Lex Talionis

by Keira Michelle Telford

  It hurts.

  He’s too big, pushing too deep, and she’s too dry to feel anything but an extreme burning sensation coursing through her insides, the pain of the friction becoming almost unbearable when he starts to move harder and faster.

  Wincing, she clenches her fists around the bed sheets, her knuckles white with tension, and she squeezes her eyes tightly shut, her lips pinched together so that she doesn’t make the slightest sound.

  Then, the door bursts open.

  Blinded by the glare spilling in from the hallway lights, Ria opens her eyes, but can’t make out any more than the vague silhouette of a female form standing in the doorway. A second later, she feels Cutler withdraw from her, a thick, globulus string of pre-ejaculatory fluid clinging to her labia, forming a bridge of ooze between the tip of his cock and her body.

  He stumbles off the bed, snapping the bridge, having to look twice at the unwelcome visitor to make sure his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him.

  They’re not.

  It’s the barmy foreigner from Trefaldwyn.

  “Asshole!” Silver barks, the sight of him balls deep in Ria triggering an ingrained primal reflex to defend, protect, and avenge.

  “You’re tougher than you look.” Cutler pulls up his trousers, tucking away his now flaccid manhood.

  “Thanks to you, I’m about as tough as you look.” She draws her hunting knife and reconsiders that. “Actually, I’m tougher, since I have a knife in my hand and all you have is a limp dick between your legs.”

  He contemplates lunging for his weapons on the dresser, but Silver’s perfectly positioned to drive her blade into him before he has any chance of reaching his gun. He stays where he is.

  “You were dead.”

  Silver puts a hand over her heart, checking for a heartbeat, becoming exaggeratedly relieved when she finds one. “Not anymore.”

  Ria might not be able to make out the face of the person standing in her doorway, but the voice is unmistakable. Heartbroken, ashamed, and horrified that Silver should’ve seen her in such a state—being penetrated like a doggess—she curls up into a tight ball and hugs one of her pillows, crying uncontrollably.

  Distracted by Ria’s distress, Silver takes her eyes off Cutler, giving him a chance to spring at her and catch her off-guard. Unfortunately for him, she’s already a lot stronger. Her reflexes are much improved, too, and he’s not even able to disarm her.

  Their strengths now matched, her expertise and formal training in hand-to-hand combat give her a distinct advantage.

  Thud.

  Bump.

  Smash!

  Ria huddles against the headboard, her eyes closed again. She can’t bear to watch, too afraid that she might witness Silver getting hurt. Or worse, watch her be killed for the second time in one day.

  She hears heavy bodies throw one another into furniture, knocking things over, smashing ornaments. She hears clothing rip, sliced by a blade. Which one of them has the knife? She dreads to think.

  One of them grabs hold of the crumpled duvet, pulling it clean off the bed as they fall to the floor by the footboard, making the mattress jiggle.

  Ria’s toes curl, her whole body rigid with fear. She tries to distinguish between Silver’s breath sounds and Cutler’s, but she can’t. Cutler groans and grunts, exerting force against something, those noises quickly followed by a female utterance of pain.

  Some words are exchanged: hatred, annoyance, and frustration from both parties. Something falls to the floor. The knife? Something cracks. Bone? Cutler roars, his guttural rumble vibrating through the room.

  Metal tears through flesh.

  Metal grates against bone.

  There’s a throaty gurgle, and then …

  The rasping breath sounds are reduced to one, and Ria feels someone move. Shaking all over and choking for air, she feels the presence move closer.

  “Ree.” Silver crouches by the edge of the bed. “Look at me.”

  Relief flows through Ria, but she keeps her eyes closed and shakes her head, whimpering faintly. The trauma of the last few minutes renders all manner of logical thought impossible, her synapses firing chaotically.

  “Please say something.” Silver tries to solicit some kind of acknowledgement from her, but receives nothing back.

  She reaches out to touch Ria’s face, but realizes her hands are covered in blood. Looking around for a rag, she snatches Cutler’s shirt off the floor and wipes the sticky red goop off her hands and forearms, then bunches the shirt up and throws it over his glassy-eyed face, hiding his ugly, dead mug from view.

