“Varian doesn’t suffer traitors.” No one knows that better than I do.

Mallory’s words play over and over in my head as I watch her sleep, and as tragic and infuriating as her story is, one part of it keeps rising to overshadow the rest.

Varian is in zone three.

I knew he’d survived, because along with six counts of murder, I was also charged with the assault of Varian Roys. But I didn’t even know he was arrested, much less sentenced and convicted to the same prison.

I was released from the arena two seasons ago. I’ve been in zone three more than half a year, and Varian’s been here the whole damn time. Which means I can find him and finish the job. Thanks to Mallory.

She was one of his girls. His favorite.

I remember how Varian was with his girls. When they were in favor, he treated them like princesses, giving them dresses, and jewelry, and sweets. But when they pissed him off, he beat them. He passed them around to his bodyguards. He locked them naked in pet cages and made them eat dog food from the can with their fingers.

He fucking tortured them, but because he was also their only source of food, mercy, and pleasure, they loved him anyway. But it was a sick kind of love. A twisted dependence.

There was a girl with Varian the day I shot him, but I hardly even looked at her. I had eyes only for him. For watching him bleed out in the street, like the gutter rat he is. Was Mallory that girl? Is that why my gaze is drawn to her over and over? Does some part of my subconscious remember her?

Does she remember me?

No. I’m pretty sure that if she knew who I am, she’d be running from me, not curled up in my bed.

If I’d killed Varian, the police couldn’t have asked her to testify against him. If I hadn’t put him in the hospital, the police would never have gotten close enough to her to threaten her. She’s terrified that he will find her out here, and she wants me to protect her.

I owe her that much, don’t I?

But who’s going to protect her from me?

I dream that I’m balls deep in Norah, with her on top. I know this isn’t real. That if I make so much as a sound, I’ll wake myself up, and reality will rip her way from me.

I’ve dreamed about Norah a thousand times, but this is by far the best—

She moans, and the dream changes. Now it’s Mallory riding my cock, and when I reach down to grab her hips, to take the eager little temptress the way I want her, I get a handful of her hair instead. She isn’t riding me. She has my cock wedged halfway down her throat, her lips around the base, and when she moans again, I feel the vibration all the way—

My eyes fly open. It isn’t a dream. In the murky morning light shining in around the seam of the hatch in the ceiling, I can see Mallory crouched over me, her head bobbing up and down on my cock like she’s never even heard of a gag reflex, and the tight heat feels unreal.

Fuck.

I pull her up by her hair, and her mouth disconnects from my cock with the tragic pop of broken suction. She gasps, and her hands fly up to clutch at mine, trying to pry open my grip.

“Ow, ow, Barrett! Please! I’m sorry!” She’s crying now, her lips swollen and shiny with saliva, and I feel like an asshole, even though I didn’t ask her to fucking suck me off in my sleep. How the hell did she get my shorts down without waking me up?

I let go of her hair, and she scuttles away from me while I tuck myself back into my shorts. I can still feel the ghost of her mouth around me, and I’d give anything to feel the real thing again. To just…let her finish. But I damn well know better.

“You let me stay, so I thought that meant… I mean… What did I do wrong?” she asks, huddled in the corner, and though I can hardly see her in the weak stream of daylight, I can see tears shining in her eyes. “That’s how Varian liked to wake up, so I thought… But if you’d rather have something else…?”

I shake my head at her fiercely, and her tears spill over.

“Was it not good? You’re bigger than most of—”

I shake my head at her again. I don’t know how to explain to her that she is not my whore.

“Please. Just let me try again. Please don’t kick me out.”

I’m not going to—

Fuck.

For a moment, we stare at each other, both of us trying to understand what’s gone wrong here, and the longer we go without coming to a mutual conclusion, the straighter her spine becomes and the harder her gaze grows, until she’s glaring at me. “Why?” she finally demands, eyes wide and imploring. “Why don’t you want me? I don’t eat much, and you have plenty of food.” She waves one arm at the rations stacked against one wall. “I’ll sleep on the floor, if you don’t want to share your mattress. I’ll go get fresh water. I’ll bathe you with my fucking tongue, if that’s what you want. Just please tell me what’s wrong with me.”

She stands and pulls her bra over her head. Then she shoves her pants down and steps out of them, and now she’s standing at the end of my mattress, stark naked. Begging me to look at her. To touch her. To take payment for a night of safety in my shelter by wrecking that beautiful body. Because she doesn’t fucking know any other way.

