The Bargaining Path

  ***

  I do not know how many days passed before I was reunited with Penny. I measured the days by the meals they gave me, if one can even call them that. The half-cooked eggs and milk told me it was morning, the peanut butter sandwiches told me it was lunchtime, and the rice and meat told me it was dinner. The portions were tiny, but I had always been skilled at subsisting for long periods of time without food. Most of the time, Penny ate both hers and mine, though she always insisted on sharing. I am sure that if I had not had Penny there with me, I would have gone completely out of my mind. But alas, she was there, and her insistence on me telling her stories kept us both sane. Spinning those imaginative yarns kept my mind and hers stimulated. She seemed completely unfazed by our imprisonment, though sometimes she cried for James, or Violet, or Idan, or just the outside world.

  “You always said we’re not meant to be cooped up. We need the sunshine! Do you think they’ll let us go outside?” She whispered to me one night as we laid on the cot in the corner of the cell. Her head was on my chest, and she smelled like the grainy industrial soap: scentless. I could feel her tears running down onto my chest. She was not sobbing. In fact, if I had not felt her tears, I never would have known that she was crying, but then, she had always been completely undramatic in that way, even as a baby.

  I kissed her forehead and tightened my arms around her, as I had grown accustomed to doing over the countless days we had been in the cell. I just needed to feel her there, rested against me, in my arms, tangible. For days, I had worried that they had harmed her. Maybe they had offered her up as a sacrifice like Tyre had tried to do originally. A few tears escaped my eyes when I thought about how afraid she had to have been.

  “I wasn’t afraid,” She had told me, “I knew you and James were here, and I would see you soon.”

  Slowly, the story had come out: She had run back to the village and was immediately taken to the prison, where she was locked alone in a cell. My father tried many times to acclimate her to him and to their lifestyle, but she would not have it. She confessed to me, somewhat guiltily, that she had thrown tantrums and demanded to see me and her “daddy.” That did not go over well, to say the least; when they brought her to me, there was dried blood caked in the side of her mouth and a cut down her swollen lip. Had my father been the one to bring her, and had she not been there to witness it, I would have channeled my rage, allowing it to drain the last remaining drops of my strength, and I would have broken both his wrists and every bone in his hands.

  The only way to make him stop raising his hand was to take both his hands.

  “I don’t know if they’ll let us outside.” I had told her, “But we’ll be okay, baby. I promise. Together, you and I are going to figure out a way to escape from here.”

  “And we’ll rescue James?”

  “Of course we’ll rescue James. And then, we’ll go off into the woods…”

  “I don’t want to go into the woods again! It was so scary! The tree monsters!”

  “I know.” I told her, and I kissed her head again, “I know they are out there, baby. But you know…” I paused, unsure if I was ready to accept the name she had given him. Was it right that she called him by that moniker, when it was rooted so deeply, as deeply as it could be rooted, in affection for him and trust in his paternal love for her? Was James that… permanent that I could allow her to call him that?

  “What?” She looked up at me, her huge blue eyes blinking at me slowly, pushing the last few tears from them in an almost hasty expulsion that was unnoticed by her. “What do I know, Mama?”

  I knew I was permanent. I knew she could trust my love of her. I corrected her the first few times out of undeserved respect for our real mother, and then, I just stopped. I had always been her mother. I always would be. There were no questions to be asked about that.

  “Mama, what do I know?”

  But were there questions to be asked about James?

  “You know…” I said, and I paused again. But then, I had had it with asking questions. I knew my heart, and I knew his. “You know your daddy and I will protect you. Daddy and I will always protect you.”

  “I know.” She said, and she smiled. There was something assured in that smile, I thought, but I might have just been tired. But then, maybe she really was comforted by my acceptance of her desire to call us Mom and Dad.

  “So, I won’t be afraid.” She said, “Dad will carry me, right?”

  “Of course he will.”

  “And you’ll hold the torch, and you won’t drop it like Quinn. Right?”

  My heart plummeted at the mention of Quinn. I could feel Violet’s life force, but despite my affection for the other kids, I could not reach out and grasp their essences to determine their state of being like I could with her.

  “I won’t drop it like Quinn did.”

  “Do you think they’re okay? Sometimes I can feel them. When I sleep… I can see them. The doctors are with them. And the soldiers beat the tree monsters. Adam’s doctors, and Adam’s soldiers. The good Pangaeans.”

  “So, they’re safe?” I asked, and for a moment, I let myself believe her.

  “Yeah, but they’re sick like you were, because they got scratched. And Allie got bit.”

  “Bitten.” I corrected her, almost absent-mindedly.

  “That’s what I said! Allie got bitten.”

  “Well, I am just happy that they’re alright.” I said, “I knew they would make it.”

  “Me too. But I’m glad I came back.”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Even though they’re safe, and they’re away from the bad people, I’m glad I came back, ‘cuz now we’re together. All of us. You, me, and Dad. And once we get out of here, we’ll be back with Violet, Allie, Quinn, and Nick.”

