Jealousy was a powerful stimulant.
“Is Quiggs really a virgin?” Max asked the professor.
“His experience is limited to the unfortunate event this afternoon. He has two weeks to prepare before the claiming ceremony. I suggested confining him to his cell with a set of plugs until he quits talking suicide and practices stretching.”
Beau had crawled out, standing slowly with claws displayed and eyes in full battle mode.
Cutty picked up a chair. Miller drew his baton.
The professor’s attention remained on Max. “I need your answer, Commander Bronn.”
“Could I treat Quiggs like a soldier instead of a concubine?”
“If you decline his service, he must draw another owner.”
A low rumble rose from Beau’s chest.
Max made his decision. “Inform Quiggs I accept his service. I will send him a gift of plugs tomorrow. Tell him in two weeks, whether he is ready for me or not, I’ll spread his cheeks and ram my—”
Before Max finished, Beau attacked. Max leaned to the side and swept a leg out to trip Beau at the ankles. Beau went down, rolled, and sprang to his feet before Max could pin him. Damn, the breed was agile.
The professor slid to the floor in a dead faint.
“You challenging me, Private Beau?” Max coiled for a strike, his three-inch claws, shorter than Beau’s, displayed. Max had slain sixty-plus full-blooded ferals larger than Beau. It was a matter of skill, confidence, control—and keeping out of swiping reach of those lethal claws.
“You do not own my Quiggs!” Beau hissed.
“The law says I own him,” Max taunted.
“Mine! Always mine!”
“Uh-uh. Mine.”
They circled each other for weakness. Beau’s lips curled back as his eyes slid to Max’s belly. One swipe of his claws would spill Max’s intestines. If Beau initiated a killing move, Max would quit playing and dispatch him without mercy. What a waste, though.
Max gave Beau a chance to back down. He was newly transitioned and in the throes of confused sexual aggression and grief. “If I own Quiggs, you can visit him. You can travel on the barge with us.”
“You are a selfish lover. You will not let him cut his braid.”
Max knew Beau would sniff out a lie. “You’re right. I’ll never bend over.”
Beau snarled. “I hate the laws. My Quiggs says Ruling Mothers like to find laws to control men. He is surprised they do not pass a law saying a man must sit when he pisses.”
The comment surprised a bark of laughter from Max. He watched Beau’s frame loosen. “There is a good law, though. It says if my concubine cheats on me, I can only punish him by adding more time to his service. What if I promised I’d let Quiggs find a soldier to fuck so he can lose his braid? For his punishment, I’d only add a half-day to his service.”
Beau narrowed his eyes, his nostrils quivered. “You are not jealous?”
“I don’t want Quiggs for sex. I lust after his genius. I’ll use him to design weapons. I’m willing to fund his work—excluding his expensive flying balloon.”
“I do not like his balloon,” Beau admitted.
“On my honor, I promise to treat him kindly. But he must service my needs for three years. An owner who cheats loses his concubine.”
Beau whimpered. “I do not like what you said about the plugs.”
“I said it to keep you alive. On my honor, I’ll let Quiggs find someone who’ll bend over for him.”
Beau thumped a fist on his chest. “I will do anything for my Quiggs. I will offer myself to him.”
“It’s up to Quiggs whether he wants your sorry ass or not.”
Abruptly, Beau sheathed his claws. He dropped his head. “My Quiggs hates me.”
“He needs time to forgive. He’s lost the life he expected.” A thought occurred to Max. “Does he prefer women like his ex-wife?”
“Rosamunde? Bah! His eyes watch soldiers. Like Miller.” Beau scowled at Miller, busy attending the moaning professor on the floor with Cutty’s help.
Max held out a hand. “I’ll keep my promises if you obey my orders.”
Beau’s frame loosened. “You speak the truth, my commander.”
Their pact sealed with a handshake, Max sent Beau to shower in his bathroom, reminding him to save his pants to bait traps tomorrow.
When he regained his composure, Professor Towers refused a glass of brandy and excused himself to carry Max’s written reply to Quiggs.
Alone with Miller and Cutty, Max explained his promise. He looked at Miller. “You attended the academy with Quiggs. Tell me about him.”
