Asteria - In Love with the Prince
Page 26
“It’s not open yet,” he protested. “Even if it was, we can’t go in there. We’d be spotted straightaway.”
“Go around the back,” I told him. “I have an idea.”
***
A year ago, Gwen – being Gwen – had had a brief thing with an eco-warrior guy she’d met while he was protesting outside the UN. I think he got off on seducing someone from the establishment and she got off on having her bit of rough. It lasted about a month, until she got sick of only having the lights on in one room at a time.
One time, we’d been in some obscure Polish-themed coffee shop – I remember there was a girl in the corner playing the cello – and he’d told us all about being a Freegan.
***
“They throw lots of stuff away,” I explained to Jagor. “In the dumpsters.”
“I know,” he said, confused. “That’s what dumpsters are for.” He helped me over the wall and climbed over himself. Fortunately, freeganism hadn’t quite reached Asteria yet: there was no razor wire on the walls, or chains on the dumpsters.
I opened the first one. Cardboard, for recycling. I moved to the next. Garbage bags – they could have anything in them. Next one. I slid open the lid and found a small mountain of pre-packed sandwiches.
Jagor looked aghast. “Lucy, they’re in the trash.”
“The stores have to throw them out on their sell-by date. They always build some leeway into these things.” I was reciting what eco-guy had told us. “Do you think the food magically turns poisonous one minute after they take it off the shelves?”
He looked half-disgusted, half concerned for my sanity. “Lucy, we can’t!”
“It was a cold night last night,” I reasoned. “Almost as good as a refrigerator.” I rummaged. Egg mayo seemed risky: so did chicken. Cheese seemed a safe bet. I started pulling out packages and throwing them to him.
“But they’ve been in a dumpster,” he said, as if to a child. “With ants. And rats.”
“They’re sealed.” I pulled out something else. A microwave meal: pity we didn’t have any way to cook it. There were some bags of chips, though, and I threw those to him. There was no water, but there were some bottles of cola we could empty and refill.
I went to the next dumpster. We had enough food for a couple of meals, but I was hoping to find something else: the store was big enough to sell...Yes! Clothes. I found something almost immediately, a loose-knit beige sweater festooned with “Sale’ stickers – it had been reduced and reduced and reduced and finally abandoned. I held it up, delighted.
He was gawping at me. “Clothes from the trash?” he asked weakly.
“Help me dig.”
***
When we left, Jagor was in a grey t-shirt and faded blue jeans that actually looked pretty good on him. There were no sweaters for him, but I found a couple of other t-shirts he could layer and – our best find by far – a parka-style jacket that just about fit him. The zipper was broken, but the buttons worked.
I’d found some jeans to go with the sweater and even a vest top to go underneath. We left the tuxedo and what was left of my evening gown behind, although Jagor kept his shirt to use as bandages. Best of all, I found a pair of huge sunglasses that hid most of my face.
As we changed, I saw the frustration on Jagor’s face. Not at me, I realized: at himself. He’d always been the provider, the organizer: always been there to supply me with a new wardrobe, or put together a surprise picnic at an hour’s notice. I loved that about him: the over-elaborate plans, the ways he found to surprise me. Now, without money or his army of staff to help him, he was feeling powerless. I winced. I probably hadn’t helped, getting so lucky with the dumpster diving.
We took off again on the bike. There were a few people around, now, but as long as we didn’t get too close I was reasonably sure we’d get away with it. Near a row of run-down stores, there was a sign for a public restroom. I got Jagor to pull over.
As we descended the dank stairs, I could sense Jagor’s unease. In truth, it was better than a lot of restrooms I’d seen in New York. But it still smelled, and when he saw the bare stainless steel sinks and the cubicles with the broken doors, he blanched.
I was going to joke about it, but something in his expression stopped me. It wasn’t just that he was appalled. He looked...guilty. He knew damn well he was sheltered and he was embarrassed about it. It hit me he’d likely never been inside a public restroom. I looked around the restroom again, as if seeing it for the first time. I tried to imagine what it would look like if all I’d ever known was marble and gold. Urgh.
We scraped a wash – lucky for us, they had paper towels and not hand driers. He carefully washed the cut on my back with soap and tied a piece of his shirt across it. It was a long way from being sterile, but it was the best we had. I dumped out the cola and refilled the bottles with water.
Feeling slightly more human, we went back to the bare apartment and ate. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was: between us, we finished most of the food.
***
We spent the rest of the day there. He told me about growing up in Asteria, about life before his brother was killed. I told him about the UN and Gwen, and how I’d got into languages at school.
“Why did you learn Asterian?” he asked suddenly. “It was useless, back then, to outsiders.”
I felt myself flush. Ever since we first met, I’d been trying to forget about that. I didn’t answer: so he guessed.
“It can’t have been the UN...we didn’t even have a presence there back then. Was it just for the challenge, because it’s so different? But you could have learned Russian, or one of the Scandinavian languages...there was something else.”
