Chapter 36
The water swallowed him. Sawyer struck out for where he’d seen her, praying he wasn’t too late.
The pool water was thick with whatever made it green – sludge, leaves, little green bits of stuff floated past his eyes. He kept them open since he had to if he wanted to find her.
His fingers touched flesh and he swam to the surface with her arm clutched in his hand.
It couldn’t be that deep, but it felt like forever in this almost silent zone.
Something grabbed, snagged, at his leg a few inches before his head broke the surface so he shoved her upwards. If she was unconscious, there was little he could do. He needed to get loose before he could do anything. He needed to be alive to help her.
A vine or something equally tough was knotted about his ankle. He reached down to untangle it and couldn’t get loose.
Air, he needed air.
Desperately he swam upward, and again he almost reached the surface, but no, he was held back, despite his hands grabbing at the water, shoving, stretching upward. His arms could go up there into the air, but he, his head, his mouth were submerged.
Then he saw her face above him, her mouth blurring as the water moved, and her hand splashed down into the water and his realm. He took her hand in his, wrapped his fingers through hers.
She pulled at him and still he stayed where he was, sunken, starving.
Oxygen was running low, his mind slowing, his lungs demanding he open his mouth and take a breath.
Blackness swept his vision, but he hung onto her hand. Air bubbled out of him – his last exhalation. He was going to have to breathe even though it’d fill his lungs with water.
Got to breathe.
Her lips hit his, and she breathed into him, filling his chest.
Life. He found her eyes, stared. He couldn’t stay kissing her. He had to trust.
He broke contact, dived again, tugged at the vine. Still nothing gave.
Another reach for the surface and again she breathed air into him, then her hand fumbled for his and she gave him her knife.
Handle first, which was a plus.
He began sawing at the vine.
On the third try, he did it; he cut through the vine.
Leg freed, he thrust to the surface and dragged himself out, coughing, spitting out water. Then he rolled over onto his back and looked up at her, put the knife aside, and he dragged her down to him.
“You saved me,” he said, an inch from those full pouty lips – lips he’d seen her worry with teeth, these last days, and he’d not been able to kiss.
“Yes. Not sure why.” But, she smiled, fleetingly, then wiped water away from his face, as if that mattered.
He took this as a good omen, and he kissed her, trying to suck her soul into his...maybe.
Seconds only, but by the time she convinced him to stop because JI was in trouble, the mech was departing with the two jaggs in tow, their teeth worrying at some strange animal in JI’s hands.
I’m fine, JI thought at him. At the bedroom doors, JI freed a hand and waved, as if off to play.
Where he’d fought, there was blood and white fur.
Sawyer levered himself out from under Ari, off the slippery floor, staggered after JI.
The main doors to the outside had shut by the time he reached the bedroom. His discarded pack lay to one side. A trail of blood spatters marked the path of the mech.
“Well.” He turned. “Guess he’s fine. You, however...” He took a step toward her.
She’d followed him through into the bedroom, dripping, her feet treading in blood, smudging it, making pretty girl prints in red.
“Me?” Ari went into reverse, eyes flaring.
Her back hit the wall beside the bedroom-to-pool doorway.
Beyond, framed by the wide opening, water rattled down to floor, to pool, and onto the abandoned knife – plinking, pouring, gushing, as the storm strengthened. Light turned gray and cool. Dappling sunlight became a sift of dark.
Suited his mood.
He wanted to hurt something, and she was all he had before him.
What had she been doing up here? JI was bigger, badder, a military bot. She was a girl with a knife.
He kicked shut both sides of the doorway, slamming them, just in case the pool harbored strange denizens. Surely not, but he didn’t want to be interrupted.
“Don’t want me running in there?” she said, the rasp in her voice betraying her nervousness.
He just smiled. They both knew this was past that. “I have questions.”
“Oh?” Ari gulped and her palms flattened to the wall either side of her. Playing the victim? He liked that. “Good ones?” she asked, huskily.
“Both of us are wet. I need you naked.”
“So I don’t get ill?”
“Something like that.”
He grabbed the neck of her shirt, and pulled her out a foot from the wall. The mulberry coat, her shirt, her pants, all of her was dripping, same as him. He left his hand tangled in the twist of her shirt, while he assessed how the wet fabric bunched up and clung to her breasts.
He was angry and needed to understand why. Anger made him hungry.
He could just take her, like he had before. Today was different.
He still had a hard-on yet his fingers rested on her cleavage, touching her.
She wasn’t, technically, his slave. She wasn’t saying yes, and she hadn’t said no.
All that past wrestling with his conscience.
All her complicity in her apparent denial of her desires.
Her wants were written on her face, her body, what she did.
Yet she denied them.
“What do you want, Ari?”
