another carried a length of spiked chain that belonged in a horror movie. The third had stone fists the size of watermelons.

It took him all of a moment to notice those things. But that was a moment that would have certainly cost him his life, if not for Aunt Nina.

The spiked chain was rushing towards his mother and the bardiche cutting a wide arc towards him and a stony fist headed for Nina's face when the beach house faded away.

"That was close," Eric said.

"Gotta work on your reaction time, kiddo," his aunt said. "We all get caught off guard from time to time. But those who panic rarely live to tell the tale."

"I can see that," he said. "Probably wasn't the best idea I've ever had to retreat there either. If I were the king, that'd be one of the first places I'd check too."

"True enough, but it wouldn't have-" Nina began.

"Where are we now?" his mother interjected.

Nina looked over at Gabby. "Back on the main island."

"Really? Is that wise?"

"Maybe," Nina replied. "Maybe not. But he's going to be joining us again soon, and would be no matter where I took us."

"What makes you say that?" Eric asked.

"He can track me," she said. "We've been intimate together. More than a few times."

"Why didn't you mention that earlier?" Gabby asked.

"In between the seventeen times you all told me to shut up, you mean?"

"Well, if you'd mentioned that, we-"

Nina cut her off with an upraised hand. "Look, we haven't got much time. So let's use it wisely. I've got a plan. Not a good one, but it's a plan."

Eric and his mother listened carefully while Nina explained what she had in mind. As she'd implied, it wasn't much. But even so, she'd probably overstated it. Though he was no tactician, Eric thought it sounded more like a foundation on which you might build a plan than a plan itself.

Nina was to act as bait. When the king showed up, she would take off, and Eric and Gabby would try to pick off one of his three clones, if he was still traveling in triplicate. If not, they'd give chase to the one true king.

Before they could point out how underdeveloped the "plan" was, the king showed up. All three of him.

When Nina bounded off, the one with the spiked chain ran after her. The other two immediately spotted Eric and his mother, despite the fact that they'd been hiding behind a bush. The two kings came at him and Gabby from different directions.

"Split up," Eric said.

He didn't like that idea, but getting attacked from both sides didn't appeal to him very much. The pincer attack hadn't worked out so well for him and Nina earlier, but something told him that the king would put it to better use than they had.

Before his mother could object, Eric made a break for it.

The sky crackled with electricity as Gabby hurled lightning at her Phil.

After a dozen paces, Eric turned to make his stand. And found that the king was already almost upon him. He barely got his sword in position in time to block the king's opening attack. Fortunately, though, he still managed to sweep it aside.

Phil was faster than Eric was. But his weapon wasn't designed for fighting in close quarters. Neither was Eric's, for that matter, but his sword was less ill-suited to the task than the king's pole-arm. If Phil had been the one wielding a sword and Eric a bardiche, the fight probably wouldn't have lasted but a few moments. As it was, he didn't see himself as being at any real advantage. Just reasonably well positioned to keep Phil at bay for a few crucial moments while he tried to figure out what to do.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 06



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Author's note

Previously, some other author's story was posted instead of chapter six. I'm not sure how that happened. I apologize for making you all wait for the conclusion to Part Five.

All sexual acts are consensual and involve parties who are at least eighteen years of age.

########################

After tracking Patty across worlds, finding Gabriela took hardly any effort.

Picking up on a signal was the easy part. Blocking out all the noise was more of a challenge. It was like there was an endless supply of information out there that he'd never realized was open to him, but most of it was useless. Not unlike the experience he'd had when he'd first logged onto the internet. But once he learned a few tricks for filtering out what he didn't need, it was surprisingly easy to find exactly what he was looking for.

They found Gabriela and Eric on House Moody's private island, outside what used to be the beach house but was now a modern villa. They sat on a terrace above the pool, drinking cocktails and looking awfully damned relaxed for people who were on the king's hit list.

Upon seeing them, Gabriela stood up so quickly that she knocked her chair on its back. Without bothering to pick it back up, she rushed over to them and pulled Patty into a hug.

A few minutes later, they all sat at the table, drinking their preferred beverages.

It all felt too good to be true. Too quiet. Things had been so crazy ever since they'd officially joined the First Court of Summer a few days ago. Or a few hours ago, depending upon whose perspective you took. Either way, Nick's experience with the Homelands made it hard to believe that they could just sit there and relax, without a care in the world.

Of course, things had changed a lot since they'd first arrived in Summer. Even since they'd left to go get Patty. There was a new king, for one thing.

But, in a way, that only added to Nick's sense that this was all a bit too much like a fairy tale. The evil king was slain, and the good king, their very own father, now sat the throne. The sun was shining, birds were in the sky, their home was rebuilt, and the damsel was no longer in distress. A perfect storybook ending.

Except that it wasn't.

Step-mothers were supposed to be wicked, not beautiful and brave and caring. The hero was supposed to slay the dragon, not be a dragon. And guys like Wes weren't supposed to die. Especially not while trying to rescue a son who wasn't even in any danger.

The inevitable conclusion was that their father had flat-out lied to them.

Yes, Gabriela insisted that Hank might simply have been mistaken. And Eric seemed almost convinced of his mother's interpretation of events. But he was probably just unwilling to disagree with her publicly. And she saw what she wanted to see in the man she still carried something of a torch for. As far as Nick was concerned, things had worked out a bit too conveniently for a man who, according to Eric, ascended the throne ever so reluctantly.

Eric had apparently considered claiming the throne for himself. But he'd ultimate concluded that commanding the respect of the other houses would take someone older, stronger, and with a larger family at his back. If he hadn't done as much growing up in the last few days as it sounded like he had, though, would their father really have stepped aside?

Nick doubted it. And if he had, he'd probably immediately have set to work on a plan to depose his son. All while claiming to be his most fervent supporter.

Nobody seemed to want to hear his reservations about how happy their happy ending was though. Perhaps Veronica would have been open to hearing what he had to say, if the two of them were alone. But the Moodys were not, and when that became clear, even his sister encouraged him to back off. So Nick held his tongue.

Instead, he marveled at the sword that had been returned to House Moody by the aunt none of them had realized they had, and made the obligatory jokes about how large and impressive it was. Everyone found that nice and amusing. Then he listened politely as Patty described the Eternal Garden of the Sun for Eric and her mother. Finally, Nick told Eric and Patty about the grandmother and grandfather they barely remembered and wouldn't recognize, insisting that they let him and Veronica take them to their grandparents' cabin and reintroduce everyone to one another.