I shifted uncomfortably.
“Was it because of the stories you’d heard?” he asked in slow delight.
I said nothing.
“Lucy Snow. All this time, I thought I’d introduced you to this world—”
“You did—”
“But you were already fantasizing about it. Something about slaves: about being owned – you learned a whole language because—”
“I found it interesting—”
“It turned you on.” I was sitting with my back against his chest again, so he pushed me gently to the side so he could see my guilty face. “And I had you pegged as a librarian.”
“It’s always the quiet ones,” I muttered, snuggling up against him.
***
That night, after more cheese sandwiches and chips, we should have slept better – at least we both had coats, now. But I kept waking in the night, feeling cold no matter how closely I held Jagor.
In the morning my head felt fuzzy and heavy, and I couldn’t seem to get warm. We braved the dumpsters again, and this time Jagor did the rummaging while I stood watch, arms wrapped around myself and shivering. He even snuck into the dumpster of the furnishings store across the street and found a couple of blankets, plus a leaking beanbag chair we could use as a pillow.
That night we actually had a bed, of sorts, but it didn’t make any difference. I barely slept, and when I woke I had to crawl outside and vomit.
“It’s probably the food,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.” But by lunchtime I was sweating and shaking. Jagor stripped off my clothes and examined the cut on my back, and I heard his intake of breath.
“It’s infected,” he said. From the fear in his voice, infected was a euphemism. “You need antibiotics.”
“We can’t go to a hospital,” I told him. “Jagor, you’ll be recognized. They’ll turn you in.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
He tried to get me to my feet, but my legs collapsed under me. He picked me up.
“Jagor, please. I’ll be okay.” There were tears in my eyes. “I don’t want you to—”
“I’m not sitting here and watching you die!”
Chapter Twenty One
The next few hours are hazy.
I remember being on the bike, me in front of Jagor with him
leaning over me to reach the handlebars. I remember him swearing at a red light.
He carried me in his arms, my skin clammy, the hair of the blonde wig sticking to my cheeks. With the hood of his coat up to hide his face, he strode into the waiting area...and I remember him just standing there, shocked, looking at all the people waiting to see a doctor. I think he’d assumed you just walked into a hospital and were treated.
It didn’t help that a lot of those waiting looked like rioters, with cuts and bruises and in a few cases tear gas injuries. They were here because they’d been fighting for his family.
We sat in a corner, me on his lap, with him feeding me sips from a bottle of water. An hour passed – maybe two. There were forms to fill in: he ignored them. Eventually a nurse came to collect them, and told him she needed all our details before we could be seen.
“This woman is sick!” he almost yelled. “Just treat her!” Then, closing his eyes in despair, “Please.”
“I’m sorry,” she said a little sniffily. “We have to have your full name and address.”
Jagor suddenly stood up and barged past her, out of the waiting area and into the emergency room. “Doctor!” he yelled, “I need a doctor!”
“Don’t....” I begged from his arms.
A doctor emerged from a curtained area and looked at us with tired, bleary eyes. He told the nurse he’d see to us – probably taking us for a homeless couple, which wasn’t so far from the truth. He showed us into a cubicle. Jagor laid me on a gurney, careful to keep his hood up.
“She has a cut on her back,” he told the doctor. “It’s infected, I think.”
The doctor eased back my raincoat, then stopped in surprise. “Where’s her collar?” he asked.
“She’s mine,” Jagor told him. “I had to take it off: she couldn’t breathe—”
The doctor wheeled on him. “Did you steal this slave?” Jagor was looking away from him, trying to hide his face. “Answer me, or I’m calling security!” He reached for a panic button on the wall.
Jagor turned to face him and flipped back his hood.
“I am the prince of Asteria,” he said. “And this is the Exkella. We need your help.”
The doctor backed into a cart of supplies, tipping it over with an almighty crash. He looked like he was going to have a heart attack and I waited for him to reach for the panic button again.
He stood up...and bowed. Then he stuck his head out of the curtain and told the nurses not to disturb us.
***
We left the hospital with my wound properly cleaned and dressed. The doctor gave me an injection of antibiotics that he assured us would, “Kill every bug in your bloodstream stone, cold dead,” and a follow-up course of pills “Just to make sure.” He wanted to help more, but Jagor refused to let him get in any deeper.
The doctor had information, too. Like everyone else in Asteria, he’d been glued to the internet since the TV and radio started broadcasting endless propaganda. The military was trying to censor the internet as well, but that was proving a lot harder than the rest of the media. A lot of what was flying around on the blogs was unsubstantiated rumor, but the consensus was that the military were firmly in control, the riots were dying out and the King and Queen were still alive, held captive in the palace. There was talk of a possible “public trial’ for them. I knew what the outcome of the supposed trial would be.
“We all support you, you know,” the doctor blurted as we were turning to go. Jagor blinked a few times and then nodded in thanks.
***
Despite my protests, Jagor went dumpster-diving alone that night, leaving me huddled under the blankets.
