“Any of them nicer than you?”
“When annoyed? Worse. This is why we need to talk.”
“Oh? You really think that? I had thought...”
He’d rattled her. He was getting somewhere.
“I do think that. You did well, getting the gun.”
“This?” She screwed up her mouth and examined the weapon from a few angles. Then she aimed it to the side and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, of course. Gio sighed. “You were too calm for someone like you with a gun aimed at them by someone like me.”
That was a fast deduction. A lot faster than he’d expected. Admiration crept in. “Someone like me?”
“A sadistic asshole.” After waggling the gun, she sat on the floor, cross-legged, with the weapon in her lap. It was a position guaranteed to make most males stare at a naked woman.
“I am that. And happy to be.”
“That sigil mark recognition is also in the grip?”
He folded his arms, deciding she had enough information. Besides, she might get the idea that lopping off his hand would let her also fire the gun.
“Fine. Don’t say.”
“I wanted to talk and thought you’d feel...safer, with that in your hand.”
The stare she sent said she’d never feel safe in his presence, and he smirked. He was happy with that too.
“I know you can lie, Ryke, and that you’re perfectly at ease hurting me or anyone, if it helps you do your job. If we talk, how can I trust your answers?”
It was a point he’d not solved yet. “I don’t know. Let’s keep talking. We might surprise ourselves.”
“Why do you even want to? You hold all the cards; all the power is in your hands. What possible advantage can you get from this?” The swallow this time was slow and obvious. “This is a trick, isn’t it? Just to get me off balance.”
“It’s not.” Move by incremental move, so as not to scare her, Ryke sat on the bed then shifted until his back was against the headboard. “I have problems. So do you. I’m fairly sure I don’t even know all my problems.” He rubbed his face. Fuck, that was the truth.
Ormrad and Gyle. Ormrad...Gyle. The king. He lost himself wondering, the room blurring. What had happened?
He began again. “What I want from you...is for you to help me without reservation, to find out how we can make new portals. So, I’ll be nicer and you help me. Simple.”
“And you think I’ll help you better if you’re nice? Give me a gun I can’t shoot? Yet you know I won’t give this up if it hurts humans, and...and what you just did to me was supposed to be an example of nicer? Jesus, man. Why are you really offering this?”
“What?” He looked to her again. She was refusing after saying she wanted to talk? The machinations of her arguments would do his brain in. He couldn’t tell her he wanted this because he wanted her to love him enough to hand over the info.
He was beginning to feel he’d stepped feet first into a quagmire that was rising above his head. Could he fool her or fake this love thing well enough?
“So you’re saying if you find a mage, you won’t tell me? Then why are you talking?”
“Because.” She shook her head. “This is like a merry-go-round. Maybe I prefer nice to being...played with. But you won’t believe that, will you?”
He might. Ryke smiled.
“Fact. We both want to find a new portal mage.” Gio put down the gun and slid it halfway to him, across the ivory floor. “Too small a gun for me anyway.”
He popped his eyebrows upward.
“I need a bigger one if I’m to kill you.”
He had to bite back a guffaw. What bravery the girl had, to joke, now. He actually didn’t care about her reasons. Anything to get her off the edge and thinking he wasn’t her enemy. Enemies... Hmmm.
“You want a portal mage to help your people, and me for mine.”
“Yes. You know that.” He folded his hands together, rotated his thumbs around each other. “I was thinking we both have the same enemies now. If we call it a truce down here, we can then work efficiently toward figuring out if there’s a chance to find this...mage. So again, I will promise to treat you better, if you help me to the best of your abilities. We sort out what we do with this information when we find it.”
“Yes.”
He frowned, waited for elaboration on that yes. “What do you mean?”
“I agree.”
Well then. He sighted between his big feet, his toes, at the woman framed by them. “Then let’s sort out the details.”
He had a feeling neither of them was being truthful and he had a headache from all the thought flip-flopping. He never got those.
