by Nya Rayne
When he’d sat there on the floor of her bedroom waiting for her to awaken, he had to fight with himself not to crawl into bed with her and curl his body around hers. The urge to be near her and to be with her was so strong he could taste it. He couldn’t understand it and had tried all night to figure it out. The more he tried, the more confused he became. He’d watched her for some time as she slept and had even dared to reach out and brush his fingers across her furrowed brow. A part of her called to him and part of him wanted to answer loudly and with pride.
He hadn’t forgotten they’d made love. He hadn’t forgotten how pliant and ready her body was for him. He hadn’t forgotten the way he’d felt during those times. The emotions that had roared through him had seemed so pure and so valid. Now, he couldn’t tell for sure whether he himself had done it of his own free will or whether they had programmed him to feel such ardor.
With all the confusion and turmoil roiling through him, there was only one thing he was sure of. Phia had bought him as if he were no more than a pair of trousers or a one-of-a-kind pair of pumps. He was expendable to her. When he was gone, she would buy another one.
Chapter Thirteen
Her mother had always told her to be careful what she asked for, because she might get it. Until now, she hadn’t known how true a statement it was.
Phia sat in Dr. Lobush’s office and glanced from Donté to the good doctor, who hadn’t asked for this when she’d tried to help her silly dream come true. Of course, Dr. Lorraine Lobush couldn’t have imagined this happening in a million years.
Except here he was in her face, snarling at her, a living, breathing man who was under no one’s control and would probably never be. He said what he felt when he wanted to and he dared anyone to say something back to him. He was like a dog, pissing on what he considered his territory.
The newly awakened imbecile had sneered at several women on the tram, without apology, and purposely tripped a FAP carrying groceries. He’d punched a PAP in the shoulder and spat at another one, and had even knocked the hat off the FAP driving the tram. When her mother had called her while they were on the tram, she’d tried ignoring the calls, but on one of her simultaneous callbacks, Donté had snatched her purse from her, dug through it, and answered the call. He’d actually talked to her mother for a fraction of a second as if nothing was wrong with him. Then he snarled at her, called her a bleeding pig, and tossed the device out the tram window.
What had she said she wanted in a man? Oh, yeah, unpredictability. What the hell had she been thinking? One night with his memories back and he was acting like an obnoxious fool. It was like he was behaving this way on purpose. What he hoped to garner from such behavior was beyond her. Maybe, just maybe, men were better off where they were, especially if they all behaved in the manner Donté did. And weren’t some bound to behave worse than he did?
Now he was speaking coolly, as an equal, to the doctor. “I don’t think you have a choice in the matter,” he said.
“Are you nuts? No! I won’t do that!”
“Put it like this: if you don’t give me the information I want, in less than an hour this entire city will know what you did.” He leered at the doctor and nodded his head at Phia as he finished. “Ask her. I’m sure people are already talking about the dog whose mistress can’t control him.”
Phia glared at Donté, and for the first time wanted to seriously maim him. “For Christ’s sake, give him what he wants,” she said, teeth clenched. “If he wants to go, let him go. I don’t care!”
Dr. Lobush turned to Phia. “I can’t give him what he wants, don’t you see? No one can walk up to one of the Zoos. Especially not a man. Men don’t walk up to Zoos; they’re born in them and carried out of there. He would be captured and disposed of. I’m sorry. I won’t be any part of this.”
“Don’t act like you care so much now, Lorraine,” Donté drawled. “From what I’ve been told by my goddess over there,” he glanced at Phia with a sarcastic glare and continued, “about PAPs and FAPs, what you do doesn’t require you to care too much about anyone.”
Dr. Lobush looked from Donté to Phia and back. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“You scoop out my friends’ brains to make your PAPs without batting an eye, don’t you? You peel the skin from some of them and strap it around your stupid little FAPs, don’t you?” He sat back, an arrogant sneer on his face. “Now is not the time when I need you to have a damn heart.”
Phia scratched her head and stared agape at him. She had told him no such thing. Was he lying? Was he making this up as he went along? “Donté, I never told you any such thing!”
He glared at her, gritted his teeth, and growled, “Between what I’ve been told by the two of you, I figured it out. Human bodies with android brains? Androids with human skin? Please, I’m sure even you were able to figure that much out.”
Phia leaned back, shocked and appalled. Shocked because she hadn’t thought about it long enough to figure it out and appalled because he’d insulted her. “You son of a…” She started in a threatening tone. A brief glint of warmth in his eyes silenced her. She sat back, crossed her legs, and turned her head away. Buzzard! Had she cared about this man? Forty-eight hours ago, had they really been making love? Who the hell was she looking at? This wasn’t her Donté. She couldn’t believe all it took was his memory coming back for him to revert back to this near-beast. Still, Phia could feel love burning even as she raged inside at his blatant disregard for her feelings. It was there, festering like a smoldering fire, ready to jump to life at any moment and devour her.
“Regardless of what you think, I care for every Companion who passes through my facility as if he were of my very own blood,” Dr. Lobush stated, her tone sounding a little defeated. “Even if I wanted to give you the information you seek, you wouldn’t make it out of the city without a chaperone.”
