Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Of the participation. Of the orgasms. Of any shred of fun others might enjoy when there was nothing but work and service and the never-ending foiled attempts to escape.
Eugenia couldn’t let go or live up.
How clever the captain had been, stroking her when she’d been in his rooms. Growling at her ear that he cared. Urging her to explore her body in private and remember how wonderful masturbation had felt.
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.