  “We will. You’re right.” I told her, “You’re absolutely right.”

  Remembering my last words to Tyre, and his promise to put James, Adam, and me onto the Lapsarian, I wondered if Penny would be joining us there. From what I had heard, no children were on the ship; it was all just the “very stubborn” adults. Those “very stubborn” adults made up a populace so sizeable that a ship large enough to house a small, old-world, third-world country had been built. We would be joining hundreds in the place where the “evil” went. Most of them had committed crimes. Instead of being killed outright, they were sent for “rehabilitation.” Despite the fact that I had not killed any of them (even if only because I had not gotten the chance), I was going to be put in with those who had. I could hold my own, but Penny could not, obviously. She was a child, and though she had proven her abilities against a fully grown man before, I sincerely doubted that she could do the same again. I did not want her to have to do the same again; James and I were lucky that the toll on her was so small, that she had forgotten.

  My heart began to beat quickly, and my body lurched upwards. She rolled sideways quickly to let me up. My palms were sweating, and my chest heaved out but still, I could not take in the right amount of air for a deep breath. What would happen to her? Was I out of my mind? I was going to allow her to be put on a ship full of the most brutal Pangaean and Earthean criminals, all because I would not renounce my beliefs in Adam’s laws? All because I would not renounce my allegiance to him? All because I would not marry him? Penny had always been my priority, and now, I was going to put her into the most dangerous situation imaginable. That ship was far more dangerous than Janna’s village under Tyre’s rule. And if something happened to James and me, what would happen to her?

  What would happen to her either way?

  My mind was spinning. My eyes were blurry. My breathing was not correct, and the lack of oxygen was severely hindering my ability to create a solution. While I was worrying, I was also chastising myself for being so selfish, for being a failure as a surrogate parent and as a leader. How many families would be torn apart by this new regime? How many people would die? I was worried about my own family chiefly—in just that w
ay, I was only human. But my heart ached when I thought of the people for whom I had grown to care so much. I had failed them. When Adam had suggested a counterstrike, and I had convinced him and the Cabinet that it was wrong… If I had just let him do it, we would all be safe. Our families would be together, and for the first time since arriving on Pangaea, we would be living free of dangers from other people, and for the first time in our lives, free of war.

  “Brynna!” A frantic male voice was saying. “Brynna!”

  It was James. It had to be.

  “Wake her up! But don’t hurt her anymore! Don’t you dare, Adam!” Penny’s voice, so fierce, and yet she was begging him. I could hear her fear but I could also hear her unbreakable strength, her forcefulness.

  “Brynna, come out of this now.” Adam was saying, and his tone was not gentle, but it was also not tinged with scorn and derision, either.

  But it was still Adam talking, and he had tried to kill once purposely, and once accidentally, so I threw myself away from him and finally drew in a deep breath.

  “It is alive.” Adam said sardonically, and he walked away from me, a towering, beastly shadow in the firelight. His head was turned; he could not stand completely upright in our cell.

  “You got all quiet, and your breathing was funny, and then they threw Adam in here!” Penny told me, and she threw her arms around my neck and squeezed, cutting off my newly restored ability to breathe.

  “I’m so sorry, baby.” I held her tightly and ran my hand down the back of her hair. “How long was it for?”

  “A long time! Like, five minutes!”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. I’m just tired. And I know you are, too. So, come on. Let’s try to lie down, okay?”

  “I can’t sleep now! I have to make sure you don’t get sick like that again!”

  “No, baby. No, you don’t. I am fine.” I told her soothingly, and I laid us both back down on the cot. “Just close your eyes, sweetheart. Close your eyes and try to rest.”

  “Do you promise you won’t go anywhere?”

  “Of course not, baby. I’m going to be right here.”

  It took a lot of convincing and prodding on my part, but eventually, she fell asleep. It was only after she was no longer with us that I remembered Adam being in the room. It was childish and utterly nonsensical, but all I wanted was to launch myself towards him, lock my arms around his neck, and explain everything for the thousandth time. I was disgusted with myself the second those thoughts crossed my mind, and when I crossed my arms over my chest and my shoulders hunched forward, it was to protect me from my own desires that made no sense, not to protect me from him. He had shot me, insulted me, and threatened me. Still, I wanted things to be fixed between us. Every time my brain shrieked in indignant wrath that he had accidentally shot me, the gentler part of me (the one that remembered, with an almost uncomfortable and certainly alarming frequency, our time in the woods together) said that he had not been himself, and I still did not know if he had even been the one to pull the trigger; I might have shot myself. He had been intoxicated by the tree-beast venom. If I had had a gun in my hands when that unearthly rage had been holding me in its grip, I would have shot someone, too, especially one who had hurt me so terribly, whom I thought had betrayed me in the most unforgiveable ways…

  “Do you know how long it has been?” He asked.

  I was taken aback not only by the random question, but by his quiet tone.

  “No. I do not. I am sorr—”

  “It has been twelve days. Almost a fortnight. I always begin to feel the signs of imprisonment after a fortnight. This time, it is coming early.”