Donté scoffed. “Please, like you cared for me when you were cutting into my damn head?”
“I could have sent you to the Higher Highness to be another one of many,” Dr. Lobush snapped, standing to her feet. “I could have altered everything about you so had you gotten your memories back, you wouldn’t have known who the hell you were looking at! I could’ve scarred your body and removed body parts, but I didn’t! I left you as you were with exception of the memory inhibitor. I did it for her!” She pointed an angry finger in Phia’s direction. “Now, I’m sorry I ever listened long enough to care!” The doctor slammed her hands against the glass-topped desk. “Everything you did, Donté, you did of your own free will. You were never anyone’s puppet!” Dr. Lobush sighed and finished, “You may have been confused at first, but you were you. No one here owes you a damn thing!” Her gaze turned to Phia. “I’m so sorry. When I talked to you, you were so desperate for something so simple. I thought maybe this once if I did the right thing, it would make all the wrong I’ve done weigh on me a little less.”
The three of them sat in silence for what seemed like hours before Donté spoke again. His voice had lost most, if not all, of its edge. “That’s all fine and good, but you will give me the location of my home Zoo.” He leaned forward, his shoulders not as straight or his back as erect as they were previously. “If you want to do the right thing, help me help my friends. Help me save them. You know as well as I do—if they don’t end up on your table, they’ll eventually end up on someone’s table to be vivisected.”
Out of the blue Phia understood everything as if he’d whispered it in her ear. He wasn’t asking to leave her. He wanted to get his friends out of the Zoo. It didn’t excuse his earlier behavior and would not excuse it, but his goal was admirable and made his previous actions just a little less intolerable.
Dr. Lobush stared at Donté for a long moment, a hundred different expressions crossing her face, and Phia had to wonder how the woman could even think to say no to him. Surely she didn’t agree with the manner in which these men were being dealt with? She had to know that, regardless
of what the reason was, holding a person against his will was wrong. Additionally, the Elites hadn’t only lied to Donté and his friends. They had also betrayed her and her community sisters. This could not be allowed to continue.
Phia stood up. “How could you allow this to happen? They’re not animals to be herded or food to be harvested. They’re people like you and me.”
“Phia,” Dr. Lobush said, standing back up, her eyes pleading. “This is not my…”
Phia shook her head, cutting the doctor off. “Shut up! There is nothing you can say to me right now to make me think you’re innocent in all of this! You people, all of you, led us to believe we had no choice but to purchase one of your perfectly crafted personomales if we wanted companionship. None of you thought to tell us you were making them from the one and only thing we truly wanted! You’re disgusting! All of you!” Her voice rose. “I came to you when you knew I didn’t want to. I opened up to you and told you what I wanted!”
“Phia, I gave you what you wanted,” Dr. Lobush countered.
Phia scoffed, angry tears coming to her eyes. “Yes, you did, and look where it’s gotten me. Had you told me he was newly plucked from some zoo where he had been held in captivity his entire life, I think I would’ve reacted a little differently, don’t you?”
Dr. Lobush glared at Phia, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. She could not seem to come up with a suitable reply.
“How could you, a woman like me, with urges and desires, stand by for all these years and allow this to continue? Had Donté not gotten his memories back, had he not dragged me here to ask you for the location of his home Zoo, would you have ever even thought about helping any of these men?” Phia went on.
“That’s not fair!”
Phia growled as anger bubbled up in her like steam from a geyser. “No, what’s not fair is you and your band of Elites have been lying to our entire society since before I was born, and you seem to want to continue with the lie. What’s not fair is you are one of the smartest women on the face of the planet, and you don’t seem to understand what you’re doing is not only killing the male species, it’s sentencing us all to extinction!”
“Ms. Zen, I…”
Phia squared her shoulders and put on her most formidable glower. “You help him, damn it! You help him save the rest of them!”
“You don’t understand. It’s not that simple.”
“Make it simple,” she said through clenched teeth. She knew the only reason Dr. Lobush hadn’t thrown her out was that her mother was Baroness Zen and she was next in line.
Dr. Lobush closed her eyes, sat back down, and turned her chair away from them.
Phia remained where she was, but she could feel Donté watching her. She forced herself not to look at him.
“Phia,” he whispered, “Thank you.”
She sat back down, her eyes averted. “Save your gratitude for someone who cares,” she snapped, though her insides melted the moment her name slipped from his lips. She would not let him think he could treat her any way he wanted, especially now, when all the reins holding him and others like him were about to be broken. She heard him shift after a moment and she swallowed the sob threatening to choke her.
“There might be a way, but it’s going to take all three of us,” Dr. Lobush said. “I don’t want either of you to think this is going to solve the problem, because it won’t. There are ten Zoos here in the states, and others spread all over the world. Even if we broke into your home Zoo and made it out in one piece, it wouldn’t stop anything.”
“Wow, could you sound any more hopeful?” Donté asked.