“No sex either.” Her mouth firmed.
His smile must have looked evil but she deserved it. “I have limits. I’m not going to –”
“None.”
Something about the impertinent assumption that he’d even go near this clause amused him immensely. And the implied challenge that she could or would say no if he wanted to fuck her.
The one thing he was excellent at was reading psychology – reading what people really meant deep down in their heads. All this other crap and the politics going on upstairs, maybe not quite his best talent. But this, yes.
“Be thankful I’m not sticking you on a fuckspear in the middle of the farm and making you scream with the accuator up you. I will go this far. No fucking. Anything else, touching you, is my territory, my prerogative.”
Her paleness was not imagined. He could and would make her get down on her knees and beg to be fucked, again. In his own time. It would be sweeter to do this than merely to force her physically. He made meals of challenges.
“Fucking is penetration. With anything.” She stared, unblinking, obviously trying not to show any emotions.
“Mmm. It is. Deal?” He sneaked up a brow, watched as her focus snapped to that eyebrow. Guess his general expression was intimidating to a little piece of prey like she was. Little sweet victim.
He could go slow with this. He could do courtship. It was that, wasn’t it? He’d never quite figured out that ritual, but she’d be eating out of his hand and purring soon.
“To be honest,” she said slowly. “I think you have bigger problems coming than whether you have portals to my world.”
Where was this heading? “What? Why?”
“I’m unsure if I’m right. It’s more a gut feeling than anything.”
“You have some fact you’re withholding and I don’t like that. I’m beginning to think you’re as good at torturing as I am.”
“I told you, I’m unsure. When I am, I will say. You know... I see that you care about your people deeply and that is the one thing that makes me believe there is some good in you.”
“Good? Good never gets you what you want.”
Chapter 15
Well, that was a depressing way to sum up morality. Good never gets you what you want. Gio hesitated. He’d said that as if it were set in stone. This was why Ryke did what he did. Why he was who he was. That and duty.
“Go get cleaned up again and shower.” Ryke shoved the pile of clothes off the bed with his foot. He glared. “Don’t let me see you with another weapon or everything we said is negated, gone.”
She wasn’t courageous enough to move until he flopped back onto the bed and put his forearm over his face. If he watched her still, she wasn’t sure. Carefully she searched through the pile – his coat and clothes, the kol suit, the bondage gloves. Ugh. She sat back on her heels for a moment before standing.
Nothing was of use. “Ummm.”
“If there’s nothing there to wear you like...and I suppose there’s not, you have my permission to search this place. Now go. I’m thinking.”
She went. Joy bubbled in her heart. Explore? This was a freedom she’d not had for weeks and weeks.
Plus he hadn’t throttled her. She’d made some wickedly bad jokes at his expense and he hadn’t killed her. It felt as if the horrific vice she’d been
in for months had loosened, a little.
He was going to be nice-er. If only she was sure he was A truthful and B she knew exactly what that meant. He’d fucked her hard, actually stuck his cock in her, and then dropped this bombshell.
Talk.
Be nicer.
Co-operate.
Though ready to turn into a puddle on the floor after that hot-as-fuck sex, she was not going to show it. A hot man was not a reason to forsake her morality or her humanity. Especially not one who terrified her.
What and why and who and a heap of complex questions swirled about in her mind.
She might be wrong about her gut feeling. She hoped so. Not simply because anything bad that happened to the landship might also hurt her people – because in the Underdeck there seemed to be more to Mekkers than cruelty. Badh didn’t like killing. Perhaps some of them could be good people? She had a good track record with hunches and gut feelings. After all her degrees were taken into account, it was an apt description of her occupation.
She wandered down the hallway that led to the bathroom. Everything was monster-sized. The bed lay in the middle of a monster-sized floor. The bathroom could house ten people, easily. She tiptoed in, pleased to see the water had drained away, and peered up at the shower heads. These reminded her of corn stalks, big fat bulging metal ones, bowed over by the weight of their seed. Or an alien dick?