  “How have they been treating you?” I asked softly.

  “Oh, very well. As captors go, Tyre is rather polite. Three meals a day, albeit ones not big enough to feed a squirrel, let alone a man of my formidable stature, as you used to like to say. Soap. No beatings, just taunts.” His head turned to the side, and his profile was outlined by the firelight now. Along the outermost line of that shadow, the firelight was a bright white line, perfectly angled, dipping in at his eye, jutting out over his nose, forming two bumps over his lips, and curving out slightly to make his chin.

  “Have they been…” He paused, either not knowing which word he wished to use, or unsure of whether he wanted to ask the question at all. “Have they been… cruel… to you?”

  “I know you want me to say yes, and tell you in minute detail all the agonizing torments to which they have subjected me. But no, the worse was being separated from Penny. From James. Not knowing if Violet, Quinn, Alice, and Nick made it to safety. Not having the faintest clue as to where Elijah has gotten. If he escaped.”

  “Oh, he did not. He is in Janna’s cell. From the sounds of it, they are enjoying their time spent as captives.” He sounded unmistakably bitter, but after that one second in which his true emotional distress was evident, he was speaking again in that dull, emotionless voice.

  “I am sorry that you have to hear it. Her and him, I mean. Copulating and… and… whatnot.” I had wanted to stop, but I had continued, much to my absolute embarrassment. I was glad for how dark our cell was, so that he could not see me blush.

  A soft, almost inaudible chuckle that was a melancholy ghost of the ones with which he had used to respond to my jokes or awkwardness gently rattled the silence between us.

  “Oh, Brynna… Your brother, the stupid boy, is not the first, and he will not be the last. I suppose that now is the time for emotional revelations, and though my anger at you is great, I will tell these emotional revelations to you because you are the only one with me, and I fear that my time is drawing to a close.”

  “It is not.” I told him bluntly. “With all of this involuntary solitude, I have been able to use my power a great deal, albeit not in the way I want to use it. I want to be able to force the top brass of the Old Spirits to bring great humiliation and pain onto themselves publicly before slashing their own throats, but I am so tired that I cannot manipulate their minds to do such things. Pity…” I shook my head slightly and returned to the topic at hand. “But I have been able to look forward.” I looked up at him, into his eyes. “You live, Adam. I hate to ruin the dramatic moment between us, or the existential crisis you might have been experiencing, but you live. Granted, as things stand right now, and they stand resolutely and unwaveringly, you, Janna, James, and I will be boarding the Lapsarian and fighting for our lives there for many, many years. The darkness aboard that ship is denser than I ever could have imagined. There is no light, not even a flicker. Staring into it, when I cast my mind out, it is…” I drew in a slight breath and shook my head slightly, not looking at him even though he was now looking at me, “It is unimaginable. So vast, and so terrible. We will all be tested there. I cannot see if we die there, but I know that you will be kept from us. What I cannot see is where Penny ends up, and that is what scares me the most. Something that I feel in my heart when I see my future self tells me that I made sure she gets away. That is the only flicker of hope I see. That she is living, and she is alright. She is safe, and reasonably happy.”

  “Brynna…” He turned to me.

  “I know that you believe all of this is my fault. The bullet and the near strangulation from twelve days ago showed me that, but Adam, I know that you know the truth about it all.”

  “Do not.” He said, “I will not discuss this with you in quarters where you cannot escape if my temper gets the best of me. Brynna, please… Please. I do not want to hurt you. Even though they want me to hurt you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, did they not tell you that you are my wife? Are you unfamiliar with their practices when it comes to matrimony? The woman is not given the choice to accept or deny the man. The man asks, or in this case, is told, and the woman is his. So, by the utterly ridiculous rules of these savages, you are now my wife. Your fixation on older men has officially been used against you. They believe this is a joke, or that it is be
littling to you. This is an effort to take something about you that they find utterly disgusting and offensive and turn it into something degrading. Marry the leader you betrayed. The one who wants to kill you. Tyre has a sense of humor that is almost childish in its simplicity.”

  “I don’t know.” I said. My eyes rose to meet his again, and I shrugged one shoulder. “It seems rather complex. If you had not explained the joke to me, I never would have gotten it.”

  “I suppose they do not know the extent of the feelings I had for you. Or the ones, I presume, you had for me.”

  “You know I had feelings for you, Adam.”

  “I thought that you did. And then you agreed to contemplate the deal Paul was trying to make with you. For her, Brynna. For the woman who not only was partially responsible for the destruction of your world, for the decimation of your race, but whom you told me you hated. Who wronged you in such unforgivable ways. If you could betray me for her, then what am I to think of how you see me?”