Phia swallowed, her eyes leaving the doctor’s and traveling to Donté. Even through his grin of satisfaction, his eyes looked sad, broken. She couldn’t understand why, when he was on his way to getting what he wanted. Turning away from him, she asked, “What do we need to do?”
Gloria Gale was a forty-five-year-old woman who, during her younger years, had been known to her friends as Gee-Gee. Daughter to Veronica Gale, one of the Founding Mothers of the Uterlined States, she had always gotten what she wanted when she wanted it. All her life she had been the center of attention, a girl, and then a woman whom others sought to befriend in hopes of raising their own status.
The attention had been something she never shied away from. She was Gloria Gale, a woman born rich, of high blood. She was destined to do magnificent things and accomplish goals others could only dream of. It was as inevitable as the blood running through her veins and the air filling her lungs. She was Glorious Gloria Gale, bound to be the ruler of women and the controller of men.
She was an excellent leader, revered and beloved, idolized and venerated. Her constituents knew she could do no wrong. When she spoke, they listened, and the few who didn’t were taught unmercifully the art of listening. Her words to them, her underlings, rolled off her tongue like airborne opium, drawing them to her, submerging them in a world hazed in wishes for a taste of the life she led.
When she swept into a room, crowds parted, cheers erupted, and shouted salutations resonated from wall to wall. In title, she was the Higher Highness of Serenity, but she knew and they knew, though it would never be spoken out loud, she was their goddess.
She moved from between the warm, naked bodies surrounding her. Justin moaned and rolled to the left, the red satin sheets slipping down his waist so they were barely covering his groin. Aro shifted, rolling onto his firm stomach, his fists shoved beneath the pillow, his broad, hard back smooth in the scant moonlight which filtered in through the windows of her bedroom.
She pulled her red silk robe over her naked, tanned shoulders and shivered against the cool air as she turned away from them. They were her toys, her harem of sorts, and were a joy to behold and to devour.
She hadn’t realized how insatiable her sexual appetite was until Justin had been delivered to her the night of her coronation six years ago. He was a strapping Irishman, who towered over her, his eyes the color of rich emeralds, and his member thick and throbbing for her and what she offered. Until then, she’d lived like the rest of the women she governed, with mechanical men to feast upon. However, when she’d learned there were several Farms concealed throughout the States, filled with real men of varying colors, statures, and heritages, and they were only available to her and others of the Elites, which was made up of past higher highnesses and retired baronesses and secretaries, she’d been beside herself.
Her first night with Justin had blown her mind and led her into a world where she was no longer respected and adored, but feared. She owned him, his body, and his soul and she’d made sure he’d known it.
Six months later, she requested Aro, a large African-American man with eyes the color of a thunderous day. His body, from head to toe, was wrapped in lean muscles. He was a gorgeous man with a voice that melted her heart whenever she allowed him to speak.
She turned and started out of the room, knowing they would sleep until morning. She enjoyed their company and the company of all the others she’d replaced over the years for one reason or another. However, none of them had touched her as Xavier Donté had when she first saw him. He was a man unto himself, a force which could not be tamed, yet he carried himself with such assured calm that it left her with a deep, unquenchable desire to claim him, own him, and break him.
As she had watched his body glide over that of his instructor’s through the one-way glass of the conjugal room, lightning had burned through her veins. When she’d closed her eyes and allowed his words to roll through her head, she shivered with pleasure as a majestic flame began to churn in the pit of her stomach. Had she been the type of woman who needed to beg for anything, she would have begged on bended knee for him.
She pushed the door to the room open and stepped inside. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have come to him this soon after acquiring him, but neither Aro nor Justin had been able to bring her to her end this night. She’d also considered paying Tawny a quick visit,
but remembered the teaching of the third commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” had sent the girl into shock and subsequent heart failure. It was too bad she wouldn’t get to teach her the fourth commandment, which was undoubtedly her favorite: “Thou shalt not fornicate in the house of the Higher Highness.” The agony that passed over each pupil’s face, the pain, and the regret for her slight, were there in every forced grunt as FAP after FAP mounted her. Number Four was the one that seemed to drive the point of the commandments home when it seemed all others had failed.
Gloria wondered often if the women she employed found it hard to not make eye contact with her toys, why they felt the need to touch them—even in passing—and what did they think made it allowable to speak to them, when she was not around or had not given them permission? Did they not understand that what was hers was hers, even before it was brought into her protection? Didn’t they understand the importance of the commandments? Surely they didn’t think she made them up for the hell of it.
“Xavier,” she called, stopping short of the foot of the large, four-poster, king-size bed as she brushed her thoughts away. He sat up, gazing at her, his magenta eyes, her requested choice, gleaming in the darkness. He was undoubtedly glorious, his muscles moving like water over his body as he pushed off the bed and stepped in her direction.
“Yes, Mistress?”
Her hands roamed up over his chest and down his shoulders, squeezing, her nails raking over the tender flesh. “Your mistress is on fire. Can you save her?” She allowed her robe to fall loosely around her naked body and leaned in closer, the heat of his being charring her own.