“She’s made her decision,” I snarl at him.
“Grace,” Sotelo’s tone cuts through the tension. “Do you feel pulled toward Thiago Zamora? Do you want to touch him, the way you’re touching Vaughn right now?”
Grace glances down, obviously surprised to see her hand on my arm. “No. I’m sorry,” she says, glancing briefly at Zamora, before her gaze loses focus entirely. I can smell distress in her scent.
Taste her, the beast demands as he projects a mental image of me pressing Grace against the wall, caged by my arms. In the mental projection, I lick the entire length of her neck, trying to determine what she needs from me by tasting the hormones secreted in her sweat, while she shudders against me, growing wet beneath the attention of my tongue. It’s a tempting image, but probably not an instinct I should indulge in front of an audience.
“You don’t owe him an apology,” I insist instead, covering her hand with my own. Hers twitches, another clear sign of how Zamora’s interference is worrying her.
Sotelo turns to Zamora. “Would you kill Coleman to get your shot at seducing Grace?”
“Of course not,” he says. “I’m just saying—”
“Well, he will kill you if you come near her. If your beast isn’t willing to do anything to win her over, then she isn’t your mate.”
“How do you know?” Zamora demands. “This is all new to you too. How do you—?”
“I know.” Sotelo turns to level a heavy gaze on me. “Maybe you and Grace should take your meal downstairs. And stay there, for a while.”
12
GRACE
“WHAT DID Zamora mean by ‘this is why we all served?’” I ask as Vaughn slides the hatch into place, isolating us in the cargo hold.
He descends the stairs and marches past me, headed for one of the crates strapped to the far wall. “It’s kind of long story. About our homeworld.”
I shrug and give him a smile. “I have nothing but time. And I want to hear about your homeworld.”
Vaughn glances at me, one hand on the strap that will release the storage crates from where they’re secured to the wall, and the sudden dilation in his eyes has nothing to do with the harsh overhead light. When his eyes look like that, it’s because the beast is whispering in his ear; I’ve already figured out that much.
He looks…pleased. By my interest in his past, I think.
Guilt floods me again, and I push it back. My honest curiosity about his homeworld isn’t leading him on. Right?
“On Tethys, there are thousands of square miles of glittering green ocean—our world is famous for it—but little land on which to build,” he says. “Which means we’ve had to build up. The land, what there is of it, is crowded with towering structures, most of them occupied at maximum capacity.”
Vaughn releases the straps holding the crates in place, his arms bulging with the effort, then he lifts the top crate from the one beneath it and sets it on the floor. In spite of the stamp on the side of the crate advising that lifting it is a two-man job. “Because Tethys is already over-crowded, the government strictly limits population growth. Each couple is only allowed to have one child, and that requires a license. As does marriage. To get a license, you have to be a full citizen. And to attain citizenship, you have to serve the government for a minimum of seven years.”
Vaughn lifts the lid of the lower crate he’s just exposed, and it opens on clamshell hinges. “The most common way for men to serve is in the military. That’s why we joined. All of us. We weren’t there to fight for a cause. Hell, it wasn’t even our war. We were part of a deployment hired out to fight other people’s battles, all over the galaxy. And we went—we fought—so that someday, if we survived, we could return to Tethys, find a partner, and raise a family.”
My guilt feels like heavy clothing, dragging me to the bottom of a lake. Drowning me. “Family is important, on Tethys?”
“Family is everything.” He reaches into the crate and pulls out an armload of folded blankets. “That’s one thing the beast’s culture and mine have in common, even if the ways we go about attaining and protecting those families are different.”
“So then, it must be difficult for Zamora and the others to see your captain so happy with Lilli. And to see that you and I are…” I shrug.
“That’s no excuse,” Vaughn growls as he spreads the first of the blankets on the ground. “I would never try to stand between Zamora and his mate, if he had one. He owes us the same respect.”
“Is that what we are?” I have to admit, the thought is not entirely unwelcome. “Mates?”