Patty was quick enough to agree to that, but, upon noticing the utter lack of enthusiasm Gabriela expressed for spending quality time with her ex-wife and her parents, Eric mumbled something noncommittal. And no one seemed to pick up on the fact that Nick hadn't been proposing that they do so at some unspecified time in the future.

Perhaps that was just as well though.

They all needed time to decompress. And Patty probably wasn't in any hurry to meet anyone's grandparents again anytime soon. Nick and Veronica could try to assure her that Flori and Randy were as nice as accepting as could be, but it wouldn't have made a difference. Not so soon after her experience with Kurt's grandfather.

In the meantime, Nick called his grandmother to fill her in on what had happened. If you could actually say that what he did was "call" her. Though he had held his phone up to his ear, doing so was as much a means of focusing his effort as anything. Whatever it was that allowed him to speak to his grandmother, it wasn't a cellular network. And there was undoubtedly a reason that he "got better reception" than Veronica, who didn't seem to be able to use her cell phone here for much besides keeping time. 

Turned out that his grandparents already knew about Hank, seeing as he'd paid them a visit. And when he had, apparently, Annie had left with him. Nick wasn't sure how he felt about that. And neither was his grandmother. Especially after he explained that Patty and Kurt had never been in any danger. That Hank had almost certainly lied to them. For a moment there, his grandmother considered paying Hank a visit, but she thought better of it in the end. The threat wasn't that Hank was going to hurt her so much as that he'd try to turn her into a pawn. He'd only be more likely to succeed in that endeavor if they allowed him to turn Annie's family into the bad guys. Which they would be, if they treated her like a child who couldn't decide for herself whom to trust and whom not to. So, for the time being, there was nothing for them to do but hope that Annie saw through his charm.

By the time Nick got off the phone with his grandmother, the others had finished their mostly full drinks and started on another round. They were pouring pretty generously too.

As a result, their conversation started to take a racier turn.

Part of Nick wanted to push back against the trend. Wanted to insist that they had a lot of serious shit on their plates that they ought to be focusing on.

But there wasn't anything they could do about any of it anyway. Not Annie, not Kurt, and most definitely not poor Uncle Wes.

Besides, he had the same urges as the rest of them. He was tired of worrying. Tired of pushing himself to the breaking point, trying to learn how to use his talents in new ways. And he was dying to show Patty how glad he was to have her back.

So Nick gulped down the rest of his drink, put his arm around Veronica, and allowed himself to relax. Gradually, he felt his concerns fading into the background and his sex drive slipping into high gear.

All three of the women looked amazing. He'd almost forgotten that it was possible for women other than Veronica to turn him on. That he'd once thought, and probably still did, that Gabriela had the best body he'd ever seen.

Now that he took the time to notice her again, he remembered how huge and perfect her breasts were. How absurdly small her waist was relative to her broad hips. And how much fun it had been when he and Eric had sucked milk from those divine beauties. He'd even forgotten how pretty she was. Nick preferred brunettes to blondes, and brown eyes to blue, but any man who denied that Gabriela was beautiful needed to have his eyes checked.

Patty had the same blonde hair and blue eyes, but she was even less his type than her mother was, given that her breasts were a bit too small to be paired with that glorious ass of hers. Even so, she was more than a little enticing. Her lower body was about as attractive as any Nick had ever seen. And though her breasts might not have been proportional to her figure, they certainly weren't small. The skimpy bikini she wore was doing a helluva job making it impossible for anyone to overlook them too. And though she wasn't as pretty as either her mother or Veronica, she was definitely cute. She had round cheeks, a pointy little chin, and a button nose.

The last time he'd been with Patty had been in a threesome, as was true of her mother. But Nick had shared her with Veronica, not Erica. His two sisters had impressive chemistry together, even though Vee wasn't all that into women.

Nick smiled at the thought that he might get to recreate both of those memories.

#

Gabriela was of two minds about the looks her sons were giving her daughter.

On the one hand, the raw lust she found there was positively contagious. Everyone had sex on their minds, and that would have made it impossible for Gabriela to think about anything else herself if she hadn't been already. As it was, it was taking her from aroused to desperately in need of a good dick.

Yet she also found herself jealous of Patty.

She knew that she shouldn't have been. That it was only natural, after fearing that they might never see her again, that Nick and Eric would be a bit more fixated on Patty than anyone else. Besides, Patty had, for all intents and purposes, just broken up with Kurt. Gabriela had Eric and Veronica had Nick, but Patty had no one. Though they all had each other, in a sense, they all knew that their kind tended to form strong bonds, very much akin to traditional relationships. A good mother would be comfortable sharing with her daughter given those particular circumstances.

And she was.

For the most part.

If Eric decided to split himself in two so that Gabriela didn't actually have to share in order for Patty to get a piece of her brother, well, that would be just fine with Gabriela. She didn't want to suggest it though. He should just know that the situation called for that.

And, much to her satisfaction, he did. Took him a little longer than it perhaps should have, but he got there in the end.

"I just keep going back to how strange it is that it's only been a few hours for you," Eric had said to Patty. "Shit, it's only been a few days for us, but that still feels like forever."

"That definitely is strange," Patty had replied. "Sometimes I still don't quite believe this is all real. Summer, the Eternal Garden, the whole damn Homelands. It's crazy."

"Sure is," Veronica had agreed.

"I mean, it really feels like I haven't seen you in the longest time," Eric then said, placing a hand on his sister's thigh. "Or felt your sweet lips against mine."

As he said that, a second Eric stood up from his chair and came around behind Gabriela to give her a back rub. She sighed as his strong hands doggedly chased the tension away.

Her son was really getting to be good with his hands. And everything else. Under her watchful eye, he was blossoming into as fine a man as Gabriela had ever dreamed of.

She closed her eyes and pictured him trading blows with Phil. Busy as she'd been fending off the king herself, she'd hardly caught a glimpse of their duel. But her mind's eye filled in the details. She watched her son's muscles ripple and bulge as he guided that massive sword through graceful arcs, casually deflecting Phil's clumsy blows. When Gabriela pictured Eric running the king through, she shuddered.

It was Hank who slew Phil. But in her mind, Eric was the kingslayer.

He'd been right to refuse the throne. For now. But she was more certain than ever that one day he'd wear the crown. Immortals would come from every isle to kneel before him and kiss his feet. How many women could say they'd given birth to royalty?