  “Ria,” she tries again. “Pah-zhah-loo-stuh.”

  Her attempt to say ‘please’ in Russian has the desired effect: Ria opens her soft brown eyes, teardrops clinging to her eyelashes.

  “Look at you …” Her voice is whisper quiet. She extends a hand and tickles her fingertips down Silver’s cheek. “Your eyes …” She looks over Silver’s body, admiring her new outfit. “And your clothes …”

  “I’ve had a makeover.” Silver smiles, trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere in the room, the stench of nonconsensual sex still pervading it.

  But it’s going to take a lot more than that. Ria’s emotionally whiplashed, having gone from the sheer ecstasy of this morning’s attempted lovemaking, to the utter devastation of watching Silver die, only to have her lover returned to her while she was in the midst of forced coitus with the man who just kidnapped her.

  It’s more than she can cope with, and she stares vacantly at violet-eyed Silver, not knowing what in the world she’s supposed to say. She blinks, causing one or two of the trapped teardrops to cascade down her face.

  “I thought you were dead,” she says at last.

  “I was.” Silver strokes Ria’s stockinged calf. “For a few minutes.”

  “How did … ?” Ria isn’t sure how to ask the question.

  “Old war injuries.” Silver taps her chest. “I’ve got armor on the inside, so if you ever want to kill me, you should aim for the head.”

  Her humor’s not doing anything for Ria.

  Struggling to control her shaking limbs, she scooches to the edge of the bed and reaches for Silver’s waistcoat. She undoes the top two buttons, fumbling dreadfully, then does the same with the shirt beneath, exposing Silver’s bare chest down to her bust.

  Her fingers cold and trembling, she glides her hand between Silver’s breasts, seeking out the place where she was shot, finding only a small clotted wound.

  “You were willing to die for me.” She keeps her hand there.

  “Don’t sound so surprised.” Silver seeks out Ria’s other hand and clasps it between hers. “You are worth dying for.”

  The bandage on her damaged hand catches on one of Ria’s fingernails, drawing the young nurse’s attention there magnetically, the sight of another wound triggering her reflex to tend and mother.

  “You’re hurt more.” In the panic and the kerfuffle of Silver’s tussle with Cutler in Trefaldwyn, she hadn’t seen it happen.

  “Didn’t your mother always say a kiss makes everything better?” Silver prompts her toward closeness.

  Needing very little in the way of enticement, Ria brings Silver’s hand to her mouth and kisses the bandage, then turns her lips on Silver’s chest. The kiss there lingers, leaving behind the perfect imprint of her lips in crimson lipstick before she tugs Silver’s sleeve off her previously injured shoulder, finding the stitches removed, the gash now sealed with fresh pink skin.

  She kisses it anyway, her lips then trailing up to Silver’s neck, the comfortingly familiar smell of peaches and lavender luring her closer. Pushing Silver back on her heels, she slides off the bed and onto her lover’s lap.

  “Derzhi menya.” She wraps her arms around Silver’s shoulders. “Hold me.”

  Silver readily obliges, holding her so tightly she can hardly breathe.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner.” She rubs Ria’s back from shoulders to tailbone. “I cou
ld’ve stopped him from—”

  “Why do you want me?” Ria wails, beginning to sob again. “Your affections are so unflinching, and I don’t know how I deserve you. You make me feel so good, even when things are so wretched and awful.”

  “You deserve to feel good, Ree.” Silver keeps holding her.

  “But I lied to you.” She sobs harder. “This isn’t a family thing at all.” She holds up her tattooed wrist, keeping her face buried against Silver’s neck. “It’s the mark of a case vrow: a prostitute tied to a—”

  “I know.” Silver kisses her wrist, smothering the tattoo with her lips. “And I don’t care.”

  Ria sits upright to better capture her eyes, certain that once the truth’s explained properly, Silver’s devotion will diminish.

  “I don’t think you understand. Luther didn’t make me a whore, I was a whore when he found me.”

  “I know,” Silver assures her.