“Yes.” There isn’t a speck of doubt in his golden eyes.
I set my food down and take the second blanket from him, then I shake it out and layer it over the first. “And what does that mean, exactly? How is being a mate different than being a wife? Or a concubine?”
“Concubine. Mistress. Those words are anathema, both to me and to the beast. They have no place in either of our cultures.”
“You don’t…come together with women who are not your wives?”
A small smile turns up the corner of Vaughn’s mouth. “That’s not what I’m saying. On Tethys, it’s difficult to obtain a marriage license. Many people never do, but few remain celibate. It’s considered perfectly respectable for unmarried people to enter into sexual relationships, whether serious or casual, monogamous or polyamorous. But that ends when a person gets married.” He shrugs. “It’s not a perfect system. Especially for those who might want children without a spouse. Or might want children with more than one spouse. Or who might want more than one child. None of which are permissible on Tethys, because of the population constraint.”
“So, what do people do, in one of those situations?”
Another shrug. “Emigrate, if they can, to a planet that allows the lifestyle they want. But moving across the galaxy is expensive, even before all the legal paperwork. As overpopulated as it is, Tethys won’t just let its citizens go without paying some enormous expatriation fees. But my point is that the beast and I agree about concubines. Neither of us would ever expect a woman to serve us sexually. Any woman I take into my bed has a right to ask for the world from me. Not just for a fraction of my time. Not just for a one-sided commitment.”
“So then, a mate is like a wife?”
He spreads the third and final blanket over the others, then he gestures for me to make myself comfortable on the pallet. “It’s definitely closer to most people’s understanding of a spousal relationship. But without a formal ceremony or paperwork. And in most of cultures, a marriage can be ended. That isn’t true, with mates. At least, not in the beast’s culture. Mates are forever. No matter what.”
“Forever.” The word echoes into my soul as I set down the leather tote I carried down here and pick up the packet of food.
Vaughn sits next to me on the pile of blankets. “Does that thought scare you?”
“Yes,” I admit, and even that little bit of truth eases some of my guilt. “But not in the same way a gun to my head would scare me.” Or the prospect of spending the rest of my life lying beneath Silas.
“You like me better than a gun to the head.” He gives me a self-deprecating shrug. “Not exactly a romantic vow, but considering that we really just met, I’ll take it. For now.”
“I meant no insult,” I assure him. “I like you better than…everything.” Part of me wishes I could stay here and have mind-blowing sex with my beautiful mate for the rest of my life. But our lives would be pretty short, if I did that. Meshach would kill us both.
“Well, surely that’s an exaggeration,” Vaughn says. God, his smile is blinding. Warm. Like staring up at the sun on a cool morning. “You can’t possibly like me better than chocolate. Or coffee. Or…sex.”
I smile when I realize he’s teasing me. “I don’t care much for coffee. It’s bitter. As for chocolate, I wasn’t given any on Gebose. I remember having some on Theron, on special occasions, and I remember that I liked it. But I can’t tru
ly recall what it tastes like. Or what it felt like in my mouth.” Like all my other memories of growing up in the convent, my recollection of chocolate is vague and has more to do with the facts of the event than with sensations that accompanied it.
I know I ate chocolate. But I can’t remember what that felt like.
“Okay, the very next thing on my to-do list is to find some chocolate,” Vaughn declares. “Just so I can watch you eat it.”
“And what if it turns out that I do like chocolate better than I like you?”
Vaughn shrugs. “It’s entirely possible to like two things at the same time. Speaking of which, you’ve only addressed two of the three things that might be my competition. What about sex?”
“Is that a trick question? You are sex, for me.”
“I am sex?” His golden eyes shine; he’s taking way too much pleasure in this. “Is that all I’m good for?”