  “Is that what this is about? You think I value her life over yours? That you deserve my respect and love more than she does? Adam, it is not about how I see you, for the sake of all deities and Gods! It was not about that! It was about her right to live, to not be tortured. He led me to believe that she was suffering terribly, and yes, despite all she had done, despite all of the horrible things for which she was partially responsible, I could not stand the thought of her suffering! No matter how I feel about any of them, about my father, Maura, or my mother, they don’t deserve to be tortured! No one deserves that! How can you even say that?! How can you even suggest that it had anything to do with how I saw you?! It was only for her, and if it had been you, if they had offered you the chance to save someone you loved from unspeakable things…”

  “Don’t you say it, Brynna Olivier. Don’t you dare say it…” He growled, but the words were already halfway out of my mouth before I could stop them.

  “If you could go back, and they offered you a chance to save Clara…’

  The second her name had been spoken, he was on me. My back was to the wall, and his fangs, thicker and sharper than any I had ever seen, were glistening as he hissed in my face. A growl left him, and I heard a roar bubbling behind it.

  “I warned you not to make me angry in here, Brynna Olivier!” He shouted, and when I pushed him hard, he stumbled back several steps before charging me and holding me against the wall again. That time, he did roar in my face. The sound rattled the bars on my door and made the celebratory sounds above us go silent for a second. Penny sat bolt upright in bed, her eyes only half open.

  “Shh!” I hissed at him, and I balled up my fingers into a fist and hit him with a brutal upper-cut in the stomach. He grunted, but the force of the hit did not knock the wind out of him the way I wanted it to. In that moment of shock and pain, his upper half collapsed, and his face rested against my shoulder. After a few seconds, Penny laid back down, sound asleep again.

  “You will not speak of her! You will not use her to make your point!” Adam growled at me, “And you will never strike me again!”

  “Oh, but you can throw me against a wall? In what universe is that alright, Adam?”

  “In Tyre’s universe! Tyre’s universe, in which, need I remind you, we now reside!”

  “So, you will adopt his ways now?”

  “Of course I will not! I try to control myself with you, but by the one God, the hatred I have for you… The blind loathing I have for you brings out this demon in me!” He slammed his fist into the wall by my head, “This animal is your making, Brynna! You have done this to me!”

  “Oh, well, it seems you are adopting his ways, even if you do not know it. I am doing this to you. This is not your fault. Your rage is not your responsibility. Blame the victim. That’s what his people do, and have always done.”

  “Yes, because you are the victim. Of course you are! Of course you’re the victim! Even though you have brought this hell down upon us! What made you think that when Paul came to see about your deal, he would not bring others with him? He would not lead others to us!”

  “All he wanted was you and Janna. Then he would give us time to run before they came after us. First, all he wanted was you and Janna, but I…”

  “I have heard this story so many times, I could recite it with you as you say it, Brynna. I understand, alright? I understand that you were not going to hand us over to them. I suppose I should forgive you for even considering it, because it was your mother they were offering you, and the human side of you did not want to see her hurt. But God, I cannot forgive your blind stupidity! I cannot forgive how you allowed your emotions to blind you to logic! The disappointment I feel in you is great. I thought because you were the last of the Athenes that you would never lead us to such ruin. You were above such petty, juvenile mistakes. My, how I was wrong. Sending Maxwell after you was a bloody waste of my time, and the waste of a completely useful, pathetically obedient dog. I should have left you to die. Well, no matter…”

  The door opened, and two men came in and pulled Penny out of the bed.

  “Don’t worry. I had them slip Slumber Root into her food. She will not awaken before this is done. Preventing her from witnessing this was the only kindness I could possibly offer you, and it is for her, not for you.”

  “Penny!” I called, running after her. But the man not carrying her slammed the door before I could stop them from taking her away.

  “Play nice, kiddies!” He shouted in the door, and his gleaming white teeth glinted through the bars, “And congratulations, newlyweds! No ceremony, but at least you get the wedding night, right?!”

  “We’ll be right out here to make sure that things go well, but don’t worry, you will have as much privacy as humanly possible.” I heard Paul’s uncomfortably chipper voice say, “Prost!”

  I whipped around to see Adam unbuckling his belt, and my stomach tumbled away, leaving a vast empty space in the center of me. My heart was hammering so quickly that my brain could not keep up, so it just spun and spun. Beneath my feet, the floor rose and fell. I had watched Michael do it, take off his belt, saunter towards me, that glint in his eyes that I had only seen in the eyes of hungry animals in my picture books… But Adam’s eyes had no such glint, and when his hands grasped my arms, and he pulled me towards him, his thoughts flooded into my already dangerously overstimulated mind. They were breezing by so quickly that I could not pick them out, but I saw past that unstoppable torrent into his heart, and I saw such unfathomable pain. He had not done this before. He had never hurt someone like this. Anyone but her… God, please, anyone but her…

  He pulled me against him, and the breath I tried to draw in quaked and died not even halfway through the inhalation. He pushed my hair back away from my ear with one hand, and after that, his trembling hand was pulling the zipper of my sweatshirt down.

  “We will not do this. Not really. Just go along with what I do.” He whispered in my ear, and though he was trying to assure me through his strength that he was in control of the situation, his voice shook ever so slightly. “Just let me lead you, and they will never know the difference, alright? They will think that I have done it. Alright?”