“He’s brilliant and knows it. Thinks a lot. Stumbles into things when he thinks, so gets bruised up a lot. He has brown hair. Green eyes. Nothing remarkable in looks. He’s an inch over six feet. He became active when he was eighteen. I had planned to… um… tap his ass when he registered with the clinic. Instead he used Beau to win a bet to tap mine.”
“I’ve heard the story.”
“He… um… likes his sweets.”
Max wanted a concubine with abs, a bubble butt, a beautiful V-shape. Instead, he was stuck with a brainy, absentminded pudge-muffin. He flopped down in his leather chair. “The First Family will laugh themselves sick at the claiming ceremony.”
Cutty said, “May I suggest hiring a styling fem to work with him before the claiming ceremony?”
“Whom do you suggest? As if I don’t know.”
Cutty lifted his brows. “Why, the best there is. My husband Stefan, of course.”
“Hire him. Seeing as how he’s your wedded husband, will he discount his rate?”
“Seeing as how you’re paying and you two butt heads like goats, he’ll double it.”
Chapter Fourteen
The way Quiggs’s luck was running, it figured he’d draw the name of the only man alive who never reciprocated. Commander Max Bronn. Big, bad, scary. An owner with no sexual interest in Quiggs’s ordinary body except as a vessel for release between baiting traps.
On the plus side, the commander despised the First Family. They couldn’t negotiate with his owner and force Quiggs to hand over the model of his combustion engine.
He huddled naked in a corner of his solitary cell with his knees drawn up and his arms folded around his knees. He owned nothing, not even clothes. The lottery committee had forcibly stripped him of his cadet uniform. Until new clothing was sewn, they’d left him a used concubine’s uniform returned to the lottery committee by a concubine who’d finished his service today: a pair of worn-on-the-knees cropped black pants, a dingy long-sleeved white shirt with frayed cuffs, scuffed red platform sandals with ragged straps, and a red leather belt with an attached pouch of supplies.
Fresh sobs wracked him. He’d pitied the actives choosing the lottery. Always watching their diets. Their hair styles. Their plucked eyebrows. Their posture. Their walk. With his flat feet, Quiggs would break both ankles before he walked out of his cell in those platforms.
He needed to wipe the snot off his face. He opened the red pouch on the belt for a handkerchief. Yech. Sticky from a farewell fuck. He blew his nose on a sleeve, then put on his service uniform. The government paid for uniforms and sleeping apparel. He’d be measured for them tomorrow along with a formal costume for the claiming ceremony in two weeks.
When eight older members of the military police arrived to escort him to his new quarters, Quiggs was dressed and pacing his cell after a sleepless night. The sergeant handed him a letter from the commander.
Understanding how unprepared Quiggs was, the commander was entrusting him to Stefan, his manservant’s husband, for training in an apartment separate from the other concubines. Once the two weeks of training plus the customary three days of claiming were over, Quiggs would relocate his work to Port Paducah. The letter concluded,
Do not bite your veins and bleed out. It is your brilliant mind I will plunder.
Respectfully yours,
Commander Max Bronn
The words sounded like straightforward sex for three years. Quiggs hated being a concubine, but he kinda was curious about the sex.
When he left the jail, Quiggs understood the reason for the large escort. A throng of heralds waited outside. The soldiers fanned around Quiggs, their batons ready.
“Was the hello sex worth it?”
“How long have you been fucking the breed?”
“Is it true Rosamunde fainted?”
“How do you feel about growing your braid?”
The last question drew a groan from Quiggs.
The soldiers led him to the residential section for married families. Here, balconies had gardens, and the latest trend was cooking on Quiggs’s small outdoor grill using a modified version of Rosamunde’s fuel paste. The smell of roasted meat from last night’s dinner drifted along with the stench of diaper bins. He tottered up six flights of stairs to a floor of coveted penthouses, eight on each side of the hallway.
His escort halted at a door wreathed with white feathers and shells, symbols of fertility.
“For fuck’s sake, is this my marriage suite?” Quiggs tore off the wreath and shook it apart as if it were Beau’s neck. Feathers scattered, and shells pinged off the floor.