Eric bent down and kissed her back and shoulders a few times. His lips barely brushed her skin, but still they sent shivers down her spine. The feel of his warm breath against her neck made other parts of her tingle as well. The anticipation was almost more than she could bear, and she wouldn't have had it any other way.

There'd been a time when he'd had only one setting. She still treasured his passion, but Gabriela was also pleased to see her son learning the art of seduction.

Of course, just as she started to think such things, he jerked her chair back sharply. Thus did her son remind her of the explosive power that forever lurked just beneath his surface.

She started to ask what he was doing, but forced herself to wait and see.

Now that her legs were no longer safely tucked under the table, there was room for her son to get down on his knees and worship her properly. With a soft sigh, Gabriela spread her legs for him. Eric flicked a nail lightly against her bathing suit and the one-piece went up in smoke, leaving her completely naked. Sitting on his haunches, still as a statue, her son stared between her legs.

With a nervous laugh, Gabriela ran her hands through his beautiful blonde hair. "Well?" she asked. "Everything in order, doc?"

"Sorry," he said. "You're just so beautiful," he said.

She blushed, fighting the temptation to close her legs. What did he even mean by that? What went through a man's mind as he stared at a vagina? What exactly differentiated a beautiful one from an ugly one? Was there such a thing?

Glancing down to her son's groin, though, she found such concerns sliding away. The glorious sight she found there made her forget all about the inscrutable male mind. Whatever it was that he'd meant when he'd said her pussy was beautiful, he clearly did mean it. He was already as hard as a rock.

The sight of his huge penis fighting to break free from the confines of his shorts had Gabriela's pussy juices flowing freely and her nipples hard. It pleased her to know that she was the one responsible for her son's erection. Made her feel like she was the most beautiful woman in all the Homelands. The knowing smile her son gave her made her condition even worse. She needed his attention desperately. If he didn't stop staring at her and start pleasuring her soon, she just might have a heart attack.

The moment his lips met her thighs, waves of ecstasy crashed into her. By the time he got to his destination, which took him quite a while, she was almost ready to cum. The way he looked up at her, blue eyes wide and full of unspoken promises, she knew that there was nothing her son wouldn't do for her. Just as there was nothing she wouldn't do for him. They belonged together, as surely as any couple ever had.

And that was what they were. A couple.

Damn the stupid rules. She couldn't bear the thought of having to pair up with another man for an entire year. Nor would she have to do so. Her former husband, who'd given her the greatest gift of her life in the form of their beautiful son, could change all that for her. Could change the court customs, or let those who were most loyal to him ignore them. It was in his power to allow her to fully enjoy the gift he'd given her.

First thing tomorrow, she would go to him.

Hank hadn't always done right by her, but he wasn't a monster. And he'd have to be to deny her the right to be with her son. Eric was simply too perfect.

She smiled to herself as she ran her hands through her son's thick, shiny hair.

Gabriela hardly lasted two minutes before she exploded. The warm tongue and nimble fingers knew exactly where to touch her.

As ever, her son allowed her energy to pass into him, but refrained from truly exploiting her moment of vulnerability.

He then guided her through a second, slow-burning orgasm. She felt the beginnings of it in her labia, her nipples, her fingers and her toes. The tension increased ever so slowly, and her whole body began to tingle. There wasn't air enough in all the world. The pleasure was almost -- almost -- more than she could take. At last, that sweet release came, and it hit her like a ton of bricks. Her whole body started spasming, and she sprayed ejaculate from between her legs. Then, as the aftershocks slowly faded away, she found herself adrift in a sea of bliss, weightless and free of all negative thoughts and feelings.

"Mmm, that was nice," she said.

Her voice sounded breezy to her ears. Like she was stoned out of her mind.

Eric kissed her inner thigh once, twice, thrice, then stood up and offered her a hand. She waited a few moments before taking it, for fear that her legs would betray her if she tried to stand up too soon. The world was still spinning, but it was doing so less frantically. She reached out and took hold of her son's strong hand.

He pulled hard, yanking her up suddenly.

So suddenly, in fact, that she kept right on going, heading straight for the table. Which, apparently, was the point. Moving faster than any man could move, Eric slipped up behind her, put one hand on her hip and one on her shoulder, and guided her into position. Bent over the table, ready to be taken from behind.

Gabriela trembled in anticipation.

Her wet pussy was still throbbing from the wonderful orgasms her son's talented mouth had allowed her to experience. It was almost overwhelming. Her poor little girl could only handle so much of her son's loving.

All the same, Gabriela was more than glad to put herself in her son's hands. To let herself go completely and trust that exquisite pleasures awaited her.

As soon as her son put his huge cock against her opening, she whimpered. But, for some reason, Eric didn't continue.

Why would he do that? To torture her?

"You're so goddamn sexy, Mom," he said. His powerful hands played with her ass, massaging and squeezing her cheeks. Each time his grip tightened, he let out a little whimper. "It's almost hard to believe that any woman could look this good."

Hearing her son compliment her was never an unwelcome turn of events, but just then, Gabriela didn't want to hear his sweet words echoing softly inside her mind. She wanted to feel his hard cock thrusting firmly inside her hot cunt. She could almost feel the heat emanating from her son's cock. Why wasn't it inside her yet? Didn't he realize what he was doing to her by making her wait like this?

"Please," she moaned.

Eric surprised her once again. The glorious slab of meat that had been poised at her entrance went away, and, a moment later, she felt her son's warm breath on her pussy lips. The pleasurable sensation made her squirm.

Was he really going to go down on her again?

She felt her son's mouth press against her moist lips as he gave her a loud kiss. But then his mouth too abandoned her poor neglected womanhood. Gabriela was about ready to her scream at the top of her lungs.

"Had to do it, Mom," Eric said. "I just can't get enough of your pussy."

Breathing heavy, Gabriela replied, "She loves you too, you know. But if you don't quit torturing your mother, you're going to be grounded until the end of time."

Eric chuckled at the idle threat before finally showing her some mercy.

Her walls instinctively resisted him at first, but it was futile. He was too big, too strong, too insistent. And too perfect. She opened up for him, taking his throbbing cock all the way inside its rightful home.

As her son ravaged her the way a man should, Gabriela watched the other Eric and one of the two Nicks team up on Patty while the other Nick knelt between Veronica's legs. It was a beautiful sight. Her whole family, what remained of it anyway, pleasuring one another.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 06



Gabriela reached down and played with her swollen clitoris. Meanwhile, her son anchored himself with one hand on her shoulder and used the other to fondle one of her heavy breasts. She loved when he played with them. They were her best assets. They symbolized her ability to provide sustenance, to nourish a new life. Marked her as a woman, and a mother. The more attention they received, the more she felt validated.