“Of course not. I just mean that my experience with sex is inextricably linked with you, because I’ve had no other experience.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” he growls softly, leaning in to nibble on the arch of my left ear. Then he sucks the lobe into his mouth and the wet warmth that envelopes it reminds me of when his mouth was…elsewhere. And suddenly I can feel moisture gather between my thighs. Again.
“You don’t want me to gain any more experience?” I tease, embarrassed by how breathless I sound. How close I am to shamelessly climbing into his lap.
“I don’t want you to experience anyone else,” he clarifies. “But you can experience all of me that you like. In fact, if there’s something you want to try, just let me know.”
“I don’t really know what else there is to try,” I tell him as I tear open the brown plastic envelope. “Though clearly you do. Should I be jealous?”
“No. I’m happy to teach you everything I know,” he assures me. “Then we’ll be even.”
I roll my eyes at him and dump the contents of the envelope onto my lap. “I meant, should I be jealous of the other women you’ve been with? The source of all those things you’re willing to teach me?” The very thought of which makes me a little light-headed. And more than a little curious. Maybe it wouldn’t be terrible to indulge this “mate” thing as long as I’m on the Dinghy…
“No need for jealousy. There’s no other woman in my life, and there won’t ever be. And there hasn’t been, other than Dreyer, in more than two years. And obviously, that wasn’t romantic. It was more…psychotic.”
I look up from the sealed packet of chicken parmesan with a frown. “You’re calling Lieutenant Dreyer mentally unstable?”
“No! Dreyer’s great. I’m calling the UA employees who ran the lab—Sotelo calls them ‘mad scientists’—psychotic. For locking us in that room—” Vaughn bites off whatever else he was going to say with a frown. “Shit. Okay, I have to tell you something, in the interest of total honesty, and I don’t want it to upset you.”
“If you don’t want to tell me, don’t,” I say. Maybe knowing that he has a secret too will make me feel better about misleading him. Using him. “I won’t hold it against you.”
His brows dip while he stares into my eyes. “I want to tell you everything.”
“Should I…wait?” I ask, holding up the small pouch of chicken parmesan.
“No. If you’re hungry, go ahead and eat. Unless unpleasant news upsets your stomach.” He frowns at me in sudden consideration. “I feel like that’s something I should know about my own mate. Do you have a sensitive stomach?”
“No. And if it makes you feel any better, I’m not sure how much I know about your mate. I mean, where am I from, if not from Theron? Who is my family, if not the Sisters of Holy Virtue?”
“I am your family.” His hand slides around the back of my neck and he pulls me close for a kiss. “The rest of the crew is your family, now,” he adds, and a brand-new ache develops deep in my chest. “Which is why you need to understand what we’ve just escaped from.”
“Yes. The mad scientists. Go ahead.” I tear into the packet and reach for a plastic spork.
“So, you know what they did to us, on a cellular level, to create their fucking super-soldiers.”
“Surgeries, right?”
“A year’s worth. And injections. And genetic splicing. To be honest, I don’t know the specifics, because I was unconscious for most of it. And I’m fine with that; I don’t want to remember being strapped to a lab table. But there are also moments when I don’t want to remember the rest of it. What came after the procedures.”
The haunted, angry look in his eye makes my stomach flip. I take another bite of tasteless, too-soft pasta, just to have something to do. To give him a little privacy with whatever he’s remembering.
“After they declared their procedures successful and their technique viable, Dr. Brennan became determined to find out if her super-soldiers could be…bred.” Vaughn pauses, watching me carefully, and after a second, he continues. “By forcing us into bed with Tirzah Dreyer. The only woman on our crew.”
“I see.” I take another bite, quietly waiting for him to continue.
“I expected more of a shocked reaction to that,” he admits. “But I’m not sure why, in retrospect. Considering that the men on Gebose basically breed their own wives and that sexual slavery is sanctioned by their holy text.”
“Dreyer being forced into intercourse does not surprise me,” I admit. On Gebose, the concept of a woman’s consent could be considered an oxymoron. “But I’m not sure how a man could be forced.”