Mallory. I want to say her name so badly, but my tongue would mangle the syllables. I want to tell her that there’s nothing wrong with her, other than a criminal lack self-worth that Varian beat into her, and that UA propagated by whoring her out.

“Barrett.” There are tears in her eyes again. “Why don’t you want me?”

I don’t know how to tell her that she’s got it all wrong. It’s not that I don’t want her. It’s that she deserves so much better than this. Than me. I don’t know how to make her understand that. And the pain of rejection shining in her eyes is sharp enough to carve a crater right through my fucking soul.

So I crawl across the mattress on my knees and grab her by the hips. My fingers sink into her soft flesh and I take her left nipple into my mouth. This is wrong, and I damn well know it. She thinks she needs to pay for my protection, and since I can’t convince her otherwise, I’m just going to go with it? What kind of asshole does that?

No. That’s not what this is. I’m going to show her that sex doesn’t have to be a currency. It doesn’t have to be a favor or a debt. It can just be…an experience. Something to share, when you have nothing else.

Her hands glide over my scalp, and she moans when I flick the tip of my tongue over her nipple. It pebbles in my mouth, so I suck harder on it, and her fingers tighten in my hair.

I grip her ass in both hands and squeeze. God, she feels good.

“Please,” she begs in a whisper, as I move from one nipple to the other. “Please let me take care of you. That’s all I know how to do. And you took care of me the other night, when I was...drugged. I owe you.”

I shake my head. Then I lift her by her hips and throw her down on the mattress. She makes a soft oof sound when she lands, and before she can recover her breath, I drop on top of her and lick my way down her body, caressing every curve with my hands as I go.

Mallory squirms beneath me, breathing hard. “Don’t you want me to—”

I reach up and clamp one hand over her mouth, pressing down for just a second, so she gets the picture.

Shut up so I can worship your body with my tongue.

Surely that concept doesn’t require actual words.

When I get to her navel, I dip my tongue inside while I run my hands up her thighs, pushing them apart with the motion. I lick and nibble my way down her stomach and over her smooth mound. I’m still hard from being in her mouth, and now I’m fucking aching for her.

I slide two fingers inside her as my tongue flicks over her clit, and Mallory’s fingers claw into the sheet beneath us. “Oh, god,” she groans as I stroke inside her, feeling for a slightly rough patch. The other night, before the stimulant wore off, it was swollen and prominent. Today…there it is. It’s less noticeable, without the drug, but when I slide my fingers over it, Mallory clenches around them.

Her hips arch toward me as I lick her over and over, stroking her from the inside, and now her clit is swollen too. “Barrett!” she gasps, and I flick my tongue over her faster, alternating with long licks, until her breathing becomes short, frantic pants.

She falls apart beneath me, clenching around my fingers, grinding up against my tongue, and the moment her muscles begin to relax, I climb back up her body, licking and nibbling on the way. I shove my shorts down and slide all the way into her in one stroke.

I can’t wait any longer.

Her legs wrap around me, her head thrown back on the sheet-draped mattress. Her cheeks are flushed from her orgasm, and she’s hot and wet around my cock. She thrusts up to meet me with every stroke, gripping me with her tight little body.

“Oh,” she breathes as I adjust my angle, brushing her clit from a new approach, and I slam into her faster.

God, I wish I could talk to her. I want to whisper dirty things in her ear. I want to beg her to come again for me. I want to tell her that she’s nobody’s sex slave. That she’s worth fifty of Varian Roys and that I will never let him touch her again.

I’ll never let anyone touch her again.

Instead, I grab her chin and tilt her face up so that she’s looking at me as I come inside her. “Ahhhh…” she breathes, and her eyes close as her climax washes over her, milking the last of my release with her own quiet, euphoric orgasm. I watch her come, still thrusting lazily as aftershocks roll over me, to prolong her languid pleasure.

She is so fucking beautiful.

Afterward, I roll us onto our sides with her leg still around my hip, my cock still buried inside her. I tuck her hair behind her ear, and she runs the tips of her fingers over my face. She’s looking at me as if I hung the stars in the sky, just for her. As if I kissed the skinned knee that is her entire existence, and somehow made it all better.

I am terrified of the way she’s looking at me.

