“They? You mean Veila?”
He shakes his head. “She’s not even in charge here. She’s just the figurehead. Your father put you here, Delphi. Just like mine did. They’re the ones in charge of this breeding program.”
“No,” I say. “No, that’s not true. He loved us, he—”
“My father loved me too. Or so I thought. They came and took us out of our beds. I was always expecting it. I knew it was weird to be allowed to grow up at home. I should’ve been turned over to the slavers when I was a toddler. I always knew it was a trap.”
I know he’s not lying. I know it because I can feel him. I can feel him the way I wanted to feel Jimmy. He is part of me, it’s all true. He is my one.
“We have to get out of here. We have to get out of here now.”
“There’s no way out,” he says. “I’m sorry. There’s just no way to get past all the guards and even if we could, then what? Where can we run to? We’re in the middle of nowhere. We can’t steal a ship. Boys tried that last year and they almost got away.”
“What happened to them?”
“They blew them up before they could reach the gate. She would rather kill us than let us escape and possibly find our way to Harem Station.”
I sigh as my back slides down the wall and I slump to the floor. “We have to think of something.” And I know I could, but being so close to him is so damn distracting. My body is doing weird things. And I’m flickering. My light is aching to get out. And… I’m so embarrassed, but I want him near me. He’s only about three meters away, but it’s too far. There’s this undeniable tug on my heart, urging me to go to him. Wanting his arms around me.
I close my eyes and chant, “I do not love you, I do not love you, I do not love you.” Then I open them again and say, “I love Jimmy.”
He nods. “I know. I can feel that inside you right now. I know you don’t love me and I don’t love you either. I love Caeli.”
“Who’s Caeli?” I ask.
“My best friend from back home. But I’m never gonna see her again. She was… she was my girlfriend. Or she would’ve been when I finished my year of rage. We made promises to each other. I miss her so much.”
I can feel that inside him too. So much sadness overwhelms me, I don’t know what to do with it. So of course, it makes me throb. I’m so humiliated. So mortified and ashamed at this reaction.
“You can’t help it,” he says. “I can’t help it either.”
His hand goes to the outline of his two cocks in his pants and he grips them tight, wincing. Like he’s in pain.
I close my eyes so I can’t see this. Refusing to be a witness to this sick, sad perversion they bred into us.
“It’s always like this,” he says. “Every night and every morning my head is so filled with lust and thoughts of sex, I can’t think straight. And you’re doing the same thing to me now. It hurts, Delphi. I just want it to go away. I can’t think. I can’t be rational because everything about this is irrational, and stupid, and wrong.”
I picture my life if I don’t find a way out of this. I picture what I will become. How they will use me, and control me just by bringing this boy into the room or taking him away. Because I can already feel the attraction and the fear. The fear of never seeing him again.
“How do you live like this?” I ask. “Because I don’t think I can do it.”
He looks at me with hooded eyes and says, “I jerk off.”
Then he waits for me to laugh, or be disgusted, or make fun of him.
But I don’t.
Because that makes so much sense.
“The release,” I say. “If we could just find the release maybe we could come up with a plan?”
“What?”
“Masturbate, you dumbass,” I say, the words coming out meaner than I intended. “We get off, and then we can think straight for a little bit and come up with a plan.”
His hand slips inside his pants and he starts rubbing his cocks.
“Don’t look at me,” I say. “Don’t think about me, either. Because I’m not yours, no matter what our DNA says. I’m not yours, you hear me?”
He closes his eyes, but it’s not enough. “Turn around and face the wall. Think about that other girl.”
“Caeli,” he moans, turning his body to face the wall. He leans his head against it, his hand frantically working on jerking himself. “Caeli,” he says again.
“Yeah, her,” I say. And just watching him do this has me throbbing.