The release, relearning her body.
Her own fingers slipping through sensitive labia, twisting over a hooded clit. Until it poked out and she tapped it just like she used to.
How beautiful it was to come.
Every night. In private.
To fantasies dug up from memory. To Li Wei’s sexy body, to his voice, which had grown deeper, his weight more pronounced when it pushed her down in that sleeping bag.
Eugenia touched herself. Fantasized about freedom, equality, a man who loved her. A man near her intelligence level who accepted she was smarter. A doctor…
She fantasized.
Ached for the kind of fulfilment she’d never find the way sweet Juanita had, bent over a table and plowed by the line of eager men for tickets.
Sweet Juanita who was looking at her with beautiful, wet, wide brown eyes. Who needed the comfort of a wiser, older person.
Eugenia had not felt like a person in quite some time.
“The captain is giving you the night off. Have a shower and a good cry. Sleep.” That was the best advice she might offer, leaving an apartment almost as nice as the captain’s to get back to the party.
Pausing outside the door that separated the women’s rooms from the party deck, she found the captain waiting for her.
So she confessed, “I learned something about myself tonight.”
Passing a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, he asked, “Care to share your newfound wisdom?”
Detached, she told the captain, “No.”
A thing like him wouldn’t understand.
A thing like him should not have reached for her arm and pulled her back. “You did a good thing tonight, Eugenia. I’m proud.”
But anger was the first and only thing she knew. “He hit her because you made him do it.”
“And?”
And what? “I have work to do. Enjoy your nightly show, slaver. Fuck a trafficked person later, tying them up so they don’t look at you while you do it. I hope you hate every moment of it as much as I think you do.”
Chapter Ten
White-knuckling the railing, far above the faded, red nonslip carpet gracing the gangplank, Eugenia strained against the heat of the captain at her back. Saw the way his hands banked hers, and screamed.
Nothing could be worse!
The favor—a few minutes of her time, he’d said.
Where no one could see the pair of them together. Where their view was unobstructed. Where he pinned her mercilessly. Where she was engulfed in a larger, stronger body. Not out of intimacy, but to keep her from running away. Or jumping to her death when she began to panic.
Because the ship’s lights were on.
And though it was a long, long way down, a familiar voice carried up. “Please! I beg you! Please let me back in!”
Even from the distance, it was clear who it was.
Brooke—emaciated, limping, and covered in filthy rags—staggered toward the lake, waving her arms. Beseeching the waiting men for help.
Wretched. Broken. Sick.
With their guns on their backs, the men were at the ready. Prepping a dinghy to fetch the pleading woman before she might accidentally drown in her fervor to stamp through the lake and get back on the ship.
“NO!” Eugenia screamed.
And screamed.
What was this life but endurance past pain?
But the captain had clamped his hand over her mouth, her muffled warning lost no matter how hard she fought.
And she fought with all she had. Kicking, throwing elbows, biting at his palm to warn the girl away. That it was a trick. That real life was out there.
Why would she come back to this?
She should RUN!
But his arm, like iron around her waist, was so much bigger and stronger.
He caught her strikes, took her wrists in hand, as if he’d done it thousands of times.
Just like he had with the other women tied to his bed so he might fuck them from behind and they might sleep on his couch.
Brooke was fetched. She was carried on board.
The show was over.
Subdued by muscle, mouth freed, hate roaring, tears flowed in an excruciating, embarrassing way. “Why would she come back? At least one good place is out there! All the bad places had been marked on that map! She has to explain!”
Though his grip was unbreakable, his voice was infinitely soft. “Brooke won’t be coming back to Level 15.”
“I... I don’t understand.” Could hardly even breathe. Couldn’t look at him. Only at those boots. At the deck and her splayed fingers, white as death, scratching as if they might find something to hold.
A kiss lingered on her temple before he said, “You won’t like it. You won’t like why Level 9 exists. Which is precisely why you’ve never asked about babies or children. Because you are so close to growing up, and so scared to face it. You’ve blinded yourself to the obvious.”
“Stop talking!”
“Neil told you that first day. The men don’t get to hold the babies, but they do get to breed them, provide for them. Know that there is a future. A future the men know they will never have. The best they can do is make the women comfortable, feed them good food.”
Hands over her ears, pressing as hard as she could, Eugenia failed to keep his words out.
“It’s a big ship, Eugenia. An entire society of people that function with minimal violence and maximum growth. The perfect equation, a tight rein on circular history.
“Brooke will earn her keep as a breeder, as a mother, finding her peace with it like they all do. As will Hellen, Juanita, Chloe...”
She was going to be sick, right there on his boots, yet raised her eyes to look at the monster, to read him like she could. “How many women have you done this to?”
“Only the pretty ones of a certain age experience Level 15 and the workload involved. Everyone else is hosted on Level 9. Twenty-four women counting Brooke.”
It didn’t seem possible that she could have thought worse of this place, of him. But it was so much worse than she’d imagined. “Can they buy their way out?”
“No. I can’t have them taking babies off the boat.” Holding her eyes as if his gaze alone might pin her in place, as if it might change her thinking, he gestured to the dead forest and the dirty lake. “Children don’t belong out there. No one knows that better than you. Brooke will be given time to adjust and heal. She may already be pregnant, which will buy her more time to settle in with her baby before she will be expected to do her part and submit to the man who purchased rights to her cycle. All copulation is monitored, genealogies tracked, and the men know they have to try to please their lady for the month. Foreplay is required. It costs them a fortune, and there is a waiting list a mile long. Level 15 is what tides them over while they wait to play house.”
Foreplay? He was the king of foreplay, and she was the queen of surviving bullshit. “How many of the kids are yours?”
“None.” He shook his head. “I don’t go to Level 9.”
“Why? Can’t look them in the eye when you can’t even fuck Level 15 slaves face-to-face?”
“Work out the statistics, work your math, and admit to yourself that I’m trying to save the world.” He had not been that harsh with her since the day his fingers tore her hymen. But he was sharp as a razor as he condemned, “I know you don’t want to face the truth, because you’re too damn bitter over what you lost. Everyone lost, Eugenia! And everyone had a part in it. And now everyone pays.”