"Keep going, baby," she panted. "Fuck Mommy good."

Eric grunted something like a response and picked up the pace. His balls slapped furiously against her crotch. She almost wondered how that wasn't painful for him, but she wasn't about to complain. The sweet friction he generated as his fat tool slid in and out of her love canal was quickly wearing her down. She was melting, her bones losing their ability to hold her upright and her juices pouring onto her son's shaft. Any moment now, she would pop.

They should cum together, she decided.

As lost as she was in ecstasy, it wasn't easy to do so, but she managed to exert enough control to make her insides spasm around his cock at just the right pace. Her rhythm formed the perfect complement to his. Just as he slid home, she'd grip him tight, release, then grip him again and hold for a second or two. Then Eric would pull back out, and she'd relax until he penetrated her again.

Meanwhile, she poured energy into his Libido, stoking the flames of his desire for her. Every little sensation he felt would be just a little more intense.

"Oh, fuck," he grunted.

His thrusts slowed down as he presumably sought to delay his orgasm.

That was her cue to push even harder. It wasn't going to take but a few more solid thrusts for her to finish herself. No sense holding back.

"Yes, yes, yes, YES!" Gabriela shouted.

Just as her climax hit, her son's warm cum sprayed the insides of her womb. The feel of his potent spunk heightened her orgasm, as she allowed herself to imagine what it might be like to accept his gift. To conceive her son's son.

The two of them would make such beautiful children together. Strong and tall. Taller than the children Hank had given her. Their skin would be bronze and their hair platinum blonde and their eyes breathtaking blue. She had but to open herself up, allow the energy in her Libido to combine with the life force contained in her son's sperm.

With a sigh, she collapsed atop the glass table.

It was such a nice fantasy. But a fantasy it must remain.

"You're a goddess," her son whispered as he slipped out. Then Eric bent down and left a trail of kisses down her back. He gave her ass a playful tap before he stood back up.

If only she truly were a goddess. Then Gabriela could do as she pleased. Even if that meant giving birth to her son's child, the way she was meant to do.

For a moment, she considered adding that to the list of requests she'd make of Hank. But she thought better of it. She might still have something of a collegial relationship with her former husband, but no king could grant such a request, be he a dear friend or a brutal tyrant. That was simply a line that they were not allowed to cross. Her parents had drilled that into her ever since they'd first initiated her.

Gabriela wiped a lock of sweat-dampened hair form her face then turned to face her son. She pressed a hand against his strong, hard abs. "When I'm with you, I feel like I am." With a smile, she added, "And you're my god."

Eric smiled at her and planted a soft kiss on her lips.

#

When one Eric became two Erics, Patty's jaw went slack. Her initial reaction wasn't even dirty. She was just impressed, perhaps even a bit stunned, by the revelation that her brother had the power to do that.

She'd seen it done before, of course. But not by anyone as young and inexperienced as Eric. In fact, the only guy she could remember ever seeing do that was Uncle Wes.

That realization made her sad. She pushed it away as quickly as she could.

Though her uncle certainly deserved to be mourned, in due time, she deserved this first.

The naughtier implications of her brother's talent soon became quite apparent. Especially after Nick followed Eric's lead and split himself in two as well. That had Patty feeling flushed and dizzy and short of breath.

Suddenly, the problem of there being too few men in the family didn't seem so bad. Veronica could have Nick all to herself, her mother could have Eric, and there'd still be not one but two gorgeous hunks for Patty to play with.

If only they'd learned how to do that a year or so ago.

Patty laughed nervously as Eric pulled her up from her chair and Nick pressed up against her back, gently fondling her ass with one hand while cupping a breast with the other. Meanwhile, Eric took hold of her other breast and freed it from her bikini top.

There were just so many hands!

How had she never had two guys at once before? If Patty were empress of the universe, every girl would experience that particular delight at least once before she died.

That both of her young studs happened to be brothers of hers only made it that much better. These were not guys who saw her as a fuck toy, an object to be used and discarded. They loved her. At least, in some sense. One had effectively waged war on the throne in a misguided attempt to rescue her, and the other had sought to kidnap the king's sons, sacrificing his legs in the process, before traveling to the ends of the universe to find her.

There was certainly a enough lust directed towards just then to get her plenty wet. But if she was just some random piece of meat to them, it would have been completely different. Horny as she was, and as desperate to get off the emotional roller-coaster she'd been riding since they'd arrived in Summer, Patty probably still have gone along with it. But the fact that she wasn't, that there was genuine affection backing up that lust, made her feel safe and warm and beautiful.

As Eric tweaked an increasingly stiff nipple, Nick dropped to his haunches and pulled Patty's bikini bottom off with his teeth. Then he set about gently biting, kissing, and fondling her ass before spreading her cheeks wide apart and tongue-fucking her brown bud.

Analingus had once struck Patty as weird and gross and perverted. Something that people only did in porn. But there were a lot of nerve endings back there, and, if she was in the right mood, it was almost as good as having her pussy eaten. Maybe even better, if her partner really knew what he was doing.

Which Nick did.

For the most part, Patty had found that women were better at oral sex than men. To most guys, sex and penetration were synonymous. Most of them understood that their fingers and tongues had their uses too, but they generally saw such uses as lesser in importance. Good for "mere" foreplay and nothing else.

In that, as in so many other things, Nick was not like other guys. Mom-Jay had trained him well. That boy could work wonders with his tongue. She suspected he could get a statue to cum, and do it inside of three minutes flat. Heck, it wouldn't even surprise Patty if her brother could use his tongue to cure cancer.

The expert service Nick was providing alone might have been enough to overwhelm her. That she was supposed to withstand that at the same time that Eric worshiped her modest little breasts was almost cruel. That was more pleasure than one woman could take.

Or so she'd thought at the time. Her understanding of how much pleasure she could endure was to be put to the test again and again that afternoon. But, just at the moment, she shuddered through as much oral onslaught as she could before pleading with her magnificent brothers to have mercy on her.

After Nick conjured up a cushion for her, Patty got down on all fours. Her one brother continued tossing her salad while the other knelt before her and offered her his gorgeous cock. She took it in both hands and set to work, doing her best to prove that was no less talented at pleasuring men than Nick was at pleasing women.

She doubted very much that she succeeded in that regard, of course. But Eric still seemed to appreciate her efforts.