By the next day I was much better – still weak and shaky, but able to eat and move about. We couldn’t avoid it any longer: we had to start talking about a plan.
Before I could really get started, Jagor held up his hands. “It’s okay,” he told me. “You don’t have to convince me. We leave for the border tomorrow.” I opened and closed my mouth a few times. “Surprised?”
“I thought what the doctor said would make you want to stay.”
He shook his head. “All those rioters in the hospital. How much worse would it be if they had some idiot playing leader, making them fight an army?”
It was weird – I wanted nothing more than to drag him away from all this and escape...but I didn’t want to see him give up. “People support you: maybe more of them than you think.”
“They didn’t like me even in the good times—”
“Maybe they like you better in the bad times! It’s clear what you stand for, now. Hope.”
He frowned at me. “I thought you wanted to leave?”
“I do! I just...for the right reasons.” We lapsed into silence. Maybe, I thought, we can get help abroad, and he can return when the time’s right. Did I want that, though? Him leading some uprising? Of course not. The safe thing to do was to shut the hell up and let his fears keep him safe.
“Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s leave tomorrow.”
But I knew that doubting himself like that was killing him...and it was killing me, too.
***
That night, after he’d been out on the daily dumpster-dive, he disappeared into one of the other bedrooms to prepare “a surprise’. When he eventually called me through, I stopped dead in the doorway in shock.
The candlelight hid the worst of the room – the peeling wallpaper and damp patches. It just lit the small area of floor where he’d laid out a blanket and, amazingly, cushions. He’d found upmarket finger food in the dumpster – olives, prosciutto and cheeses. A loaf of bread. And then he brought out his pièce de résistance – a bottle of red wine.
He’d found a way, even with all that was going on, to amaze me. I could see some of his spark coming back. He was fighting, and I loved him for it.
“There are no glasses,” he said. “And you probably shouldn’t drink on those tablets anyway, but...”
“But it’s our last night in Asteria.” I sat down on a cushion – you have no idea how good a cushion feels after three days of the floor. I unscrewed the wine – it was a cheap bottle, and probably rough even before it passed its use-by date. “Would sir like to try the wine?”
He took an experimental swig from the bottle and winced. We both laughed. Inside, though, I was cold: What must he be going through, torn between Asteria and me?
We both needed an escape.
***
After the meal, I sat crossways in his lap and asked, “Can we?”
“Can we what?”
I looked up at him, saying nothing. He got the idea pretty quickly, the smile breaking across his face like a sunrise. He kissed me, brushing the hair from my cheek and shifting us slowly down until we were lying on our backs, with me half-on top of him.
But that wasn’t what I wanted. No, wait: it was what I wanted. It wasn’t what I needed.
Since the yacht, it had been normal. What I’d read was called vanilla. Since we’d been on the run, it had been loving and warming: powerful, in a different way, and perfect at the time. But now....
I suddenly realized what it was. I knew we were leaving Asteria. I wanted to know that we’d be taking some of it with us; I wanted to know that he would still own me, even if we left those laws behind. All understandable and very rational. But I had no idea how to ask him.
When he broke the kiss, I looked at him, a question in my eyes. I saw him frown, puzzled.
I stretched my arms out over my head and slowly crossed my wrists. He glanced at them and then looked at me, raising his eyebrows.
I started playing with my safeword ring, rolling it around and around on my finger.
“You want that?” he asked.
I felt myself blush. Why do I find it so hard to ask?
“Lucy,” he said, gentle humor in his voice, “what is it you want?”
I wriggled in embarrassment. I could feel him hardening beneath me: this was turning him on. Is he really going to make me ask?
He used the English word for dominate. It sounded hard; images of leather and gags and pain, not at all like the soft, Asterian words for slave and own. Somehow, though, because it was him, that made the desire swell inside me even faster. I wriggled again, feeling the weight of him on my hips. “Yes,” I told him, and it was nearly a pant.
“Take off your clothes.” And he swung himself off me, sitting down on the floor to watch.
I thought about Monaco as I stripped off my sweater and vest top. How I’d undressed for him that first time in the lavish hotel, the heat intoxicating. Now, when I took my bra off, I could feel my nipples crinkle and stiffen in the cold. I quickly took off the rest.
“Lie down,” he told me. He’d arranged three cushions in a line on the floor. I lay down with my ass on the first one, and he adjusted the others so that they were under my shoulders and head. It was cold, lying naked in the unheated apartment, but the swirling, rising heat inside me was starting to make my skin prickle.
Then he picked up one of the lit candles and toyed with it, turning it in his hands. He smiled down at me meaningfully and I could feel the twin currents of lust and fear winding together. I’d heard of this, but I’d never considered doing it.
He knelt beside me, his massive frame hulking over me, and planted one big hand on my crossed wrists. I hadn’t even been conscious of putting them up above my head again. I flushed. A few weeks ago, I’d have asked myself what I was turning into. Now I knew: his slave.