  Somehow, I forced my throat to unlock, and for words to be spoken through the sharp, rapid half-breaths my lungs were taking in.

  “This is… to… belittle me… yes? Make me… want to… obey them…?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is supposed to break me?”

  He pulled away from me and nodded.

  “I am sorry. So sorry, Brynna, that they are doing this to you. But I will not hurt you… Not really… I will not h—”

  I pushed him away from me, rage coursing through me. It terrified me, that unfathomable wrath. I despised them. Every last one of them. Their abhorrent lifestyle, their shameful, downright sadistic and evil laws, their perverse and merciless creed that was galaxies away from the true meaning of the creed from which theirs had sprung, from the true will of Go
d… I could have allowed them to think that Adam had raped me on our “wedding” night, even though he was not actually going to do it. Or I could show them, for the first time of many, that they could never, ever break me. They could never make me weak.

  I pushed Adam back, and then I unzipped my sweatshirt and threw it off.

  “Brynna…?” He said in utter confusion.

  I pushed him back for the third time until his back hit the wall. Before he could speak again, I pressed my lips hard against his and rooted my tongue into his mouth. It took one second for his shock to dissipate, and then, his tongue began to push back against mine just as forcefully. It was what he had wanted to do for so long, to kiss me that way, to feel my body pressed hard against his, to hear my breaths deepening and my voice whispering his name.

  It was a childish notion, but I had always thought that I would have to learn to kiss another man. Perhaps I was only a skilled kisser with James because I knew how he kissed and how to kiss in response. In short, I would have to shut off my personal preferences and learn the ebb and flow of someone else’s kissing patterns. But Adam would have no such thing; my lips were the ones dominating the kiss, deciding how hard or how soft our mouths would be pressed together, how deeply our tongues would go. Adam was kissing me back according to my intensity, to my direction. I had full control. I stood on my tiptoes, wrapped my arms around his neck, and then dropped my hips against him. In between one of my forceful kisses, he gasped when I began to rub against him. For a few seconds, he let me do it, and all the while, his breathing deepened. Then, he was pushing me backwards and picking me up when I stumbled over my feet. We slammed against the door, rattling it in its frame, and his lips broke free from mine so he could move them down my neck. Quickly, his hands unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans and pushed them down my legs. Then, he was running his rough palms up and down my smooth skin, all while keeping my body pressed firmly to the door, all while kissing, licking, and sucking the spot on my neck that made me breathe deepest and moan loudest, the spot that he had found so quickly, seemingly with little effort. Just when I began to feel that rush of warm moisture between my legs from the contact of his rough skin on mine, the weight of his body against me, and his lips on my neck, his hands were up, pulling the straps of my tank-top off of my shoulders so he could slide it down my torso. At the same time, I was pushing his jeans to the ground.

  “Not much screaming in there, Rexprimus!” Paul said cheerfully out in the hallway, “Are you having some manly trouble? You are quite old, after all. But then, she’s probably used to that problem, aren’t you, Ms. Olivier? Manly trouble?”

  “Oh, no…” I moaned when he pressed himself against me. I reached down between his pelvis and mine and rubbed my hand over his erection. When he pressed against me even harder, it forced the next breath I took to turn into a gasp. “No trouble… No… trouble…”

  Adam chuckled softly in my ear, and it was the sound I had always known and had grown to love so much. His hands came around behind my back to unhook my bra, which he pulled off and threw aside. My black thong was ripped off and thrown in a similarly unceremonious fashion. My hands were up, grasping the bars on the door, gripping them tightly in both hands, when he took two steps back, away from me.

  “Stay just like that.” He said breathlessly. “Let me see you.”

  My heartbeat increased slightly as very slight self-consciousness overtook me for just one second. James and I had been naked in front of each other a million times. He had certainly seen every part of me, and he never let me doubt how aroused he was by me. But never once had he asked to just stand back so he could look at me, so he could observe me closely, the way Adam’s searching gaze was observing me. His green eyes began at mine, moved slowly—so slowly—down, down, down… My grip on the bars tightened even more, but not because I was afraid of what he would say, but because seeing him looking at me that way—seeing his unbelievably beautiful eyes glaze over the second they met mine, to see the lust in them deepen as he looked at me, to see his desire grow, to hear his breaths coming in deeper and slower—made my face hotter than it had ever been before, my breaths faster and deeper than they had ever been before, and the heavy, screaming longing between my legs more insistent—it was absolutely violent, utterly savage—than it had even been before in my life.

  I had always been confident about my body, and over my two years with James, I had become perfectly arrogant about it, as every girl should be. I had my moments of weakness when sleek, raven-haired queens or bleached-blonde, blue-eyed, size negative-three comfort workers coveted my men, but even in those moments, I knew I was beautiful, just maybe not as fitting with the idea of socially conventional beauty. In short, I was not “perfect.” But in Adam’s gaze, I saw that he thought me perfect, and that belief, coupled with my own perception of myself, provoked the most heightened arousal in me that I had ever experienced.