The sergeant spoke without inflection, “Stefan subleased the penthouse from the First Family. Nothing else was available.”
“That’s the spirit. Stab me, then poke a salty finger in the wound.”
“Stefan will visit you after he has packed. The commander has ordered you confined in your apartment, away from the heralds. Soldiers will stand guard in the hallway and at the entrance.”
Locked inside alone, Quiggs unfastened the straps of his platforms and flung them across the room. The wobbly shoes had allowed him little dignity. He limped around the plush greeting room. Same beige stone walls, but colorful woven mats covered the polished floor. A pair of L-shaped plaid sofas bracketed a low table holding a basket of fruits and cheeses for his ravenous night of sex with Rosamunde.
Quiggs tested the balcony doors and found them locked also. On a narrow eating bar attached to the small kitchen were trays of heart-shaped crackers and bowls of creamy spreads, as well as a carafe of a pale green beverage with a sweet vinegary smell. The pair of tiny cups beside the carafe indicated it held shrum, a fertility beverage meant to be poured into the cups and sipped slowly between hand-feeding each other crackers. The husband traditionally offered a flowery toast to his wife’s fertile health with each sip. When each was relaxed, they retired to the bedroom.
Quiggs filled a cup and offered a toast to the empty stool beside him.
“Here’s to Rosamunde, my lovely ex-wife. May your piss burn like fire the rest of your life.”
He was done with dieting. Quiggs sat on one of the tall padded stools at the bar and pulled a tray closer. He swiped crackers over different spreads, some sweet, some savory, and stuffed one after another in his mouth, washing them down with the vinegary beverage.
After finishing the crackers, he carried the carafe into the bedroom leading off the right of the entry. A white quilt and mounds of plump pillows covered the bed, big enough for three people. He wondered at the mechanics of a wife bringing a second husband into the marriage. Or three husbands sharing one bed.
The lavender and gray bedroom was designed for a wife’s comfort, with a closet for her wardrobe and a dressing table with mirror. He remembered his mother’s bedroom: his first father brushing her long brown hair each evening, their chatting comforting Quiggs as he played with building sticks on the floor. He’d assumed all women were like his mother—loving, intelligent, fiercely loyal, dedicated to the good of the Triangle. The truth was a jolt. Like swigging water to quench a terrible thirst and discovering worms sliding down your throat.
Behind a folding screen painted with fanciful birds and flowers was a ceramic tub large enough for two with a long handheld showerhead. Would Rosamunde have stepped into the tub with him? Carefully settling between his legs and leaning back for him to fondle her breasts? Now he’d be the one stepping into the tub and leaning back into a muscled chest with strong arms surrounding him and assertive hands fondling him. Or would the commander bother with warming him up?
It is your brilliant mind I will plunder.
Bleh.
Quiggs filled the tub and threw in a handful of pale lavender salts which fizzed on contact with the steamy water. He inhaled, and a delicious buzz filled him, so he tossed in another handful, then another. He drank more shrum, then fumbled off his clothes and sat on the rim to soak his sore feet before sliding into the steaming water. Gradually, the steam soaked into his muscles. He wriggled lower, hooking his ankles over the foot of the tub. Though he’d heard the public baths were popular, he’d never taken a tub bath. His eyes drifted closed.
Someone screeched at him. “Breathe! Come on, breathe!”
Quiggs coughed up lungfuls of water. When he finally took a ragged breath, he heaved the contents of his stomach. He lay on his side, certain he’d puked a couple of ribs. He tried to sit and figure out if this was real or a nightmare, but the motion made him puke the rest of his ribcage.
Whoever was screeching at him propped Quiggs up against what he slowly recognized was the side of the cold tub. He sat in a pool of filth. He wriggled up and tried to slide back into the tub to wash himself off.
“You will not drown yourself!”
“I shhhtink,” he explained reasonably.
Hands pulled him away by his ankles. He flopped over on his back and gazed up at the ceiling, where hundreds of spotted purple sucker-toes chased each other. He passed out again.
Quiggs awoke naked in a strange bed with his hands folded atop a sheet tucked around his waist. When he moved, his ribs ached, his head throbbed, and his mouth tasted like he’d bitten into the rotten carcass of a canal rat.