He moaned louder than he usually did, gasped for air a few times, and his knees buckled periodically. The hand cupping the back of her head helped her figure out when he wanted her to take him deep in her throat and when he wanted her to focus all her effort on his sensitive head. She was surprised by how readily she opened her mouth wide enough to fit his python inside, how comfortable she was deep-throating his monster. Her brother wasn't too terribly long, thankfully, but few men had such girth. A mortal woman, one who couldn't unhinge her jaw like a snake, one whose muscles were prone to cramping up, couldn't have done what she did.

By the time Eric busted his nut, Nick had already gotten her off twice. Without yet touching her pussy. Her whole body was warm and tingly. She hard even noticed that her brother's seed had filled her mouth to overflowing. When he pulled out and jerked a few more sticky ropes onto her face and into her hair, she giggled. Part of her found it demeaning, and having her one eye plastered shut by his spunk was a bit awkward, but the euphoric state Nick had put her in left her willing to just go with the flow.

Besides, some part of her, a part she didn't want to admit existed, thought it kind of hot. She imagined what her face must look like covered in her brother's cum, and the dirty feeling excited her. It was a testament to her talent with fellatio and her overall desirability that she could make Eric ejaculate so much. All her life, she'd thought of herself as the type of girl guys liked to tease, but not the kind they fantasized about. The other girls had certainly done nothing to disabuse her of that notion. If they could see her now, with one guy licking her browneye and another painting her face white, they'd die of shock.

Patty scooped up a few globs of Eric's jizz and licked them off her finger before willing the rest of his gunk away. Then she instructed Eric and Nick to trade places.

Eric was far more talented than she remembered. And surprisingly delicate. He didn't quit make Patty melt faster than an ice cube in a volcano, the way Nick did, but he had learned more a few tricks. And his repertoire of tricks had rounded out nicely. He was no longer all intensity, all the time.

Meanwhile, she'd found Nick's sweet spot and was exploiting it ruthlessly. He was a little longer than Eric, but not quite as thick. Except, of course, for his bulbous head. Getting that thing inside her mouth took some effort, and it felt funny sliding down her throat. But Patty had never wanted to please a man as badly as she did Nick at that moment. After things had crashed and burned with Kurt, and after seeing how happy he and Veronica made each other, Patty was determined to prove to her brother, and to herself, that she could make him hers if she so chose. She wouldn't do that to Veronica, of course, but she need to know that she could. And every drop of cum that he poured down her throat or shot onto her face or tits suggested that she did indeed have what it would take to get her brother to crave her every bit as intensely as he did Veronica.

From there, she took turns with them. She had every intention of working her way up to having both of them fuck her at the same time, but she wanted to take her time to get reacquainted with each of them individually first.

Eric was still incredibly intense. He'd mastered a more diverse range of techniques than she recalled, but it was the powerful, passionate, confident, and aggressive man she remembered that she wanted most of all, and he was happy to provide it. At times, Patty wasn't sure her poor little kitten could handle the punishment her brother was dishing out. It was like she was a slab of concrete being pulverized by his jackhammer of a cock. Or a tree trunk being sawed through by a lumberjack. Her lower body was on fire, both from that and the harsh slaps he was raining on her butt cheeks.

But it felt too damn good for her to ask him to stop.

A guy who could fill her up like that, could make her feel so desired, would have been a great lay even if he was bald, fat and ugly. And, of course, Eric was none of those things. He was shamefully, painfully, egregiously gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that made her stop talking to girls she'd once been friends with, after they started turning every single conversation into another attempt to get Patty to promise to put in a good word for them with her brother. He had the perfect body to go with that perfect face too. A slender waist, if not so narrow as to make him seem effeminate, a barrel chest, broad, meaty shoulders, and biceps like bowling balls. His legs were long and powerful, his abdominals like a miniature mountain range. His ass was every woman's idea of perfect and his calves were like baseballs. His skin was smooth and bronzed and his muscles perfectly toned.

Best of all, he'd either become a better lover or really had missed Patty. Whatever the reason, he looked her in the eye as he never had before. The hunger she found there made her heart flutter. Especially because she knew that Eric didn't know what it meant to humor a girl. He'd never once in a life made a girl he didn't care for feel special. Her brother was not known for flattery. When he used women for playthings, he made it clear that he was doing just that. There'd never been a shortage of women willing to debase themselves for him, after all. When he stared at her like that, ran his hands through her hair and whispered sweet nothings in her ear, she knew it was genuine.

In the end, Eric made Patty cum so hard she thought she might bite her tongue off.

Then Nick set about seducing her, and it was like being treated to the most decadent desert after savoring a perfectly spiced entree. Her brother made love, slowly and tenderly, to every part of her body. He used his mouth and his fingers as well as his eyes.

Patty had never realized how much she liked brown eyes.

In a sense, they were dreadfully common. But everyone in her family had blue eyes. And so did just about everyone in the Eternal Garden. When her brothers dark orbs met hers, his gaze unwavering, she felt weak and powerless. In all the right ways.

Those eyes were inscrutable.

Yes, inscrutable.

For the first time, Patty realized exactly why she'd never quite fallen for Nick as hard as Veronica had, and it wasn't that he was too nerdy or that he made her feel insecure about her own intellectual capacity. Though he was amazing in a lot of ways, and she definitely did have strong feelings for him, he lacked the one thing she'd found so appealing about Kurt. Something that even Eric possessed in greater abundance.

Sincerity.

Nick lavished praise on her, the same way he did most every woman. He wasn't a serial flirt any more than Eric was. In fact, he'd always been pretty shy around girls. But since they'd been initiated into the ways of their people, Nick had, at one time or another, made Patty and Veronica and Jennifer and even Gabriela feel like the only woman alive. It was intoxicating, but some part of Patty had always known that she couldn't take it too seriously.

He was an incredibly talented lover, though. Even once she realized that everything she felt with him was at least partly an illusion, Patty couldn't keep herself from cumming buckets for her brother. Whether the emotions his face conveyed were real or not, her brother knew exactly how to please her. It was like her body was a book written in an obscure dialect. Most men could figure out the basics, but only Nick could unlock every little secret.