  “You are perfection, Brynna Olivier.” He breathed, speaking out loud what I knew he had been thinking. “You affirm what I have always thought: I am unworthy of you.”

  “No.” I said, and I reached out, took his hands, pulled him back to me, and wrapped his arms around me. As I kissed him slowly wherever my lips could reach, I slid my hand into his boxers to wrap around him, and a shudder passed through me. Under my breath, I murmured, “Oh my God…” and he chuckled but said nothing, because he could not possibly say anything when my hand began to move forward and back, slowly at first, but then slightly faster, as my grip got slightly tighter…

  “Not yet.” He whispered breathlessly, and I released him. “Let me take care of you first.”

  “Rexprimus, what is happening in there?” Paul asked, “The young lads out here are getting antsy, because they came for the show you promised them, and you are not delivering.”

  “Whatever you want…” Adam said to me loudly enough so they could hear but still breathlessly, “Whatever you want me to do, Brynna Olivier, I am yours. Tell me what you want, and you will have it.”

  I smiled and looked up at him. And loudly enough so they could hear, I said:

  “Get down on your knees.”

  “Yes, ma reine.” He dropped to his knees in front of me with no further ado. I gasped, and my hands flew up to grasp the bars on the door again when he began to devour me. Both of his hands crept up my torso to caress my breasts, to push them up and together, so his fingers could move outwards to knead and pinch my nipples… Every time I thought that the pleasure was at its peak, his tongue found a spot that had not been fully stimulated and pushed hard and fast or licked slowly against it. My hands were holding his to my breasts, and my head was tilted back as I moaned. Wild, sensuous, passionate fire was spreading through me, through every part of me, and within mere minutes, I was not only coming for him, I was coming for him and screaming out his name, and his name dissolved into a long, loud moan that the whole building had to have heard.

  “Now what?” He asked, licking and kissing my inner thigh, “Again? I will live on my knees in front of you, giving you pleasure this way, if you require it of me.”

  “Yes, you will.” I said breathlessly yet firmly, and I dropped to my knees in front of him so I could kiss him again. My hands moved up and down his back as we kissed.

  “That is enough.” Paul said, but I spun Adam around so he was against the door, keeping it firmly shut. There was no way that I would allow him to remove Adam from my cell now. I threw my leg over him and grinned up at Paul, whose furious face was in the doorway.

  Then I slid myself down onto Adam’s erection and began to thrust as hard as I could, with everything I had, with all the rage, and pride, and pent-up frustration I felt. His hand twisted in my hair and pulled my head back so he could lick my neck, and I heard him growling and snarling, and felt his fangs grinding into my neck, my shoulders, my cheeks, my lips, and my breasts when his mouth claimed each of them. When I pulled his head back by his hair, my fangs shot out, and my hips bucked faster as I ram
med my tongue into his mouth again.

  If only my body had been slightly less malnourished, if only I had been slightly stronger, I might have been able to continue riding him as fast and as hard as I was. But I was slowing, and Adam was nowhere near close to finishing, and neither was I. But my body was slowing, wanting nothing more than for my hips to keep bucking forward so powerfully but unable to do so. When they shuddered and stopped, and my body, trembling violently with the desire to keep going, collapsed forward onto him, gasping and fighting tears of frustration and longing to finish for both his sake and mine, I started to apologize.

  Before I could even get out a single word, he rose while he was still inside of me, and my arms and legs wrapped around him. With unthinkable ease, he carried me to the cot quickly. My back was on the hard mattress, but the rest of me was hanging off, held up in his hands. Now, he was the one thrusting hard, and at the angle at which my body was contorted, he was hitting me even more precisely in all the right places than he had been before.

  “Oh, my God…” I moaned, “Oh, God, Adam… Oh, right there…”

  My arms curled back, and I took two fistfuls of the thin blanket in my hands and squeezed.

  “Oh, God… Oh, God…” I gasped out, as that warmth and heaviness grew and grew to absolute fullness, and every thought in my mind disappeared, and every trouble in the world evaporated like it had never existed.

  “Climax” and “reaching my peak” do not even begin to cover it. I had never, in my life, experienced that… My vision went blurry, and when the fire light exploded into a blinding flash of light as he groaned out my name, I threw my body upwards so I could latch onto his front at the exact second that I began to come. It was minutes, not seconds, that my insides contracted and expanded, writhed and pulsed and throbbed and screamed… By the time my body relaxed, I had tears streaming down my cheeks. It was only after I opened my eyes that I realized we were lying on the bed. Well, my back was on the bed, my feet were on the floor, and he was on his knees in front of me, his wide, muscular torso, at which it was almost painful to look, covering mine protectively from the gaze of the men who were struggling to see in the door.

  “Adam, she will pay for this dearly.” Paul spat at him furiously, “You will learn to screw her right, and she will learn to submit.”