“It’s less an outright physical force than a brutal and ongoing erosion of willpower.”
My spork pauses halfway to my mouth. “I don’t understand.”
“Okay. Here goes. Once Brennan decided she wanted to breed us, she started locking one of us into the ‘breeding’ room with Dreyer for a week at a time, once a month. During Dreyer’s fertile period. We would just wake up in there, with no warning. With nothing but a week’s supply of food and a time-release hormone capsule embedded in one of our forearms.”
“A hormone capsule?”
“It releases a cocktail of drugs—synthetic hormones—into the bloodstream, to keep the body…ready. Desperate, actually.” When I can only frown at him, Vaughn sighs. “It keeps a man’s dick hard for a week solid. With a similar effect on a woman. Dreyer, in this case. It creates a sexual craving so consuming that you can’t think about anything else. After about twenty-four hours during my first time in the breeding room, I nearly rubbed myself raw trying to take care of the problem in the bathroom. Alone. Without involving Dreyer. I assume she was doing the same thing, in the bedroom. But manual stimulation is like settling for a single drop of water on your tongue, when you’re dying of thirst. When there’s a cold, clean fountain flowing right next to you. The drugs make you crave not just physical release, but human contact. We gave in after less than two days, because the alternative was to lose our minds.”
“Lord above…” I breathe, moved as much by the memory of torment clearly visible in his eyes as by his words themselves.
“Of course, Dreyer already knew it would come to that. I wasn’t the first one locked in there with her. But she was kind enough to let me figure it out on my own. To let me resist as long as I could.”
“That’s why her scars are different. On her arms. You and the other men have these seams, which allow your weapons to emerge from your skin.” I reach over and run one finger along the line running down the entire underside of his left forearm. “But Dreyer’s arms are actually scarred. With claw marks. She tried to dig the capsules out, didn’t she?”
“Over and over,” Vaughn confirms. “There were five of us men, so we were on a five-month rotation. But Dreyer was stuck in that room every damn month. She had it worse than any of us, because she was the only woman.”
“Doesn’t that always seem to be the way?”
That haunted look echoes from his gaze again, focused on me this time. “Those days are ove
r for you, Grace. The crew and I are no longer prisoners, and Silas will never lay a hand on you.” He laces the fingers of his left hand through mine. “I will spend the rest of my life standing between you and anything unpleasant life tries to throw at you.”
An ache throbs in my chest, and my sudden urge to touch him has nothing to do with sex. It’s a much more intimate and frightening need. One I can’t remember ever feeling before. Not with the Sisters, who may or may not exist. Not with Silas or Meshach. Not even with Damaris or her daughters, who were the only people on Gebose I regularly spoke to.
This need is…connection. I want to know Vaughn. I want to understand how and why he is who he is, and how I could possibly fit into that. How I could possibly deserve this kind of devotion from a man I just met. A man whose strength and kindness he has pledged as my sword and shield.
“I’m sure you did what you could for Dreyer,” I assure him.
“She made the best of it. She tried like hell to find the whole thing funny, and she never made us feel guilty.” As his praise for her fades in the air between us, his focus narrows on me again. “And that’s what I wanted to tell you. That it was never romantic between us. We didn’t choose what happened. And while I would step in front of a tank for Dreyer, just as I would for any member of our crew, my history with her will not resonate into my future with you. She is not your competition. You have no competition.”
I blink at him, stunned to realize that after baring his heart to me—showing me who he is, by showing me where he’s been—this is what worries him. This has been the point of his confession.
I lay my hand on the side of his face, feeling the stubble that has grown there in the hours since we met. “I am not worried about your relationship with Dreyer. Nor do I feel any sort of distrust for her. I like her even more, now that I know what she’s been through. I’m grateful that it wasn’t strangers forced upon her. And I hope the two of you found at least a fraction of the pleasure in each other’s company that you and I found together on Miscellany. That seems to be the very least that fate owed the two of you, after what it put you both—you all—through.”
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