He tried to grasp what had happened. The pieces swirled like glass shards in his mind before settling into place to form the cracked picture.
Well, fuck, he’d gotten drunk and nearly drowned himself taking a bath with fizzy salts meant to be added sparingly. He’d overdosed on the combination. Who’d saved him?
Sitting on a stool by the dressing table, snipping thorns off a rose stem, was a tall, slender man with hair dyed red as the rose and styled in sideswept curls. He wore a bright yellow tunic belted tight around the waist and reaching mid-thigh.
The bright yellow stabbed Quiggs’s eyes. “Who… are… you?” he rasped. It came out like “woo-errrrr-oooo?”
The stranger uncurled from the stool like a bud opening. As he came forward to introduce himself, his swaying walk challenged known mathematics.
A breathless voice informed him, “Good afternoon, Quiggs. I am Stefan, your fashion fem, service felicitator, and confidante. Max hired me to train you.” The soft voice hardened. No mistaking: if angered, the voice carried the power to rupture eardrums. “Now tell me why you tried to kill yourself.”
“Wuzznt.”
Stefan placed a pillow to prop him up against the headboard, then offered him a sip from a polished silver flask. “It’s brandy. Take a swallow. Hair of the dog, as an ancient proverb says.”
The brandy flowed like a smoky tickle down Quiggs’s throat and exploded like a fuel stick when it hit his stomach. His eyes watered. He refused another swallow. “Like thuther shttuff.”
“Get used to the brandy. It’s the commander’s favorite.” Stefan took a healthy swallow after Quiggs. He delicately licked his lips and checked his lip paint in the reflection of the flask. Satisfied, he flipped back a wave of hair and fixed his light brown eyes, emphasized with black liner, on Quiggs’s face. “You’ll need to get used to many changes in your life. Which is why I am here. And not a second too soon.”
Quiggs had a frightening glimpse of himself with his braid dyed to match his red lips.
Stefan clapped his hands together. “You slept into the next afternoon. A whole day of my skills wasted. I’ve been waiting fo
r you to wake up so I can get started.”
He’d slept that long?
Stefan peered down at him. “You aren’t pretty or cute.”
Quiggs scraped his tongue across his teeth to clean off the fuzz. “Tell me something I don’t know. When someone finally throws me a boner… it’s Beau in front of an audience.”
A throaty laugh greeted his quip. “Perfection is boring.” Stefan tipped Quiggs’s chin up. He gripped tighter when Quiggs tried to twist away. “Hmmm. Nothing a strict regimen of diet and exercise can’t improve. I’m putting you on greens and vinegar for two weeks.”
“Then I’m not eating.”
“You’ll last a day before you eat what I dish out. Hmmm. Nose a bit longish and tipped up at the end. With a little paint and less scowl, I can make you look… interesting.”
“No paint.” Quiggs’s scowl deepened, earning another laugh. He had a sick feeling Stefan was immune to whining.
“Except for the dark blue rim, your eyes are a pure green without a fleck of gold. And those long lashes—learn to work them. Your lips are plump, shaped well. Nibbly.”
“Bleh.”
“Ah, one of those men who believe kissing is a perversion unless with a wife. Never stole a kiss from Rosamunde?”
“Rosamunde would have whacked my balls with her parasol.” He rolled his shoulders, waking up fully to his fate.
“I remember when her third father Palmer married the governor. I was hired to groom him. How he cried and swore vengeance for his family’s betrayal. He had planned to marry Rosamunde the day of his graduation. Cyrus and William were wild for him. Poor Palmer waddled for days.”
Quiggs sniggered.
“Oooooh, nice when you smile. It transforms you. Smile more often. Now stand up and off with the sheet. I need to measure you.”
Quiggs fluttered his lashes like a bug flew under one eyelid. “Eight inches.”
“Shame on you.” Stefan fluttered his lashes like a pair of shy butterflies had landed. “I mean your height, chest, waist, hips, feet. For your claiming costume.” He pulled Quiggs to his feet. The sheet fell aside. “Eight inches?”
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