God, please let her understand what I can’t tell her. That she is no one’s whore. Not anymore.

“Will you kiss me, Barrett?” she whispers.

I recoil from the chill rushing through me, as if Mallory’s just tossed a bucket of ice water over my head. I pull out of her and stand so fast she gasps, looking shocked.

“I’m sorry. I had no right…” She grabs her blouse and drapes it across her chest, as if she feels like she has to hide herself from me now. “You just did such a nice thing, and I fucked it all up. I’m sorry.”

I hold one hand out, trying to tell her that it’s okay. I’m not mad, and she didn’t fuck anything up.

There’s nothing to fuck up between us. She is not my whore, and I am not her guardian. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what we’re doing. But it is not a good idea.

“I just… Guests and guards don’t kiss me.” She shrugs into her blouse without her bra, then sits up and reaches for her panties. “They come in and tell me what to do, and sometimes they make it good for me too. Sometimes they’re nice guys who’re just lonely, and nothing they do hurts. But even the best of them are still customers paying for my time. Well, paying the prison for my time. And…it’s just that this was so beautiful, and for a minute, I thought that meant… I mean, I guess I thought that if you kissed me, that would mean you like me, and this could be like it was with Varian, before they made me turn on him.”

Holy shit. She thinks I’m like him, and she thinks that’s a fucking compliment. The fucker bought her, and beat her, and loaned her out, but because he kissed her, she thinks he cared about her.

No. I give her another fierce shake of my head.

Hope dies on her face, and I feel like a stone-cold asshole. “It’s stupid. Never mind. I talk too much.” Mallory stands and steps into her panties, then pulls them up. “Just forget I asked.”

I breathe deeply, trying to ease the brutal ache in my chest.

It’s just a kiss. She just wants a fucking kiss, and it turns out that was the key to giving her her dignity. Her humanity. To showing her what she’s worth. I didn’t have to fuck her. I only had to kiss her. Like Sleeping fucking Beauty.

So what if I haven’t kissed anyone since Norah?

I reach down and take her hand.

“Really. I’m sorry, Barrett. I—”

I slide my free hand into the hair at the back of her skull and press my lips against hers. I kiss her slowly. No tongue, at first. Just lips. Then she makes this heartbreaking surprised noise. As if she isn’t even really sure this is real. She melts against me, her body molded to mine. This poor girl doesn’t have any defenses. There isn’t a hard edge or a sharp point in her entire existence. She is what she had to be to survive. Adaptable. Malleable.

She is what Varian made her: vulnerable.

A harsh look hurts her just like a fist to the gut, and she’s as grateful for a tender touch as she is for clean drinking water.

Fuck me.

I tilt her head and plunder her sweet mouth, exploring it like I should have the first time I touched her. I tease her tongue with mine, tasting her, and when I finally pull away, Mallory just stands there with her eyes closed. Her cheeks flushed. Her lips are swollen and damp, and they’re open a little bit, as if she’s still living in that kiss.

She needs me to keep her safe from Varian. Hidden from him. But what better way is there to protect her from him than to end him?

But I’ve been here for months without so much as seeing him, and the only way that seems possible, considering that the release of a new champion into zone three is a big news, is if he's hiding from me. I can’t kill him until I draw him out, and the only way to catch a fish is to put bait on the hook.

Mallory is a damn tempting lure.

There’s only one problem with the plan stringing itself together in the back of my mind—the bait always gets eaten.

She’s never stepped into a stream before. That much is obvious from the laughter bubbling up from her throat as the water trips over her bare toes. She’s wearing nothing but that lacy red thong and her thin white blouse, unbuttoned over beautiful bare breasts, and as I watch her from a bed of trampled grass, I can hardly believe any of this is real. That I’m still on Rhodon—still a prisoner—and that despite this sexy little interlude, I am still trapped in this hell with four million other convicts. Several hundred of which are in this very zone.

Though there will be one fewer, once I find Varian.

If not for the backdrop of red forest foliage and the rust-colored grass beneath me, I might be able to pretend this mirage is reality, for just a little while.

As I watch Mallory, I eat nuts one at a time from the bag she insisted I take, when she saw me looking at them. I haven’t had honey roasted peanuts since my season in the arena. They had some in the green room one week, and I must have eaten my weight in them.

Mallory’s smile is almost as sweet as my snack. “You’re sure this is safe to bathe in?” she calls out. When I nod, she pulls her blouse off and wads it into a ball, then tosses it to me.