  As Paul spoke, Adam’s large, rough hands had been grasping my small breasts, and his tongue had been flicking over, sliding around, or sucking gently on my nipples. But after Paul said those words, Adam wrapped me up in the thin blanket on the bed and then rose to his feet. Calmly, he walked forward, and I threw off the blanket and slunk up behind him, wrapped my arms around his firm midsection, and rested my head on his shoulder. So suddenly that it even startled me, Adam reached through the bars and grabbed Paul by the back of his neck. He pulled him forward with all of his might until Paul’s face slammed into the iron bars. A crack was audible, and I wondered which of Paul’s bones had broken. Even as four young boys—the rest of our audience—tried their best to help, they could not, and Adam was only gripping Paul with one hand. When Adam’s other hand came through the bars, reached into Paul’s mouth, and grasped hold of his tongue, the other boys backed off, eyes wide and terrified. All the while, I kissed Adam’s shoulder, up his neck, to his cheek, and back again slowly. When he spoke, I nestled my face against his shoulder again.

  “Threaten her again, and I take your tongue.” Adam snarled at him so ferociously, a shudder passed through me. “Lay a finger on her, and I take them all. Rape her…” He smirked at him, “And I will search for something between your legs, and whatever I find, I will take from you. Do you understand me?!”

  Paul did not respond, so Adam gave his tongue a hard pull. That did the trick; Paul nodded vigorously and tried to shout that he did understand.

  “Good. Now run along and tell Tyre how bad we have been. Run along and tell him how my love demands pleasure, and how I love nothing in this world more than submitting to her demands.” When I kissed his cheek, he looked back at me and kissed my lips.

  “I recognize her power and revere her absolutely. She is my queen. I am not her King; I am nothing but a servant who lives to oblige her desires. Tell them all that King Adam Elohimson drops to his knees at Brynna Olivier’s command. Most importantly, tell them that he loves doing it.”

  “If she will not break, and you will not break her… If you will not obey, either of you…” Paul hissed, “Then there is nothing left for us to do.”

  “Perhaps not. But we have done much for you.”

  “Yes.” I smiled, “Taught you some tricks.”

  “Taught us how to be a pussy is more like it.” One of the younger boys said, but he did not sound sure of that assertion in the slightest.

  “Let’s go. All of you.” Paul ordered, and as they went up the stairs, I heard that same young boy murmur, “My wife never sounds like that…”

  “Shut up!” Paul snapped.

  Adam and I were laughing softly at that when he lifted me up into his arms and carried me back to the cot. Once I was lying on it, he kneeled beside me and caressed my lips softly with his. His mouth moved down so he could gently plant light kisses up my stomach, to my breasts, to my neck, and to my lips again.

  “I do not know what to say.” He told me, “I have not the slightest idea.”

  We both laughed again, because truly, what was there to say?

  “How about ‘I am sorry.” I suggested, “‘I will never call you such awful names again, or threaten you, or accidentally shoot you, or put you into a situation in which you could accidentally shoot yourself, or push you into walls… Well, I will not push you into walls unless it is while we are having amazing, passionate, wild sex.’”

  He laughed.

  “I am sorry. I will never call you such awful names again, or…” His smile faded, and his fingers traced over the scar just below my collarbone. “God…” He whispered, and he came down to kiss the scar, holding his lips to it for a long second and then kissing it quickly again.

  “It has eaten me alive for days. It has consumed me. The guilt… I was furious, but I could never do you harm. You knew that, and it infuriated me more. But you know I could not harm you by my own will.”

  “I do know that. I knew that you could threaten me, but when the time came for you to act on those threats, you did not, despite your anger. Despite how much you hated me.”

  “I did not hate you. You know that. You knew my lies even when I did not. You knew my heart, as you always have, even when I did not.”

  I smiled and pulled him to me so I could kiss him, this time slowly but with just as much passion as before.

  “Oh, you crazed woman… What have we done?” He asked, and we were laughing again, “Oh, we have done it now, haven’t we?”

  “Yes. Yes, we have.”

  “It is worth it. It is worth it just so I did not have to even pretend to do what they told me to do. It is worth it, because you showed them that you will never bow down to me or anyone else. You will never let them break you that way.”

  “I will never let them break me in any way. Did that hurt your masculine pride terribly, saying you enjoy submitting to my demands?”

  “No.” He replied, “I do apologize.”

  “No, that is actually a better answer.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.” I said, and I giggled because he was moving in for another kiss.

  “I am glad.” He said just before he kissed me again. “You do know that I was not saying that just for them. That is the truth. Whatever you want from me, you will have it always. And not just like this. In every way, Brynna, I will give you anything and everything you want.”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And what do I give you in return? I don’t have anything material.”

  “You have plenty. Do you not know yet that you are everything to me? You are all I have wanted since the day I learned that you existed. I knew
you would be my weakness, and you are. But by the one God, you are also my greatest strength. Because of that, and because of how deeply I care for you, you will always have what you want. Always.”

  I smiled and raised my head to kiss him again.

  “And what if I want both you and James?”

  He kissed me again, his heart and mind calm, as though he had been expecting me to say that.

  “Then we will shake hands and make peace. And we will work on our envy, and our rivalry, and we will realize that our ultimate goal is the same: for your happiness to be unrivaled and unbreakable. If you want us both, then you will have us both. I will lay down my arms, as they say, with him, if it will make you happy.”

