It would leave her locked in a glorified breeding pen.
Candlelight dinners and orgasms—pockets of solace—didn’t last. Nothing that had passed between Aaron and herself could be real. She knew that, yet when they were in bed, it was easy to forget. He was right. She was starving, and between the enlivening arguments, there had been something almost peaceful.
“I thought you’d at least wait until I was pregnant before you dumped me in your hellhole.” Not that she intended to let that happen. Yet… she’d been unable to stop him from ejaculating inside her. She even enthusiastically participated in sex despite knowing what he’d do when his climax was reached.
Being alone with him was doing things to her mental state that were both dangerous and unsettling.
It was confusing her.
When he moved inside her, when he said sweet things, it was almost like she could forget the rest of it—exist only in the moment and pretend the other moments didn’t matter.
But they did matter.
On Level 9, women were truly separated from any hope of freedom. Eugenia could see it in her mind’s eye—the final door slowly closing before her. If she didn’t run before he dragged her down there, she’d miss her chance to find the good place waiting out there.
And when she ran, she’d leave those women behind… knowing she’d abandoned them to save herself.
It wouldn’t be the first time. After six years, the things she’d seen, each time adrenaline had pumped her legs to run faster, run farther, to not look back.
She felt it then, the skin-stinging anxiety that had become her new normal since the bombs. The shame.
As if he too felt the sting, the captain rolled away, leaving her body bereft of his heat and weight. Heading to the bathroom, he called over his shoulder. “No, you won’t be permanently locked in. You’ll learn the ropes of Level 9 in the day. Your nights will be spent in this room with me.”
His nights were not available. Not when the captain’s presence oversaw the raucous party where beer flowed and women relied on someone to maintain the rules. Not when his rotating schedule existed so he might fuck them all from behind and suffered for it, as he should.
And did he really think he could just throw her in the hole and pull her out at night when he wanted to play with her? Absolutely not! “Who’s going to service Table #2?”
Chuckling from his bathroom, clearly urinating from the sound of it, he pitched his voice so she might hear from the distance. “New girl came yesterday. You’ve been officially replaced.”
It shouldn’t have hurt to hear. It shouldn’t have hurt at all. But it did.
It hurt way down deep.
Cutting the anger and twisting it into sorrow, stealing her fuel for battle.
That was Eugenia’s table, her chessboard, her ongoing fight against the machine. Would the new girl bend over and take it on her first night? Would there be anyone out there reminding the crew how fucked-up the whole show was.
Would the new girl cry when they dumped food on her head?
“How many tickets is she worth?” And how vile was it that she had to ask the man returning to bed that question?
Kissing the tip of her nose, the scowl between her brows, his voice was only consoling. “Not twenty-million.”
There was a rattle behind Eugenia’s heart, a strange fluttering both foreign and uncomfortable. A sensation that only grew worse when she looked him in the eye to suggest, “Give her some time before you put her on rotation for this room. I know you think I’m joking, but you’re scarier than you’ll admit. And don’t jam your fingers in her on her first night.”
Like steel shutters falling to hide what churned inside, the captain went back to the lazing, false cowboy. Utterly guarded, giving nothing away, he toyed with her hair. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
&
nbsp; “I just said what I was thinking.” No lie hid in those words. “And maybe… maybe don’t fuck them so hard. They don’t like it, Aaron. And I know you’re going to say you do that on purpose—”
“Just stop right there. I hear what you’re saying.” By the indifferent feel of him, it seemed he more than heard it.
Breathless in a way that ached, she shook her head. “I don’t think you do.”
“I do. I hear it.” Pulling the sheet over her breasts, he tucked her in. “You’re scared, and you don’t trust me.”
Who would? There wasn’t even a reason to shy from the subject. “I made a mistake trusting John. I won’t make it again.”