She wouldn’t call it precious. Because it wasn’t anymore.
Because this world’s elders fucked it up for everyone. Long gone were wedding nights and tender men. They had Johns, who she’d saved and who’d tried to trade her person for fucking water.
“The shock will wear off. Look at me.”
“What?” That’s right. She was on a ship, dressed like a tramp so she might earn tickets to freedom for sexual favors.
And the man who had just jammed his fingers with true violence inside her was adjusting the gusset of her lacy panties, smearing her thigh with virgin blood.
“Get off of me.” Her voice shook, and she hated herself for it.
“I think you need a drink. Also, just so we’re clear, you’ve added one-hundred thousand tickets to your price.”
Oh, she was going to kill him. Which didn’t need to be said. It was right there in her glare. “I will find a way to take something from you of equal value. Then I will burn your goddamn ship to the bottom of this rancid lake.”
Why was he smiling? “I believe you.”
“You’re smarter than you look.”
After snapping his fingers, Joan appeared out of thin air to his call. How she already had a cup of beer, Eugenia couldn’t say. But it was there, and he took it, pressing it to her hands.
“I’m not drinking that shit.” A clear head was needed at all times these days.
“Drink it or I’ll put my fingers back in and keep them there all night.” And he’d enjoy it—his smirk said that plain as day.
But she was no simple opponent. “Do yourself a favor and escort me off the boat.”
“Try again, siren.” He pushed the earthenware cup closer to her lips, fingers coated in her drying blood.
She would not take a drop into her mouth, considering what might lurk in homebrew garbage… until her eyes cut to Table #2 and the terror on Brooke’s face registered.
All of it sunk in at that moment. It was more than this fucked society, air conditioning, whoring, and fingers ripping membranes. It was more than her at stake, which is what made the captain’s system so indescribably wrong. Every soul on this ship was tied to a well-oiled machine of expectation and consequence. Eugenia’s hostility would cost another far more than it would cost her.
The captain was indeed smarter than the lazy cowboy persona he projected.
And he knew it. And he knew the precise moment she knew it too.
“I will drink. I will go back to my table and verbally entertain your men… on one condition.”
Voice husky, he said, “I do enjoy negotiation.”
“I’ll bear Brooke’s half of the responsibility when you command your men to dump their food and drink on our bodies as if we are worthless come dumpsters. And I take on the remainder of her tickets.”
“You’d rather play the hero than the damsel?” Cocky, already lazing back without going to the trouble of wiping his fingers on his shirt, the captain said, “You’re not going to like it.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
Hazel eyes closing as if to drowse, he muttered, “Very smart. Drink up.”
She did. Her first real taste of beer since the bombs. Good beer to boot.
Brooke got to go inside, lighter twenty-thousand tickets—not close to half of what she still owed, but enough to make her glow with appreciation.
It took more willpower than Eugenia anticipated to get up off the deck and resume her duties at Table #2 alone. The virgin jokes, the way the men—and not just from her table—all of them, seemed to find a reason to drop by, staring at the smeared blood on her exposed thigh.
They touched it.
Because those were the rules. Anything not covered by clothing was fair game.