  “You honestly think I will be able to convince him of that?”

  “Yes. Together, we can convince him. Together, we will. I will always have my objections to him, but you love him very much, and I know that. Lately, he has not given me a reason to threaten him; he has treated you well. I have been far worse to you than he ever has been, and I know that, as well. I know that, Brynna, and I will make up for it, in every way I can. I promise.”

  “I know.”

  “I was childish. I allowed my hurt at your betrayal to cloud my reasoning. I could not see through my anger into your true motives, and I would not accept your explanation. I am so sorry for that.” His fingers brushed over the scars on my chest. “For everything, my beauty, I am sorry.”

  I reached up when I saw that he had tears in the eyes. They were the first I had ever seen, except when he was slowly dying from his poisoned wound in the forest with me so many years earlier. Gently, I wiped his tears away and raised my head to kiss him again.

  “In any other world, I would never tolerate such violence. I would never be here with you like this if it had happened on Earth or in another life, nor would I ever be with you if it happened again, obviously. But for this one, because, like James, you were under the influence, I will let it slide.”

  He looked at me, his eyebrows creasing slightly in confusion.

  “It means you are off the hook.”

  His face broke into a slightly embarrassed smile, and I laughed somewhat hysterically, covering my mouth to stifle the sound.

  “It means that I forgive you, Adam. My stars!”

  “Oh! Yes, alright. I will have to write these expressions down to forever avoid these humbling moments of incomprehension.”

  “Yes, you must.”

  When they brought Penny back to us, she was still asleep, thank God or the Gods. Adam lifted me, yanked the blanket off of the cot, wrapped me in it, and laid me back down before the guards had even gotten fully in the door. Even though I was covered, he still kept his arms around me and held me to his chest. After the guards left, we got dressed, fearing that Penny would awaken and find us wrapped, limbs entwined, on the cot, naked and so obviously guilty of the transgressions we had just committed. After we were dressed, we sat on the floor by the bed, and with his arms around me, he fell asleep against my shoulder.

  “Just for a few minutes. I promise.” He murmured drowsily, and I looked back to find his eyes drooping. I held my lips to his for a long moment, and then nestled my forehead against his.

  “You have not slept in days. I am fine. Sleep for as long as you need to.”

  “No. Just a few… Just a few min—”

  I giggled softly to myself when he passed out completely, and then I laid back and rested my head against his.

  It was while he was sleeping there that the panic set in. How would I ever explain what had just happened to James? How could I ever think that he would accept the idea of me having both him and Adam? I would have to let one of them go, and I knew I could not live without James. He was my everything, my first love, the surrogate father to Penny… We had built a life together. But my heart never lost its fire for Adam, even when our fight was at its most vicious. Even after one of us had pulled that trigger… I had known then, the same way I had known with James, that he had not been himself. It was hard to make that excuse for both of them; it was hard to accept the possibility (though it was possible; in fact, it was true) that the two men I loved could hurt me in such terrible ways due to being under the influence of hallucinogenic substances.

  And then, what if the Old Spirits were right about my love for these older men? I thought briefly what the press back home might have said. Surely, they would have blamed my mother. They would have said that her lack of maternal capabilities had led me to look for love in all the wrong places. Either that, or they would have blamed my dad, saying that if he had been more attentive, I would not have developed “daddy issues.” Were my mother and father to blame for my love of older men? Were they responsible for my love of that one older woman?

  The one thing in this world we can’t help is to whom we are attracted, physically, sexually, and emotionally. I had told Alice that when she had asked me for advice. I had told her the story of Rachel, when I had told no one else but Adam since Rachel had died. She had accepted that line of reasoning about attraction because it was true. I could not help that it was James and Adam to whom I was so drawn. I could not help it that boys my own age—indeed, boys even ten or fifteen years older than me—left me feeling bored, annoyed, and quite frankly, disgusted. When Rachel had been alive, and we had been together, I had assumed that I was lesbian, and that was perfectly fine. As it turns out, my sexuality was not clear cut, as sexuality so often is not. And as it turns out, my sexuality did not just apply to gay or straight, it applied to different subgenres of the two sexes: old or young, street smart and sarcastic versus bookish and sheltered, power versus powerless, Herculians versus Rexprimusi of Pangaea. People can dissect this all they want, and I have heard that they do. I have heard it is a topic of much debate. But all you need to know is this: my love for them constructs a colossal part of me. My love of such a strange assembly of characters, male and female, Earthean and Pangaean, old and old, is me.

  So, if I wanted to be with both Adam and James, my two older men, then I would be. If they made me happy (and God, I knew that James did, and once Adam and I repaired the damage to our relationship, he would make me happy, too), then I was allowed to love them both. Maura would have said that it would tear me apart, having to split myself between them. But she was wrong, because somehow, we would make it work. Somehow, they would grow to understand. Somehow, they would accept that my heart was too large and too strange for just one of them.