Pet Shop Boy moaned. His eyes rolled back in his head. Was that what survival looked like? Trading sex for weapons, food…safe passage on a boat?
I lowered the carbine and watched the very thing I’d planned play out before me. The men collapsed on the mattress in a tangle of sweat and limbs. A few panting breaths later, Baldy collected himself and left.
My breath rushed out in a whoosh. Could I seduce Pet Shop Boy in exchange for his assistance? What if more men visited? What if I threw up during the first intimate touch?
Turn around. Go back to the Lakota. Why wouldn’t my feet move?
The hunger to go east chewed at me. I had to find out what my dreams meant, what my children were telling me, who the Drone was.
For twenty minutes I stood there, fighting it, knowing the need for truth was forcing me to take impossible risks.
Vertebra by vertebra, my backbone girded for action. I tucked my weapons under the cloak and edged to the front. Then, with the pistol aimed under the folds of fur, I tapped on the door with my free hand.
It cracked open. A shotgun barrel and two wide eyes peered out. “Whatever you want, I don’t have anything. Please leave.” His British accent was as shaky as the gun’s barrel.
I slid back my hood enough for him to see my face.
He gasped, lowering the gun as he covered his mouth. Then he looked up and down the street and ushered me inside.
That was too easy, the kind of naiveté that was fatal. The next few minutes were even easier. I stuck to the truth about crossing the Atlantic, the dangers associated with boarding the ship and my need for help.
When I finished laying out my cards, I winked at him. “Got a name, Pet Shop Boy?”
He looked down at his shirt and grinned. “Ian.” Squared shoulders and a raised chin joined his smile. “I’d be happy to sneak you aboard. I’ll keep you safe, I swear it. Anything you need. Anything.”
He would do that without anything in return? I didn’t think so. The more we talked, the more he smiled. His body hovered closer. His gaze grew bolder. When a yawn broke his smile, he said, “Stay the night. Share the mattress with me?” A tide of red washed over his cheeks.
To think this shy boy was groaning under another man an hour earlier. I should’ve been repulsed, but he was surviving. Same as me.
“I’ll stay the night.” I speared him with a look that could not be misunderstood. “To sleep.”
When he nodded, I joined him on the mattress.
He pulled blanket over us. “It’s been so lonely. Fate brought you to me. Can you feel this?” His hand swept from his chest to mine.
No, but I hummed in agreement and hid my annoyance with his easily duped heart. Worse was knowing I’d break it once I exhausted his usefulness.
He touched my cheek. I gripped a dagger hilt under my cloak but forced myself to keep it sheathed. His finger trailed along my jaw and down my neck, searing my skin with every stroke.
I rubbed my wrists. No ropes. I controlled what was happening. “How long is the voyage?”
“Six days. I can stow you undetected. If I lock the crate like all the others, no one will know.”
Six days. What would keep him from second-guessing our arrangement during that time away from me? Would a tease be enough to keep the boy tight-lipped? When his finger tugged at the clasp under my neck and his eyes begged mine, I knew I would make him a promise I wouldn’t keep.
He bent over me with blue eyes sparkling and scrawny legs twisting in the blankets. “You’re so lovely. I want you. Please.”
With a hand on his chest, I put distance between us. “I’m nervous about the journey, Ian. We need to plan it out. Then, when we arrive safely, you’ll have me.” I held his gaze, despite the burning need to look away.
“Eh, o-okay.” He shut his eyes, opened them. “We’ll have such a blissful life together in England. We’ll live in my childhood home. You’ll see.”
I needed his allegiance until I reached my destination. So I nodded.
He wrapped his arms around me and dragged stiff lips over mine. I lay still, mouth closed, and tried to ignore the heavy breaths pushing over my face. Eventually, he read my resistance and settled on his side, folding himself around me.
For the next four nights, we plotted my ingress onto the ship, and each night I deflected his advances with the same promise. He adopted restraint with large hopeful eyes and flushed cheeks and my guilt over it grew like an ugly thing in my gut. So, in the dead of night, I held him the way his mother might have and wished I had more to offer than an empty pledge.