Her mind was focused too much on dicks. She turned the shower on at the wall. Taps were taps at least – things that turned and did not look in any way like cocks. That the water ran after what Ryke had said was a century of neglect seemed astounding. Her dishwasher had died after five years. Mekkers were great at plumbing, at least.
That was one plus. Needed more before she’d award them a Nobel prize.
Gio aimed the shower head at the wall then leaned into the cream surface with both hands, letting the warm water sluice over her, easing her aches, her hurts, and her mind also. Water soothed.
Was she doing the right thing by giving in to him for a while? It seemed so. She couldn’t have kept on the way she had or she’d have fallen apart. Even now her arms shook.
After an eternity of washing, she turned off the water, dried herself, and wandered out, naked still. The towels were too stiff to use as gowns and there was no one here who hadn’t seen all of her.
She sneaked down hallway after hallway, into bedroom after bedroom. This place was too quiet for her to feel safe or comfortable making loud noises. Something might find her. The fine hairs on her neck goose-bumped erect more than a few times. She gave up counting after seven bedrooms. Of course a king would have more than one, though the one Ryke had found seemed the grandest. After searching in a few wardrobes and trying on many gowns, lingerie, and other matching outfits, all of which disintegrated when she tried to walk in them, she ended up eyeing curtains and thinking longingly of the towels or the quilt Ryke lay on.
The quilt on the last bed had been brown and shriveled.
Ryke had looked as if he might go to sleep.
If she sneaked that out from under him...he’d be angry, if she woke him. An angry Ryke was a terrible idea. Except it brought to mind his eyes while he’d pinned her to the bed with his cock and his body, while he searched for a leash and bondage. That memory made her tingle in places she did not want to be reminded of, places he’d held, kissed, and entered with that cock.
“Jesus.” Gio wiped her mouth, squeezed shut her bleary eyes.
The curtain was good enough. Although the bed in Ryke’s room hadn’t fallen apart, if she slept in this bed she might wake up a foot deep in powdered mattress and bedding.
She tugged on the curtain covering a floor-to-ceiling window, with glass thick enough to distort what lay beyond. She barely noticed the drop beyond and the blue scenery, and she tumbled into the pile of curtain, and curled up. She hid her eyes with her hand and dropped toward sleep. Safe...
Funny how she thought safe merely because she was alone.
A landship chewed past, eating the countryside, eating people, making everything run away, until with a lurch it fell off the edge of the world, falling, tumbling over and over, flinging people, objects, Ryke, guns, and clods of earth at her face.
Somewhere near and yet also far, a something whispered, Welcome.
Someone shook her shoulder, softly, then rougher. “Wake up, Gio. Wake up.”
She uncurled, stretching stiff muscles and half sat up, fumbling beneath her with hand and arm to prop herself upright.
“Sorry?” Who was this?
Oh fuck. Ryke. The man swam into clarity.
“The doctor has arrived.” He wandered off and sat on the bed, unleashing a small cloud of dust that made him cough and wave his hand. “Some of these rooms are worse than others.”
There was a doctor?
Then he shifted to an armchair and reclined, waiting, like a predatory hawk – one that only wore dark pants and no shirt. Why couldn’t the man be a pigeon some days?
A matching sofa was in a corner. She could’ve slept on that except she’d missed seeing it.
Gio yawned and found the curtain had slipped to her waist and she was nude. Strangely, clothes hadn’t materialized while she dreamed.
The doctor stood off to the side eying her skeptically. His instruments, or whatever he’d brought, seemed to be in a brown, hide-covered case resting on a low table. She squinted at it then him. Tall man, gray face with pudgy features and a pursed mouth. His hair was thin, raven black, and fell straight to his shoulders, and was possibly loaned from a corpse.
“Sorry...about the lack of clothes.” Why was she apologizing? She’d never met a Mekker who cared one jot if a female human was naked.