Though Nick was not as gorgeous as Eric, he was cute. She wished there was a better word for her to use, but it fit. He had dimples you could open bottles with. And Patty had a new appreciation for his caramel skin, brown eyes, and black hair, now that she'd been to the land of golden-skinned obnoxiously self-important angelic fuckwads. His body was nowhere near as divine as Eric's either, but his muscles were every bit as well defined. Size wasn't everything anyway. His biceps and chest and shoulders were all modest, compared to Eric's, but he too had an exquisite eight pack with deep grooves between the rounded heads. Patty just loved pressing her hands against those hard mounds while her brother was on top of her, or while she was on top of him. And though Nick's ass might have been smaller than Eric's, it was just as tight and round.

Nick looked her in the eye more often too. Eric was better about that than he used to be, but compared to Nick, he was downright reluctant to make eye contact. Nick was so talented at making his partner feel like she was the only woman alive that Patty fell for it all over again, even though she'd just a few moments ago realized that he did that with every woman he was with. Not to mention that he was, at that very moment, making love to another woman while wearing a second body.

Fuck, but a girl could get lost in those deep brown pools.

"You have no idea how badly I've missed you, Patty," he whispered at one point.

Bullshit.

But the sheer intensity with which he said it made her skin tingle. Nevermind that it hadn't even been a day since he'd last been inside her, or that he was probably telling Veronica something even more flattering at that very instant. She wanted it to be true so bad that she couldn't help but believe it.

"I never should have left," she said.

Finally, after Nick guided her through three small but very enjoyable orgasms, Patty declared that she needed a break. Not to mention a glass of water.

The sheer amount of fluids that her brothers had coaxed out of her was stunning. Patty had never cum so hard and so often. Nor had she realized that she was one of those girls who could ejaculate. She probably ought to have assumed that all the women of their kind could, in the right hands. But it took Nick to show her that.

While the three of them rehydrated, her brothers' other bodies kept right on going. How they managed that, she couldn't have said. Sure, she and the other women were feeding them a lot of energy. But still. It took all she had to stop herself from announcing that she was all sexed out for the day, and she was just wearing the one body.

Maybe if she didn't find herself slipping into orgasm again every few minutes, she wouldn't be feeling so drained.

Not that she was complaining.

When they started back up again, Patty was ready to take both of her brothers at once. Initially, that meant sucking one off while the other fucked her. She rode Eric cowgirl while Nick stood in front of her, holding her hair back from her face and feeding her his cock. Then she laid flat on her stomach and Nick took her ass while Eric sat in front of her, holding his dick in one hand and guiding her down to it with his other.

Her two brothers tasted wonderful. Nick's cum had a hint of almonds. Eric's was fruitier, but equally pleasant. She wished she could swallow more, but it was time to move on.

It had taken her a while, but she'd worked her way up to proposing that they DP her.

Butterflies filled her stomach as she said it. She'd never tried that before. The thought of it was simultaneously terrifying and titillating. Though Patty was pretty comfortable with anal sex, since every guy she'd ever been with had been fixated on her ass, even when it was done right, it was an intense experience. And that was without another guy in her pussy.

At the same time, it was hard to imagine any greater intimacy, or any stronger indication that men found her desirable. If they allowed her to direct things, didn't try to dominate her, perhaps it would even be empowering.




Homelands Pt. 05 Ch. 06



It took a long time to coordinate everything. Just getting Nick inside her ass again, now that Eric was stretching her snatch good and wide, posed a challenge. Finding a way to make their movements work together, rather than at cross purposes, wasn't any easier. A few times, she came very close to calling it a failed experiment.

In the end, though, everything started to gel. The sheer amount of physical stimulation was just this side of unbearable. And it was, as she'd hoped, a total power trip. She was the center of the universe. Her two brothers were slaves to her needs. Their hands went where she directed them. They went no slower and no faster than she commanded. And all the while, they showered her with compliments.

It wasn't long after she rode her brothers to a series of intense climaxes that Patty fell asleep, right there on the cum-stained cushion.

#

The time with Patty was more than welcome. Eric hadn't realized quite how much he'd missed her. While she'd been gone, it had never quite hit him that he might never see his sister again. He'd been too preoccupied with other thoughts, not least of which were figuring out how to get her back and arguing with the others about precisely that.

But, as fun as it was to fool around with her again, that wasn't the release he'd been craving. After the whole ordeal with Phil and Nina and Hank, from their brief period of imprisonment to his uncle's death to his father's ascension, what Eric needed was his mother.

It made him feel like a horrible person, but when Patty passed out and Nick carried her inside to sleep in a clean bed, Eric was relieved. Not that she didn't deserve a little something special. She did, and he was glad to give it to her. But so did his mother. And he was eager to focus all his attention on her.

Whereas Eric had collapsed back down to a single body after Patty tapped out, Nick's double remained. The two of them shared Gabby while the other Nick continued to enjoy some alone time with Veronica.

To start out, Eric and Nick played with Gabby's breasts, suckling at her pink nipples the way they had as infants. There they stood, side by side, worshiping her natural wonders.

Next, they took turns eating her pussy. Gabby tasted so good that Eric was beginning to see cunnilingus as a treat for him as much as for her. His sister's juices were pleasant enough, but when he went down on Patty, he was aware that he was doing her a favor. With his mother, though, he'd have been glad to bury his face between her thighs for hours.

Well, maybe not hours. The need to be inside her couldn't be ignored for that long. But it still came as a surprise to him that he enjoyed giving her head as much as he did.

After they pleasured her, Gabby sucked the two of them off at the same time. She would take one of them in her mouth for a few moments while jerking the other off, holding him by her face, switch cocks, then switch again. The whole time, Eric had been on edge, nervously wondering if she might make them joust for her amusement.

If she had, he'd have done it, simply to see the smile on her face.

There wasn't much Eric wouldn't do to put a smile on his mother's face. But he was definitely glad that she hadn't asked him to do that.

After he and his brother coated Gabby from forehead to navel in their cum, she cleaned herself up and said she was ready to have their stiff dicks inside her.

To think, he'd once preferred Olivia and even Zoey. How fucking crazy was that?

His cousin was pretty enough, but she lacked curves. And his aunt was a downright bitch. He hadn't quite realized that before. She'd always been uptight, but he'd somehow convinced himself that the woman he'd known growing up wasn't the real Zoey. That she'd only been wearing a mask, like his mothers. Only now was he realizing that however much their appearances had changed, the people inside never had. The woman he'd fallen in love with was the very same one who'd cut the crusts off his sandwiches and tied his shoes and criticized all his girlfriends. And, by the same token, Zoey was a lot nicer to look at now than she had been when he was a kid, but she was the same overprotective, controlling, judgmental cunt she'd always been.

And she wasn't anywhere near as hot as he'd once thought either.