  Ria sniffs, her tears momentarily stemmed. “How long for?”

  “A while.”

  “And you don’t think less of me? You don’t find me vulgar? Or cheap?”

  “A job’s a job—it’s not who we are. Nobody understands that better than me.” The memories of her past as an executioner are never far from her mind. “We’ve all done things we’d rather not do because we need the money. It’s survival. Besides, you know the worst things there are to know about me, and it doesn’t change the way you look at me.”

  She nuzzles Ria’s cheek, clammy with tears, and rubs their noses together, inching toward her mouth to steal a tender, chaste kiss from her soft lips. The loving contact works magic, opening Ria up to spill her heart’s deepest secrets—the truths she’d found too shameful to admit before.

  “We did need the money very badly—my younger sisters and I.” Ria lays her palm flat against Silver’s chest, feeling her lover’s steady heartbeat, deliberately avoiding the sight of Cutler’s leaking corpse. “Our mother died when we were children, and our father became very ill. He couldn’t work, and we fell behind on the rent. There were too many mouths, not enough food, and the hospital only paid me minimum wage. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You don’t have to explain yourself.”

  “I want to.” Ria wipes her eyes on the corner of a pillow and continues. “My father had a warrant out for his arrest. He was going to be sent to debtors’ prison, where he’d surely have died, and I couldn’t let that happen. I’d heard that the militia had found a way to override the CPS control of the nanites in our blood: a way to activate the deactivated. See, if he were activated, the virus would’ve destroyed the cancer that was killing him. It would’ve saved his life.”

  “So you took him out of the city?”

  Ria nods. “On a temporary permit. I told the border guards I thought the country air might do him some good in his final months.”

  “But you brought him to Birmingham instead.” Silver can see where this is leading.

  More nodding. “I didn’t have any money, so I offered myself to Luther in exchange for the black market virus.”

  “What happened? Wait, let me guess: he was the one who told you it was a myth?”

  “Uh-huh.” Ria sighs.

  “But it’s clearly real.” Silver points in Cutler’s direction.

  “I didn’t meet Cutler until much later. When I did, I confronted Luther about it, but he said Cutler was an anomaly. He said the infection couldn’t be transferred.”

  “But—” Silver points to her own eyes.

  “I know.” Ria looks forlorn. “I knew that was a lie when I first saw Linx. It was all too late anyway. Luther denied me help, and I should’ve gone home right then, but my father was too weak to travel. We couldn’t go back to London together, and I wasn’t going to leave without him, so I stayed and nursed him till the end.”

  “What about your travel permit?”

  “It expired. I needed a way to smuggle myself back into London.”

  “So you went back to Luther,” Silver pieces together the series of unfortunate events that led to her captivity.

  “I didn’t know what else to do. He said I could work off the fee for returning me to London, but …”

  “He didn’t hold up his end of the deal,” Silver completes the predictable sentence for her.

  Ria shakes her head. “Months went by, and before I knew it, a year had come and gone since I’d left home. I got desperate.”

  “So you escaped.”

  “I had no idea where I was going, I just kept walking. I barely slept or ate for two days, and I didn’t know Luther was looking for me until Slade’s men picked me up outside of Manchester.”

  “Then I found you.” Silver rubs noses with her.

  “I reckon we should’ve left you there in that rat infested tunnel.” Carmen is standing in the doorway, glaringly grimly at Cutler’s cadaver. “This is all your fault.” She kicks the bottom of his foot, making sure that he’s properly dead. “Luther’s going to flip his lid when he finds out we’ve killed his best mate.”

  “It’s not Ria’s fault Luther’s a psycho,” Silver sticks up for her lover. “Anyway, if you want to start pointing fingers, you’re the one who’s really to blame for this.”

  “How?” Carmen challenges her to follow that accusation through with an explanation. “What did I do?”

  “If we’d have gone with Bentley and Chapin, and taken the longer route around the Angau, we’d have arrived in Trefaldwyn a day later. Cutler would have come and gone already, and we’d be off on our way to London by now.”