“It’s not clothes that concern me; it’s your neck, your collar, that you’re a slave.”
Ryke shifted, slumped in the depths of his chair. “Really?” He was relaxed and in his element, lurking, his thighs strong, voice rumbling. His abdominals cut into his skin like steps up his torso, leading to where his chin leaned on his hand.
Something alluring about this entire arrogant male display made her want to crawl over and smell him...a desire disturbing enough to warrant a trip to a psychiatrist.
“Badh must have explained this. I messaged him.”
“He said you were here under orders from the king. That we must conceal what she is and remove the collar. I’m still not sure why.”
“For the good of the ship,” Ryke added curtly. “It’s all you need to know.”
The doctor stood silently, ramrod straight and disapproving.
“I want the collar off her, and I want the hole healed sufficiently that no one will notice it.”
“Aerthe healing too then.” The doctor sniffed. “I could do this, though I’m not good at it.”
Whatever Aerthe healing was.
Gio pushed herself to her knees then climbed to her feet. The man was so reluctant. If he blabbed about this and her, everything would come undone. Everything. She’d be dead, or returned to men who wouldn’t hesitate to add more torture to what Ryke had done. Her fears looming, she wrapped her arms about her chest to conceal how her nipples had hardened.
“Yes.” Ryke waited. “Correct. You want more, don’t you?”
“Yes. This is illegal and likely to cause problems that could have grave ramifications. A slave, here?” He stared from under his brow. “I respect you greatly, yet...”
If Ryke wouldn’t say it then she must. Gio opened her mouth only to catch the frown Ryke threw at her. She snapped shut her mouth.
He sat forward in his chair, hands wrapped over the armrests. “This is not to be told to others. I am the King’s Own Lawgiver. It is how I opened up the residence. It’s why I know this is vital. I need her to be safe here. I promise she will not interfere in the work we Underdeckers do. Clear? Good enough?”
“Oh. Oh. I see.” The doctor looked from him to her then strode to his equipment. “I can indeed be discreet. But you are the King’s Own! In
credible, though I might have guessed, what with you being up there for so many years. Twelve?”
“Yes, that.” Ryke subsided into the chair again. “Twelve. It’s been a long time.”
“You’re away for most of the year too.” He held up a severely long pair of forceps and advanced to Gio. “You, girl. I need still. Can’t do this while you stand there. If you faint...” He tsked. “The chair would be best. Could you vacate it, dear Ryke?”
Dear? She grinned in spite of the insects fluttering in her stomach – couldn’t be butterflies, they didn’t have those here.
Ryke stood, unfolding, rippling where muscles shifted in the light. It occurred to her how suited he’d be on a card, as the Jack of Spades, the one most suited to a killer.
At the doctor’s direction, Gio seated herself in the big chair, wedged into a corner since he didn’t want her to move unexpectedly. The port opening on the collar was on the exposed side of her neck.
“You must not jump or I could put this through your neck, girl.” The doctor held up the forceps.
“I won’t.” Fuck, she’d better not.
“Want me to tie her there?” Ryke drawled.
She shot him an alarmed look and he grinned.
“No. I think we’ll be fine. Close your eyes and hold your breath when I tell you to. There will be some blood spilled,” he muttered, as he unlocked something on the collar with the forceps. “Hold your breath.”
She did. Her throat stung then a long, sickening, dragging sensation began and she strived not to throw up what wanted to be delivered from her stomach.
Hold your breath. Hold your breath. Think of a field of daisies. Yellow. Swaying. Breeze.
The slide of what felt like a worm crawling up through her chest halted. The doctor pressed something soft to her neck and pulled away the collar. She heard it drop to the floor.
“Done. All that’s left is to seal up the hole.”
She breathed, lightheaded but a little triumphant. That awful thing was gone. Now if only she could avoid another being placed.
With his hand wrapped over her neck and the port site, the sting faded slowly, then vanished.
Branded Possession (The Machinery of Desire Book 3) Page 10