I catch the silky projectile as it unfurls in the air, and a second later, her panties follow. Mallory stands naked in the stream, sunlight highlighting every dip and curve of her figure, and suddenly my cock is at attention again, straining against the confines of my prison-issue pants.

I sit up straighter and scan the horizon in all directions, to make sure there’s no one else out there. No one to see her prancing naked in the water like a fucking siren, fated to lure every man close enough to see or hear her. In the stories, sirens were a sailor’s doom, but that’s not how it would play out, here. Anyone who sees her would try to take her, and Mallory is hanging from one fragile psychological thread.

If someone snips that thread, she’ll shatter like ice dropped on the sidewalk.

I have no business even thinking about using her as bait. But I have no other choice.

Varian took everything from me. If he finds out Mallory is here, he’ll come after her. And eventually, he will find out. I’d much rather that be on my terms. So I can kill him before he lays a hand on her.

So I can avenge Norah.

Mallory wets the rag I gave her and begins wiping herself down, and I watch her bathe. I should join her; I could use a bath too. But first…I’ll watch.

“It’s so beautiful here. I love the sun. And those sister planets…” While she runs the rag down her pale arm, she stares at the horizon, where both of the other rocks in this solar system are still visible. “When I was growing up, we couldn’t go outside for very long. And because the air was toxic, houses had to have special, expensive ventilation systems.”

She’s from Ananke. Has to be. The poor girl was born with one foot in the fucking grave.

Ananke is a moon orbiting a gaseous planet near the edge of charted space—almost as out of the way as Rhodon. Several decades ago, mineral scouts discovered a large store of some rare, lightweight metal beneath the surface. The moon was terraformed in a hurry. Badly. Settlers were sent to start mining, but the chemical they injected into the surface of the moon, which was intended to open existing fissures and give easy access to the ore pockets, reacted badly with the environment. In less than a century, Mallory’s homeworld became as toxic an environment as Earth became after hundreds of thousands of years of human existence.

“Not that we had a house,” she continues. “We lived in a basement apartment, so the landlord had to pay for the ventilator. My uncle said that’s why my parents never bought a house of their own. Too much upkeep. And then there were medical bills, for all the good the doctors did. There wasn’t much they could do, when every breath you take carves a minute off your life.”

I remember the evacuation attempts. Refugees fleeing to any planet that would take them, and the whole time, the mines remained operational, making a fortune for off-world owners while the miners and their families died miserable deaths.

Mallory bends in the stream to rinse her rag, and I get a blissful view of her ass, and the beautiful cleft between her thighs. “That all changed with Varian, though. He wanted us clean and healthy. There were immunizations, and vitamins, and a home gym. Warm baths and hot meals.”

She sounds nostalgic.

I want to beat his fucking face in.

“I still couldn’t go outside much, though. He liked to keep me close. In case he needed me.”

I feel sick.

Varian needed her the same way a bullet needs a target. The way my fist needs his face.

I wave my hand, trying to get her attention. Determined to remind her that everything Varian did for her hurt eventually. And that now he wants to kill her. But she doesn’t see me, because she’s staring at the trees in the distance, singing as she scoops up water to rinse herself.

She’s singing. Her voice is stunning. High and clear. The song sounds like a lullaby. Mallory turns and sees my hand still in the air. “What’s wrong?”

I shouldn’t ask her. She’s so happy right now, and I shouldn’t remind her of painful things. But I can’t stand the fact that she says his name with longing. As if she misses that psychotic fuck.

I hold up the first two fingers of my left hand, then I trace the shape they make with the index finger of my right hand.

“V,” she says. “I do know my letters. I went to school for two years before my uncle pulled me out. I’m just not very good at putting them together to make words. Turns out that if you don’t use that skill, you lose it.”

I trace the letter again.

“V,” she repeats. “Oh, for Varian?” I nod. “What about him?”

I roll up the top of the peanut bag, to keep my snack from going stale. Then I sit up on my knees and face her as she steps out of the stream. I curl my hand into a fist and mime punching something.

Her face goes pale. “Yeah, sometimes he hit us. Never in the face, though.” She says it as if only hitting women in the torso is a gentlemanly quality. But the truth is that he liked his women pretty.

I shrug, giving her an exaggerated sign for “Why?” Why did he hit her?

