She sucked in air from the misting cup made to fit over nose and mouth. Without complaint, she ate a bowl of the same green sludge Caspian had fed her in her room. Sludge she now knew was more than food. It was alive, worked on the body from the inside out. Cost a fortune.
Because she was no good to them as a whore if she was sick.
And for some reason, she had woken up in a foul mood. Clearheaded, finally, she obeyed Kieran so that there would be no more injections or random swallows of creamy cum.
But bitterness tinged her actions. Wren had played their twisted sex games. She had kept her part of the bargain. And if Kieran didn’t keep his and take her to Mikael, he was going to pay. All this was in her glare as she swallowed the last taste of sludge, and slammed down her spoon on the tray.
“Feisty.”
Fuck you. Everyone knew that universal sign.
His attention piqued, Kieran raised a brow. It made him even more handsome, and made her even angrier.
“I can’t tell if that’s you or him, but I like it.” He helped her up, his normally cold sneers replaced with an oddly chipper wink. “Don’t be sore. I always keep my word. You can have your day with your boy.”
And she did. She had the perfect day sitting on the edge of Mikael’s bed and talking with someone she loved so much it hurt. She had a day of seeing him eat until he was full. A day of smiles.
A day to remember why she was doing this.
When Kieran told her it was time to go, she didn’t argue or sneer. She smiled at the Second with real joy, and thanked him.
And obeyed.
Back in her room, despite the aches in her joints, she unhooked his buckle and let her unskilled fingers show him just how grateful she really was. She would be the best whore they ever had, please them in every despicable way so long as her boys were healthy and happy.
When Kieran growled and bent her over the bed, it wasn’t like the last time in Caspian’s room. He didn’t hurt her or try to make her cry. The calculating caution he used when he shunted forward left her pushing back against him. She took his cock, sighing as he rocked her against the mattress.
Reaching under her hips to tease her clit with the soft stroke of a lover, Kieran brought her to orgasm in seconds. Wren kept her eyes open through the pitch and roll of pleasure, hissing at unexpected discomfort when his knot swelled to tie them into one.
She bore it looking out the window at a drab city and the sparking pink of a distant sunset as he shot his cum against her womb and pinched her clit until another wave of shimmering warmth left her milking his cock.
Praise was given with a kiss on the shoulder and long minutes of sure strokes down her spine. “My mom never looked at me the way you looked at that boy. She sold me for more crack in her pipe. It would have been nice to have been looked at like that.”
Glancing over her shoulder at the Alpha standing between her dangling legs, Wren made the mistake of showing pity.
Kieran, more beautiful than one man should be, sneered. “Tell anyone I said that, and I’ll kill you.”
Chapter 14
It felt strange to be back in the pipeworks. This wasn’t her home. The ‘big room’, as Rosie had called it, was unfamiliar in every way. Wren had only spent one disastrous day here, served Caspian, Kieran, and Toby one night before she’d woken in the hospital. And just like that was expected to nest here.
For now. In that brief encounter with Rosie, Wren had gleaned another key lesson. None of the girls were offered this room for long. Some of them coveted it.
Wren missed her true home, and knew it would not be long before Caspian found some new toy to play with and sent her packing. So long as Mikael was well, it would be a relief. This place made her skin crawl. As did the unfamiliar tapping in her chest.
A sign of the shrinking infection she hoped, but a sensation she was happy to see long gone.
One day she’d be able to forget about all of this. One day Caspian would fill her pockets with credits and send her off with a fortune in water. She’d be rich enough to see that both Mikael and Alec would have real futures away from the mud.
And that—that one dear thought—filled her heart with joy and made the stinking room bearable.
That… and she’d be remiss to pretend that finding new machines dotting the blank spaces between gaudy furniture in the big room wasn’t also a little touching. Dehumidifiers, something that looked an awful lot like the contraption she been attached to for breathing treatments, and other things she couldn’t account for… which considering her experience in salvage, was something to say.