  “No, she’s right,” Ria flatly defends Carmen’s condemnation of her. “It is my fault. I should never have let you travel with me. I knew there was a reward out for me—Slade told me so—and I knew then that Luther would never stop looking. He’s relentless.”

  “Wait.” Carmen processes that. “You knew there was a price on your noggin and you didn’t bother to say anything? The whole of Mercia was on the lookout for you, and you didn’t think that was worth a little mention?”

  “I was afraid. I—”

  “I knew.” Silver astonishes them both. “I knew before we left D10.”

  Overwhelmed by the depth of Silver’s commitment to her, and by the fact that nothing seems to sway her from the desire to seek romance and intimacy, Ria chokes on the air in her lungs, finding it difficult to breathe.

  “Milaya, if you knew the danger, why did you come?”

  The answer should be obvious.

  Ria’s bum is cradled in Silver’s lap, her porcelain thighs peeking out between skirt and stockings, her slender waist cinched into a steel boned corset, her plentiful breasts spilling out of it—she’s spectacular.

  Unable to resist, Silver sneaks a furtive hand beneath the skirt. “Because I wanted you.” She caresses Ria’s bare ass.

  Carmen huffs. “Oh, please. Don’t make me upchuck. You know as well as I do that you’re only coming with us ‘cause it suits your own needs.”

  “That’s not true.” Silver shoots her a threatening glance, hoping to shut her up before she reveals something unflattering.

  “Bollocks.” Carmen doesn’t back down. “I overheard you yakking to your husband about it. You do still remember that you have a husband, don’t you? He’s that rather gruff bloke who tried to talk you out of going to London to bump off the King.”

  Aghast, Ria pushes Silver’s groping hand away. “That’s why you want to go to London?”

  “She used you,” Carmen cuts in, giving Silver no opportunity to explain herself. “You’re the excuse she fed her hubby so he wouldn’t stop her. She was going to use me, but then you came along and I s’pose you’re more her type. What with you being all buxom and sexually available and whatnot.”

  “You were planning on going to London all along?” Ria is devastated, her eyes pleading for Silver to deny it. “You let me believe …”

  She begins to pull away, scrambling to get off Silver’s lap and back up onto the bed, but Silver k
eeps hold of her, seizing her hips.

  “I’ve never lied to you.” She makes Ria look at her. “Everything we’ve shared is real, I swear.” She tugs Ria forcefully back onto her lap.

  Ria’s naked butt cheeks slap against Silver’s leather kicksies, causing her to emit an involuntary, pleasantly surprised ‘oof’ when their bodies come together.

  “So you’re calling me a fibber, then?” Carmen crosses her arms, wholly unaware of Ria’s sudden flare of arousal. “Why would I make something like that up? Huh?”

  “Things were very different when I first made that deal with you.” Silver tries to concentrate on Carmen, despite the very unexpected and powerful realization that she can smell Ria’s body seeping moisture. “I had my own reasons for wanting to go to London,” she says, speaking to Carmen, but looking at Ria. “And I thought we could help each other.” Her voice drifts slightly as she and Ria lock eyes.

  The musky scent of Ria’s sexual excitement fills her nostrils, stirring her own carnal needs and electrifying her other senses—and Ria can tell.

  She’d heard that the black market virus enhances certain sensory perceptions beyond the limits of what normal activation can achieve, and the thought that Silver is now able to identify the very faintest hint of her weeping cunt has her body surging with another wave of lust—this one stronger. She watches Silver’s eyes widen in response, her head slightly tilted, her lips parted in wonder.

  Holy fuck.

  Feeling her passions trickling between her labia, Ria’s face floods with color and she averts her gaze, lifting her hips slightly, worried that she might leave a telltale damp patch on Silver’s kicksies.

  “Bozhe moy,” she mutters under her breath.

  My god.

  “Listen”—Silver tries to avoid sensory overload by bringing the conversation back on track—“your people came to my city and destroyed everything I’d ever worked for. My father is dead because your government’s idea of social reform involves a pair of fighter jets and a few gallons of napalm. So yes, I did have ulterior motives when I first made up my mind to go to London, but I let all of that go the moment I realized I was falling for you.”