Her eyes flicked upward. She’d been staring at his arm, fixated on how he held her. The bulk of his biceps contrasted with her delicacy. He could flatten her despite her fitness and lithe muscularity.
“You just saved me from drowning.” Violence in his voice. He needed to simmer down. He released her collar, let her slump into the wall. Instead, he planted his hands above her, caging her, though she could escape.
He knew she wouldn’t. They both did.
“I need you to talk. I’ve done things to you just because I could and I wanted to. Here’s your chance. You want me? You don’t? You want to be fucked, or you don’t.”
She shook her head. “This is a little too abrupt. I need...”
God, what drivel.
“Space?” He cocked his head. “Or a different man? I’m from Earth, and there, we don’t do what I did to you. It’s fucking with my head. I can be your master. I want to be. It’s my default with you, but if you want to go on, I need words. From you. Words about us, sex, what you need. Think you can do that?”
The blush spreading across her face was cute.
Calm spread. This was grounding him. Hadn’t known himself he needed this in the clear, but fuck it all, he did.
Ari cleared her throat. “Still abrupt. I’ve never talked about ummm sex like this.” She frowned to the side, sort of shook her head. “Here is...messy.”
“I don’t care if the bloody apocalypse is outside the door. You’ve never talked sex with a man?” He smiled. Yeah, this was right. He could do this. Go slow. Get his head straight. He leaned in and brushed his mouth across her damp forehead, kissed her and nipped her ear lobe, tasting her like the delicacy she was...then he let his words rumble out. “Let’s try this way. I’ll feed you the script. You say, yes, Sir for me. You answer my questions, but if you deviate, I’m done.”
Lines marked her forehead. “Done?” she murmured – her lips so close he almost kissed her there too.
He cradled her chin in his hand. Softness before the storm. “If you say, yes, Sir you accept my words. Done means I walk away. I’m past doing stuff that only scrapes the surface. You open up to me or I walk.”
Negotiation of a kind.
And if she really didn’t want him, this would show the cracks. He’d turned things upside down on her.
If she stayed...
His heart beat a little easier, if a little crazier. This was a crossroads.
She stayed under him, waiting, eyes big, all of her wet and shivering. Maybe not from cold, he hoped. The air was pregnant with promise – dark promise.
The storm boomed as if to underline that promise.
“I won’t beat you with anything, even though you’d like that, won’t hurt you much at all. I won’t tie you up, but you will answer me. I also will never guarantee to be one hundred percent kind.” That last part was for him – it made his throat tighten. He needed it. “Total fucking kindness is not me.”
She blinked up at him, swallowed then nodded.
Fuck. Highlight and underline the promise.
“You also keep that damn power of yours in check, and we both know now that you can, finally, do that if you want to. Yes?”
Though she trembled, she said it. “Yes, Sir.”
“Then let’s begin.”
Whatever she wore for a bra under that wet shirt wasn’t working too well, because her nipples were sticking up so hard and high he could’ve ID’d them in a parade.
He pushed away from the wall, took a step back, then another.
For the first time, he knew he had her. Nothing imagined about this. She’d as much as placed her head under his boot by agreeing to his terms.
Today, he’d treat her with kid gloves...ones with hidden spikes, but the spikes would be kept for another day – a day when she knew she belonged to him with the same certainty as he knew she did.
“First answer me this. Name the first time you enjoyed what I did to you.”
“Oh.” She looked aside, and he swore her blush deepened.
“Remember the terms of this.”
“Can I ask one question before we start, Sawyer?”
He nodded.
“Won’t they miss us?”
They. A good point. He sent a quick mental message to JI that they were okay but occupied, and received an equally terse reply.
“I’ve told JI to tell them we’re okay. Now answer.”
“The first time?” Her cheek dimpled, her gaze dipped. “It was the first time you did...anything.”
“I thought so,” he said softly. Oh yes. “Take off your pants, your boots, your coat.”
Watching her do so after whispering, yes Sir, was another milestone.
“Unbutton your shirt but leave it on. Take off anything you have over your breasts.”
Another, “Yes, Sir.” She obeyed impeccably, standing there afterward against the wall as if she waited in the spotlight for a firing squad.
His cock was at full attention, and he might have blue balls before this was done, but he’d do this all day just to watch her obey.
Ari, mostly naked except for that opened shirt with her nipples playing peekaboo at the edge, and those white panties he’d not been aware of until now – both pieces of clothing wet and sticking to her flesh.
“Pull your panties down just enough to show that cunt to me and then slide your fingers inside.”
She obeyed that too. Slowly, reluctantly, but she managed.
Her waiting there, slightly hunched over, with her fingers vanishing inside... “Push them in and out and say where they are.”
There came that blush again. He’d pay to see that.
“They’re in me, Sir.”
“Where?” He smiled. “You know the word. If you don’t know it, maybe I should get you to walk back down to show everyone how many fingers you can fit up there?”