Mallory grabs a towel from her satchel and wraps it around herself, then pads toward me, caking the soles of her feet in loose, reddish dirt. “Varian had a ring. Something old and special, that his dad gave him. He hardly ever wore it.”

I know the ring. And I think I know where she’s going with this.

“When he got mad, he would put it on the middle finger of his right hand.” She lowers the towel on one side and shows me a small, pale scar on her left side. “This one is because I wouldn’t get on my knees for his friend, at a party. Because I thought… I thought Varian wanted me for himself.”

She’d thought she was his girlfriend.

“I was rude and immature. So he corrected me.” Her words have the cadence of something memorized. Of a line fed to her. She recites it through gritted teeth, and I’m relieved to see another spark of anger in her. To see some sign that she understands that what he did to her was wrong. “I should have just done what he wanted in the first place, because it’s a lot harder to give a blowjob with a broken rib.”

That bastard.

“But I learned my lesson. So when Billy asked me to do that for him—he was my friend who used to sleepwalk—I thought I should. Varian liked me to keep his friends happy. And Billy was my friend too. So I did, and afterward, he held me and told me that I was beautiful, and sweet, and that I did it just right. That I made him feel really good. And I felt so…proud.” Her voice breaks on the word. “But then Varian came in, and Billy got scared, and that’s when I realized I was only supposed to do that when Varian told me to.”

Mallory pulls her towel up and bends to take a fresh pair of underwear from her satchel.

I clear my throat, and when she looks at me, I give her the “go on” signal.

She hesitates, and I’m just about to let it go, to tell her she doesn’t have to tell me what happened next, if she doesn’t want to. But then she starts talking again. “He killed Billy. Varian beat him to death right in front of me. Then he called his guards in and I had to take all of them in my mouth. One after the other. There were…” She rubs her jaw, clearly caught in the memory. “There were eight of them. I had to sleep on the floor for a week after that, listening while Jerri got to sleep in Varian’s bed and make him happy. So she could show me what a good girl acts like.”

Mallory gets dressed in silence, and I want to tell her that it’s okay. That all of that is over. I want to show her all the flowers growing in the field, or the rabbits hopping through the woods, so she’ll smile again. Because for no reason I can understand, considering everything she’s lived through, it really doesn’t take much to make her smile. But I can’t do that, because I’m trapped in my own version of that same memory.

I was there with her, in that room. Not in person, but in spirit.

Before my promotion, I was one of Varian’s bodyguards. One night he got mad at a girl named Avery, so he called us in and told us to line up and drop our pants. He made that poor girl suck us all off.

I was fourth in line, and she was bawling by the time she got to me. She was choking on her own tears and clearly in pain. The guys before me were not gentle. I tried to back out, but Varian held a gun to her head. He said if I didn’t play the game, he’d kill her, then he’d take what it cost to buy a new girl out of my pay.

So I had to stand there and let that poor girl…

I had to close my eyes and pretend I couldn’t hear Avery crying. I had to pretend she wanted to be there, so I could keep it up long enough to shoot off into the back of her throat, to keep Varian from killing her. Then I had to watch her wipe her tears and crawl over to the next guy in line.

I never told Norah about that. I couldn’t. I didn’t want her to know what he made me do. I didn’t want to know what it said about me that I was able to finish, while that poor girl sobbed around my cock.

But maybe I should have. Maybe if I’d told her how bad things were—how dangerous my life was—from the beginning, it would all have ended differently.

Maybe she would still be alive.

Mallory doesn’t sing anymore, after her bath in the stream. She hardly speaks, after what I’ve made her remember, and I wish to god she would, so I could think about anything other than Varian’s girl looking up at me from her knees.

That night, Mallory crawls into my bed, naked as the day she was born, and I’m afraid she’s going to try to “pay” me again. But she only tucks her head into my shoulder and cries herself to sleep in my arms.

I’m terrified that I’ve broken her.

But in the morning, I wake up to that sweet little lullaby and I find Mallory humming in the middle of the shelter, beneath the square of daylight leaking in from around the closed hatch. She’s opened one of my meal packets and is eating a triple chunk brownie in the nude.

When she sees that I’m awake, she sets her breakfast down and crawls onto the mattress, then sinks onto my cock.

She leans down to kiss me while she rides me, and I swear to god, she tastes like chocolate and rainbows.