Chapter 41
Ari found for Sawyer what he called jeans, as well as a belt, boots, and a dark brown shirt. Most, she had to experiment with a few times to get a size that would fit him. Then she waited while he sifted through the bins and came to her with a red dress with a tiny flared skirt and a pair of thin black tights. When she wriggled on the dress and then the tights, he had her wait while she was bent over. Then he assured her the tights outlined everything on her ass he wanted to see and feel.
His big hands running over her made her shiver.
“Come here.” Sawyer pulled her to a corner where a deep, padded sofa waited. He sat then drew her onto his lap. With Sawyer reclining, she curled up her legs and cuddled into him, listening to the steady assuring beat of his heart.
“We can live here? Survive?”
“Yes.” He patted her ass, breathed some more. “After being on Aerthe, the worries I used to have here are nothing. They’re absolutely frivolous. Stop worrying.”
The breathing helped as much as his heartbeat and more than words could. She liked simply being next to him. A new world...his world. It was too much. How did you understand something like this? How did you feel it? Maybe it would take weeks before she’d know, everywhere, in her head, her bones, her toes, in the way her skin bumped into things that had never existed before, that she was here, on Earth.
For the moment, he was enough. He soothed her with his immovable weight that didn’t stir when she shifted, with his voice, with his scent. She moved her arm so she could feel his thigh, watched her fingers cover the muscle there...saw how small her hand was against him. To go from hating him to this was as radical as moving to another world, she supposed.
If one could happen then the other must be true. Ari sighed.
A new world.
Her thoughts whirled in chaos but it was a distant, muffled chaos.
“I suppose, you will still be you, here, on this Earth?”
Sawyer chuckled. “Yes. Meaning?”
“Nothing.” She liked that too. Continuity, and she loved how he’d been on Aerthe, this last week or more. “It’s just...”
Ari wriggled, and finally knew she had to say the words she’d wanted to say. Admitting this was the opposite of the strong, if introverted, person she’d imagined herself.
“I want to be with you, here. Please?”
The please seemed stupid, but she was worried...because maybe he’d say no. Fear gnawed at her. Maybe he’d reject her, because he didn’t need her here? Such irony. It felt weak to need him with such intensity.
“Done.” He swallowed. Her heart caught for a moment. His arm was draped over her, keeping her close, and he squeezed her. “I want to be with you too, Ari. I’ve not been able to imagine anything else for a while.”
She huffed, thinking, thinking, round and round in circles. More, she needed to do more, and it was time she took that step. He’d been waiting for her to take it.
“There is no slavery here?”
“Not true slavery, no. Not for us, anyway.”
“Then...” She sat up and looked into his eyes. “May I have your belt, Sawyer?”
Around his eyes crinkled, but he gave her a straight-edged smile before he said, “Yes.” He unbuckled the belt, slid it from his waist, handed it to her.
She slipped off the sofa to the floor and waited, with her hands on his knees, thinking, gathering courage.
“I can guess what you want to say.”
“Mmm.” Still hard to say it, but... She held up the belt. “Put this around my neck, Sir?”
When he’d done so, when he held the free end in his fist with determination, as if he was never planning on letting go, when the metal buckle sat beneath her chin and the leather circled her neck, then she finally said the words.
“I would like to be yours, Sawyer. Your slave. By my choice. Does that...does that work for you?”
It seemed a compromise of huge proportions, and yet, if he accepted she’d be ecstatic.
If slavery was real, she could never say this, do this.
Or could she? The moment was so potent, so satisfying – to hand herself over to him – it made her wonder.
His voice came out in a deep tone that sawed down to her bones. “Yes. It satisfies me greatly.” He put his hands over hers, clasping her hands between his while still holding the belt. “Thank you, Ari. I accept you.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
There was a symbolism here, for they seemed the first beings alive in a world encompassed by these walls and by the rain drawing lines down the windows. It was a symbolism underlined and etched by rumbles of thunder and the dimness of the store, by their nakedness when they first arrived...by coming to this world through a portal that might’ve killed, by finding hope when all had been gone.
By being everything to each other, for no one else could understand them.
Then he tucked his finger under her chin and also used the belt to tilt her head. Grim, serious, with the belt just a little tighter than it needed to be, he said, “You are mine now, girl. Do not forget.”
Oh she wouldn’t; she wouldn’t. Surely her eyes shone.
“I’m going to have to teach you to speak English.” He patted her head where she’d laid it on his knee. “Wait here. I saw a piece of jewelry I can use.”
When he returned to tower over her, because she’d stayed on her knees, a slim steel necklace hung from his hand. He opened his hand and showed her – it was a sculpted dragon with the wings wrapped tightly to its body and the clasp formed where the dragon gripped the tail in its mouth.
“A dragon collar. This’ll look beautiful on your neck.”
Then she waited as he removed the belt and placed the dragon around her, the metal cool on her skin. His callused, blunt fingers moved from link to link, softly and methodically, as if placing each link exactly so.
With the clasp fastened, he went to one knee before Ari and laid the weight of his hand on her head. “I’ll find a leash to use in private, but you’ll wear a collar in public. Just know that I will never let you go, whether slavery is real here or not.”
A paradox, but strangely it completed her, compelled her.
“I own you.”
“Yes, Sawyer,” she whispered, mesmerized by the ferocious intensity in his eyes.
His fingers crunched painfully into her hair. Then he leaned in and took a kiss from her lips – a hard, relentless kiss – leaving her panting, squirming, and squeezing her thighs together, and wishing they could do more here, in the darkness of the store.
Was this love or obsession or something else? All the arguments she might raise for or against giving herself to him had disintegrated. The labels didn’t matter. This was right.
They went out into the rain again, with her wearing the steel dragon collar.
The rain rattled on roofing iron and signs, pattering at their feet and on their heads when they walked in the open.
They came upon what Sawyer called an ATM machine. She laid her palms on the machine and was fascinated at how the innards resembled a mechling, though Sawyer denied that to her, twice.
But, she could feel it.
She reached within with her mind, and the machine spat out money in large amounts.
Sawyer swore. “Magic is here?”
As they walked away, he said something else that captivated her more.
“I wonder if I can get you pregnant here? Would you like to have a baby? The doctors might know how.”
A baby?
“Umm.” She thought on that.
To have a child. Children were little adorable creations she’d admired from afar but had never dreamed could be hers...theirs. The idea blossomed into something new, something of promise. She imagined them strolling like this with a child between them, the child’s hand held in hers. She could almost hear small footsteps and laughter.
A child both hers and Sawyer’s.
She hugged Sawyer tightly and smiled, leaning into him. “Yes. I want that.”
“Good.” He kissed the top of her head.
They turned back and left money in the secondhand clothing store. It seemed right to do so.
Then, his boots and her shoes squishing from wetness, they went out into the rainy darkness to find whatever this world of Earth had waiting for them.
“Lots of easy money and babies,” Sawyer told her.
And she was fine with that. She even skipped a little.
He angled his head her way, eyebrow rising as if he were dubious. Rain dribbled down the side of his face. “You’re dancing?”
“Maybe?” She smiled shyly.
“I get it. I do.” He sought and held her hand. Above the sound of the rain and their shoes on the pavement, he quietly added, “Keep on dancing. Without you here, my life would be colorless.”
Sawyer kept walking as if nothing had happened, but those words...no one had ever said anything like that to her before. Those few words had filled her heart.