Maybe his resentment for the way she'd treated his mother was coloring his perception, but he honestly couldn't remember why he'd once thought she was so attracted. Her long legs were almost like flower stems, her ass was a joke, and her breasts were only big by the standards of a world obsessed with anorexic waifs.

If they never saw Aunt Zoey again, that would be just fine with Eric.

Olivia, he'd done wrong by. Thinking about the way he'd been obsessed with her in the past gave him the same sense of shame that he got when he thought back to when he'd let Patty talk him into taking tap dance lessons with her. But however his thoughts about female body image had changed, his cousin deserved more from him. They'd been so close for so long. Granted, his cousin hadn't stopped wearing masks after they'd been initiated into the ways of their family, so he'd never really known her as well as he'd thought he had. But, in the end, she'd proved herself to be her father's daughter more so than her mother's.

Not even a week ago, he'd have thought it an insult to Olivia to say that she took after Uncle Wes more than she did Aunt Zoey. But a lot had changed since then. He'd failed to look past the surface with Uncle Wes. And with Olivia too.

One day, he'd have to make things right with his cousin.

One day.

"You know, I was afraid it might be a long time before we got to do this again," Nick told Gabby while they all took a break to catch their breath, his words breaking Eric out of his reverie. "This may sound weird, but it was always with you that I really felt like I was satisfying my Oedipal complex."

Eric snickered.

He was glad that his brother was helping him give Gabby her proper due, but who was Nick kidding? Yes, Gabby was his mother. In a sense. But not in the same way that Jennifer was, and certainly not the sense that she was Eric's mother. Sure, any guy who shared the age old obsession with mother-son sex would immediately recognize that Gabby was the very embodiment of motherly beauty. She had such broad hips, so perfectly suited to bearing children, and incredibly large breasts that were ideal for nurturing those children.

But all three of them knew full well that Nick had been thoroughly obsessed with Jennifer before he'd fallen head over heels for his sister.

Perhaps, like Eric, he'd seen the light. That wasn't what he'd said though. Here he was, claiming that Gabby had always made him feel like he was acting out the primal drama that haunted all men's fantasies more than his birth mother ever had.

And that was a fucking load of bullshit.

His mother seemed to be buying it though. "That's not weird at all," she told Nick, brushing his cheek with the backs of her fingers. "Your mother's a beautiful woman. But she couldn't, wouldn't, give you what you needed."

"Exactly," Nick said.

And how would Jennifer like to hear him say that? How would Veronica?

Eric cleared his throat as he stepped up behind Gabby and wrapped his arms around her. "There's no one else like her. Not in Summer, or anywhere else."

His mother purred and leaned back against his chest.

Nick's lips tightened. On the surface, Eric had been agreeing with him. But he'd also subtly signaled to his brother that Gabby was his. And that wasn't lost on Nick.

He'd always been the perceptive one.

"So. Who's for double penetration?" his mother asked, apparently oblivious to the little duel her sons were having over her. Or perhaps amused by it.

That made Eric's heart beat faster. This wasn't something she was open too. It was something she wanted. Craved, even. Because his mother's sexuality knew no bounds. Nothing intimidated her, and nothing was quite enough for her.

He was not worthy of such a goddess.

But, then, no man was. Whomever she settled for, she'd be doing worse than she deserved. It was only through pure luck that Eric had turned out to be the winner of that lottery.

It didn't take them nearly as long to get things going properly as it had with Patty. This was only the third time he'd done this with his mother, but each time, she grew more comfortable with it. The eagerness with which she requested it this time, the utter lack of nervousness or discomfort she showed as they got into position, so unlike the reluctance Patty had shown, made Eric's dick throb.

The three of them become one, their movements perfectly harmonized as they marched in lockstep towards climax. Nick's hands busied themselves with Gabby's breasts while Eric fondled and lightly slapped his mother's ass. Then Nick's attention drifted downward and Eric played with his mother's huge fun bags. All the while, Gabby worked her hips, riding her two stallions like the world depended on it.

When they reached their orgasms, they did so in unison. Afterwards, they collapsed together in a sweaty, sticky heap.

#

After all they'd been through, Veronica couldn't blame Nick for wanting to spend some time with Patty. She even convinced herself that there was nothing wrong with the fact that he'd shared Gabriela with Eric even though Eric hadn't felt the need to get reacquainted with Veronica. In fact, she was so relieved to see everyone again that she'd have been glad to hook up with some of the blonde-haired beauties herself.

But when she and her brother finally retired to one of the many luxurious bedrooms in the newly renovated Moody Summer home, Veronica felt a weight lift from her shoulders.

They weren't a couple, however much she wanted to believe that they were. Their kind didn't work that way. He could, and should, avail himself of the other women in the family. Just as she was free to take other men into her bed. Veronica understood that. And she was okay with it. More than okay, even. She looked forward to getting back to the cabin and discovering what it was like to make love to her grandfather without having to share him with Annie. So long as it was clear that Nick considered her special, that she could trust that whatever they did during the day, it was her bed he'd lie in at night, Veronica didn't care how much recreational sex they had with other people.

It would be nice if he made it easier for her to believe that it was strictly recreational with the others though. The way he looked at Patty, the breathless tone with which he spoke both to and about her, awakened something ugly in Veronica. When he'd carried her into the house, he'd looked like a loving father putting his daughter to bed, or a groom crossing the threshold with his bride on the night of their wedding. She loved her sister to death, and it pained her to feel this way towards her. But she was having a harder time convincing herself that the attention Nick showed her meant nothing than she did with Gabriela.

Veronica had been tempted to ask Nick to carry her into the bedroom, but she knew how silly that would sound. In fact, she'd have been lucky if all her brother thought was that it was silly. Knowing him, he'd have guessed exactly what was going through her mind.

Of course, her Libido had undoubtedly betrayed her already. But so long as she did her best to keep it to herself, he couldn't hold it against her, could he?

He closed the bedroom door behind them then took her in his arms. Her heart raced and her pussy ached. When Nick bent down, she closed her eyes and puckered up. But he only planted a peck on her cheek, cruelly leaving her lips unkissed.

"I'm going to take a quick shower," he said.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked.

Did that sound as desperate and pathetic to his ears as it did hers? Why hadn't she kept her fool mouth shut? If he'd wanted to shower together, he'd have asked her to join him.

"I'll just be a minute," he said, kissing her forehead.

"Okay," she said as she ran her fingers down his chest and between his chiseled abs. "Don't keep me waiting."

"Never," he said with a faint grin.

