At last the tune ended and the glow faded. Terra, who had been staring at it fixedly, looked up to see that all her Monstrum were gathered around her. Then, without a word, each and every one of them dropped to one knee.
“Our Queen,” Tem breathed, his eyes filled with longing.
“Yes, Terra is our Heart,” Rive agreed.
“Little Terra, you have to believe now—don’t you?” V’rone rumbled. “Don’t you see that you’re our Queen?”
Terra looked for a place to put the Heart-finder and settled for placing it gently back on the velvet cushion Rive had brought it on.
“Yes,” she said, looking at all three of them. “Yes, I’ll be your Queen. I’ll be the Heart of your colony because I love you—all of you—so much!”
And then she was trying to get her arms around all of them and they were pulling her into the middle of them for a hug. Terra found she was laughing and crying at the same time and trying to kiss all of the big Monstrum at once and they, of course, were kissing her back.
She thought she had never felt so completely surrounded and so completely loved but there was still one thing missing.
“Bonding,” she said, coming up for air at last. “The four of us need to bond, right away!”
Rive frowned.
“Wouldn’t you rather wait until we get back to the Mother Ship? We can all take a bath in the bathing pool and take our time enjoying each other’s bodies.”
“No.” Terra shook her head firmly. “I don’t want to risk losing you again—I promised the Goddess I would bond all three of you to me as soon as I got you back and it’s a promise I intend to keep! In fact…”
She reached for the cord around her neck. All this time she’d been wearing the little blue vial of concentrated bonding fruit essence that Kat had given her at the beginning of her quest. She hadn’t even thought of it—most of the time, she’d forgotten it was even there. But now she wanted it—both to ease the way and to prove her point.
Breaking the cord, she opened the stopper and tilted the bottle to her lips. Recklessly, she drained the entire thing, noticing as she did that it tasted like ripe peaches, fresh strawberries, and—strangely enough—buttered popcorn.
“What was that you just drank?” Tem asked, frowning as she finally lowered the bottle.
“It’s bonding fruit essence—my friend Kat gave it to me,” Terra explained. “It’s, er, supposed to help you—you know—stretch.”
“I have heard of bonding fruit—it’s what the Twin Kindred use to help a female open for their merged shafts while bonding,” Rive said, frowning. “But it’s said to be an incredibly powerful aphrodisiac.” He shook his head. “I really don’t know if you should have done that, Terra.”
“I don’t understand why she did it,” V’rone growled. “I mean, we’ve proved over the past few days that she’s able to open to all of us. Hell, every one of us nearly got our knot all the way into her sweet, tight little pussy at one time or another,” he added, giving Terra a lustful look that sent her heart racing.
“It’s not my, er, pussy I’m worried about,” she explained, frowning. “You guys told me that in order to bond, I’d have to take all three of you at once. I know I can handle whoever’s in front and taking one of you in my mouth is no problem either. It’s my, er, back passage that makes me nervous. I’ve never done any, uh, butt stuff before, if you know what I mean.”
“Are you fearful for your rosebud, my Lady?” Tem asked gently, leaning forward to stroke her cheek. “Would it make you feel better if I promised to tend to that area myself and to be extremely gentle with you?”
“Actually, it would.” Terra gave him a grateful smile.
“Who gets to tend to our Queen’s sweet pussy, then? V’rone growled.
“As the leader and Brawn of our colony, it should be you this first time, I think,” Rive said. He gave Terra a half-lidded stare. “I have already experienced the pleasures of our Queen’s mouth, but I am happy to do so again.”
“Then it’s all settled,” Terra said, rather breathlessly. “Let’s bond—I want to.” Indeed, she was beginning to feel a strange stirring inside her—a hungry, sexual craving she’d never felt before.
But to her surprise, V’rone shook his head.
“We should really try to wait until we fold space and get back to our own area,” he argued. “Bonding before we get back to the Monstrum Mother Ship is a bad idea.”
“I never thought you’d be the one to want to wait, V’rone.” Terra frowned up at him. “Are you afraid we’re in some kind of danger out here?”
“No. As far as the ship’s scanner could reach there’s nothing but empty space around us. We’re safe,” the Brawn of the colony assured her. “But if we bond now, we won’t be able to fold space—we’ll have to take the long way home through stable wormholes.”