“We kept our eyes on one another at all times. We never had clothes. We had to watch out for one another. Seeing each other naked didn’t exactly arouse interest. Then being trained the way we were in sexual practices. We were taught to have control over our bodies by performing on someone while someone else was beating us or using us brutally. The idea was to get the other person aroused while not being aroused. This was done in front of one another. If we could see one another we could keep each other from being killed.”
He saw the dawning comprehension. “What you’re saying is that when Torpedo Ink has parties together, just you, you have sex with your partners but with others in the room because you feel safer.”
He nodded. “Most of the others feel so much less inhibited if they feel the partner they love is safe.”
“You don’t seem to have any inhibitions.”
“Like I said, I was luckier than the others in that I wasn’t as sexually tortured as they were. But I did get used to being with them. And looking out for them. Not to say I can’t do without that, but it does separate me even more.”
He felt her moving through his mind. How did he explain Torpedo Ink to her? He needed to try. He wrapped her hair around his fist.
“We aren’t whole without one another. We try to be, but in order to survive, we had to become one person to get us out of there. We took pieces of one another and wove ourselves together. That’s the only way I have to describe what we did. I need them. They need me. We all are trying to live our lives separate but together if that makes sense. We’re trying to find a way to do what Czar would like us to do, but we’re predators in a world we don’t understand. We were kids, raising each other. Czar was our moral compass, and he still is.”
She nodded. “I can see that. So what you’re asking me is would I ever be willing to go to one of these parties and have sex with you where others might see us?”
“Not at the clubhouse. I wouldn’t be comfortable with that, because there are other chapters now, people I don’t know as well. But here at the house, if the others come over. Or on a run if we go and we’re all together in a campground. How comfortable would you be around the others with me?”
“I don’t honestly know, Player. Here at the house, when we’re crazy, I doubt I’d even notice if someone was around, but I won’t know until it happens. I would be very uncomfortable at the clubhouse, and I have no idea how I would feel on a run. I’ve never been on one. That’s me being as honest as I can be.”
Every time he thought he couldn’t love her any more, she gave him something that made him realize she was branding deeper and deeper into his bones. She was in his soul. Wrapped around his heart. He didn’t understand how she could possibly ever think that he didn’t love her for herself. How could anyone not love Zyah once they knew her just for her? She was honest. She hadn’t condemned him or his brothers and sisters. She hadn’t said no. She had given him what she could, as honestly as she could.
“You do realize that no one can ever measure what someone else’s life or the impact of their past is against anyone else. Each person is different. We’re all born different. You escape into your mind, but your mind is very sensitive—that’s why it can fragment when you build your illusions and hold them too long. You learned, over time, to become strong, but you were a little boy, working day and night to become strong. That took courage and discipline.”
“I thought I was crazy. I thought I was so much less than everyone else. My psychic talent seemed so useless when everyone else had so much to contribute.”
“And yet you could actually cover their bodies in the illusions of sores to keep the worst of the pedophiles from taking them,” she pointed out.
He nodded. “That’s true. I did. But they’d just take another child. I wasn’t strong enough to cover everyone.” He pressed his hand to his face, tried to scrub away the memories that seemed too close. “Sometimes, Zyah, if someone died, I felt as if I killed them myself. Just like every time Sorbacov forced me to go to one of his insane parties and carry in the bombs I made. I had to sit at the table and talk to people I knew were going to die. He would sit there laughing and talking with them, eating dinner and acting as if he were their friend. I built the bombs. I carried them into the party. Czar would cover for my silence, but most of the time, Sorbacov would be furious with me that I didn’t engage with those at the table. I just couldn’t.”