Just as he started to pull away, she slipped the tips of two fingers into the waistband of his boxers and pulled back gently. "Is something wrong?"

Her brother tilted her head back with a single finger. Their eyes met and her brother's unyielding gaze melted Veronica's spine. "You tell me," he said.

She looked away.

"Vee."

"It's stupid," she said.

He kissed the top of her head. "No it's not." His fingers ran through her hair. She loved when he did that. It didn't feel like much, but every little touch from her brother took her breath away. The littlest ones most of all. "What would be stupid would be for me to ignore the fact that something's bothering my baby."

"Say it again," she said.

"That you're my baby?" he asked with a wan smile.

Veronica tapped her fist against her brother's stony midsection so softly that it couldn't really be called a punch. "You know what I mean."

"I love you, Veronica."

She sighed.

If she lived another hundred years, she'd never tire of hearing him say it. But never again would it carry the same weight as when he'd said it for the first time.

"You, and only you," he added.

"Go take your shower."

"I mean it. No one else-"

"No, I know," she said as her hands made their way up to his hard chest and over to his exquisite deltoids. Each head was prominent and cleanly separated from the others. "I'm just being a stupid girl. You don't need to say any more."

"I'm glad she's back," he said. "I was worried about her. Same as you were." Those eyes of his were so dark. So unlike their father's. Yet every bit as arresting. Had she noticed that before? Once he locked gazes with her, she was completely powerless. Couldn't move, couldn't tell him that she'd already said he didn't need to explain himself, couldn't do anything but stare back at them. "But I'm not in love with her."

Veronica responded by kissing his chest.

"Say the word and I'll promise never to touch her again."

Her throat went tight. Did he think her so petty? How could she demand that of him, when she herself wouldn't agree to avoid all other men?

"Seriously, Nick. Go take your shower," she said. "You stink."

He chuckled, kissed the top of her head, gave her butt a soft smack, then left.

With a snap of her fingers, Veronica cleaned herself up. Then she changed out of her bathing suit and into something a bit naughtier. Nick hadn't said anything, but she'd noticed the way he reacted the one time she'd worn stockings and heels for him. The sheer black baby doll and lacy panties made her feel sexy, but the red patent leather stilettos and fishnet thigh-highs were ridiculous. Not skanky, exactly, but like she was trying to be something she was not. She knew that Nick would like them though.

No, it was too much.

With a thought, her shoes turned into black pumps and her stockings went from fishnet to opaques. That was still a bit out of character for her, but she could see herself gradually becoming the kind of woman who felt at home in them. They were almost tasteful.

The pumps didn't make nearly as much noise as the stilettos would have as she walked over to the mirrored dresser. Veronica studied her face for a few moments before setting to work on her makeup. Her cheeks were puffy and her eyebrows never looked right, no matter how much she shaped them or plucked them or willed them to fill out. But she had nice eyes. Twin to her brother's eyes, really. And her lips had always made other girls jealous. Even Annie, who never missed an opportunity to tear her down. Veronica had always been proud of her hair too. Would Nick prefer it blonde though? Was that it?

"Of course not," she told herself with a sigh. "And there's no 'it' anyway."

She'd just finished fixing her makeup when the bedroom door squeaked open.

"Oh, hey Vee," Patty said. "Was looking for you guys. Sounded so quiet in here, though, I figured the room had to be empty."

"Nick's taking a shower," she said.

"Ah." Reluctantly, her sister came into the room, closing the door behind her.

Patty did look good. There'd have to be something wrong with Nick to ignore here.

She wore a flimsy white top that you could see right through and a matching pair of panties. With the sun shining right on her through the open window behind Veronica, Patty's skin looked paler than it was. Veronica would hate to see what she'd look like if her tan faded, but her sister could probably pull off the fair-skinned look.

The girl had a slamming little body too.

She was of even shorter than Veronica's mother and had a waist the size of Olivia's, despite having a woman's hips. Only Gabriela had a more extreme waist-to-hip ratio. Ever modest and self-deprecating, Patty had often referred to her thick thighs as haunches. But as she stared at her sister, Veronica found herself more than a little jealous of the girl's legs. The message they'd received all their lives from the mortal world was that thin was beautiful. But Veronica had always thought real women had curves. And Nick thought so too. Patty's breasts might not have been as big as Veronica's, but her sister had a lower body that had to be seen to be believed. If she chose to wear stockings and heels, Veronica herself might have to pounce on her. She could only imagine how Nick would react.

"Sorry if I hogged all the attention earlier," Patty said, fretting at her lower lip. "Just felt so good to be home again."

Home?

Maybe that's what Summer was, after all. Or maybe it didn't matter where you were, so long as you were with your family. One way or another, her sister's choice of words struck Veronica as oddly appropriate.

"Nice to have you home," Veronica said.

Patty smiled. "You're not mad at me?"

"Why would you think that?"

"You look like you're ready to snap someone's head off. And I don't have any of my stuffed animals here with me."

Oh, god. Did Patty still remember that? They'd been thirteen at the time. With all those hormones pumping through their bodies, it was a wonder that they'd never done anything worse to each other.

"Discovered you've got a knack for reading Libidos too?"

"So you are mad at me?" Patty said, folding her arms across her stomach.

"No," Veronica said, walking over to her sister. "No," she said again, taking Patty in her arms. Her sister smelled like peaches. The way she tasted. Suddenly, Veronica felt flushed. "I'm just a bit of a mess. These past few days have been crazy."

Patty pushed a lock of hair back from Veronica's face. Not with the familiarity that Nick would have. Hesitantly, like she didn't want to presume too much. That innocent, vulnerable little gesture drained still more of the poison from Veronica's blood. 

"I'm so sorry I put you all through that," her sister said.

"You didn't," Veronica said. "From the sound of it, Kurt did."

"I guess. But he didn't mean to either."

"It's okay. No one's mad at him," Veronica said. Her hands drifted from the small of Patty's back to her ass. "Just meant that you certainly have nothing to apologize for."

Damn. It hurt to admit, but she could see why Nick wasn't too impressed with her ass, why he was so impressed with Patty's. It was big, but not overly soft. Soft enough to be all kinds of squeezable, but there were mounds of steel beneath that layer of padding.

"I'm not sure I'd say no one's mad at him," Patty said. "Just not for that reason."

Veronica gave her sister a bemused grin. "Want to talk about it?"

"Not really," Patty said. "Mostly I want you to throw me down on the bed, rip my clothes off, and have your way with me."